“I don’t know a lot about medicine and plagues,” she said, looking around at the team. “But it seems to me that I remember from freshman biology that vaccines used to be made from the blood of persons who had acquired antibodies to a certain illness or something like that.”
Mason’s brows knit and he looked puzzled. “Yeah, so?”
“Well,” she continued, “we have all seen the Indio boy running around the jungle as healthy as can be in spite of being exposed to the anthrax at the campsite. Might his blood not have the antibodies you need to make a vaccine or something else that might help treat the anthrax?”
“Jesus!” Jakes exclaimed, leaning over to kiss Lauren on the cheek. “Out of the mouths of babes…”
“She’s right,” Shirley Cole said, standing up in her excitement. “He’s got to be immune to the bug, either through previous mild infection or through some genetic abnormality that helps to fight off further infection.”
Suzanne also stood up, a thoughtful expression on her face. “And whatever it is that is protecting him might be able to be harnessed to help protect others.”
“Damn, Lauren,” Mason said, excitement on his face. “You’ve managed to look through the forest and see the one tree that might just be the answer we’ve been looking for.”
Lauren smiled. “So I guess the next step is to try to find this boy and convince him to help us?”
“Yeah, but the problem is does anyone here speak Indio?” Joel asked, looking around the room.
Lauren held up her hand, hesitantly. “There is no Indio language, Joel. Other than Spanish, the only other language that might be spoken this far south is Nahuatl, a form of the ancient Aztecan language. However, I used to work at an outreach program in the Hispanic part of Austin. I speak pretty tolerable Spanish, and I think the boy would have to understand at least some Spanish to be up here this far north, so I can probably make myself understood… if we can get close enough to talk to him.”
Mason jumped up. “Then let’s do it! Everyone spread out through the jungle and look for the boy, and don’t forget to take some of Shirley’s sweet treats with you. A couple of cookies or one of her muffins might let you get close enough to him to get him to follow you back to the lab.”
Jakes shook his head. “I don’t know, Mason. Those damned Racals might just scare the poor little bastard off.”
Mason shook his head. “No need to wear the Racal suits,” he said. “Since we know now we’re dealing with a respiratory bug, just wear the micropore masks and latex gloves and our scrubs that are contamination-proof and that should be enough protection.” He hesitated, “Of course, we’ll still use all decontamination protocols before reentering the lab.”
“What about Dr. Matos?” Shirley Cole asked. “He’s hanging on by a thread and I don’t think it’d be a good idea to leave him all alone in the lab in case he takes a turn for the worse.”
Mason sighed. “You’re right, Shirley, as always. You’d better stay here and look after him.”
She nodded. “And while I’m watching him, I’ll try to cook up a good meal for the boy when you bring him back. A full stomach may make him more agreeable to letting us stick lots of needles into his arms.”
“Needles?” Lauren asked.
“We’re gonna need lots of his blood to run antibody titers and for DNA testing,” Jakes said, “And we may even need to take some tissue samples before we’re done with him.”
Lauren cast a worried glance at Mason.
“Don’t worry, Lauren,” he said, patting her on the arm. “We’ll do our best to make the tests as painless as possible, but remember, thousands and maybe millions of people’s lives are at stake here.”
“Yeah,” she answered ruefully, “but I’m the one that’s going to have to try to explain to a jungle boy who probably speaks no English why you’re going to poke him with needles and take his blood.”
Suzanne put her arm around Lauren’s shoulders. “I’m sure you can do it, Lauren. Just tell him his gods need a blood sacrifice and it will assure him of a place in his heaven,” she said, smiling.
Lauren laughed. “Yeah, right!”
Chapter 21
Colonel Blackman was in the middle of dealing with the first Code Red lockdown at Ft. Detrick since a vial of smallpox had gone missing back in the mid-70s. Both his phone and his cell phone were ringing continually, and he was having to deal with an amount of panic in the workers he hadn’t really expected in a BL4 facility.
“These chicken-shit bastards knew what they were getting into when they hired on,” he muttered to himself as he supervised men in Racal suits who were putting Paco’s and the security guard’s bodies in biohazard black body bags, which were double-sealed and then sprayed with a powerful disinfectant before being hauled off to the BL-4 morgue in the basement of the main laboratory.
Both the men in the Racals and the men in the body bags would then be subjected to additional multiple showers of bleach and other antimicrobial solutions until they were considered safe to be around.
The entry room to the lab was another question, as was the car in which Paco’s body was discovered. Blackman thought he’d just have the fucking car burned until nothing was left of it but smoking ash. Of course, he thought, he couldn’t very well do that to the room in the secure lab. The damned thing would just have to be repeatedly sprayed and irradiated and wiped down until nothing organic could live in the freaking place.
Just as he was about to decide to leave the scene for a quick cigar, the radio on his belt buzzed.
He grabbed it and pressed the send button. “Yeah?”
“Sir,” his aide said, “Your computer is signaling a secure communication from the field.”
Damn, he thought. It must be Janus checking in. He really didn’t have time for this shit.
“I’ll be right there,” he growled, all thoughts of a calming cigar forgotten for the moment. He strode into his office and slammed the door before sitting at his computer and keying in his secret password to enable the satellite transmission of Janus’s secure phone.
“What is it?” he almost shouted. “I’m up to my ass in alligators here, Janus.”
Janus’s voice, unlike his was calm. “I really don’t give a shit what your ass is up to, Colonel.”
In spite of himself, Blackman laughed. “Well, Janus, if you’re gonna mention my ass, you might as well call me Blackie.”
Janus laughed, too, for a second. “The good news, Blackie, is that I may have found a way to either control or even prevent the spread of this super anthrax.”
“Uh-oh. What’s the bad news?”
“I’m going to need an extraction team here at the site pronto. They’re going to have to be prepared to bring a living specimen back to the States for tests, and they’ll have to be prepared to bring him in while quarantined.”
Blackman ran his hands through his hair. “You’re not asking for much, Janus. You do realize the whole world is in lockdown and nothing is flying anywhere right now?”
“Okay,” Janus said, and Blackman could almost hear the shrug over the phone. “I guess I’ll just let the CDC have him and let them get control of the vaccine and antidote to the anthrax then.”
“You’ve got a vaccine?” he almost shouted.
“Calm down, Colonel,” Janus said. “No vaccine yet, but I’ve got, or rather we’re soon going to have, someone who is totally immune to the anthrax, and his blood and tissue are just as good as a vaccine.” There was a slight hesitation, and then Janus continued, “In fact, there just may be an entire village of people immune to this bad boy, but I won’t know that for a while yet.”