The Emerald Virus Read online

  The Emerald Virus

  by Patrick Shea

  Text copyright 2015

  Patrick Shea

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is dedicated to

  my wife Uschi. A most

  spectacular woman.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One: The Island

  Chapter Two: Reaction

  Chapter Three: Action

  Chapter Four: The Middle

  Chapter Five: The Blue Wolf Ranch

  Chapter Six: Tech Day

  Chapter Seven: The Reservation

  Chapter Eight: Don’t You Love to Travel

  Chapter Nine: The South Shall Rise Again

  Chapter Ten: The Road Trip

  Chapter Eleven: The Road Trip Continues

  Chapter Twelve: Bunker Life

  Chapter Thirteen: Turmoil in the Streets

  Chapter Fourteen: Butch and Sundance

  Chapter Fifteen: Jack and Harry

  Chapter Sixteen: Past Promises

  Chapter Seventeen: Return to the Blue Wolf Ranch

  Chapter Eighteen: Fun in the Sun

  Chapter Nineteen: The Wild West

  Chapter Twenty: The End of What We Know

  Chapter Twenty One: Where Next?

  Chapter Twenty Two: A Day in the Park

  Chapter Twenty Three: Let’s Organize

  Chapter Twenty Four: The Blizzard of 14

  Chapter Twenty Five: Life in the Rockies

  Chapter Twenty Six: The Basics of Law and Order

  Chapter Twenty Seven: The Trapper

  Chapter Twenty Eight: By the Time You Get to Phoenix

  Chapter Twenty Nine: The Yellowstone Militia

  Chapter Thirty: Jack’s Back

  Chapter Thirty One: Rules

  Chapter Thirty Two: Sunday Service

  Chapter Thirty Three: Autumn in the North East

  Chapter Thirty Four: The Saloon

  Chapter Thirty Five: The Show Me State

  Chapter Thirty Six: Go West Young Man

  Chapter Thirty Seven: Yellowstone Enlightened

  Chapter Thirty Eight: The Lock-Up

  Chapter Thirty Nine: The Plan

  Chapter Forty: The Exchange

  Chapter Forty One: Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

  Chapter Forty Two: Epilogue

  Chapter One: The Island

  The virus that was to change civilization turned out to be not a new virus, but rather a very old virus. In fact it was so old that it had been frozen in ice for the better part of 70,000 years. Its genesis preceded man, and man had co-existed with the virus up to the last ice age. During the time of co-existence man was simply and naturally immune to the virus; just as in today’s world man is immune to thousands of other viruses. Unfortunately, that natural immunity had been lost in the seventy millennia since the last vestiges of the virus had been preserved in ice.

  The glacier that would release the virus into the modern world was like many others in the Arctic in that it was unknown to anyone but locals and scientists. In this case, only a small percentage of the 2,000 residents of the Arctic island of Spitsbergen could identify the glacier that starts on the slopes of the center peak of the mountains known collectively as the Three Crowns. The glacier meanders down to the Kings Fjord, where it typically calves into either small-or-medium-sized icebergs. Few people were aware of the exceptionally large iceberg that separated from the glacier in the early summer, and for a short time came to be known as J30.

  Locals correctly assumed that in the remote past one of their own had named the glacier, but no one remembered why the glacier came to be known as the Two Bears glacier. Two Bears had been calving icebergs into Kings Fjord long before the archipelago of Svalbard was discovered by the Dutch explorer Willem Barents in 1596. The Svalbard icebergs were not problematic since the West Spitsbergen current carried the icebergs north into the Arctic Ocean, far from any commercial shipping lanes.

  After calving the iceberg moved slowly into the main channel of the Kings Fjord and passed within sight of the small scientific community of Ny-Alesund as it moved to the eastern edge of the Greenland Sea. Ny-Alesund, the northernmost permanent community in the world, is located on the West coast of Spitsbergen at the mouth of Kings Fjord. The community houses a collection of research facilities, and a small group of perhaps 40 scientists and support staff work year round. Another 100 or so scientists are seasonal residents so on any given day you can find as few as 40 or as many as 140 people in the village.

