The Visitor

by Brent Ayscough

  “But the fact that it did spread so quickly to so many is of great concern, something that presents a new way of thinking to people like us in the US. We simply are not prepared to deal with anything so large in scope. It is of the magnitude of the largest epidemic ever and so overwhelming that it presents an entirely new challenge. The White House wants full reports as soon as we can provide information.”

  ***

  The huge C-17 airplane made a most impressive drop off at the airport at Lhasa. Planned for just such a bio-warfare scene, the plane performed its designated task by coming in and touching down on the runway. It did not stop, but instead, kept rolling at a slow speed so as to minimize contamination from any bio-warfare agent that might be present. The rear cargo door was opened and out rolled the olive-colored NBCRS. With four wheels close together on either side, it rolled easily off the plane, even with its attached trailer full of equipment. As soon as the vehicle cleared the ramp, the pilot of the C-17 hit the throttles and closed the cargo doors as the C-17 picked up speed and took off, away from the biological hazardous area. The NBCRS then motored over to the area near the terminal where soldiers were waiting in their Chinese bio-warfare suits.

  One of the soldiers came over from where he was standing near his jeep to meet the group. Colonel Chamberlin got out to greet him.

  The soldier spoke English, but he had to speak inside his mask, making it hard to hear him. “I’m Captain Zeng. Greetings on behalf of the People’s Republic of China.”

  Chamberlin spoke up loudly, so as to be heard. His team had on short-range headsets under their hoods for communication amongst themselves, but that did not work with the Chinese in their suits.

  “Thank you,” he practically shouted inside his hood. “I’m Colonel Doctor Chamberlin in charge. We are a group of six. We would like to be led to the area that you have selected for us so that we may begin our observations.”

  “Very good. Please to follow me.” The captain went to his jeep, one of three, with soldiers there to protect the guests.

  The NBCRS, pulling a trailer, could not go as fast as a jeep, but the soldiers went slow enough to allow it to keep up. After an hour, they arrived at the designated location. They stopped inside the city of Lhasa, in a large lot with a one-story, small building set back from the street. It was a government building, used for warehousing, that had been cleared out for the insertion of the M20 tent.

  Chamberlin’s group of six got out of the NBCRS and looked about. The team then unloaded the trailer and carried the M20 inside the building to unfold it. It was a package three-by-four-feet in dimension when folded and included a second pack with the door and air pump. They set up the inflation blower, and it began to fill the room like a giant bladder, lining the sides, as the positive pressure filled it. Once inflated with the air lock door in place, the group began setting up their things inside the room, making ready for their mission. By the time they had everything in place, and safe, it had been nearly four hours since they came off the plane and time to take off the suits to change the batteries, use the toilet, take a break, and get a snack and some water before suiting up again to go out and observe. The suits with their re-breathers weighed thirty-eight pounds each, which made working in them a chore, and the rest break was welcome.

  ***

  “Let’s get some tissue samples and blood from this man here,” Colonel Chamberlin said to his team, utilizing the PRC-127 headset communicator inside his STEPO. The team looked like men in space suits with the breathing packs, except that the hoods and face shields were not small like space suit helmets. The hoods were roomy and the face shields quite tall, making visibility much better for working.

  The team gathered around a body on the street in Lhasa. The body was still warm, having expired only minutes earlier. Blood was coming out of his nose and mouth, and he had red blisters on his face and hands with bloody, open sores. A red patch in his crotch indicated bleeding from the anus as well.

  Sitting or lying down against the buildings on either side were several other people, not moving, either dead or dying, who had apparently collapsed there, unable to go farther. Six Chinese soldiers in their bio-warfare suits and breathing masks stood by, guarding the team, their AK-47 rifles in hand.

  Two of the team members bent down and opened their special container for samples. One of the team, Lanier, cut away the man’s shirt, revealing open sores on his chest that were dripping with blood. Lanier cut tissue from the open sores and took blood via a syringe.

  A military truck came down the street with a stake-bed rear section completely filled with dead bodies. It did not stop for the bodies on the street, as there was no room for more. The activity of the men in the special suits attracted a Chinese man nearby, who was obviously infected with Ebola as he had open, bleeding rashes on his face. He came up to the group, yelling something, with his arm out in front of him. The soldiers yelled at him, but could hardly be heard in their suits. The soldiers all pointed their guns at him, in a warning not to continue to approach. The man looked like he was too sick to know what he was doing--but knowing or not, he continued to approach at a rapid pace. At about fifteen feet away, all of soldiers opened fire with bursts of bullets, pumping dozens of rounds into him. He fell, right in front of the group, very dead, which was probably a relief over having to die slowly of Ebola.

  Chamberlin looked on and then went back to work as there was nothing he could do. The soldiers had to guard them, and that was what they were doing.

  “Okay, got this one,” Lanier said, putting away the syringe and tissue samples in the container.

  “Let’s get some more from two or three other victims and then head back,” the colonel said. “We’re supposed to observe what we can and make any recommendations on how to assist in containing it, but I don’t see much that can be done.”

