Going Viral Read online

  GOING VIRAL

  ANDREW PUCKETT

  © Andrew Puckett 2015

  Andrew Puckett has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 2015 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Prologue

  It Could Be YOU… the lottery sign said, and it seemed to Lucy Stokes that the finger might be pointing at her.

  Yes, it could be me, she thought, Why not? And she resolved to buy a ticket before she left work. And one for Jake as well…

  Lucy was seventeen and her luck had changed.

  With her fair hair and grey eyes, she was pretty, but not obviously so. She had a pleasant personality, but was not academic and tended to be reserved – in other words, the perfect target for the bullies and inadequates that haunt every secondary school.

  Not that she was actually hit, but as every girl knows, psychological bullying is every bit as bad, if not worse. And the scars take longer to fade.

  But now she was finished with all that, forever. She’d got a job she liked at the local store and had recently even acquired a boyfriend – something she’d once thought an impossibility.

  So she bought her tickets and went home. The next morning, she felt ill and her mother told her to stay in bed. The following day, she was worse, and her Mum called the doctor.

  ‘Flu,’ the nice lady doctor said.

  ‘It can’t be,’ Lucy wheezed. ‘Not like this,’ – this being a raging temperature, shivering, and a savage headache, not to mention a sore throat and a cough.

  ‘That’s because it’s real ‘flu,’ the lady doctor told her with a grin, ‘as opposed to man ‘flu’.

  She’d feel better in a few days, she said. She gave her ibuprofen for the temperature and pain and an antibiotic to prevent secondary infection.

  Lucy did, as the doctor had said, feel better after a couple of days, better enough for a visit from her boyfriend, better still when he stroked her hand and told her he loved her.

  But then she got worse again and her mother called the doctor back.

  She, the doctor, was wondering whether Lucy had got a secondary infection, despite the antibiotic, when she noticed the rash on her hands.

  ‘Ever had chickenpox?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ her Mum answered for her.

  ‘Well, you do now.’

  ‘Chickenpox?’ Lucy echoed, ‘But that’s just a kids’ illness...’

  ‘So it is,’ the doctor agreed. ‘When you’re just a kid, but when you’re older, it’s worse. Sometimes much worse, like now.’

  Over the next few days, the spots covering her arms, face and legs, turned into vesicles, and the doctor was satisfied with her diagnosis. Then they transformed into angry, deep-set pustules and Lucy was suddenly very ill indeed. The doctor went with her and her Mum in the ambulance to hospital.

  The consultant took one look at her and put her in isolation.

  ‘What is it?’ the doctor asked.

  He took her to one side. ‘Smallpox,’ he said.

  She gaped – ‘It can’t be!’

  Nevertheless, that’s what it was. The doctor wanted to know who else lived with her.

  Well, her father – and a brother who was away at the moment – oh, and there was a boyfriend on the scene as well…

  He’d arrange a trace on the brother and have the father and boyfriend brought in now. Any other patients with these symptoms?

  She shook her head, still in a daze.

  ‘When were you last vaccinated?’ he asked.

  ‘Never, not for smallpox…’

  ‘We’ll do that as soon as I’ve arranged to have the others brought in.’

  During the day, more cases trickled in. By the next day, it was a torrent. That’s how it started...

  Chapter 1

  For me, it started a bit earlier than that, thirty-seven days earlier to be exact, when Fenella Mason phoned me late one Tuesday afternoon toward the end of January.

  ‘Herry,’ she said. ‘I need you to come up to London tomorrow.’

  ‘I can’t, not tomorrow. I’ve just agreed to cover for someone...’

  ‘Then I’m afraid you’ll have to uncover. It’s SCRUB.’

  ‘Can you tell me what it’s –?’

  ‘Herry, just come,’ she interrupted. ‘If you don’t, I’ll have to ask Roland in your place.’

  ‘I see,’ I said slowly. ‘What time?’

  ‘Nine o’ five, at Paddington. There’s a train from Exeter at seven fifteen.’

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  I clicked the phone off and thought for a moment… then took a breath and clicked it on again to call my deputy, Caroline Chambers, at home.

  ‘I’m very sorry Caroline,’ I said, ‘but I’m going to have to renege on our agreement. About tomorrow.’

  ‘You can’t,’ she wailed, ‘I’ve just told Annabelle and Toby we could go…’ Her children had been pestering her to take them to a celebrity panto that was sold out, then today, she’d been offered last minute cancellations.

  I said as gently as I could, ‘It was on the proviso that so long as nothing really important came up. I’m sorry, but it has.’

  Silence, then she said in a small voice, ‘Can’t James do it?’

  ‘That would be very difficult.’

  ‘But he owes you, doesn’t he? Would you ask him, please Herry…?’

