USAMRIID

Platt felt like it was taking an eternity. He thrived on order. He respected processes that followed logic and reason. But suddenly the basic procedure for entering a Biolevel 4 hot zone had become a painstaking, excruciatingly long process. Everything took too long. Everything seemed to move in slow motion. And yet, he didn’t dare skip or hurry any of it. He knew better and all he had to do was to remind himself of the cells he had just looked at through the microscope. That was enough.

His heart still pounded against his rib cage. At least its thundering in his ears had eased up a bit. At times like this his nervous energy pulsed and raced, making him anxious. It was the same excess energy he liked to slam out on the racquetball court or pound out on the running trail. Years of self-discipline taught him how to control it, but here, inside these windowless walls, it was always a bit of a challenge.

He had helped McCathy into his space suit first. Platt would be able to put on his own suit. In the field it was a little trickier. Here it was routine and Platt had plenty of time. McCathy would need to prepare the frozen samples they’d use for the test, something Platt didn’t envy. The samples they were going to use were actual blood serum from human victims with filoviruses, samples in glass vials taken from USAMRIID’s freezer, their own private collection of hot agents. Platt tried to stay positive, tried to remind himself that not all filoviruses were equal. Though all were highly infectious, not all were fatal.

Ebola Reston had shown up in a private laboratory’s monkey house in Reston, Virginia, about twenty years ago. Platt’s mentor at USAMRIID had been one of the task force members who had had the job of containment. The virus spread through the monkeys like wildfire, but it didn’t have the same effect on humans. The sample they had in their freezer collection was from a worker who had gotten sick but who had survived. Ebola Reston hadn’t taken a single human life. Yet under a microscope it looked like snakes or worms with thousands of threads splintering off of it. It could certainly look just as vicious as Ebola Zaire.

Ebola Zaire had earned the nickname “the slate wiper” and for good reason. Its kill rate was ninety percent. The sample they had was from a nurse in northern Zaire just south of the Ebola River. In September 1976 she took care of a Roman Catholic nun who had somehow become infected with the virus. From what Platt knew of the outbreak, entire villages in the Bumba Zone of northern Zaire were wiped out. The virus jumped from one village to another until the government blocked off sections of the country and allowed no one out or in under threat of being shot. That was Ebola Zaire. The only means of containment was to let it die out and, of course, let everyone infected die with it.

In between was Marburg and Lassa fever. Marburg wasn’t much better than Ebola Zaire. Its survivors looked very much like victims of radiation. But the difference was that there were actually survivors. The sample they had of Marburg was from one such survivor, a doctor in Nairobi.

Likewise, Lassa fever was not necessarily fatal. If caught early it could be treated with antiviral drugs, though one out of three victims was left permanently deaf. Still, it was a much better compromise. The sample they had in their freezer for Lassa fever was from a man named Masai. Platt had treated the old man before he himself was quarantined in Sierra Leone.

The test McCathy was preparing would be rather simple. Eventually he would need to do the same test with each of the exposed victims’ blood: Ms. Kellerman, her daughter, Assistant Director Cunningham and Agent O’Dell. McCathy would start with Ms. Kellerman, placing only a droplet of her blood serum onto each of the samples from the freezer.

Unfrozen, the viruses were as hot as when they were collected. If Ms. Kellerman’s blood reacted to any one of the samples, giving off a faint glow, it meant that she tested positive for that virus. The glow meant that the virus recognized what was living inside Ms. Kellerman’s blood. Platt was hoping all of the samples would come up negative and that there might be a chance this wasn’t a virus at all.

Still in his surgical scrubs he sat down on the bench in the gray area, his elbows on his knees, his jaw resting in his hands. He was exhausted. He knew McCathy had to be exhausted, too. Platt’s training and adrenaline would get him through. He had been in war zones, physically exhausted, mentally drained and forced to perform surgical procedures in makeshift operating rooms with blinking generator lights and limited sterile water. Somehow he’d learned to dig deep and find the stamina and the necessary energy to get through the next minute, the next hour, the next day. If he didn’t, it could mean someone’s life. A war zone wasn’t much different than a hot zone.

He stared at the stainless-steel walls lined with spraying nozzles for the decon shower that came afterward. The gray area was neither sterile nor hot. It was neutral territory. Or, as Platt’s predecessor had told him, “One last chance to change your mind before crossing over to the hot side.”

Platt checked his wristwatch then took it off and started getting into his suit. Regulations prohibited wearing anything inside your space suit that touched your skin other than your scrubs. Yet Platt knew several people who wore amulets or charms. Here in the gray area outside the Level 4 air lock it wasn’t unusual to see a variety of rituals or superstitions. Platt had seen scientists make the sign of the cross. He remembered one veterinarian who took out a picture of his wife and children and studied it before gearing up. Others went through a series of breathing exercises or relaxation techniques. McCathy didn’t appear to have any rituals or superstitions, unless his muttering “it’s goddamn unbelievable” had become a sort of mantra for him.

As for Platt, he wished he still had the family or even a photograph. Sometimes he thought it’d be nice to believe in making the sign of the cross, just like he did so many times growing up. Instead, he had no routines, no superstitions. Although he did always make sure he used the bathroom. Six hours in a suit had taught him that lesson very quickly.

He rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck. He took several deep breaths before attaching his helmet then he pulled the handle on the steel air-lock door to enter the hot zone.