Influenza: Viral Virulence (3 page)

With a few strides, Brian crossed the room to Michael and placed an unopened beer in his hand. Then he announced, “It’s my birthday! Time to par-tee!” He popped open the top of his beer and proceeded to empty the contents down his throat.

“Congrats!” Michael cheered halfheartedly. “Happy birthday!” He opened his beer and took his first sip. It looked like he wasn’t going to get much studying done tonight. Well, he still had all day Saturday and Sunday. “So what are we doing? Where are we going?” he asked.

Both Brian and Scott smiled at him like he had just asked the most moronic question.

Chapter 3

Doctor Curtis Freeman
walked briskly down the white, tiled hallway with a stern look of either determination or smoldering anger on his face. His nostrils were assailed by the lingering smell of sanitizer and disinfectants that made the Innocu-Tech lab smell like the bowels of a hospital. Holding a PhD in microbiology and immunology, and having specialized in infectious disease during his medical training, it had been a long time since Dr. Freeman had seen the inside of a hospital. He had preferred to work with his microbes, viruses, and spores in the isolated comfort of a laboratory. He really did not like the company of people; hence, he was still single at forty-six years old.

He had just lost his last test subject this morning. After making the required notations on the deceased patient’s chart, he had his secretary place an emergency call to the CEO of Innocu-Tech. If he didn’t hear from him soon, the next call he was planning to make was to the CDC in Atlanta. This was no longer an Innocu-Tech laboratory, nor was it a clinic. After losing thirty-nine test patients within two days, he considered that this building was now a morgue.

At the sealed doors leading out of the lab, he reached over, swiped his card, and typed a sequence of numbers on the keypad. The small green light above the keypad flashed three times. Then, as Dr. Freeman waited impatiently, the airtight door hissed as it slid open. A gust of wind blew past his face as he stepped into the chamber. The intermediate chamber was purposely maintained at a higher pressure than the inner core to prevent any airborne particulate matter from inadvertently escaping the lab.

Hitting the large button on the wall a little harder than he needed to, Dr. Freeman fidgeted as the doors closed behind him. He slid his protective goggles over his eyes as he pushed another button. The chamber was flooded with ultraviolet light. After a time, the intense light shut off, and the door in front of him made a similar hiss as it opened to allow him through. Stripping his protective gear and scrubs in the connecting locker room, he mindlessly placed them in the appropriate receptacle to be sterilized. He then dressed in his normal work clothes and put on his lab coat. Adjusting his black-rimmed glasses and checking himself in the mirror, he was clipping his ID badge to the pocket when he heard the overhead intercom.

“Dr. Freeman, please come to your office,” the female voice said. He instantly recognized it as his secretary. “Dr. Freeman, please come to your office.”

Good timing
, he thought as he opened the door. He hurried down the hallway. He ignored other scientists and support personnel dressed in matching white lab coats. After passing several offices, he pushed open the door to his own office.

His secretary, Midge, glanced up and pointed to her phone. “He’s on line one.”

“Thanks, Midge,” he responded as he strode quickly to his inner office and closed the door behind him. He barely noticed the morning sun beaming from his large window. Outside, Malaysia was just waking up to another busy day in downtown Johor Bahru. At first, he had regretted being transferred here from the States. But over time, he had come to enjoy working as head of the research department.

Dr. Freeman glanced at the large clock on the wall. It was 9:00 a.m. in Malaysia. As he circled his large desk, with papers and graphs scattered all over the top, he quickly calculated that it was 7:00 p.m. in California. At least the company was taking him seriously. Sitting down in his chair, he picked up the phone and punched the line.

“This is Dr. Freeman,” he said sternly into the phone.

“Curtis…”

Dr. Freeman grimaced but said nothing. It always irritated him when people didn’t use his proper title. He had earned his doctorate, and he deserved to be treated with the respect due him. He didn’t care that the person on the other end of the phone was the CEO of Innocu-Tech, Steven Colburn. He still deserved—no, demanded—to be treated as a professional.

“Mr. Colburn,” Dr. Freeman said abruptly. “Did you receive my reports?”

“Yes, I have them here in front of me. We need to discuss this.”

“What is there to discuss? The results are clear. Your new flu vaccine doesn’t work. In fact, compared to the test group, your vaccine exhibits significantly increased rates of morbidity and mortality over the control group.”

“Now, don’t get overly excited about the results. We need to take your data and verify it in our domestic labs and…”

“There is no time! I just lost my last test subject this morning!” Dr. Freeman shouted into the phone. “This vaccine is dangerous! Somehow, the vaccine is shutting down people’s immune systems. It’s almost like someone has genetically weaponized it. This is a danger to anyone getting it! You need to pull it off the market. Now!”

“What do you mean when you say the vaccine has been ‘weaponized’?”

“I think that someone has genetically altered the vaccine structure. Has Innocu-Tech purposely created a bad vaccine? Maybe I should call the FBI!”

On the other end of the phone, Steven was also starting to raise his voice in anger. “Dr. Freeman! How dare you accuse this company of placing people’s lives in jeopardy! First you throw wild accusations at me, and now you want to stop production? We’ve already shipped hundreds of thousands of vaccines and have three times that much waiting in our distribution centers ready to go out. Dr. Freeman, do you have any idea of how many billions of dollars in inventory that is? Do you have any clue as to how much additional money it’s going to cost the company to recall all of the vaccine?”

