The Twelve: A Novel (Book Two of the Passage Trilogy)
Justin Cronin
Page 60 of 593 (Amazon Kindle Version)
"Don't know if you've been following the news lately," Guilder said, delivering a second spoonful into his father's mouth. "There's something I thought you should know about."
"So? Say your piece and leave me alone."
But what did Guilder want to say? I'm dying? That everyone was dying, even if they didn't know it yet?
What purpose could this information possibly serve? A chilling thought occurred to him. What would become of his father when everyone was gone, the doctors and nurses and orderlies? With everything that had happened in the last few weeks, Guilder had been too preoccupied to consider this eventuality. Because the city was emptying out; soon, in weeks or even days, everyone would be running for their lives.
The Twelve: A Novel (Book Two of the Passage Trilogy)
Justin Cronin
Page 60 of 593 (Amazon Kindle Version)
Guilder stepped from the room. In the vacant hallway, he paused to breathe. The voice wasn't real; he understood that. But still there were times when it felt as if his father's mind, departed from his bodily person, had taken up residence inside his own.
He returned to the front desk. The nurse, a young Hispanic woman, was penciling in a crossword puzzle.
"My father needs his diaper changed."
She didn't look up. "They all need their diaper changed." When Guilder didn't move, her eyes darted upward from the page. They were very dark, and heavily lined. "I'll tell someone."
"Please do."
At the door he stopped. The nurse had already resumed working on her puzzle.
"So *tell* someone, goddamnit."
"I said I'd get to it."
A fierce protective urge came over him. Guilder wanted to shove her pencil down her throat. "Pick up the fucking phone if you're not going to do it yourself."
With a huff she lifted the phone and dialed. "It's Mona at the front. Guilder in 126 needs changing. Yes, his son is here. Okay, I'll tell him." She hung up. "Happy?"
The question was so absurd he didn't know where to begin.
twitter_patrick-stewart_11-07-2018_1.jpg
From 7/29/1945 To 8/3/1998 ( Tom Clancy "Rainbow Six" ) is 19363 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 11/7/2018 is 19363 days
From 10/12/1959 ( Wikipedia: Yuri Gagarin and Georgi Shonin were among the first test pilots selected to be Soviet cosmonauts ) To 10/16/2012 ( Justin Cronin "The Twelve: A Novel" Book Two of The Passage Trilogy ) is 19363 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 11/7/2018 is 19363 days
From 5/7/1992 ( the first launch of the United States space shuttle Endeavour orbiter vehicle mission STS-49 includes me Kerry Wayne Burgess the United States Marine Corps officer and United States STS-49 pilot astronaut and my 1st official United States of America National Aeronautics and Space Administration orbital flight of 4 overall ) To 11/7/2018 is 9680 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 5/4/1992 ( premiere US TV series episode "Star Trek: The Next Generation"::"Imaginary Friend" ) is 9680 days
From 5/7/1992 ( the first launch of the United States space shuttle Endeavour orbiter vehicle mission STS-49 includes me Kerry Wayne Burgess the United States Marine Corps officer and United States STS-49 pilot astronaut and my 1st official United States of America National Aeronautics and Space Administration orbital flight of 4 overall ) To 11/7/2018 is 9680 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 5/4/1992 ( the countdown begins by NASA for STS-49 ) is 9680 days
http://articles.latimes.com/1992-05-05/news/mn-1536_1_shuttle-endeavour
Los Angeles Times
Nation IN BRIEF : FLORIDA : Shuttle Countdown Gets Under Way
May 05, 1992 From Times Staff and Wire Reports
NASA began the countdown for the first launch of the shuttle Endeavour and its satellite-rescue mission with spacewalking astronauts. The countdown clocks began ticking at 8 p.m. PDT Monday, and the liftoff is scheduled for 4:06 p.m. PDT Thursday. The seven crew members arrived at the Kennedy Space Center, Fla., Monday night. Endeavour replaces the Challenger, destroyed 73 seconds after liftoff six years ago. All seven crew members died in the fireball. Endeavour's crew will try to save a communications satellite stranded in a uselessly low orbit for two years. Two astronauts will attach a rocket motor to the satellite that is designed to boost the craft to a working altitude. Other spacewalks are planned so astronauts can practice techniques for building a space station.
