Pestilence (Jack Randall #2) (19 page)

Now, standing in his bare feet on the cold epoxy-painted floor, he pushed the button for the Level 2 door. As it opened, he again felt the small breeze that preceded him into the next room. He moved through the staging area that was lit with blue ultraviolet light, passing a decontamination shower with its hotel bars of soap and sample-sized bottles of shampoo. He paused long enough to force a last pee and grab a pair of socks. He then walked across the room to the bio Level 3 staging room door. Once through, he pulled a pair of rubber surgical gloves from a box and slipped them on without powder (he hated powder) before pulling a roll of tape off the wall and carefully taping the sleeves of his scrub shirt to the gloves. With practiced hands he diligently repeated the process on his socks and pants. Finished, he inspected his work in another mirror before deciding it was satisfactory. At this point he had only one layer of protection.

He then proceeded through another swing door with large windows into another locker room. Here he reached for his space suit hanging on a rack, marked with a piece of tape and a black marker. He placed the vial in a special carrier with a large handle before spreading the suit out on the floor. He then stepped into it and sat down, placing his feet into the legs and carefully pulling them up, inspecting the suit as he did. Holding the suit with both hands, he then stood and pulled it up to his armpits, sliding his arms into each sleeve until his fingers passed the connecting gaskets and entered the brown rubber gloves. Once both of his hands were in and snug, he spent a full minute inspecting both. This was his most vulnerable point. With these gloves he would be handling sharp objects, glassware, and syringes with needles attached. He had never taken it lightly, and as a result had experienced only one minor exposure in his entire career. If he had even the slightest doubt about the integrity of his space suit, he would destroy it and get another. He slipped his feet into a pair of thick yellow boots and taped them as he had his socks and scrubs earlier. He added three six-inch long strips to his right forearm to serve as emergency seals if he should somehow rip a hole in his space suit. Once done with the tape, he added another set of surgical gloves over the suit gloves. This put three layers of protection over his hands.

He performed a quick mental checklist before pulling on the soft plastic helmet. Once in place, he pulled the lubricated zipper closed across his chest with a series of popping sounds. He quickly snagged a coiled yellow air hose hanging from the ceiling and plugged it into the suit. He immediately heard the roaring air and his suit blew up till he resembled the Michelin Man. The condensation on his faceplate disappeared as he pirouetted in front of the three-way mirror looking for leaks. Finding none, he picked up the tray and stepped to the airlock. Pushing the button for the door, he unhooked the air line as it opened and walked through the small stainless steel corridor. It was lined by stainless steel plumbing leading to stainless steel nozzles over a stainless steel floor. Several large red buttons were spaced down both walls and it was lit by the same eerie blue ultraviolet light. This was the decontamination chamber. If he hit one of the buttons he would be locked in for a full seven minutes and deluged with water and chemicals. Something he would do on the way out. For now he walked its length quickly and opened the far door of the airlock. He stepped through, and was in the hot zone.

•      •      •

As Doctor Miles entered the hot zone, Sydney was speeding down a New Jersey back road in her new Mustang convertible, a treat to herself after their last case. She couldn’t understand why anybody would buy a sports car without getting a convertible top. It just added to the thrill. She loved her little car and gave it a little extra as she came out of a sweeping curve.

The illegal speed resulted in a breeze that almost drowned out the ring of her cell phone. She slowed down to a safer speed and pulled out her Bluetooth headset before she thumbed the button.

“Hello?”

“Syd? It’s Jack. Where in the hell are you?”

“New Jersey.”

“Are you standing on the beach or something? Sounds like you’re in a wind tunnel.”

“I’ve got the top down!”

“Okay,” he bellowed back. “What do we know?”

“Nothing yet, I just gave it to him yesterday, give him some time.”

“I figured you two would run straight to the lab with that stuff. I know it’s been burning a hole in your pocket.”

“Yeah, but you can’t just barge in and order an old friend down to
his
lab. We had some dinner and caught up. I’m sure I piqued his interest, he’s probably in the lab already.”

“Okay, you’re sure we can trust him?” Jack had to ask.

“Yes, he’s a good friend.” She let her exasperation come through a little.

“How much is he nailing me for?”

“Nothing, said he’d do it for free. He makes plenty himself.”

“Well okay then, how long till you get back?”

“I was gonna just take the back roads and enjoy the ride. Why?”

“Both of our friends disappeared. The tails lost them.”

Sydney thought about this as she slowed even more. Something was going on with their newest team members. Jack’s instincts weren’t often wrong.

“I’ll be back as soon as possible.”

“Good.”

Action needed to avoid world water crisis.
March 12, 2009—Reuters
 

—THIRTEEN—

D
octor Miles considered his options. Based on Sydney’s theory that the sample was a vaccine of some sort, that meant it was most likely made up of a weakened version of a live virus. He decided to run it through his new bio analyzer to identify it by its DNA.

After laying out a variety of equipment on the bench in front of him and pouring a large bowl of EnviroChem and placing it on the table, he was ready. He first held the vial up to the light one more time, sometimes the DNA would clump up and one could actually see it with the human eye. As he had tried several times already he was not surprised to see nothing again, just a clear fluid with the consistency of water. He gripped the vial in one hand and pried off the yellow top. It broke its seal under the pressure and he was treated to a view of the gray membrane material that was common for this type of vial. It would allow a needle to pass through to draw out the fluid, yet would seal again on its withdrawal. Using a syringe, he withdrew half the fluid and placed equal portions into five small test tubes, each about the size of his little toe.

