The grainy feed provided a perfect view of the entire terminal. They watched dozens of commuters hurrying to their next destination. Then an abrupt screech erupted from the middle of the pack. The audio was crystal clear, but Kate couldn’t tell if the sound was human. It sounded like an animal in distress.
Chaos ensued shortly after, and the hallway became a mass of terrified passengers screaming and running in all directions. When the passage cleared, a single man stood in front of the camera. Visible spasms shook his shirtless body as he walked slowly across the carpet. He jerked from left to right, his body twisting with every step.
As he got closer, Kate saw his face. Crusted blood surrounded a swollen mouth transformed into a suction cup. Blood oozed from his eyes. He tilted his head like a curious dog.
“What in the hell?” Kate muttered.
What they were witnessing made no sense. At that stage of infection, he theoretically shouldn’t have the energy to move. This man wasn’t only moving; he seemed to be possessed with energy. And his lips. What the hell had happened to his lips?
The man suddenly hunched over in apparent pain and clamped his bloated lips around his arm. He tore away a chunk of flesh and let out a howl that reminded Kate of some of the exotic animals she’d heard in the remote jungles of Africa.
“My God,” Michael whispered.
Kate didn’t reply. She was trying to find a way to justify what they were watching. Was it possible he had suffered brain damage? She knew of cases where Ebola patients had gone insane and mutilated or attacked medical personnel, but that didn’t explain his mouth.
She looked back at the screen just as two Homeland Security officers entered the hallway. They kept their hands on their holstered guns. Kate could hear one of them yelling, “Get on the ground.”
The man twisted his body at an odd angle, his joints clicking as he moved. His posture was grotesque, like his body didn’t fit together anymore.
Kate had never seen anyone move like that, especially not a person with a suspected Ebola infection. She stared with morbid fascination, wondering what exactly was happening to the man in front of them. His lips and joints. They didn’t fit with what she’d seen in the past.
They continued to watch in silence, Kate furiously chewing on her fingernails. She had moved to her index finger as one of the officers finally pulled his gun.
“Get on the fucking ground!”
The man snarled and lunged forward with incredible speed. With a running leap, he straddled the guard. He wrapped both legs around the officer’s waist. Kate wasn’t prepared for what came next. She’d always thought her stomach was like a maximum-security prison, but she’d also never seen anything quite like this. Nothing so barbaric.
The other officer quickly grabbed the infected man, trying to pull him off his partner. The result was a tangled mass of limbs and screams as the three fell to the ground.
Several gunshots rang out, and the infected man’s body rolled onto the carpet. He shook violently, clawing at his wounds before leaning over and vomiting black gore onto the floor.
The injured guard crawled away, clutching his neck and moaning while the other officer tried to help him up.
More shouts echoed in the hallway as paramedics and additional security arrived. The video ended with the camera focused on the man. His twisted body was now limp, surrounded in a puddle of dark red blood.
It took Frank several seconds to gather his thoughts before he returned in front of the video feed. He very methodically reached for the Styrofoam cup of coffee and took a slow sip. He wiped his mouth and in a deep but serious tone said, “Call everyone that knows anything about Ebola. I want everyone we have working on this,” he said. “Everyone.” Frank reached for his phone. “Shit, I have to take this.” His voice was shaky, uncontrolled.
“I’ll get to work on the—” Michael began to say.
“Wait,” Frank said, picking up the phone and holding out a finger. “Yes, this is Dr. Frank.”
A pause.
“That’s not possible. They can’t already be showing—”
Another pause.
Kate bit her lip.
“But the incubation period is normally—”
Silence.
“San Nicholas?” Another pause. “What do you mean everyone there is dead?”
More silence.
“Okay, I understand, Chad. Keep this quiet until we know more.”
Kate flinched when Michael’s phone vibrated on the table. He pulled it toward him to look at the screen. She caught a glimpse of the caller ID.
Gibson/USAMRIID.
