Plague (5 page)

The suits were essentially space suits. They held positive pressure and inflated with a hose that connected to the back and made the scientists appear like they had tails. There
were
ports in various rooms where they would hook up and fresh air would circulate in the suits.

Over their head
s
they placed thick plastic helmet
s
with
clear faceplate
s
.
They
connected with the suit
s
and prevented any sort of penetration by airborne pathogens. Except of course if the zipper that ran down from your neck to your crotch ever opened up, which it did all the time because the suits were only replaced when absolutely necessary. There was a mirror up near where he was dressing
,
and Duncan looked at it
every day
,
wondering
what the
hell he was doing here exactly. He had a master’s in microbiology and epidemiology
and soon would have a doctorate
. He had
also
finished his MD a long time ago and only needed to complete a residency he had begun and abandoned
. He could work at a lab as a director and have a plush office and a
well-endowed
secretary. Instead, he was putting on an old space suit and about to handle some of the most dangerous substances
on earth
.

He and Janice
moved from the dressing area to a negatively pressurized chamber. That meant air was being sucked into the room rather than being allowed to escape.
Only one door could be opened
at a time and
to enter
they locked the heavy steel door behind them and unlocked the one in front leading to the first room
, which
contained
a chemical bath
.

They made their way to the exterior door of the laboratory
and hooked up their blue suits using the
ir
hose attachment
s
.
They roared to life. The sound in the helmets was so loud you couldn’t hear without shouting. They opened the final door, and entered the laboratory.

Standing over a microscope were two men in blue suits. The first was explaining something about protein synthesis to the second who
tried
to angle his faceplate so he was able to see into the microscope.

“FIND ANYTHING GOOD?” Duncan shouted.

Dr.
Taylor Nielson looked at him and smiled. “THAT TWENTY BUCKS YOU OWE ME.”

“I PAID THAT BACK.”

“NO YOU DIDN’T.”

“YES I DID. WE WERE AT THE DODO EATING BURGERS AND I PAID AND YOU SAID WE WERE EVEN.”

Taylor thought a moment. “ALL RIGHT FINE, BE THAT WAY.” He turned to the man seated at the microscope. “THIS IS ALEJANDRO NEVAL. CALL HIM ALEX.”

“ALEX,” Janice shouted, “HOW DO YOU LIKE OUR LITTLE LABORATORY?”

“IT’S AMAZING. I CAN’T BELIEVE HOW MUCH NORMAL STUFF IS IN HERE.”

Duncan knew what he
meant
. When he had first come to the labs, he was amazed that a laptop sat on one of the counters. Some
of the scientists had been taking
notes on Teflon treated plastic that could be decontaminated in the intensely hot decontamination proce
ss that all inanimate objects leaving the
BSL 4 labs went through.
There were also the standard instruments, cleaning products, and
other
items you might find in any laboratory.

“YOU READY TO SEE OUR SPECIMEN?” Duncan asked
.

Alex nodded and rose from the microscope.
A
nother sealed door led to what appeared like a
n autopsy room
one
might find in
a pathology department at a small hospital.
They unhooked their hoses, stepped into the room, shut the door
,
and hooked
their suits
back up to the outlets there.

On a metal gurney at the far side of the small room lay a monkey. It was a howler monkey, its eyes frozen in the last expression it had in life. Duncan walked to it and ran his thickly gloved hand over the fur. The monkey’s blood contained a level 4 hot agent, one of the deadliest in the world: the Ebola virus. Though Ebola habituated some
unknown
host somewhere in the jungle
s
of Africa—perhaps a bat or a fly—when it performed an inter-species jump to primates, it was absolutely devastating.

Janice got the surgical instruments out of a container. They gleamed in the harsh lights of the lab as she set them one by one on a tray next to the gurney. Taylor approached; he was the zoologist of the group and would be performing the extraction. A vial of the liver would be taken for analysis at the labs in the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta: the only other laboratory in the United States capable of handling BSL 4 hot agents.

As Taylor readied the instruments, Alex stood behind him, attempting to take notes on
one of
the Teflon tabs provided
. Taylor
began lecturing
Alex
about the process of tissue extraction and how the monkey had ended up at USAMRIID. Janice stood next to him in case he needed anything and Duncan stood behind them near the door, wondering exactly why three people were required for any visit from a reporter.

Taylor began with an incision in the monkey’s belly. He was shouting to Alex the whole time, impressing him with his knowledge of primate
physiol
ogy
, and
Alex was leaning in close s
o
he could actually hear over
the endless air pumping through his suit. Duncan
had
always thought it sounded like a vacuum cleaner pushed up against each ear. He was about to tell Alex not to get too close and give Taylor some breathing space when Al
ex leaned just a little too far
forward. The awkward shaped suit created enough forward momentum that he bumped Taylor’s arm.

There was a moment when nobody moved. Duncan thought that perhaps some delicate
procedure was happening. Tissue extractions on a liver that was
an inch acros
s were difficult enough. Throw
the space suits and thick gloves on top of that and you would have to be a skilled surgeon to get the proper samples.

But that wasn’t what had occurred.

