White Wasteland by Jeff Kirkham (best color ebook reader .txt) 📕

10,000 times, then bursting that cell in under ten hours. She saw the copies of the virus in her imagination, hiding in the delicate alveoli of the human lung, saturating its branching filaments, penetrating the thin mesh meant to mix air with blood. Now, flush with blood and air, the greedy virus explodes outward, setting up camp in the most aggressive immune environment in the body: the human lung.

But the serious killer wouldn’t be the virus. The human immune system would then marshal billions of warriors of its own, a cytokine storm, and it would send them to its vulnerable regions, launching defenders at the virus with a ferocity that doomed the very ground upon which the battle would be fought.

The body’s own cytokines would obliterate the fine capillaries, trigger a massive influx of inflammation and ultimately drive the body to produce fiber-like connective tissue, enmeshing the lung in debris, fibrin and collagen.

The human immune response would wage a worthy battle against the virus, but in a young body, the response would bring such destruction that the lung would choke with the waste of battle and the patient would die, no longer able to extract life-giving oxygen from the air.

Emily knew that if she autopsied the girl, she would find a lung more like fiberglass than the pink spongy tissue of a healthy lung.

She searched her mind for a treatment that would stop the onslaught of the body’s own cytokines, but she knew immune therapies had barely emerged in the world of modern medicine. In this “battlefield infirmary,” those experimental therapies might as well be Star Trek science fiction for as much good as they would do. Even the Homestead’s “natural” remedies of elderberry and echinacea would be useless or even damaging. Strengthening the over-powering immune system would be the last thing they should do. The old and the very young were doing better in this phase of the virus, since their weaker immune systems responded more-moderately to the virus.

“Is there any way we can suppress the immune system in the young adults? Give them a better chance by tapping the brakes on their immune response?” Emily wondered. Certainly, modern medicine had ways of restraining the immune system, but they didn’t have access to a big enough pharmacopoeia to provide for such an approach.

“Hmm.” Doc Erik considered the idea. “I suppose we could try the same natural remedies used for rheumatoid arthritis. That’s an autoimmune disorder. Maybe the same plants or pharma might slow a cytokine storm. We’d have to be careful not to suppress the immune system of anyone who has already crossed into the stage of the infection where they’re experiencing a bacterial infection. Pneumonia.”

“Oh,” Emily realized what he meant. After the siege launched by the body’s immune system, most patients’ lungs would be stripped clean of natural defenses. Bacteria would invade in a second-wave attack. The patients would need all the immune support they could get if they survived the initial virus. Given that the Homestead only had a few types of fish antibiotics and not much else, there would be a limit to what they could do to defeat a bacterial infection. The body’s immune system needed to go into that next fight as strong as possible.

“Is it even worth it to try to thread that needle—try to give opposing medications to beat the autoimmune attack and the bacterial attack?” The answer went way over her pay grade.

“I think so. We should try it. There’ll be a lull between the immune system over-reaction and the ramp up of the bacteria. If we limit our treatment to young adults and if we halt the immune suppression after the first forty-eight hours, then we might be able to do some good. Our next question is: who the hell knows which natural remedies combat rheumatoid arthritis? None of us doctor-types gave much consideration to natural quackery back in the days when we had modern medicines.”

“I think I have just the person.” Emily headed off to search the plastic-sheeted cubicles that had once been the Ross family mansion.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Jenna,” Doc Erik looked up when Jenna Ross came into the infirmary, led by her daughter.

Emily presented her mother. “Here is our expert in fake medicine. She knows everything there is to know about herbal nonsense.”

Jenna gave her daughter the stink eye and turned to the handsome physician. “What can I help you with, Doctor?”

“Which herbs function as immune system modulators? Maybe, the kinds of herbals you once used to fight rheumatoid arthritis or maybe lupus?”

“Easy,” she answered, obviously pleased with herself. She shot her daughter a smirk. “I have an over-active immune system myself, and when I was working on getting pregnant my naturopath practitioner gave me a list of herbs, berries and roots.”

Doc Erik interjected. “Maybe start with herbs we’re likely to find in Utah.”

Jenna Ross went down the list. “Not elderberry. That’s an immune booster. Not echinacea either. I think we have hops growing around the tennis court. That’s an immune moderator. I don’t believe we grow turmeric, but I probably have a bunch stashed away in my kitchen. Also, stinging nettle suppresses inflammation, but that might only work as a topical salve.”

“Hops—as in the little flowers they use to make beer?” Doc Erik asked.

“Exactly.”

“Fabulous,” Doc Erik stopped her there. “Do you want a new job? I’ve seen you emptying bed pans and that’s important, but I need you on my team.”

Amidst the fresh death and terror of the flu epidemic, Jenna Ross smiled. “I would be delighted to join your team.”

Even with his face curled into a contorted mask and his hands twisted into claws, Jacquelyn still recognized the man, dead and frozen against the ten at the Upper Barricade. His soul had likely been taken in the night, rigor mortis and the overnight freeze stiffening his joints and muscles, curling his extremities like a trout on a frying pan. He’d been ordered to leave the Homestead eight days before.

Ryan Bernhardt came