http://www.tv.com/shows/star-trek-the-next-generation/imaginary-friend-19108/
tv.com
Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 5 Episode 22
Imaginary Friend
Aired May 04, 1992 on CBS
Episode Summary
Stardate: 45852.1
While exploring a strange form of energy in a region of space, a little girl's imaginary friend becomes real and places the Enterprise in great danger.
AIRED: 5/4/92
2017March27_Chloe55-200_DSC00518.jpg - Kerry Burgess
DSC03724.jpg - Kerry Burgess
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DSC00868.jpg - Kerry Burgess
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-mitchell/countdown-to-hiroshima-fo_b_3670602.html
HUFFPOST
Greg Mitchell, Contributor
Author of a dozen books, latest “The Tunnels”
Countdown to Hiroshima, for July 29, 1945: American POWs in Target Cities?
The second bomb — the plutonium device — was still back in the States. The target list, with Hiroshima as #1, remained in place, although it was being studied for the presence of POW camps holding Americans in the target sites.
07/29/2013 10:21 am ET Updated Sep 28, 2013
For the past several days here, and for more to come, I am counting down the days to the atomic bombing of Japan (August 6 and August 9, 1945), marking events from the same day in 1945. I’ve written hundreds of article and three books on the subject: Hiroshima in America (with Robert Jay Lifton), Atomic Cover-Up (on the decades-long suppression of shocking film shot in the atomic cities by the U.S. military) and Hollywood Bomb (the wild story of how an MGM 1947 drama was censored by the military and Truman himself).
Here are previous daily pieces this month in this unique series.
July 29, 1945
: Assembling of the first atomic bomb continued at Tinian. It would likely be ready on August 1 and the first use would be dictated by the weather.
The second bomb — the plutonium device — was still back in the States. The target list, with Hiroshima as #1, remained in place, although it was being studied for the presence of POW camps holding Americans in the target sites (indeed, several American POWs would be slain by the bomb in Hiroshima).
Japanese sub sinks the U.S.S. Indianapolis, killing over 800 American seamen. Beyond the tragic loss of life: If it had happened three days earlier, the atomic bomb the ship was carrying to Tinian would have never made it.
A Newsweek story observes: “As Allied air and sea attacks hammered the stricken homeland, Japan’s leaders assessed the war situation and found it bordering on the disastrous.... As usual, the nation’s propaganda media spewed out brave double-talk of hope and defiance.” But it adds: “Behind the curtain, Japan had put forward at least one definite offer. Fearing the results of Russian participation in the war, Tokyo transmitted to Generaliissimo Stalin the broad terms on which it professed willingness to settle all scores.
Secretary of War Stimson began work on the statement on the first use of the bomb that President Truman would record or release in a few days, assuming the bomb worked. It would portray Hiroshima as simply a “military base,” not a large a city with a military base — aptly opening the nuclear era by deliberately misleading Americans..
Truman wrote letter to wife Bess from Potsdam on deals there (but does not mention A-bomb discussions with Soviets): “I like Stalin. He is straightforward, knows what he wants and will compromise when he can’t get it. His Foreign Minister isn’t so forthright.” He had also written kind words about Stalin in his diary in the past 10 days.
Joseph Davies, the influential former ambassador to the Soviet Union, in his diary recounts warning Secretary of State Jimmy Byrnes today that the new bomb has severe “psychological effects” beyond the physical — particularly on the Russians, and not in the positive ways Byrnes was counting on. Presciently he writes that using and further developing the bomb with no cooperation with our allies, the Russians, will create “hostility” leading to a “race” in the laboratories threatening “annihilation” of both countries.