  It was indeed difficult; James West, too, had other plans, but he did owe me, as Caroline had said. Make an enemy to keep a friend. I was still speculating on what could be making me do this when Ellie came in with the last of the day’s reports to check and sign. After that, I logged out and drove home, still wondering…

  At the time, I was Medical Director of Public Health at St Mary’s in Exeter; at 35, a rather (some said suspiciously) young director. So pleased had I been to get the job that I’d readily accepted an additional duty, a mere nothing, as my new masters assured me, that of Western Area Head of SCRUB.

  ‘What is SCRUB?’ you may ask, as indeed I did.

  The Smallpox Containment and Reaction Unit.

  And the B? Ask Professor Mason, the National Head of SCRUB, which I did, on our first meeting.

  ‘Bugger all,’ she said crisply. ‘But I thought SCRUB sounded better than SCRU.’ I liked her from that moment.

  And SCRUB’s function? In the unlikely event of a biological terror attack using smallpox, we have the first responsibility of containing the disease and preventing an epidemic.

  So was this it? Surely not, or Fenella would have intimated it in some way… Wouldn
’t she?

  Was she retiring, being forcibly retired? She’d already hinted that she wanted me to take over from her when she went...

  Yes, that was it – she was retiring and wanted to prepare me for anointment.

  Did I want the job? And where did Roland come in?

  No, I did not want the job – but I wanted Roland to have it even less. This may seem very dog-in-manger, but as you will see, I had my reasons.

  As it turned out, I was wrong in almost every particular.

  Fenella was waiting for me at the meeting point at Paddington. You know that’s what it is because a plain black and white notice above it displays the words: Meeting Point.

  She silenced me with a frown, then said quietly, ‘We’re due at the Home Office at ten, but I needed a word with you first. A private word.’

  She led the way down to the Tube.

  She asked me if I’d had a good journey and I said yes. I thought as I looked at her how she probably hadn’t changed in years, certainly not for the time I’d known her: wire framed glasses over grey eyes, short greying hair and an ascetic, unmade up face. Typical scientific spinster you’d have thought, and been wrong. She’d been happily married until her husband had died a few years earlier, and had two grown-up children. She was in her mid-sixties.

  We took the Bakerloo to Charing Cross. She asked me if things were any better now and I said no, not really. In fact, they were worse, and the way she looked at me over her glasses suggested that she already knew.

  We didn’t say much after that. I don’t know why, but the Bakerloo always seems both noisier and faster than the other lines; an illusion, I suppose, caused by the narrowness of the tunnels.

  We walked down The Mall to St James’ Park and found a bench. Trees loomed in the frigid misty air and only a few walkers and joggers were braving the chill. I’d read somewhere that no one sits down in St James’ Park anymore, because it’s assumed you must be a spook, so I asked her facetiously if she knew what the password was.

  She gave me a pained look, then said, ‘There’s something I have to clear up with you. As you know, the powers that be would like to see me gone. I, however, intend on going in my own time, and when I do... Well, I’ve had it in mind for some time that I want you to be my successor.’

  I told her then about my own precarious position. We tossed that around for a while. Then she said abruptly,

  ‘Well, something’s come up that may have a West Country dimension, and I want to name you today as my official executive and deputy.’

  ‘What’s come up, Fenella?’

  She waved a hand. ‘You’ll know soon enough.’

  ‘Where does Roland come in?’

  ‘If you don’t want it, I’ll be pressured into giving it to him. In fact, I

  already have been.’ She looked at her watch, then back to me. ‘Are you with me in this, Herry?’

  She meant, did I trust her?

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Good.’ I think she’d expected more resistance. ‘We’d better go.’

  She didn’t say any more as we skirted the rock gardens and frozen lake and walked over to Birdcage. The sun penetrated the mist briefly and lit the massive, mottled trunks of the bare plane trees.

  We were buzzed through the hallowed stone doorway and a flunky ushered us through hushed corridors to a small, windowless boardroom. There were already six other people present.

  ‘Ah, Fenella,’ One of them, the very model of a desiccated civil servant came over to us. His eyes narrowed as he saw me and she said firmly, ‘Since Dr Smith is Head of the Western Area, Colin, I’ve decided it would be best if he were my official executive.’

  ‘But I thought I’d made it clear…’ he began, then his lips compressed in irritation… ‘We’ll discuss it later,’ he said ominously, ignoring me.

  He turned to the others. ‘Since we’re all here we’d better make a start.’

  He took a seat at the highly polished round table and indicated for the rest of us to do the same. I sat next to Fenella.

  What was her game? Had she directly disobeyed him in bringing me here, was it some sort of fait accompli…?

  He reminded us that we’d all signed the Official Secrets Act and how it thus went without saying that nothing was to be divulged to any other party without his express permission. Dignified pause, then: ‘For those of you who don’t know me, my name’s Colin Blake and I’m a senior civil servant here.’

  I later discovered that he was Sir Colin and very senior indeed, and I suppose it said something for him that he didn’t make anything of this.

