Chapter 3

KHABAROVSK AIRPORT, RUSSIA

Infection Date 9, 1200 GMT (10:00 p.m. Local)

With help from her Marine escort, Isabel dressed head to toe in disposable personal protective equipment, then passed the plastic shelter erected inside the cavernous C-17 cargo bay on her way to the open rear ramp. Joining her was Capt. Rick Townsend, wearing identical gear, who checked her seals.

The PPE created a sense of detachment, allowing Isabel’s thoughts to wander along with the man’s hands as he tugged on her taped seams. Captain Townsend had introduced himself at Joint Base Andrews at the conclusion of Isabel’s whirlwind first day. The landlord had let her into Emma’s apartment with no questions asked except about her now long hair. Isabel passed people at the complex who called her “Emma” and asked her to a party, for drinks, for coffee, for tennis. Emma’s messy apartment was strewn with photos of her with friends and boyfriends, on vacations skiing and scuba diving, and dressed up at galas or costume parties. How can you possibly keep up with epidemiology literature? came Isabel’s catty thought.

Also fun that day was the FBI interview and lie detector test. She freaked a little when asked if she was an agent of a foreign government. She wasn’t, but the question was scary. Her list of acquaintances had seemed suspiciously short, so she’d added married colleagues’ wives, the receptionist at the gym, the guy at the auto body shop who’d ripped her off. But when the agent said they’d contact them with questions, Isabel had even more suspiciously deleted the additional names and tried grinning her way past the questions. And in the end, the laminated White House badge Isabel had received bore a huge T, for Top Secret, the agent informed her. Her messy-hair-pulled-back picture was even worse than her awful driver’s license.

“Rick,” she called the man beside her, to herself, towered over her at maybe six four. His hair was too short to tell, but from his eyebrows he may be blond. He was tanned, square jawed, bright-eyed—green, like hers. “I command your protective detail,” he had said. Isabel had had trouble repressing a smile. He then went on and on about the mission, organization, equipment, and we-were-never-there secrecy rules.

He wore no wedding ring and was about her age. During the long flight over, she had come up with several requests for clarification about what he had said. Most of the time, however, was spent with her failing to dream up anything else to say. He was asleep when she finally remembered to ask about his job. Talking to guys was Emma’s thing, not Isabel’s.

A disturbance at the bottom of the ramp drew their attention. Russians faced off against Marines, all in full PPE, all heavily armed. Isabel and Rick joined them.

The Russian soldiers, rifles raised, wore heavy rubber hoods and gas masks. As the C-17 was being refueled, a Marine lieutenant colonel, overall mission commander, said, “The French transport from Anadyr doesn’t get here for thirty minutes. The Russians don’t want us to disembark. Apparently, a commercial 737 from Anadyr arrived, with everyone aboard exposed by some infected Russian oil company executive.”

“I want to go see him,” Isabel said.

The colonel, Rick, and the Russians all argued against it, but she insisted, dropping “the White House” and “the president” as needed to get her way.

Townsend and three Marines surrounded Isabel. A half dozen Russian troops enveloped them for an uneasy walk to the terminal. They passed armed guards in gas masks posted by unmarked doors, climbed stairs, and weaved their way through curtains of plastic sheeting before arriving at a medical team also garbed in protective equipment.

“Dr. Miller!” said a white man with a thick South African accent. “Can you not recognize me in all this?” Isabel knew no South Africans. He was short and rotund, with a smiling round face behind a clear shield like a silent-movie depiction of the moon. “It’s Pieter Groenewalt! From the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in Johannesburg?” From the autopsy slides, she remembered. “You had dinner at my home with Katryn and our daughter Marna?” They shook hands. “I heard you’d run into a bit of bad luck and had to. . . . Oh, never mind. You look hale and hearty.”

“Dr. Groenewalt, I’m afraid there’s been a . . .”

“We need to be getting back,” Rick abruptly cut her off. “So let’s make this quick.” Oh yeah, Isabel remembered. Everything’s a secret. Groenewalt understood the ridiculous security measures and discretely winked at her in sympathy.

“Is he in there?” she asked.

Groenewalt said, “Yes,” then added in a whisper. “They’re fascinating.”

Isabel headed for the doorway, whose plastic drapes were being sucked inward. Rick gave his men hand signals. The South African doctor said, “Vitals are normal. Other than the mydriasis, they’re asymptomatic. A little stuporous—in some sort of fugal state—probably lethargic after their high fevers.”

