In the Time of Man

Chapter 11

(Time to get back to the science fiction novel. I am pleased at the number of people who have been asking about it and I am redoubling my efforts to get the final edit completed. Anyone wanting to read the chapters filed here from the beginning just needs to go to the homepage of Texas to the World and scroll down the page to get to Chapter One. My present plan is to start posting these chapters as the edits are completed and I won’t wait for my Sunday and Wednesday posting schedule. When the book is completed, I will post the full PDF on here for paid subscribers, or it will be available for purchase at a modest price. I will also be reading and recording an audio version available for download for free for paid subscribers that can be purchased, too. - JM)

Long before Becky got downtown to meet Mike Burke, he had put down three double scotches. She realized there had been a tremble in her voice when she had finally spoken with him and that Burke was undoubtedly worried. He had agreed to meet in a restaurant at a halfway point but Becky had insisted on going all the way into the inner city business complex. She needed to be as far away from her own home as possible and she was not concerned that the living room curtains were blowing through the busted front window as she backed out of the driveway.

Convincing the police of what had actually happened was difficult since the alarm had not sounded and all the obvious evidence had showed that a woman at home alone had simply thrown a lamp through her own living room window. If one of the officers had not informed the chief investigator Becky was a well-known television news reporter, she might have been arrested. Becky was fairly certain they did not believe her story even though the police had no real idea why an otherwise sane professional woman might bust out the biggest window in her house. Drugs were always a possibility in these kinds of domestic calls.   

Sitting at a table close to the outdoor fountain, Becky saw that Mike Burke had found a spot where their conversation was not likely to be overheard above the sound of splashing water. When she looked at his wrinkled chinos and white shirt rolled up at the sleeves, Becky thought her managing editor could have hardly looked more out of place than he was in the stylish Arizona Center restaurant. The men surrounding him wore open-collared cotton dress shirts, golf polos or signature sports pullovers with loose slacks and expensive loafers. The women shone like baked porcelain in sun skirts and sleeveless blouses with shorts.

In their midst, Mike Burke sat with his short, stiff, gray hair and his skin dull with a yellow pallor from excess smoke and drink combined with a strict regimen of no exercise. Discipline for any endeavor outside of work was missing from Mike Burke's daily existence. A few people from the newsroom had been by his condominium and reported there was nowhere to sit, only books spread across a few tables and the floor. Whatever sleep he acquired apparently was on a ragged old mattress. For a man who fueled himself with cigarettes, caffeine and scotch, Burke needed little rest.  Any time there was a breaking news story in the middle of the night, he was always the first person into the newsroom, looking wide-awake and providing the same explanation every time, "I was up anyway."

Burke saw Becky coming down a sidewalk leading to the patio restaurant where he was waiting and she realized he could read the angst on her face from a distance. As he stood up to greet her, she smiled because she understood that any display of manners from him was an indication that the regular order of things had been upset.

"Hey, Acuna, what in the hell's going on?" Burke pulled out a chair.

"I'm sorry, Mike, I didn't mean to frighten you into niceness."

"Cute. You want a drink?"

"I think, actually, I could use one."

A waiter brought her a gin and tonic double and a fresh scotch for Burke. Becky looked at all the healthy and prosperous people gathered at the tables around them and did not speak until she felt the alcohol slowing the race of her pulse. Burke did not hurry her. 

"Something’s happened," Burke said. “And why in the hell haven’t you told me what it is yet?”

“I’m sorry, Mike.  I’m just trying to figure out what the hell it was and what it means.”  Becky sipped her drink and saw that her hand was trembling slightly as she lifted her glass.

“Let’s hear it before I get too damned drunk to remember it,” Burke said. 

Through the white snake of smoke around his head, Becky saw the bitter twitch on Burke's face. She often wondered how every aspect of his personal life had become a disaster and he had still managed to retain his curiosity in human nature. 

"I don’t know, exactly, Mike. When I got home there was this car on my street and this guy just kind of got out and stared at my house and then brazenly walked up and tried to knock down the back door.”

“What the hell?”

“I know. And the alarm was off and I had no way to protect myself so I just threw a damned lamp through the window hoping I’d scare him off.”

“I guess you did.”

