Plague

CHAPTER 13

Samantha sat in the corridor of Queen’s Medical and watched journalists from every newspaper, magazine, blog, and website stream into the hospital and go straight to the media room that had been set up in another building just behind the ER. The hospital’s main floor had been cleared with the exception of the staff. They had been asked, politely, to remain on hospital premises for a short period of time to see if any of them had been infected. When they were asked, national guardsmen with rifles stood behind their supervisors. There wasn’t a lot of room for debate.

Samantha was one of the few people allowed to move freely. Technically, she would by right be under observation as well. But in an emergency situation when they faced a hot agent as deadly as black pox, it was all hands on deck.

She noticed the man from the prior meeting in the Depeche Mode T-shirt walking by with a Diet Coke in his hand and he smiled to her and came over.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

“Are you going to the press conference?”

“Yes.”

“So what lab are you with again?”

“I’m with the CDC.”

“Oh, man. So this is your press conference. Are you going to be sitting up there?”

“They like to fill the long tables during these things so if there’s space they’ll ask me.”

“That’s so cool.”

“Not really.”

He shrugged. “It is to me. I’m stuck in a nine-by-nine room twelve hours a day and when I do anything important my supervisor takes the credit.”

“The CDC can always use good field agents.”

“Maybe I’ll take you up on that.” He took a sip of his drink and she could tell he was thinking of what to say next. “If that guy you mentioned, the index patient, if he did pick it up in South America, that probably means someone’s going to have to go down there and snoop around, right?”

“It’ll take time to clear it with our two governments, but yes. We’ll send down a team to all the locations he visited.”

“And try and hunt down a virus. Man, I’m telling you, your job puts mine to shame.”

“It’s rewarding work. But it’s hard to have time for everything that you want. I travel so much I sometimes feel like a stranger in my home town.”

“That’s not necessarily a bad thing if your home town sucks.” He sat next to her on a chair, removing an old issue of Sports Illustrated that was open on the cushion. “So what does somebody need to do to be on that expedition to South America?”

“You wouldn’t want to go, trust me.”

“Why?”

“It’s government travel. That means charters and the cheapest lodging and food available. They’re rarely fun.”

“Well if I wanted to, what would I have to do?”

She stood up. “You’d have to work for the CDC. You ready?”

“Um hm.”

They walked down the corridor together, Duncan asking her about how she began with the CDC and why she remained there when she was clearly qualified to work anywhere in the world she wished. They left through the back entrance and came to the second building, which was crowded with military vehicles, police cruisers, and news vans.

“Man, must be a slow news day,” Duncan said.

“You don’t think this is deserving of attention?”

“You kidding me? Do you have, well, yeah you do, but do you think the general population has any idea how many deadly epidemics are just at their doorstep? Every day in Africa, somewhere, there’s an Ebola outbreak. It infects one or two people, spreads to a few dozen or one or two hundred and then disappears. Some people are in the same room with an Ebola infected patient and they contract the disease and others get blood coughed into their mouths and don’t get it. That’s what creeps me out about it. It seems like the viruses almost choose who they want to infect and who they don’t.”

“They can’t choose anything,” Sam said.

They worked their way through the cords from the cameras and sound mics that coiled on the ground like thin, black snakes. They showed identification to the MPs at the entrance and went inside.

Everyone seemed to be going in one direction down a hallway so they followed. This building was much different than the hospital proper. The floors were carpeted and clean and there were no fingerprint marks on the glass doors or the walls from children. Samantha guessed this was probably an administration building.

They finally came to a small auditorium and took seats in the back, Duncan sitting next her. Samantha took out her phone and began reviewing notes of the three patients that had been admitted during the night. Two women and a fifteen-year-old boy. They were all displaying fevers, rashes, vomiting, and diarrhea. The boy had developed what had become the telltale sign of the illness: a spreading, smooth black surface just underneath the skin.

“I guess you lost your seat,” Duncan said.

At the table set up at the front of the room sat a man Samantha recognized from long nights in cramped laboratories. In front of him, a nameplate with her name had been pushed to the side and replaced with one that said, DR. PUSHKIN.

The reporters filed in and took their places as Wilson, Pushkin, the director of the hospital, and a man in a military uniform with three stars pinned to his chest took their places at the long table before the cameras.

Wilson took out two pills in a cellophane wrapper and popped them before taking a sip of water. Samantha knew them to be beta-blockers to calm his nerves and remove any performance anxiety.

A man in a suit with a nametag came up to Wilson and made a few adjustments to the papers in front of him. Samantha heard him say, “Ready when you are” and the reporters took out iPads and notebooks.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Wilson began, “I don’t need to explain to you exactly what we’re facing. However you did it, many of you knew about this before many of us sitting up here did. It’s extremely important that we not cause a panic. When people panic, they get aggressive, they make mistakes, and they sometimes lose all sense of morality. I would ask that when you report on this story, you not exaggerate the seriousness of the infection. No one in Kansas or Miami is going to get this agent. It’s confined solely to this city. In fact, there has not been one confirmed case more than five miles from this hospital and, since yesterday, we have not received any new patients with the symptomology we’re looking for.

