The Protectors Read Free Page B

miraculously produced the perfect immunization or cure. The cure always worked, and it was always expensive. A little plague would vanish from the earth and we would have a reprieve until the next winter."
    "Because they were making the plagues," yell s out Little Eaton who has probably heard the story a dozen times already.
    Broily sh akes his head. "We didn't know that. It wasn't until the Great Plague that governments were able to prove this crime. By the time they shut everything down, it was too late." The old man remains silent for a moment, his jaw tight. "They called it T-path. Some scientists think it was a synthesis of Spanish Influenza and measles. Like Spanish Flu it took the strongest and left the young, old, and weak alone, something about using the body's immune system against itself. 'A work of art' one scientist described it on television before they knew the cure didn't work. I think they were even proud of T-path. Those brilliant minds in those laboratories were drunk on the power of creating and taking lives. There was no one to stop or even watch them, just as long as the profit margin remained in the black. Competition was growing fierce among the pharmas, sometimes we had two or three little plagues a year. We'd buy the cure they produced in their laboratories and go on back to our oblivious lives."
    "But the cure didn't work on T -path," I whisper surprising myself.
    "They waited too long," continue s Broily not hearing me. "I'm sure there was some sort of marketing formula for the best time to release the cure for highest profits. Typically it was at the point of maximum worldwide press coverage to optimize the publicity of the cure. Usually that meant several million dead, but T-path was different. By the time the cure was introduced, the original contagion had mutated, the cure didn't work. The irony is that those who caught the original T-path, and received the immunization, had immunity to the T-path 4, Red T-path, and Cromel's mutations. The problem was that the T-path mutations inherited the originally designed T-path long gestation period. This was in order to spread the contagion to as many people as possible before that person became obviously sick, and thus increase exposure and subsequent profits."
    "Lot of good it did them," grunt s Grandpa beside me.
    "The governments and the corporations tried to step in, but all they really wanted to do was quarantine the sic k so those folks would die without infecting their privileged selves. If you tested positive for any form of T-path, they locked you up in camps. Everyone who was immune, of course, still tested positive so we were herded into the camps with the rest. Little food or water, no medical care. Desperate men and women with a ticking death sentence. All the fear and depravity of mankind burst forth eventually in the world and for those of us with immunity all we could do was hide...and endure. Once enough folks died we were able to break out of the camps and return to our homes. But it had all changed."
    I glance at mother. S he stares at the ceiling vacantly as her hands knit. I wonder if she was remembering or seeking to distract herself.
    He indicate s those in the room, "All of us here are descended from someone who received the cure and either escaped from those horrific camps or hid away somewhere."
    "And now we're immune," sa ys little Ginny cheerfully hugging a soft lump of dirty cloth that might once have resembled an animal.
    "Yes," answer s the old man. "I'm sure T-path and all its mutations are still out there somewhere. Maybe dormant, sleeping for now. It never infected animals, of course, that wouldn't have been very profitable, so maybe without human hosts it is truly gone. For all we know it's still ravaging other parts of the world."
    "Tell us about the years after," cr ies another of the little ones. "How the Dark Times and how the Shriekers came, and the war they fought so they could protect us."
    Broily gazes around