Plagued: Book 1 (16 page)

“What about England and Europe?”

“They had to wait. Producing the vaccine was a very labor intensive process. The U.S. could barely produce enough for their own needs.”

She waved her hands in the air impatiently. “And it worked. We all know it worked. So what's your point?”

“You've seen the footage of your then-President on live TV being the first to swallow the vaccine. All smiles and battle has been won rhetoric. Flu deaths decreased dramatically in the U.S. Then, slowly, over the next two years something disturbing happened. The altered blood proteins began to mutate after their exposure to the bird flu virus. So slow at first, no one noticed. Only in negative blood types and only after they received the vaccine. The altered enzymes gestated and began to affect major organs, muscle mass, and the brain itself. The effect on negative blood types was renewed vitality and stamina in the old. Within a few years, fifty became the new thirty. Alzheimer and dementia were somehow now a thing of the past. The mental and physical enhancements that have gained so much attention in the younger generations soon began showing up as well. Everyone was astounded, calling it a miracle of science. Other blood types anxiously awaited their own enhancements.” He paused, looking sadly at her.

Hugo was right, she didn't want to hear what happened next. She didn't want to know.

“The vaccine that consumed the bird flu spit up a virus of its own in those improved humans with negative blood types. The Negatives, like most carriers, proved immune to this new plague, a hemorrhagic fever much like Ebola that caused it's victims to bleed to death internally. Positives had and still have little resistance. The plague mutated again and became airborne and that was that. They died off in the tens of millions the first winter the blood plague appeared. That was double the rate during the worst of the bird flu. Rednecks, as you Americans call them, are referred to as the plague children for a reason. Salvation and damnation in one neat package.”

Chapter 17

Hemophobia

“Come on, we need to get back to town. We've already been gone too long.”

She put out one hand to stop him. “No. You are not just going to leave it at that. Not after dropping that sort of bomb.” She mimicked his deep voice, “
Salvation and damnation in one neat package
. What the hell?”

“We can talk in the car,” he said still moving to the door. “You need to get back to the hospital.”

Rickey! She had forgotten him for a few moments. Yes, she had to get back to the hospital and his family. Sky looked around the shabby, dusty cottage. Get far away from this place and the segregant lying in his unmarked grave.

Sky followed Hugo thinking furiously over everything he said. Wondering if it was true or just another massive conspiracy theory.

As they pulled out of the sheltered glade, he turned on the radio, tuning it to nothing but static. She had to lean closer across the front seat to hear him speak.
“The initial results were so encouraging, you can't blame them for rolling out the mass inoculations.”

“They still had the labs in place. You can't tell me they weren't working all along to find a cure that would work on Positives.”

H
e drove slowly over the pitted dirt tracks, his eyes on the road.
“You're still operating on the false premise that the government's first duty is to its people. Yes, they carried on trying to create more stable proteins but they knew after the plague appeared, they could save Negatives for sure. Your government began to seek out and slot Negatives almost immediately into key positions in vital services and the military. Survival of the government became their priority. Besides, the enhancements were already creating a new form of human: smarter, faster, better. That's a pretty tempting combination. What if the new vaccines stopped that?
You know as well as I what happened next.”

Sky knew. Everyone knew. The die-off happened. Economies crashed, riots and war around the world. Chaos.

“Things have gotten better, though,” she pointed out as he turned back onto Alpine Road. “There were enough Negatives to restore order after ten here in the U.S. Rebuild the economy on the gold standard, re-establish transportation networks. Survival rates for Positives have increased with blood transfusions and growing natural immunity. Europe is doing so much better, too.”

He looked at her as if she were crazy “Who told you
that
lie? Europe is undergoing its own sort of transformation, Sky. Back then, their labs were not having the same success as those on this side of the Atlantic. This is before the vaccine's mutation into the blood plague virus. America agreed to make the vaccine available to your allies.” He slowed down at the broken signal waiting for his turn to go. Someone had painted the words 'stop' in the center and everyone knew to treat it like a four-way stop. “The vaccine arrived in such small amounts that only those in government and vital industries could be inoculated. The Europeans and Japanese were desperate.”

'“Other countries developed other vaccines,” Sky protested as he swerved the car around several sizable potholes. “Their own version. That's what we learned in school.”

