The Fallujah Strain
Power After the Ebola Apocalypse
Thomas Porter
Copyright 2014 by Thomas Porter
To my daughters
Author's Note
This novel is a reimagining of “Mutant Blood”, a novel by the same author.
Prologue
The upper left corner of the thick plastic sheeting covering the doorway of the cinder block building outside Fallujah blew in the wind.
Inside, three men wearing medical protective suits lay on the floor, dead. Vomit smeared the inside of their surgical hoods.
After four years of disciplined, persistent, methodical attempts to develop a strain of Ebola worthy enough to represent their hatred for the West, they struck viral gold. They called it no. 289. Their 289th batch of weaponized Ebola.
The speed at which no. 289 reproduced itself, and its ability to travel on the slightest of breezes, were indeed a tribute to the men's skill. Its virulence, the speed at which it killed each person it infected, were a tribute to their rage.
The first particles of no. 289 escaped through the stopper in the vial, then passed through their breathing filters like a bug through chicken wire.
They never stood a chance.
It killed them, brutally, quickly, and mindlessly. It used their lungs to duplicate itself ten thousand fold, then disposed of their carcasses where they lay. It circulated through the still air of the room for several seconds before finding the gap in the upper left corner of the doorway. It found a lone man walking near the side of the road. It attacked his lungs, duplicated itself, and moved on.
It spread across the Middle East in two days, across Europe, Asia, and Africa in another five. It traveled across the globe like burning natural gas. It hit people in cars stopped at traffic lights, killed them, duplicated, and moved on. It swept through train stations in Europe, open air markets in Africa, and the plains of Asia at a speed that would have made its creators proud. It burned through the streets of Rome and Shanghai in an afternoon. New York City, Vancouver, and Los Angeles succumbed the following day, then Santiago, Minneapolis, and Muncie the day after that. It moved with the wind, infecting, duplicating, killing. Infecting, duplicating, killing. Most were dead within minutes of being found by no. 289, but some unlucky few, about 3 percent of the world's population, survived for a few days, writhing in agony as their organs were liquified. Another 1 percent lasted months before death.
But some very few, less than 1/10th of 1 percent of the world's population, were immune to no. 289. After exposure to the virus, they lost all their hair and the upper layers of their skin took on a blue tint, as if they suffered from severe cyanosis, but they were otherwise unaffected. They lived.
About a month after Ebola no. 289's burn through humanity, an immune phlebotomist in Brownsville discovered that daily transfusions of his blood kept his infected wife alive. Word of this power, the power to keep others alive, spread quickly. But, throughout history, power's constant companion has been the desire to abuse that power. The 1/10th of 1 percent were immune to Ebola but not to this desire.
No. 289, the Fallujah strain of Ebola virus, broke out five years ago. This is the story of Maya, an immune girl orphaned by the virus who abused the power of her blood in her own immature way, and of what happened next.
Chapter 1
Maya woke up slowly and comfortably, her bald head cradled in three of her favorite pillows. She leisurely opened her eyes and looked up at the ceiling, painted in cheerful yellows and greens.
As she had instructed.
Her eyes followed the curves of paint while she remembered. She was in sixth grade, five years ago. The door to her classroom opened, the teacher fell to her knees, clutched her chest, and died. Shortly afterwards, the students began vomiting violently. Maya watched from her desk, unaffected.
The sounds of the students, all the students almost in unison, suddenly retching violently remained vivid in her memory. And she could not forget the silence of them lying on the floor, all dead. Some were twisted horribly, as if writhing in agony before death. Most emptied their stomachs and bowels and the memory of the smell was her constant companion.
At times like these, in the morning when the beach house was quiet, she tried to remember the moments before the classroom door opened, to understand. This morning, like all others, she failed.
Was she doing something, saying something, thinking something, that saved her? Why did she survive but everyone else died?
But, like, whatevs, she thought.
