Public Enemy Zero (16 page)

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Authors: Andrew Mayne

BOOK: Public Enemy Zero
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The first case was brought to their attention by a Red Cross worker in Mongolia. His team was immunizing children in a yurt village when they told him about a “wild man” that chased them back to the village. When the worker went with two other men to look for him, they found his body with a bullet to the head. An old woman said she’d seen a military helicopter in the area. When he asked the local military commander, he said he didn’t know anything about it but oddly came back later that night to seize the body. Fortunately, the aid worker had taken blood samples before soldiers in masks took the body away.
The blood samples sat in a refrigerator in the CDC until a Chinese defector passed along some documents including a video of a gruesome experiment apparently performed in a Chinese-controlled prison in Mongolia.
Baylor had used the video to get funding and push through programs that otherwise saner minds would have said no to. Shot with a handheld camera, it showed forty Asian men in prison uniforms led into the center of a prison yard wearing blindfolds. Six men in green hospital gowns injected the kneeling men with a handful of syringes and then quickly left the yard. At first, nothing happened. The men sat there obediently awaiting further instruction. Then a handful began to make growling sounds and pull away their blindfolds like animals. The camera zoomed into bloodshot eyes and the claw-like way they held their hands. Within moments it was pandemonium as men leaped to their feet and attacked one another with teeth and claws. They opened up huge gashes in throats and clawed at each other’s eyes. Two men would attack another and then attack another when he was down. The camera tried to capture as much of the blood frenzy as was possible, but it was all over in under four minutes. The dead lay there with their fingers held out like claws and their lips pulled back in an angry expression. Calm, dispassionate voices spoke in Chinese making clinical observations.
When the blood samples from the “wild man” were examined, they discovered a new pathogen. Rapid genetic sequencing revealed a simple virus that pulled an interesting trick. When the body’s autoimmune system went to fight it, instead of just reprogramming it to make more copies of itself, like retroviruses did, it had a payload of genetic information that tricked an older immune system, one we shared with reptiles and sea animals. This system is what researchers believed evolved into the fight part of the fight-or-flight reflex.
Instead of just causing the body to fight off the infection and inadvertently make copies of it, this virus actually caused a physical fight response. A fight response so powerful and primitive, it overpowered all the higher brain functions.
In the Mongolian prison, the men didn’t discriminate; they tried to kill their best friends. They went after anything that moved and didn’t stop.
The mall panic subsided without anywhere near the high mortality rate of the prison. The fact that it subsided at all was more evidence that this wasn’t the Mongolian Flu.
From later experiments with the pathogen, off-the-books experiments Baylor oversaw, they discovered victims wouldn’t stop trying to kill other people. They kept going until physical fatigue stopped them or they went into cardiac arrest.
The version of Mongolian Flu they obtained from the “wild man” was transmissible through an open wound but not airborne. Baylor had to explain to his oversight panel that that could be changed with just a few keystrokes on a genetic sequencer. If someone had malevolent intent for the virus, they could infect a lot of people very quickly.
Baylor tapped his fingers on his desk. Although this wasn’t the Mongolian Flu they were familiar with, there was nothing saying that the people who made the first version hadn’t come up with a variation. If they’d found out about the preventive measures Baylor and his team had taken, they may have tried to engineer a work-around.
China was the obvious guess for the creator, but there was credible evidence to suggest the virus was something they had accidentally discovered and the prison experiment was just their own cruel way of finding out what it did. The problem of trying to have indirect communication with the Chinese was that each branch of the military kept secrets from the others. It could have been a project by a group like his own.
Cold War political machinations aside, Baylor had second thoughts and decided the photos were enough reason to take precautions. He picked up a secure line and dialed the research center.
Thirty miles away in a 60,000-square-foot building that said “NitroFertilizer Inc.” on the front, a phone rang. A 52-year-old molecular biologist with curly gray hair and a well-manicured beard answered the phone.
“
Ari, you following the mall thing down in Florida?” asked Baylor.
Ari Steinmetz replied, “Not really. What’s up?”
“
I’m going to have some blood samples sent to us. I need you to stay late to look at them. I’ll have a courier waiting at the CDC for when they get their batch.”
Steinmetz looked over at two of his lab assistants who were leaning over a piece of hardware while referring to a manual. “Hey guys, we’ve got to stay late.”
They nodded and then went back to trying to figure out how to get the new automated sequencer to work.
“
Anything I should be on the lookout for? I can get some lab tests ready to go,” asked Steinmetz.
Baylor paused for a moment. “It’s just a precautionary thing. Nothing we need to worry about. And it’ll be a good exercise for your team.” He tried to make his voice sound as matter of fact as possible. “I just want to follow up on something relating to Mongolian Flu.”
“
The virus or the vaccine?”
“
The virus,” replied Baylor.
“
No problem.” Inwardly, Steinmetz swore.
“
Thanks, Ari.” Baylor hung up and then dialed another number.
“
What’s the current prep time for one of our go teams?” he asked.
“
Three hours,” said the voice on the other end of the line.
“
OK. What if we need a site containment in South Florida? Say five hundred people?”
“
Six hours.”
“
Thank you. Just updating my files.” Baylor hung up and then called over to the executive airport they used outside of Atlanta and told them to keep a plane ready.
 