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/opinion/columnists/guest-commentary/john-wolf-the-tragic-sinking-of-the-uss-indianapolis/article_fc5991da-7b7f-552b-950c-78da440d417a.html
NWI
JOHN WOLF: The tragic sinking of the USS Indianapolis
John Wolf Aug 17, 2014
Editor's note: This is the fifth in a six-part series on the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II.
World War II began and ended in two tragedies. Pearl Harbor in 1941 was a complete surprise that began the Pacific War. The sinking of the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis CA-35 on July 29, 1945, was a tragic ending.
It was the Navy's worst tragedy at sea for a single ship: 880 men died, and only 317 survived.
I have talked to one of the survivors and read the statements of the others.
One of the officers I knew in Navy chaplain's school was Father Thomas M. Conway. Like many, he held on to the life raft until strength gave out and he sank beneath the waves.
The Indianapolis had shot down six enemy aircraft at Okinawa and had been hit by a Kamikaze attack so was in need of repairs. The repairs would have to wait. The Indy was to carry "Little Boy" to be dropped on Hiroshima by way of the Marianas.
The distance between Tinian and Leyte was not great. The requirement that ships zigzag was not observed as the war was winding down. The whole Navy was preparing for the coming invasion of Japan. Everyone was somewhat relaxed.
Capt. Charles Butler McVay III did not know the Japanese had just launched its newest I-58 submarine, longer than a football field, but still a virgin with no kills.
At 12:09, the submarine launched its first torpedo that struck the bow of the Indianapolis, and water rushed into the wound. The wound became fatal, and the Indy sank in 12 minutes.
By this time, 317 men had slid down the side of the sinking ship and were clinging to 35 life rafts. An SOS had gone out but had not been received. The rafts soon spread out over a square mile.
Many of the men were burned by the oil, and others had swallowed salt water. Planes flew over but were too high to see the tiny life rafts. By morning, a third of the men had slipped beneath the waves. There was no fresh water or food. Sharks circled, and bodies were mutilated. The ordeal went on for several nights.
Finally, survivors were spotted by a PBY plane that spread word of the disaster. The USS Bassett and Cecil Doyle and Ringness took the men to the Navy hospital ship Tranquility for expert corpsman care.
McVay was court-martialed for the loss of the ship despite the fact the Navy had dropped the ball in the whole tragedy. Later, he would commit suicide. Years later, he was exonerated.
The beautiful monument in Indianapolis reminds us of the 880 men who died needlessly.
https://www.indystar.com/story/news/2014/07/26/uss-indianapolis-survivor-first-morning-sharks/13207061/
IndyStar
USS Indianapolis survivor: 'That first morning, we had sharks'
diana.penner Published 11:58 a.m. ET July 26, 2014 Updated 12:40 p.m. ET July 30, 2018
Corporal Edgar Harrell was a Marine, a 20-year-old kid, who finished his watch on the USS Indianapolis at midnight July 29, 1945. It was unbearably hot, stifling down below where his berth was, so he got permission to make a pallet on deck, right under the barrels of the No. 1 forward turret.
Harrell had just dozed off.
And then, a few minutes into July 30, the world exploded.
The USS Indianapolis, with 1,196 sailors and Marines aboard, was hit by two of six torpedoes fired by a Japanese submarine. The 610-foot-long heavy cruiser was chopped into three sections, all of which were sinking.
Metal groaned and twisted, water churned and rose, and men scrambled and screamed. Three-quarters of the crew would die in the disaster.
Reporter Diana Penner interviews Edgar Harrell, one of 317 survivors of the 1945 sinking of the USS Indianapolis on July 30, 1945. Michelle Pemberton / The Star
For years afterward, Harrell and his fellow survivors talked little — if at all — about what happened that night. And when some did, they were dismissed or ignored. But eventually, they not only talked, they hollered — to correct the historical record and to redeem the captain they revered but who got the official blame for the single worst loss of life at sea in the U.S. Navy's history.
