The Green Flu

Chapter 11 - Devon

The inside of the observing lab was quite small, but there was enough room for the researchers to do their work, I suppose. The whole side facing the rest of the lab was a window and you could see everything. I tried not to look at Anthony's body from here.

"Hmm..." Swindle mumbled to himself, circling around me.

"Uh, what are you doing?" I took a step away from him. I suddenly felt like a spider trapped in a glass being observed.

"Why haven't you turned yet?" He put the gun away into one of his lab coat pockets and started examining the scratches on me.

"I don't know. Why? Is something wrong?" I asked, wondering the same thing.

"Yes! The infection was supposed to spread quickly!" Swindle looked at the cuts and then scurried over to a table where a First-Aid Kit was sitting. "Those scratches are precisely how it was supposed to be passed onto others. So why haven't you turned?" He repeated his initial question.

"How about you answer a question I have." Swindle started going through the kit and pulling things out. I got the feeling he wasn't terribly interested in giving me any answers. "How do you know so much about this? How do you know how it was "supposed to" spread?"

My question seemed to strike a nerve for Swindle because he stopped what he was doing and just kind of looked into space for a second. Then he gave a sigh like an old, wise man might when he knew something bad was about to happen. Edward picked up the medical supplies and continued to walk over to me.

"I guess there's no harm in telling the truth now. I don't need to lie anymore." Swindle started to try to address my wound, but I waved him off and took the supplies myself. I was no doctor, but I trusted myself much more than I trusted this doctor.

"The Green Flu wasn't just a sickness. Or, it was. It is. But it isn't just a new cold that came to town. It was...designed." He stopped and thought about what to say next.

"Designed?" I asked, pulling off my jacket and T-shirt. I wrapped some of the bandages around my chest to see how big it would have to be, then poured some of the antiseptic onto the part that would touch the cuts.

"Engineered. Or created. It was supposed to be a weapon." I froze in my spot and looked at Swindle for more information.

"See, it was created to be contagious and to turn people into these creatures." Swindle walked over to the window and gazed down at all the dead bodies of the infected. He shook his head before continuing. "The Pennsylvania Scientific Organization would be great again, like it once was."

I wrapped the bandages tightly around my chest and shoulders, hissing quietly when the liquid antiseptic touched the scratches. I used the medical tape to keep everything in place and listened to Edwards tale.

"The P.S.O. would be great for inventing some deadly virus?" Maybe Swindle had lost his mind because that doesn't sound so great to me. I pulled my ripped shirt back on and my jacket.

"Yes. We used to make a difference, we used to make scientific progress. But now we've sunk so low that the only thing we ever do is find cures for pet diseases!" He looked frustrated and his hands formed fists. "When I joined this company, it was to solve problems in the world of science, not just waste our time looking for useless cures. And so when the military offered me money and support to make a biological weapon, I agreed."

I looked at him, wondering what happened to make him so convinced that the organization was just wasting their time. "You took a bribe from the military?"

Edward turned around and faced me, blank faced. I hadn't realized just how bad he looked earlier. He had dark circles under his eyes and he had worry wrinkles all over his face. Swindle was a crazy man and he certainly looked the part.

"Yes, I guess you could call it a bribe. We were to turn the Flu into a gas or liquid that we would compress into capsules and the military could drop it on our enemies. Then it would not only kill them, but it would spread to everyone on that area. It was a perfect way to get rid of any threats." There was a sparkle in his eyes when he said that, like he truly believed that he was doing the right thing.

"Well..." I tried to wrap my head around all this. "What about a cure? I mean, surly you created a way to reverse this, right? You created a weapon, so where's the self-destruct button?"

Edward gave a sigh, a sigh full of regret and grief.

"That was our only problem. The reason why everything went wrong." Swindle went back to the table and sat down in one of the chairs, took his glasses off, and put his head in his hands. "Before we finished with the Green Flu, before it was perfected, it got out of hand. One of our scientists got sick with it. He swore it wasn't the Flu, but we all knew it was. Most of us just stayed away from him and tried to quarantine ourselves, but there were some people who wanted to help him.

"They all tried to come up with a cure for it, but it was impossible since the sickness was incomplete. Soon they all got sick and so did their families. Then it was exposed to the outside world and everyone in Philadelphia started to get sick. That's when those of us who had been quarantined started to fall ill. We never anticipated that the Flu was airborne, and that's how it got us.

"I locked myself in here and didn't let anyone in, no matter what. I've been here since yesterday morning and the whole time I've been trying to come up with a cure." I listened to his story and wondered how everything could have gone down in only a couple of days.

"There is no cure. It's impossible." Swindle looked at me with what should have been guilt or regret, but I saw hope in his eyes. "But you, you aren't effected by it. You're clearly infected, but you haven't turned. It was supposed to have taken over your body by now."

"What are you saying?" I asked, my voice full of suspicion.

"I'm saying," Edward stood up and walked over to me, clearing his throat. "That you could be immune."