 

24
Mitchell watched the front of the other house for another two hours after the SWAT team left. Periodically a patrol car would pass through the neighborhood. Mitchell suspected this wasn’t their usual beat.
Although he wasn’t experienced at how the police tracked down fugitives, he would bet that there was probably another car, maybe an unmarked one, parked near the entrances or, worse yet, hiding in plain sight in a driveway, masquerading as one of the neighbor’s cars.
For a moment, he thought he was being too paranoid and then realized that was the whole point. He had to be extra paranoid. Getting out of the house was going to be tricky. He needed to make it from there to his next location while avoiding whatever surveillance there was. At least they would be looking for someone heading to the house and not away from it. Maybe there was something to that.
The attic was starting to feel more claustrophobic. He was tempted to go down into the house but didn’t want to take the chance of being seen through a window or have the owner come home early. He needed to sit tight for another few hours.
Mitchell pulled the pocket radio from his bag and put in an earbud. He used one ear to listen to the street and the other to find out what was being said on the news. He hoped in vain that he’d hear newscasters explaining that the manhunt was all a mistake and that Mitchell was in the clear.
He turned to an all-news AM station and caught the middle of a broadcast.
“
... while the search continues for South Florida radio personality Mitchell Roberts after an apparent one-man rampage that led to a riot at Park Square Mall where at least 18 people are believed to be dead, authorities have downplayed rumors the riot was caused by some kind of unknown chemical or biological agent. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said that their personnel on site are there merely as a precaution.
“
Meanwhile, news outlets have continued to press for access to security camera footage, hoping it could shed some light on how the actions of one man could lead to such a tragic event.”
While the news overall was depressing, hearing the phrase “chemical or biological” made Mitchell feel like there was a chance of finding out some kind of explanation that didn’t involve him being a sociopathic mass murderer.
The newscast came back from the commercial break, “Earlier today we spoke with University of Miami psychology professor Jeff Keating in a phone interview.”
Keating spoke with a precise tone. “What we may have here may be a case of mass hysteria. We see this all the time in news footage from the Middle East and places like India and Pakistan, where crowds of people are so angry by what they see that, in the comfort of the crowd, they feel empowered to take actions that otherwise morally they’d never do.
“
Ultimately, they’re not responsible for their actions. This man who caused the riot by threatening a mother and her child is the one who has to pay the price for these actions.”
“
Go fuck yourself,” Mitchell replied to the radio.
Sick of hearing people who weren’t there, describing something they didn’t know anything about, Mitchell turned off the radio. He decided to try to catch a nap in the attic before he departed.
To keep on the safe side, he set the alarm on the stolen iPod for two hours. He used his backpack as a pillow and placed the iPod inside of it. Wedged between old boxes and itchy insulation, he somehow managed to fall asleep.
 
Two hours later, he almost cracked his head on the ceiling when he woke up startled and confused. It took him a minute to find the iPod and shut off the alarm. He was terrified a passing patrol car was going to hear it and know where he was hiding.
After he turned off the iPod, he took a look out through the vent. It was dark. There were a few more cars in driveways, but the neighborhood still looked deserted.
Mitchell decided he should wait to see if there was a pattern to when the police car drove through the neighborhood. Knowing that could help him plan his escape out of there.
In the meantime, he needed to occupy himself. After a lot of internal debate, he decided to turn to WQXD to see what they were saying. He was also strangely obsessed with the thought that they were going to give Mike the intern his late-night spot. It was a stupid thing to think about, but the idea that Mike would rat him out for the opportunity nagged him. Everybody for himself.
Mitchell heard the opening music to Rookman’s show. It was some Neil Diamond meets the Doors send-up that Rookman had recorded in his garage with a few of his buddies. Imagining Rookman playing guitar next to an ex-cop playing a drum set in front of a half-put-together Camaro and beer bottles strewn about the place made Mitchell feel like things were back to normal.
Rookman’s gravelly voice came in over the music, “Man on a rampage! Watch out! Our own Mad Mitch a wanted fugitive folks! It doesn’t get any more exciting than that. Tonight I’m going to give you the inside scoop into this criminal mastermind. This dark loner who sat just a few feet from where I am now earlier this morning.
“
I’ve got a special last-minute guest on the line whose going to tell us how the authorities are going to catch this dangerous menace before he murders us all!”
Mitchell shook his head.
What the hell?
“
Please welcome former police captain Dick Miller. Dick just wrote a book about the search for the DC Snipers and is an expert on how manhunts work. I brought him on the show so he could explain how the authorities are going to catch our Mad Mitch and bring him to justice. Dick, how are you?”
Mitchell’s stomach turned. Despite all his fight-the-power talk and what he thought was mutual respect if not friendship, Rookman was ready to pounce on him like everybody else. Mitchell wanted to turn off the radio, but his sense of self-loathing wouldn’t let him.
“
Great, Rookman, thanks for having me on here,” Miller said.
“
Thank you for agreeing on such short notice. Just for background for our syndicated listeners and those of you living under rocks and in your bunkers, an arrest warrant was issued today for Mad Mitch, aka Mitchell Roberts, the kid who plays that emo music here after I go home to get drunk. Run for your lives, folks!
“
So, Dick, first I have to ask you, is it clear to you why there’s this manhunt for Mitch? I’ve looked at the bulletin they’ve sent out and I can’t find any mention of a gun, a rifle, a knife or even an angry T-shirt.”
“
Well ...” Miller hesitated. “I think that since he’s the one person who seems to be at the center of the tragic events at the Park Square Mall, I can understand why police want to talk to him. That plus the events earlier in the day when he assaulted, allegedly, his girlfriend, the boyfriend and threw the parking enforcer into a windshield.”
“
Have you ever seen Mitch?” asked Rookman.

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