“I did but what was so creepy about it, Mike, is that he just slowly walked back to his car and turned around and looked at the house like he was trying to tell me he’d be back.”

“And the cops, what did they say?”

“Nothing. I think they thought they were just dealing with a coked-up bored suburban housewife who was coming down too hard. They didn’t show any signs they believed me and none of the neighbors were around to see anything.”

“Christ.” Burke shook the ice in his glass and looked up at Becky. “Who the hell was it? Any idea? Not some guy just breaking in because you sound like he was looking specifically for you.”

“I’m pretty sure he was. Mike, do you think someone knew we were talking to Crawford? Could we have been followed?”

“You mean someone got tipped we were going out there and followed you after I dropped you off at your car? How in the hell could that have happened?”

“It’s not impossible, you know. Maybe they are just monitoring Crawford all the time.  If the government’s working so hard to keep this Slims Disease thing a secret, they probably keep a pretty close eye on him, don’t you think?”

“They sure as hell wouldn’t want him talking on television but wouldn’t it have just been simpler to walk in there and bust up the interview and chase us off?”

“Yeah, but they don’t even acknowledge the disease exists so why would they risk confronting a guy in front of reporters when what they’ve got him doing isn’t even real?” Becky laughed, a little relieved. “We’re getting down the rabbit hole, I guess.”

“Except for the fact that somebody just tried to break into your house after you had been up there interviewing Barton Crawford about a big, scary-assed U.S. by god government secret.”

Becky looked up and smiled at a young couple who pointed at her as they passed the table. “His lab in the Superstitions is a bit odd, too, don’t you think? I doubt the government would authorize him working outside of the Bleak House on his own time and property if this was such a dangerous virus, would they? That’s probably his own research he showed us tonight.”

“Probably. I’m sure they know what he’s doing. They might just want to see what he figures out on his own and then find a way to use it. They’re just letting him think he’s getting away with something.” Burke tapped ash off of the tip of his fourth or fifth cigarette. When he drank, which was often, he always had a cigarette burning. He looked at Becky without saying anything but she thought she knew what was on his mind.

“I’m not afraid, Mike, and I’m not backing off of this story. Barton Crawford is not a kook.”

“Yeah, well, don’t talk so tough, Acuna. You’ve got a great husband and two little kids and as I always told my buddies who were so crazy about shooting combat video, there just ain’t any story worth dying for.”

“Oh for god’s sakes, Mike. Nobody is going to die.” Becky motioned for their waiter to bring the check.

“I know. I’m just saying keep an eye out and be careful. This ain’t like covering city council.”

 “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever. But I’m not going home tonight.”

 “No, you aren’t. You’ve got to drive me home. I’m too damned drunk to even call a cab.”

“That’s fine. But I’ve got to find a place to stay tonight,” Becky said.

“You’re staying at my condo, Acuna. I’ve got to keep an eye on you.”

Burke rose unsteadily as Becky signed the credit card receipt. She looked at him, quizzically.

“Oh stop it,” he said. “They’re all wrong. I do have a couch. And you can sleep on it.  Now get me to Paradise Valley, will ya?”

                                    *                                  *                                  *

Privately she was afraid, and her efforts on the Slims Disease story moved forward tentatively. There was considerably more taping to do before she filed her report, though, and she was unwilling to allow any other photographer to work with her on the story. They were curious about why their managing editor was doing the shooting for the piece. Mike Burke went with Becky out to Buckeye after she had contacted Vicente Cantu about taping an interview. Becky had explained that she also wanted to talk to Vicente’s sister Angel Mata and see how she was doing.

“Not well,” he had said on the phone. “She will be gone soon but at least she won’t be in the Bleak House and all alone. I’ll be with her and Roberto is here now.”

“Her husband is home?” Becky asked.

“Yes. He’s not working on construction right now.”

“Is he ill?”

“No. Just tired. And he’s lost weight because of how hard he has been working. You know, outside in the sun all day.”

“Sure, Vicente. Sure.”

“What did Dr. Crawford tell you? I didn’t think he would talk to you,” Vicente asked.

“He told us everything he knows, which wasn’t that much. But he said it was important that the news get out. Are you and Angel comfortable talking on camera about this?”

