Finally, Jackson leaned back in his chair, “Okay, you lost me at the MHC junction.”
“Gentlemen,” the President called out and Jackson turned to the president, but Sutton kept typing and raised his eyebrows to indicate that he was listening. “Care to explain in words that others can pronounce?” the President asked.
“Sorry, Mr. President,” Jackson said and then leaned over, looking at Sutton’s laptop screen. “Is that Dr. Skannish you’re talking to?”
Scoffing, “No,” Sutton chuckled. “He’s back in the lab and I’ll have to pry his ass out to talk this over with him. I’m typing the highlights of this report for the teams in Atlanta. Who put this together?”
“Um, I did. Last night,” Paterson mumbled.
“Paterson, I need you to show some of my associates how to put together a report because they suck,” Sutton said, typing away. “I’m sorry I didn’t get to finish it yet, but can I ask you some questions while I type?”
“Sure,” Paterson said, feeling very proud.
“Have you gotten numbers yet from the UK?” Sutton asked.
Nodding as he flipped over several pages, “Yes, and they are very similar to ours, percentage wise, with the exception of more dead,” Paterson told him.
“Dr. Sutton,” the President called out. “Would you like your team in Atlanta to have a copy of that report?”
Sutton’s hands froze over the keyboard and he turned to the president. “We can do that? It says, ‘Top Secret’ on the cover,” he asked.
“I am the President,” he laughed and Sarah stepped up behind him. “You do have a secure fax there, don’t you?”
“Yes sir. Let me pull up the number,” Sutton said, grabbing the mouse and clicking it while Sarah walked down and stood behind him.
She leaned over his shoulder and pointed at the screen, “That’s a secured fax number,” she said.
“Perfect, that’s right outside the main lab,” Sutton sighed as Sarah wrote the number down on a scrap of paper.
As she walked past the president, she grabbed a report off a stack and then walked out another set of doors behind the president. “I thought I was going to have to type all that up,” Sutton grinned, then stood up as he took a cable out of his laptop bag and plugged it into the back of his laptop.
Across from him, Paterson leaned over the table and grabbed the other end of the video cable and plugged it into a slot at the center of the table. “Okay, Mr. President,” Sutton said, sitting back down. “As you’ve read in Paterson’s report, he hypothesized that the virus has mutated. He’s correct, it has into at least two different mutations. Atlanta sent me the information, that’s some of what I was reading,” Sutton said, tapping his keyboard.
“The thing nobody can figure out is how we found them dispersed over such a large area,” Sutton told him as the screens around the room showed his laptop screen and they saw Sutton open up an e-mail. “Turns out, Mr. James Taylor flew out of London the day after he’d landed. First to Mexico City for a day, then he flew into New York and stayed for a few hours, then headed to Chicago, and then LA. Remember, my second report stated Taylor visited all three US cities over forty-eight hours but it turns out, Mr. Taylor also has a hobby,” Sutton said, clicking an attachment.
A picture opened, showing a middle-aged man sitting in a park and feeding pigeons. Next to him was an older man, looking at the camera. “The man feeding the pigeons is Mr. James Taylor. The man sitting beside him is over Tong Shipping’s New York office. It turns out that Mr. Taylor did this in every city he visited that had a park with pigeons. From Greece to L.A.,” Sutton sighed and everyone gasped. “Yeah, now we know how it got around the globe into the bird population so fast.”
Clicking open another picture, it showed the same scene but caught Taylor mid sneeze. “Holy mother,” Jackson gasped.
“Was thinking the same thing,” Sutton said, closing the pictures. “Birds spread the mutated viruses. Before we lost contact with the CDC team in Mexico City, they had reported large flocks of dead birds.”
“What do you mean, ‘lost contact’?” the President asked.
Looking up the table, “They lost contact with them twenty-four hours ago,” Sutton answered, looking at the president. “Last contact, the team was reporting millions dead and the city had lost power.”
Sitting up, the president flipped through the report. “I know I saw projections for Mexico,” he mumbled.
“Yes sir,” Paterson said, looking down and flipping over a few pages. “Page one hundred and fifty-two.”
“The embassy has been sealed?” the President asked.
“Yes sir, but over a dozen inside are sick with four deaths, so we told the ambassador to stay in place until we could send assets to pull him out,” Paterson answered.
“Mr. President,” Sutton said and he looked down the table at him. “Mexico City is a packed city like New York. The fact that New York has better sanitation is the only reason it took a while to snowball.”
Panting with wide eyes, “What did you mean by skewing the numbers?” the President asked.
“Kids skewed the numbers, showing we had a higher survival rate,” Sutton said. “From birth to fifteen, the mortality drops to seventy-five percent or so. I would have to run the numbers, but I’m sure I’m close.”
“Well, that’s good,” the President sighed as Sarah walked back in.
“Ah, Mr. President,” Sutton said slowly. “No, it’s not. Not with this death rate. Who will take care of the kids? The average kid thinks food comes from a box, can, or McDonald’s.”
Slumping his shoulders, the president leaned back in his chair. “Can you give me numbers that I can