A portable filter loudly vented through the window to the outside. “Thank God I was passing through with my brain specimens on the way back to Geneva,” Groenewalt said. He lowered his voice. “Has it broken out in Anadyr?” Despite Rick’s glance, Isabel nodded. The South African pathologist said, “The Yakutia Airlines pilot radioed ahead with a medical emergency. The Russians asked for help, and when I heard the flight was from Anadyr . . . ! I sent my brain specimens back to Geneva for analysis. Oh well. I almost made it home. Hopefully soon!”

He pulled the plastic aside. A stocky man with gray unkempt hair and black eyes rested against a pile of pillows atop his gurney. A slender, younger man in a second gurney—eyes also black—had his wrists bound to the side rails.

Groenewalt followed her gaze. “He’s this other man’s pilot. The advisory said to be alert about possible aggressiveness. I guess you’re familiar with that. Were you on a flight right behind mine?”

Rick stared at Isabel, so she ignored the question and asked, “Has he shown any violent tendencies?” Groenewalt shook his head.

“Why isn’t that man restrained?” Rick asked about the older patient.

“He’s some VIP,” Groenewalt replied, looking down at his chart.

“Pyotr Ignatyev?” Isabel asked. The pug-nosed Russian executive, with skin long ago ravaged by acne, returned her gaze. Rick posted riflemen at the feet of the men’s gurneys. Both patients stared warily at the weapons. Their dilated eyes made them seem oddly . . . not human.

She went to the executive’s gurney. “Do you speak English?”

“English?” Ignatyev replied. “Yes.”

“You were at the Anadyr drill site?” He didn’t respond. “You flew out of there on your own plane?” Again, nothing. She began to wonder if he really did speak English. “When did you start feeling sick?”

The man’s eyes darted about as he seemed to search his memory. “The illness?” he asked. “Nausea on the small plane.” His Russian accent was thick. “The flight to Anadyr was too bumpy!” he complained to his pilot in the gurney beside his. “Then vomiting in the terminal. Sleeping on the airport director’s sofa and on the flight here.”

“You know you infected everyone on that plane to Khabarovsk?” she said. He had no reaction. “Half of them are going to die.” Nothing. “How are you feeling now?”

“Feeling? Well. And you?”

Isabel was thrown by the reply. “Good. I’m . . . I’m fine. Does your head hurt?”

“Head?” The man raised his hand to his temple. “Yes. Quite a lot.”

“Can they get you something for the pain?”

“Pain? No.” Despite his calm responses, Isabel noticed the man’s black eyes flitting toward her Marine escorts and his fists clenching his bed linens into a wad. His breathing was shallower. On the monitor above him, his pulse rate had risen from the mid-fifties to nearly 120. Isabel decided to talk to the younger man. “How are you?”

“He’s not authorized to speak!” bellowed the executive, startling Isabel. He had now pulled wrinkled bed sheets loose and practically vibrated, red-faced, with indignation.

“Just a couple of questions,” she said soothingly, smiling. She turned to the slender pilot, who looked to be around her age. “When did you start feeling ill?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Isabel sensed a blur of white as sheets flew and the executive’s bare feet hit the floor. He growled at her as he lunged. But nothing jarred her like the three blasts from rifles six feet from her ears, which she felt as much as heard.

Time slowed. She recoiled from Ignatyev’s outstretched hands and raised gloved fingers to press her ringing eardrums through her hood. Crimson splatter sprayed the plaster behind the executive, who slumped to the floor leaving a streak of reddish brown along the wall. Smoke curled from the three Marines’ muzzles. Bullet casings spun to a stop on the floor. Alarms beeped on monitors still connected to the dying man. Groenewalt and a nurse raced by. Like a scuba diver Isabel heard only the sound of her own ragged breathing, which drowned out Groenewalt’s pointless first aid commands.

Isabel found herself sitting on the pilot’s gurney. His black eyes rose from his boss’s bloody corpse to the space-suit-clad American. “At the Anadyr airport,” he said.

“Wha . . . ? What?”

“The illness began in Anadyr.” He was answering the question, she realized, that she had asked before his boss was shot dead right in front of him. The medical staff tracked blood to the door. A pressure bandage slid off the executive’s still oozing chest wound.

The pilot betrayed no emotion. When Isabel stood, he watched. Otherwise, he seemed content. “Are you feeling alright?” Isabel managed. “I mean, about this?”

The Russian looked down at the dead man, whose head rested at an odd angle between the wall and a wheel on his gurney. “He attacked you,” the pilot said calmly. Like Ignatyev when asked about infecting an entire airliner full of passengers, the pilot exhibited a remarkable absence of empathy.

Rick returned from the hallway, where she had heard him report the incident over the radio. He grabbed Isabel by the elbow—“Let’s go!”—and led her toward the door.

Isabel pulled free and asked the pilot, “Does your head hurt?”