Vicente’s voice was weak and emotionless. “Yes, it’s okay now. We aren’t afraid.  There’s nothing they can do to Angel and I’m not worried any more. Everybody will know soon, verdad?”

“Yes. I think you are right,” Becky answered with glum resignation. “We’re on our way Vicente. See you at your sister’s in a while.”

When he met Angel Mata, Mike Burke was horrified. In the early 90s, Becky remembered, her managing editor had gone to Somalia with U.S. troops and he had witnessed extreme starvation but it had not prepared him for the appearance of Angel Mata.

“Jesus,” he whispered to Becky after they had returned to the truck to carry in the gear. “How can anything do that to you? How is she still alive?”

“I don’t know, Mike.”

Angel was in the living room, sitting in a soft lounge chair with the air-conditioner turned off. She was wearing cotton pajamas with a small flower print. Becky thought she looked worse than some of the pictures in history books she had seen of World War II concentration camp survivors. There was no saving Angel Mata and death would be an act of grace in her condition. Her voice was a tissue-thin whisper and her sentences were short responses to Becky’s questions. Roberto, her husband, stood across the room.

“Do you remember me, Mrs. Mata? I came out with Vicente several months ago to meet you.”

“Yes. The TV lady.”

“What do you think has happened to you, Mrs. Mata?” Becky saw blood pulsing in the woman’s neck veins and down on her hands. She would not have been surprised if Angel had died on camera.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you have any idea?”

She waited, momentarily, as if marshaling her remaining energies for another simple sentence. “My brother says it’s Bleak House. Where he works. They can’t cure it.”

“What is it?”

“Slims Disease?  I think he calls it.”

“How’d you get it?” Becky was already feeling guilty of robbing this poor woman of some of her final moments with her husband and brother.

“Don’t know. They say sex. Maybe some other way. Only have sex with my husband.”

“He looks healthy.”

“Yes. Healthy. Good.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Mata.”

Angel did not respond. Her eyes closed and she tucked her chin against her chest.  Becky and Mike asked Vicente to come outside so they could record the interview with him away from Angel. In fifteen minutes, he described in great detail all of the dying he had seen inside of Bleak House and the frantic desperation of the physicians and researchers. He also told Becky and Burke that when his own wife and children had finally come to visit his sister, they had refused to ever be around her again until she was healthy and his wife had urged him to stay away from Angel for the sake of his own children.

“You get a good look at ol’ Roberto skulking back in the shadows of the living room, Beck?” Burke asked Becky as he turned the truck off the sand and back onto the Buckeye Road.

“Yeah, he sure was quiet.”

“I wonder why.”

“What do you mean, Mike?”

 “You know, Mr. dark and swarthy. Handsome Latino, always traveling to construction jobs, you said, right?”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that if this thing is transmitted sexually I’m pretty sure Angel Mata probably picked it up from Roberto Mata, who is very likely out there on the road having his fun.”

“Maybe,” Becky said. “It’s another thing we don’t know. There’s no proof it is transmitted sexually, you know, Mike.  ou heard Crawford.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m just sayin’.”

The next four evenings they spent on the deck at Becky Acuna’s house recording the arrival of sick people at Luke Air Force Base. Burke had rented infrared gear and a 1 x 1200 lens to capture as much detail as possible over the night distances.

“You could watch Neil Armstrong scratch his ass on the moon with this lens,” Burke had said.

Becky’s husband Gene kept Burke supplied with scotch and soda and the nights passed quickly and surprisingly productively. On Tuesday, there was only one plane landing to record but the next three nights there were two each evening. Becky noted that there were now groups of people being brought to Bleak House compared to the one or two she used to see arrive when she initially started monitoring the base’s activity more than a year earlier. Burke shot a lot of daytime b-roll of the base and drove around it looking for an angle to frame up what they had been informed was Building 3C but he was never able to show more than a corner of the structure because it was situated in the midst of a complex of hangars.   

The process of creating this one story was agonizing for Becky Acuna. In almost every way possible, this was going to be the most important report she had ever written and filed. As skeptical as she knew she needed to be, Becky realized she also had to give great credibility to the words of Dr. Crawford and Vicente because they were eyewitnesses. She had also taped a satellite interview with a National Institutes of Health virologist to ask him if he had heard of Slims Disease and she intended to edit that into the packaged report to have an expert doubting the words of the Nobel Laureate.

