He pulled a small array of sampling tools out of his bag and started to work. First, he drew blood samples – the girl moaned in pain as he used a needle to draw the blood out of her body – and then stool and urine samples. Carefully, he scraped away some of her skin cells and removed one of the pustules, transferring all of the samples into a secure medical case. The history of biological research included hundreds of doctors who had accidentally infected themselves with a deadly disease and even though Nicolas had been immunised against Smallpox, he could take nothing for granted. It wasn't unknown for a new and deadly strain of a disease to be unaffected by the immunisation.
Beside him, Doctor McCoy took his own samples, duplicating Nicolas’s work. If one of their instruments was contaminated, there would still be a proper set of samples. Other Wildfire team members were moving into the apartment and starting to take samples from the air and all exposed surfaces, as well as the food in the fridge and sanitary facilities. The entire apartment would eventually be bagged up and transferred to one of the classified research facilities, where it would all be analysed for clues as to how the outbreak had started and how far it might have spread. He looked over at one of the unprotected policemen – an older man with a pose he recognised as being from the Marine Corps – and shuddered. The retired Marine would have been immunised, of course, but there was no way to know if it would work. The man might have been condemned to death just by walking through the door.
“Done,” Doctor McCoy said, finally. “Nicolas?”
“I’m ready,” Nicolas said. He took one last look at the girl and stood up. Now that the samples had been taken from her, she could be transferred to a proper quarantine facility, where she would receive the very best of medical care. If Patient Zero could be cured, it would bode well for the others in the apartment and outside who might have been infected. “Come on.”
He led the way back down the stairs and outside, into the biological research lab. The whole area was illuminated oddly by ultraviolet germicidal irradiation lights, which provided a measure of security for the surrounding area. Nicolas didn’t completely trust them – few did – but they worked. Even so, the remainder of the team would have to be careful, at least until they knew what they were dealing with. His research now would hopefully confirm or deny the possibility of Smallpox.
They passed the cases in through the access hatch on the research lab and then stepped into the quarantine section, running through a series of sterilisation drills to ensure that the exterior of the MOPP suit carried no trace at all of disease spores. Once the tests were complete, Nicolas removed his suit with some relief and stepped over to the sealed laboratory. Remote systems within the laboratory were already working on the samples, removing them from one of the cases and slipping them into analysis tubes. The other case would eventually be transferred to USAMRIID, even if it was a false alarm, something that was looking more and more doubtful every minute.
“Let’s see,” he said, as the computer-aided microscope hummed to life. Germs might be invisible to the naked eye, but careful microscopic examination could lead to rapid identification. Nicolas had spent years at the CDC and USAMRIID studying the few samples of deadly diseases kept in storage – ranging from Smallpox itself to Ebola and other viral hemorrhagic fevers, as well as highly-classified samples of Russian biological weapons – and knew what he was looking for. Even so, he took great care with the equipment, running through all of the checks before he began. “Ah.”
Humans thought of germ cells, when they thought of them at all, as tiny cartoon monsters. Nicolas knew that that was far from the truth. Up close, germs could be remarkably beautiful, even though an aura of evil seemed to hang over some of the most dangerous diseases in the world. Biological researchers had wondered if that was humanity’s primal mind warning of danger, or if it was merely an effect of the researchers knowing that they were staring at small items that could exterminate entire populations if they were released into the wild. He studied the monitor carefully, wincing slightly as the germs came into view. The computer analysis programs blinked up their results, but he ignored them, studying the images directly. There was no margin for error.
“No,” he said, simply. The world had turned upside down. “Just…no.”
Doctor McCoy looked over from where he was studying the results himself. “I think that there’s no room for doubt,” he said. The results would be uploaded onto the secure network, where experts from all over America would look at them, but they’d only be confirming what Nicolas and Doctor McCoy had discovered. “God alone knows where it came from, but the demon in the freezer has finally awakened.”
Nicolas nodded. “Smallpox,” he said. He felt stunned, unable to react. In time, he knew there would be horror and anger, for the mere presence of smallpox was proof of a biological attack. There were precautions that had to be taken – that must be taken, now that the threat was identified – but somehow he could barely move. “Some bastard infected her with smallpox.”
Doctor McCoy nodded. “Unless she was a terrorist herself,” he said. Nicolas doubted it, from what he’d seen of her apartment, but it was a valid possibility. He knew how terrorists thought, yet Miss Henderson hadn’t looked to be an Islamic fanatic, which meant that if she was a terrorist, she was from a domestic terrorist group. Very few of them would be insane enough to release smallpox onto the United States. This was the work of a far more fanatical enemy. “What do we do now?”