  If you look at a map of the Arctic north of the Scandinavian Peninsula you will see that Spitsbergen, the largest island in the small archipelago of Svalbard, is about 450 kilometers long and varies between 40 and 225 kilometers wide. The archipelago belongs to Norway and is located midway between the North Pole and the north coast of Norway, which places Spitsbergen about 1100 very cold kilometers from the Pole. Norway has had sovereignty over the archipelago since the Svalbard treaty of 1920, although no one is sure why Norway wanted sovereignty to begin with. By 1920 coal mining had run its course and the mines were being abandoned by the Russian, American, Norwegian and Dutch mine owners, who had hoped to see a sizeable return on their original investments. Each of them had discovered that the Arctic was a fickle and expensive place in which to place hopes.

  Spitsbergen was originally known as West Spitsbergen, but since there is no East Spitsbergen, the “West” was dropped from common use and today is officially known as Spitsbergen. The island is home to the Zeppelin Station, the Norwegian Polar Institute, the Polish Polar Station and about a dozen other scientific research stations in five different locations around the island, operated by ten different countries. All study the varying facets of the Arctic and arctic weather. The island is also known for its large populations of polar bears and reindeer. Both the polar bear and the reindeer populations far outnumber the human population of the island, and account for much of the tourism enjoyed by Spitsbergen.

  During the 17th and 18th centuries the Spitsbergen harbors were a seasonal home for whaling ships from Norway, the Netherlands, France and England. Tens of thousands of whales were hunted from the surrounding waters and during this time the Greenland Whale became extinct. By 1900 whaling was a footnote in history; the coal had been mined out and the coal towns had been abandoned; mining for metals and minerals had never proven successful and the island was left to science and tourism.

  Another significant historical note claimed by Svalbard is that the Arctic explorer Roald Amundsen used the island of Spitsbergen from which to launch his air journey over the North Pole. This happened after Amundsen and his party reached the South Pole by dog sled in December 1911. In May 1926 Roald Amundsen, along with American explorer Lincoln Ellsworth and Italian explorer and engineer Umberto Nobile, departed from Spitsbergen aboard the dirigible Norge. The three explorers, with a crew of 13 others, flew over the North Pole to Teller, Alaska, in the first flight across the Arctic.

  The geography and topography of Spitsbergen were important factors when it came time to decide where to build a seed vault. The decision was made to locate the vault near Longyearbyen, the capital city of Svalbard located near the center of Spitsbergen. The vault is now known as “The Svalbard International Seed Vault.” Construction of this unique vault began in the summer of 2006 and was completed in early 2008. The initial start-up cost of the construction was estimated at five million dollars and was funded by Norway. However, contributions to the effort were made by many of the world’s countries, corporations and foundations. These contributions were needed to cover the cost of packaging and shipping seeds from around the world, and for the annual operating costs of the project.

  The vault has the capacity to store up to 4.5 milli
on seed packets and to protect them from future catastrophe, such as a nuclear war. The vault was hollowed out of a sandstone mountain near Longyearbyen and its walls are made of steel-reinforced concrete more than a meter thick. It is accessible through a 140 meter-long tunnel with dual blast doors that lead to two separate vaults, each accessible through two air locks. The vaults are cooled to -30° Celsius to preserve the seeds. The hope is that the primary seeds of the world will survive for hundreds if not thousands of years. The vaults themselves are located 130 meters above sea level to ensure they stay dry even if the polar icecaps melt, which would occur following a nuclear war.

  Unique to Spitsbergen is that the island lays at the confluence of four of the world’s seas. The Arctic Ocean lies directly to the north, the Barents Sea is to the east, the Norwegian Sea is to the south and the Greenland Sea is to the west. While the waters of the North Atlantic Ocean tend to swirl generally clockwise, the waters of these northern seas follow a different set of rules.

