Elliott napped in the family room until the morning sun blazed through the French doors. The house was still quiet, and he took the opportunity to do some work he dreaded, work he knew had to be done.
In his study, he turned on his computer and made a list of everyone he needed to warn. Then he made a list of his neighbors. He and Rose lived in an established, older neighborhood just outside Atlanta, close to the CDC. The homes weren’t mansions, but they were authentic, well-built, and expensive. Doctors, lawyers, and business owners shared the street with them. Elliott wrote down the names of the neighbors he thought he could rely on, the ones he thought would have steady hands in a crisis.
And a crisis was coming; he was certain of that.
At seven a.m. he brought Rose, Ryan, and Sam into his office and told them his plan. By the time he was done, Rose was crying quietly. Ryan and Sam nodded solemnly and told Elliott he had their full support.
Next, he began making calls to the people he wanted to warn.
By ten o’clock, five husbands and wives sat in his living room.
“I’m sorry to take you away from your families,” Elliott said, “but I believe your families, and mine, will soon be in very real danger.”
Surprised, confused expressions stared back at him.
“What are you—”
Elliott held up a hand. “Just… give me a minute, Bill. It’ll all make sense.
“In 2004, Congress passed the Project Bioshield Act. On the surface, it was a bill that called for five billion dollars to spend on stockpiling vaccines and other countermeasures against bioterror and pandemics. But what the public doesn’t know is that there are secret provisions in the act—provisions that are only invoked in the event of a catastrophic biological event. I believe we are witnessing the beginning of such an event. I believe this respiratory virus—X1—may actually be the early stages of the Ebola-like hemorrhagic fever that is currently devastating Kenya. If they are one and the same virus, I believe that Project BioShield will soon be invoked to try to stop that outbreak.
“When that occurs, the America we know and love will change very drastically. What I’m about to tell you must never leave this room.”
When Elliott was done speaking, one of the men leaned forward and said, “Let’s say you’re right. What do we do?”
“That’s why you’re here. I have a plan. And I need your help.”
Chapter 47
In the metal and glass cell, Desmond lay on the narrow bed, watching the never-ending slide show. A few of the photos were from his childhood, but the bulk of them depicted him at industry trade shows or at business meetings. They began in his early twenties and ran nearly up until the present. Either his captors didn’t have pictures of his personal life, or none existed. The people who came and went outside his cell asked him a range of questions, careful to never reveal anything about their cause and goals, but here and there, he gathered small clues, which he cataloged, hoping they would help him escape.
After they left, Desmond felt his stomach growl. They had fed him very little, perhaps hoping to keep him weak and docile.
Instead, the sensation brought back another memory.
For the first year that Desmond lived in Oklahoma, his uncle left him at a preschool when he was working on the rigs. The kids there were of varying ages, but at six years old Desmond was among the oldest. Several of the other oil workers left their children there too, and he made a few friends. But every time Orville returned to pick him up, he argued with the owners about the price, complaining that it was highway robbery.
One day, Orville announced that he was leaving Desmond at home. He put some money on the counter and told Desmond that if he had to come home to tend to him, he’d make him sorry.
Desmond used the money to buy food at the small grocery store in town. The owner helped him count out the money and stretch it as best he could. His diet consisted of beans and canned meat. Still, he ran out of money a few days before his uncle returned. At the grocery store, he didn’t ask for credit. He asked where he could find a job.
“For a six-year-old?” The skinny man with small glasses laughed.
Desmond looked at his shoes.
“I’ll give you some things on credit, Desmond. You can settle up when your uncle gets back.”
“I’d rather not,” he said quietly.
Thankfully, the grocer told him to sweep out the supply room and stock some of the shelves and sent him home with enough food to get him through a few more days.
When his uncle returned, the first thing he said was: “How much have you got left?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? You spent it all? On what, boy? A new Barbie doll?”
He stormed off, muttering that Desmond would eat him out of house and home.
The man was obsessed with money. He would work on whatever rig paid him the most. He didn’t care how dangerous it was or how bad the camp conditions were. He wanted the money. And he kept it all to himself. He deeply distrusted banks.
“They’re all crooks,” he said, one night when he was into the second half of the bottle. “Fools, too. They’ll loan any Tom, Dick, or Harry money—your money, that is, the same dollars you put in the vault. The thrifts are the worst. They’ll be busted soon, you watch.”
Desmond was actually quite surprised when, a few years later, over a thousand savings and loans—thrifts, as they were known—collapsed, costing American taxpayers over one hundred and thirty billion dollars to bail them out. It was perhaps the only one of his uncle’s predictions and conspiracy theories that came true.
His uncle continued to leave him home alone after that first time, and Desmond soon figured out how to make the money last: he supplemented it with meat from animals he killed. Some he took out of season, but he figured the game warden probably wouldn’t fine a six-year-old boy slowly starving to death.