The Genesis Plague (2010)

mattress that was the room’s only furnishing, Fahim Al-Zahrani lay in a gory mire of blood, vomit and tissue. Since much of the stringy red slime still draped from the corpse’s blue lips, Jason assumed it to be a puree of Al-Zahrani’s innards. Blood streamed like tears from the corpse’s lifeless eyes - the orbs solid red. And the entire mattress beneath his lower half was completely saturated in red, suggesting that blood and liquefied organs had found their way out every possible exit.
    ‘Man,’ Meat said from the far corner, ‘what the hell’s going on here?’
    An elderly Arab - unarmed - sat on the floor beside Meat, legs tucked to his chest, rocking back and forth. He was chanting prayers in Arabic. Every few seconds, a spate of coughing interrupted the recitation. The old guy displayed the same pallid complexion Jason had noticed in the man whom Meat stabbed in the throat.
    ‘I mean, what did these guys do to him?’ Meat said.
    ‘They didn’t do this, Meat. They couldn’t have done this.’
    ‘Then who did?’
    As if on cue, Jason’s sat-com vibrated. He dug in his pocket to find it, saw that it was Flaherty.
    ‘Tommy?’
    ‘Yeah, it’s me.’
    ‘Everything all right in Vegas?’
    ‘No. Not by a longshot, I’m afraid.’
    Jason listened as Flaherty rehashed the candid tell-all discussion he and Brooke had had with Pastor Randall Stokes - the discovery of an ancient contagion that USAMRIID scientists under Frank Roselli’s guidance had weaponized for mass transmission throughout the Middle East. Staring over at Al-Zahrani, Jason felt his nerves turn to ice. When Flaherty detailed Stokes’s sinister objective - to annihilate the Arab male population - he could feel a dark cloud settling over him. He’d had a similar response when in September 2001 his sister Elizabeth had called to report that Matthew had officially gone missing at the World Trade Center.
    ‘Not sure if I’m buying what Stokes was saying about this virus he and Roselli concocted. Seemed a bit out there to me …’ Flaherty said.
    ‘He’s right, Tommy. Trust me. We just found Al-Zahrani and he’s dead.’
    ‘Dead?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘But you only pulled him out of that cave a few hours ago.’
    ‘That’s right. We thought he had a fever. But now … God, it looks like something minced his organs and pushed them out his throat. We killed a few others that had been in contact with him … it’s a long story. But they weren’t looking too good either. If you ask me, I’d say they were showing early signs of being infected with this virus.’
    ‘Virus?’Meat said, looking alarmed.His eyes wentwide with concern as he looked at Al-Zahrani again. ‘What do mean “virus”?’
    ‘Virus,’ the elderly Arab echoed grimly. ‘Yes … virus,’ he said holding out his hands and staring at them with vacant, yellowed eyes.
    ‘Shut up!’ Meat demanded, kicking the old man.
    Jason stifled Meat with an abrupt hand gesture.
    ‘The others you killed … were they Arabs?’ Flaherty asked in a low voice.
    ‘They were.’
    A pause.
    ‘So it’s true,’ Flaherty said in a grim tone. ‘It only kills Arabs.’
    ‘For our sake, I hope so.’
    ‘Stokes was pretty proud of the fact that this virus could specifically target Arabs,’ Flaherty reiterated. ‘Let’s not go making any assumptions. I hope you’ll be fine. Are you okay?’
    Jason wasn’t so sure. ‘You said this thing can spread through the air?’
    ‘What?’ Meat said, startled by the bits and pieces he was overhearing. ‘You mean just breathing it—’
    ‘These men you’ve killed …’ Flaherty said, thinking it through. ‘You’ve got to get rid of the bodies. Burn them or something. Until we find out what’s really happening, we can’t risk letting this thing get out in the open.’
    ‘Agreed.’
    ‘There’s something else too. However Stokes was planning to spread the virus, it’s in that cave. He referred to it as a “delivery system”. I don’t know how or what that might mean, but he implied that it somehow uses nature, not warheads. Our friend Crawford has been in on this thing all along. And he’s determined to finish this, understand? So you’ve got to wrap things up there quickly and find a way to get back to that cave and stop Crawford.’
    ‘I’ll do that,’ Jason said, ruing the fact that he didn’t force the issue of calling for backup earlier. ‘Hey, is Stokes dead?’
    ‘No. But he will be soon. And not from the