Chapter 17: Connecting the Dots

Once Monique rested and her fever dropped, David helped her inside the house. While David had certain specific plans regarding the Charlottesville group he held responsible for both Monique’s current state and the two most recent deaths, there wasn’t anything he could do about it at the moment. They’d have to wait while he took care of other necessary details, one of which was taking care of Monique.

“The Grande Dame arrives,” Tom announced with a flourish as they entered the kitchen, directing them to their seats at the large table with a wave of his hand.

“Thanks, but I’m not sure I like the ... Grande Dame bit,” Monique protested, still struggling to regain her breath from her exertions. “It makes me sound like a distinguished older woman.”

“I meant it only as an honorific, my lady,” Tom hurried to assure her, “signifying how you’re now one of the senior members of this small community of survivors.”

“Don’t worry,” she answered with a dismissive wave as she collapsed into the chair he held for her. “But you may want to think of a better ... phrase. Not to mention the ... senior part,” she panted, her thin frame struggling to breathe deeply enough to replenish her strength.

“It’s great to see you back among the liv...” Melissa caught herself, not wanting to remind everyone of those who hadn’t made it. Those from the house had gathered around as David and Monique had entered, and the others living near were hovering nearby to welcome her back too—as well as to discuss what the next plans were.

“I’m glad to be back.” Monique grinned, not taking offense at the phrase nor Tom’s poor word choices. “I wasn’t sure I was going to make it, and what happened to Peter and Nina shouldn’t diminish what is a major advancement.”

“Was it really as bad as everyone describes?” Wendy asked. “No one else really wants to talk about what it’s like.”

“I don’t think that’s because they’re afraid of talking about it,” Monique quietly said, taking another sip to sooth her scratchy throat. “It’s more that it’s hard to describe to anyone who hasn’t experienced it. It’s not something I’d recommend—unless it was unavoidable—but it’s much better than the alternative,” she added with a weak laugh.

“I know that you and the others are concerned about a memorial service,” David said as he took a seat himself. “I wanted to ensure that Monique was ready for one. I’m also sorry you couldn’t have been there when I buried them, but you realize why I did that, don’t you?” He asked, looking at their surviving siblings with concern clearly apparent in his eyes. “They were still too contagious to risk exposing the rest of you. Monique should already be past the highly contagious phase.”

“No, I understand,” Wendy answered, tears silently returning to her eyes at the thought of her older sister.

“We all knew what was likely to happen,” Jenny calmly said as she valiantly tried to steady her trembling lower lip. “We know that the Great Death is a ... well, that it’s a death sentence. I’m just glad that you’ve managed to save so many. I’m upset that Peter and Nina weren’t among them, but we’ve got to count our blessings where we can. If it wasn’t for you, none of you would have survived,” she added, indicating the group of five survivors of all the Great Death plagues.

“We’ll talk more about that later, but for now let’s focus on the party at hand,” Tom said, trying to keep the gathering on target as Melissa set a small cake on the table.

“Honestly, I can’t even imagine eating that,” Monique informed her.

“Don’t worry,” Tom said, “I’ve got another of my shakes. But based on past experiences, you should be able to eat a little later on, and you should be up to eating small regular meals by tomorrow.”

“If you say so, but I feel like I can hardly even lift my arm.”

“That’s from lying still for so long. Your muscles have atrophied,” David explained as Tom delivered the promised protein and fruit shake. Luckily he also provided a straw, so she didn’t have to lift it. “Also, you’ve lost a lot of muscle tone as your body burned your fat reserves trying to find the resources to keep you going.”

“Uh, what about the Peterson gr—?” Franklin started to ask, motioning towards the living room.

“Nope. Don’t even suggest it,” David warned him, casting him a steely glance. He wasn’t about to let anyone sidetrack this little ritual he’d developed with Mattie and Betty. “This is a celebration that Monique has survived, and we’re not going to sully it by turning it into a discussion about other topics. We’ll all sit down later to iron out other details, but right now we’re rejoicing that we’ve avoided losing yet another one. Each life saved is a blessing and needs to be celebrated.”

“I’m sorry,” Franklin hurriedly apologized. “I’m just so anxious about everything. You’re absolutely right. Monique, my dear, for as sickly as you look, it’s a real treasure having you here.”

