Plague

CHAPTER 10

It was two o’clock in the morning when Samantha received the first call.

It was a nurse from Queen’s Medical. Sam didn’t get to the phone in time and the nurse left a message stating that Dr. Jerry Amoy had asked that she call him. Six new patients had been admitted, exhibiting symptoms of the “UF”: the Unknown Flu. It was what the staff at the hospital had begun to call the disease because they had to call it something and just calling it a flu made it sound less toxic than it was. Even though Samantha knew that influenza was one of the worst serial killers of all time.

Just as she had rolled over and was going back to sleep, her phone rang again. It was a long distance number with an Atlanta area code.

“This is Dr. Bower.”

“Sam, glad I caught you. This is Dr. Pushkin, from the lab.”

Even though Sam had known him several years, Stephen preferred that everyone call him “Dr. Pushkin” rather than Stephen.

“Doctor, hi. What are you doing up? It’s four in the morning there.”

“You haven’t spoken to Wilson yet?”

“No, why?”

“Sam, we received the results of the lab work. It’s black pox. It’s fucking black pox.”

Samantha sat quietly a while and stared at the floor. “Are you sure?” was all she managed to say.

“Yes. The symptomology matches the cultures. Wilson’s on his way down right now. He’s going to hold a press conference with a general or secretary of something. The military’s involved now too.”

“Why?”

“You know damn well why. I don’t have time for silly questions. Shake the sleep off and call me back in ten minutes. I’m grabbing the next flight and need to talk to you about our next steps.”

Sam was down to her rental car in five minutes. The night sky was glittering with stars. It was clear in a way she had never really seen before, as if a wound had been torn open in the sky and she was allowed to look into the innards of space. Along with the stars were planets, lit up brightly like incandescent bulbs, and farther off, galaxies. Even with the hotel, the light pollution was so minimal it was like looking at the sky from the top of a mountain.

She drove down to Queen’s Medical and saw a news van from Channel 4 parked out front. Several Jeeps in basic green and two sedans were all parked illegally. Sam parked in employee parking and walked inside.

At the entrance to the Emergency Room an MP in uniform was checking IDs and turning people away, giving them directions to the Straub Clinic and Hospital. Sam pulled out her CDC identification card.

“One moment, ma’am.”

He checked with someone on the radio hooked to his shoulder and they gave the clearance for her to come in.

The hospital looked empty with the exception of the staff. Sam smiled to the receptionist and realized it was the same one from yesterday morning.

“They’re all in the conference room down the hall,” the nurse offered without being asked.

Sam made her way down and saw the news crew setting up. At least twenty men and women were meandering about in both suits and military uniforms. Bagels had been set out on the table with sodas and coffee. Only one man was sitting at the table. He was young with auburn hair and wearing a Depeche Mode T-shirt with canvas shorts and sandals. He looked more like a surfer than a doctor. Sam sat across from him and he glanced up and smiled as he spread cream cheese on his bagel.

“Hi, I’m Duncan.”

“Samantha, nice to meet you.”

“Hm, you’re a doctor, right?”

“Yes.”

“Interesting. You didn’t introduce yourself as a doctor. Everyone I’ve met in this room calls themselves doctor like they don’t have names.”

“It’s ego. That’s probably why they went to medical school. Are you a physician as well?”

“Sort of. I got my MD before my PhD but I never took the boards or practiced.”

“That seems like a lot of work for nothing.”

“I wouldn’t say nothing. It taught me that I didn’t want to be a doctor.”

Ralph Wilson got up and stood at the front of the room. A PowerPoint display was on behind him and he flipped through a few slides and then said, “Ladies and gentleman, I’m Dr. Ralph Wilson of the Centers for Disease Control. I’m the deputy director of Infectious Disease Research for those of you who haven’t met me before. I know everyone’s been called out here in the middle of the night so let’s begin so we can get as much shut-eye as possible. We all have a big day tomorrow and tomorrow’ll be here sooner than we think.” He adjusted his glasses, and began with the first slide.

It was a black hand with yellow, brittle nails that had fallen off. It appeared to belong to a body that was housed in a crypt.

“This,” Ralph said, “is a victim of the plague of Justinian circa 541 AD. It afflicted the Eastern Roman Empire, after Constantine had split the empire and left the Western portion with Rome as its headquarters abandoned. Justinian was the emperor of the time and like with all leadership positions, whatever happens is your fault, so the plague was attributed to him.

“It was, by all accounts-and modern forensics conducted by the University of Tubingen has confirmed this-the worst natural disaster in human history. Responsible for the death of over half the world’s population. We believe it had its genesis in China and spread from there. It went through the Middle East, devastated Africa, and was recurring in Europe centuries later. It would disappear and then reappear twenty years later to re-infect a new generation.”

The screen shifted to a screenshot from under an electron microscope.

“You can see here that it appears much like common bubonic plague, but with these ridges here on the periphery of the virus. In fact, we believed for a long time that it was the bubonic plague, but research conducted on the remains of priests in Constantinople-it was the common practice at the time to bury priests in underground catacombs, making a type of preserve for tissue-shows us that it was in fact some now extinct form of Yersinia pestis.

“If you can imagine the scene in Constantinople, you can see how frightening this particular contagion really was. Bodies were piled so high in the streets that they were like roadblocks at every turn. Justinian eventually ordered the burning of the bodies on the outskirts of the cities and this calmed the contagion until the next iteration. But to be perfectly clear, we don’t know why this contagion occurred, or why it went extinct.

“In my research into the plague of Justinian, I developed a coding system, a type of shorthand, for the infectibility of a particular contagion. I did this so that those outside the medical and scientific communities could understand the level of threat they were facing with any disease. I called it the T score and now it is a widely accepted rating model.

“Its theory is simple: T-1 means that the contagion is such that each person infected, on average, will infect one other individual. The common flu is a T-1 contagion. The bubonic plague was a T-3 contagion. The plague of Justinian was a T-4. The scale goes to T-7, which, in effect, would cause the extinction of all mammalian life on earth.”

Ralph looked up to the screen as it changed to a shot of the earth. It went through the different iterations of T, showing small red spots that grew as the infectibility rate progressed. At T-5, all human life on earth was extinguished. He looked back to the audience and adjusted his glasses.

“This contagion has been determined to be a strand of smallpox. What strand, we cannot say for sure, though we have our theories that it could be black pox. Smallpox, and its derivative black pox, currently, only exist in two places on the planet earth: the CDC BSL 4 labs in Atlanta, and a remote outpost in the former Soviet Union. Other than that, man has conquered and abolished it. It has, to put it bluntly, come back somehow.” He shook his head. “Mother nature always has surprises in store for us it seems.

“Our most important goal for this contagion is determining its T score, containing it, and if possible, destroying it.” He adjusted his glasses again. “I see many worried looks in the audience. I myself am not taken to panic and I apologize if I seem too relaxed in discussing this subject. But please do not misinterpret my calm for a lack of concern. To put it bluntly, we are looking at an extinction-level event. At least, for mankind.”