Blue Bark

By William D. Honey

What do an incurable strain of Syphilis called Black Death and influenza have in common? Are bacteria and viruses able to exchange DNA material? The origin of AIDS is finally revealed in this novel called Blue Bark by William Honey.  But, what is Blue Bark?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wings ePress, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9781590883044

Book preview

Blue Bark

William D. Honey, Jr.

A Wings ePress, Inc.

Mystery and Suspense Novel

Edited by: Pat Casey

Copy Edited by: Marilyn Kapp

Senior Editor: Marilyn Kapp

Executive Editor: Lorraine Stephens

Cover Artist: Chrissie Poe

All rights reserved

NAMES, CHARACTERS AND incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Wings ePress Books

Copyright © 2003 by William D. Honey, Jr.

ISBN  978-1-59088-304-4

Previously published: ISBN: 1-58697-572-2

Published In the United States Of America

Wings ePress Inc.

3000 N. Rock Road

Newton, KS  67114

Dedication

Barb, Skye, Chris, and Jessy in Corvallis, Oregon

Trapper in Newcastle, Washington

Mom in Forest Grove, Oregon

Nishi in Nagano, Japan

Acknowledgements

My good friend and colleague, Duane Ackerson, MFA, read the initial draft of Blue Bark and made many suggestions for improving it. As always, I appreciate Duane’s help and advice.

Micki Reaman edited a later version of the story, and I thank her for her most valuable work.

Disclaimer

Needless to say, this story is entirely fiction.  However, The National Archives and Records Center is real, as is Glacier National Park, The Federal Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, and the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. And the reader may be pleased to know Three Fingered Jack is an extinct volcano in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon. The Pacific Crest Tail, number 2000, passes around it. All the locales I mentioned in this novel can be located on a map, and the reader can find them with patience.

Everything else in this book is a figment of my imagination and I apologize to biological scientists for taking such liberty with the nature of viruses and bacteria.

Any likeness of the characters to persons living or dead, as well as events in this novel, is impossible and absurd.

One

Oregon Highway 20 from the community of Sweet Home to Hoodoo Pass, also called the High Cascade Summit Road, was circuitous, monotonous, and most of all dangerous. Near Sheep Creek Bridge, a horseshoe curve claimed the lives of overworked and tired truck drivers who made the last leg of the long haul run from the Midwest to the Willamette Valley. The rusted carcasses of trucks lined the bottom of the canyon below the bridge like some strange graveyard from a Stephen King novel. Why in the hell did he drive Highway 20? The fifteen-mile-per-hour-curves required all his concentration, then some, but he enjoyed the scenery he caught from the corner of his eyes. Besides, it took him by the Mountain House for pie—his favorite food the morning of a climb.

HE HAD PULLED INTO the parking lot in the early morning hours and headed inside for his preferred table overlooking Soda Springs. The Mountain House marked the halfway point between the valley and the summit. The owner and cook baked the best deep-dish logenberry pie in the whole damn world.

Murray Favor methodically scraped the bottom of the deep ceramic dish for every last drop of juice. He had finished the article he was reading in the Sister’s Dispatch, about a climber’s death on Three Fingered Jack, and placed the newspaper back on the table. He rose, grabbed his tan chamois shirt from the back of the chair, and wandered to the counter for a refill of coffee. He poured his second cup from the pot and sipped the hot liquid.

Time to go, he told the waitress. Time to go. If I don’t get with the program, I’ll be spending the night on top of the mountain. And I really don’t want to do that.

Murray paid the check, bounded through the door and down the sagging steps to his dark blue 4 X 4. He started the engine, drove out of the parking lot, and continued on his way. As he drove, he thought about the mountain. Three Fingered Jack, as he knew the mountain, had taken the best of the bunch to their death.

LUCKY FOR HIM, TRAFFIC was light today. After two hours on hair-raising curves, Murray reached the Pacific Crest trailhead, about a half-mile northwest of the pass. He parked near a grove of three-hundred-year-old firs at the south end of the parking lot.

Today, an unusual number of horse trailers filled the area. Must be a camping convention at nearby Marion Lake, but then there was always a convention there. The U.S. Forest Service had recently zoned the lake as a high-density land use area—an area most hikers and climbers avoided like the plague.

Born and bred in Oregon, with all the characteristics of Oregonians, Murray was furtive and did not trust strangers—especially southern Californians—and most of all, like other Oregonians, he was environmentally conscious. Too many outsiders were coming into the state, to suit Murray’s taste—especially Californians who brought all their bad habits and behaviors with them.

