The Panic Zone

43

At dawn, columns of mist curled from the river, enshrouding the camp and the spectral forms floating in the water.

Four dugouts, each with half a dozen figures waiting. A bird shrieked as Juan poked his head from his tent, fumbled for his glasses, waved to the group then roused the others.

“Our help has arrived.”

Sutsoff approached the group and offered a respectful greeting, using some of the dialect she’d learned from tapes Pauline had sent her.

Yes, they knew of the new discovery, said one man who had a command of English. It was frightening, he said, but other than the river people, no one knew what was happening.

“Have the white doctors come to help?” the man asked.

“Yes, we are here to help.”

Sutsoff’s team washed, dressed, rekindled the fire for breakfast and broke camp. Juan and Pauline saw to the men whom they’d hired to carry the research team’s equipment overland to the field station.

Payment was fifty U.S. dollars for each man, a fortune by regional standards. Juan instructed them on the equipment, while Pauline distributed ropes and straps, ensuring each man carried a reasonable load. Heavier items were secured to carrying poles and two men were tasked to carry either end.

The trek began in good time.

Sutsoff took her place near the head of the line behind Juan and two of the older local men, regarded as expert guides. The dark forests appeared impassable. But the locals knew the way, following paths made by elephant herds that had come to water at the banks of the river.

The woods came alive with the buzzing of insects. The pungent smells of mud, decay and the fragrance of the flora challenged her senses. Trees rose like skyscrapers, their branches forming a natural roof pierced by shafts of light. While birds and monkeys screamed, the vegetation rioted with creeping crimson vines and giant purple, blue, orange and yellow flowers.

The load bearers carried items on their head or on their shoulders or strapped to their backs. Sweat glistened on their bodies.

When the expedition stopped for breaks, the locals expertly helped themselves to bananas, oranges or pineapple that were abundant. Their sharp knives sliced with swift surgical precision and they slurped the sweet juices. To the side, Juan crouched and used a stick to draw a crude map in the earth. The elder guides consulted it, then spoke with Juan and Sutsoff.

“We should be at the field station in two hours. That’s late morning-earlier than we’d hoped,” Juan said.

“Good. We’ll start work immediately,” Sutsoff said.

The group had gained its second wind as the terrain sloped downward, and in a little over an hour they had reached the field station. It was a crude wooden shack, no bigger than a garden shed, where Juan had spent the past three months conducting research.

“We must move quickly,” Sutsoff said. “We must finish our work today. We’ll camp here tonight and leave in the morning for the barge and my rendezvous with the float plane. I need to get a flight from Yaounde and get back to my lab as soon as possible.”

Everyone moved with military swiftness and order. Equipment was uncrated and positioned. Sutsoff’s pulse quickened as Juan and two of the elders led her down a path beyond the shack. They’d gone about one hundred yards when the elders stopped.

“They’re frightened,” Juan said.

“What is it?” Sutsoff asked.

“They refuse to go farther. They say the area is cursed, that we’re coming to ‘the hole with no end’-what they say is a gate to hell.”

Barely able to contain her impatience, Sutsoff said, “We’ll go on without them.”

She and Juan continued, then paused. The forest seemed subdued, waiting, the quiet punctuated with the rattle of a palm frond falling from high above. They walked for another hundred yards, came to a twist, then arrived at their destination.

The yawning mouth of a cave.

“They’re in there, about two hundred to three hundred feet,” Juan said.

While working here, he’d been tipped off by a source conducting studies in the region on African witchcraft about a disturbing development: the emergence of a new and powerful lethal agent.

Juan had immediately alerted Sutsoff.

Now, as she stood here considering the cave, the reality of the discovery was palpable. The key to her success lay deep within the darkness-this so-called gate to hell. She’d memorized Juan’s reports and knew that soon international health experts would descend on this site to neutralize what was inside.

Her job was to isolate and collect what she needed now.

“Good work. We’ll suit up and collect our specimens.”

