Sealed In.
By Jacqueline Druga.
Brief Introduction.
Russian President, Boris Yelstin, when newly elected in 1992, publically announced that the Soviet Union had retained an illegal offensive biological warfare program. He immediately signed a decree banning the development and research of offensive biological weapons. A repercussion of this ban would cause many Russian scientists in the biological warfare arena to seek work in other countries. Many of these scientists defected.
Sequentially, in 1992, Russian scientist and defector, Ken Alibek, attested that Russia had developed a hybrid of the Ebola and smallpox virus for use as a biological weapon, known as Ebolapox.
The hybrid would combine the devastating and hemorrhagic effects of Ebola with the highly contagious nature of smallpox. The weapon caused lesions to appear below the skin"s surface. The skin blackens and peels away in layers. Mucus membranes disintegrate. What begins as common flu symptoms will in four days break down the body inhumanely, and death is inevitable.
Because of the combination, the weapon"s fatality rate is near 100%. Alibek deemed it as the weapon that, once released into society, would inevitably come back to those who released it. Further researched was needed.
Then the program was banned.
It is conceivable that many of the Russian biological weapon scientists retained samples of the hybrid before defecting. It is out there in circulation. The Soviet Union highly refutes this rumor, yet has been unable to prove that all specimens of Ebolapox have been destroyed.
In 2002, a mysterious illness erupted in Pakistan claiming at least ten lives. The distinct similarities led scientists to believe it was the Ebolapox virus. Pakistan was not the first of these mysterious outbreaks, and until all of the weapon is eradicated, unfortunately, it will not be the last.
FLASH FORWARD.
Ground Zero - 1.
Hartworth, Montana.
December 23.
The wide eyes seemed to stare at Dr. Edward Neil, following him around the room like a painting. Eyes that were open, didn"t blink, their color lost in the blood flow that had poured into the white portion of the eyeball and turned black.
The victim had to be in his twenties and he, like everyone else Edward Neil guessed that he would encounter in Hartworth, Montana, was dead.
The quiet, small town, nestled in the north of the state close to North Dakota and Canada, was an ent.i.ty all to itself. The nearest neighboring town was forty-three miles west. It had been days since a car moved down the road or a person walked the streets. That"s what Edward estimated.
They entered the town alone in protective garb. A fresh blanket of snow lay upon the unmoved cars, covering the Christmas decorations that gave even more a depth of sadness to the situation.
The song, Silent Night, would forever hold new meaning. It eerily played on "auto" through the streets of the town.
How fitting.
There were homes and ranches within the boundaries of Hartworth; those had to be checked as well. But Edward felt it would be useless.
They would bring no one else into the town until he and his team had thoroughly gone through and confirmed what had occurred.
Edward hadn"t a clue what killed everyone, not yet. Skin appeared as if it boiled below the surface, black as if burned, but it wasn"t charred; it was blood. Skin peeled off in layers and adhered to the bedding. This more than likely occurred while the victim was still alive. It happened only after they literally vomited their insides, and blood seeped from every orifice.
He stopped about five victims into his search and made his way to the utilitarian metal lab trailer set center of the one-stoplight town.
After disinfecting, he removed his garb and poured a cup of coffee. They"d only just set up, had not been in town that long, and already Edward felt the wind knocked from him.
He sipped his coffee. It made him sick. He had been in the field and worked for the CDC for years; never had he seen anything as horrendous as Hartworth, and he"d barely scratched the surface.
When the call came about Hartworth, he was back in Vermont actually joking around with Dr. Walker about a zombie apocalypse. The odd timing of the call coupled with the conversation sent a chill up his spine.
Receiving only minimal details and a directive to pack a small team and go, Edward knew he wouldn"t be home for Christmas.
It was strictly confidential. In fact, Edward had never encountered something as cla.s.sified as this.
A small team would go into Hartworth; four CDC security squads would police the neighboring roads wearing gas company logos. The story was a gas leak.
Hartworth, like many small Montana towns, was an ent.i.ty of its own, so it wasn"t uncommon for someone from a neighboring town to go days or even weeks without having contact with Hartworth.
Because of that, Edward hadn"t a clue when the outbreak occurred or how long they were dead. Those were part of the answers he had to discover.
The dead town, however, was luckily discovered by a keen state trooper, Steve Irwin, who had a cousin that worked as a secretary for the CDC in Atlanta.
The trooper was at a crossroads about six miles from town and thought it odd that at two in the afternoon, there were no car tracks in the snow, nor had any attempt been made to maintain or ash the roads out of Hartworth.
He needed only to make it to the edge of town, and he knew.
He discovered the first body in a pickup truck right at the beginning of town, decimated by illness. The young man held a shot gun and looked as if he were standing guard, or rather sitting guard.
Irwin took a picture of it with his phone, and before calling it in to the station, he called his cousin at the CDC. The trooper"s slip in protocol was actually a good thing. It worked in favor of keeping the situation tight-lipped and secret.
The picture went through the CDC faster than any disease.
