Twenty-Five Pairs by T.S. Severe
Chapter Thirteen Baltimore - Boston - Bangkok 2014-2019
"You've got..." Cassandra dropped a long white envelope on my lap. "...Mail."
"Ohmmmm, what's this?" I sighed, collapsing on our old sofa. "I don't need another credit card."
"Rough night?" My friend asked and she was 27, ten years older than I was, and an intern at Baltimore General, just like me. I was just getting off the night shift, Cassie would be going on later that afternoon.
We shared a small apartment in Baltimore, not far from the hospital really, in a predominantly black neighborhood. Interns didn't get paid very much and after graduating from medical school I'd wanted to flex my independence. I had money from my parents, and a very rich uncle in Mr. Fox, but I wanted a lesson in humility and I was getting it.
"Three kids in a drive by, one of them was pregnant...Hey!" I frowned, looking at the envelope and the return address. "This is from NIAID."
"No foolin'...I sorta noticed that." Cassandra's green eyes were smiling and she always woke up cheerful. "Open it up."
"Dear Doctor Pinchbeck...Blah blah blah..." I blinked at the form letter. "...Your application to the Horace Tufts Research Laboratory has been reviewed and accepted for consideration..."
"What?" Cassandra grinned at me and I read through it quickly and then again, once more slowly.
"I have an appointment with a Dr. Beyle on..." I had to think about it. "...Thursday. For my interview."
"I didn't know you applied there." Cassandra said, taking the letter out of my hands and looking at it. "Nice fucking paper too."
"I didn't apply anywhere." I smiled at her. "Horace Tufts..."
"Never heard of it. What do they do?" Cassandra wondered and I shook my head.
"I don't know." I laughed. "But it's NIAID, so...I want it."
"How'd they get your name?" Cassandra gave me back the letter.
"I don't know that either." I licked my lips, but I had a good idea.
"You got a serious guardian angel someplace, Jen." Cassie grinned.
"Yeah." I sighed. "An old one."
=-=-=-=-=-={25}=-=-=-=-=-=
"Your handiwork?" I slid the envelope across the table towards Mr. Fox and he tilted his head.
"You didn't think I'd forgotten about you?" The old man smiled. "It's what you want."
"It's what you want." I picked up my wine, even though I was only seventeen, and we were in one of the nicer restaurants in Baltimore for a very private dinner.
"I merely arranged the introduction, my dear." Mr. Fox was looking at the envelope. "The rest is up to you."
"Just tell me." I sighed. "I'm no good at this stuff."
"Horace Tufts is part of the Army Medical Research and Development Command at Fort Dietrich." Mr. Fox said. "For administrative purposes it falls under the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases."
"That's what? Like a cover story?" I smiled.
"Something like that, but only a thin one." Mr. Fox shrugged. "When the Biological Warfare Convention went into effect in 1975 the United States agreed to abandon any development of biological weapons and delivery systems."
"Okay."
"The loophole..." Mr. Fox smiled, "...is that we're still allowed to develop countermeasures to detect, identify, and best of all for you, neutralize biological weapons."
"So...We develop biological weapons so that we can defend ourselves against them?" I narrowed my eyes. "Is that what you're saying this place does?"
"You have to know your enemy." Mr. Fox said. "You want to be a virologist? This is the place to start."
"Weapons." I licked my lips.
"A year or two in the lab and we can get you into the field." Mr. Fox leaned forward slightly. "That's where you really want to be, isn't it?"
"What do you need from me." I asked him, knowing that I'd never get anything from this man for free.
"Nothing but the brilliance of which you're capable, my dear." Mr. Fox chuckled. "I want to watch you shine."
=-=-=-=-=-={25}=-=-=-=-=-=
"So? Who is he?" The lieutenant stirred his coffee slowly, frowning at the color. "Get me some goddamn coffee mate, will ya?" He wasn't talking to anyone in particular and none of the other four men moved, except Goddard.
They were looking at me, for the most part and I was conscientiously avoiding their eyes. The very last thing I'd expected when I woke up this morning was to be sitting in a police station and I was hardly dressed for it in my tailored blue suit. The skirt was modest anyway, and my white blouse opaque enough, but I was dressed for a classroom at Harvard Medical School, not the down to earth, nuts and bolts of Boston's Finest. I felt a little naked, actually.