“Get me the Director,” Nicolas ordered. The Wildfire Protocols admitted of no ambiguity, not now that an attack had been confirmed. They had to go right to the very top. Others would handle the grunt work now. “I have to brief the President as soon as possible.”
Chapter Four
…When dealing with a confirmed outbreak, there are certain steps that must be taken. Patient Zero must be isolated, along with anyone else who might be infected, allowing researchers to hopefully limit the disease’s spread. Failure to do so could be disastrous. Even so, it is far more important to understand where the disease originated and how it spread than to take care of Patient Zero…
-Nicolas Awad
New York, USA
Day 5
The headquarters of Project Wildfire (New York) were situated in an unmarked office building near the centre of the city. Various project administrators had complained about the location over the years, but the supervising committee had believed that a central location would work better as a command and control centre than one based outside the city. In a compromise, many of the facilities earmarked for Wildfire’s use – if the Wildfire Protocols were ever activated – were situated outside the city, in areas that could be easily defended by the project’s security staff.
Doctor McCoy took his place at the head of the table and waited for the briefing room to fill up. Project Wildfire, unlike many other bloated government programs, had only a small permanent staff and a temporary staff that existed as part of a smart mob. Over the years since the Project’s inception, thousands of trained and experienced personnel had been investigated, security-cleared and then recruited into the smart mob, where their talents could be called upon at will. Few had believed that they would be summoned to the building, outside of exercises and training drills that were run once a year, but they all knew to come when called. The nineteen men and women in the briefing room might not have been public personalities, but they were at the top of their profession, a mixture of medical staff, trained disaster relief experts and investigative personnel. They would all be needed to handle the outbreak.
He studied their faces, noting who looked concerned and who looked annoyed. They had to suspect what was going on, yet there was no way to know for sure, not until the briefing began. The psychologists had helped choose the recruits on the basis of who would take it seriously, rather than growing bored of false alarms and endless exercises, but McCoy had little faith in their conclusions. In his experience, based on a career practicing medicine around th
e globe, there was no way to know what someone was really made of until the shit hit the fan. As the doors closed behind the final member, he tapped the table for silence, forcing them all to look at him.
“This morning,” he said bluntly, “a pair of policemen discovered a woman suffering from smallpox in New York City.”
The staff stared at him. McCoy knew that many others would have sought to sugar-coat the message, but that wasn't his way. There was no time for panic, or even for disbelief, not when smallpox was already loose in New York and God knew where else. They could panic later, once the crisis was under control...if they could ever get it under control. Some of the more optimistic scenarios he’d seen over the years had included New York – or a city of choice – being transformed into a charnel house.
He keyed a switch and one of the images taken at the apartment appeared on the main display. Cally Henderson’s face, covered with ominous red pustules, stared down at them. He ignored several people who sounded as if they were going to be sick, flicking through the pictures one by one, ending with a chart showing how many people might have been infected by the outbreak.
“There is no room for doubt,” he said, leaving the display showing the final chart. The implications wouldn't be lost on any of them. New York was a large city, but as the old rule of thumb had it, there were only seven links between anyone in a city. The entire city – including the Wildfire HQ – might be infected by now. Smallpox, at least in its original form, was well understood, but from what little he had heard before the meeting had been convened, this particular outbreak wasn't behaving as it should. It wasn't a reassuring thought. “That poor girl was infected with smallpox and left to rot in her room.”
His gaze swept the room. They were good people, he noted, observing how they had gathered themselves and focused on the issue at hand. There were emergency procedures for a biological hazard or a disease outbreak and they’d drilled endlessly on how to confront them. They were the best-prepared group in America. Across the continent, other teams would be being briefed and warned to prepare for possible outbreaks in their area, but New York would have to take the lead.
“We have sent a representative to Washington to meet with the President,” he continued. “We believe that the President will issue the order to lockdown New York – if not the entire country – within the day, but we do not have time to wait. It is our duty to stop the outbreak as quickly as possible, regardless of the risks. We all know what to do.
“I want Miss Henderson’s activities over the last week dissected down to the tiniest detail,” he said, looking towards the two representatives from the New York branch of the FBI. “I want to know when she was infected and by who. I want to know who she knows, who are her friends and family, who she works with...they may all be infected by now, running around like viral time bombs. There is no way that this is a natural outbreak. We are dealing with, at the very least, a case of biological terrorism.”
There was silence. New Yorkers took terrorism seriously. Terrorists had struck the city on 9/11, killing thousands of people and damaging the city’s famous skyline. Since then, there had been a constant series of minor terrorist plots against the city, most of them nipped in the bud. The NYPD and the city’s government had no intention of resting on their laurels, however; the city had the best-trained emergency response staff in America, outside the military.
