cadavers all buried in a common pit.
Miles had contacted the authorities before he began work. The magistrate was in the town of Longyearbyen, a village six hundred miles from the North Pole, one of the northernmost pieces of land in the world, on the edge of the ice pack. Longyearbyen administered the smaller hamlet of Barentsburg, where he was digging. It was an old mining camp, which for three-quarters of the year was frozen wilderness. Even during the peak of the summer season Barentsburg had only some four hundred residents. But the residents Miles was interested in were long dead.
The magistrate’s answer to Miles’s question lifted his hopes. No one had been near the mass grave of the 1918 flu victims in Barentsburg in nearly forty years. The last person who had examined the site was Miles himself. Back then, he had traveled the fifty-five miles to the village by dogsled. Now he would take a Land Rover. When he went to Barentsburg that winter long ago, the little village had been clad in the romance of the Arctic ice and snow. Now, in early autumn, the place had lost most of that romance. Barentsburg was a desolate dump. Coated with coal dust, it stood ramshackle and depressing on the edge of a bleak sea.
When Miles arrived this time, there had been a great willingness to help. It was almost as if unearthing a pandemic might liven the place up a bit. Six young diggers, coal mine workers, had stepped forward to help, for the modest fee of a hundred dollars each.
Miles knew the grave held seventy-two people. The history was grim. In 1918, a village celebration had turned into a death sentence. A ship had put into Advent Bay, and two men on board had brought the deadly contagion with them. They had arrived in Barentsburg by dogsled, ready towork in the coal mine. They had been lavishly welcomed: the village had prepared a feast for the newcomers and everyone had turned out to celebrate. There was grilled fish, blueberries, griddle cakes, and whiskey consumed in the largest structure in town, a church, with people crammed cheek by jowl on the wooden benches in the overheated room, talking, laughing, eating. That proximity had been their doom. Within a day the first had fallen, in extreme distress.
First came the high fever, facial discoloration, deep brown splotches, and purple “heliotrope” rash. Next came the telltale cyanosis, victims blue-faced from the lack of oxygen. The feet turning black was the indicator of eventual death. The victims were a horror show of symptoms, with blood-colored saliva foaming out of their mouths and rectal bleeding from the intestines. Some died within hours, delirious with the high fever, gasping for air as they drowned in their own blood.
The whole village had been wiped out. Only five adults survived. The rest were buried hastily in a deep pit. What a tragedy, Miles allowed himself to think, as he watched the generator pump steam into the permanently frozen ground.
Miles took a deep breath to quell his excitement. There was a good chance they would be able to biopsy the tissue if it had been frozen all this time. This deadly pestilence was all but extinct, but he would seek it out, resurrect it, bottle it, and send it back to the civilized world, to Paul Oakley.
Miles and Oakley had been comrades-in-arms for decades against the new influenza strains that were emerging in the world. Most recently, they had been conducting clinical trials using new vaccines and antiviral drugs.
Paul Oakley had already tried to get samples from the high Arctic. He had funded a team last year to try to get tissue from the old miners’ graveyard in Longyearbyen. The mission had been only partially successful. This year they might succeed in Barentsburg.
This was not a mere ego trip, or the resolution of an unfulfilled scientific quest from decades ago. Miles and Oakley knew it was a critical race against time. Tissue samples were essential to discovering the genomic connection to the avian flu
Miles had contacted the authorities before he began work. The magistrate was in the town of Longyearbyen, a village six hundred miles from the North Pole, one of the northernmost pieces of land in the world, on the edge of the ice pack. Longyearbyen administered the smaller hamlet of Barentsburg, where he was digging. It was an old mining camp, which for three-quarters of the year was frozen wilderness. Even during the peak of the summer season Barentsburg had only some four hundred residents. But the residents Miles was interested in were long dead.
The magistrate’s answer to Miles’s question lifted his hopes. No one had been near the mass grave of the 1918 flu victims in Barentsburg in nearly forty years. The last person who had examined the site was Miles himself. Back then, he had traveled the fifty-five miles to the village by dogsled. Now he would take a Land Rover. When he went to Barentsburg that winter long ago, the little village had been clad in the romance of the Arctic ice and snow. Now, in early autumn, the place had lost most of that romance. Barentsburg was a desolate dump. Coated with coal dust, it stood ramshackle and depressing on the edge of a bleak sea.
When Miles arrived this time, there had been a great willingness to help. It was almost as if unearthing a pandemic might liven the place up a bit. Six young diggers, coal mine workers, had stepped forward to help, for the modest fee of a hundred dollars each.
Miles knew the grave held seventy-two people. The history was grim. In 1918, a village celebration had turned into a death sentence. A ship had put into Advent Bay, and two men on board had brought the deadly contagion with them. They had arrived in Barentsburg by dogsled, ready towork in the coal mine. They had been lavishly welcomed: the village had prepared a feast for the newcomers and everyone had turned out to celebrate. There was grilled fish, blueberries, griddle cakes, and whiskey consumed in the largest structure in town, a church, with people crammed cheek by jowl on the wooden benches in the overheated room, talking, laughing, eating. That proximity had been their doom. Within a day the first had fallen, in extreme distress.
First came the high fever, facial discoloration, deep brown splotches, and purple “heliotrope” rash. Next came the telltale cyanosis, victims blue-faced from the lack of oxygen. The feet turning black was the indicator of eventual death. The victims were a horror show of symptoms, with blood-colored saliva foaming out of their mouths and rectal bleeding from the intestines. Some died within hours, delirious with the high fever, gasping for air as they drowned in their own blood.
The whole village had been wiped out. Only five adults survived. The rest were buried hastily in a deep pit. What a tragedy, Miles allowed himself to think, as he watched the generator pump steam into the permanently frozen ground.
Miles took a deep breath to quell his excitement. There was a good chance they would be able to biopsy the tissue if it had been frozen all this time. This deadly pestilence was all but extinct, but he would seek it out, resurrect it, bottle it, and send it back to the civilized world, to Paul Oakley.
Miles and Oakley had been comrades-in-arms for decades against the new influenza strains that were emerging in the world. Most recently, they had been conducting clinical trials using new vaccines and antiviral drugs.
Paul Oakley had already tried to get samples from the high Arctic. He had funded a team last year to try to get tissue from the old miners’ graveyard in Longyearbyen. The mission had been only partially successful. This year they might succeed in Barentsburg.
This was not a mere ego trip, or the resolution of an unfulfilled scientific quest from decades ago. Miles and Oakley knew it was a critical race against time. Tissue samples were essential to discovering the genomic connection to the avian flu
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