The Universal Vaccine by Nancy Smith

Author:Nancy Smith [Smith, Nancy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Colin Barnes, pandemic, John Scalz, John Brunner, Andy Weir, Kim Stanley Robinson, vaccine, environment, Neal Stephson, hard science fiction, Michael Crighton, Dystopian, Margaret Atwood, overpopulation, Chris Lowry, flu, Lisa Moore, Nancy Kress
ISBN: 9780991390731
Goodreads: 37944144
Publisher: First Look Publishing (Austin)
Published: 2017-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

11

It was National Puzzle Day and Peabody sat at his desk thinking over the first of the ten brainteasers that had been posted online to celebrate. The first puzzle was a Sudoku with many more spaces than numbers.

Peabody was curious. He liked to explore and understand every puzzle he came across. That is how he got his nickname. He’d been called Peabody since childhood after the Mr. Peabody and Sherman cartoon.

These kinds of puzzles relaxed him so that he could concentrate on the bigger mysteries in his life— like where was Nick?

Nick Calhone was a nice guy. He had never developed a taste for the wet work like some of the other men had. Peabody should have never sent Nick to that lab. It was most likely that Nick had just taken off. What was he going to do about it? There was no retirement from this job. If he couldn’t find Nick soon and talk him off the ledge, Peabody would have to text Darwin.

Peabody got his instructions from Darwin—always by text. They had never spoken in person or over the telephone. Peabody’s crew had done a lot of jobs for Darwin—jobs all over the globe, but mostly in the United States. The jobs were usually innocuous. They’d watch somebody in Florida or special deliver a box to somebody in New Jersey.

Peabody suspected that Darwin wasn’t one person. He’d studied the texts and noticed that the word choice, use of shortcuts, and abbreviations varied from place to place. He thought Darwin was a group and he believed that they had offices in Austin, Shreveport, Atlantic City and West Palm Beach. Not the biggest cities. Not the hubs. He thought that was interesting too.

“Hey, where’s Peabody?” he heard one of his men call.

Peabody looked up from his computer, adjusted his tie and waited for the man to enter is office. In a moment, he wasn’t disappointed.

“Yes?” Peabody said.

“The girl and the nosy reporter have gone missing.”

“Gone missing?” he used the quiet, calm tone of voice he knew disconcerted his men. They would much rather he yell at them. “How long have they been gone?”

“Four hours.”

“Well. You better find them then.”

“Yes, sir.”

Another man appeared behind him. “I’ve been checking area hospitals for Nick. I found a John Doe in a 24/7 emergency room in San Marcos.”

“Description?”

“Male, but older, maybe late fifties.”

“Injuries?”

“They won’t say. HIPPA.”

The two soldiers stared at Peabody. Peabody looked back and forth between the two men, his forehead crinkled in concentration.

“I want the identity of every one of the seventy-five verified. Now. Right now. You got that?” They had kept fingerprints where the skin wasn’t too burned, blood and hair samples of every person from the lab before they released the remains. “Start with the father of Isa Vedkka,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

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