It is July 2039, and two highly disciplined men with nerves of steel honed in a $2 billion nuclear submarine are obsessively discussing infectious diseases. Marine Lt. Colonel Buzz Striker and Navy Commander Dwight Hoggue are sitting on highly classified information from the Chinese that an aggressive virus reported to cause a cytokine storm in its victims in a matter of hours has been unleashed on the world. They prepare for the worst. Six months later, Striker is in hiding, and Commander Hoggue is devastated. His grandchildren and his wife are dead. Isolated in a cabin outside a Floridian forest, Hoggue watches helplessly as the virus spreads across the United States, eventually collapsing the government and leaving only the addicted and compulsive unaffected by the disease. Suddenly, Hoggue becomes a man on a mission, determined to build his own paramilitary organization that will combat those who wish to enslave the survivors for their own selfish purposes. In this science fiction tale, a societal collapse reveals a futuristic hell populated only by alcoholic, drug-addicted, cruel enslavers. As a devastated population awaits a miracle, two military commanders must do everything in their power to bring order, salvation, and ultimately hope-before all life ends forever.

Tenacity Gene

By D. Michael Battey

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2012 D. Michael Battey
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4759-5498-2

Chapter One

July 7, 2039: The home security system announced, "CommanderHoggue, Buzz Striker on line one, which room?"

"Right here, Nellie, thank you."

Marine Lt. Colonel Theodore "Buzz" Striker's audio and video streamswere routed to the monitor in the kitchen. Buzz, who appeared to be inthe den at his condo on the DuPont Circle in Washington, DC, was nowa highly placed intelligence officer at an NSA office in the Pentagon. Hisfield of expertise was biological warfare, and the Chinese were his forte.

"Dwight, you remember my recommendations when Sandra and Iwere down there last month?" Navy Commander Dwight Hoggue didtake Buzz's recommendations to heart. They chilled him to the bone, thenand now.

Hoggue and Striker were highly disciplined, steely-nerved men,cut from the same genetic cloth. They had been forged, tempered, andannealed in a $2 billion nuclear submarine. The two men, who had stareddeath in the face and prevailed, seemed possessed during that last visit,obsessively talking about infectious diseases. Their intelligent wives wereentranced instead of bored by the dialogue, and they eagerly joined themacabre conversation.

Dwight's mind flashed on the many years ago he was in that airport inAlbany, New York, after visiting his mom. Hoggue was on furlough afterhis graduation from Annapolis. He was reading The Coming Plague byLaurie Garrett. From that book and many others since, Dwight Hogguelearned about Ebola, prions, mutated viruses of all kinds, more than a fewinfectious particles with and without nucleic acids, recombinant DNA,and gene therapy. The Coming Plague was scary stuff, until that lady in theshawl and the granny glasses read the cover and, in that rude, nasal NewYork tone said, "The Coming Plaque. So what are you? A dentist?"

Presently, Dwight was still in the navy but was now stationed atCentCom at MacDill AFB in Tampa, Florida. His command and Buzz'scommand interacted with each other often.

"Yeah, Buzz, how could I forget?"

Silence lasted several long, long seconds.

Dwight broke the silence. "No!"

"Yes," said Striker.

"An index case of the Big One?"

"Numerous index cases, so it has to be man-made," Striker said withoverwhelming sadness in his voice. "The Chinese say it's a highly mutated,highly aggressive H5N1 avian RNA virus, causing a cytokine storm inits victims in a matter of hours. The CDC received some samples fromour diplomatic staff in Beijing, and the CDC says that's bullshit. It's notnaturally occurring. They've never seen anything like it.

"Each particle has a lipoprotein capsule around two distinct nucleicacid molecules: number 1-coding genes that work in trans, which areheterologous plasmids; and number 2, cis-acting sequences to do somekind of transduction."

Hoggue was well aware that transduction was a dead-end infectionthat introduces functional genetic information into target cells.

Striker sadly, ominously continued. "Dwight, we believe this is anengineered infectious agent, like a synthetic nano-probe for gene therapy.And get this-the envelope has a terrifying resemblance to smallpox!"

"Smallpox, Buzz? Is there even a sample of that anywhere in theworld?

"Yes, Dwight, one in the United States and one in Russia. And Godhelp us, the coding genes and the cis-acting sequences are recombining intoproductive, viral-like particles. If this is gene therapy, that is not supposedto happen."

"Then what the hell is causing the plasmids and the cis-sequences toreconstitute?" Hoggue asked, disbelief in his voice.

"We ... don't ... know, dammit! It's worse than anything we couldhave imagined; if our intel is correct, there's a 100 percent lethality. Pointof infection is human body fluid of any kind, including any little cough,and the particles stay viable on surfaces such as shopping cart handles forhours and hours, thanks to that very sturdy lipoprotein envelope. Did youand Marty do like I said and get a mortgage on both houses?"

