Page 2

"Where are they," he demanded at a near scream, grabbing my shoulders as he asked. "Where are the samples of wonder bug?"

I snuffed my Marlboro on the wall and shrugged his hands from my shoulders. "In the cooler locked up where they've been since I started on this project."  I answered, not hiding the frustration in my voice. He staggered back as if struck by my hand and stared at his tarnished black boots.

"No, no, no, no, no," he muttered beneath his breath as the panic spread over his face. "That can't be it, it just can't be."

I felt my stomach begin to knot up inside me. I could taste bile at the back of my mouth, feel my heart pounding through my chest as if it was trying to escape. "Rich," I said, fearing that I knew the answer to my question already. "What's happened, Rich?"

 He looked up at me with those eyes, not the eyes of a scholar or a soldier but with the eyes of a frightened little child.  Tears were forming at the corners. "We sent them the wrong samples, John," he said, choking on the words as he spoke. "We sent them the wrong samples. We've got two cases of mutated flu virus and vaccine down there mixed in with what’s left of the bug. Jesus Christ, what have we done?"

My knees trembled, my stomach ached and a violent urge to vomit had struck me as he looked on with those frightened, tired eyes. I lit another cigarette and took a long, hard drag. I let the smoke escape through my nose; linger in the air above us for a moment as I tried to gather my wits again.

"Doc," one of the enlisted men cried as he came around the corner. We both jumped. "Doc Griswold, you'd better come here, sir!  It looks important!"

We bolted towards the guard shack where four other enlisted men had gathered around the radio there. No one spoke, no one move; we were all transfixed by the announcer's voice coming from the speaker on the small AM/FM combo.

"For those just tuning in to our news report I'll recap our top story. Rioting has spread like wildfire through out the nation. What was believed just a week earlier to be a limited amount of anarchist activity has now spread beyond the city of Atlanta and into neighboring boroughs and towns. Reports have come in the past hour of similar activity occurring as far north as Vermont and Pennsylvania and as far west as Utah. While no official word has come down from Washington at this moment, we expect the president will address the situation during his speech later this morning as well as implement a national state of Marshall Law until this crisis has passed. Stay tuned for up-to-date information from this and other stations as developments occur."

I felt a pain rip through my guts like I had never felt before. It was a burning, nauseating thing that made me double over as soon as it hit. It died within a moment and I looked back at Richard who was staring blankly at the radio, now playing commercials for foot cream and hair gel.

"What have we done, Doc?" I asked, trying not to vomit on myself and those around me.

"I don't know," he whispered. "I just don't know yet."

2

We had no idea how the wonder bug could have possibly escaped the confines of the CDC other than a breach in procedures similar to the one we had made. Of course, as you may know by now, they screwed up just as bad, if not worse than we did. The bug should have stayed in containers, sealed up and safely away from anyone not wearing hazmat gear. For that much, when it was extracted and examined it should have been noted that it was a strep throat virus and not the flu and returned immediately. To make a long story short a lot of safe guards in place to prevent an epidemic like this were in place but not used. The wonder bug was shipped out to other states as well as other countries and distributed as a new flu vaccine. That was mistake number two, the one that damned us all. The first deaths from the "new flu" occurred the same day the shots were administered. Others followed and within forty-eight hours anyone who received the influenza shot was dead.  Well, they seemed dead at the time. The neurological effects we had theorized in the lab were far greater and more sweeping than we had anticipated. The bug was smart. The wonder bug feeds not only on the flesh but on the nervous system of the host it’s in. Once that host dies the virus itself should die but not our wonder bug. No, some how the virus in its damage to the nervous system learned to control the motor functions and primal instincts of its victims. The loss of control experienced before death was like a test drive to the bug.

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