Michael ignored the call and waited for Frank to return to the screen. Moments later the Deputy Director dropped his own phone onto his desk and swiveled his chair back in front of his laptop cam. The deep wrinkles on his forehead were even more pronounced.
“That was Dr. Chad Roberts again. He’s at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Both of those Homeland Security officers are showing signs of infection. Rashes, bruising, and hemorrhaging from multiple locations, and that’s not all.” He paused and shook his head solemnly. “Both men are showing abnormally violent behavior. They had to be restrained. A nurse and an EMT have been bitten.”
He shook his head a second time, muttering something to himself. “The good news is Chad thinks they found the original flight. Homeland Security boarded it an hour ago. It’s a Navy plane. The pilot and two Navy officers were found dead. Brutally murdered, and apparently cannibalized.”
The word paralyzed Kate with fear. There was no need to ask what any of this meant. She knew the CDC’s worst fears were now a reality. Ebola had not only made landfall in the U.S., but it had evolved into something even worse. The virus was notorious for mutating, which was what made it so deadly, but this time she was afraid it had made a leap they couldn’t stop.
Michael’s voice pulled her back to the room. “Does law enforcement think the man in the video killed the crew of the plane?”
Frank nodded. “They are checking the flight data as we speak.”
“San Nicholas,” Michael suddenly said. “That’s one of the secret locations for USAMRIID.” He looked back down at his cell phone. “Colonel Rick Gibson just called me. Shit,” he muttered. “I sent Pat Ellis into the field per Gibson’s request just yesterday. I figured it was a routine training mission.”
Frank’s eyes hardened. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Jed, you're in L.A., and the USAMRIID activates the EOC for training ops all the time.”
The Deputy Director shook his head. “Call Colonel Gibson and find out what he knows. Then let me know what the hell is happening.”
Michael nodded and rose from his seat.
“We need to lock down that hospital,” Kate said. “Isolate everyone that has come into contact with suspected cases. Everyone.”
“We’re working on it, Dr. Lovato. Trust me,” Frank replied.
“How about a sample?” Kate added with urgency. “This may be Ebola, but it has to be a different strain. I’ve never seen anyone that looks like a…” She peered back at Michael’s laptop and considered the word on the tip of her tongue.
Monster.
She couldn’t bring herself to say it.
Frank lifted a brow like he knew what she was thinking. “Chad is already getting samples, so you will have them in twelve hours.”
“We will get started as soon as they come in,” Michael replied. It was then she realized she was shaking. She slowly sank back in her chair, her mind drifting to Javier. She could feel her phone burning a hole in her pocket. As soon as they were done she was going to call him and tell him to quietly get out of the city.
“Oh, and Michael,” Frank said. “Keep me apprised. You got that?”
“Yes, sir,” Michael said. He stood and patted Kate on her shoulder. “You know what to do.”
She nodded, but deep down she was terrified—deep down she wasn’t sure if she did know what to do.
Beck
ham hesitated when he saw the Blackhawk on the tarmac. He didn’t trust the Medical Corps insignia on the side or the guards standing out front with their M4s. If Major Caster had held a gun to his head, then what would stop these fuckers from doing the same?
“Let’s go,” one of the men yelled, waving him forward.
There was motion inside the chopper. Beckham spied three silhouettes, one of them nearly twice as big as the others. It had to be Horn.
Beckham hurried across the concrete, shivering in the new clothes the technician had given him after the short briefing. He decided if Gibson was going to have him taken out back and shot, then his team would already be dead.
A flashback to the decon shower hit him before the wind from the whooshing helicopter blades. He could still see Tenor’s blood churning around the floor drain. It was a painful reminder that half of his team was already dead.
He formed fists, his knuckles popping. Less than twenty-four hours. The amount of time it took to wipe out half of his team. Years of training—of life—all gone in an instant.
There was no controlling his anger. Noble and Caster hadn’t given Beckham’s team proper intel. If he had known what they were dealing with, maybe he could have saved his men.
