Julie shut the door to the hotel room and opened her laptop. She initiated a few searches, first inside the SecuNet database and the rest of the private CDC intranet, then through Google. She tried numerous combinations. Livingston CDC, David Livingston, David Livingston CDC, and more, but each result was merely a bare-bones biographical entry that was obviously written by Livingston himself.
David Foster Livingston is a successful leader and proven manager in many corporate settings. He is currently head of the Biological Threat Research division of the Centers for Disease Control. A growing list of Livingston’s accomplishments include successfully restructuring the BTR division for efficiency and efficacy, increasing employee retention, and streamlining data systems for cost effectiveness at BetaMark, Inc., where he was previously employed. He has one daughter and resides in Minnesota.
Julie saw the same paragraph pasted onto every page that referenced Livingston. Each of the surrounding articles only mentioned the man, too. A project he co-sponsored, a few articles written by a team Livingston had served on, and a few shots of the man on a company softball team years ago. Livingston was certainly paranoid, as the verbatim biography on each site suggested that he’d been successful in forcing each of the article’s writers to update his information with the same paragraph.
She shook her head and reached for her phone.
“Hey Randy, it’s me again. Anything yet?”
“Julie, it’s been ten minutes. Are you serious?”
“Sorry, I know. I’m getting a little antsy, though.”
“I get it. We all are. Don’t worry about it. Why did you call?”
“I’m trying to find something on Livingston — just in case.”
“Don’t bother,” Randy said. “I already tried. It’s pointless. The man’s either got the PR team of a celebrity or he’s the most paranoid person I’ve ever met.”
Julie laughed as she read the first line of the Livingston biography. “David Foster Livingston is a successful leader and proven…”
“…Manager in many corporate settings,” Randy finished. “Ugh. You’ve got to be kidding me. What a joke.”
“Okay, well, thanks for trying. Let me know if you come up with anything else.”
“Will do — take care.”
“Hey, one more thing,” Julie said into the phone.
“What’s that?”
Julie paused. “Uh, don’t worry about it, actually. Let me see if I can dig something up first.”
She hung up the phone and woke up her computer’s screen. She started a new search, and began browsing through the results.
Finally, one result jumped out at her.
Teenaged Hero Rescues Father and Brother was the headline.
She clicked the listing and waited for the slow hotel WIFI connection to load the advertisement-riddled page. It was a newspaper article that had been scanned and transcribed for the news site’s archives, dated thirteen years ago.
“…The Bennett men were camping in a southern region of Glacier National Park when the youngest Bennett, nine-year-old Zachary, wandered to a clearing where he accidentally stumbled between a mother grizzly bear and her cub…”
“Johnson Bennett ran to his son’s aid, but the mother grizzly struck Johnson, knocking the man unconscious…”
“…Shooting the larger bear first with two rounds from the father’s rifle, and scaring away the cub. Harvey pursued the smaller animal and eventually shot it, bringing it down with one round…”
Julie covered her mouth as she read the account.
“…Zachary and Johnson Bennett were rushed to St. Andrews Memorial Hospital, where they were both treated for severe trauma, and the elder Bennett for a concussion. Zachary Bennett is expected to make a full recovery. Johnson Bennett is currently comatose in a stable condition, however, doctors are unsure of the possibility of recovery…”
The door to the hotel room opened, and Julie quickly slammed the laptop shut.
“Julie!”
It was Ben.
Startled, Julie nearly tripped over the chair as she stood and turned toward the door. Malcolm Fischer entered the room just behind Ben, breathing heavily.
“Julie, I got an email from Randy. Just now.”
Julie looked at him. “Randall Brown? My IT guy?”
“Yeah, he wanted to send it over directly, since he thought there might be an issue with your emails or something. But you should have gotten it too.”
She started to check her email, but stopped herself. “Okay, well what did he say?”
“It was a forward of my mother’s email draft. She must have tried to send it, but it never went out.”
Julie’s eyes widened.
“It has information in it, Julie, about the virus. The night… the night she died, she must have been writing it. It’s got everything she was working on, and everything she and her assistant discovered.”
“Go on.”
“For one, it’s not a virus.”
She turned her head slightly, her eyes narrowing.
Malcolm continued the explanation for Ben. “Ben’s mother’s research seems to prove that the virus is actually a mutated bacteria —”
“No, that’s not possible. The contagious spread, the outbreak pattern, the —”
“It’s a mutated bacterial infection inside of a virus.”
Julie’s head snapped up. “Come again?”
“That’s right, Julie,” Malcolm explained. “While I still believe the virus is made up of some synthetic alteration of the powder substance my students and I found in Canada, Dr. Torres is postulating that the reason this strain has been so difficult to model is due to its uncharacteristic qualities. Map it as a virion, and it fails many of the chemical application tests. Map it as a bacteria, and it doesn’t appear to be living — immediately disqualifying it from the ranks of bacteriophages.”
“Okay,” Julie said. “So she was able to determine that we’re dealing with a highly infectious viral-bacterial disease. I’ll admit that’s unbelievably fascinating, but did she find a cure?”
Malcolm and Ben shared a knowing glance.
“No,” Ben said.
“But she found that the infection would naturally die out, after running its course. It reaches a certain point, she said, and just vanishes. But not until after it kills its host.”
“We’re not dead yet,” Julie said. “And you’re not dead, either, Dr. Fischer.”
Malcolm stepped forward and nodded. “Julie,” he said, his voice calm and steady, “We need to get to a research lab. If there’s any way you can find out exactly why none of us in this room are dead, you must.”
She started pacing. “Okay, right. Yes, you’re right. Let’s, uh, let’s go back to —”
“Julie, we’re not going back to the CDC. Livingston and Stephens might be there, and besides, we can’t forget about the bomb back at the park.”
“But can’t you call someone there? Someone who might —”
“Julie.” Ben’s voice was firm, but he looked her right in the eyes until she understood. “There’s no one else.”
She hesitated, thinking through it. “You’re right. There’s no one there who can help anymore. The government agencies involved are going to wait until they know it’s not dangerous to their staff. It’s what I’m supposed to do — wait until someone presents some compelling research as to why it’s safe for us to go in, then send a bomb squad in hazmat suits to find anything unusual.”