"He's Patrick Fredrick Burroughs, a 24 years old grad student at MIT, no record, no tickets, no nothing." Detective Goddard said, tossing a packet of creamer across the desk.
"Fredrick, eh?" Lieutenant Riley grunted. He was older, nearing sixty and probably retirement after nearly forty years as a cop.
"Neighbor reported a suspicious smell..." Goddard smiled at me, as if I'd find suspicious smells particularly amusing.
"Smell?" Riley frowned, biting the creamer packet with his teeth.
The detective shrugged. "Smell, yeah. Landlady opened the door for a uniform, new guy from the one three named Barnes. Our rookie took about 30 seconds..."
"Closer to a minute." One of the other men, Harris, corrected Goddard with a smile.
"A minute then. And called us. Detective Harris and I arrived just in time to catch the young Mister Burroughs chasing his bus." Goddard laughed and his partner grinned.
"Apparently boss," explained Detective Harris, "this guy gets off the bus, sees a black and white outside his apartment, and decides he don't wanna get off the bus afterall. He's running alongside, pounding and yelling. It was funny as hell."
"I bet." He eyed the other two men. "And you guys were..."
"Across the street. I'm Clayton and this is Special Agent Younger."
"ATF, FBI, all we're missing is DEA and we could have a real party." The lieutenant observed dryly. "So what's your interest?"
"The guy's name showed up on some orders for methane hydrate," Agent Clayton explained. "Some big orders..."
"The hell is that?" Riley sipped his coffee and made a face.
"It's a fossil fuel, methane gas trapped in sand, stuff like that." Younger, a good looking black man spoke up. "The short version is, the stuff can be used to make explosives, so Homeland Security keeps tabs on who's buying how much."
"Like fertilizer, sure." Riley shrugged. "So you guys are with Homeland Security and this Burroughs guy was what? Making bombs?"
"Well, that's what we want to find out." Agent Clayton said with a smile. "You got him downstairs, we just want to have a sit down with him."
"What'd we get him on?" Riley looked at his two detectives.
"Suspicion right now, depends on what he was cooking." Goddard said. "We wanna charge him with kidnapping, but..."
"But we don't know if that's gonna stick." Harris shrugged. "We found a girl, a school kid in the bedroom. She was high as hell on something, they got her down at Sisters of Mercy. Burroughs ain't said a word, except to ask for his lawyer."
"So could be he's a real bad guy, or..." Riley held out his hands.
"Or could be the kid's his little sister and he's Chef Boyardee, we don't know." Goddard nodded. "But he was running from something, boss."
"Sounds like a real soup fucking sandwich." Riley leaned back in his chair. "And you found..."
"Monkeys." Harris shrugged and everyone looked at me. "We didn't touch anything. Called forensics, they took one look at all the test tubes and shit and turned around."
"That was the smell." Goddard chuckled and I wondered if he had a thing for strange scents.
"And so they called you." The lieutenant nodded at me. "So...Who are you?"
"Jennifer Pinchbeck." I cleared my throat. "I'm with NIAID."
"Oh." Riley nodded and looked around. "Can someone please tell me what a nigh aid is?"
"It's the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases." I said. "I'm just here to make sure you don't kill half of Boston."
"Right." Riley grinned. "Hay fever is a bitch. Uh, how old are you...Jennifer was it?"
"Nineteen." I coughed lightly. "Your department called CDC in Atlanta, my office is copied on all reports of possible contagion and I was the closest person available."
"Do you live here in Boston, Miss Pinchbeck?" Goddard asked me with a smile.
"It's Doctor Pinchbeck and I was supposed to be delivering a lecture on a recent influenza outbreak in Brazil..." I looked pointedly at my watch, "...Right about now, actually. So if you wouldn't mind I'd like to take a look at the house and the monkeys."
"You're a doctor?" Riley narrowed his eyes.
"Can I get a ride?" I smiled sweetly. "Please?"