Ducking, Beckham shielded his face from the gusts of wind and moved to the chopper. He grabbed a handhold and took a seat. No one spoke a word. The exchange of nods was all that was needed.
Beckham’s body quivered, but not from the cold air. He shook from the rage growing inside of him. The smell of the chemicals lingering on his skin filled his lungs as he breathed deeply. He sat there knowing that somewhere, halfway across the country, pairs of Army officers were arriving at the homes of Tenor, Edwards, and Spinoza to feed their families lies. Just like the lies he’d been fed during the “short” briefing a few minutes earlier.
When the chopper finally took off, Beckham broke the silence, whispering to Horn, “What did they tell you?”
Horn grunted. “Said that we encountered a group of mad scientists in Building 8 infected with an experimental drug.”
Beckham almost laughed. They’d told him the same thing. There was no mention of Ebola or VX-99, and he knew there never would be.
“We’re lucky to be alive,” Riley remarked. “After seeing what they did to Chief Wright and the pilot.”
“This is fucking bullshit,” Horn said. Veins bulged from his forehead. “How do we know they’re really flying us back to Fort Bragg?”
“If they were going to kill us, they already would have…” Beckham’s voice trailed off. Now he wasn’t so sure.
He blinked away the paranoid thoughts and attempted to manage his anger, but he couldn’t stop thinking of the haunting images of the charred bodies of his men. He’d led them through Fallujah, the Mog, and countless other missions in places most Americans didn’t know existed, all without a single casualty. But it had been on American soil, deep beneath the surface, that he’d lost half his team, and now he was heading home to bury empty caskets. At least, that’s what he thought was going to happen. His gut told him they might be flying somewhere else.
-8-
April 19th, 2015
DAY 2
2100 Hours
Northwestern Memorial Hospital
Chicago, Illinois
Chad Roberts sat in the backseat of the cab with a sick stomach. He’d been nauseated all day. On top of that he was exhausted. He needed a very hot cup of joe, or even better, a shot of adrenaline.
After returning home from making clinical rounds in Guinea a few days earlier, he had been looking forward to getting caught up on sleep. Instead, Deputy Director Frank had sent him straight to Chicago.
Judging by the checklist of items he still had left to work on, sleep wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. Even if he could find a bed, the horrors he’d seen in the past six hours would keep him awake. The microbreak, or what they were calling an isolated outbreak in Chicago, made the one he’d seen in Guinea look like a common cold. He could only imagine what was happening on a microscopic level. Somehow the Ebola virus had mutated again, and this time, it had turned into something beyond his wildest fears.
Chad situated his backpack more comfortably on his legs. Pulling his breathing mask off his face, he checked his list. The most important item was already crossed off—the samples were already on their way to Atlanta on a modified jet used to transport Level 4 contagions. That was a relief. At least Deputy Director Frank could get his teams working on figuring out what this thing was and how to develop a treatment and eventually a vaccine.
A chirp from his phone reminded him he hadn’t looked at it in fifteen minutes. One missed call and three text messages blinked across the screen.
“Shit,” he muttered. Every time his phone buzzed, he worried it was a report of another case, but so far they had contained the infection to Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
With a sigh, he crammed his tablet into his bag and caught a glimpse of the driver in the rearview mirror. The metallic click from a gold ornament dangling beneath it reminded Chad of how superstitious the villagers in Guinea were.
Now the skeptical looks made sense. The driver, an immigrant from Somalia, eyed Chad suspiciously. In remote Africa, Western medicine was seen as witchcraft, so it was no wonder the man had glared at Chad's CDC badge with wild eyes when he first got in the car. It was the same look the villagers in Guinea had given the white, portable biohazard facilities that popped up outside their homes. Ironically, it was their superstition that often caused the vicious outbreaks to fizzle out. Many villagers would treat their loved ones with herbal remedies and opt not to travel to one of the major population centers for modern health care, which would likely result in the outbreak spreading further. The locals' fear of Western witchcraft had so far saved the world from the reaches of the Ebola virus. Until now. Now the virus had popped up in one of the most populated areas in North America.