Old Governor Tom McCall had been right. Come to visit but don’t stay.

The canopy door to his truck stuck slightly as he reached for his gear: hiking boots, the backpack, and his rack, which he had inspected carefully again and again, along with the pitons, carabiners, cams, web harness, the eleven millimeter perlon rope, and climbing helmet. While other climbers, mostly the pundits, ribbed him about the thickness of his rope, Murray liked the extra security in case of a fall. A rope that snapped during a fall was like no rope at all.

He tightened his low-level gaiters around his ankles and placed the Bundy cord stirrups, he’d fashioned, in front of the heel of his boots. Then, he cinched the straps, made some other last minute adjustments to his pack, and grabbed his boonie. Boonie hats not only shaded the eyes but also provided protection from UV radiation. He squared the hat on his head like a sniper might do before taking aim at a far-distant target. Finally he made his way to the southern corner of the parking lot to trail number two thousand, the Pacific Crest Trail.

He tried to make this climbing trip a couple of times during the summer and early fall, before the first heavy snowfall, but that wasn’t always possible. This year, however, he would have the time. He had just been fired from his government research job. He stretched his six-foot frame and started for the three-mile hike to the base of the mountain. He wouldn’t worry about the job—at least for now.

THE TRAIL WOUND ITS way gracefully up the ridgeline. The heavy rains and winds from last winter’s storms had combined to uproot the pines and fir that covered the trail. As Murray passed the Eight Lakes Basin junction at milepost 1.5, he saw that El Nino rains had eroded the trail to an unprecedented depth.

The goddamn horses don’t help things either.

While he hiked above the trail ruts, he caught sight of showy aster, a plant with medicinal qualities, blooming along the base of a rock outcrop.

Murray reached the top of the southern ridgeline and there she stood like an old warrior—the most splendid peak in the entire Cascade Mountains, Three Fingered Jack.

The climb required strenuous physical and mental output. Folks who didn’t know this to be an axiom died on the mountain. Murray shook his head and cleared his thoughts, removed his gaiters, tightened the lacing on his boots, donned his helmet, and trudged toward the first gendarme at the southern base of the mountain.

Approaching the crawl, Murray hammered a piton into the side of a gendarme for added security and hooked the rope into the carabiner in the front of his web harness. Climbing alone violated the cardinal rule held dear by all. Today, however, a solo ascent was unavoidable.

Murray reached the chimney from the southern pinnacle. He adjusted his pack and crammed his fingers into a crack to begin the ascent to the summit.

TWO-AND-A-HALF HOURS later, Murray lifted himself onto the summit of Three Fingered Jack. The view was typically gorgeous. He slipped off his backpack and sat on a small ledge just beneath the slightly frigid and imposing winds on the west side.

His status among the unemployed hadn’t mattered since the trailhead, but now he had some serious decisions to make about his future. The top of this mountain was a good place to do some thinking. How would he get himself out of this jam and get back into the ranks of the employed? He was old, too. Who would hire him now? At 53, there were many limitations facing him such as gray hair, slightly stooped posture and, of course, the aches and pains that came with aging. It was time to think about a new career.

For years, Murray had dabbled with writing. He had written a bunch of unfinished short stories, mostly outlining his life experiences and recollections. Writing always had been therapeutic for him. One idea, though, had stayed with him since his return from Vietnam in the late sixties. An idea that he’d never put to words, but it had occupied his thoughts. He sat looking to the west. The wind began to subside a little, but an occasional gust reminded him of his vulnerability. The view continued to mesmerize him and revived memories of Vietnam.

As part of the Fifth Combat Unit, Company A, Third Infantry, Murray had arrived at Tan Son Nhut Airbase along with several hundred other GIs on January 15, 1968. His particular unit drew the short straw and headed for Fire Base Four just west of Tay Ninh. Although military intelligence knew of the forthcoming offensive, the Pentagon had not yet given it a proper name.

The troops at Fire Base Four were lucky in some respects. Sergeant Major Joe Leonard told a yarn as good as anyone. Murray’s grandfather perhaps could equal the sergeant, but certainly not better him. Leonard told his stories, bunker talk as he called them, as a way of breaking from the reality of the war even if that break lasted only a few precious moments. As a veteran of twenty-five years in the military, including World War II, Korea, and now Vietnam, the Sergeant Major had stories to tell and therapy to give. And the sergeant was a master psychologist, too. When he could, he took every opportunity to give his troops something else to think about beside combat and death.