After struggling with the script for three days, Becky finally took it to Mike Burke for approval and then she sat down with her news director. Ed Smith, who was in his early 50s, had been on the TV news merry-go-round for almost 30 years and had dragged his family through more than a dozen cities and jobs. He thought he was smart and successful but Becky had concluded his only skill was disguising his incompetence with talk. 

“Well, it’s long,” Smith said as he passed the printout back to Becky.

“That’s all?” She laughed. “I write a story that has a Nobel Laureate on camera saying the end of the human race might be approaching and you say it’s long?”

“Look, are you sure about this one, Acuna? Because I’m not. I’m backing you up because you say you’ve got it nailed. And it looks like you’ve got everything in here.  But Christ, we are gonna just get the shit kicked out of us when this airs.”

“What do you mean, Ed?”

“You know what in the hell I mean.  We are either going to be a local station doing one hell of a big story, maybe the biggest story ever, or we are going to be the goddamned laughingstock of journalism. There’s no middle on this one, is there, Beck?”

“I guess not but I’ve got no idea what I am supposed to do but report what I have,” she said. “I don’t have the background to question this any more than I have. We are talking about a Nobel Laureate, remember?”

“Yeah, I know.” Ed Smith leaned backwards in his executive chair and straightened his tie over the great rolling mound of his stomach. “I’ve never before been in the position of hoping one of my reporters has something wrong, Acuna. You know what? I hope to glory hell you are all wrong on this and so is Crawford.”

Becky got up to leave. “Thanks for your support, Mr. Smith.”

While her report was being edited and prepared for broadcast, Becky agonized over its endless implications and dire science fiction scenarios. People were going to be frightened and some might even commit suicide to avoid being among the final survivors in a world becoming barren of humans. Conspiracy theories would proliferate about who created Slims Disease and why. They would be endlessly frightening and many of them would be based upon a germ of logic, which would make them even more disturbing. 

Becky remembered a couple of studies she had read more than a decade ago about the stress of overpopulation on the planet. Conducted by Stanford and Vanderbilt Universities, researchers had tried to establish an optimal carrying capacity for Earth based upon a need to sustain resources indefinitely. She recalled the figure being about 3.5 billion humans as a maximum population before permanent depletion began to set up eventual eco-system collapse. Already, there were twice that many people in the world as the report considered sustainable and there was not enough food or water or even oil and the result was war, starvation, and endless suffering. 

The questions that occurred to Becky about all of this were endless. Was Slims Disease a natural by-product of the overpopulation or was it a clandestine effort to deal with the overcrowded world? If someone was trying to thin out the crowd, who was it? Did they think they were doing something moral? Perhaps the creators of the virus had thought they had control over the spread of Slims Disease and then it had jumped the fence that they had designed for keeping it confined. Were they trying to get rid of certain types of people? Was the artificial disease targeted at specific demographics?

Something had to be done about the problems of overpopulation. They were certainly dramatic and Americans were mostly oblivious to their long term ramifications. Just recently, Becky had read an article about the rampant population growth in Egypt.  The country had what was considered the most progressive and effective birth control program in the world and yet every nine months there were a million new babies born in Egypt.

Even in places like the U.S. the complications of too many human beings were no longer subtle. Becky had done many stories about the Salt River Project and the difficulties of getting enough water into Phoenix to meet the demands of growth. A series of concrete aqueducts and canals steered water away from the Colorado River and into Phoenix and Southern California and there was a limited amount of time in which even the powerful Colorado could fulfill the needs of both regions. Yet, when Becky drove to work each day she saw the sprinklers running on green golf courses, making grass grow where it was never meant to be. She had even traveled down to the Gulf of California to do a report on effects of the reduced flow of water from the Colorado. Fishermen of all types in Mexico had been robbed of their source of income because the gulf had been turned into little more than a muddy sandbar and the lack of freshwater flow had destroyed the habitats needed for the breeding of new shrimp.