She rolled on her side, pulled a tablet computer onto the bed and pressed the ON button. As the character on the screen jumped from platform to platform and floating gems disappeared, so did her desire to remember the old world. The battery indicator showed three bars. That should last at least six more hours.
Three hours later thirst drove her to put the tablet down and get out of bed. She picked up the tablet carelessly, descended the stairs, and went to the kitchen. She poured a glass of water and downed it in one gulp. The virus in the water, which was collected for her from a hand pumped well behind the beach house, was deadly to most. But Maya seemed to thrive on it.
With a tablet computer in hand, she walked into the room with wall-to-ceiling glass which overlooked the ocean, her favorite room in the house, and sat in the oversize couch. She called it her "window room."
Much like those animals in the Galapagos which survived due to a quirk of nature that endowed them with just the right mutation needed to survive, Maya did not feel lucky or unlucky. She just felt the desire to take, to get what she wants, to be served.
And after the power of Ebola-immune blood was discovered, the power of her blood, she wanted for nothing.
And so, as her body needed water, she drank. As she needed protein, she cut off another piece of deer or salmon. If the supply was low, she ordered more brought to her. If her computer battery was dead, she demanded another.
If Maya wasn't wearing headphones while playing, she would have heard the gun shots outside. Instead, her bluish finger tapped on the tablet screen as she chewed, lost in her game.
~ - ~
In the gravel road outside the north wing of the beach house, Abel and Pryce fired their Remington rifles into the tree line. The grass was dry and about knee high, lower than usual but this was an unusually hot summer.
"Are you sure that was a deer?" Abel asked, fired again, and chambered another round. Unlike the grass and grasshoppers, deer were not impervious to the Fallujah strain and most were gone. But some immune deer remained and that is what Abel and Pryce hunted that morning. Unfortunately for them, though, grasshoppers seemed to thrive in the new post-Ebola world and throngs of the insects plagued them constantly.
But Maya liked venison, and so the two men hunted.
"Pretty sure it was. I didn't see its white tail though. I don't think it saw us," Pryce said. Grasshoppers bounced off his pant legs. "Stop firing. Let's go check it out."
They leaned their rifles against a tree, pulled mosquito netting down from their hats, and stepped into the grass.
Abel, who had his transfusion yesterday, reached the trees well ahead of Pryce, who had skipped his. He stopped to let his eyes adjust to the relative darkness and to give Pryce a chance to catch up.
"Can I have some of your water?" Pryce asked when he reached the trees.
"Sure thing. You need to get a transfusion today. Skipping another one is not an option. I think I see it over there," Abel said and pointed into the trees at a bluish mound about 50 feet off. They reached it a c
ouple minutes later, bleeding from several places but definitely dead. Like their human counterparts who were immune to this apocalyptic strain of Fallujah Ebola, Ebola-immune deer were perfectly hairless and bluish-gray. Pryce kneeled next to the deer and looked it over.
"This one is smaller than last week's," he said casually as he scratched at the yellow tag on his ear and absent-mindedly traced the outline of the embossed letter "R" on it.
Abel, several yards farther into the woods, was also kneeling down. He put is face close to the ground and examined some wet spots on the light brown underbrush. Then he stood up but continued to examine the ground, moving his hand from his ear to the thinning whiskers on his chin. He took a few more steps into the woods and knelt down again. "Hey Pryce. Check this out. It looks like blood, maybe a blood trail, but what's it doing here? I'm pretty sure the deer didn’t run into the woods this far."
"No, I think you're right. It didn’t run that far. Let's get this thing dressed and see where this trail leads. Maybe we got two-for-one on deer today."
~ - ~
James Sparrow, the registration scout from Infected Resource Communal Control, pressed his brown uniform shirt onto the wound in his blue and hairless right thigh. One of the bullets passed through it cleanly, missing his major arteries and bone. He limped and hopped away from the sound of the shooting, then dropped into a depression in the forest floor and waited.