“Not really. There wasn't time. Winter was coming and with it another season of the killer flu. Several countries got the formula for the American vaccine by stealth and made their own version.”

“How did they get the information?”

Hugo glanced at her, his brows drawn together, saying nothing.

“Stop playing games,” she growled. “Tell me.”

He swiveled his eyes back on the road. “People were willing to die to smuggle the formula out to their homeland. There weren't just Americans working in those labs. Under martial law, the military could pull in anyone they wanted on American soil. Chinese, Indians, Africans, Japanese, the French and Germans, all of them utterly desperate to get what they thought was a miracle cure for their own people. The basic formula was leaked to several sources.”

“And their versions mutated into the plague as well?”

“Worse than that. Their own labs produced generic versions using local blood supplies. All the vaccines in America were actually produced exclusively from the stock available to the labs in the Bay Area. It still is. The tiny variations in the protein, I'm speaking at the nanomolecular level, caused the reaction in the generic versions to be unstable.”

“So, they
didn't
cause the plague?”

“Yes, they did.”

They were almost back at Redwood Shopping Center.

“Hugo, God damn it, cut to the chase.”

“The European negatives did have immunity. However, their enhancements
mutated in a very different, unpredictable form. Many developed super-musculature as early as twelve or fourteen years old. Others gained hyper senses, rather like you super nose, though far beyond what Negatives here experienced. Intellectual ability turned them into genius savants at the expense of their emotional growth. Autism runs rampant.”

“That's bullshit. You're just quoting urban myths, They've been all over the internet since I can remember.”

“They're not myths.” He pounded the steering wheel with one fist, making Sky jump. “In the U.K. and Europe, the gene has started cropping up in positives as well as negatives. Children who are identified with these behaviors are labeled 'Aberrant', ABRs for short. Removed from their homes and forcibly taken to by 'Social Services'.” Hugo put imaginary quotation marks around the two words. “If they test low, they're sent back home. High, and they go to government relocation centers.”

“What do they do to them there?”

“They are assets and are trained, perverted and exploited as such. They have unique talents, after all. Other countries also seek to use ABRs to political or personal advantage. They have in-vitro fertilization for breeding programs. Berserker-style mercenaries have been cropping up in Africa and the Soviet Union.”

“Are you one of these ABRs?” she asked. “Is that how you're still alive?”

They pulled into the abandoned side of the garage at the mall.

“What do you mean?”

She pointed to his bracelet. Azure for AB positive.“We both know you should have been dead before your fifth birthday.”

“My father has continued his research on the blood proteins. You can thank the research teams he works with, by the way, for substituting a placebo for the regular bird flu vaccine given to Positives in the U.S.. Survival rates are higher without the vaccine. If they get the flu, they don't get the blood plague.”

He pulled into the same parking space as before and switched off the engine.

Sky unbuckled her seat belt and swiveled to face him squarely. “The blood plagues started over twenty years ago, Hugo. Even if the truth came out, many survivors are already Negatives. They're not going to commit mass suicide. The world is climbing back from the brink. What does this have to do with anyone we know?” 

“Your view of humanity is very simplistic. Many researchers are still locked in secure labs all over the world. Just like our parents in the beginning. Giant research centers, mostly underground, that have been turned into brain gulags supplied by the government. After twenty years, people have married and had children. There are a hundred thousand Positives locked away still searching for a vaccine that might actually work. And they can't come out from these bunkers. Living in clean environments, they have not had a chance to build up even a modicum of immunity against either the bird flu or the blood plague. If they're a Negative and get the vaccine, they can't come back in and must leave everyone behind.”

“So, what are you saying? There's a plot to kill off all the Negatives so the Positives can abandon their troglodyte existence and inherit the earth? That won't work.”

He stared at her, shaking his head. “Actually you'd be shocked at what sort of plotting goes on within quiet government meeting rooms by supposedly civilized people. That scenario has been held in reserve since the start of the plagues. In case the status quo did not reassert itself. Which, lucky for Negatives, it did.”

'So they're not trying to wipe us out?”

