Ebola K: A Terrorism Thriller: Book 2 (18 page)

Olivia had just finished her lunchtime run—four miles at an easy pace. She walked along the edge of a green field bordered by thick trees. The office building, one she’d initially liked, she had come to despise. She turned away from it and looked at the trees. She wasn’t happy with the trees, either. Even though it was late September, the trees, for the most part, still held their green leaves. She wanted autumn color.

She took her phone out of her pocket and dialed Mathew Wheeler, hoping to catch him at lunch or between meetings.

“Hello?” he answered almost immediately.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey, yourself. What’s up?”

“Have you got time to talk?” she asked.

“Sure.”

Olivia hadn’t thought that far into it. She’d had the urge to call and talk. That was it. But she wasn’t ready to admit that, so she went with the first thing that came to mind, a ridiculous thing that had come up in the queue. Laughing a little, she said, “I came across a story this morning that I started to research. It’s probably a waste of time.”

“A medical story?” Wheeler asked.

“Yes.”

“I’ve got a few minutes. Maybe I can help.”

Laughing again, Olivia said, “The story was pretty much a list of accusations by a guy who’s supposedly a doctor. It dealt with misleading work being done by the CDC and the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control.”

“What kind of misleading work?” Wheeler asked, concerned.

“I’d say the core of it is that nobody actually isolated the new strain of the virus, and that all of the testing done on the monkeys to show it was airborne—and any work you’re doing now on a vaccine—is spurious. Yes,
spurious
is the word he used. He said because you hadn’t isolated the virus, you couldn’t possibly know if anything you were doing or any conclusions you were drawing were accurate. I laughed, because I knew that you guys had done that first. You guys did identify the new strain. You told me that, right?”

Wheeler paused for a long time.

Olivia stopped walking. “What?”

Wheeler heaved one of his tortured sighs. “The article has
some
truth to it, but at the same time, it’s not true.”

“That sounds like the kind of thing people tell you when they’re thinking up a good lie.”

“Don’t—” Wheeler stopped himself and said, “If you’ve got a minute, I’ll explain. You’re bright. You’ll understand.”

“Okay.” Olivia was starting to feel pretty sure she wouldn’t.

“For starters, we ran the new strain of Ebola through our electron microscope. We’ve tested it nine ways to Sunday. It’s unique. Definitely a new strain. That’s identification.”

“So far. It sounds like there’s no problem at all.”

“Identifying the new bug doesn’t mean all that you think it does. Identification and isolation aren’t the same thing. In order for us to be certain that symptoms we’re seeing in people and in the monkeys we tested are from the new strain, we would have to find a way to isolate and grow the new strain in some medium. You follow me so far?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a time-consuming process, sometimes
very
time consuming. If we’re lucky, it could take weeks. If not, it could take months, maybe longer.”

“Oh, crap.”

“Exactly,” confirmed Wheeler. “You ran your spreadsheet simulations after I gave you the r nought data. You know each day costs lives, and with every day that passes, the cost goes up. We don’t have months to spend on being absolutely certain we have the right bug.”

“You’re guessing? Are you telling me it could be something other than the new strain of Ebola that’s making everybody sick, and that the existence of the new strain of Ebola in the samples is a coincidence?”

“That’s it exactly,” said Wheeler. “I have to tell you, and you’ll know it’s true when I say it, that all the evidence points to Ebola K being the culprit. Nearly every researcher looking into this—hundreds, maybe thousands—believes it is. A handful don’t. Even their concerns aren’t so much that we’re wrong, as that we’re skipping a step in a well-defined, scientific process. We’re not doing science now, Olivia. We’re just trying to cobble something together to save lives.”

“What if you’re wrong?”

“Wrong?” Wheeler asked. “It won’t matter.”

“Why not?”

“Think about it, Olivia. If we spend three months delaying a therapy, delaying a potential vaccine, how many billions, and I did say
billions
, might die?”

Olivia didn’t answer. She knew the number was more than one billion and less than seven.

“If we proceed and get it wrong, how many billions will die?”

“The answer doesn’t change much,” she admitted.

“That’s why, in this case, being wrong doesn’t matter. We’re rolling the dice and hoping for a seven.”

Olivia started to say something.

“Let me change that. We’re rolling the dice and hoping for anything but snake eyes.”

“The confusion passes,” said Dr. Bowman.

“The last few days are a blur.”

“The good news is you’re responding spectacularly. How do you feel this morning?”

“Better,” Paul answered. Throughout the past several days, everything had hurt, he hadn’t been able to hold a complete thought in his mind, and then there was extreme gastrointestinal distress. Paul asked, “Did I have Ebola?”

Dr. Bowman’s hooded head bobbed up and down. “You were lucky.”

“I’m going to make it?” Paul asked.

Nodding again, Dr. Bowman said, “Your viral load has plunged dramatically. You seem to be on your way toward recovery, but don’t get too optimistic. We need to be cautious. You’ve been given an experimental drug.”

Shaking his head, Paul said, “I don’t remember that.”

In a surprisingly defensive tone, Dr. Bowman said, “Your wife approved—”

Shaking his head emphatically, Paul said, “Oh no. I wasn’t making an accusation. I just—” He put a hand to his head. “Everything seems jumbled up.”