One of the few left
This weekend, Harrell, who now lives in Tennessee, was among about a dozen of the remaining 36 survivors of the ship at a reunion in the city that gave the famed vessel its name. Harrell told his story, vivid with details and passion, insistent that it not be forgotten.
He also has chronicled his story in his book, "Out of the Depths: An Unforgettable WWII Story of Survival, Courage, and the Sinking of the USS Indianapolis," which Harrell republished in May after initially self-publishing it in 2005. Harrell's story, like that of his shipmates, is one of harrowing survival and gruesome death, tremendous courage and painful betrayal, and, eventually, redemption, albeit posthumously for many.
That night, in the chaos, the young Harrell, originally from Kentucky, realized he didn't have his drab brown kapok life jacket. He'd left it below. He spied some of the jackets on deck, but waited permission to take one. He also searched for his commanding officer, looking for orders on what to do next. They all waited for the official command to abandon ship. The order came, but really, it was a moot point.
Within 12 minutes, the USS Indianapolis sank. There were few lifeboats. Of the original crew, 900 men went into the water. Some had the life jackets, some didn't, and most bobbed in the water like corks.
Some were severely burned from explosions, some had broken bones and cuts, most were covered with fuel oil loosed in the water as the ship broke into pieces.
How did Edgar Harrell survive?
The gruesome and harrowing story of the next four days was little known in the years right after the war. Harrell didn't talk about it, even privately, for the first few years. They didn't have this label back then, but today, the 89-year-old knows he suffered from post-traumatic stress.
The men in the water faced relentless exposure to the sun, starvation, dehydration — surrounded by water, they had nothing to drink — and fatal saltwater poisoning if they gave in and tried to drink the ocean water. And then there were the sharks.
Harrell found himself in a group of about 80 men that first night, including another Marine, badly injured. Harrell held the man, keeping his head above water, but there was little else he could do.
"He basically died with me holding onto him," Harrell said, lowering his eyes but pausing only slightly. He has told the story many times by now; he knows how to get through it.
"And that first morning, we had sharks."
The men were bobbing in the water, trying to pack together, and fins would appear around them, Harrell recalled. But inevitably, a man would get separated from the group and float off.
"And then you hear a blood-curdling scream," he said. "And then the body would go under, and then that life vest popped back up."
No water to drink
The life vests, crude by today's high-tech standards, would become water-logged and less effective as flotation devices, he recalled. The men figured out they could fashion vests in a way that allowed them to sit on them, sort of like inner tubes, allowing them to keep their heads above water if they maintained the effort, strength and discipline to stay balanced in a seated position.
The thirst and dehydration were unimaginable, Harrell said. Tongues swelled, lips split open and salt caked their eyes and faces as the briny ocean water dried in the sun. In desperation, some men drank the salty water, and those who resisted the impulse soon saw what happened to the brains of those who relented. It took only about an hour, Harrell said, before the hallucinations began for those men. Terrifying, final hallucinations.
By Day 3, only 17 of the original 80 who were with Harrell were still alive.
That day, his group spotted what looked like a small raft. A few sailors had found a few ammunition cans and potato or orange crates and figured out a way to lash them together. On the raft, they placed sodden life jackets, which they squeezed as dry as possible, like sponges, then allowed them to further air dry atop the crude raft. That way, they could trade out the jackets and buy themselves more time.
Also that day, Harrell saw another crate floating. He swam to it. Inside were potatoes — mostly rotten, but with some nutrition and moisture in them. He stuffed some in his pockets. He ate, peeling skin and the most rotten parts off with his teeth.