  ‘A COBRA meeting was convened three days ago, and as a result, I’ve been asked by the Prime Minister to act as facilitator at this level.’

  COBRA. Cabinet Office Briefing Room A. So this was it, or something very like it. I quickly glanced round. Some people, like Fenella already knew, but others, like me, didn’t.

  He went on, ‘I suggest we all, very briefly, introduce ourselves.’ He turned to the tall, soldierly man on his right in police uniform.

  ‘I’m Commander Brigg and I head the HCTU. That’s the Home Counter Terrorism Unit.’ He had a narrow, rather hard face, a moustache and short dark hair going grey at the temples. He glanced at the woman to his right in civvies.

  ‘Rebecca Hale,’ she said. ‘Detective Inspector, HCTU.’

  She had long dark hair and a (probably deceptively) gentle face.

  The man next to them in army uniform told us he was Major John Gibb, an urban control specialist. Then came Fenella and me, and lastly, a man and a woman who were a molecular virologist and analytical chemist respectively, both from Porton Down. Which brought us back to Blake.

  ‘The reason you’re all here,’ he said, ‘is that four days ago, the Prime Minister’s office received a parcel through the post, together with this letter.’ He dimmed the lights and a large monitor on the wall glowed. It read:

  Dear Prime Minister,

  Accompanying this letter is a sealed, airtight package. Under no circumstances should it be opened other than in a Containment Level Four laboratory for dangerous pathogens. It contains a chick embryo infected with live Variola Major, the smallpox virus.

  As you read this, Prime Minister, thousands of children are starving to death in Africa.

  That obviously went over your head, so I will repeat it.

  THOUSANDS OF CHILDREN ARE STARVING TO DEATH IN AFRICA.

  And we, the British, bear a large measure of responsibility for that.

  Throughout the 18th and during the early 19th century, we kidnapped them in their thousands and sold them into slavery.

  We occupied their countries, stole their natural resources, confiscated their land and sold it to our own. We then oppressed them and treated them as second-class human beings.

  Then, we walked away, leaving them to cope with the mess we’d bequeathed to them. So it’s small wonder they’re starving.

  And what do we do? We deny them the aid they desperately need, allow their children to starve to death because we don’t happen to like their rulers. A country that wastes billions of pounds worth of food per annum, where the fastest growing medical problem is obesity, refuses to give food to the starving - because it doesn’t happen to like their rulers.

  If this were another country, we would say they were no better than murderers.

  But it isn’t another country. It’s us.

  We must repay the debt we owe the African people. We must give them more in aid immediately. The UK’s annual aid budget is approximately £7 billion, of which approximately £2 billion is sent to Africa.

  We demand that by midnight on February 28th at the latest, the government announces an increase in the amount of aid sent to Africa to £4 billion.

  Pour encouragement

  Somalia, in Africa, was the last place in the world to be cleared of endemic smallpox (a further example of how low a priority we regard Africa). If the above announcement is not made by the stipulated
time, we will infect a named individual with smallpox. If our demand is not then immediately complied with, the UK will become the first country in the world to suffer a smallpox epidemic since its ‘eradication’ forty years ago.

  John Amend-all

  Chapter 2

  I read it through again, then darted a glance round… Brigg was staring at the middle of the table, while Fenella poured herself a glass of water – they’d obviously already seen it. The others were still reading, the army major’s lips moving slightly as he did...

  A hoax, I thought, has to be… then Blake said, ‘If you’ve all finished reading now, I’ll hand over to Dr Staples.’

  He was the virologist from Porton Down. He was thin, bald and earnest, as a good virologist should be. He described how they’d taken the package back to Porton and opened it as stipulated…

  ‘It was well-sealed and air-tight, as they’d said. Inside was a hen’s egg, infected with a virus which electron microscopy and DNA analysis showed to be Variola Major...’

  As he droned on, I was having one of those weirdly self-aware moments when something you know can’t be happening actually is…

  No hoax then. And Fenella, knowing this, had persuaded me to be her executive against Blake’s will, and then shoved me into his face…

  Why…?

  ‘Do you know which strain?’ she was asking Staples.

  ‘Well, this is where it gets interesting…’

  Interesting! Like the Chinese curse, I thought…

  ‘It seems to be a strain called Som 3, which was isolated from a Somali some fifty years ago.’

  ‘Does it have any particular characteristics?’

  He touched his lips with the tip of his tongue. ‘An increased infectivity. We, my predecessors, that is –’

  ‘So if you’re right, we should be not only interested but terrified.’

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed meekly. ‘As I was about to say, we thought that this strain had been destroyed in the late seventies, along with all the others.’

  ‘It wasn’t sent to America or Russia, then?’ Brigg asked.

  After the last case of smallpox in the world, which occurred – to our shame – in Birmingham, all the UK stocks, together with the rest of the world’s, had been either destroyed or sent to secure labs in Atlanta, USA, or Novosibirsk in Russia.