Harris and Goddard were nice enough to drive me, the Homeland Security guys just wanted to talk with Burroughs. The forensics team was still at the scene, waiting for an expert, and the police had cordoned off the block and secured the small apartment building. I was feeling both excited and a little nervous. After spending nearly a year at Horace Tufts, this was my first work outside the laboratory. I had about four hours to play before someone arrived from Atlanta and I really didn't want to screw it up.
"So, Doc, what do you think he was cooking up in there?" Harris asked me, turning around in the front seat so he could look at me.
"I won't know until I look." I shrugged. "You sure it's not a meth lab or something?"
"Heh." Goddard was eyeing me in his rearview mirror. "They don't have monkeys in meth labs, Jennifer...Can I call you that?"
"Hmmm..." I ignored his question.
"So you were gonna talk about the flu, huh?" Harris asked with smile. "In Brazil?"
"It's one of my specialties." I nodded.
"Really?" Goddard nodded. "What, uh, else do you like?"
"Who cares about the flu in Brazil?" Harris wondered.
"The Spanish Flu, at the end of the First World War, killed more people than the war itself did." I said.
"How many's that?" Harris asked.
"Twenty million." I told him. "A little more."
"Yeah, but we got pills now." Detective Goddard said. "Hell, they give us a shot every year."
"Hate those shots." Harris frowned. "Always makes me sick."
"Yeah, why we do gotta get a shot every year, Jennifer?" Goddard asked me. "I always wondered about that."
"Because influenza mutates, it changes." I told him, looking out the window. "The medicine that works one year, doesn't work the next."
"Huh." Detective Harris nodded. "I thought there was just a bunch of different kinds."
"There are." I smiled. "Millions of them."
"You're real cheerful, Doc." Harris sighed, turning back around and looked at his partner. "Like we ain't got enough to worry about."
We pulled up in front an old brick building, painted white and streaked with rust from the fire escape crawling halfway up the side. The Mystic River was just a few blocks away and all I could smell was the brown water, the muddy banks. I found a black panel truck with the BPD shield in gold on the side of it. A number of men were standing there talking and they were waiting on me, I realized finally and fully, which was a feeling I liked.
"Who are you?" An older man asked me, heavyset and dressed up already in a yellow hazard suit.
"Doctor Denny, meet Doctor Jennifer." Goddard grinned. "She wants to see the monkeys."
"Doctor Pinchbeck." I said. "I'm with NIAID, do you have a suit for me?"
"You're a doctor?" The guy looked me up and down and then started digging for what I needed. "Shit. Yeah, okay, I got one for ya. I'm Doctor Adams, Dennis...Or Denny...Uh, where'd you go to school?"
"I'm gonna close the door." I smiled at him and skirts were never intended for biohazard suits. Thankfully the truck was barely roomy enough that I could change inside.
"Jeeze, you think she's real?" I heard one of the men asking and I rolled my eyes.
"Johns Hopkins." I said, coming out of the van carefully some five minutes later. "Check me."
"Check you?" Adams smiled.
"All that necessary, Doc?" Harris was watching me, him and his partner both.
"For rips? Tears?" I frowned at Adams. "You've done this before, haven't you?"
"What? Oh sure, yeah we..." He cleared his throat. "...We have drills, you know."
"He's an assistant medical examiner." One of the other men said. "Don't let him fool you."
"I'm, uh, better with bodies." Adams confessed.
"I'm better with bugs." I shrugged, which is a wasted gesture in a biosuit, believe me.
I looked at the other two men, both dressed in biosuits as well and I shook my head. "Just me and you, Dr. Adams. Your men can wait out here."
"We're not going in?" One of the men asked.
"No, we need to minimize exposure." I licked my lips. "After we know what we have, I'll decide if we need anyone else inside."
"You'll decide?" Adams frowned at me and I ignored it.
"Double gloves and hoods, these chemical masks won't stop a virus." I told him and I wondered if I wasn't going a little overboard, but I was having fun.
"Double gloves?"
"And leave the toolkit, Batman." I shook my head at the belt he was wearing, the man looked like a carpenter. "All we need is a sample kit, uh, an evidence kit and whatever else...No sharps, okay? Leave the pocket knife."
