experiments, citing the Baghdad virus as an example. 'We don't really know what life really is,' they say." He opened the paper to a page inside. "Disturbing Blurb here." He looked over the top of the newspaper at Idris. She immediately saw the concern on his face. He tapped the newspaper as if to emphasize his cause for concern. "Looters! Again! Caught sneaking out of the quarantine around Baghdad!" he snarled. He reached over and with his forefinger pointed to the article to underscore its awful implications. She stretched over to glance at it. The article's headline read: LOOTERS CAUGHT LEAVING QUARANTINED AREA. And the headline of the article next to it read: BV DEATH TOLL NOW AT 106. They both knew that BV was "Baghdad Virus." Lionel scanned the page. There was another and even more disturbing small article. And he also pointed this out to Idris. She leaned to examine it more closely. Lionel read it to her anyway. "At least a hundred Baghdad Virus deaths in Somar al Jadeeda now." Idris took the paper from him and intently read the two inside-page blurbs. Then she looked up at Lionel and slapped the paper down in some anger. "Scares the hell out of you, doesn't it?" she asked him. He nodded. "Can Centers for Disease Control get a handle on this?" Idris was visibly upset. "Lionel, aren't you just damn scared? You really think CDC can come up anything?" She studied him for a second. "Look at how many years they've been fooling around with the AIDS virus. Or Ebola." Lionel shook his head and sighed. "Sure I'm scared. But what can we do?" Idris looked out the window and then back at her husband. Her expression changed to more hopeful. "Well, only a hundred. Almost a year now. Remember when they said the stuff would spread like wildfire — wipe out half the population of the planet? A hundred could be kept isolated. Even in New Sumer." "If that's all," he told her with a frown. "Two weeks after the UN reduced its armed quarantine forces around Baghdad we see looters caught, disease spreading." "World isn't set up to handle problems spilling over international boundaries." "Look at global warming."
The Last Human (a novel)
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