The last position paper was a bone chiller. It was a short list of known viral strains, both natural and synthetic, that could wreak havoc in a poorly inoculated population. Lots of nasty little bugs nestled in labs and in arms factories all over the world. They were all deadly but, thank God, all very delicate. Some would die in direct sunlight. Others had no tolerance for temperature swings. Some hated smog while rain rendered a few strains impotent. The fragile nature of most of these viruses eliminated their possible use as weapons. But a few were robust enough to scare the bejesus out of anti-biological response teams.
One particularly nasty little bugger was HCD Complex 33, a synthetic strain that needed to be incubated right up until its time of release. The heat of the human body was incubation enough, but the Complex 33 had to get into the body from a warm source to begin with and that wasn’t that easy. Sunlight killed it. UV actually. So you couldn’t just release it in a warm climate. However, once it was inside a person, it spread by the simple act of breathing. Then the next victim’s internal heat incubated it for the next migration through the new host’s breathing patterns.
Bill read the blurb again to make sure he understood that in order to start the chain of infection you’d have had to set it inside a body from an incubated environment intentionally. Then he put the message at the top of the list. He wanted everyone’s thoughts on this. Pronto.
He was about to call up some position papers by the NIH when the sound of retching made him fly back to the bedroom. He saw Janice in their bathroom bent over the bowl throwing up. At a time like this, a man makes a choice, one that will either dog him or herald him for decades to come. Bill chose wisely. He pulled back Janice’s hair, placed a gentle hand on her upper back, and was ready with a damp washcloth when she was able to stand again. He then guided her by the shoulders back to bed and sat alongside her.
“You okay?”
“I don’t know what happened.”
“You were pretty restless all night.”
“I can’t imagine what got into me.”
“Probably some bug or twenty-four-hour thing.”
He spoke reassuringly, but inside, Bill’s silent alarm went off. This is how it would happen. Thousands of Americans dismissing the first sign of an attack as a bug or bad sushi. He got another washcloth, wet it down, and laid it on Janice’s brow.
“Rest. I’ll call in for you.”
“Just give me a minute or two, I’ll be okay.”
A half-hour later, Janice was ready to get dressed and start her day. She headed off to work, but only after Bill made her promise to see a doctor later.
At 7:30 a.m. from his office phone, Bill called Judy, America’s “MD #1.” By 8:00, she was in his conference room.
“What’s the gestation period of the kind of influenza we are going to get hit with this season?”
“Thirty-six to forty-eight hours from the time of infection, depending on the antibodies and general health of the exposed.”
“Ever hear of HD Complex 33?”
“Whoa. Yes. Very nasty, a super-strain on steroids. Helped along by synthetic technology. And unfortunately that genie is out of the bottle. We couldn’t stop the propagation of the synthesis process because it was Chinese-Soviet research initially. When the Soviet Union went down the papers got out.”
“So why isn’t this more of a concern? I mean, I just learned of it.” Hiccock asked as he tapped the printed out email in front of him.
“The only good thing is it is very unstable outside the host and not easily transported. Can I ask why you brought it up?”
“What would the gestation period of Complex 33 be?”
“Again it’s supercharged; maybe twenty minutes.”
“So how long would it take before our public health system was alerted to any spikes in influenza with a normal virus?”
“I know you are going to tell me why you are asking me, but three to four days is the generally accepted timeframe for confirmation of a major event.”
“Roughly twice the gestation time. So if we were hit with Complex 33, the confirmation time would be forty minutes?”
“I see where you’re going, but let me call in the boys at CDC. They have some epidemiological data sprays on stuff like this.” She picked up the phone and dialed. “You know, if you think this agent is in play, you are duty bound by law to inform my office.”
“I assure you all of this is just speculation, a big what-if.”
She nodded to the computer. “Is this an exercise in your SCIAD group?”
“Yep. Just egghead stuff. For now.”
“Let’s hope it stays that way.” She drew her attention toward the phone. “Hello George, Judy. Can you flash-net over to Mr. Hiccock’s office the first three tiers of the EP study you ran for me last week? Oh and George one more thing, does Complex 33 have a dormant quotient? Uh hum. I see. Okay, get back to me fast.”
She hung up the phone. “You better hope it stays an exercise, Bill. Complex 33 has a dormant quotient.”
“Which means?”
“It can lie dormant inside the host for up to seventy-two hours before any signs occur. Yet unlike natural viral structures, it remains infectious while it’s napping.”
“So that means we have a stealth weapon, a biological time bomb, which spreads silently before going off.”
Judy nodded solemnly. “That makes us blind to an attack for the first three days at least. Then hundreds of thousands of cases start overloading the system.”
Bill shook his head at the concept. “Infectious diseases were so much more fun when we left them to nature.”
“How real is this exercise, Bill?”
“I swear it’s just that.”
Angela D’Martino adjusted her brand new plunge demi-bra so the neckline of her new sweater showed just the right amount of cleavage. She made a face like she suddenly had fangs to check that the Revlon Killer Red lipstick was not smudged all over her new caps. $12,000 dollars worth of dental work, free! That was just one of the benefits of boinking her Jewish dentist. Here was a man who noticed a woman and all the little things she did. Her husband, the “schmoe,” never noticed anything about her anymore. Including her frequent nights out with the "girls."
Angela checked her watch as she grabbed the car keys. Harvey was going to meet her at 8:30 at “the place.” As she opened her front door, she called out to the blob on the couch. “I left sausage and peppers in the Tupperware. Just heat it up for a minute in the microwave. Didja hear me? The sausage and peppers!”
“Yeah, microwave, right,” was the rumble from the living room. He was in for the night; Saturday night no less.
As Angela drove down the Van Wyck Expressway, she felt excited, young even, feeling the warm flush of impending sex. It would go just like the other times. She’d wait in the motel parking lot inside her car, wearing her sunglasses in spite of the night. He’d pull up, go in, get the room key, and then come out and escort her inside.
Harvey Edelstein, DDS was a good lover and didn’t mind the oral thing. Her husband, on the other hand, thought it was beneath his manhood to please a woman that way. His loss.
She arrived at the Starlight Motor Inn at 8:25. Even had she not been lost in her sweaty reverie, she would have never noticed the dark sedan that entered the lot with her, parked, and killed its lights.
A few minutes later, Harvey’s BMW pulled in. He parked next to her, and came round and gave her a peck on the cheek through her driver’s side window.