These were all matters that were the subtext of the report she was about to broadcast. The editor worked three days cutting together the story and the promotions department was equally busy preparing ads to run for 48 hours in advance of the broadcast. Becky watched the finished story the day before its air date and fretted that it was too long. Nobody got much more than 90 seconds to impart their information in television news and this piece ran just over four minutes. It did not matter that she was writing about the potential end of human evolution and existence; four minutes was cutting into advertising revenue.  

The next morning as she was making breakfast for the kids, Becky heard the first promo when it was broadcast during a local commercial break in The Today Show. It had popped up on the station’s website the night before but she had fallen asleep early. On the counter in the breakfast nook, the television showed the nearly perfect face of Heidi Jennifer Jones trying to achieve an evasive degree of gravitas. 

“A one hundred percent fatal and incurable disease has entered the valley. We’ll have full details tonight in a special report on KSUN news at ten. Join us.”

“Yep. Fear sells. Scare the hell out of ‘em, Heidi,” Becky said sarcastically. 

She had watched as Heidi smiled with her bright eyes cheery and her lips full and shining their peach color against her straight, white teeth. 

“She’s gonna look good right to the bitter end, kids,” Becky grumbled while handing her children their cereal.

“What momma?”

“Oh nothing, son. Just eat your breakfast.”

Anchors who had worked at KSUN through the years, Becky was certain, had never listened to the words they were reading on the teleprompter. They read them as they were written and then smiled at the end of their stories for the express purposes of appearing attractive and making sure anyone watching the news did not get so depressed they did not tune in again. A strange and deadly disease was loosed in America and nobody had any idea of how or why or what to do to stop it and Heidi was turning on her sexy smile to make men want to watch KSUN. Jesus, television news is crazier than the world it attempts to report on, Becky thought.

At the station, no one said a word to her about the big story. Normally, when she did work that was exemplary or was a part of a project the photographers and editors admired they often summoned each other back to an editing bay to preview the piece prior to broadcast. Instead, the Slims Disease story had simply been cued up in the producer’s show rundown and she got no impression there was either concern about the facts or pride in her accomplishment of capturing such a profoundly important piece of information.

At home that evening, she had a quiet dinner with Gene and the kids and kept her cell phone close in the event the station’s general manager called from his vacation in Colorado to say he was going to embargo the story. The phone never buzzed, though, and after she put the kids to bed she sat on the deck with Gene and watched the sky darken and then speckle with stars. 

“How do you think this is going to go, Beck?” her husband asked.

“I don’t know, honey. It’s possible it’ll just be overwhelming.”

 “Are you ready for that?”

 “I wasn’t ready for Barton Crawford to call me,” she said. “So there’s no reason I should be ready for whatever comes from that call, I suppose.”

A distant wail of jet engines caught their attention and they turned in time to see the landing lights roll up on the wings of an aircraft approaching from the east. The plane looked bigger than anything that had touched down at Luke in the past year and a half.

“I think that’s a KC135 or a 747, Beck. Maybe they’re just bringing in all sorts of medical equipment.”

“God, Gene. I hope that’s it. Can’t be room for that many more patients.”

Gene reached inside the back door and picked up the binoculars they had been habitually leaving in a handy spot near the deck. The great wheels of the jumbo jet looked like talons of a giant bird and they squawked on the old runway before the plane rumbled toward the other end of the 10,000 foot stretch of tarmac. Even in the darkness, Becky saw that the aircraft was unmarked and painted a battleship gray.  While the pilot was turning around his big jet, a line of vehicles curled out from behind the corner of the building that Vicente Cantu had told Becky was the Bleak House, or Building 3C. They stopped parallel to the runway and each driver turned off his lights.  Becky counted at least twenty trucks or EMT wagons.

“I can’t believe this, Gene. Are they bringing in that many people?”

“I don’t know, honey. I have no idea.”

He handed Becky the binoculars. She stood and watched as the jumbo jet stopped and the engines wound down. Someone jumped from one of the panel vans and placed chocks beneath the aircraft’s wheels. The giant turbines stopped spinning and a ramp was lowered at the back of the fuselage. In less than a minute, people began to slowly move down the incline toward the trucks. Becky did not think to count but there were dozens and the unloading took almost an hour with the intravenous hookups and gurneys. There may have been as many as 200 people climbing into the parade of vehicles and a few trucks made more than one trip between Bleak House and the cargo bay of the jet. 