The thought was terrifying, and the sight of Northwestern Memorial Hospital chilled Chad to the core as the car stopped outside the emergency entrance. He still couldn’t believe what was happening. Not only had the virus mutated, but the victims were displaying violent behavior, in some cases mutilating themselves or even feeding on their own flesh or attacking others. Many of them appeared to also be suffering from hallucinations. He’d seen that symptom before, but not at the beginning stages of infection. Typically such cases only occurred when the brain had suffered damage from lack of oxygen or internal hemorrhaging.
That was the most confusing part. The incubation period was damn near instantaneous. He’d seen this when one of the Homeland Security officers from O’Hare had bitten a nurse. She’d dropped to the floor, gripping her arm, and suddenly started seizing. In under an hour, the hemorrhaging had started. He’d never seen Ebola work so fast, and the violent behavior made no sense. It was like the virus had possessed the victim, which he knew was nearly impossible.
He shook the thoughts from his mind and climbed out of the car, thanking the driver and handing him a twenty-dollar bill. The man hesitated, regarding it as if it might be laced with poison, before snatching it from Chad's hands.
Chief of Staff Sam Marks waited for Chad at the entrance to the Emergency room, his foot tapping nervously on the concrete. The short bald man smiled nervously, his immaculately trimmed mustache curving around his lips.
When they’d met earlier, Sam had assured him that they were prepared to handle the microbreak. Like the cab driver, Chad was skeptical. He’d ordered the hospital to set up an entire wing for quarantine immediately upon his arrival, but he knew right away that it was delusional to think the staff was prepared for such an event. They’d likely only been trained a handful of times on how to deal with a Level 4 virus. Northwestern was the highest ranked hospital in the city, but even they didn’t have the proper equipment to deal with such a contagious virus.
“We have everything locked down, Dr. Roberts. Just like the emergency operations plan exp
lained.”
“That’s great. Help is on the way,” Chad replied. He followed Sam down the hallway toward the quarantined wing of the hospital.
“Uh, when exactly do you think it will arrive?” the chief of staff asked. He sounded uneasy, much more so than when Chad had first arrived.
“Soon,” he said. “In the meantime, I want to see the initial case, the man that was shot at the airport.”
“Very well. This way, doctor.”
They navigated the hallways in silence until they came upon the isolation section of the hospital. A wall of glass separated them from the three infected corpses on metal gurneys. Inside, a man in a blue biohazard suit examined the bodies. It was Ted Lucas, another CDC doctor that specialized in filo viruses and had an obsession with diseases, specifically the worst kind. Chad wasn’t sure what to think of him, having only worked with him a handful of times. He’d heard Ted was an adrenaline junkie, and he was rumored to take unnecessary risks in the field. If true, the man was his exact opposite, considering Chad prided himself on the precautions he took.
Tapping on the window, Chad pressed a button to activate the communication system. “Just got back from O’Hare.”
Ted tilted his blue helmet toward them. “Any leads on this guy?” he said, pulling back the white blanket over one of the corpses. Chad could see right away it was the man from the airport. The top of his skull was missing. A result of being shot at close range by the second batch of cops that had arrived. The victim’s mouth bulged, his lips swollen and white. He would be hard to ID even with a photo.
“We think he came from a Navy flight that originated from San Nicholas Island,” Chad said. “If that’s the case, then we should be able to locate his baggage and identification soon.”
“Understood,” Ted replied.
Sam stood awkwardly close to Chad, watching Ted work with an odd expression. “Have you ever seen anything like this?”
“Not quite,” Chad replied. His mouth twisted to the right. “I’m pretty sure this is Ebola. But it has to be a new strain. One we have never seen.”
Extinction Horizon (The Extinction Cycle Book 1) Page 10