  Included in this mix is the Fram Straight which links the Arctic Ocean to the north, with the Greenland Sea to the south, and lies between Greenland to the southwest and Svalbard to the east. It is here that the warmer West Spitsbergen Current and the ice-infested East Greenland Current collide. The West Spitsbergen Current carries relatively warm Atlantic water north to the Arctic Ocean, while the East Greenland Current carries cold water and sea ice south out of the Arctic basin. The West Spitsbergen Current is 70 kilometers wide and brushes the west coast of Spitsbergen as it flows north. To the east of Svalbard is the East Spitsbergen Current which is fed by the Norwegian Current and also moves water to the north. Consequently the coastal waters of the Scandinavian Peninsula move through the Barents Sea and into the Arctic Ocean.

  J30 calved as an unusually large iceberg into the Kings Fjord. While icebergs typically show an eighth to a tenth of their mass above sea level, this iceberg displayed one-sixth of its mass above sea level. Archimedes’ principal of buoyancy still applied, but in this case it also showed that the weight of this iceberg was substantially less than normal. The huge ice cave in the middle of J30 accounted for the difference. While J30 was about 50 meters in height, the cave itself was about 20 meters high and 150 meters long, nearly as long as the iceberg. J30 would be officially named J-30/14 by the Polar Institute when it entered the Greenland Sea. J was for the month of June, 14 for the year, and 30 because this was the 30th named iceberg during the month of June. The other 29 all originated from Greenland or farther north in the Arctic Ocean itself. Using hindsight J30 could have been given a more exciting name; this would have been appropriate since J30 carried a threat to civilization.

  The cave inside the iceberg carried millions of tiny pods made of an organic material that was very thin and very light. Each pod was nearly hollow, about the size of a pearl, and was a light brown or tan in color. Each pod had a small circular indentation where it had once attached to a vine.

  Prior to the last ice age this vine was common vegetation that covered the southern Arctic lands. The vine grew at temperatures just above freezing and it thrived throughout the islands of Svalbard due to the relatively moderate arctic climate enjoyed by the archipelago. The vines did not fare well in warmer climates and daytime temperatures above 50 degrees would kill the vine. All of these vines were either killed outright or were frozen in ice during the Weichsel glaciations that began during the Pleistocene era in the sub-arctic regions of the world. The only remnants of this kind of vine were frozen deep in the glaciers of the Arctic and had been there for some 70,000 years. J30 carried the first of the frozen vines and seed pods to see daylight in seventy millennia.

  While the pods were not digestible by humans, many animals used the pods as a valuable food source. The vine thrived during the cold Arctic summers; it lay dormant in the winter. Inside the seed pods was a fruity gel-like material that served as a source of nutrients even during the dormant winter periods. The pods currently inside of J-30’s cave had long since dried out. What was left was a wispy matter that held tiny seeds and looked and acted much like a puffball that children around the world love to pick and blow into the wind. Like puffballs the wispy material inside the pods would touch down indiscriminately, but if dry were likely to be picked up by the next breeze or wind and continue their journey. Unlike the puffball the material inside these pods was not white but a deep green. Coincidentally, the virus was diagnosed first with the fishermen of Emerald, a small coastal village, and the virus came to be known as the Emerald Virus. For a short period of time the pods themselves came to be both known and feared.

  J30 was only the first of the Emerald Virus delivery vehicles, and it exited the Kings Fjord sedately. However, it picked up speed quickly as the iceberg entered the channel between the island known as Prince Charles Foreland, and Spitsbergen. The West Spitsbergen current moved J30 north through the Fram Straights and into the Arctic Ocean where it brushed the edge of the Arctic Gyre in the eastern half of the Arctic Ocean, known as the Eurasian Basin. J30 moved along the southern edge of the Eurasian Basin in a westerly direction toward the area north of Greenland. At about 30 west longitude J30 caught the East Greenland Current and was drawn south through the Denmark Straights between Greenland and Iceland and into the Greenland Sea.

