Explore "Righteous Plague" by Robert Abernathy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
So twenty-five healthy privates of the Dictator's Honor Guard, handpicked for courage, rigid honesty and selfless loyalty to the leader, were hospitalized and injected with potent doses of viciously lethal culture RM4-2197. They were told that it was a new immunization which would soon become regulation throughout the armed forces. And twenty-five prisoners, likewise healthy save for the twist in their minds that made them seditionists and rebels instead of Honor Guardsmen, received the same injection and were told the same story.
The results were almost fantastically satisfactory. The twenty-five convicts died, one and all, with the uncontrolled spasms and twitchings, lapsing into stupor, that told of the virus' progress in the higher nerve centers. Their isolated barracks, together with the unimportant orderlies who had cared for it and the victims, were sterilized, almost obliterated by caustic chemicals and flame. Meantime the Honor Guard in their separate quarantine rolled dice and exchanged dirty jokes and felt no ill effects.