Read Online Under a Graveyard Sky-eARC by John Ringo - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: John Ringo
Ads: Link
public restroom again.
“And we have a…” Nate said, shaking the test-tube. The liquid was red as blood. “Positive? Seriously?”
“Did we get a sample to cross-test?” Luiz asked.
“You think they’re going to hand me F7?” Nate said, looking in the stall. There wasn’t much graffiti. The problem with the stalls was that they were, yeah, cesspits on one level but they were also cleaned regularly. They just weren’t cleaned well . So most of the trace evidence, including any H7 should have been removed or degraded by the environment. Even if there had been some sort of vector there a couple of weeks ago, the F7 should have been cleaned away or basically broken down from heat and humidity. And there wasn’t any sort of aerosol canister. That had been the first check. “I’d be too likely to slip it to our ‘handlers.’”
“Don’t even joke,” Luiz said. He was from Argentina working, like Nate, on his masters at UCLA. “You they’d at least give some rights. They even suspect it’s me and I’m on a plane to Guantanamo.”
“Where’d this come from?” Nate asked, looking around the stall.
“Walls and door,” Luiz said.
If there was F7 in the stall something had put it there. Recently. It had clearly been recently scrubbed. Two more tests showed that the walls, door and even floor were contaminated. According to the swab and tube.
What there was was a deodorizer on the door. A round, green, deodorizer with the motto: “Save the Planet. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. SaveThePlanet.org” stamped into the plastic.
He’d swabbed those before. They were the first thing he’d hit the first stall he’d seen. And gotten back that the material in the deodorizer was giving a false positive. Which just might have been a false negative . If the carrier had enough chemical similarities to the protein coat of the virus it could be construed as a false positive depending on the test. If the evaporative coating was still coating the virus as one example.
He reached out, carefully, and cracked open the deodorizer.
“I want you to, personally, run this back to Dr. Karza,” Nate said, using a scupula to pull out some of the beigish substance in the deodorizer. “Tell him I suggest he run it through the portable SEM…”
* * *
“Why didn’t you identify that immediately?” the FBI Supervisory Special Agent asked. “Those canisters had been tested, right? I mean, they were obvious…”
“Because microbiology isn’t as easy as POINTING A GUN AT SOMEONE!” Dr. Azim Karza shouted, his eyes glued to the SEM screen.
“There’s no need to get…” the agent said, then coughed and sniffed. “Oh…shit…”
“GET THE HELL OUT OF MY LABORATORY!” Dr. Karza said. As the agent left he gave himself a quick blood test, then sighed in relief. Still no trace of H7D3. He’d seen the special agent using poor transmission protocols but was forced to work with him in close quarters. Which meant that the agent’s sniffles were something other than H7D3. Karza could have cleared that up for him with the same sort of test. But let the myrmidon bastard sweat it for a while.
“Cune.”
* * *
“FBI sources have found the source of the Pacific Flu virus. Anyone observing green deodorizers imprinted with the words ‘Save The Planet’ in public places should avoid them and immediately report their location to their local police or the FBI tipline…”
* * *
“The evaporative material was giving a false negative reaction to the antibody tests,” Dr. Dobson said, wearily. “We’d checked the deodorizers and given them a pass. Yesterday. Then when we got the new antibody strips one of the techs realized that there had to be a continuous source. Looking at the material under SEM…” He gestured to the image and shrugged. “I don’t know if that was part of the culprit’s plan but it was effective. They’ve now identified them in over sixty locations. At least one per bathroom mostly stretching up
“And we have a…” Nate said, shaking the test-tube. The liquid was red as blood. “Positive? Seriously?”
“Did we get a sample to cross-test?” Luiz asked.
“You think they’re going to hand me F7?” Nate said, looking in the stall. There wasn’t much graffiti. The problem with the stalls was that they were, yeah, cesspits on one level but they were also cleaned regularly. They just weren’t cleaned well . So most of the trace evidence, including any H7 should have been removed or degraded by the environment. Even if there had been some sort of vector there a couple of weeks ago, the F7 should have been cleaned away or basically broken down from heat and humidity. And there wasn’t any sort of aerosol canister. That had been the first check. “I’d be too likely to slip it to our ‘handlers.’”
“Don’t even joke,” Luiz said. He was from Argentina working, like Nate, on his masters at UCLA. “You they’d at least give some rights. They even suspect it’s me and I’m on a plane to Guantanamo.”
“Where’d this come from?” Nate asked, looking around the stall.
“Walls and door,” Luiz said.
If there was F7 in the stall something had put it there. Recently. It had clearly been recently scrubbed. Two more tests showed that the walls, door and even floor were contaminated. According to the swab and tube.
What there was was a deodorizer on the door. A round, green, deodorizer with the motto: “Save the Planet. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. SaveThePlanet.org” stamped into the plastic.
He’d swabbed those before. They were the first thing he’d hit the first stall he’d seen. And gotten back that the material in the deodorizer was giving a false positive. Which just might have been a false negative . If the carrier had enough chemical similarities to the protein coat of the virus it could be construed as a false positive depending on the test. If the evaporative coating was still coating the virus as one example.
He reached out, carefully, and cracked open the deodorizer.
“I want you to, personally, run this back to Dr. Karza,” Nate said, using a scupula to pull out some of the beigish substance in the deodorizer. “Tell him I suggest he run it through the portable SEM…”
* * *
“Why didn’t you identify that immediately?” the FBI Supervisory Special Agent asked. “Those canisters had been tested, right? I mean, they were obvious…”
“Because microbiology isn’t as easy as POINTING A GUN AT SOMEONE!” Dr. Azim Karza shouted, his eyes glued to the SEM screen.
“There’s no need to get…” the agent said, then coughed and sniffed. “Oh…shit…”
“GET THE HELL OUT OF MY LABORATORY!” Dr. Karza said. As the agent left he gave himself a quick blood test, then sighed in relief. Still no trace of H7D3. He’d seen the special agent using poor transmission protocols but was forced to work with him in close quarters. Which meant that the agent’s sniffles were something other than H7D3. Karza could have cleared that up for him with the same sort of test. But let the myrmidon bastard sweat it for a while.
“Cune.”
* * *
“FBI sources have found the source of the Pacific Flu virus. Anyone observing green deodorizers imprinted with the words ‘Save The Planet’ in public places should avoid them and immediately report their location to their local police or the FBI tipline…”
* * *
“The evaporative material was giving a false negative reaction to the antibody tests,” Dr. Dobson said, wearily. “We’d checked the deodorizers and given them a pass. Yesterday. Then when we got the new antibody strips one of the techs realized that there had to be a continuous source. Looking at the material under SEM…” He gestured to the image and shrugged. “I don’t know if that was part of the culprit’s plan but it was effective. They’ve now identified them in over sixty locations. At least one per bathroom mostly stretching up
Similar Books