James' goal on this, like previous trips, was to identify potential “resources”, people who depended on immune blood to survive. They were rapidly dying off and what IRCC considered a “good find,” a person not immune but worth collecting as a resource and putting to work, was becoming a very rare event.
Blood continued to drip onto the dead leaves. His worry, instead of dissipating, continued to grow. James had not been injured this badly since he was found four years ago in a grocery store warehouse by other immune scouts of the IRCC office. They found him as they searched what remained of the country for survivors. Those who were found were assigned to a collective and put to work.
He gingerly rolled on his right side and pulled his HF radio from his left thigh pocket. He flipped it on and keyed the talk button.
“Anyone? Anyone? They shot me! They shot me!”
Sandra, on duty at the IRCC Scout Operations Desk Work Unit, located across three rivers and 100 miles away, replied instantly, “Who is this?”
“Yes...um...James. James Shuh. Recon Scout 237. I’m in Dutchess County Boonville Township. Checking out a group of people in a house on the beach. I’m not sure how many but they look like resources. Maybe resources. Definitely hairy, regular color, not immune. They shot me!”
“Shot you? Okay, James, take a breath. We can send someone for you but you’ve got to be more specific about where you are. Do you know your coordinates?”
“Let me check. Give me a sec,” James said. He set his radio onto the leaves and pulled his map out. “Yeah. Desk, are you still there? Sandra?”
“Yes. Do you know your coordinates?”
“Yes. 38.955 - 74.851. Can you get someone here?”
There was a pause of about a minute before Sandra came back. “That’s pretty far. We don’t have anyone within 24 hours of you. The vehicle is picking up some resources and isn’t scheduled to be back until late today, then it needs 12 hours charging minimum. Problem is, it will have to hit the bridge 80 miles north before heading back down. Since when do you stray from the bridges anyway? Can you find shelter and wait?”
“Okay, okay,” he replied desperately.
Sandra asked, “Try to calm down, Mr. Shuh. I'm sure you can handle this. I've heard good things about you. Everyone has. What about the resources? How many did you see?”
“Two. Both males. Ages approximately 20. Look, I’m bleeding here. I’m signing off now but I’ll check in later, maybe 60 minutes. Two three seven out.”
~ - ~
Maya miscalculated how long the tablet battery would last. About an hour later, the screen went black just as she reached level 9 of her game.
“Crap,” she muttered out loud. She walked onto the cement patio outside the door and flung the tablet into the pool like a Frisbee. It skipped across the water twice, hitting a few grasshoppers on the way, then sank. She went back inside, walked up to the third level of the house where her supply was kept and plucked an unopened box off the top of the pile.
Downstairs, she heard the glass door slide open then closed. Abel and Pryce must be back, she thought. She descended the stairs, sat back down at the table, and tore the tablet out of its packaging. She tossed all the cardboard and plastic onto the floor near the massive fireplace. It will burn tonight when it gets colder.
If she wasn’t poking at the screen to access the setup parameters, she would have seen the trail of blood leading across the tile floor and into the north wing of the house.
Poke, swipe, poke. Maya played the pre-loaded game for a few minutes more. Then the software locked up, frozen and probably in need of a reboot. Maya threw it onto the floor. She watched it rattle across the marble and skitter across. . .what? Is that blood? She stood up to take a closer look. It really looks like blood, she thought as she followed it with her eyes back to the sliding glass door. The trail seemed to enter from there, drip across the floor along the wall before heading into the back of the house. She followed it. It turned into the first bedroom on the left and she walked to that doorway. Inside the bedroom, sitting on the bed and holding what appeared to be a brown shirt to his thigh, was....someone.
"Who ARE you? What are you doing here? Is that a scout radio?" she asked, looking at the HF radio on the bed next to him.
"Yes, I’m a scout. Two three seven. There are two non-immune people outside and I’m calling them in for registration……"
"Who is that? What's going on?" Abel said from the window room. "Is that a scout?"