Accidental discovery
It was on the fourth day that finally, and by accident, a U.S. military plane discovered "the boys" in the water, still with sharks all around. That plane couldn't land in water, but summoned help. The pilot, Harrell recalled, didn't even know if the bobbing heads he saw were American or Japanese. It didn't matter. A sea plane and rescue vessels were dispatched.
In all, 317 men were plucked from the ocean. They were moved from emergency to longer-term hospitals. It took years to recover. Harrell was in hospitals for months, a stay extended when his appendix burst and his body was riddled with infection. In those early days of penicillin, Harrell received 11.8 million units of the new antibiotic over 29 days — he remembers it, to the unit, to the day.
And then, the young man basically went home, stopping in Chicago in early 1946 to be discharged from the Marines and in 1947 marrying the pretty brunette who had promised to wait for him. Friday, together in Indianapolis, Edgar and Ola Harrell celebrated their 67th wedding anniversary.
The USS Indianapolis' mission was top secret — few of the crew knew that it was delivering to the island of Tinian key parts and enriched uranium for the atomic bomb used at Hiroshima. After completing that mission, the ship stopped off in Guam and was then sent to Leyte Gulf to prepare for a likely invasion of Japan. En route to the Philippines, disaster struck.
Postwar redemption
As the years unfolded, Harrell and other survivors became angry — that their ship was sent out without a protective destroyer escort, that a cable intercepted before the USS Indianapolis took off from Guam said an attack submarine was in its path but that information wasn't relayed to the ship, that the celebratory transmission about the sinking from the Japanese submarine to Tokyo was intercepted but didn't trigger a rescue effort, and that the skipper of the USS Indianapolis, Capt. Charles Butler McVay III, was held accountable and court-martialed even though critical information had been withheld from him.
"They just sent us into harm's way," Harrell says, in a booming voice and with vehemence. "It was a miscarriage of justice!"
The goal of many of the surviving USS Indianapolis crew was to un-write the inaccurate chronicles of their ship, and to correct the record of McVay.
"We wanted our good captain exonerated," Harrell said.
On Oct. 30, 2000, they got their wish, when McVay was posthumously exonerated by Congress and President Bill Clinton. It was a victory for the USS Indianapolis survivors, but too late for McVay. He committed suicide in 1968.
Harrell and many of his fellow survivors went on with their lives, drawing strength from their faith, family and friends. Forgiveness came — last year, Harrell held on his lap the great-granddaughter of Mochitsura Hashimoto, the commander of the Japanese submarine I-58 that sank the USS Indianapolis. The baby smiled at him; Harrell had tears in his eyes.
And this weekend, Edgar and Ola Harrell were here with their son, grandson and great-grandson, in the embrace of a few remaining survivors and their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Now, Harrell said, the important thing is that the story is told. The true story.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/history/594535/Tragedy-of-the-USS-Indianapolis
The Daily and Sunday Express
The tragedy of the USS Indianapolis
Its sinking in shark-infested waters 70 years ago is still regarded as the worst naval disaster in US history. Now the story of the survivors is being told in two new Hollywood films.
By ANNA PUKAS
PUBLISHED: 22:19, Tue, Jul 28, 2015 UPDATED: 22:34, Tue, Jul 28, 2015
The USS Indianapolis in 1944
On November 6, 1968, a 70-year-old man was found dead on the lawn of his home in Litchfield, Connecticut.
In his hand he clutched a toy sailor. The body was that of Charles Butler McVay III, a retired rear-admiral in the US Navy.
He had shot himself with his Navy issue revolver but, in some ways, tragedy and injustice had broken Charles McVay many years earlier.
From November 1944 until July 1945, he had served as captain of the USS Indiana polis, flagship of the 5th Fleet.
Shortly after midnight on July 30, 1945, the ship was hit by Japanese torpedoes and sank within 12 minutes.
Nearly 900 of the 1,197 aboard survived but they remained adrift in the Pacific for five days before being rescued.
By then only 317 were left. The rest had perished by drowning, dehydration, exposure or shark attacks.
