“That shouldn’t be a problem,” said the doctor. He studied me for a moment with a blank expression on his face. “We had better go to—”
He was interrupted by wailing sirens. I felt the blood drain from my face. I was terrified that someone had discovered I’d stolen the sailboat’s documents. I was sure that, at any moment, Green Guards would race in and arrest me. Instead, Mrs. Compton’s cell phone rang. The secretary answered it, listened for a few seconds, and replied tersely, “I’m on my way.”
“What is it?” I managed to ask, feigning calm.
“A riot in Bluefont. The guards heard a gunshot even though firearms are strictly prohibited there. I have to go.” She wavered for a moment. She knew she shouldn’t leave me there alone, but Greene had called and she had to go.
“Don’t worry, ma’am. I’ll leave as soon as my checkup is over. I can find my way out.”
“Great, great! Go home and get some rest. See you back at the office tomorrow.” Mrs. Compton waved and scurried out as fast as her little legs could carry her. “Take care of my Sue Anne!”
Once she’d disappeared through the door, I turned to Dr. Ballarini. The doctor looked me straight in the eye. “You’re not sick. At least not with the flu.”
“No,” I confessed.
“Do you want to tell me what you are doing here? I have a lot of work, you know.”
I could’ve apologized for the interruption and left immediately. I could’ve walked back down the hall past the guard post and blended into the crowd. If I had, I might’ve had time to get guns and provisions. We might’ve been spared all the horrors that came later. But Dr. Ballarini had developed the only treatment for the virus that had destroyed humanity. I needed to know more and to get my hands on some of that liquid. One bottle could be worth more to us than all the weapons and food we could carry.
“I’m the head of the Office of Hispanic Helots. Are you familiar with it?” I was making things up as I went along. “We need to know what the… uh… acceptance rate of Cladoxpan is among the patients. The reverend asked me to do this discreetly, thus the flu excuse. No one can know I’m here.”
“Helots? What are you talking about?” Dr. Ballarini looked confused.
The good doctor didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. How much did the creator of Cladoxpan know about life outside his lab?
“Dr. Ballarini, do you know how Cladoxpan is used?”
“Of course I do.” His expression said, Don’t yank my chain. “Strain 15b, or Cladoxpan, as it is commonly called, is a palliative retardant of the TSJ virus. It is a mixture of a viral suppressor and an immunoenhancer through a variation of enzymes that—”
“I know what it is, Doctor,” I said, holding up my hands. But do you know who they’re giving it to?”
“The newly infected, of course. It has absolutely no beneficial effect on other subjects. It is even toxic. Where are you going with this?”
I was about to explain the genocidal cesspool Gulfport had become, but I didn’t have time. Any moment someone might read the register and discover I was there. Without Greene’s secretary, I’d have a hard time sneaking out. That Italian doctor and his team would have to learn the truth on their own, the way I did.
“Never mind, Doctor. To carry out my research, I need you to provide me with a few gallons of Cladoxpan. To assess its effectiveness.”
“This is outrageous!” Dr. Ballarini exploded. “I will not allow another laboratory to conduct a study when we have not fully developed the strain! I have told Greene that several times! Not a single fungus cultivar leaves here without our supervision!”
Fungus? Cultivar? What the hell was he talking about?
“Why don’t you explain it to me, Dr. Ballarini?” I used my best lawyer voice and pretended to take notes. As long as Dr. Ballarini thought I was there on official business, everything was OK.
“The 15b strain is the first strain we were investigating in Atlanta.” Glad to have a new audience, the doctor sat down and plunged into a story he was clearly proud of.
“When the pandemic broke out, I was in Atlanta, on a research exchange from the University of Bologna, to study a mutation of the Asian flu virus. They ordered all personnel in the laboratories, residents and guests alike, to research TSJ full time. No one refused, of course. It was a new disease and, therefore, intriguing. The ramifications were huge.”
His academic viewpoint didn’t surprise me. A new virus could lead to an award, an endowed chair, and prestigious publications. But TSJ put an end to all that in its first week.
“At first I could not believe what I saw. It was so… perfect.” Dr. Ballarini’s eyes sparkled with excitement. “I do not know who created it. I do not think we will ever know. The TSJ virus is a marvel. It combines the best of Ebola, the flu virus, and strains of three other unrelated viruses. Not only did they not reject each other, they fit together with unprecedented precision. È un lavoro dell’arte magnifica. Understand?”
“I understand, but what about Cladoxpan?” I said impatiently.
“All in good time, all in good time.” Dr. Ballarini’s mind was somewhere else. “When they gave us the first samples, we did not know what their effect was. Only when they brought in infected soldiers from Ramstein, Germany, did we understand that it was bigger than we had ever dreamed.”
“So much bigger,” I said under my breath.
“You do not understand!” The doctor’s voice rose two octaves. “In that laboratory were the sixty top virologists in the world! For nearly a month, we were shooting in the dark. TSJ was so perfect that nothing we tried worked. Nothing! It was like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle, blindfolded, without all the pieces. It was so frustrating.” Dr. Ballarini pounded on the table.
“Fine, but in the end, the Cladoxpan…”
“It pains me to say we discovered Cladoxpan almost by accident.” The doctor pushed his glasses up. “Do you know what Cladosporium mold is?”
“Honestly, Doctor, I have no idea.”
“It is the most common fungus you can imagine. Laboratories are routinely contaminated by Cladosporium. That was precisely what happened. Some muscle tissue in a petri dish was contaminated with the fungus and nobody noticed. During a test of some potential vaccines, we inoculated TSJ in one hundred fifty petri dishes, but in one petri dish, the virus did not multiply. Guess which one it was?”
“The one with the fungus?” I said, sure I already knew the answer.
“Indeed. For some reason, Cladosporium combined with strain 7n of the vaccine, slowed TSJ infection almost to a halt… but didn’t eliminate it. We were working on that when the Atlanta Safe Zone collapsed and they evacuated the CDC.”
“How did you end up here?”
“In the chaos, our van and six others got separated from the rest of the convoy that was headed for Austin, Texas. I do not know what happened to the others, but I have heard that recent satellite images confirmed Austin is gone. We drove around aimlessly until we heard the broadcast from the Gulfport Christian Radio Station. It was the only signal on the air, so we decided to take a chance. And here we are,” the doctor concluded, with a theatrical wave of his hand.
“And ever since, you’ve been producing strain 15b.”
“Cladoxpan, yes. It is the most stable strain we have developed so far.”
“And it’s a liquid,” I ventured.
“Not exactly. Cladoxpan is simply the by-product of a genetically modified fungus grown in a water base.” Dr. Ballarini’s voice swelled with pride. “That is my contribution. I devised a way to produce that by-product cheaply and easily by means of a protein modification. It used to take five days to make fifty milliliters of Cladoxpan. Now we can make fifty liters in an hour.”