Back in a normal tone of voice Dr. Bowman said, “That’s not unusual. Blood clots in the brain. We don’t have much information on the long term effects of an Ebola infection, but what we do know indicates that people recover fully.”

Paul nodded and asked, “Is Heidi here?”

“Of course.”

“Can I see her?”

Dr. Bowman shook his head. “She can’t come into the quarantine room. You understand.”

No. He didn’t understand. If the doctor could wear a plastic tent, why not Heidi? Paul nodded anyway.

Dr. Bowman pointed at a telephone handset on a nightstand beside the bed. He then pointed over to a smallish window with a metal mesh in the glass, built through an interior wall. Heidi stood on the other side of the window with a handset pressed up to her ear. “You can talk to her through the intercom.”

Seeing Heidi’s pained smile and tearful eyes, Paul grabbed for the phone. “Heidi.”

“Paul,” she said as she shook her head and started to sob.

Paul looked over at the doctor then back at Heidi. “Dr. Bowman says I’m going to be fine.”

“You’re a liar, Paul Cooper.”

Paul looked back at the doctor for confirmation. “He said I’m responding well.”

“I know more about how you’re doing than you do,” she told him.

“So you know I’m going to make it, then.”

“You’re probably going to make it,” Heidi agreed.

“Only happy thoughts,” Paul told her.

Dr. Bowman excused himself and left the room, presumably into a decontamination area.

Heidi, finding a stable place in her emotional moment, said, “If you ever do anything like this again—”

Paul shook his head then caught himself before he answered, knowing he could never talk about the truth anywhere but in the most private circumstances. “I can only think I caught it from the guy I helped with his tire when I was driving up to Lake Granby.”

Heidi paused before she said, “Everybody’s looking for him. People on the news are saying he might be the cause of all the cases in Denver.”

“What?” Paul hadn’t wanted that, and had taken precautions to avoid an outbreak. He was coherent enough to know that his Liberian tire changer was a phantom, and yet was humane enough to feel guilt over the possibility that the outbreak in Denver was his own fault.

“Other news channels say the cases are tied to an airline passenger.”

“How many cases?” Paul asked.

“Twelve so far, I think,” answered Heidi. “Most of them are at this hospital. Dr. Bowman has been researching an Ebola drug at CU. You were lucky to get it.”

“At CU?” Paul asked. “Colorado University? I’m in Denver?”

“Of course. What’s wrong?”

“I—” Paul started. “I thought they’d move me to Omaha. They can handle Ebola better there.”

Shaking her head, Heidi said, “No, they were overwhelmed with patients from the Dallas outbreak.”

“How many?” Paul asked.

“I don’t know how many went to Omaha, but Dallas has a whole hospital dedicated to Ebola now. More than a hundred patients, I think. The news has been pretty sketchy on the details lately, and half of what you try to find on the Internet turns into a 404 error.”

A lot had happened since Paul went down with Ebola. He asked, “Are the other patients getting the new drug, too?”

“I don’t know.”

Paul and Heidi looked at one another through the glass in a silence that was comfortable only because they felt so comfortable together. Heidi finally said, “I’m sorry we fought. If I’d have known this would happen—”

“You’d have upped the life insurance first.” Paul grinned.

Heidi rolled her eyes again. “Wow, you’re getting back to normal.” Dryly, she added, “I’m thrilled.” Changing the subject, Heidi said, “They expect—or maybe I should say, they hope—that you’ll be virus-free in a couple of days.”

“No shit?”

Heidi nodded. “You got lucky.”

No, Paul didn’t agree, but nodded anyway. What Heidi called luck, Paul called careful planning and execution.

Now, he just needed to protect her. He’d had plenty of time to think during his stay at the petri dish hotel. Heidi would need to stay in solitary confinement in their house. Then Paul simply had to keep the house secure and make sure that he sufficiently decontaminated himself when he came and went. He already had all the food or any other supplies they’d need to survive until vaccines were available.

Now he just needed to convince Olivia to return from Georgia before it was too late. She could stay sequestered with Heidi. Paul had already lost a son. He could bear to lose no more of his family.

Heidi said, “They’re planning to move you out of this room and into isolation for twenty-one days—”

“Twenty-one days?” Paul asked, a little angry, even as he was accepting it. He hadn’t expected isolation to last that long.

“It’s a precaution.” Heidi’s tone was firm. “They need to make sure you’re not going to infect anyone else. It won’t be as bad as this. They set up a rec room. You’ll be able to walk around, watch TV, read a book.”

Nodding, Paul said, “Will I be able to use a real phone. I’d like to call Olivia.”

“Don’t worry about her, okay? She and I have been talking every day. She’s fine. You scared her to death, Paul. You should know that.”

Paul understood exactly what she meant. His stupid, selfish choices had effects on other people. “Yes, dear.”

“Have you seen the news?”

Paul shrugged, without thinking that the gesture was nearly lost since he was lying on his back in a bed.

“You’re something of a celebrity.”

“What?”