It remains the biggest US naval disaster of the war and Captain McVay, quite wrongly, got the blame.
If they were hungry, they’d eat a little of you. If not, they’d leave you alone. The fear was constant
Seventy years later, the tragedy of the USS Indianapolis is to be told in two Hollywood films.
One of them, Men of Courage is in production in Mobile, Alabama, with Oscar-winner Nicolas Cage playing Captain McVay.
Despite its scale, the disaster – and the shameful incompetence of the US Navy high command – remained little known for years.
On July 29, 1945, the Indianapolis was returning from a top-secret mission to deliver enriched uranium and other parts to the island of Tinian in the Pacific.
The materials were destined for use in Little Boy, the atomic bomb that would later be dropped on Hiroshima.
The delivery completed, the Indianapolis called at Guam for a change of crew, then set sail for Leyte, in the Phillippines.
At 12.14am on July 30, two torpedoes from a Japanese submarine struck the ship on her starboard bow.
Three hundred of her sailors never got the chance to obey the order to abandon ship.
No lifeboats or life rafts were launched.
The others jumped into the dark waters of the Pacific, many before they had time to grab a life jacket.
As the Indianopolis sank, her four propellers were still turning.
The ship had no sonar to detect submarines but the crew managed to send three SOS signals.
Captain Charles B. McVay
However, it soon became clear that the 880 drifting survivors faced other perils.
They had no food or water and nothing to cling to except each other.
By day they burned under the fierce sun. By night, they froze.
And then there were the sharks – hundreds of them.
“I saw a shark the first morning after daylight,” recalled Loel Dean Cox, then 19, who had come on duty at midnight.
“I swear some were 15 feet long but then they all looked that big swimming beneath you.”
At first the sharks feasted on the dead bodies but soon they began picking off the living.
“We were losing three or four each night and day,” said Cox.
“Every few minutes you’d see a dozen or two dozen fins coming at you.
"They’d bump you but you never knew when they would attack.
“If they were hungry, they’d eat a little of you. If not, they’d leave you alone. The fear was constant.”
On the third day, Cox saw a shark shoot towards him “like lightning” and take down the man next to him.
“I stayed in half shock after that. All you could do was pray it wouldn’t be you.”
The men huddled together in groups in the hope of deterring the sharks.
At first they talked constantly but as the hours stretched into days, their tongues became swollen with thirst.
Some began to hallucinate. One sailor believed he was in touch by walkie-talkie with a submarine but warned that no one who wet the bed would be rescued.
One of Cox’s friends became convinced the Indianapolis was floating just below the ocean surface and announced he would dive to the second deck where the supply of drinking water was stored.
He resurfaced, raving about how good the water tasted.
Minutes later he choked to death, with brown foam at his mouth from drinking salt water.
On the fourth day, two US Navy aircraft flew over the sailors without seeing them.
Just before sundown, they were finally spotted by a seaplane flying so low that the men in the water could see a man waving.
“That was when the tears came,” said Cox.
“That was the happiest time of my life.”
As he waited for rescue, drifting in and out of consciousness, he became aware of a bright light.
“It came down out of a cloud.
"I thought it was from heaven but it was the rescue ship shining its spotlight up into the sky to give all the sailors hope and let them know someone was looking for them.”
But why had it taken so long to rescue them?
Why was there no response to the three distress signals sent from the Indianapolis?
Before the voyage, Captain McVay had requested a destroyer escort.
Despite the Indianapolis having no sonar and despite evidence of Japanese submarine activity in the area, the request was denied.
Instead, the admirals had simply instructed McVay to adopt a “zig-zag” course. Why?
Captain McVay never got an answer.
Instead he became the scapegoat that the US Navy clearly needed.
In November 1945 McVay was found guilty of “hazarding his ship by failing to zig-zag”.
Even the Japanese commander of the submarine that had fired the fatal missiles testified that zig-zagging would have made no difference.
