Free Independence Day Plague by Carla Lee Suson Page A

festival dinner survived longer. However, the disease had a high infectivity rate. The children fell ill within a week. Treatment options involved drugs that the lab stocked only in small quantities. No cure existed. The only hope was to treat the symptoms until the body's immune system conquered the invader. The lab had stocks for the eventuality of one or two patients, but not all 425 members. No calls for help went through. No one escaped the electrified fences.
    Mitchell trudged through the early morning icy mud towards the Admin building. Captain Phelps called another meeting on the third day of lockdown. The group included a few select members that declared themselves as an emergency council. Inside, Geller, the captain, Sanchez, and surprisingly, Jeanine Iverson gathered around the conference table. Mitchell silently pulled out a chair and sat while Tanaka spoke.
    “ I can account for eleven men in the barracks. We found Jergans in the garage mechanic’s bathroom with a bullet in his head. The caterers and waiting staff are still here. They're billeted in the barracks too.”
    “ How many?”
    “ Nineteen all together.”
    “ What’s their condition?”
    “ Most complain of headaches, nausea.”
    “ How many attended the party?”
    “ All of them at one point or the other. The waiting staff and cooks ate the leftover food during clean-up.”
    Phelps sighed and made notes on the pad in front of him. “Jeanine, what have you heard from the other families?”
    Her red-rimmed eyes looked swollen but her voice came out calm and firm. “Almost everyone I talked to suffers from some flu-like symptoms except many of the very young children. It’s pretty obvious that Ray’s right. It’s the Marburg virus, isn’t it?”
    Phelps nodded, “Why would the children be unaffected? Could they be immune?”
    Geller spoke up. “No.” He looked around the room and Mitchell saw the spider web red lines across the whites of his eyes. “If the pathogen is normal Marburg virus, straight from the jungles, some of us have a chance for survival. Normal Marburg incubates for ten days, then takes up to three weeks to kill. We actually increased the infectivity rate and the fatality rate. Less than five percent of the people will survive, probably crippled for life. I’m guessing that the unaffected children didn’t attend the party.”
    “ So they’ll survive if we isolate them?” Phelps’s deep voice rumbled.
    “ No. They’re probably already infected from their parents. I’m willing to bet the concentration of virus in their body isn’t as high as ours. Marburg's contagious naturally but at a slower rate. The kids will be symptomatic within the next few days.”
    “ Oh God,” Jeanine whispered. A tear rolled down her cheek.
    Ray continued. “This disease is progressing at a faster rate than natural Marburg. It's even faster than what we predicted in our computer models. I’m guessing that the food and non-alcoholic drinks were filled with contaminant from our stores. Symptomatically this acts like the designer version.”
    Bio-Lab 4, in an effort to stay up in the bio/chemo arms race, made the RNA virus more virulent, spreading quicker and killing faster than its natural form. With a 95% mortality rate, the lab personnel referred to it and others like it as world-killers. The only purpose of the weapon was to create fear, never used.
    “ What about Forester and the others with him? We’ve got to reach someone to warn them. Forester’s out there spreading it.” Albert stared at the touchpad he had been making notes on. “There must be some way to get word out.”
    Geller replied. “I don’t think he’s contaminated. He and his driver left before dinner. Marburg’s vector is through touching and ingesting of contaminated material. I’ll bet neither man ate or drank anything the whole time they visited. And they wore dress uniforms.”
    “ So? All the military guys had uniforms. I remember we made jokes