by Paul Hetzer
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.
One second, Anwar was just lying there and in the next he was sitting up. LTC Hanson was still facing the camera and didn’t see him, although she must have seen the look on my face over her monitor. She whirled around just in time to see Dr. Anwar Rafik, usually an affable small framed man, reach out with the quickness of a striking cobra and grab Sung’s arm. I watched in horrified amazement as he opened his mouth wide and bit through the tough suit material and into flesh. Sung screamed and tried to fight off the snarling man who was clamped on like a dog worrying a chew toy.
Anwar was making a growling noise as he worked his teeth in deeper while his bloodshot eyes reflected the madness of what I was witnessing. Sung was trying to pull away, using the fist of his other hand to pound Anwar about the head.
They fell backwards into an instrument cart and onto the floor with Anwar on top. He was no longer biting Sung’s arm, for a large portion of flesh and material had torn away in his mouth. Blood was everywhere. Before I could yell a word of warning LTC Hanson was there pulling Anwar off of Sung.
Dr. Rafik, with his own bloody froth mingling with the blood of Sung and running down his chin, was on his feet and with a strength out of proportion to his size, picked up LTC Hanson by the neck and slammed her back into the hospital bed. Her umbilical cord snapped free from her suit and the sound of escaping air filled the speaker, whipping the cord around spasmodically. An insane snarl escaped Anwar’s bloody mouth and he was on her in an instant, his clawed hands flailing wildly at her body as he tried to get to her flesh through the spacesuit.
LTC Hanson was beating him about the waist with her clenched fists. Anwar bent down and bit her shoulder through the material as easily as biting through tissue paper. Blood erupted and she screamed, frantically trying to beat him off of her.
From behind Anwar, I saw a blur of green and a metallic sound as something slammed into the back of Anwar’s skull. Sung rammed the blunt end of an oxygen cylinder over and over into Anwar’s head until his body slumped to the floor.
Blood was splattered everywhere. The room was severely contaminated. Procedure called for getting everyone out to the airlock for decontamination and smoking the room with gaseous formaldehyde, however, that wasn’t going to be possible.
“Sung, how bad is she?” I asked.
“She’s bleeding bad,” he replied, grabbing a towel and pressing it to her wound. I could see blood dripping from the tear in the arm of his own suit.
“Steve,” Jennifer called weakly. “We have to assume this room’s hot.”
“I know,” I replied in a surprisingly calm voice, “but first you two need to be stabilized. I’m on my way over now.” I hooked up to the external backpack and exited through my lab’s airlock, still in shock from what I had just witnessed.
Both Sung and Jennifer appeared even worse when I arrived in the isolation lab a few minutes later. Less than ten minutes had passed since the attack. The thing that had been Dr. Anwar Rafik was still lying in a heap on the floor by the bed where he had fallen, his head a pulpy mess. Jennifer was lying in the bed where Anwar had been just ten minutes prior.
“He fucking bit through my clavicle. How the fuck could he do that!?” LTC Hanson cried weakly when she saw me.
“He got her brachial artery,” Sung informed me quietly. “She’s losing blood fast.”
Sung still had the towel folded and pressed hard to her shoulder and it was already soaked and dripping with bright red blood.
“I’m sorry I killed Dr. Rafik. I didn’t know what else to do to stop him,” Sung stated while he tended to LTC Hanson.
“I know. I saw what happened. You did the right thing.” Then again I wondered if it was the right thing. A man we all knew had lost his life after havi
ng some sort of manic episode. Could something else have been done to restrain him? I replayed the event in my mind and could see no other course of action that could have stopped Anwar before he had killed Hanson or Sung.
“How’s your arm?” I asked, looking over at the other two infected patients in the room. They were still comatose.
“Very painful, Dr. McQuinn,” he replied in his light Korean accent.
I spotted some surgical tape laying near the spilled cart and grabbed a pressure bandage off the counter then proceeded to bandage up his arm through his suit as best as possible. I poured a half bottle of hydrogen peroxide over the bandage and used the other half on the towel covering LTC Hanson’s shoulder. She was looking very pale, with dark circles forming under her eyes. I took a roll of duct tape and made a temporary patch over the hole torn in Sung’s sleeve, thankful when his suit repressurized.
“We need to get some saline into her,” Sung said, then motioned to the two infected girls still laid out on their beds. “Can you secure those two?”
I nodded in reply.
“I’m bleeding out,” LTC Hanson weakly told Sung. “You need to clamp off the artery. There’s not much time.”
I pulled Dr. Rafik’s body off to the side, his mangled head leaving a bloody smear across the floor. I covered him with a sheet then went over to the two girls. The beds had leather wrist and ankle cuffs built into each to keep infected patients immobilized in situations where they could harm themselves or others. This was one of those situations. It took me only a few minutes to get both secured to their beds. When I turned around Sung had cut away a portion of Jennifer’s suit and set up a saline drip into her arm.