"Yes, I'm a scout. I've already contacted IRCC and they will have someone here within 24 hours so running is useless," the scout said. He pronounced “IRCC as “erk”.
"Who is running?" Abel asked.
Pryce had also stepped into the hall and stood listening. "Is this guy really here to register us? Does he not see the ear tag?" He turned to James. "We are dependents. Registered. Do you not see the ear tag?"
The scout said, "I do now."
Maya told him, "These guys are with me and they were registered like months ago. Years ago. Whatever. Since when does IRCC register dependent servers and then register them again? You need to call your boss. Abel and Pryce are resources assigned to me. Didn't you see their tag?"
"No. I mean, I didn't even see them clearly before they shot me in the leg. Why would they do that, anyway?"
Pryce casually leaned on the door frame and said "Because we were shooting at that deer? Didn't you see it? We didn't even see you. We DID see a trail of blood and now we know who made it. Here's a piece of advice: if two guys are shooting at a deer don't stand near it, okay?"
"Yeah, got it. Give me a minute to call off the collectors," Scout said. He picked up his radio and said, "Sandra, Sandra! Are you still online? Cancel the collectors. Cancel the collectors."
The radio said in response, "This is Sandra. I'm speaking to James, right? Did I hear you correctly? Call off the collectors? Over."
"Yes, there is one immune with two dependents assigned to her already. I thought these guys hadn't been collected yet but I was wrong." The scout turned to Abel and Pryce and said, "Give your numbers to Sandra so she can confirm this. Here," he said, handing the radio to Abel.
"You're talking to Abel 245-23-981. Also here is Pryce 548-58-865."
After a pause, Sandra answered back "Confirmed. Mr. Shuh, is everything there in order?"
"Everything's okay except I have a wound in my thigh and have to stay here to heal before I can make it ba
ck there."
"Negative. You are to collect a pint of blood and leave before sundown. We will send a car to pick you up at 38.955 - 74.851 by midnight tomorrow. How copy, over?”
"Yeah, I got that. 38.955 - 74.851," James repeated back, sounding disappointed. There went his hope of spending the night indoors and in a bed. "So you heard the boss," James Shuh said to Maya. "But before I go do you have any bandages? Anything I can wrap my leg up in? And some pain killer wouldn't hurt either."
"Follow me," Pryce said and headed down the hall.
“Follow you? Do you mind if I, uh, wait here? Kind of injured, you know.”
“What’s this about a pint of blood? More people want my blood? What's with that?” Maya asked.
“Yes, new policy. All immune persons are to pay tax, one pint of immune blood every three months. IRCC is stockpiling. Is that a problem?”
“Whatever,” Maya said. “But let’s get it over with, okay?”
“First my leg, little girl,” James said.
A few moments later, Pryce returned with some isopropyl alcohol and bandaging.
“I should take more than a pint from you,” James told Pryce. “Shooting an IRCC scout, accident or not, should cost you.”
“You want a pint of my blood, take it, big shot IRCC scout,” Pryce said, barely concealing his anger at this intruder.
“I will when the time is right, 548-58-865. That and more. Count on it.”
“What's with you, Scout?”
“What's with me? You're out here, probably in a house you didn't register, then you shoot me, then this snotty girl talks to me like she does?”
“She talks to everyone like that, idiot,” Pryce said but James Shuh didn't reply. Instead, he concentrated on bandaging his leg and Pryce left the room.
~ - ~
Two hours later, James had drawn Maya's blood, bandaged and rested his leg, and limped out of the house toward the pick-up coordinates Sandy had given him. The fresh pint of Maya’s blood was topped off with some sodium citrate for preservation, tucked into his mail bag and covered by dry ice. Collecting it was easier than he expected and Maya did not resist.
Pryce, after fetching a fresh tablet computer for Maya, had joined Abel outside to dress the deer.