"Yes, Buzz. When you tell it to Marty and me like you did last month,we have to take it to the bank, and we did, literally. Between my son'sequity, Marty and me getting mortgages on both houses, cashing in myNorthwestern mutual accounts, and with Marty's inheritance, we had acool million dollars. I talked to that Reynolds guy in St. Petersburg and gotall million of it converted to Krugerrands. The 'rands were authenticatedby that jewelry appraiser in Altamonte Springs that you referred me to.The 'rands are in the safe at the house here in Tampa, but we're ready tomove to the cabin. Should we go now?"

"Absolutely, Dwight. Pack up your son and his family—and then you,Marty, your son, and his family skedaddle out of Orlando and go to yourcabin in the panhandle with lots of rifles, ammo, groceries, bottled water,and supplies. Get ready to stay isolated for three months, maybe longer.With a little luck, you can then return to Orlando. You take your pickuptruck. Tell your boy to drive his dualie and keep enough fuel in reservetanks to get back to Orlando, in case some Florida crackers siphon all thefuel from the trucks' tanks. Those Florida good ol' boys refer to eight feetof garden hose as a `Carolina credit card.'"

"Oh Christ, Buzz. That bad? You think this is `the Big One'?"

"Yes, I do, Dwight. I hope all of you are still alive when this is all over.I hope Sandra and I are alive as well, but be prepared for the worst. Andby that I mean losing some of your grandkids, your wife, your son, or yourdaughter-in-law, if you don't lose yourself as well. You can't do anythingabout your daughter and her family in Albuquerque, except immediatelywarn them and get them to her cabin in the Jemez Mountains. Did youprepare her like I suggested?"

"Yes, Buzz, and she's spent the past month stockpiling stuff at hercabin, thank God, as Marty and I have been stockpiling the cabin nearDefuniak Springs. I sent Heather enough money to buy everything sheneeded for lasting more than three months in the Jemez Mountains. Sheknows how to hunt; she'll be fine for weeks, even months, after that. Thankyou, Buzz. We owe you our lives. We didn't think it would be this soon."

"You can thank me when all this shit is over. It hasn't hit the fan yet,but it will in the next two weeks or so, when it spreads outside of China.Mark my words. Buy everything you can for a long siege; stock the cabinwell during the next week. After that, stay out of town and away fromeverybody. I mean it, Dwight. One week, then complete isolation. Gottago, Commander, lots more calls to make to family and loved ones."

Chapter Two

Christmas Day, 2039. Commander Hoggue was devastated. Bothhis grandchildren were dead. His wife had died. His son, Donald, anddaughter-in-law, Madeline, had survived. What the hell had happened?How contagious was this virus or whatever it was? They'd had no contactwith anyone after a week at the cabin. They made limited contact withpeople, shopping at night for six days, and then only gassing up the trucksand filling the jerry cans on the seventh day. No reports of sickness yetin Milton, Bagdad, or Crestview. A few members of the overseas flightcrews at Eglin Air Force Base were getting sick, but no one outside thebase knew it.

Thank God for the Grid, the laser fiber-optic network that was tenthousand times faster than the old Internet. It was the mature spin-offfrom CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland, the particle physics center thatcreated the World Wide Web. After they'd heard initial reports of theplague on the Grid and then lost the broadband signal, the commanderand his family were fine for more than two months. They still had enoughsupplies for another month, and they had fresh venison. It spoiled quicklywithout refrigeration, so they took the spoiling meat far from the cabinand tossed it in crevices in the rocks. It attracted no carrion eaters, andthe commander thought that was odd. This was still Florida; vultures,opossums, and wild hogs were common.

The cabin was on the edge of the Blackwater River State Forest.Commander Hoggue and his son, Donald, forayed near the town ofMilton, and they scanned the town from about a quarter mile awaythrough powerful navy binoculars. They saw the reason there were nocarrion eaters left in the forest near the cabin. They had all moved to townfor the easy scavenging there. Father and son saw the bodies in the streets,saw animals plundering the corpses, smelled the stench, and became sickto their stomachs.

* * *

They arrived back at the cabin in late afternoon. A small dog was in thedriveway and had brownish-red glop on its muzzle. The dog, a very youngDoberman, was a friendly thing, wagging its tail and not afraid at all.Commander Hoggue was wary. The dog came near, and Hoggue took hisModel 1980 Colt .45 out of a hand-tooled holster. He shot the Dobermanin the heart, lest brains get splattered in the driveway.

Little Timmy came running down the driveway, crying, "You kill mydoggy. Why you shoot my doggy?" Timmy went to pet the dog, as he haddone before his dad and grandpa had arrived home.

"No, Timmy!" his dad screamed, and he grabbed his son's hands,noticing the traces of old, clotted blood on the child's fingers. "Timmy,did you pet the doggy?"