Irwin was told not to go into town, to report it as a gas leak, and position troopers on the outskirts to keep people away.
He did. Irwin and the other troopers immediately went into quarantine in a special CDC trailer.
As far as the story of the gas leak told to the State Police, Edward was still fielding questions regarding that.
Something he could handle What he couldn"t handle was the daunting task of solving the mystery before him. He would with the others, bit by bit, piece by piece, body by body.
He had to do so quickly, because with something as deadly as what wiped out Hartworth, Edward was certain he didn"t have much time.
But before he found the answers to what happened in Hartworth, he had one very important task to complete. First and foremost he had to find out if the bug crossed boundaries. If it did, the CDC had bigger problems to face than just one small dot on the map.
Chapter One.
ONE MONTH EARLIER.
Lincoln, Montana.
November 28th.
Stewart Burton could have been a starting quarterback for the Miami Dolphins. He almost was. They scouted him and wanted him. His college statistics were phenomenal. He had the talent, personality, and the good looks to endorse any product.
But two things stopped that from happening. Neither of them were an injury.
In his senior year, he found out his college girlfriend was pregnant, and his mother died, both occurring in the same month.
Not only did his state of mind wander from the game, but his father needed him at home. Stew could have gone on to play football, but his father and the ranch took top priority.
That was forty-two years earlier.
In exchange for helping on the farm, Stew"s father gave him a small piece of property. Stew bought two horses for the land. Eventually, with his father"s pa.s.sing, he inherited the rest of the property.
He still farmed some wheat, but his primary interest was thoroughbreds.
And really, he didn"t need all that land. He rented it out, even to his own daughter, who built her home a half a mile from him.
Stewart Burton was one of the two richest men in the county and in Lincoln, Montana.
Three things came out of Lincoln, and pretty much everyone who wasn"t working a business in town made a living producing or aiding in those three things.
Wheat, thoroughbreds, and the best flannel shirts in the country.
Handmade ... sort of. Ty-Bow Flannel. Tyler Bowman was the other richest man.
But neither of the two men, both who lived in Lincoln, acted like rich men.
Stew was as down to earth as they came. A strong man with a barrel chest, a man who used to be muscular and athletic, but his body kind of shifted the bulk in various places. His wife of thirty-some years died in her sleep six years earlier. Heart failure, he was told. Stew never remarried, nor would he.
He loved Lora and always would.
He wasn"t lonely, not at all.
Aside from friends, Stew had a semi-sane daughter, two grandchildren, a great granddaughter, and his life was full.
He worked and lived his life for his family.
The day after Thanksgiving, Stew liked to go into town. He actually went into town every day, but Black Friday was his favorite.
Not that the shops and restaurants that spanned the three blocks of the small town offered great deals; they didn"t. Just because the town was empty on Black Friday, everyone went somewhere bigger to shop.
Stew also enjoyed watching the town maintenance engineer, Andy Jenkins, hang the Christmas decorations.
Andy wasn"t bright, not at all, but a good fella. A nice looking kid, Stew would describe him, even though he wasn"t a kid. Dark wavy hair that didn"t gray and a rugged face. It was too bad he just couldn"t convey his thoughts. He went to school with Stew"s daughter, Emma, and then, just after high school, Andy was in a motorcycle accident, suffered a major head injury, and was never the same again.
He picked up the streets of Lincoln, decorated for holidays, and Stew employed him as a stable hand, as well.
Andy was a nice guy, funny to watch and listen to. He spurted out his own G-rated cursing when he messed up. And that was often.
Stew heard him.
"Gosh darn, son of a gun! Fudge filled cheap b.u.t.tock lights!" Andy blasted.
Stew laughed, looked up to Andy who stood on a ladder, his lanky body barely holding on.
"You okay up there, Andy?" Stew yelled.
Andy peered down, almost losing his balance. "Oh, yeah, hey, Mr. Burton. I"m ... I"m ... good. Just... just trying to find the bad b .... bulb."
Stew c.o.c.ked back some. "Thought that was a thing of the past."
"These lights are from ... from ... eighty-f.... eighty ... fer.... 1970; trust me they are a thing of the past ... the past."
Stew laughed, was impressed at Andy"s quick wit, and after wishing him luck, headed into Bonnie"s diner. There were about six people in there, mainly men his age having coffee.
He took a seat at a booth, and Bonnie came over within a few seconds. Instead of placing down a menu, she set down a newspaper.
"Morning, Stew. Back from shopping?"
"You know I don"t shop until the last minute."
Bonnie smiled, pouring his coffee. "Usual?"
"Yes, please, and thank you." Stew added the cream to his coffee and slid the paper into his view. The headlines weren"t anything spectacular, but Stew would skim through them while waiting on his eggs and toast.
It was a quiet, peaceful moment ...
"Pap!" Her voice yelled at the same time as the bell above the door dinged.
Stew, like two other men in the diner, looked up at the call of "Pap". He looked down at his watch when he saw his twenty-year-old granddaughter, Heather, plowing into the diner. It was only a little after nine. "What"s wrong?" he asked her.