She somehow managed the strength to stick her tongue out at him, and everyone laughed.

The kids were especially interested in hearing the details of the event, both so they could better understand it—potentially anticipating it—and understand what their siblings had suffered through. Monique was very patient with them, even though she had to pause frequently, but the kids were in no rush to hurry her.

“Did ... did Peter say anything?” Jenny asked, not bothering to fully state her question, although everyone seemed to know exactly what she was asking.

“We were all pretty well out of it, after all, it happened while we were asleep, but I was well aware of what was happening. When that alarm goes off, it grabs your attention right away. I was too weak to get up, but I watched what was happening.” Monique slowly sipped from her protein shake and sank back into her chair before continuing.

“Your brother was too weak to respond, much less speak, but David and Alice worked heroically on them both. I don’t know whether it was just their time, or just the timing, but with both of them having attacks at the same time and with our not being properly prepared for such an event, they were scrambling.

“They managed to revive both quite a few times, but Peter never really came around. They’d get his heart beating for short periods, but he never fully recovered. Nina actually did a bit, but she slipped away some time later. I suspect that they were already too far gone, and that David’s miracle cure didn’t have enough time to work on them.”

Although they knew they weren’t supposed to, Jenny, Adam and Wendy all turned to Tom for a more ‘official’ explanation.

“I’ll discuss it in more detail later, but she’s right,” the scientist shrugged. “Whatever David’s plasma did for everyone else, it didn’t work for them. Their internal organs began to break down, so there was no way they could have survived. Peter was probably fortunate to have suffered from a heart attack first, but there wasn’t any hope if he’d survived that.”

Jenny hung her head at that and the others respected her grief, but the teenager was actually relieved. She knew how horrible a death it was, and if her brother had avoided most of it, then she felt that it had been something of a blessing—one that he’d earned.

The others remained quiet, lost in their own reflections, until Mattie blew a party whistle they’d recovered from one of the houses they’d cleaned out. “Enough talk. More party. If you can’t eat that cake, then the rest of us will have to do it for you,” she offered.

Monique smiled and waved her forward, and the young girl distributed the cake slices that Melissa cut up. It was a strange celebration, part sad memorial for the recently departed, part welcome home for Monique. Left unspoken was the open question of how everyone who had not been through David’s miracle cure would fare when it was their turn.

“OK, it looks like Monique is getting tired,” David informed the others as he hovered over his charge. “She should really lie down.” But she turned and laid her hand on his arm, now that she could.

“No sleep yet. Memorial still,” she said, already too tired to complete her sentences.

“Are you sure?” he asked, but she firmly nodded, reinforcing her decision, so David told the others to gather by the mass grave outside while he and Alice helped Monique outside. He’d assumed he’d have to physically carry Monique the entire way, but was pleasantly surprised when Debbie showed up with a slightly modified wheelbarrow equipped with a supporting chair back. Monique smiled her appreciation as she was led outside.

“Thank you, that was a beautiful tribute,” Jenny told David as they reentered the house following their impromptu funeral ceremony.

“It was the truth,” he said with a shrug. “I didn’t know either Peter or Nina for long, but I was very impressed by what I saw, and I’m sure I’d have been even more impressed if they’d have continued.”

“Still, I appreciated it. I know they both thought the world of you.” The older teen sniffed once more and dabbed the corners of her eyes with her sleeve as her emotions started to settle down.

“Monique, I should get you upstairs and into bed,” David said, turning his attention to the woman on his arm. She had managed to make it through the short ceremony, but the light exertion had taken its toll and she looked more than a little peaked.

“The hell with that,” she stubbornly insisted as she stiffened, trying to remain standing through sheer force of will. “If I rest now, you’ll make all your plans without me, and then I won’t be able to object to any stupid, self-sacrificing decision you might make.”

“Wait... ,” David said, looking perplexed, “I’d assumed you’d remain here and rest while the rest of us go and deal with the situation.”

“Screw that!” Monique growled as she tightened her grip on his arm. “There’s no way I’d let you leave me behind. Tom tells me that I’ll be okay if I rest for a little, and I figure I can rest the entire way there. But don’t you forget, mister,” she added, waving a stern finger in his face, “I’m the only medical authority you’ve got, and if you’re planning to do what I think you are, you’ll be needing a lot of medical assistance.”