“This is, as far as I can tell,” Wilson continued, “a fluke. In nature things come out of hiding every few centuries or so, rear their head, and go back to where they came. Once these patients are treated, I have a feeling we won’t have any more reported cases.”

Duncan leaned over to Sam. “What’s he doing? Why the hell would he say that? He has no idea.”

Sam shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Wilson cleared his throat and said, “Now, I thought we would just open it up to questions.”

One reporter, an overweight man in a Hawaiian shirt, stood up. “Doctor, can you confirm that there have been twelve infections in the past seventy-two hours, and if you can, how is it that you can assert that you don’t think there will be more?”

“I can confirm that there have been twelve cases reported in the last seventy-two hours. Obviously, we cannot discuss the details of these cases due to patient confidentiality, but what I can tell you is that we now believe, thanks to the fine work of our field agent, Dr. Samantha Bower, that the initial infection occurred in South America and was brought here via a carrier who resided in Honolulu. And the reason I can state with confidence that I don’t think there will be more infections is that this type of agent has an exponential growth factor. It hits its tipping point quickly and reaches a critical mass in a matter of days rather than weeks or months. That has not happened here. Which means one of two things: it’s either not the agent we think it is, or it’s dying out. I believe it to be the latter.”

Another reporter, a woman in a short skirt and a white button-down shirt stood up. Wilson called her by name and she smiled at him before speaking.

“Doctor, my understanding is that black pox is a mutation of the smallpox virus. And that smallpox, since being eradicated through vaccinations, only exists in two places in the world. One is in the former Soviet Union and one is here at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“Is it possible then that there’s been some sort of release of this agent from one of these two labs? Either on purpose or by accident?”

“Absolutely not. The first thing I did was check with our laboratories and with Moscow. All smallpox agents are accounted for. They are stored in a frozen state using liquid nitrogen. The only way they could be released is if they thaw, infect someone, and have that person leave the lab and infect others. But there have been no reported cases in either our labs or the Russian’s.”

“Is it possible then that perhaps this virus has been manufactured by another entity. Perhaps a rogue nation like North Korea or Iran?”

Wilson grew noticeably uncomfortable. He shifted in his seat and adjusted his glasses. He looked hopefully to the military officer seated next to him.

“Perhaps General Lancaster would be better suited to answer that question.”

The general looked at the reporter sternly, unblinking, and said, “There’s no evidence of that. And until there is I don’t think speculation helps anyone.”

The woman was about to ask something else when she was drowned out by a reporter from Fox News who yelled from a seated position, “Is it true that a high ranking member of al Qaida has taken responsibility for the outbreak?”

Before the general could answer, Wilson said, “Lots of people are going to take responsibility. Being the United States means we are the richest, most powerful nation on earth. When that role was held by Babylon, then Egypt, then Rome, and the French, the English, and so forth, they were all hated. They were all attacked. I have no doubt that several groups will take responsibility for this. But that’s not what the evidence suggests; it suggests this is a naturally occurring phenomena.

“Terrorist organizations attack clusters of people, like the sarin poisoning in the subways of Tokyo. Or the September 11 attacks. They don’t attack a single individual. They would want to maximize exposure to the agent as much as possible. The evidence strongly favors our theory that a single individual returned home from a trip to the jungle and carried this virus with him. Period.”

More questions were thrown at the panel and Wilson fielded almost all of them. Sam saw that Dr. Pushkin was checking his watch. She guessed that he wished he was alone in his lab right now.

There were around twenty or twenty-five more questions before they closed the press conference. Once the cameras were off, Sam saw Wilson and his assistant going from reporter to reporter and having a whispered conversation. Probably reminding them that causing a panic unnecessarily would be extremely detrimental.

Sam stood and made her way down to the long table just as Pushkin rose to leave.

“You didn’t speak much,” she said.

“Ralph seemed to have that particular function covered. You look tired.”

“I’m okay. How was the flight?”

“Awful. But this is one beautiful damned island. Let’s get lunch or breakfast, or whatever the hell mealtime it is.”

They were walking out when Duncan appeared in front of them. He thrust out his hand and Pushkin shook.

“Dr. Pushkin, I’m Duncan Adams.”

“Oh, yes. From USAMRIID, right?”

“Yeah.”

“You two know each other?” Sam asked.

Pushkin said, “Their laboratories are much more secure than ours even though we have a BSL 4 clearance. I’ve had them perform a few diagnoses when I require. Duncan here is a brilliant research scientist. When he wants to be.”

“Which is rarely,” Duncan said. “So where you guys off to now?”

“Breakfast. Join us. I think we may need to do some brainstorming on this.”