Duncan, in a moment that seemed to slow
down time, saw that a thick, black
liquid was dripping off Alex’s faceplate
and
onto the floor. The elbow bump had caused Taylor to nick the heart, causing blood
to spray
over the three people and the ceiling.

Duncan’s first thought was that he should grab one of the disposable towels on a metal rack in the corner and clean the blood before taking Alex to a chemical shower and beginning the decontamination process. Before he could move, he heard the muffled scream and saw Alex raise his hands to his helmet.

“No!” Duncan yelled.

But it was too late. Alex ripped off the helmet in panic and began tearing at the spacesuit. He tried to run to the door and Taylor had to tackle him at the waist and pin him to the floor. Janice stood frozen, staring at the scene in wild-eyed amazement.

Duncan jumped on top of Alex and held his arms down. He was screaming and spitting and biting. He had drifted away on a cloud of terror and was not responding to any comman
ds. The two men each grabbed an
arm and looked to each other. “UP
,” Taylor yelled.

They lifted the man and began to drag him to the door. Janice ran over and unlocked it. He was dragged across the lab and to the first of the chemical showers. The chemicals washed down his head and into the opening of the space suit at the neck. Duncan tried to shield Alex’s eyes with his gloved hand. He was now calming down, embarrassment and horror coming into his eyes in equal parts.

“COME ON,
” Taylor said, taking the man by the arm and into the next chamber.

Duncan stepped into the shower next as Janice stepped out of the laboratory. They glanced at each other and a moment passed between them where they didn’t say anything. They both understood that Alex was to be placed in quarantine for double the length of the incubation period of the Ebola virus. It would be a type of solitary confinement and it would be Duncan and Janice’s job to ensure he didn’t go insane.

Janice leaned against the wall. They both wanted to say something, but the only thi
ng Janice thought of was, “SHIT.
”

Duncan couldn’t think of anything to add to that.

CHAPTER 7

Samantha Bower sat on the white sand beach and absorbed the sun. She had been in the hospital collecting blood samples for two hours and figured she had earned this. Collecting blood samples for a viral infection
that was suspected to be unknown
was not an easy task.

She had to find vacu-containers in the supply closet with a nurse that had no intention of making her
job
easy. Then she needed anticoagulants and sodium hypochlorite. The hypochlorite was to was
h
the outside of the plastic bags the blood
would be contained in. The risk of even a droplet of blood
on the outside of the bags typically made
the extraction of blood the most dangerous part of her job.

She had also taken throat swabs from both Erin and Clifford. Everything had been sent back to the labs at the CDC and would be
analyzed
by one of the most brilliant men she had ever met: Stephen W. Pushkin.

Stephen had
begun
work at the CDC as an undergraduate and returned every summer while completing his degree in biological engineering
and microbiology
at Harvard. He worked briefly at New Day Systems
,
designing heart valves and artificial limbs and
whatever else caught his fancy
,
the company recognizing his brilliance and giving him free reign.
He soon grew bored
designing limbs
and became obsessed with disease after being present in Guadalajara, Mexico
,
after a particularly brutal strand of dysentery killed over thirty people. That, and his background as an intern at the CDC, made him an ideal candidate for work in the laboratory.

Sam
lay
back on her towel and let the sun wash the stress out of her. She still felt the knots in her belly but the heat, at least, made her muscles relax. She was drifting off to sleep when she felt
her iPhone buzz next to her. She
picked it up, her eyes still closed behind her sunglasses.

“This is Sam.”

“Dr. Bower, it’s Jerry Amoy. From Queen
’
s.”

“Yes, hi.”

“Um, hi.
I was calling because two more patients exhibiting symptoms came into the ER in the past hour.”

“What symptoms?”

“Fever, a rash, vomiting blood. One of the pat
ients is having bloody diarrhea
. He doesn’t seem to be able to control it. I noticed some dark splotches on his back that resembled the other two patients
’
.”

“Okay, I’ll be right down.”

Samantha changed and was at the hospital in less than twenty minutes. She went directly to the ER and had Amoy paged. He arrived a short while later and said, “They’re upstairs.”

The two of them rode the elevator up together and went through the procedure of cleaning and scrubbing themselves. Sam wasn’t as nervous this time and she couldn’t decide
whether
that was a good thing or a bad thing. Barricade nursing had been put in place and there was little chance of an exchange of body fluids. Samantha remembered another field agent at the CDC named Melissa who had been leaning over a patient with a suspected
Marburg
infection in Washington
,
DC
,
some three years ago. The man had suddenly vomited blood into her eyes. Luckily—
or
miraculously
, Sam thought
—the woman had not been infected with the virus, and the patient had survived.

The two new patients were set up in rooms across the hall from each other. Sam chose the one on the right and went in. He was a young man, no older than thirty, and was reading a paperback novel as he lay in bed. He looked up and she could see the discoloration in the conjunctiva of
his
eye
s
. The whites of his eyes had turned a dark red.
A
clear plastic sheet
hung
over his bed like a canopy
except that it went all the way underneath the bed and wrapped around. The man
was running his toes along it near the bottom.