"Shit, I thought the Feds were bad." Someone said and I frowned, but I wasn't going to say anything back.
"Whatever you say." Adams was turning a little red faced, but I'd really expected a little more out of a forensics guy.
It wasn't often they had to deal with anything real though, collecting something like anthrax was just a little different than collecting blood off the sidewalk. The man's lack of experience was making me feel like the girl who cried wolf and I had mixed feelings about finding something worth all this trouble. Adams was having a hard time taking the threat seriously in any case. I hoped that would change once we got inside though, because one slip in there could change his life forever.
The biosuit was hot and uncomfortable and I'd never really liked them. I was breathing canned air and the canister was heavy, forty minutes of oxygen packed in a smooth, self-contained backpack made of molded plastic. I had to think about my movements before I made them, turning my head first to see exactly where I was going. It was slow and tedious, but as soon as I saw the guy's apartment I knew we were onto something.
"I'm going to take pictures." Dennis said, his voice deep and muffled.
"Okay, just warn me first." I said, finding a place on the floor for the samples kit, which was a large aluminum box that folded open.
"Flashing." Dennis said and I closed my eyes for a second.
There were a dozen rhesus monkeys, two of them dead, one prone and dying with its thin chest rising and falling rapidly. Rats as well, a five gallon aquarium with eight small brown mice and they looked happy enough. On a couple cheap card tables, covered with a piece of plywood to make a larger single workplace, there was a small lab set up. It was neat and orderly compared to the rest of the place and I catalogued it patiently while Adams took photographs. The monkeys didn't like the flash bulbs though and they screeched wildly, some of them spitting and throwing feces through their cages.
"Fucking monkeys." Adams said.
I was looking at an electron microscope, an older one to be sure, but functional and already prepped with a sample. It had a metal tag that said 'Property of MIT' on it and I wondered how Burroughs had gotten it out. Electron microscopes weren't exactly small. It looked like most of his equipment was borrowed, to put it nicely, but I was very glad he had that microscope handy just then.
"Get on your radio." I told Adams. "I want Burroughs and the girl they found isolated immediately. Who were the forensic guys that came in here?"
"Uh, all three of us did, why?"
"I want your men quarantined as well. Right now. The cops too."
"What? Did you find something?" Adams asked and his voice had an uneven quality to it, even through the hood.
"Oh yeah." I said and I felt my heart pumping rapidly, a feeling like...Euphoria flooding my brain. I had to push it away and close my eyes for a second. My first time out and I was looking at death in an uncontrolled environment. I always was pretty lucky.
=-=-=-=-=-={25}=-=-=-=-=-=
"Sin Nombre." I said into my celphone, standing outside and bathing in the relatively cool air.
"Really?" General Palmer grunted. "You're sure?"
"Yeah, I got an eyeball on it." I told him. I had a near photographic memory and the General knew it. "The guy was milking rats, incubating it with monkeys. I found a liter of blood, a little more than that, in the refrigerator. It's all good."
"Where's he at?"
"There's two of them, a man named Burroughs and a girl, early teens. No ID on her yet. I've got them in quarantine at the local hospital, along with three police officers and three forensic guys who entered the scene before I got here. I'm going there now and I'll run the labs myself."
"Six went in?" General asked. "That many?"
"Yeah, well. How were they supposed to know?" I asked reasonably. "There's also a landlady and two neighbors. It's unlikely, but..."
"Yeah, get them too." The man sighed because six was a lot and the number wasn't gonna go down. "Okay, I've got some calls to make." The General thought for a minute. "You have any problems, Jen?"
"No sir." I shook my head at the phone. "Boston PD wasn't ready for this. CDC needs to do the cleanup."
"Nobody's ready for it." The man said. "Yeah, CDC will be sending everyone, that's not a problem. Alright. Keep me informed."
"Yes sir." I agreed, turning off my phone and Riley was right there.
"What's in there?" The lieutenant asked me.
"Sin Nombre Virus, it's from the southwest." I told him. "It's found in mice and transmitted through body fluids, saliva and urine, feces, blood."
"Is it dangerous?" He looked at the apartment.