“I want all hospitals and other medical centres alerted,” he continued. “Smallpox is known to cause flu-like symptoms; doctors may have deduced flu without realising that they were dealing with a disease believed to be non-existent within the wild. I want any suspicious disease patterns tracked down and all suspected infected people held for testing, if possible. Miss Henderson is almost certainly the tip of the iceberg. There will be more cases within the week, perhaps within the day.”
He spoke as if it would be easy. It wouldn't be; New York’s medical profession wouldn't take kindly to such heavy disruption. All non-essential operations would have to be postponed indefinitely, perhaps permanently. Hospital beds would have to be emptied in preparation for thousands of smallpox victims. Doctors and nurses would have to be briefed on smallpox, and then immunised against the disease before they could be risked while treating their patients. McCoy had studied hundreds of smallpox outbreaks over the years and had been terrified; the disease spread rapidly, just like a wildfire burning through dry wood. The irony was not lost on him.
“One final point,” he concluded. “The President will doubtless make a statement to the nation. Until then, there is to be no contact with the media. I will personally blacklist anyone who speaks to a reporter out of turn; in fact, I want all contacts with reporters reported to me at once.”
There was no argument. Most of them were familiar with how the media could distort and misrepresent the truth. A single leak could result in massive panic, with the disease being spread further by the mobs and causing far more deaths before it finally burned itself out. McCoy would have suggested closing down the media for the duration of the crisis, but he was experienced enough to know that the President – or even New York’s independent Mayor – wouldn't go for it.
“Good,” he said, finally. “I have to brief the Mayor in twenty minutes. You know your duties, gentlemen; report to me the minute there are additional developments.”
He watched, grimly, as the team filed out of the room. Outside, New York looked normal, although he was sure he could sense an edge in the air, a faint sense that something was not quite right. Or perhaps he was just imagining it; the citizens were enjoying a normal day, unaware of the growing crisis. That, he knew, wouldn't last. No matter what the President said, it would not be long before the citizens of New York knew about the crisis, in a manner they couldn't ignore.
***
“You know,” Sergeant Al Hattlestad remarked, “perhaps I'm just being insane, but I feel as if I am in prison.”
He gazed around the hospital room. It was bland, painted a boring yellow-white, with nothing in the room apart from a bed and some complicated-looking equipment. He had been transported to the facility – he had no idea where he was, or even if he was still in New York – and pushed right into the sealed compartment, having been stripped of everything he had been wearing. They’d even taken his wedding ring and refused to return it to him.
“This is not a prison,” the doctor said. He wore a spacesuit-like protective garment, rather like the MOPP suits that Al had worn back in the Iraq War. His face was completely hidden behind the goggles. “This is an emergency medical centre operated by FEMA, among others. While you are not a prisoner, Sergeant, honesty compels me to admit that we cannot actually permit you to leave.”
“Sounds rather like a prison to me,” Al said, flatly. He deliberately looked away from the doctor, towards the mirror that took up most of one wall. Unless he missed his guess, it was a one-way window, allowing them to stare at him through the glass. He lifted his hand and waved towards it; unsurprisingly, there was no response. “How long do you intend to keep me here?”
The doctor took his arm in a surprisingly gentle grip and pressed a hypodermic needle against his wrist. “As long as necessary,” he said, flatly. “We will keep you here until we know if you have been infected, at which point we will know how to deal with you.”
Al waited until the doctor had finished drawing blood and then leaned back on the bed, staring up towards the ceiling. “Doctor,” he said, “let’s not bullshit around, shall we? That poor girl was infected with smallpox, right?”
“Yes,” the doctor said. He sounded surprised that Al had recognised it, even though it had been an essential part of the NBC course he’d taken in the Marines. “The presence of the disease has been confirmed.”
Al nodded. “But I have been immunised against smallpox,” he argued. “You should let me out and back onto the streets. I'm going to be needed.”
“There are several problems with that,” the doctor said. “There is no way to k
now if the injection you received several years ago is still effective, or even if it was effective against this particular variant of smallpox in the first place. If it is not effective, you are almost certainly infected and will infect others if we allowed you out of the room. We will hold you here until we are sure that you can be released without posing a danger to others.”
“I guess I can't argue with that,” Al said, finally. He had to admit that the doctor had a point. “Even so...do you have any idea how long I am going to have to remain here?”
The doctor shrugged. “Smallpox has a standard incubation period of up to fourteen days,” he said. “We should be able to tell if you have been infected sooner, through blood tests and...ah...other methods. If you don’t show any symptoms in a couple of weeks, we should be able to release you without further ado.”
The Coward's Way of War Page 4