  He looked up the street at the shops and buildings, formerly filled with Chinese merchants, now completely abandoned. Looking at the clock on the outside of his sleeve, he sighed. “We’ve been out two hours. It’s about an hour’s walk back to the M20, so we should start heading back in about a half hour. That’ll leave us with a thirty-minute safety margin on these four-hour packs.”

  They went down the street and found a dead woman lying in the street with blood around her mouth.

  “This will do for a specimen,” the colonel said. “Let’s go get more.”

  ***

  “It’s time to go,” Chamberlin said to his group on the third day, as he was one of the first awake inside the M20.

  The others awakened and made ready for the welcome trip home with their samples. When they arrived back at the airport in the NBCRS, ninety-odd Chinese were gathered restlessly behind the fence separating the tarmac from the terminal. Most were from the airport or had found out that there was a plane coming. They had hopes of leaving on any plane that might come. Chamberlin’s group stayed in the NBCRS just outside the terminal building waiting for the C-17 to come, so as not to cause the group of desperate Chinese to follow it or start a riot.

  “This could get ugly,” Chamberlin said to his group inside the NBCRS.

  On schedule, the big C-17 could be seen coming in for a landing. The Chinese all looked and pointed, chattering among themselves. The soldier who had accompanied Chamberlin stood by and watched as the NBCRS drove toward the gate so it could get out onto the tarmac near the landing strip where the C-17 was touching down. Several other soldiers stood by the gate. The C-17 touched down, slowed to a stop, then turned around quickly, and taxied back to where it had landed, ready to take off into the prevailing winds. It came to rest on the runway, not taking the chance of coming up to the terminal where the unruly crowd looked on.

  The cargo door lowered. The Chinese soldiers opened the gate to let the NBCRS vehicle, with the six specialists inside, pass through. Chamberlin drove the vehicle toward the C-17 out on the runway and started up ramp of the cargo door. Two US soldiers in STEPO suits stood ready inside the plan
e and secured the vehicle with nylon straps to the airplane deck. They began spraying the vehicle with decontamination fluid.

  Seeing a perceived escape out of the country, the Chinese behind the fence went into a frenzy, trampled down the fence at a spot near the terminal, and rushed toward the plane. The pilot could see the group coming and pushed the throttles forward to spool up the engines. He radioed to the back for status on the loading. When he got an affirmative answer, he released the brakes and started the plane rolling.

  “Close the cargo door,” he commanded his co-pilot.

  Chamberlin got out of the NBCRS once it was secured to the plane, the rest of his group following. As the door began to close, he could see the Chinese running as fast as they could, nearing the plane. It appeared that several of them would make it to the cargo door as the big C-17 was still moving slower than they were running. This he could not allow.

  The Chinese soldiers that escorted Chamberlin’s group were giving chase to the group, yelling at them to halt, but to no avail. They opened fire, hitting them in the back, dropping them as they ran.

  Eleven of the faster ones made it to the cargo door, trying desperately to get into the plane, in hopes of saving their lives. The two soldiers inside the plane went for their weapons, M4A1 rifles with extended magazines in case of just such a situation. Both readied a round in the chamber and aimed.

  A few dropped away, but seven got to ramp, which was closing slowly, and grabbed on, trying desperately to climb in. They had their hands on the door, and their heads were visible just above the edge. One was pulling himself up into the inside of the plane.

  The C-17 began to rotate its nose up preparing to lift off. This had the effect of lowering the rear of the cargo door toward the ground, making it easier for the men to get in. Five were now pulling themselves up and in.

  The two soldiers opened fire on them, riddling them with holes, blowing them back and out the door. Those hanging on were shot in the head. The doors finally closed, and the big C-17 lifted off.

  One of the two soldiers lowered his smoking rifle and looked at the other. “That’ll teach ’em!”

  ***

  Colonel Doctor Chamberlin, his medical team, and the four-man crew of the plane came down the ramp of the C-17 at Guam, at the far end of the runway where the quarantine had been set up. The C-17 was parked at an out-of-the-way spot, where it could remain until decontaminated by chemicals, waiting for the added safety of the passage of time, all before it would be put back into service. The remote possibility of a rodent or other animal getting on board was considered, and chemicals were sprayed around the plane and then inside, just to be sure.

  The team left their suits in the plane, and wore ordinary clothes. Outside were two Nuclear Biological Chemical (NBC) men, in STEPOs. They had a pressure sprayer set up on a truck, with which they sprayed the outside lower parts of the plane, especially the door areas. They would then go in--after the team was led to their quarantine quarters--collect the samples, decontaminate the outside of the containers, decontaminate the inside of the plane, and collect the team’s suits and other things to put into a large fire that they had set up for the disposal.

  One of the men in a STEPO came up to the colonel and spoke to him with the radio gear. “I’m Captain Dudley, sir. Your quarantine building is just there.” He pointed to a building about eighty yards away. “Please follow me. I’ll lead you there, come back for the samples, and take care of supervising the decontamination procedures.”