"It kills about half the people who get it." I nodded. "So, yeah. It's dangerous."
"You think my guys got it?" Riley looked at me again and I shrugged.
"It's doubtful they were exposed. I'm going to the hospital." I said. "I'll do the tests personally, but it might be too soon for anything conclusive. They'll have to be kept isolated for at least 72 hours and by then we'll know for sure."
"What if they were?" He asked. "There's a cure, right?"
"Sin Nombre is a hantavirus and there's several different strains." I explained. "I don't even know if we've seen this particular one before or not."
"So...What? Is there a cure or isn't there?" Riley demanded.
"No, there's no cure. No vaccine." I shook my head.
"So if my guys got it, you're saying it's fifty-fifty if they live or die?" The lieutenant frowned at me.
"Yeah." I sighed and I hadn't really been thinking about it, but now I did. That was another thing about being out of the lab and I wasn't nearly so euphoric at the possibility of losing any of those people.
=-=-=-=-=-={25}=-=-=-=-=-=
"The girl died this morning." The General said, standing in the open door of my small office at Horace Tufts.
"Oh." I swallowed hard.
"Acute respiratory distress." He told me.
"What, uh..." I blinked, wondering if I wanted to know. "...What was her name?"
"Allison." The man walked in, taking the only other chair I had in there. "Allison Burroughs, twelve years old. She was his niece, his sister's kid, or so I heard."
"Okay." I nodded slowly.
"They did what they could, Jen." General Palmer watched me closely, he was forty three years old, small and black, a damned good immunologist, and he didn't look like a general at all.
"She shouldn't have been there." I said.
"No, she shouldn't have been there at all." He agreed. "Burroughs is recovering, he's charged with negligent homicide, among other things."
"Yeah." I nodded. "The US Attorney was talking to me, um, my deposition..."
"You don't think about her too much, okay?" Palmer said gently. "You did good work. What happened to the girl...You couldn't do anything about it."
"I know." I sucked my lips and picked up some papers, not wanting to talk about it anymore.
"We got it downstairs anyway." The General was standing up. "CDC sent us a sample, it's a new strain. Hanta-Boston. If you want to play with it, well, there it is."
"Yeah, maybe." I swallowed hard and looked over my cluttered desk. "I just need...uh...I have to finish this up first."
"Sure." He rapped on my desk softly and left without saying anything else.
Three hours later I was in the lab, looking at a monster that ate twelve year old girls for breakfast.
=-=-=-=-=-={25}=-=-=-=-=-=
"I know you." His eyes were glassy and red and he swayed a little, towering over my table. He was big and blonde, with close cropped hair and a thick Aussie accent.
"I don't think so." I barely glanced at him. That was the problem with this part of the world, with Asia, the Westerners all gathered in the same places.
"Whyncha wank faddle, mate." My would-be companion for the evening was from Liverpool, one of Brownstone's boys and as genial as an Englishman could be under the circumstances.
"Visoko." The man smiled at me, nodding as he finally did catch my attention. "I remember you."
"Blikey barney bastard!" My friend wasn't smiling and I put a hand on his chest, pushing myself up. "Whare'd yey goan?"
"Smoke." I smiled. "Be right back." I looked at the Aussie. "Come on then."
The place was noisy, with some Thai band screaming, bar girls hustling, drunks laughing, and monkeys screeching. This was Old Bangkok, the way it used to be during the war. But that fun was done with 25 years before I was even born and even the old timers hadn't been in country for more than a tour before it was over. We were all residents of a new age, a new conflict...That we found such a place as this a comfort is just proof of human nature, I think. I was all of twenty-two and feeling a bit jaded.
Inside it had been hot and humid and smoky. Outside it was hot and humid and dusty. I lit a cigarette and sucked it hard, leaning against the poured concrete wall. I'd only taken up the habit, just to fit in, and I'd quit as soon as I was done here. I hated it.
"You ain't changed much." The guy said, ripping an old crumpled pack of Winston's open. He pulled the last stick out and straightened it between his thumb and finger.
"I thought you were dead." I handed him my lighter.
"I was." He didn't look nearly so drunk anymore, even his eyes had cleared as if by magic. "They brought me back for you."