Once that was accomplished, he disposed of the needle in a red plastic box full of EnviroChem and switched to a micropipette. He had turned the machine on when he had entered the lab and selected a disk of the most common vaccines to try first. It loaded quickly and the machine now announced its readiness with a green light. He drew a small drop of the fluid from the first test tube and placed it on a sample card which he then fed into the machine. The solid green light began blinking as the machine worked on it, and Jim watched the screen as the dry air roared in his ears.

Soon he was treated to letters scrolling across the screen—only four letters, in seemingly random order—T, C, A and G representing the nucleotide bases thymine, cytosine, adenine, and guanine, the building blocks of DNA. The letters scrolled faster as the machine worked and were soon going too fast to read. This could take some time. A small virus can have over 7,000 bases, a more complicated one over 200,000.

After a five-minute wait he felt he had enough to try for identification. He pressed a few keys on the machine and a larger computer monitor to the left came to life. The machine would automatically link via the internet with an organization know as GenBank, located not too far away in Maryland. Its purpose was to maintain a large database of genetic sequences. If you were looking to identify an unknown strand of DNA, this was like asking the Library of Congress of genetic codes for help. With a few more clicks on his part, the GenBank computers accepted the data and began matching it to its database. He soon had answers popping up on the screen.

Knowing he would have to run several samples he forced himself not to look and began prepping another sample on a slide to look at through his microscope. Again using the micropipette, he placed a small drop onto a slide and utilizing tweezers secured a cover slide over that. This he placed under his microscope and reached for the fine adjustment. He saw various shapes, but nothing he could readily identify. He had not really hoped to get too much as this microscope was not powerful enough to see something as small as a virus. For that you needed an electron microscope, something they had in his lab, yet he was not an expert at running it. For that he had a talented lab technician who should be along in a couple of hours. He would do what he could to prepare for him what he needed.

He separated the last two test tubes from the other three and placed them into a separate holder. Uncapping the lids, he added a quick-drying plastic resin. The resin would freeze any virus particles in place. The tech would then take these small tubes of plastic and slice them utilizing a diamond bladed microtome. Much like a machine one would see in a deli, it would produce incredibly thin samples no bigger than the head of a pin.

Once the resin chore had been handled, he rose and walked the length of the room to a large door next to the airlock. He stopped to gather several biscuits and other food from a small closet before opening the heavy door and entering the room. He was greeted by the hoots and hollers of several monkeys. There were two banks of cages facing each other across a narrow walkway. The monkeys always went crazy at the sight of him early in the morning. They performed as they always did, rattling their cages and leaping back and forth. Their high pitched screams penetrated the thick plastic of his space suit and overpowered the roar of air in his ears. He checked the cleverly engineered door mechanisms to ensure they were all still locked as they should be. The mechanism had to be easily manipulated by a human with a triple layer of gloves, yet unable to be released by curious primate fingers. He moved down the walkway, shuffling his feet on the concrete floor with its multiple layers of thick epoxy paint.

“Hello ladies,” he greeted his two control monkeys as he carefully dropped monkey biscuits into the feeding chutes. He watched as they scrambled to pick them up and immediately start eating. They still never took their eyes off him, watching every move he made. Unknown to them they were the only two in the group that were safe from him as they were always isolated and never experimented on. They served to inform him of unexpected airborne pathogens, much like the canary in the coal mine. Their names were Thelma and Louise.

He continued down the row feeding the monkeys and the noise level dropped somewhat as they now divided their time between screaming and eating. He carefully observed all of them for any signs of disease, but they all appeared normal and healthy. He finished providing water for them also and quickly left them to their breakfast.

He exited the monkey room and entered a smaller, much quieter room housing a variety of animals. Here he performed the same feeding chores for a multitude of mice, rats and guinea pigs. He stopped to observe a cage of six white mice he had injected last week with a new vaccine. In three more days they would be exposed to a form of cervical cancer to test its effectiveness. Someone had beaten him to the discovery already, so this was more of a personal mission, and who knew, perhaps his version would be better? The mice looked no different then they had yesterday.

He selected six mice from a small cage next to the original six and separated them into a portable cage. He wasn’t ready for them yet, but he wanted to separate them now just to save the time later. He observed them as they climbed around and over each other as they explored their new home. They all looked healthy. Soon they would get an injection of Sydney’s mystery vaccine. He truly hoped they stayed healthy.

A virus to Jim Miles was both a beautiful and a deadly thing. He’d been fascinated with both aspects of their existence his whole life, and to this day the appeal kept him researching them for their secrets.

He called them Terminators, after his favorite movie character. Like many scientists, he was a science fiction fan. When the movie had come out he had been captivated by the writers’ invention of the man-machine with its single goal, and the cold, efficient, and deadly means to carry it out. To him, the Terminator was the ultimate virus. It existed for one purpose: to kill the main character and therefore ensure its own survival. A virus was much the same. With eternal patience it would lie in wait, much like a machine, only to spring to life and begin the process of taking over a host for the purpose of self-replication, ensuring its survival.

He often recalled the soldier’s description of the Terminator as he described it to the woman it was pursuing. “It’s out there. It can’t be reasoned with. It can’t be bargained with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear, and it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead!” It helped him to remember the words when he worked in the hot zone. They kept him safe.