  South of Iceland J30 entered the North Atlantic Current and began to move to the east, towards Ireland, Great Britain and beyond to continental Europe. J30 also began to melt rapidly in the warmer North Atlantic waters of late summer. When the bottom of J30 melted enough to open the cave, the pods began to escape their natural prison and float to the surface. As the cave opening got larger, currents pushed against the opening and caused J30 to roll. The opening was now above the surface. This made little difference since in a matter of days in the North Atlantic Current J30 melted first to the size of a bergy bit, then to the size of a growler, and finally, ceased to exist. In all J30 had lasted 110 days. The millions of pods were now a dark mass floating steadily eastward as they were dispersed by the currents. By the time they reached landfall they would have spread out on a long north-south line and looked much like an invading army approaching the British Isles.

  The southernmost of these pods moved south of Great Britain and made landfall on the Atlantic coasts of France, Spain, and to the south, Portugal. Some pods would be caught in the Azores Current and move toward the equator.

  Those pods that stayed in the center would make landfall first on the west coast of Ireland and then on the west coast of Scotland, the west coast of Wales and the southwest coast of England.

  Those pods that dispersed to the North would pass north of Ireland and Great Britain and would be caught up in the North Atlantic Drift, move into the Slope Current and finally into the Norwegian/North Cape Current where the pods would either make landfall on the Norwegian coast, or move into the Barents Sea, where they would find land on the north coast of Finland before they were captured by the winter freeze. They would remain locked in the pack ice until the late spring thaw. In the late spring and early summer they would continue their eastward journey through the Kara Sea, the Laptev Sea and into the East Siberian Sea. Ironically, a few of these pods would stay to the west of the Scandinavian Peninsula and enter the East Spitsbergen Current where they would be routed north and west back to the island of Spitsbergen where they would enter the Hinlofen Straight from the south and four months after the journey started would make landfall on the east coast of Spitsbergen, less than 100 miles from their start point on the opposite side of the island.

  While J30 was en route, the next delivery vehicle was calving off the Two Bears glacier into Kings Fjord. Unlike J30 the second iceberg was small and it calved at the point where the pods were located. Due to the surface currents and winds most of these pods were to follow J30’s route; however, some of the pods were blown directly across Kings Fjord and landed on the shoreline near the village of Ny-Alesund. This small iceberg would be followed by two more medium-sized icebergs, carrying pods of th
e Emerald Virus, and these icebergs were also bound to follow J30’s route. All four icebergs would calve within 30 days of each other and any one of them would have been enough to cause people from around the world to fear for their lives. Four of them were to prove overwhelming.

  While the pods were insoluble, they were fragile. Many opened as they were thrown against rocky coasts; some were opened by the myriad of sea birds found along the coastlines of the world. Others opened when people or animals stepped on them as they walked along the tide lines. Once opened, the puffball-like material in the pods became dependent on the winds to spread them, and spread them they did. The wide north-to-south dispersion of the pods meant that most of the major winds and air currents of the world would help transport the Emerald Virus. The jet streams, the trade winds and the easterlies would all participate in spreading the virus, and they would do so in a way that would make it impossible to determine the source. The only thing that would be clear was that the Northern Hemisphere would be infected first. However, the Southern Hemisphere would not be far behind.

  The Emerald Virus itself was what you would expect of a filo virus, except unlike the Ebola virus, found in Africa and named after a river in the Republic of the Congo, or the Marburg virus, named after a village in Germany, the Emerald Virus was transported by vegetation. It is believed that the Ebola and Marburg filo viruses were zoonoses, i.e., transmitted by animals to humans. The Emerald Virus did not infect plants, birds, fish or animals. However, it would prove to be extremely efficient at killing people.

  Once it infects the human host, the Emerald Virus inserts its genetic material into the DNA of the host, and directs the host to begin copying the viral DNA code instead of the host DNA code. The Emerald Virus attacked internal organs in general, but this virus also seeks and attaches itself to the cells of the heart. The virus stimulates these cells to grow uncontrollably fast. In fact, unlike a cancer that could take months or years to grow large enough to become fatal, as a filo virus, the Emerald Virus could do the same thing in a matter of weeks.