"You shoulda just done it." I gave him a half-smile. "It would hurt less."
"I don't mind a little pain." He grinned. "Besides, I owe you one."
"At least one." I chuckled. "Who's calling me in?"
"Beats me." He glanced up the alley as a motorcycle coughed to life. "I'm just a messenger boy these days."
He was reaching into his back pocket, pulling out a slim wallet and I watched as he extracted a business card for a dry cleaner in Hong Kong.
"Number's on the back, you know the drill." The guy shrugged apologetically and this was a shitty business.
I flicked the card with my fingernail, frowning at it.
"You hanging around for awhile?" I asked him and he shrugged.
"Why?" Like he had to ask.
"I know a place, it'll be like old times." I promised and he smiled at that.
"In this town?"
"Trust me." I grinned at him and nodded towards the street.
"That'll be the last thing I do, Jen."
"You're not still mad at me, are you James?" I tossed my cigarette and started walking.
"You fucked me and you left me." He chuckled. "It hurt."
"I'm taking a truck across the border, into Myanmar, day after tomorrow." I said.
"What's in it?" James took my arm, both of us looking both ways six times before dodging the barely controlled traffic and crossing the street.
"Medical supplies." I said, pulling him towards a narrow doorway and a steep flight of steps.
"Yeah, right." He smiled.
"I got three guys, but I'd feel better if you came along." I told him honestly.
He waited while I fished a key out of my khaki shorts, rattling the door as I opened it. The room was small and hot, but it was private anyway and a good place to kill time. So far as anyone cared I was working for the Pierce-Bowman Foundation, which was a non-profit international relief agency. It was just a CIA front in reality, a good way to move whatever needed to be moved, from one place to another. People, weapons, drugs...In this case it was moving me and two thousand kilos of food and medicine, flour, rice, aspirin and even chocolate from Thailand into Myanmar.
"Hmmm..." James nodded, looking around. "...You were right. This is just like old times."
"I can pay." I closed the door and bolted it.
"I bet you can." He snorted. "Look, they just asked me to deliver a message."
"I know." I smiled at him. "You're a good boy, so...How about it? Ride shotgun with me?"
"Ahhhh...Jenny..." He put his hands on my shoulders, standing close now and looking me in the face. "...If you were anyone else..."
"You wouldn't even be here." I put my hands on his narrow hips, giving the big Aussie a squeeze. "You gonna say no to me?"
"No." He grinned and I took half a step, feeling my sweat stained tits press against his chest.
"Two days, in and out." I licked my lips. "I'll give you ten thousand and."
"And?" He raised a blonde eyebrow.
"And." I nodded.
"Heh." He tilted his head back and laughed. "I forgot that one, okay, ten thousand and. But I want the and part right now."
"Well...Yeah." I giggled. "I figured you'd want it up front."
"Oh that's bad." He licked his lips and grinned.
"Puns are the highest form of humor, don't you know that?"
"Get on your fucking knees, bitch." James said and he was pushing me down. "Start paying."
"You're so romantic." I laughed lightly, reaching for the man's trousers, and knowing he was already growing hard for me.
James had to be, because my own cock was straining hard at my shorts.
I freed his penis quickly and it was nice and long and thick, just like I remembered it from Herzegovina a little more than a year before. I'd been all of twenty-one and James twice my age exactly, but that hardly mattered. He was precisely the sort of man I was always attracted to physically, large and strong, and full of confidence. He'd been one of my watchers for a time, an ex-Australian Special Air Service officer who made sure I got where I needed to be safe and sound, and he was very good at protection, but he didn't like the rest of it. He was a decent man in his heart and we had a love-hate thing.
"Ohhh..." He sucked a long breath between his teeth as I worked my mouth back and forth, tasting his salty skin and smelling a long hot tropical day rising from his hairy balls.
I swallowed his precum and stroked my fist slowly along the shaft, ripe with dark veins and growing wet now from my attentions. I used my other hand to slide his trousers down completely and James steadied himself with his hands on my shoulders, kicking off his boots with some difficulty. We were managing though and I soon had him naked from the waist down. I dropped my mouth to his heavy balls, licking and kissing him there while his cock slid across my face.
