The Zombie Virus (Book 1) (4 page)

I was overwhelmed with relief when Holly’s
voice filled the receiver of the phone and told me that she was
still feeling fine, as was our son. She had been watching the news
in disbelief and growing unrest. She seemed to have gleaned just as
much information from the news channels as I had.

I unnecessarily told her to keep Jeremy home
from school today, as if they would even be open, and to hunker
down at the house and not to go outside or answer the door for
anyone. We discussed what she should do if the hospital called her
in, since she wasn’t on call today I recommended that she just
ignore any of their calls for now. I knew in my heart that if the
hospital called she would want to go in. She was stubborn and
responsible that way. She was also going to try and get hold of our
respective families and find out their status.

I hung up feeling like I should be getting
the hell out of there and making my way back home. On the other
hand, I have to admit that there was also an excitement at being on
the front line in the fight against this new and terrifying
development.

I started running through and analyzing the
facts that I had garnered from the news and Dr. Hanson while I
undressed in the clean room. My mind filled with hypotheses and
more questions as I moved into the sterilization shower which we
call the decon showers when we are coming from the labs. From the
anecdotal evidence we had, the pathogenicity of this virus was
high, however, we had no idea of its fatality rate yet, its vector,
or even how it could be transmitted.

At the airlock suit-up room (what we
affectionately call the Gumby room), I pulled a clean pair of
sterile disposable cotton undergarments from their bin and slid
into the cool fabric. I made my way to one of the alcoves that held
my Sperian portable biocontamination suit. We call these
‘spacesuits’. Now don’t ask why we call the suits ‘spacesuits’ and
the room the ‘Gumby room’, scientists can be quirky. Anyway, these
are positive pressure suits and are required attire for any staff
past the airlocks on levels five and six.

My best guess based on what I have observed
of the infection rate from The Facilities personnel and what I
heard on the news was that the primary infection rate is greater
than ninety percent. That means at least ninety out of every one
hundred men, women and children on this planet have come down with
symptoms.

While I was donning the suit’s portable pack,
which would supply pressurized filtered air to the suit until I
reached my lab and connected to an umbilical, Staff Sergeant Sung
Yeop, the BSL-4 rated tech who worked in Stanton’s viral lab came
into the room from the shower and got dressed. I had met him only
casually a few times before.

“Good morning, Staff Sergeant,” I greeted him
as I pressurized my suit and checked its integrity.

He nodded toward me. “Not so good, Dr.
McQuinn, eh?”

“No, Sung. Not so good,” I frowned at him
through the Plexiglas facemask.

My suit checked out and I was ready for the
airlock. I had to wait for Sung to get suited up so we could go
through the airlock together.

“I have to get the beds ready for our
patients,” Sung said, working his legs into his red spacesuit. “Lt.
Colonel Hanson will be bringing them down shortly. She’s speaking
with them now.” He zipped up the large self-sealing zipper that ran
from his left hip to his right shoulder, sort of like a scuba
diving drysuit system.

When he was ready he gave me a thumb up and I
activated the airlock door. I could faintly hear the pumps
resonating as they brought the airlock up to ambient pressure. When
the light flashed green I unlatched the door and we stepped into
the bland, stainless steel room and closed the thick hatch behind
us. The Gumby room would now be sterilized before either entrance
allowed anyone else to enter.

The same pumps worked in reverse, reducing
the atmospheric pressure within the airlock. I felt my ears pop as
the pressure equalized with those of the labs on the other side of
the airlock. A light mist of disinfectant rained down around us
before the green light came on the panel showing that we were safe
to proceed past the inner airlock door. Sung and I went our
separate ways with only a reassuring nod to each other.

CHAPTER 3

I reached my lab after going through its smaller
airlock, which also misted my suit with a spray of disinfectant
solution. My lab was an open, brightly lit space filled with
stainless steel and glassware. Large bio-hoods were built into one
wall and a myriad of equipment and computers graced the floors and
benches of this sterile, but well used room.

Housed in an adjacent room of its own,
through a door off of the right wall of the lab, was our state of
the art Transmission Electron Microscope. This bulky and
complicated piece of equipment allowed us to obtain electronic
images of molecular structures tens of thousands of times smaller
than the best visual microscope.

The wall opposite the airlock was lined with
sealed, double-paned glass windows that looked into the remote
robotics lab where we could handle very hot specimens from the
relative safety of this lab through the control bank at the base of
the wall. Sleeves mounted at the operators station fit over each
arm and sensors detected the movements of your arms and hands which
fed their movements to the precision motors of the robotic arms in
the interior lab.

We stored all of the pathogen samples in the
robotics room in large liquid nitrogen storage units or glass
fronted coolers.

Several banks of high definition color
monitors linked my BSL-4 lab with the other BSL-4 labs on this
floor, complete with manual panning cameras and sound.

I stepped into my lab and grabbed one of the
overhanging umbilical hoses and connected it to my spacesuit. Once
I was sure it was providing a cool flow of pressurized and filtered
air, I turned off the suit’s backpack supply and removed it.

I was used to having two to three techs plus
two other scientists working in the lab for me. They took care of
many of the day to day and repetitive tasks that this level of lab
required. Working by myself would be difficult and time
consuming.

We also kept several varieties of animal
species for testing in the animal isolation ward. They would have
to be cared for by me, Sung and LTC Hanson since our regular animal
husbandry techs would not be showing up today.

I went to work immediately preparing for the
samples that LTC Hanson would draw from our three patients. Several
pieces of equipment took considerable time to warm up and
stabilize, and I went through the start-up procedures for these
before preparing for the assays. The sounds of my own breathing in
the confines of my helmet, along with the roar of the vent fans
that removed and filtered the air once every five minutes, filled
my ears while I methodically completed the tasks I had assigned to
myself.

