unprecedented economic nightmare from which it might never recover. Nothing was ever going to be the same again.
“Get some sleep,” he ordered the boys, as they passed an army convoy heading the other way. He half-expected the soldiers to stop them, but they just let them pass without even waving. Perhaps, out in the countryside, there would be no attempt to impede traffic. “We’ll be there tomorrow morning.”
The radio spoke endlessly of the need for calm.
Chapter Eight
It is important to remember that animals are not, by definition, human. A medicine tested on an animal – such as a monkey – may not actually be effective when used on a human, or vice versa. Even when dealing with diseases that can cross between species – like smallpox – it is still difficult to be sure that one cure will work for all. This leaves us with the disturbing need to carry out human testing, intentionally or otherwise.
- Doctor Nicolas Awad
Washingto n DC, USA
Day 7
There was exactly one research facility that belonged solely to Project Wildfire, a former USAF base that had been decommissioned and placed under the care of a small caretaker crew. The Wildfire experts had converted the base ’s underground facilities into a series of research labs, patient rooms and secure storage facilities, knowing that if the base were ever to be activated, it would be required to study the effects of a biological attack. No one outside a very small group of select people knew that the base was anything other than what it seemed, a disused airfield far enough from Washington for comfort.
Cally Henderson lay on a bed within a private room, stripped of all dignity by her disease and the small army of doctors and nurses surrounding her. Nicolas watched as they bent over her naked body, warped and mutilated by the hundreds of pustules covering her bare skin, taking samples and injecting her with fluids that might help keep her alive for another day or two. IV lines ran from the ceiling, pumping in liquid food and painkillers, while smaller tubes had been attached to her vagina and anus. The poor girl would have died by now, were it not for the medical intervention, yet Nicolas held no hope for her recovery. The researchers had been charting the process of the disease – Henderson’s Disease, they’d started to call it – and had concluded that it was systematically wrecking her body. They weren't even sure if Miss Henderson was still aware of her surroundings.
Nicolas grimaced as one of the pustules broke, scattering infectious material over the bed. The woman had become little more than a walking pile of smallpox, so heavily infectious that anyone who went near her without a protective suit would almost certainly wind up infected with the disease. Even death would bring no relief for the rest of the world, he knew, for smallpox would remain dangerous until her body was burned in a furnace. When her body finally failed, despite everything they could do to keep her alive, she would be dissected and then, what remained of her body would be destroyed. Even so, it hardly seemed to matter. The disease was already loose in America, if not the entire world.
He turned away as the girl moaned in pain and looked towards the FBI’s massive chart of her life. It would have alarmed any civil liberties campaigner if they had known just how comprehensively a person’s life could be profiled by the government, yet none of it answered the most important question of all; where in the world had Miss Henderson been infected with smallpox? As an air hostess, she had been around the world, but there was nowhere outside the United States – yet, he reminded himself – that was reporting a smallpox epidemic. The disease appeared to have come out of nowhere. The pattern fitted a biological attack, of course, but even so...where had it come from?
Cally Henderson, in the week
“Get some sleep,” he ordered the boys, as they passed an army convoy heading the other way. He half-expected the soldiers to stop them, but they just let them pass without even waving. Perhaps, out in the countryside, there would be no attempt to impede traffic. “We’ll be there tomorrow morning.”
The radio spoke endlessly of the need for calm.
Chapter Eight
It is important to remember that animals are not, by definition, human. A medicine tested on an animal – such as a monkey – may not actually be effective when used on a human, or vice versa. Even when dealing with diseases that can cross between species – like smallpox – it is still difficult to be sure that one cure will work for all. This leaves us with the disturbing need to carry out human testing, intentionally or otherwise.
- Doctor Nicolas Awad
Washingto n DC, USA
Day 7
There was exactly one research facility that belonged solely to Project Wildfire, a former USAF base that had been decommissioned and placed under the care of a small caretaker crew. The Wildfire experts had converted the base ’s underground facilities into a series of research labs, patient rooms and secure storage facilities, knowing that if the base were ever to be activated, it would be required to study the effects of a biological attack. No one outside a very small group of select people knew that the base was anything other than what it seemed, a disused airfield far enough from Washington for comfort.
Cally Henderson lay on a bed within a private room, stripped of all dignity by her disease and the small army of doctors and nurses surrounding her. Nicolas watched as they bent over her naked body, warped and mutilated by the hundreds of pustules covering her bare skin, taking samples and injecting her with fluids that might help keep her alive for another day or two. IV lines ran from the ceiling, pumping in liquid food and painkillers, while smaller tubes had been attached to her vagina and anus. The poor girl would have died by now, were it not for the medical intervention, yet Nicolas held no hope for her recovery. The researchers had been charting the process of the disease – Henderson’s Disease, they’d started to call it – and had concluded that it was systematically wrecking her body. They weren't even sure if Miss Henderson was still aware of her surroundings.
Nicolas grimaced as one of the pustules broke, scattering infectious material over the bed. The woman had become little more than a walking pile of smallpox, so heavily infectious that anyone who went near her without a protective suit would almost certainly wind up infected with the disease. Even death would bring no relief for the rest of the world, he knew, for smallpox would remain dangerous until her body was burned in a furnace. When her body finally failed, despite everything they could do to keep her alive, she would be dissected and then, what remained of her body would be destroyed. Even so, it hardly seemed to matter. The disease was already loose in America, if not the entire world.
He turned away as the girl moaned in pain and looked towards the FBI’s massive chart of her life. It would have alarmed any civil liberties campaigner if they had known just how comprehensively a person’s life could be profiled by the government, yet none of it answered the most important question of all; where in the world had Miss Henderson been infected with smallpox? As an air hostess, she had been around the world, but there was nowhere outside the United States – yet, he reminded himself – that was reporting a smallpox epidemic. The disease appeared to have come out of nowhere. The pattern fitted a biological attack, of course, but even so...where had it come from?
Cally Henderson, in the week
Similar Books