One evening, in a lull between fighting, Sergeant Major Leonard told a story that forever imprinted itself in Murray’s mind. Although the Sergeant Major had exceeded his usual limit of Japanese whiskey, he wove a plot much different than ever before.

It’s called the Black Death. He winced a little when he spoke the words. This isn’t the same plague that hit Europe centuries ago. This is different and there ain’t no cure. What’s more, you die a horrible and painful death. You might think those guys stationed near Saigon or Da Nang are lucky ‘cause they are close to the bar girls. Let me tell you, some of those girls can carry a strain of syphilis that can’t be cured.

Murray became attentive, much more attentive than usual. And the others did, too. What a horrifying concept. He rose from his canvas cot and propped himself on one elbow. Wait a minute, Sarge. Are you telling us that you can die from this VD?

Yes, that is exactly what I’m saying. It’s like leprosy, only worse. You rot and medics will use maggots to clean away the dead flesh. The stench is beyond description. Eventually, your skin turns a grayish color and then dark blue-black.

The Sergeant Major wiped the residual of still another drink from his chin. The first outbreaks in Korea and Vietnam were from women who were injected with this strain of VD. Young girls in rest and relaxation centers near the big military bases got the first injections of the disease and they had the job to infect as many men as they could before they died. R and R can be as dangerous as combat.

Murray and the others listened steadfastly.

There have been a number of GIs in Saigon who contracted the disease, Sarge exclaimed. You know, at first everything looks and seems just like syphilis. The blood test, though, confirms something different than syphilis and they ship you off to the isolation ward at Cam Ranh Bay hospital. Here’s the kicker—antibiotics don’t work and it takes a year’s time to die. And you see no one. You can’t even see the other miserable souls like yourself. You are kept from your own kind in a cell-like area. As I said, the Pentagon notifies your family of your MIA status—whereabouts unknown.

Sergeant Major Leonard took another sip of whiskey to moisten his throat and he prepared for more delivery. I can’t say anymore. This plague is painful, ugly, and deadly.

One soldier rose slowly from his cot. How about the villages, Sarge? he asked sheepishly. Any of this Black Death out there in the villages? He pointed beyond the bunker.

Not sure, Leonard moved a little in his seat. I never trust the Cong, though. They are capable of anything and everything. Consider the young children drafted into sapper squads. Some of these kids are nine years old or even younger. Christ, if they can sell children on that kind of shit, they can sure as hell enlist the support of those village women.

Murray shifted his position as the wind on the Three Fingered Jack picked up. His mind had wandered away from Vietnam for a moment. But then he returned to the good sergeant’s story. Yes, this was the beginning of Murray’s novel-to-be. But he would embellish the yarn and write it with a real demented twist.

The story would go something like this: At Cam Ranh Bay hospital, a soldier with that incurable disease would infect a nurse with his lethal bacterium during sexual intercourse. And who could have guessed she carried an influenza virus in her body when she flew back stateside. Within a few days, a new and deadly virus would emerge—HIV. It needed to be polished, of course. Wonder if a bacterium and a virus could interact and create a new and lethal offspring from their union? Could the two different critters even exchange DNA materials? Also, there would be a government cover-up of how HIV really started.

For the much needed authenticity, Murray could make a trip to Washington, D.C. and the National Archives and Records Administration. He could research the various record groups of the military as well as materials from many other pertinent government agencies. Interviewing personnel stationed at the hospital in Cam Ranh Bay might add a certain credibility to his book. Physicians, nurses, orderlies, and even clerks needed to be interviewed. Not many. Just a few would suffice. Any eyewitness accounts added much more flavor to his tale.

Murray couldn’t help getting caught up in this idea of a new career as a writer. He was ready to start researching and writing his mystery book. His excitement grew the more he thought about it. He could write a query letter to an editor, or better yet, a literary agent. The origin of HIV has been discovered and it started during the war years in Vietnam. That kind of opening sentence might just whet their appetites for more. For now, though, he needed to get off the mountain and back down the trail.

MURRAY POPPED A PINT of Porter and slouched in his favorite leather recliner. Corvallis had been pretty deserted when he pulled into his driveway around 9:00 pm. Most of the folks around here had already gone to bed. Not Murray. His head was too full. His plan to write didn’t seem as clear-cut as it had up on the mountain. He glanced at his gear in the corner of the living room entry. He had tossed his sandals beside his stuff before entering the living room—a habit he’d picked up in Asia. He’d clean up in a moment or two.