By then the public were celebrating the Japanese surrender and had little stomach for wartime calamities.
Despite 380 US ships being sunk in the war, McVay was the only captain court-martialled for losing his.
For years the navy denied receiving any distress signal but when they were eventually declassified, papers relating to the disaster revealed that all three had been received and ignored.
One commander was drunk, another didn’t want to be disturbed and the third suspected a Japanese trap.
No one had reported the ship’s failure to arrive in Leyte because no one was tracking it.
McVay retired in 1949 as a rear-admiral but for the rest of his life he was haunted by abusive letters and phone calls from the families of the dead sailors.
Eventually he could take no more. He was finally exonerated in 2000 after an unrelenting campaign by some of the survivors, aided by a 12-year-old Florida schoolboy who interviewed 150 of them for a history project and gave evidence before the US Congress.
Until then, the only mainstream reference to the Indianapolis was in the 1975 blockbuster Jaws, in which shark-hunter Quint, played by Robert Shaw, reveals he survived the sinking.
There are now only 32 survivors of the Indianapolis, among them Richard Stephens who has given his first-hand account to Nicolas Cage.
After five days in the sea, Loel Dean Cox’s hair, fingernails and toenails fell out.
He returned to his home town in Texas and died there in January, aged 89.
The horror had never faded for him. “I dream every night and I have anxiety every day,” he said.
“But I’m living with it and sleeping with it and getting by.”
Rainbow Six (1998) - Tom Clancy
(from internet transcript)
CHAPTER 8
COVERAGE
"This seems to work," Steve said quietly.
"How many strands fit inside?" Maggie asked.
"Anywhere from three to ten."
"And how large is the overall package?"
"Six microns. Would you believe it? The packaging is white in color, so it reflects light pretty well, especially UV radiation, and in a water-spray environment, it's just about invisible." The individual capsules couldn't be seen with the naked eye, and only barely with an optical microscope. Better still, their weight was such that they'd float in air about the same as dust particles, as readily breathable as secondhand smoke in a singles bar. Once in the body, the coating would dissolve, and allow release of the Shiva strands into the lungs or the upper GI, where they could go to work.
"Water soluble?" Maggie asked.
"Slowly, but faster if there's anything biologically active in the water, like the trace hydrochloric acid in saliva, for example. Wow, we could have really made money from the Iraqis with this one, kiddo - or anybody, who wants to play bio-war in the real world."
Their company had invented the technology, working on an NIH grant designed to develop an easier way than needles to deliver vaccines. Needles required semiskilled use. The new technique used electrophoresis to wrap insignificantly tiny quantities of protective gel around even smaller amounts of airborne bioactive agents. That would allow people to ingest vaccines with a simple drink rather than the more commonly used method of inoculation. If they ever fielded a working AIDS vaccine, this would be the method of choice for administering it in Africa where countries lacked the infrastructure to do much of anything. Steve had just proven that the same technology could be used to deliver active virus with the same degree of safety and reliability. Or almost proven it.
"How do we proof-test it?" Maggie asked.
"Monkeys. How we fixed for monkeys in the lab?"
"Lots," she assured him. This would be an important step. They'd give it to a few monkeys; then see how well it spread through the laboratory population. They'd use rhesus monkeys. Their blood was so similar to humans."
Subject Four was the first, as expected. He was fifty-three years old and his liver function was so far off the scale as to qualify him for a high place on the transplant list at the University of Pittsburgh. His skin had a yellowish cast in the best of circumstances, but that didn't stop him from hitting the booze harder than any of their test subjects. His name, he said, was Chester something, Dr. John Killgore remembered. Chester's brain function was about the lowest in the group as well. He watched TV- a lot, rarely talked to anyone, never even read comic books, which were popular with the rest, as were TV.cartoons-watching the Cartoon Channel was among their most popular pastimes.