“My god, what are they going to do with all of those people? Kill ‘em?” 

Becky turned to her husband who was leaning against the rail of the deck beside her.

“They don’t have to, Beck. Remember?”

Gene looked at his watch in the dim light through the kitchen window. “It’s a few minutes to ten. Let’s go inside and watch your story.”

“Okay. And then we turn off all phones and go to bed. Whatever it causes, I am putting off until tomorrow.”

“Sure.”      

The newscast opened and the KSUN anchors did their best to adopt a serious mien.  The beach blonde male began the introduction.

“Good evening. Some startling information to report to you tonight. KSUN news has learned of the presence of a deadly virus here in the Valley of the Sun. It causes a fatal illness known as Slims Disease.” 

“Biff Rock,” as almost everyone in the newsroom was now calling the male anchor, turned to stylish Heidi to pick up the introduction.

“And Slims Disease, our Becky Acuna has learned, is being treated at a special facility on the former Luke Air Force Base. In her exclusive report tonight, she talks with a Nobel Laureate scientist who has been leading the U.S. government’s attempts to find a cure.”

The opening pictures were video of ghostly figures shuffling through the desert haze floating between airplanes and emergency vehicles parked on a runway. Beneath the pictures, Becky’s narration was delivered with an emotionless tempo.

“No one knows who these people are. Their names are a secret. None of them is believed to still be alive. But for the past few years, these sick and anonymous souls have been arriving via unmarked aircraft at the old Luke Air Force Base facilities.”

The camera began a long, slow zoom into the portion of the Bleak House visible from Becky’s deck.

“According to KSUN’s sources, many of them directly involved in the work, the individuals being secretly brought to Luke are treated for a fatal disease in this old hangar. Formerly known as 3C, government employees on the inside say it is now referred to as the Bleak House, a place where physicians and researchers are desperately trying to save people dying from a mysterious disease. But they have apparently had no success.”

Vicente appeared on camera to clarify. “I got a job in Bleak House when it started.”  He paused and looked away like he was trying to remember details. “I’ve helped to care for hundreds of people with Slims Disease. Not one of them survived. Not one.  They just die and their bodies are cremated somewhere so that their sickness will be burned up with them. I don’t think the government should be keeping this a secret any longer.”

The camera cut to shots of Vicente walking down a desert trail toward his sister’s house.

“Cantu, who says he works in the so-called Bleak House as an orderly, is convinced he has personal experience with Slims Disease,” Becky continued. “Although he has no clinical proof, Cantu believes his sister has somehow become infected with the deadly virus.”

Becky Acuna’s face appeared on the screen with a backdrop of the desert spreading in sunset light. “Cantu’s sister agreed to be interviewed about what is happening to her. However it is communicated, Slims Disease found her at her home in the rural desert outside of Phoenix. Her appearance, she acknowledges, is startling. And it will likely be disturbing to some viewers of this report.”

Immediately after Becky’s on camera “standup” had concluded, the editor had cut to her brief interview exchange with Angel Mata.

“What do you think has happened to you, Mrs. Mata?”

“I don’t know.” 

The camera gave Angel’s skin an even more chalky white hue and the harsh TV lights highlighted the shadows cast by her protruding bone structure.

“Do you have any idea?”

“My brother says it’s Bleak House. Where he works. They can’t cure it.”

“What is it?”

“Slims Disease? I think he calls it.”

“How’d you get it?”

“Don’t know. They say sex. Maybe some other way. Only have sex with my husband.”

Anyone watching the brief clip with Angel Mata might have made the mistake of thinking they were watching an animated skeleton. Becky thought the woman’s appearance was more disturbing on the television screen than it had been in person. 

“The man leading the research and treatment teams at Bleak House has no scientific proof that Slims Disease is transmitted sexually.” Barton Crawford was shown looking into a microscope as Becky’s narration continued. “Dr. Barton Crawford, a Nobel Laureate in virology, says he has, however, proved something about the virus that causes Slims Disease. And he is frightened by his own findings.”

“Slims Disease is not a natural occurring sickness borne of conditions in nature. It was artificially created, synthesized. Someone invented this presently, unstoppable disease. I am certain of that now after running these procedures dozens of times and exposing it to mice. The next questions are who did this and why.”