  Dudley led the team and flight crew to the quarantine building. Temporary facilities were set up, including a shower, toilet, ping pong table, two big screens TVs with satellite antennae, a stack of the latest magazines, Internet-ready computers, and phones, all to try to make this very important crew comfortable--if infected--in case it turned out to be their “last supper.”

  “I think everything is pretty obvious,” Dudley said, as he went inside the room with them following, looking about at all the goodies set up for them.

  Colonel Chamberlin went to the food service area, where there was a place for meal preparation and a table with two long benches for the group to sit at. There were two refrigerators full of many things--too many, as Dudley had set up everything he thought they might possibly want, in case they were going to end up infected. A filing cabinet had been moved in and converted to a pantry of dry foods ranging from pancake mix to peanuts to chips. Locally grown tropical fruits filled a large bowl on the coffee table. A makeshift bar was stocked with the usual liquors and cases of beer were on the floor nearby. They would no doubt either gain weight--or die after suffering the tortures of the damned if infected.

  “Boy! This is first class,” Chamberlin exclaimed, his eyes wide.

  “You can call your families, or just dial 0 and you will get our command post,” Dudley informed them. “I will be there most of the day, but if I should go out for a time, there will be someone at the phone at all times, around the clock, twenty-four/seven, if you need anything, or, if you detect any sign of infection. I have arranged a special medical and nursing team of four, with suits and equipment, should it be needed, and more who are standing by and can be brought over at once from the mainland.

  “Do not leave the building. After ten-to-fourteen-days, evaluation, a decision will be made as to whether or not your team can be let go, or if additional time in quarantine is needed.”

  “I understand perfectly,” Chamberlin said.

  Dudley left, and closed the door.

  Chamberlin opened a box of medicines that he had prearranged. One of the small containers in the box had a few special pills. He recognized them at once. They were cyanide capsules that, if broken in front of the nose or in the mouth, would kill instantly. They came from the CIA, as they were not the sort of thing you could find at a CVS or Walgreen’s pharmacy. Some in his group, and certainly he, would rather end life quickly than take the slow death of Ebola, should they get it.

  Two guards were posted outside, taking positions that were believed to be a safe distance away from the building, which was two hundred feet. They were under orders not to let anyone in, or out. They would be replaced in shifts and further confined to special quarters, where only they and their replacements would be living, away from anything and anyone--similar to the confinement of the team they were guarding, only not as extreme, for the entire period of the team’s confinement.

  In the meantime, the samples in special containers, collected by Dudley and his helper, were wiped with decontaminates on the outside, then taken for additional decontamination. The samples were then hurried into a plane waiting to carry them to USAMRIID. It was there that the best analysis in the US could be undertaken.

  ***

  The president’s staff and other important people were summoned for an update. To expedite an updated report, a special link was set up from USMARIID, with the scientists there, and a camera was positioned against a wall to transmit the image of the scientist or doctor in front of it. A big screen was already in place in the president’s situation room and had been hooked up for the report.

  “Our volunteers are still in Guam, right?” the president asked Christy Elniff, the lead doctor in Maryland.

  “Yes, still in quarantine,” she responded. “But we received the tissue and blood samples by a special jet shortly after they landed in Guam.” Elniff then switched the image to an electron microscope enlargement of a long-tailed figure. “This is an actual filovirus from the tissues of a victim in Tibet. Note the interesting shape. It has the long tail of known filoviruses, but the head is much larger and much more complex. It is certainly different from any of the Ebola or related viruses that have, to date, come from Africa.”

  She switched the screen to an existing picture taken from an Ebola Zaire textbook, which clearly showed the difference. “This is a picture of an Ebola Zaire filovirus.” Then she switched it back to the current enlargement. “You can see the difference. The morphology is different from any
known Ebola. It’s not just the usual nucleocapsid and surrounding helical capsid. It appears to be much more complicated. It is as though it has mutated either into something different or perhaps combined with something that is not usually combined with Ebola. One theory here is that it may have become linked to an antibody that must find an antigen that only exists in Chinese. This would explain why it only attacks Chinese. But this does not explain why, after it infects a Chinese, that it remains race specific. We think that it has to be in its RNA.

  “Since we know it causes bleeding, it must still have the glycoprotein sticking out from the surface that destroys the endothelial cells that line blood vessels, causing them to leak.

  “There are several travelers that left Tibet before the quarantine. A Chinese couple from Vancouver, Canada, returned to Vancouver from Tibet and infected their Chinese family in Vancouver and, as far as we know, no one else. Another Chinese traveler from London brought the virus back from Tibet to London, infecting his Chinese family in London. The reason it affects the Chinese and not the Tibetans must lie in the makeup. This is only our preliminary studies, as you requested immediate information. We will learn more in time, to be sure.

  “I’m sure that we can learn a great deal about it, but I don’t know what good it will do the dying Chinese. We have no cure for the virus, no matter whom it infects. We hope that it will mutate out and become less virulent in time.”