First Kill the Doctor, Then Yourself (Ch18)
Chapter 18 in THEDA'S TIME MACHINE. Jackson is where the action is, but past information is reminding him of a grim fact.
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Eyes front! was the drill command, but Asa Jackson’s eyes scanned every visible inch of the sparse lobby in the place he had been trying to get into since arriving in 1918: the General Building.
Under a single bulb hanging from the ceiling like a pendulum, the front desk clerk tapped with machine gun speed on a massive typewriter, his brows furrowed. After a hundred rounds, he yanked the sheet of paper up and placed it face down on a thick stack to his right. The rapid change in air pressure swayed the single bulb, silvering cobwebs and causing shadows to switch positions. After a clipped exchange with Jackson, who informed him that he was to wait there on orders from Dr. Evora, the clerk wrinkled his nose and paid no mind to the farm boy soldier.
Jackson was glad for his dismissive rudeness. His mind ticked in time with the typing to make a few critical observations.
The interior door behind the clerk was made of thick steel with a single lock that belonged more in a prison than a medical building. Many of the Fort Riley administration-type buildings had a reception area with a lot of interior windows, but not here. The glass had been removed and boarded up, hastily, from the looks of the boards, some of which were crooked. Twice now men, doctors by their dress, exited the door which shut behind them but not in the natural way of a door closing on its own. It was pulled from the other side and as soon as it clicked shut, he felt more than heard the deadbolt slamming into place, causing the bulb to quiver.
Jackson wasn’t surprised by the security. He was remembering what his father had told him about his last days at Fort Riley before getting shipped to the Great War Front: I never actually went in there, but I can tell you that we hauled a lot of bags of something from there. On the side was a large door where, at night, we would be ordered to pull one of the Packards up to it and load these big burlap bags to the dump. Never knew what was in there, but it stunk. Smelled like rotting meat.
“Doctor Evora should be out in a minute. You could wait outside, if you like,” the clerk suddenly stopped typing and stared.
Jackson smiled with polite country-boy innocence. “Thank you, sir, but I’ll wait here, if you don’t mind.”
It wasn’t hard to tell that he did indeed mind, but also couldn’t override orders from Evora, who was one of the head doctors. “Suit yourself.”
Jackson dropped the smile when the clerk went back to his papers, continuing his train of thought. The level of security wasn’t surprising, but he was surprised at the faces of the doctors that had just left. There were red marks across their cheeks on across their foreheads, which were dotted with sweat. It was as if they had been wearing some sort of mask for quite some time.
Now his thoughts turned to the late Dr. Andersen, and his last conversation with him before he journeyed from 1946 to 1918.
“Thrax is a doctor. He’ll be among the doctors at Fort Riley in the top-secret area of the General Building. I don’t have a photograph of him. All photographs are missing. He didn’t just cover his tracks, he obliterated anything to do with his real self, Dr. Benjamin Smith. There is no Ben Smith anymore. There’s just Thrax.
“When you find him, kill him. Your best bet to find him is on or right before the date of March 6th, 1918. The first man will report to the Infirmary with the flu on March 7th. His name is Albert Gitchell. He’s a cook. He’s patient zero of the Spanish Flu.”
“Why him?” Jackson had asked. “If this germ was concocted by Thrax in that building you’re telling me about, then wouldn’t one of them get it?”
“I have only one theory that may answer that question. It’s one of two possible outcomes. The first, is that this man was deliberately given the flu and sent out to spread it.”
“And the second?”
“There is an animal between the creation of the flu and its subsequent release into the world.”
“Animal?”
“A pig, most likely. A pig that a cook may handle post- or pre-slaughter that may be the carrier. Watch for it.”
And today he saw it. He had driven Dr. Evora to and from the General Building for weeks now and every time he passed the little, broken-down animal pen and shelter, he only paid it a glance before it was in the rearview mirror. He figured it was left over from earlier times at Fort Riley. Now, because of the surge of troops and the need to feed them, the livestock were kept in huge structures in adjacent towns and further from the base, where the downwind wouldn’t carry the smell of burning the incredible amounts of manure. But this morning he saw it. There were animals in the little pen. Pigs.
Dr. Evora had been unusually quiet, but Jackson turned on the country charm. “Haven’t seen them hogs before. Looks like quality stock.”
Evora answered casually, “Oh, that’s a new experiment we’re working on.”
This is it. “Oh?”
Evora laughed. “Keeping the finest pork for the hardworking doctors.”
There was always a possibility that Evora really thought that. From all his interactions with the doctor, he was pretty sure he was not Thrax, but now there was another monkey wrench thrown into the mix. And it involved his daughters. He remembered what he had read in his father’s war time journal: The doc with the beautiful daughter.
“You really should wait outside,” the clerk started in again, still pounding at the keys, breaking into his thoughts.
Jackson growled, “You wanna make me?”
The clerk’s head whipped around and Jackson laughed. “Just joshin’ you.”
Jackson’s thoughts returned to his conversation with Andersen. “What if I catch it?” He had asked.
“I don’t think I have to tell you what to do if you fall ill. I don’t think I have to tell you what would happen again in the world if you were to come back to 1946 with that old enemy. First you eliminate Thrax. But if you fall ill, you know what happens. It’s the way of these missions.”
Andersen didn’t have to spell it out any plainer than that. If he came down with the flu, he’d be stuck in 1918. And either it would kill him outright, or he’d have to do the job himself. Those were the only two options.
Then Jackson had asked the question that had really been on his mind from the moment Andersen approached him for this assignment.
“What if I just kill the cook? If he’s sick and I kill him, it could end it all. Save millions of lives.”
Andersen had shaken his head sadly. “No. You can’t. The Spanish flu is a catastrophic event, yes, there is no question about it. But it’s too big for either of us to tamper with. By subverting such a major event in history, we could be unknowingly creating a worse one. Something far worse. I learned that the hard way the first time. The mission was to kill Hitler. I was naïve to believe that such a thing was even possible. Stopping the second world war would also eliminate our memory of it. Then where would we be? What would become of us?”
“Then why kill Thrax at all? Why not just allow him to continue to do what he wants?”
Andersen looked him straight in the eye. “We’re preventing the future atrocities he’ll commit. The ones we don’t know about yet. Our responsibility is for what is yet to come, but we also cannot tamper with what we know has already happened.”
Now, sitting in the lobby of the building where behind that door the destruction of millions of lives was being manufactured, Jackson understood Andersen’s logic, but the rebellion that had built in him from the moment of the conversation with Andersen came back at full force.
His own mother had died of the flu after his birth in October of 1918.
Killing Thrax was a given. But Jackson was going to kill the cook. And get his mother back.
The door opened and Dr. Evora came out. He looked tired. Even worse than usual. Jackson stood at attention. The clerk sniffed.
“Private Jackson,” Evora said. “Could you do me a favor? My daughter, Theda, is wandering around the town. Someone has seen her over by the display aeroplanes by Army City. Would you please go retrieve her? I fear she’ll just get lost out on her own.”
“Yes, sir. Where would you like me to bring her?”
“Stop back here, please. There is something urgent I would like to tell her.”
“Very well, sir.” He exited the building, seething with disappointment. He needed to get inside that building. Now, he was going to have to do what he wanted to do the least: find Theda Evora.