Switching off the motor entirely, he got out of the car and walked to the shiny black sedan.
“No. Quite the opposite. My government has sent me here on a covert mission. A European crime cartel has been playing the long game. Buying loyalty within your government and the Home Guard. America has more clean blood than any other country in the world but refuses to give it to anyone else. Blood is power.”

“It's against the law to sell blood overseas.”

“Precisely. Which is where the greedy Sergeant McNeil and Major Bromwell and others come into the story. Blood is easily traded for gold on the black market.”

“Why would the sergeant or any of them want so much money? Anyone can live in a nice house. There's enough food and jobs for everyone.”

“Human nature, of course!” he said curtly. “There are always people who want far more than their fair share. The blood vault that narrowly escaped falling to Operation Cineplex is an old Victims Army headquarters. A covert operative from our operation fell into your squad's hands that night in the eucalyptus forest. The major was unable to cover up the information she spilled under torture. He was forced to attack, though he managed to deflect the operation onto the wrong building with a decoy storage supply. The blood in the vault is just part of the theft we are trying to prevent.”

“Awfully generous of your country to help us out, seeing as how we don't sell blood to you either.”

“They don't know we're here, Sky. We are committed to keeping order in Europe, something America shows little interest in pursuing. The British Government has no desire to see the Cartels or War Lords become any stronger.”

They drove the short distance back to the hospital without saying another word. Sky's body so tightly wound her jaw ached from clenching it. He pulled up in the parking lot at the exact spot he had picked her up. Reaching over, he took her hand.
She tried to jerk it away, but he kept a tight hold.

“I thought I could keep you out of this. Let you go on in your opaque, bubble world. I should have known better. The sins of the fathers. Your family is in as deep as mine.”

And damn him, he kissed her. The move took her by surprise. Only for a second, then she tried to push him away. He held tight, not enough to hurt, just enough to linger a few seconds more. He broke it off, exhaling angrily. “Damn it to hell, Skylar. You've ruined everything.”

Sky couldn't open the door fast enough. Her feelings so tight they were choking her. She wanted him to kiss her and she wanted to kiss him back. Even after all the revelations and the murder, Hugo St. James had become an itch that felt like heaven to scratch.
She had taken no more than a step away when two cars roared into the parking lot, smashing into Hugo's black sedan. The car spun and the front bumper hit her hard. The impact sent Sky flying to the side. Men poured out of the vehicles, wrenching open the door and reaching for Hugo, trying to drag him from the car. A gun barked, once, twice and two of the men fell. Two more took their place. There was a flash of light and a shout of pain. She saw Hugo, head down, hanging between two enormous men.

Sky was realistic enough to know she had no chance against these attackers. Staggering to her feet, she shouted, “Security! Help!
Help us!
”

People came running out of the hospital, drawn by the noise. They were too slow to get there in time. The men in black threw Hugo into one of the vehicles and picked up their fallen comrades The driver of one car spun the wheels, reversing the engine until his window was next to her. He was wearing a knitted mask that showed only his eyes. They were sea green and he
winked
. Winked right at her before giving a jaunty salute and speeding out in a squeal of spinning tires and smoke, the other vehicle right on his tail.

She was mobbed by hospital security and staff just a few seconds too late. Security called in a description of the vehicles to the Home Guard hotline and several people helped her into the building. She wasn't hurt, not really. Just shaken.

What had just happened? Hugo kidnaped in the middle of the day, right out in the open. The boldness of the action was unbelievable.

Rickey and his family were only five floors above her, but she couldn't get any closer until the Home Guard took her statement. There wasn't much she could tell them beyond Hugo's name and address. Ironically, his father was right here in the hospital. She saw the Viscount, still in his scrubs, being escorted out of the building by two officers. He saw her as well, raising one hand in solemn greeting before being ushered out the doors into a Guard Humvee.

When the waiting room finally cleared, one of the nurses handed her a couple of ibuprofen, patted her on the back and sent her on her way. A security officer was more helpful. He walked her to the cafeteria and brought a large hot cafe mocha with soy milk.

“Drink that,” he advised. “Slowly. Let the sugar take effect. Can I call someone for you?”

She shook her head. “Thank you, that's very kind. My friend's parents are upstairs. I'll go to them.”

“Make sure you get something in your stomach as well.”