At the field station Sutsoff, Juan, Colin, Pauline and Fiona got into protective encapsulated biochemical suits. Nervous tension seeped into the air. Sutsoff saw it in their eyes as they checked and double-checked their equipment, their breathing masks, two-layer face shields, three-layer gloves, special night-vision goggles, specially modified air-conditioned respirators, radio intercom and hazmat boots.

As awkward as it was, it was safer to suit up at the station. In their reflective suits, they resembled alien beings as they walked to the cave. It was unmapped, unidentified and estimated to contain about three million clustered bats, not fruit bats, but a rare new species known as the pariah bat.

The pariah was discovered in the region in the 1980s. But it was thought to have been wiped out after the tragic carbon dioxide explosion at Lake Nyos.

In his attempt to supply Sutsoff with samples of the Marburg virus and its relative, the Ebola virus, which she required for her work, Juan had learned that his source had encountered a farmer upriver who feared he’d been the victim of witchcraft, thinking someone had empowered bats with a powerful poison to bite his cattle at night and kill his entire herd.

Tissue samples obtained by Juan confirmed the presence of a new and alarmingly powerful lethal agent.

The farmer helped Juan track the bats to this cave.

At that time Juan was joined by Pauline at the field station. Both knew the risks but took what precautions they could. They designated a corner of the station to be a lab. Then they secured the structure with layers of heavy plastic sheeting coated with antiseptic. Finally, they donned military biochem suits obtained from a South African lab and began analysis.

Their work determined that the virus, which they’d christened Pariah Variant 1 (PV1), was present only in female bats. It was common for bats to feed on insects from swamps where the virus likely emerged. Sutsoff’s review of their testing confirmed that PV1 was one hundred to two hundred times more lethal than Marburg or Ebola. They observed that it would have a fatality rate in humans of 95% to 97%.

Based on the results on the cows and on their initial study, infection from PV1 could cause death in humans in less than ten minutes, making it the world’s deadliest pathogen.

Sutsoff had already created an unprecedented delivery and manipulation system back at her island lab. She’d been in the final phase of developing a potent synthetic pathogen from a spectrum of known biological agents. But Juan’s discovery of PV1 meant her model would be far more lethal than she could have imagined. All that she required was a sufficient supply of PV1 to complete her work and initiate her operation.

As they arrived back at the cave, Juan held up a gloved hand.

“Do not use your white light unless it’s an emergency. They have an aversion to light, it will agitate them. Use your night vision.”

They exercised supreme caution as they entered the mouth of the cave, taking time to allow their senses to adjust as the daylight at the entrance gave way to abject darkness. The cave floor was uneven and jagged; a wrong turn, a fall, could mean a tear in the suit.

According to Juan and Pauline’s study, this was the optimum time to collect samples. For a brief period of a few weeks, the females would be sedentary, docile and incapable of flying because at this stage they were lactating. This was the time to manually extract samples of the virus.

“Okay, let’s start.” Juan’s static voice came over his radio.

They each switched on their night vision and waited again for their senses to adjust before proceeding.

“Be mindful of sinkholes,” Juan said. “Stay close to formations you can grab if the ground beneath you gives way.”

Fiona released a small scream as a lone bat darted by squeaking.

“Just a male checking us out,” Juan said.

“Stay calm, everyone,” Sutsoff said.

Colin sensed the cave floor was actually soft like padded carpet.

“Kind of cushy,” he said.

“Bat droppings,” Sutsoff said.

“Eww,” Fiona said.

“Stop, everyone,” Sutsoff said. “Fiona, behave as a professional scientist or withdraw now.”

“Sorry, Doctor.”

As they progressed, about a dozen more male bats strafed them, brushing against their helmets and suits.

“The gear has been tested,” Sutsoff said. “Stay calm. It will protect you.”

Fiona muted her disgust.

“Careful, a steep step down,” Juan said.