“I don’t care,” Dr. Freeman responded vehemently. “The vaccine is a danger to the public. If you don’t do anything, my next call will be to the CDC in Atlanta, and then the FBI.”

There was a pause on the line. Finally, Steven conceded and lowered his voice. “You are right, of course, Dr. Freeman. I was only thinking about how I am going to break the news to the stockholders and the board. We’ll have to issue the priority level-one recall on the vaccine, and hopefully, we’ll be able to reformulate it in time.”

Sensing victory, Dr. Freeman relaxed. He was glad Innocu-Tech was seeing things clearly now.

“Do you still have all of the data?” the CEO asked.

“Yes.”

“Have you shared your findings with anybody?”

“No, not yet,” Dr. Freeman admitted. He looked at all the papers scattered haphazardly across his desk.

“I can’t stress how important it is that we keep this matter quiet for the moment. We need to get together with the CDC and the government to see how we can release these results without causing public panic. We’ll probably have to coordinate with Homeland Security, and maybe even FEMA, to prevent mayhem from erupting on the streets. Do you understand the need to keep this under wraps for the time being, Dr. Freeman?”

“Yes, I understand.”

“Good. I am going to send a courier over to collect your data. I need you to gather everything you have and give it to him. The US government will want to see it all. I cannot stress how vital it is that you keep this information to yourself and not release it to anyone but the person that I send over.”

“I can send it to you digitally,” Dr. Freeman offered.

“No, I’m not too confident in the security of our intranet at the moment. I was notified just yesterday that IT has found traces of evidence that some unknown hacker has tried to gain access to our system. It is of the utmost importance that you give the courier, and only our courier, the information. Can I count on you, Doctor?”

“Yes, I can do that.”

“Good. I knew that you were one of our brighter professionals. You’ll go far in this company.” Steven said good-bye.

Dr. Freeman gently placed the phone back on his desk and smiled to himself. Finally, his brilliance and hard work were going to pay off. Maybe he’d even get promoted to head the Research and Development branch of Innocu-Tech.

Victoria Downing reluctantly squeezed herself into the economy seat in the back of the airplane. She was meticulously dressed, and her round hat matched her blouse perfectly. With an angular face, thin lips, and a pointy nose, she had an air of superiority. Victoria had eyes that could shoot flames of fire and a tongue that could cut people into a thousand pieces if they didn’t meet her expectations…which happened often.

Accustomed to flying first class, she had been forced to sit with the common people when she had to make the return flight from the Philippines to Los Angeles on such short notice. She had tried to offer the ticketing agent a generous tip to get her into first class, but the lady obviously didn’t recognize her stature and refused to bump someone less deserving out of first class. As soon as Victoria arrived home, she would make a few calls and make sure the ticketing agent lost her job. The only comfort she had at the moment was that she did reserve a first-class seat on her connecting flight in Tokyo—if she could just endure the riffraff until then.

So, here she was, stuck between two commoners on an overcrowded flight. It was obvious they hadn’t showered recently. The man seated on her left had an unpleasant odor. Reaching up and turning the overhead air jet toward her, Victoria crinkled her nose and again hoped she could survive until her later flight.
How many hours is this flight?
she thought for the tenth time.

The woman sitting behind her started coughing and sniffling. Victoria turned around and gave the woman a stern look before facing forward again.
These seats are so uncomfortable
, she thought, trying to recline the seat back a little. How she suddenly envied the people who were sitting in the luxury seats up toward the front of the airplane.

As the plane filled up, she watched the working class file in and put their worthless belongings in the overhead compartments before taking their seats. Some of the passengers were actually wearing shorts and sweatshirts! She sank a little lower in her seat in disgust.

The woman sitting behind her suddenly sneezed loudly.

Don’t people have any manners?
Victoria thought as she prepared for a less-than-perfect flight surrounded by swine.

The virus was so small that it could only be seen under the lenses of an electron microscope. Made up of just a few DNA strands, the virus was neither alive nor dead, neither good nor evil. Unable to reproduce on its own, it could not live or propagate without hijacking another cell. Suspended in midair, surrounded by a micronized sphere of fluid, like a balloon, the virus traveled across the plane, propelled by the force of a sneeze. The small, circular particle of fluid was lighter than air, and it could travel a large distance before the fluid either evaporated or collided with another object.

Unseen by the naked human eye, this particular virus-filled bubble floated through the air and then slowly descended. As Veronica inhaled, the small sphere was drawn up into her nasal passage. Completely unaware of the danger, Victoria continued to breathe. The bubble of fluid collided with the mucosal membrane lining her nasal passage. As the fluid burst, multiple viruses were released.

Traveling in the cellular fluid, one particular virus attached itself to the nearest cell by receptors that its genetic code recognized. Firmly locked on to the cell membrane, the virus injected its genetic material into the cell. The code inserted itself into the cell’s own programming, and then, like a hacker in a computer, it reprogrammed the cell. Instead of building life-sustaining proteins, the cell now began to rapidly produce more copies of the virus until it ran out of resources and room. Reaching capacity, the cell burst, releasing hundreds of thousands of new viruses, which proceeded to attach themselves to other uninfected cells.

The body’s normal immune-response cells were confused. They had been “trained” by a recent vaccine to recognize and react to certain infections, but this was not one of them. The body’s natural defense response was hindered. Unable to identify the virus as a malignant invader, the body did not fight it but rather took a backseat as the virus infected cell after cell, producing millions of viruses that started circulating around the body.