The Road Home by Clifford Beck - HTML preview

Chapter 6

Three days later, the campus was still under heavy quarantine and all classes had been suspended. The news continued to carry the story, showing pictures of those students and faculty directly impacted by an accident that was yet to be explained. The entire country sat glued to their T.V.s hoping for an answer. This time, one of the news stations managed to sneak a journalist on campus carrying a small video recorder. They had confiscated a hazmat suit and simply wandered the campus, photographing everything they saw. Those pictures were then broadcast. David was the first to notice several odd consistencies in the pictures of those affected by the accident. “Guys,” he began. “Come here, look at this.” Rushing to the living room, everyone sat staring at the images flashing on the screen. Although Dave was in his graduate program for biomechanical engineering, he had spent much of his undergraduate work in biology. Pointing at the T.V. he focused on what he believed to be symptoms.

“Look at that,” he began. “They all look the same. Their faces and eyelids are drooping, and it looks like they’re having trouble breathing. Jesus Christ, do you know what this could mean?” The group stared at him without an inkling of what he was saying.

“Guys, this could be botulism.”

They had all heard of it, but none knew the specifics of the organism.

“Botulism,” Maya said. “That’s crazy. How would something like that affect so many people?”

A lull came over the group as Dave considered the possibilities.

“Well,” he began. “Let’s just say that the government ‘is’ involved in this. As a weapon, how would you disperse it?”

These were highly intelligent graduate students, but biology was not their strong point. However, out of curiosity and a need to answer a few questions, each felt compelled to take a guess. “Well,” Aurora began. “You could put in someone’s water supply, right?”

“Yeah,” Dave replied. “But what if you want to poison as many people as fast as possible?” The gears of Eli’s mind were already turning, and he believed he had an answer.

“You’d have to get it into the air, but it would have to be in an aerosol.”

It was then that the group looked at each other in a momentary state of shock.

“Holy shit,” Eli said. “The lab was working with the military to develop an aerosol weapon from botulism.”

“And that’s why they quarantined all the people living around the campus,” Maya responded. “Holy fuck!”

The rest of the group also realized the seriousness of what had become of the campus, but some expressed another concern.

“Uh, guys,” Dave began. “We’ve got class to go to. We can’t afford to lose any time.” Maya spoke up as the voice of reason. Being in law school, logic was always her first weapon of choice.

“Didn’t you hear the news? All classes have been suspended, so everything’s going to be okay. Besides, this will give us more time for studying.” Other issues were being considered as well— things of a practical nature.

“What about going out for groceries?” Aurora said. “You know, shit like that.”

Nathan anticipated this question and readily provided an answer.

“Guys,” he began. “Calm down. The campus is too far from here for us to be affected. We can still go out for groceries or anything else.” Everyone breathed a sigh of relief knowing in spite of the events currently unfolding, they would not be impacted by the invisible cloud believed to be blanketing the campus.