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“—with help from Canada and Great Britain—” added Ford.
“—to develop the first atomic bomb.”
“Yikes,” said Chong quietly.
“What do you mean by ‘backup plan’?” asked Gutsy.
“If the atomic bomb project was a failure, then plan B to defeat the Empire of Japan was to release bioweapons in Tokyo and other major population centers. Because Japan is a series of islands, the hope was that the distance from the mainland would contain the resulting epidemic. That plan, luckily, was scrapped because it was deemed unmanageable. There was no way to guarantee isolation and, therefore, containment. And, bear in mind, this was similar in many ways to what the Soviet Union was planning when they developed the Lucifer bioweapon. It was intended for use in isolated areas—a base, ships at sea, and so on. In both cases the plan was to let the bioweapon sweep through the population and then the infection itself would die out when there were no more living hosts.”
“That’s… that’s…,” began Spider, but couldn’t finish.
“It’s madness,” said Morton. “The fact that all of the research and samples of Lucifer weren’t completely destroyed when the original plan was deemed too dangerous is proof.”
“This is what you do, though,” said Alethea, “isn’t it?”
Morton looked genuinely surprised. “Me? No! My field of research—and everything we did at our lab—was focused on stopping these kinds of bioweapons. We were the shield to the biological sword.”
“That sounds very noble,” said Ford, “but you also killed a lot of innocent people, so let’s wait a bit before we nominate you for sainthood.”
Morton gave
him a vile sneer, then turned to the others.
“The program begun at our lab during the Second World War was scrapped when the bomb tests proved successful,” said Morton. “Unfortunately, that research was, like Lucifer, never completely disposed of. When Lucifer 113 began spreading, we were ordered to investigate whether any of the dormant bioweapons projects might be viable as counterplagues to stop the infected—including the one designed to exterminate the majority of the Japanese population.”
“That’s horrible,” Spider said.
“It’s practical,” said Morton, then he flicked a glance at Gutsy. “Wouldn’t you agree? You’ve always been the practical one.”
“Agree about it being practical?” she said. “Sure. But it’s evil.”
“I’ll leave the concepts of good and evil to the philosophers,” sneered Morton. “The point is, we soon discovered that a number of these older bioweapons were very useful to us in developing potential treatment protocols.”
“None of which actually worked,” said Ford. “Like what you did to create the ravagers?”
“That was an accident,” Morton said grudgingly. “And yet it wasn’t a total failure, because the ravagers are smarter and more humanlike than the shamblers. It was proof that the mental functions of the reanimates could be partially restored.”
“Oh, you must be so happy,” said Alethea. Morton started to reply, but Gutsy cut in.
“Hold on,” she said. “What does all this have to do with this man?” She pointed to the silent body under the sheet.
Morton sniffed. “By the time we learned about the Lucifer 113 variation, we were already dangerously behind the curve, because the designer of that form, Dr. Volker, committed suicide. Various research teams proposed possible response protocols, but when it comes right down to it, all of that was guesswork. Combating disease is, at the best of times, a slow and laborious process. And because we’re talking about a genetically modified bioweapon, it requires reverse engineering decades of research. What became clear, though, was that Volker never intended for his Lucifer form to get out into the general public. There were no safeguards built into 113. It was intended for one specific use: he wanted to it to revive the consciousness of the death row inmate Homer Gibbon, leaving that consciousness connected to all five senses, but to completely sever connections with all motor functions. In essence, the intended victim was meant to wake up inside his own inert body following execution via lethal injection. He would be aware of his condition, and remain aware as his body rotted inside its coffin.”
“God…,” breathed Chong.
“I think we can all agree,” said Morton, “that Dr. Volker was psychologically compromised.”
No one commented on that.
“During the height of the outbreak,” Morton continued, “and before the government tried to limit the spread by dropping nuclear bombs on the areas with the densest populations, one team attempted to fight fire with fire. They released a compound they felt would destroy the parasites that drove Lucifer 113. This counter-weapon was code-named Reaper.” He paused and shook his head. “There was no time to test. It was estimated that we were losing upward of three hundred American lives per minute by the time it was deployed.”
“Reaper?” murmured Ford. “Are you saying that the Reaper Plague was really this counter-weapon?”
“No. The name stuck, but really what accelerated the spread was the way in which Reaper and Lucifer 113 interacted. Instead of battling each other, the two disease forms combined and mutated into a true pandemic superplague.” Morton shook his head again. “It’s possible that time, natural mutation, and natural barriers such as rivers and so on might have slowed Volker’s plague and kept it from spreading beyond all control, but Reaper amped it up, turned it airborne. And… well… we all know what happened. It’s everywhere. All of us are technically carriers. When we die, the change in metabolism results in the parasite eggs we all carry in our bloodstream hatching. We reanimate quickly.”
No one said a word.
“When it was clear how terrible a mistake had been made,” Morton went on, “the government sent the last of its resources to bases like ours. We were told—no, we were begged—to find a solution. The last message sent by the president of the United States was for the science teams to find a solution by any means necessary. The Constitution and Bill of Rights were suspended. In fact, all rights of any kind were suspended. We were the last line of defense in this war.”
