Cruel World(135)

Quinn dug in his pocket and drew out the page that was beginning to roughen from being handled so much. Holtz took it from him and read, holding the paper only inches from his nose. When he was finished, he looked up at Quinn but didn’t hand the page back.

“Where did you get this?”

“From a man named Harold Roman. He was from this camp. We found him right before he died in Fort Dodge. It was in his pack. My father was James Kelly,” Quinn added.

“I see.”

“Do you know what it means?”

“Oh yes. In fact, it’s so familiar it’s almost like finding something that you hadn’t known you’d lost.”

“What do you mean?” Quinn said, grabbing a nearby chair and pulling it closer to sit in. The others did the same, seating themselves in a semicircle around the doctor’s bed.

“It means the answer I’ve been looking for was right before my eyes the whole time.” He cleared his throat. “When this all began, and my wife and I came here, we had all the samples and test subjects we needed. There was always a sick person turning up or being quarantined in different areas of the camp. Now, from the start, I suspected we were dealing with a virus, a very special virus, but a virus just the same. The problem was when we began to study the samples, we found only a simple strain of flu.”

“Flu?” Alice asked. “Like stomach flu or what?”

“No, not stomach flu but a strain of influenza. It appeared to be exactly like the type that makes its rounds every winter all over the world. But instead of only a handful of people dying, we had hundreds of millions.” He paused again and turned his wallet end over end. He opened it and shut it. “It baffled us to say the least. But the most interesting aspect was hidden within the strain of flu. There were two latent protein impressions within infected humans, but only one remained within the mutated population. Now, one of the proteins in the humans we understood because of the extreme immune reaction that occurred within nearly all infected. This produced the high fever. But it also was a type of concealment for what the protein was doing.”

“And what was that, doctor?” Collincz asked.

“It was creating an enzyme that dissolved healthy bone structure.” Holtz shifted his eyes to each of them. Quinn rubbed his hands on his pants, recalling the softness of his father’s forehead beneath his fingers. “This increased the fever beyond known medical records, which in essence liquefied the body from the inside out over a period of time. Bones, organs, musculature, everything broke down and continued to dissolve even after death. The end result, as I’m sure you’re all aware, is a viscous, foul smelling liquid.”

Holtz took another drink of water as the pattering of rain increased on the roof. Denver whined, and Ty, who had been listening raptly, stroked the dog’s ear.

“But what does this have to do with the paper Roman was carrying?” Quinn asked.

“Everything,” Holtz said. “One of the first terms you’ll come upon on that page is adenovirus. Do you know what that is?” Everyone shook their heads. “An adenovirus is basically a gutted virus. Its proteins have been extracted or modified for genetic purposes. Genetic research has made huge leaps and bounds in the past decades, and many scientists are only beginning to grasp the full potential of the power gene therapy encompasses. The adenovirus in question was disguised as a flu virus carrying the two types of proteins I mentioned before as well as a heavy dose of human growth hormone. You see the genes from the flu virus were present and easily recognizable. This was why it baffled my colleagues and I so much. These other proteins were integrated among the flu’s typical contents that enabled it to reproduce and metabolize within a host. Chimeric is the correct term for what we found though we didn’t realize it at the time. It was basically an adenovirus shell containing the flu genes as well as the proteins I mentioned. As I said, we know that the first protein destroyed healthy bone structure, but the second was designed to rebuild it.”

Silence hung in the air for a beat before Quinn rubbed the side of his face and leaned forward.

“So you’re saying this virus was engineered?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying, dear boy.”

“But why?” Alice asked.

Holtz’s eyes darkened, and in the gray light, he seemed not just old but ancient.

“I can only tell you what I believe,” he said. “From my studies, and with this new revelation, I can only conclude that the anomalies were the end result of a genetic undertaking such as the world has never seen before. It appears to me that they were designed to evolve from any healthy human being through the virus to be used for God knows what purpose by their creators.”