“Someone who had a good thing going until you got too nosey,” the man replied, sweeping his arm around the room in a wide gesture. “This is my home, and you invaded it.”

“Aw, come on,” Laura argued. “You couldn’t live here.”

The man smiled again. “Not as a full-time habitation, but a place where I can work out my plans. This is kind of a retreat for me.”

He sat down on the stool but pointed the gun at the vent. “I know you’re down there, young lady. Get out here now and stop eavesdropping.”

Liz quietly came through the vent opening and stood next to Laura. Both girls realized that the only way out of this room was to get by the man. He had a gun.

Liz pointed at him accusingly. “You’re the man who crawled through the vents. You’ve been on the other side of this place. We saw your notes and your work area.”

The man nodded. “The Trogl Project was an early 20th century governmental scheme to create a vaccine not only for the Spanish flu but for any future pandemics coming through America. This was kind of like a biological fortress, with testing and planning going on. Vaccines were being made in one side of this center while animal experiments were being carried out in others. Codes and secrecy were all over the place. There were even early plans to use this in warfare against an enemy, but that was dropped almost immediately. At that time of our history, this country had too many morals to make it work. However, this work carried on in secrecy for decades. This was closed down and covered over by natural surroundings until I happened upon it while . . . er . . . trespassing last year during the camp’s off-season.”

He gazed at the ceiling as if ready to tell a story. Liz moved back toward the vent.

Wild Tricks
The roar of the gunshot filled the room. Laura grabbed at her ears, fighting the pain. Liz fell to the ground in fear.

“Now, I shot a nice neat hole in the ceiling,” the man said, “just to show you that I’m not afraid to use this gun. Try another little storybook escape again and I’ll make sure that the ceiling is not what I hit.”

He leaned back. “My research is almost done. All I need to do is mail my envelopes.”

He nodded toward some large, clear-plastic boxes on the table. Laura saw that each contained test tubes, some tweezers and forks, small postage envelopes and some rubber gloves. The boxes were heavily duct-taped shut, but each had two large holes on each side of the box. The gloves were taped securely over the holes so that a person could slip his hands inside them from outside the box.

The man noticed her curiosity. “That’s my little laboratory. A portable little chemistry kit that’s easy to carry around and utilize at anytime. You like it?”

“I don’t understand it.”

“It’s simple. Whenever I’m working with the Spanish flu samples or my other chemicals, I can’t afford to get infected, so I put on the glove—do you see how I taped them onto the box so I just slip my hands into them?—and work within the confines of the box. My skin never has contact with the material inside.”

He motioned toward the outside. “I walk down to the small pond at the base of this hill. It’s clear water, and I submerge the box under the water while I work. It’s clear water so that I can see what I’m doing, but should the virus leak out of the box, the water will keep the vapors from reaching my nostrils.”

Liz stood up slowly. “What are you up to?”

The man waved the gun in the air. “Well, young ladies, I’m going to be writing my Christmas letters. Or birthday letters. Or chain letters, whichever I’m in the mood to write at the time. I’ll send them to some fortunate individuals who will have the surprise of their life whenever they open them.

“Imagine,” he said with a chuckle, “a grandma opening up an anonymous greeting card and getting a whiff of this chemical! Or the rich, fat millionaire who gets an envelope telling him that it’s his payroll bonus. What a bonus! I might even send out a couple that tells some poor saps that they won the publisher’s sweepstakes!” He leaned back and roared in glee.

“He’s a terrorist,” Liz said to Laura.

The man stopped laughing and narrowed his eyes. “Don’t you dare call me that. I am not a terrorist, young lady. I’m a crusader, a freethinker. I’m making a statement to the world, letting them know about the injustice of mankind. I have the last traces of the Spanish flu left anywhere in the world outside of the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, and I mean to make use of these precious vials.”

He took a deep breath. “We live in a nihilistic world, girls. Nothing makes sense, and the insanity gets worse and worse as the days go by.”

Spreading Disease
Laura shrugged one shoulder. “And so you’re going to make sense of it all by sending poison letters to people?”

The man shook his head. “I’m a missionary, sending out the necessary ingredients to bring this country back together again. People are too independent of one another. Too high-tech, too self-centered.”

He pointed at the boxes. “When the Spanish flu struck this country in 1918, people came to need each other in order to live. Time stopped, and the population took an accounting of what they were doing with their lives. People were humbled. They were brought down low. It was good for all of us.”

He looked at them. “My little letter campaign is going to bring America to that once again.”

Laura stepped forward, steadying herself. “No. The Spanish flu caused massive quarantines. People stayed indoors more than ever. They kept away from grocery stores, movie theaters, shopping centers and libraries. Paranoia ran rampant. Fear and anger ruled the streets. Most of all, people died. Many, many people died.”

She pointed at him. “You’re not a missionary in any sense of the word.”

The man folded his arms. “And you are?”

“I’m going to be, “ Laura said. “This world has seen too much Hollywood religion and artsy spirituality. I was as guilty as the rest of the people of my faith. I guess you could say ...”—she glanced back at Liz—“that I lost my identity. I lost the memory of who I was. So now I’m starting new, in telling people of a new hope, and that’s in Jesus.”

The man rolled his eyes. “Excellent. I’m in the company of a fanatic.”

“Call me what you will,” Laura said, pointing to Dee lying on the ground. “But you’re not going to harm anyone else.”

The man looked her over and laughed. “You’re so dizzy that you can hardly stand up. You’ve got an arm that’s caked with blood, and you can’t be half as tall as me. You’re going to try to stop me?”

He raised his gun. “I’ve had enough of this chit-chat, even though I admire you for your attempt at grasping intellectual thoughts well beyond your reach. Now move away from that vent and head over here. You’re not going to be a distraction to me anymore.”

He motioned toward Liz. “You seem to have more strength than this girl. Grab this man by his ankles and start sliding him through the doorway.”

Liz grasped Dee’s trousers by the cuffs and pulled as hard as she could. He was moving across the linoleum, but not as quickly as the man liked.

“Move him, I said! Oh, come on, now.”

He grew exasperated. “Let me help you move him. Holding the gun on her, he grabbed one of the pant legs as Liz pulled on the other. Dee was now sliding across the floor and through the doorway.

“Good,” the man puffed as he stood facing Liz in the hallway. “I’ll take care of him after I’ve handled the two of you. Keep moving him down the hallway, toward that closet. Don’t get any ideas about running away, because the end of this hallway leads to nowhere. I know this underground bunker like the back of my hand.”

He turned to get Laura, adjusting his gun as he walked toward the nearest desk. “Now, my little fanatic, you’re going to come with me. Just—”

He stopped, frozen in his tracks.

Laura was standing in the center of the room, the two plastic boxes balanced above her head, filled with the virus test tubes. “If you make one move,” she said, “I’ll shatter these boxes right next to you. Both you, and I will catch the Spanish flu. And I have seen no antidote in this room or anywhere else in this bunker.”