The toxin was successfully isolated in a pure crystalline form and methods were developed for producing it on a large scale. A really large scale wasn't necessary inasmuch as the poison was so deadly one-seventh of a microgram was a fatal dose when taken internally; one ounce was capable of slaughtering a hundred and eighty million people. The military machine thought to introduce this toxin into an enemy's food or water supply by agents, or by spraying from the sky. Unstated, but implied, was the definite possibility of its being introduced by long-range missiles, whether guided or in free flight.
Gary stopped reading, looked up to see sunlight through the windows. He reached for a cigarette, paused to inspect it critically and then put it in his mouth. The following sentence caught his eye: “Among diseases suitable for biologic warfare are pneumonic plague…” He paused again, to reach for the other volume.
Pneumonic plague was a different kind of a killer. The plague was a dark leftover from the Middle Ages when Bubonic swept a countryside and completely decimated a town. Pneumonic plague was so named because the lungs were the organs infected; the disease was freely transmitted by the spray from the mouths and lungs of other infected persons. The infection may spread — he turned the page — to other parts of the body, resulting in septicemic plague. There followed a graphic description of the symptoms of the two, and the statement that one is about ninety-five percent fatal whereas the other is almost invariably so. Time: death as early as the same day on which the symptoms first develop, or as late as two or three days afterward. The final paragraph pulled his attention. The victims assume a deep blue or purple color, typical of the last hours of all forms of plague, due to respiratory failure. The so-called “black death.”
Gary puffed slowly on the cigarette, disliking the taste of it. His gaze wandered back to the brutal line of the other article.
Among diseases suitable for biologic warfare are pneumonic plague, influenza, yellow fever, dengue, glanders… The United States, because of its particular geographic isolation, would be highly vulnerable to biologic attack. Infectious diseases would be spread by air or other means and then freely allowed to propagate themselves; for instance, pneumonic plague, one of the most contagious and highly dangerous diseases known, could readily be spread in this manner.
Biological warfare can be a weapon as deadly and as devastating as an atomic bomb, in addition to having the advantage of being an inexpensive and efficient method of waging an undeclared war. A nation could be quickly and seriously disabled by subjecting its population to…
He flipped shut the volume and let the cigarette drop to the floor. Absently stepping on it, he slumped down in the chair and stared moodily through the window, unmoving and unconscious of the passage of time until the sun covered his face and struck his eyes.
So that was what was thrown at them.
Who threw it?
Someone to the east of them, the north and east; at least the bombardment appeared to have come from that direction. The northeastern third of the nation was wrecked, pulverized and depopulated by bombs and flying missiles dropping out of the sky. Atomic bombs for the larger cities, pneumonic plague for the smaller, the toxin of botulism spread everywhere. Water supplies, the grain fields, wherever people gathered, ate and drank in sufficient number, someone to the northeast had knocked out the industrial potential and the greatest mass of the population. Quite apparently the bombing had not been carried into the West or even far into the Middle West for the Mississippi River marked the dividing line between the contaminated and the clean. The government had explained its present position coldly and clearly in the pink leaflets: the eastern third would be sealed off to protect the remainder. How much was left of the government, he wondered?
First Army, on Governors Island, New York, was charged with the over-all defense of the country. The fact that a western headquarters was now defending it bespoke the fate of Governors Island. Even Washington admitted what might befall it when it built secret bomb shelters under the Pentagon building, super-secret military and government chambers beneath the green rolling hills of Maryland and Virginia. Those chambers still might contain living people, but they too were quarantined on the wrong side of the river. He recalled that in the earlier war, the one which had swallowed him up ten years before, Hitler's underground retreat had not proved successful in the end.
Who threw it?
Someone to the northeast, someone whose missiles and bombs were concentrated on the eastern third of the nation for tactical and economic reasons. They could have easily originated in some spot as near as Greenland, an island almost as large as a continent and nine-tenths uninhabited. A source such as Greenland would not find it too difficult to shower death on those portions of Canada and the United States nearest it, with the West and the South escaping immediate devastation only to fall victim to pestilence shortly thereafter. The plague would spread as fast as frightened people ran. By now, he realized, it must have reached the southernmost tip of Florida and would quickly have gone to the Rockies if it were not for the river and the pink leaflets.
The sun reached his eyes and he left the chair.
He was immune. The past week had proved that. Therefore he could see no reason why he shouldn't cross the river and get back into uniform. If nothing else, the army offered him security, a precious security now that death in many forms stalked the countryside and food was becoming scarce. This food was contaminated and…
But he had already eaten it, and drunk the water.
Gary sat down again to puzzle it out, to think back to that morning when he woke up in the run-down hotel. What he had eaten had come from cans, liquids from sealed bottles. He had passed by the meats and vegetables, the bread in the stores because of mold and the decaying odors; he had not been able to brew coffee because water was not running from the taps. So he had opened cans and drunk from bottles. But what about shaving? That water was stale, clean but stale. It had lain untouched in the flush boxes since at least the day before the bombardment. And since then he had drunk only from bottles or fresh water country wells, forced to by the dry taps or the nearness of a well. The narrow margin between life and death, his life and death staggered him. Had water still been flowing from taps…
The only food that could still be regarded as safe, then, was stored on grocery shelves. And despite the immense loss of life, there still remained some thousands of people roaming the countryside between the river and the Atlantic. The grocery shelves would not supply them forever and in the very near future an acute situation would arise. When the food began to disappear, a different kind of plague would grip the survivors.
A man would either be quick, or dead.
Gary intended to be quick even before the necessity of making such a choice confronted him. He quit the library abruptly, conscious of the several days he had wasted, and descended the stairway at a fast trot with the two volumes under his arm. Absently closing the smashed door behind him, he dumped the books onto the automobile seat and gunned the motor, straining to recall the location of the street which carried the highway through town. He stopped only once more in the silent city to pick up tobacco from the shelves of an outlying store, and then nosed the car south along the highway which would eventually lead him to the Kentucky border.