I had set one of the monitors to display the
human isolation ward. Within the hour LTC Hanson and Sung had the
two patients ensconced comfortably on hospital beds wearing
rear-entry gowns and covered with a thin cotton sheet. Both Sung
and LTC Hanson were suited up in spacesuits and tethered to
umbilicals mounted on the ceiling.

The isolation ward could hold four patients
in curtain-partitioned sections, each with their own set of
monitoring equipment. This was the first time I had ever seen this
room used.

The two patients were both enlisted Army
personnel. They were young female techs, a pretty black girl and a
timid looking white girl, who worked up on Level 2. Neither had
been cleared to work in any of the higher level biocontainment
labs, although they were well aware of their existence and the kind
of critters that we kept down here. You could tell that they were
clearly frightened about their conditions, and who could blame
them?

LTC Hanson’s hooded face filled the
monitor.

“Dr. Rafik is in here with me. We are getting
him prepped as a patient.” She looked over her shoulder at
something, then back at the monitor. “He’s downgrading quickly with
a high fever. It looks like you will be on your own.”

She backed away from the monitor and I could
see Sung lead Anwar to a bed and lay him down onto the white
sheets. A sheen of sweat covering his face from the fever, Anwar
looked up at the monitor, seemingly directly at me, and I saw the
fear reflected in his eyes. He threw me a pained smile and two
thumbs up. I forced a smile back, although I was unsure if he could
see it through my Plexiglas faceplate.

“Hang in there, my friend, you’re going to
get the best care possible,” I said with a strained voice. He
nodded slightly and then turned his head to stare at the
ceiling.

After Sung delivered the first samples
collected from the patients by LTC Hanson, I set about the work of
isolating any pathogens and fixing them for electron
microscopy.

I was able to take a few breaks during the
day to check the cable news channels. I began to suspect the worst
as the day dragged on and the number of news channels ceased
transmitting. I felt like we were starting to fight a war that was
already lost.

LTC Hanson kept me updated on our patients’
conditions throughout the morning. She informed me that they had
become extremely irritable and a little combative. Not enough that
they had to be restrained, she said. All had begun salivating
profusely and capillaries were leaking blood into their gums, which
was causing the saliva to become pink-tinged. She also reported
that Dr. Rafik had indicated he could smell a sweet scent, kind of
like cotton candy, emanating from his body.

By noon all three had slipped into a deep
coma. The petechial hemorrhaging that was causing their gums to
bleed was also affecting the sclera of their eyes, turning them
blood red. This disease was rapidly shaping up to be a monster.
Death seemed like the inevitable outcome.

If there hadn’t been the petechial
hemorrhaging, I would have been leaning toward a rabies type viral
infection, as they were displaying many of the classic symptoms,
albeit at a much accelerated pace. With the breakdown of some of
the finer capillaries, I was at a loss to classify this disease as
being similar to anything I was familiar with.

We had basic monitoring equipment for vitals
in the isolation ward, but lacked any equipment to monitor brain
function or conduct deep tissue scans. We had no idea what the
disease was doing to these people internally.

LTC Hanson and I were able to keep in
constant contact and watch over each other via the lab monitors
without having to go through the required decontamination
procedures when traversing from one lab to the other. A little
after 1300 hours she told me that the fevers had broken in all
three of the infected patients, but that they remained deeply
comatose. We felt that this was a good sign, especially with the
vital signs climbing back into the normal ranges.

I took a break about 1400 hours to call my
wife again. Back in the Gumby room I un-suited and went through the
decontamination process, then threw on a pair of sweats to get to
my office. Once there, I sat down at my desk and called Holly.
After assuring each other that we were both okay, she told me that
looking out the windows of our house she could see columns of smoke
out to the southwest, but couldn’t tell what was burning. There was
no traffic going by the house or any people out and about. She said
it was eerily quiet. I told her I would be staying at the Facility
until I uncovered some answers and that she needed to stay in the
house with Jeremy until I got home.

She had never heard from the hospital, which
she considered highly abnormal. I surmised that there may not be
anyone there well enough to call. I promised I would call her again
in a little while. I hung up with a fear gnawing at my belly like
some ravenous animal. I didn’t know how long I could remain here
away from my family.

Before going back to the lab I stopped
briefly to watch the national news on the one remaining channel
still broadcasting. Nothing earthshaking was being offered that I
didn’t already know. At this stage all the infected were comatose
from everywhere that reports were coming in. There had been little
to no communication from our government since this morning’s
outbreak started. There were also reports of several commercial
aircraft down across the country.

When I suited up and returned to my lab, LTC
Hanson called to me over the monitor. She and Sung were with Dr.
Rafik, who was still laid out on his hospital bed with the thin
sheet covering him.

“He’s starting to come out of it, getting
some eye movement,” she said through the suit’s sound system. Even
on the monitor through her Plexiglas faceplate I could see the
relief on her face.

“The capillary leaks are still limited to his
eyes and gums. We haven’t found any blood in his stool or urine,
which bodes well internally. Heart and lung functions are strong.
He’s still salivating copiously, although I think he may be past
the worst of this.” She stepped up closer to the camera. “Anything
new on your end?”

“No, I’m about an hour away from my prelim
results. I think I’ll be able to tell you if it’s a virus and what
type it is within twenty-four hours.”

I could see Dr. Rafik behind her in the bed.
Sung, in his spacesuit, was beside him looking like a giant red
Gumby as he wrote down readings from the bedside monitor onto a
chart.

Jennifer opened her mouth to say something
else, then before she could finish her sentence, everything went to
hell.

It started quickly and was over with just as
fast. I can still see every detail of the entire terrible, bloody
scene.