They were all in hog heaven, John Killgore had noted. All the booze and fast food and warmth that they could want, and most of them were even learning to use the showers. From time to time, a few would ask what the deal was here, but their inquiries were never pressed beyond the pro-forma answer they got from the doctors and security guards.
But with Chester; they had to take action now. Killgore entered the room and called his name. Subject Four rose from his bunk and came over; clearly feeling miserable.
"Not feeling good, Chester?" Killgore asked from behind his mask.
"Stomach, can't keep stuff down, feel crummy all over," Four replied.
"Well, come along with me and we'll see what wa can do about that, okay?",.
"You say so, doc," Chester replied, augmenting= the agreement with a loud belch.
Outside the door, they put him in a wheelchair. It was only fifty yards to the clinical side of the installation. Two orderlies lifted Number Four into a bed, and restrained him into it with- Velcro ties. Then one of them took a blood sample. Ten minutes later, Killgore tested it' for Shiva antibodies, and the sample turned blue, as expected. Chester, Subject Number Four, had less than a week to live not as much as the six to twelve months to which his alcoholism had already limited him, but not really all that much of a reduction, was it? Killgore went back inside to start an IV into his arm, and to calm Chester down; he hung a morphine drip that soon had him unconscious and even smiling slightly. Good. Number Four would soon die, but he would do so in relative peace. Mare than anything else, Dr. Killgore wanted to keep the process orderly.
Rainbow Six (1998)
Tom Clancy
CHAPTER 9
STALKERS
Chester wasn't going to make it even as far as Killgore had thought. His liver function tests were heading downhill faster than anything he'd ever seen-or read about in the medical literature. The man's skin was yellow now, like a pale lemon, and slack over his flaccid musculature. Respiration was already a little worrisome, too, partly because of the large dose of morphine he was getting to keep him unconscious or at least stuporous. Both Killgore and Barbara Archer had wanted to treat him as aggressively as possible, to see if there were really a treatment modality that might work on Shiva, but the fact of the matter was that Chester's underlying medical conditions were so serious that no treatment regimen could overcome both those problems and the Shiva.
"Two days," Killgore said. "Maybe less."
"I'm afraid you're right," Dr. Archer agreed. She had all manner of ideas for handling this, from conventional-and almost certainly useless-antibiotics to Interleukin-2, which some thought might have clinical applications to such a case. Of course, modern medicine had yet to defeat any viral disease, but some thought that buttressing the body's immune system from one direction might have the effect of helping it in another, and there were a lot of powerful new synthetic antibiotics on the market now. Sooner or later, someone would find a magic bullet for viral diseases. But not yet: "Potassium?" she asked, after considering the prospects for the patient and the negligible value of treating him at all. Killgore shrugged agreement.
"I suppose. You can do it if you want." Killgore waved to the medication cabinet in the corner.
Dr. Archer walked over, tore a 40cc disposable syringe out of its paper and plastic container, then inserted the needle in a glass vial of potassium-and-water solution, and filled the needle by pulling back on the plunger. Then she returned to the bed and inserted the needle into the medication drip, pushing the plunger now to give the patient a hard bolus of the lethal chemical. It took a few seconds, longer than if she had done the injection straight into a major vein, but Archer didn't want to touch the patient any more than necessary, even with gloves. It didn't really matter that much. Chester's breathing within the clear plastic oxygen mask seemed to hesitate, then restart, then hesitate again, then become ragged and irregular for six or eight breaths. Then… it stopped. The chest settled into itself and didn't rise. His eyes had been semi-open, like those of a man in shallow sleep or shock, aimed in her direction but not really focused. Now they closed for the last time. Dr. Archer took her stethoscope and held it on the alcoholic's chest. There was no sound at all. Archer stood up, took off her stethoscope, and pocketed it.
So long, Chester, Killgore thought.
- posted by Kerry Burgess 9:16 PM Pacific Time Spokane Valley Washington USA Wednesday 07 November 2018
