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year.’
    She responded by telling him she couldn’t. His reply … a single K.
    Macy fumed. She hated that. One letter. As if she wasn’t worth the time to add the ‘O’. She always over thought the simple ‘K’ response. Was the person mad, annoyed or were they trying to play mind games by making her guess why they only replied with a ‘K’.
    It was a pet peeve of hers and she wasted seven minutes of her break thinking about why he would just send a ‘K’.
    There was nothing more that Macy would like than to go on vacation with the boys. She hadn’t taken them away or gone away with them since the divorce four years earlier. But Macy couldn’t. Not only wouldn’t George give her the time off, she just couldn’t lose a week’s pay.
    Getting a break from Littlefield was a nice thought. The most excitement they had was when the Twist and Twirl ran out of chocolate ice cream.
    Littlefield was boring and calm. How could it not be? It was far removed from everything, it would be nothing less than a major fluke for anything big to ever happen there.

SEVEN – MOVED
SAT Biomedical Research BSL4 Facility
San Antonio Texas
June 18
     
    Not even a half of bottle of scotch took Charles from the dark places in his mind. The thoughts were still there and they swirled as much as the bed did. He couldn’t get the Chimpanzees out of his mind, what he had done to them, what the germ truly was.
    Not that he didn’t see it in full force back in the Congo, but to be the cause was another story.
    It was real. Too real and not only was the virus deadly, it was something they should not have.
    The true nail in the coffin on what he had to do was when Emir said to him. “We have a virus that even a terrorist would be scared to touch.”
    With those words of wisdom from the young man, Charles believed he knew what he had to do.
    Then again, he should have called Rupert while drunk.
    “Charles, listen to me, you are inebriated.”
    “I know.”
    “You’ll think more clear in the morning.”
    “We need to get rid of it. Destroy it.”
    “You and I both know that would be foolish,” said Rupert.
    “It would be foolish to keep it.”
    “It would be foolish not to.”
    The conversation went round and round until Charles hung up. He slept a few hours, enough to get some of the booze out of his system, took a cab back to the pub to get his car and then went to work.
    It was seven in the morning and it surprised him that security stated, “Surprised you weren’t here this morning.”
    Conrad made a similar comment.
    Did something happen?
    He made his way to his lab floor, Emir was the only one there.
    “Did something happen earlier with the chimps?” Charles asked.
    “No.” Emir shook his head.
    “You look frightened, what happened?”
    “I’ll tell you…” Rupert entered the room.
    When his superior walked in, immediately Charles’ mind went to an accident with the virus or that perhaps the government found out they had it.
    Rupert continued. “We didn’t know what you were going to do.”
    “I’m sorry. Who is ‘we’?”
    “Myself, the investors. Investors invest. They want to protect their investment. So fearful that you were going to destroy it, Dr. Beutel removed samples to take to his facility in Germany.”
    Charles’ mouth dropped open. “Since when is a virus an investment.”
    “When there is a cure.”
    Like a madman, Charles laughed. “There is no cure. It’s an antidote, inoculation. You get it, you’re done.”
    “If there is an outbreak, yes, there can be loss of lives, but think of the lives saved by inoculating other regions.”
    “By the time this country get FDA approval and then mass produces, this virus will have wiped us into extinction.”
    “This country.”
    Charles groaned. “This is why you allowed him to take it to Germany.”
    “He felt it was best.”
    “What’s best is we destroy it. All of it. Emir, tell him.”
    Emir replied. ‘It is too dangerous. We have been