“Yeah, I’ve got to admit you have a point,” David admitted. “I was worrying about that little detail.”

“Face it, Dad, she’s got you over a barrel on this,” Alice told him with a small smile as she helped to steer the shuffling frail woman to the couch in the living room where her father could watch over her. The view through the window was still grand, although it was a bit obscured by all the medical equipment and scientific gear. “You might as well surrender to the inevitable while you still can.”

“OK,” David replied with a sigh. “I don’t like it, but I’ll take you along just as long as you listen to my restrictions.”

“Don’t worry, boss man,” Greg replied. “We all know that you’re the man in charge.”

“Besides, you don’t need to tell me about proper medical care,” Monique reminded him. “I do have some experience, after all. I would probably be lecturing you if our roles were reversed, but if I relax and take it easy then I’ll be OK.”

“All right, I’m convinced,” David said, looking around the group and seeing the determination in everyone’s eyes. “So is everyone expecting to discuss the details of the trip now?”

“Actually, before you begin, there were a couple of things I want to cover first,” Tom informed him. “First of all, I never told you about the results of my experiments in Charlottesville with the electron microscope.” Here he glanced at each of them, letting the tension build slightly. “That was because it takes a long time analyzing the results. All I could do while I was there was to run as many tests as I could, not taking the time to analyze any results. Thus it took some time to scour the data.”

Everyone leaned forward, as they’d been wondering what he’d discovered.

“The results are exactly as we’d been hoping for,” he told them, grinning widely. “They prove that we’re on the right track. That there’s a companion cell than actually helps carry and transmit the virus, and that we can use it to identify and measure the lethality of the plagues.”

“While that’s good news, I never really doubted you,” David told him proudly. “You already had too much evidence backing you up. If you were wrong at all, it wouldn’t have been by much.”

Tom puffed up with pride over David’s words, but just as quickly turned serious before tackling the next subject. “Related to that, while you’ve been ministering to the sick I’ve been doing more research, and while I don’t have enough evidence yet, I think I’ve got a pretty good understanding of why your plasma is saving so many lives.”

“Pray tell, continue,” David told him as he settled onto the couch. Monique snuggled up beside him, comforted by his steady presence. He was a little surprised she did, given how weak she seemed, but he wasn’t surprised when Betty curled up on his other side. “I feel confident that everyone is anxious to know what’s happening.”

“Well, when I told you earlier that your version of the virus wasn’t as aggressive as the unmodified strain, that wasn’t correct,” Tom explained, instinctively slipping into ‘professor lecture’ mode. “Instead it’s still as aggressive as the regular, non-David version of the virus. It attacks almost all the cells it encounters, and as we’ve seen, it can clearly still sicken and kill, but it’s not quite as destructive as the pure strain of the plagues.”

“Wait!” Alice interrupted. “How can that be? It clearly doesn’t make sense. If it attacks the body’s cells enough to have killed both Peter and Nina, then why doesn’t it damage them?”

“Ah, that’s just it,” Tom replied with a knowing smile. “It’s a virus, and as such it invades the individual cells trying to find a home that will support it. But the Great Death viruses themselves don’t actually kill anything. The key is that the deaths we’ve been attributing to it aren’t actually caused by the Great Death itself. Instead it’s an autoimmune response.”

“I’m pretty sure I know where you’re going with this,” Monique told him, “but you’d better explain what you’re referring to for everyone else.”

“Right,” Tom agreed with a nod. “Essentially, these new viruses, unrecognized by the body, try to find a home in each cell they come in contact with. It just latches on and lives happy as a clam. But the fact that the virus is so alien catches the body’s immune system by surprise—basically the body doesn’t realize it’s being invaded at first. As a result, the plagues manage to infect quite a number of cells before the body realizes that anything is happening. But once the body does react, it goes into overdrive.”

Tom paused to let them consider that, watching everyone’s reactions before continuing. “Since the disease is something that’s never been encountered before in Earth’s biological history, the body has no predetermined defense mechanisms—no ‘ready response’, if you will. So the body goes into panic mode, attempting to wipe it out at any expense. The immune system tries so hard to exterminate the diseases that it actually begins to destroy each infected cell.” Tom ran his hand down his torso, indicating his internal organs. “By the time the immune system starts to work, the viruses have already infected the host’s vital organs, and so...”