“For stopping to help the Liberian man,” said Heidi. “You did a good deed, and now you’re fighting for your life because of it.” Heidi dramatically rolled her eyes. “With all the bad news, I think the local stations are infatuated with your story because it’s uplifting.”

“I’d rather they left me out of it.”

“Reporters want to interview you,” said Heidi, “I’ve been putting them off. With you being in the hospital, it’s easy so far.”

Paul shook his head. He hadn’t planned for the possibility of media interest.

“There’s something else.”

“Yes?” Paul asked.

“The police are probably going to come and talk to you today.”

That made Paul nervous. He’d done plenty of things that they might want to talk to him about. “Why?”

Nodding slowly to emphasize her point, she said, “They want to ask you about the Liberian man, I think.”

Crumbled plastic wrappers, dirty sheets, and other clutter gathered on the hall floor, kicked to the sides by the feet of the busy. The trash bins in Salim’s room went un-emptied. His isolation room had no running water, so no proper bathroom facilities, just some kind of chemical toilet that was in danger of overflowing. It hadn’t been emptied in a week. Nurses came by to check on him with decreasing regularity. In the halls, people passed by his window but they were either draped in protective garb, or were patients being wheeled toward a room. Too frequently, they wheeled other patients away, clearly dead.

From his window on the fifth floor, Salim saw the police cordon all around the property. Police in riot gear walked the perimeter or faced off against mobs of protestors that grew in number and grew in their anger each day. At first, the picketers appeared to be hospital workers, and their signs spoke of unsafe working conditions. The protest changed as locals joined in. They didn’t want the infected in the hospital to be there at all.

At first Salim thought the crowd was protesting his presence. As the hospital filled with a sporadic but growing stream of new patients, Salim worried he was witnessing Kapchorwa all over again—only on a grand, modern scale. The protestors outside were shouting their messages but the only thing that really mattered was the emotion that drove them—fear. Fear that Ebola had come to decimate their city.

Salim felt sad for them. They should have worried about annihilation.

Two days before, Salim had taken the chance to leave his room, just to see what would happen. At first, nothing did. He made his way through an anteroom and into the hallway without anyone taking notice. It wasn’t until he neared a centrally located nurse’s station that one of his nurses in head-to-toe protective gear told him in harsh tones to get back to his room. She then went back to whatever she was doing behind her desk. Salim accepted his scolding and complied. On the way, he passed an open hamper marked with a biohazard symbol overflowing with sheets, gloves, goggles, and bloody gobs of things that in a previous life Salim wouldn’t have touched on a dare.

The situation was different now.

Salim rifled through the bin and gathered up all the pieces he needed to construct his own biohazard suit. Back in his room, he stuffed the suit into a plastic trash bag and stowed it in a cabinet that seemed to have no purpose. That next night, after his nurse’s evening rounds, he removed his biohazard gear from the cabinet and went to work cleaning it with alcohol wipes.

The biohazard suit turned out to be his ticket to freedom, at least within the hospital. He donned the gear, wrote the name Dr. Jalal across the forehead of his suit with a discarded permanent marker he’d found, and walked through the hospital unquestioned. He was a doctor, the top of the hospital’s social hierarchy.

What Salim found in the hospital was troublesome. He covered three of the hospital’s eight floors, and every one of them was the same as his. The only people moving about wore full biohazard gear. He peeked into a dozen rooms, even speaking to a few of the patients to ask how they were doing. His pretense grew easier with each visit. He wasn’t qualified to diagnose any of the sick, but he’d seen enough of the dying in Kapchorwa—with their bruises, bloody eyes, bleeding noses, and empty, hopeless stares—to know that all these people had the same disease.

Before going back up to his room, Salim walked into a lounge a few floors down from his own. He found an arrangement of worn couches and stained chairs. The vending machines were a disappointment, with dispensing rows cluttered with those off-brand potato chips that are always stale because nobody buys them, and chocolate bars with unusual names that are so old they’re covered in that powdery crust of brown dust.

Just as well, he had no coins to spend. He had no money at all, nothing but his off-blue gown and his newly acquired spacesuit. He leaned against a wall and looked out a window that faced the backside of the hospital. He saw dumpsters and big yellow arrows painted on the concrete to direct trucks into the loading dock. He saw refrigerated delivery trucks—six of them—of the kind they parked behind restaurants for dropping off frozen fish or hamburger patties. Salim felt their idling diesel engines vibrate through the glass.

A handful of people in biohazard suits milled around behind them, seeming to have no purpose other than to look bored. The group perked up and came together. A gurney rolled out from the hospital loading docks, followed soon by a second, each pushed by a pair of plastic-clad people who were obviously tired. On each gurney lay a body bag with what could only be a human corpse.

One of the people who’d been lingering pulled a ramp out from under the back of a truck, walked up, and rolled the door open. Body bags were stacked inside from the floor up to the height of a man. The bodies on the gurneys were hauled up the ramp and added to the piles inside. The rolling door was closed. The gurneys returned to the loading dock.

As he stood there, staring at the truck, watching the men go back to loitering and waiting for the next gurneys, Salim realized the trucks might all be stacked full. How could a modern country develop a problem with corpse disposal so quickly? It shook Salim’s sense of security.