"You must have just gotten into town." I breathed, looking up at him and swallowing a mouthful of spit and precum.
"Why?" He grinned at me, his blue eyes full of good humor.
"Because I can't taste any pussy on your dick." I giggled.
"Maybe I washed it off." James shrugged.
"You?" I shook my head with a smile. "You want to cum in my mouth or in my ass?"
"In your mouth, Jen." He nodded. "Save that ass for later."
"Mmmppph..." I agreed, taking him hard and sucking the man eagerly, dragging my teeth lightly across the top of his dick because I knew James liked it that way.
I sucked him good for a few minutes, until his patience ran out and I felt his big hands in my hair, untying it first, so that it fell around my face, and then digging his fingers inside. He held me tight and started moving his hips, thrusting his cock in and out of me while I just kept my mouth open and my tongue out of the way. He fucked my face like it was a cunt, just wanting to get off, and I gagged every now and again as the blunt swollen head of his prick would bang into the back of my mouth.
Spit and precum spilled out of me, running down my chin to stain my t-shirt. A lot of it too, turning the thin white cotton transparent and exposing my hard brown nipples. I played with them, squeezing my tits and feeling my cock throbbing anxiously in my shorts. I just had to be patient though. James was full of me now, desperate for his first orgasm and after that I'd have mine. He was one of those guys who hated my cock, convinced that I wasn't a girl at all, but helpless to do anything about it.
I enjoyed fucking guys like James a lot.
=-=-=-=-=-={25}=-=-=-=-=-=
The village was small and it had been selected for several reasons. One was its proximity to the Thai border. Another was that it was remote, in the densely forested hills and not readily accessible. There was an anthropologist waiting for me, a contractor named Reed, and he was the only one who could stop it now. I'd made my phone call and gotten the go from Langley, as I'd expected.
"Any problems getting through?" Reed asked me and he was nervous, which was a bad sign.
"Nothing a few baht couldn't handle." I shrugged.
"Who's this then?" He looked at James, not expecting to see another white face.
"My bodyguard." I smiled. "James Rhodes, this is Danny Reed."
"G'day chum." James played up his accent just so Reed would know he wasn't an American.
"Right." Reed licked his lips. "Uh, we're all set, I think. Three people left this morning, some of the boys going to look for work in Taunggyi."
"How far is that?" I asked, meaning in time, not miles. I had the map memorized.
"It'll take a couple days for them to get there." Reed shrugged. "They won't be back anytime soon."
"Any visitors?" I asked and James was frowning at our exchange.
"No, they don't get many outsiders here this time of year."
"We need three days." I looked at Reed's eyes and he blinked.
"I don't know." He cleared his throat. "It should be good."
He didn't know exactly what was going on, but whatever he thought it was, the man was clearly having second thoughts.
"Should be isn't good enough." I told him. "I need a guarantee."
"Nobody can guarantee three days." Reed shook his head. "There's trails all through these hills, it's possible someone could enter or leave..."
"Fuck." I frowned.
"What's going on, Jen?" James asked me.
"Nothing at all." I shrugged, looking at Reed and wondering if he wasn't lying to me. "How many people are here?"
"Villagers? Seven families, a total of eighty-eight persons, after the three boys left." Reed looked down and then over his shoulder.
The dirt here was red, full of clay, and all they grew was cassava and papaya. Some jackfruit was overripe above us, stinking sweetly and drawing bees. There were a few coconut trees, but mostly it was mahogany and the occasional thicket of bamboo growing a hundred feet high and as big around as a man's thigh. It was cool in the shade, with a nice breeze. This village and its people had been here a thousand years and all I needed were three more days.
"Okay." I nodded. "I need to see...Take me to someone with arthritis."
"What?" Reed blinked at me. "Didn't you hear what I said?"
"It's now or never." I told him. "And never is too fucking far away for me. Let's go."
I waited outside a bamboo house while Reed spoke with the people inside, and it was only a couple older women, one of them holding a baby, probably her daughter's child. Everyone else in the village was unloading the truck, excited and happy, although they really didn't know what half the stuff was probably. Except the chocolate, everyone knows what that is, and the sound of excited children filled the afternoon air.