"He's my doggy. I want my doggy," the child wailed.

"Oh Christ, Dad, the dog's been eating carrion. Look at his muzzle,and look at Timmy's hands."

"Let's get him washed up, son. I hope it wasn't human remains."

It was.

* * *

Timmy died first, three days and five hours after his doggy was shot,seventy-seven hours almost on the dot. His grammy and his sister wentnext, within the hour. They had all screamed at first, often, for the firstday. The second and third day, they were so galvanized and racked withpain that all they could do was pant and grunt, their tortured eyes and graytongues bulging, every muscle taut, like one constant grand mal seizurefrom hell. At the end, their bodies twisted into a death throe postureknown as opisthotonus, an extreme, dorsally hyperextended posture of thespine, characterized by the skull and neck recurved over the back, throatstretched and finally closed, and they gasped their last breath.

Commander Hoggue stood with his son and daughter-in-law andwatched in horror, too stunned to do anything but fall into an exhaustedsleep for a few hours.

Commander Hoggue buried his wife. Donnie and Maddie buriedtheir children. They stayed at the cabin for another month, grief-strickenand numb, eating little, crying themselves to sleep and all jerking awake ashort time later from the same nightmare.

* * *

January 25, 2040: The three went into Milton, finding an abandonedcafé on the edge of town. The old 6G air card didn't have a signal, so theyplugged their iPad D4 into an old 5G router in a back room that appearedto be an office. Maddie plugged the router into the iPad's myPower charger,and wonder of wonders, they had access to the Grid!

Commander Hoggue had a hunch that if any newspapers had publishedto the bitter end, it would be the Christian Science Monitor and the WallStreet Journal. He was right. They spent the day at the café, opening cansof food, eating, reading the last issues of both newspapers, and loadingthe truck with cans and boxes from a very well-stocked storeroom thathad yet to be discovered and plundered. There were several unopened fivegallon jugs of Zephyrhills spring water in the office, and they took thoseas well.

* * *

The situation was grave and getting worse, according to bothnewspapers. It had started quietly enough, a slow news day turned into afast one as reports filtered out of China. The country was then placatedby the American Medical Association, mollified and pacified by every TVmedical guru that "it cannot become a pandemic"—they were seeing tothat. This nonsense was repeated by state medical societies, area hospitals,and not a few enterprising physicians who offered discounted vaccines andshots. Chiropractors and naturopaths offered homeopathic medicines andmiracle nutritional and herbal pills.

It was a variant of H1N1, and if you took precautions and improvedyour sanitation, it would not spread even if it came to the United States.The truth was, as America found out a week later, it had already come tothe states. Yes, it was contagious, the media medicos said, but they hadenough doses of vaccine for those who had not had an H1N1 booster.

As immunized folks started dying by the millions, the culprit wasH1N2, then H3N1, then H2N3, and no!, it wasn't swine influenza A, itwas influenza C. No! Recent tests indicate it was Avian H5N1. No! Newtests showed it was a Hendra-like virus! Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,blah!

Chapter Three

October–December 2039: Over a period of ten weeks, the federalgovernment collapsed, as had state and local governments. Completeanarchy had asserted itself within three months, at least in the smallercities and rural areas. Orphaned children were already being herded intogroup camps, where they were at least fed, but their indoctrination andexploitation had begun.

In northern Georgia and in the Carolinas, a neo-Nazi named Speer,pronounced "Schpeer," had organized several anarchist groups into aparamilitary organization. In Florida, a neo-Nazi named Volksburg wasorganizing the anarchist groups into his paramilitary union-like structure.He was said to have several young teenage brides and had the demeanorand sexual stamina of Charles Manson.

The military was distributing food and other supplies, but withoutpay or discipline from their superiors, the military deserters joined upwith paramilitary anarchist groups who were scavenging and stockpilingchildren, young adults, and all the food, supplies, guns, and ammo theycould plunder from abandoned stores, warehouses, and armories.

With the population reduced by more than two-thirds, there wasplenty for everyone. In the larger cities, law enforcement stood their groundfor the most part against lawlessness but had their own skins and familiesto think about, if they had any family left. Acting police chiefs had theirhands full seeing to the needs for survival for their beleaguered troops, andfor the most part, the police forces were able to maintain some semblance oforder. Looters were ignored, but not the slavers, crowed the newspapers.

The "Pollyanna" twits at both newspapers predicted that law and orderwould quickly reassert itself as the federal government was resurrected,and the rebels would be subdued with Bibles and law books. Hallelujahand praise God-a, but it didn't happen-a that way-a! Can you give me anamen, brothers and-a sisters?

* * *

January 26, 2040: Driving back to Orlando, Commander Hogguehad his doubts about the federal government being resurrected.

Continues...

Excerpted from Tenacity Geneby D. Michael Battey Copyright © 2012 by D. Michael Battey. Excerpted by permission.
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