After a few hundred feet, they came to a mammoth chamber that was dwarfed by a magnificent cathedral with groves of stalactites, stalagmites and dozens of pillars.

It took a moment to realize that the structures were trembling with life-clusters upon clusters of roosting bats.

My beauties. Sutsoff was awed. My glorious beauties.

“Let’s get started.” She set out her kit. “You know the procedure.”

Sutsoff demonstrated by plucking a roosting female from a cluster and turning its docile rat-faced head toward her. Using a dentist’s pick, she pried the tiny mouth open, inserted a small cotton tip past its fangs, swabbed the oral cavity, then put the specimen in a bottle of diluent.

“Like that,” she said. “We need as much as we can get.”

While male bats flitted about, nicking and bumping into the scientists, the team worked smoothly.

They had been at it for more than thirty minutes, collecting specimens, when they were distracted by an odd sound.

Click-tap.

“What’s that?” Colin asked.

They looked toward the mouth of the cave.

Nothing but darkness.

Click-tap. Click-tap.

Then a muffled cry.

That’s not human.

“What is that?” Fiona asked.

They followed a furious thrashing and kicking as if some violent force were charging toward them.

“I have to see!” Fiona switched on her white light.

“Fiona, no,” Juan called out too late.

A misshapen deer had staggered into the cave, rearing and swaying its neck. The group quickly realized it was not deformed but instead trapped within the writhing coils of a massive python. The snake’s jaws were extended over the deer’s muzzle in a hideous death hold.

Pauline screamed and switched on her white light. “I want out!”

A cloud of bats enveloped the deer, which dropped to its knees. Another cloud swarmed the scientists, pinging and nicking at their suits. The air filled with squeaks.

“Everyone keep calm,” Sutsoff said. “Get those lights off now! Use night vision and pack up. Juan, take us out. Let’s go!”

As the deer and snake thrashed, the team made its way to the mouth of the cave.

“Christ!” Colin shouted. “I’m getting hit harder.”

The plunk-plunk of bats strafing the team intensified.

“Keep moving!” Sutsoff said. “We’re almost out.”

Daylight painted the air as the group hurried from the cave.

There was a collective sigh of relief as they cleared the cave and retreated toward the field station.

“That was a nightmare,” Fiona said.

“Incredible!” Colin said. “Absolutely incredible!”

Juan started to take off his suit.

“Why don’t you wait until we get to the station?” Colin asked.

“I’m just so hot,” Juan said, tugging at his hood.

He had unzipped his foiled outer layer and was working on his lime-yellow layer by the time the group arrived at the field station.

Once Sutsoff placed all the samples in a protective case, the locals began helping her and the others out of their gear. Their faces were moist with sweat and the glow of accomplishing a deadly challenge.

“I need some DEET,” Juan said, “got a mosquito bite.”

Juan slapped the back of his neck but felt something larger than an insect.

It was furry.

On his fingertips was a bleeding bat.

“Juan!” Pauline’s voice filled with fear. “Oh, God!”

“Oh, Jesus, no! I’ve been bitten!”

One of the local men pointed at a small tear at the back of Juan’s suit.

Blood dripped down Juan’s neck.

He stared at the quivering bat in his hand.

“In here, Juan!” Sutsoff held out a plastic container. “Drop it in here!”

She snapped it shut, then observed Juan as he spasmed.

“Help him!” Fiona screamed at Sutsoff.

Juan collapsed, writhing in agony.

Colin held him. Sutsoff rushed to get something and Pauline scrambled for her medical bag.

Juan’s eyes widened and he screamed at the sky.

“Oh, God!” Fiona screamed. “Look at his eyes!”

His eyes liquefied, melted in their sockets, rivulets of blood oozing from his ears, his mouth as he spasmed. The air cracked with the sounds of breaking bones as Juan’s back curved into a humped spine as he died.

“Oh, no,” Fiona sobbed.

The others looked to Sutsoff and were stunned by what they saw.

She’d recorded the entire episode with her camcorder.