The day had been good. The old doubts about writing, that had plagued him in the past, lingered. Can I pull it off? Can I make the commitment? Can I get the book written? Can I find a publisher? Will I run out of money first?

Where do I start?

Washington, D.C. and the National Archives, Murray answered under his breath. Nothing had changed. The plan he had formed up on the mountain still made some sense. He would fly to Washington National Airport—Murray refused to acknowledge the name change to Ronald Reagan Airport—and take the subway to the archives building. And that will be my starting point. It was simple and it was clean.

First things first. He sorted and cleaned his gear and threw out the paper bag that once held his lunch. Compass, map, magnesium fire starter device, first aid kit, and other wilderness essentials stayed in the pack. He wiped off his boots with a damp sponge from the kitchen. A sandwich sounded good to him, so he prepared his favorite, tomato, red onion, and sprouts on whole wheat bread with a copious amount of mustard, and devoured it with another beer.

In the living room, he reached for the television remote and clicked to The Learning Channel just in time for back-to-back episodes of The Medical Detectives. The first, on forensic entomology, he’d seen before. The second program about DNA typing from blood and saliva samples at the scene of a crime really caught his interest. During the first commercial break he grabbed another Porter.

He sat the third pint of Porter on the table and leaned back in his recliner. He forgot about the television program he wanted to watch. The thought of returning to Washington, D.C. and the National Archives to research his novel excited him to no end. It had been at least five years since his last visit.

Murray reached for the remote and turned off the television. In the morning he would start preparations for his new career. He closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep in the recliner.

Two

Aday later, Murray stepped into N’s, his favorite downtown coffee shop. He had decided he needed to contact a biologist—someone in the know of things—at the local college. After all, his premise about HIV and AIDS must have authenticity of sorts. Fiction writers must portray the story with accuracy or tell the reader otherwise. He preferred to base his fiction on fact.

He had called an old buddy at the local college who referred him to a biologist working at Fillmore Laboratory in nearby Salem—a person who had a real knack for presenting technical information in lay terms. Murray had arranged to meet Dr. Sally Gibbs, a virologist, here at N’s this morning. She was giving a guest lecture at the college later in the afternoon, and since the shop was close to campus, it made it easier for both of them.

Murray grabbed a cup of self-serve coffee from the bar especially designed for people in a big hurry. He recognized Sally Gibbs sitting in a corner by the blue scarf she had said she would wear. He strolled to her table and held out his hand.

I’m Murray. I’m the unemployed researcher, backpacker, mountain climber, and wanna-be mystery writer who called you. And thanks for coming. He laughed.

The young woman grinned at Murray, stood up, and shook his hand. She tossed her short, red hair a bit as she spoke. I’m Sally Gibbs. Please sit. She motioned for Murray to sit in the empty chair across from her.

Murray smiled then pulled up the seat. Waif-like in her appearance, Sally wore a cotton checkered shirt, jeans, and running shoes.

So, you’re giving a lecture today at the college. Do you do a lot of teaching? he asked in order to break the ice a little and find out more about her.

I taught for a while at the university in Eugene, but the advancement and the salary came too slowly. In the private sector, pay and promotion come much faster. You know the old adage: Hard work brings large profits. She seemed a little impatient. Now, enough about me. Tell me more on how I can help you.

Murray cleared his throat. As I mentioned on the phone, I’m planning to write a mystery novel loosely based upon bacteria and viruses. Not the doomsday type of thing. Something different.

Right. You’re a mystery writer. Have I read any of your books? I love mystery books.

I said wanna-be. He spoke softly. I’m unpublished. But I’m in the process of researching my first novel.

Well. You have to start somewhere, she replied.

Murray hoped he had met a person who might know some of the answers to his questions about viruses, bacteria, and who knows what all in the world of small things. Or at least she could point him in the right direction if he roamed too far off course.

What’s your area of specialization? Murray asked, still probing.

Virus molecular systematics or VMS is all about the origin and evolution of viruses.

Murray nervously cleared his throat. As I told you, I’m writing a mystery and, without giving you too many of the boring details, bacteria and viruses will play a role in my novel. Maybe you can help me. I’m not even sure how to phrase my questions. Do bacteria and viruses ever exchange DNA material? Or do or can they interact in any other manner to produce an offspring of some type? Even his own sentence confused him.

"Yeah, I follow you. First, though, let’s back