“While he does not have answers to those questions, Dr. Crawford does claim to have the data he needs to prove the Slims Disease virus was designed and created by someone and was not produced by nature. According to his findings, it is a product of a genetic connection between two animal viruses. The Bovine Visna Virus in cattle, which is shown here under microscopic amplification, and the Sheep Visna Virus, were either genetically spliced together or were cultured in the same human tissue to create HIV1, the precursor to Slims Disease. HIV1, shown in this slide from Crawford’s research, is a Human Immunodeficiency Virus and attacks the body’s ability to defend itself from disease.”

“It has mutated beyond that now,” Crawford explained on camera. “It’s doing things now that we cannot isolate or explain, consuming flesh and energy and causing organ shutdown. We’ve had very few patients die from illnesses they contracted from weakened immune systems, though we take great precaution to make sure no one brings a bug into any of their rooms.”

Still photos of dead cattle, bloated and cut, appeared on screen. Becky had taken most of them from the Internet because Crawford was worried about any of his pictures revealing identities or locations of ranchers he had promised anonymity.

“God, Beck.” Gene whispered. “That’s awful. No wonder they ran this at ten instead of the dinner hour newscast.”

“We aren’t that considerate, honey. 10 p.m. is just the biggest audience. That’s all.  Listen.”

“Crawford took an unconventional approach to some of his research. He began by examining mutilated cattle found on ranches throughout the U.S. The animals are often found with surgically precise cuts that have removed their sexual organs. All blood is also drained from their bodies. The phenomenon did not lead Crawford to a cure for Slims Disease but he thinks it is connected.

“It seems likely,” Crawford told Becky on camera. “That cattle were used to either host the original forms of Slims or test it for virility or they are being used in a desperate effort to create a vaccine or some sort of cure. In any case, whoever or whatever is conducting the experiments on cattle has a level of technology with which I am not familiar.”

“According to Crawford,” Becky’s narration resumed, “Slims Disease readily mutates to resist all experimental treatments, which tend to make the virus even stronger. He believes it represents a grave risk to everyone. Crawford says the disease appears to be moving out of control in parts of Africa while the U.S. government continues refusing to even formally acknowledge its existence.

“We have no knowledge of any type of virus you are describing or anything referred to as the Slims Disease.” A white-haired public information officer from the National Institutes of Health, wearing a dark suit and pale blue tie, stared round-eyed and unblinking into the camera. “While we have great respect for the work of Dr. Barton Crawford, the NIH is concerned that he is being alarmist about what may simply be animal borne viruses, which are, in most cases, not fatal.”

Becky’s face was the final one that viewers saw as she concluded her story with a shot framed up against the entrance to Luke Air Force Base.

“If Dr. Crawford’s science is as accurate as it has been throughout his career,” she said, “then we are all at great risk of eventual infection by the Slims Disease virus.  The government’s refusal to confirm the existence of the Bleak House Project, Slims Disease, or even the scientific data offered by Crawford, raises serious questions about how this emerging health crisis is being managed by Washington. Becky Acuna, KSUN News.”

Becky picked up the remote and clicked off the television before she was forced to listen to inane comments from Heidi and Biff Rock. She saw her husband staring at the black screen.

“Beck?”

“I don’t want to talk about it, Gene,” she said. “Not tonight, please. I just want to go to bed and have you hold me. Please.”

“Beck, we live right next to this. Our kids.”

“I know, Gene. I know. Let’s go to bed. We can talk about this tomorrow.”

In the morning, while getting dressed for work, Becky turned on her cell phone expecting several voice mail messages. There was only one call and it was from Vicente Cantu. Gene caught her crying when he walked in and saw her listening to the recording.

“Miss Acuna. This is Vicente Cantu. I wanted to tell you my sister died last night before she saw herself on TV. I guess that’s good, verdad? She used to be so beautiful. I wish you could have seen her back then. We aren’t telling anyone. Roberto and I are going to bury her out in the desert where she can still see her house. I don’t want them to come get her and burn her like all the others. We don’t believe in that. I guess I better go. I wonder what’s going to happen to me. Good bye, Miss Acuna.”

Becky drove to work that morning uncertain she had done the right thing.