"This is Tusa and her sister Janlyn." Reed said after waving us to enter. He was watching me and trying to smile like everything was fine as he spoke to them in their native tongue.
"Does she have arthritis?" I asked, smiling at the woman and she was old, but very strong looking. I thought she must have been very pretty as a young woman.
"Yeah...Yes, she's got pains in her hands and knees." Reed said slowly, translating for me as he spoke with her. "She's seen a hilot, like a bone doctor, but it doesn't really work."
"Okay." I nodded. "Tell her I'm going to give her an injection to help, okay?"
I opened a metal case and pulled out a thin syringe, capped with a rubber tip.
"What are you doing?" James whispered and Reed was hesitating.
"Do it. Tell her." I smiled at the woman again and held up the needle.
"Uh..." Reed swallowed hard and started talking.
"You're going to kill these people?" James grabbed my arm, but gently because he was watching that needle close, so was I.
"Let me go." I said softly. "Go outside, get everything off the truck. We need to cross the border before dark."
"I won't let you do it." James narrowed his eyes and his hand was starting to hurt.
"You don't know what I'm doing." I whispered. "Now let me go."
"Uh, Tusa doesn't like needles." Reed gave me an apologetic look. "She...She says she'll try it, but only if you try it first."
"There's only enough for one." I said. "Tell her that."
Reed spoke slowly and the woman was looking at the needle and shook her head. I didn't need that translated.
"Okay." I shrugged. I looked at James and he relaxed his grip so I could put the syringe back in the case.
"She doesn't like needles." Reed shrugged.
We turned around and I took two steps towards the frayed rice sack that served as a curtain door before the woman was calling us back.
"I guess she changed her mind." I smiled and I walked over quickly, before James could grab me again.
"Jen..." The Aussie stared at me.
"Here we go..." I said softly, holding the old woman's arm, thin and long. "...Just a little pinch."
I would have liked James to hold her arm, but obviously he wasn't going to do that and so I was very deliberate and cautious. Some people had a tendency to jerk away from sharp pain and needles and I didn't need a slip. I kept my hand away from the point of injection and I smiled when the old woman barely winced.
=-=-=-=-=-={25}=-=-=-=-=-=
"So what was that then?" James asked me as we drove down the mountain on a road that resembled a dried and particularly rocky stream bed as much as anything else. We rode in the back, my three Thai men crowded in the front of the Canter truck.
"The injection?" I shook my head.
"You've killed those people, haven't you?" He stared at me. "That's what it is, right? What did you give them, smallpox? Yellow fever?"
"Yellow fever isn't contagious." I sighed.
"So what were you doing then?" James grabbed my shoulder. "Tell me how you just killed eighty-eight people."
"I didn't kill them." I said. "They're going to be the safest people on this planet."
"Say what?" Reed looked at me.
"I gave the woman an antigen, a vaccine against a strain of influenza." I said truthfully. "It will make her sick, but it won't kill her. She'll pass it to everyone else in the village and they'll develop antibodies. They'll be immune to it."
"A vaccine?" James let go of me.
"I don't do weapons, James." I looked at him. "You should know that better than anyone. I want to see how well it spreads, that's all. We're testing vaccination motility, okay? Not a weapon."
I didn't mention the fact that some of those villagers would in fact die from it, the elderly and infants being at a higher risk, but even so I estimated the worst case numbers at five percent mortality, meaning I'd probably killed four people. Less I hoped, but I couldn't know for sure. I didn't feel good about that, but there wasn't any other way. We needed a real world test because there's only so much you can do in a lab and if it worked, those few innocents would be worth it. No one liked it, but it was a fact and so I lived with it. We all did.
"Someone does though." James blinked at me and he always was too smart for his own good.
"You're going to infect them." He said. "In three days? What? A crop duster? Is it in the milk?"
"James..."
"What's he talking about?" Reed looked between us.
"Tell me, Doctor, are you testing the vaccine? Or the virus?"
"Both." I shrugged.
"Jen...Jesus." James shook his head. "You're a bloody piece of work, you know that?"
End of Part 13
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