“Tom and I discussed the progression of each variant earlier,” Monique offered, filling in for Tom. “Each one tends to focus on a specific region of the body. One concentrates in the lungs, one in the liver and kidneys, another in the heart.”

“Basically, once the blood becomes infected,” Tom said, once more taking over because he was so excited to reveal his discoveries, “every cell in the body that delivers oxygen becomes infected, which in turn infects every cell that they touch—which basically means every single part of the body. Thus everything suffers this overactive immunological attack. While we can’t observe it on a cellular level, seeing the death of each individual cell, we only notice it when the major organs begin to fail.”

“But you first thought that David’s version wasn’t aggressive, meaning that while it still infects each cell, it doesn’t cause as much damage?” Greg guessed, skipping ahead.

“Exactly,” Tom replied with a nod. “What David and Alice’s plasma does is to shut down this overreaction behavior—essentially it tells the immune system to quit, to back off, and to treat it just like it would anything else. That buys the victims time. What the body does then is to attack the virus at a more leisurely pace, which also allows the diseases to progress at their own pace. Thus those treated with his plasma become quite sick, and still suffer horribly—still mostly because of the autoimmune response—but it’s not as severe, so they’re much less likely to die as a result.”

“Fascinating,” Monique replied. “I’m guessing that the immune systems’ delayed reaction plays into the treatment as well?”

“Precisely,” Tom agreed, pleased to see everyone catching on. “Because the plasma treatment delivers the virus directly into the bloodstream, it spreads it throughout the body very quickly, which gives the body time to absorb whatever it is that affects the immune system before the immune system launches its attack. That’s why it’s so necessary that we begin the treatment right away, the sooner after the infection the better. If we wait too long, we might miss our small window of opportunity and the body may begin to break down before the immune system has adapted.”

“Is that what happened to Peter and Nina?” Jenny asked quietly, leaning forward, eager to understand this phenomenon despite its reminder of what it had done to her brother.

“Sort of,” Tom replied as gently as possible. “The transference from David to the kids was blood born, which is a much more effective infection vector than touching or even inhalation. Thus their immune system started ramping up before we could apply whatever it is in David’s blood that blocks it. Since it took Peter and Nina so long to get back here, they only had a limited amount of time until it would have been too late.” He paused for a second, and then stumbled on, desperate to give Jenny and the other kids some small measure of comfort. “But even so, they lasted for a long time. They lasted for quite a few days, far longer than they would have if they did not receive the treatment. That shows just how effective the treatment actually is.”

“While I survived longer before I underwent the plasma treatment because I’d only touched David and the infection hadn’t spread as quickly, right?” Mattie asked.

“Yes, and in that case each cell that was infected by the virus had already started turning off the immune response in the nearby cells, so you had a lot more leeway.”

“Believe me,” Melissa broke in with a snort, “we’re not about to move very far away from you after this. Do you have a spare room we could share, just so we’ll be that much closer when we manage to get sick?” she added with a smirk.

“It’s actually a very real concern,” Tom agreed, taking her teasing comment seriously. “We don’t have a firm grasp on how soon we’d have to respond before it’s too late, but I’m guessing it may be too late if we encounter a random sick person during our travels. It may only work if they get sick after we’ve already met them. But again, we can’t be sure about that.”

“So Amy likely wouldn’t have survived even if we’d been able to treat her at the time?” Alice asked her father, addressing something that had been bothering her for some time.

“No, she was cut up pretty badly when that woman shot her with her shotgun when we confronted her in her shop, and there were too many exposures to her bloodstream over too great an area of her body,” David surmised. “The unadulterated virus was applied almost directly to her bloodstream. Not only that, but it took us too long to get her back here.”

“Not knowing the details of that incident, I’d have to agree with David,” Tom added. “The time between the exposure and when she could have received treatment would have been critical. But beyond that, there’s a difference between the blood being exposed, and being exposed via a blood transfer. By having your blood splattered on their already cut up flesh, and because it was in too small a quantity to affect enough of their immune system, both Peter and Nina were particularly bad cases. I’d guess this Amy would have had more time simply because she wasn’t exposed to infected blood, but by exposure by contact instead.”