“Head? Hurt?” He tried to raise his hand, just like the oil company executive, but couldn’t because of the ties. That seemed to prevent him from composing an answer.

In the hallway, disinfectant spray jolted Isabel as it pattered off her face shield. People were in motion, reporting, and giving and receiving orders, but Isabel was in a daze until she reached the terminal. She heard a commotion and again pulled free of Rick’s grip, leading the entourage to glass walls overlooking the arrivals hall one floor below.

Passengers from the Yakutia Airlines 737 were banging on locked doors. One man, doubled over, vomited into a trash can. A woman in the middle of the hall did the same while stretched out across several seats. Her male companion tried to comfort her from a distance. Some lay unconscious, not hearing calls from loved ones who instinctively knew to stay away. All the others clung to far walls, articles of clothing tied across noses and mouths. But it was no use. From what Isabel had heard, everyone was already infected.

Outside on the tarmac, a large prop plane taxied to a stop. Groenewalt found her. “Emma, are you alright?” Isabel nodded. “That’s the French plane we took to Anadyr. So how did you get to Khabarovsk?” The only other plane there was the US Air Force C-17.

“We’ll take it from here,” Rick said, wheeling to a stop in front of Groenewalt. Isabel left them to join the CDC medical team, which was getting debriefed at the open side hatch of the prop plane by a French doctor who had just disembarked.

Isabel peered inside the plane, searching for her sister’s gurney. Someone Isabel’s height, wearing French-style protective gear, appeared beside her and joined in her search, leaning into the plane’s dark interior. Isabel looked through the person’s face shield. All she could see above the surgical mask were two black eyes. “Emmy?” Isabel threw her arms around her sister. Emma’s hands rose to pat Isabel’s back, but she didn’t return the hug. Emma’s eyes bore no trace of the green that had always identified them as twins no matter their hairstyles or clothes. They were now bottomless black pits. Windows into darkness.

“Hello, Isabel,” Emma said with no inflection. No expression. No emotional breakdown on meeting her beloved twin sister after the horrible ordeal she must have endured.

“How . . . ? How are you feeling?” Isabel asked.

“Fine. And you?” Emma’s response seemed rote; a meaningless courtesy.

“You wouldn’t believe what just happened!” Isabel told her about the shooting. Emma didn’t react at all. Not verbally. Not in body language. Oh-my-God, Isabel thought. There’s something really wrong with her.

US and Russian soldiers kept their distance, but held weapons . . . on Emma.

Gunfire suddenly erupted in the terminal. All heads turned toward it. Flashes lit windows. Glass rained onto the tarmac.

“Mount up!” Rick Townsend commanded.

The CDC medical team rushed Emma away. “It’s alright!” Isabel called after Emma, who went placidly to the C-17 without looking back at her lifelong closest friend.

A tall man wearing French PPE came up to Isabel. “Dr. Hermann Lange.” He nodded curtly but pointedly declined to extend his hand in greeting. “I was with your sister when she turned. She said to tell you and your brother to prepare.”

Isabel stared up at the French or German man. “What?” she replied. Turned? she thought. Is that what they call it? “Prepare for what?” she asked.

“For the disease. She made me promise to warn you.” At the rear ramp of the American transport, Emma rotated in place while standing in a disinfectant bucket and being sprayed. Groenewalt angrily waved a clipboard in the American mission commander’s face. Rick and the other soldiers—American, French, and Russian—warily eyed the gunfire in the terminal. Flashes sparkled through the icy, fractured glass like strobe lights at a club. It was all too much for Isabel to process.

“What did she mean?” Isabel asked Dr. Lange. “Prepare how?”

Lange said, “Buy supplies, food, survival gear.” He looked at the terminal. Rips of automatic gunfire had been replaced by single shots. “Weapons and ammunition.”

“Weapons?” Isabel asked, incredulous. “Why?”

Dr. Lange was summoned in French. His team was headed into the terminal. “Prepare for the worst, Dr. Miller. The very, very worst. I bid you adieu, et bon chance.”

Rick dragged Isabel into the rising whine of jet engines, into the disinfectant-filled bucket and spray, into the shouts of Groenewalt. “What’s going on? That was Emma! Who are you?” And into the huge transport plane while still dripping noxious bleach.

Marines ascended backwards behind raised weapons as the ramp rose. The C-17 began to taxi even before the ramp sealed. Isabel’s ears plugged and the huge cargo bay seemed eerily quiet. “The very, very worst.” Isabel followed a nurse into the plastic tent surrounding Emma’s gurney. Her sister lay under bright overhead lights.

A doctor and two nurses flitted about during high-speed turns, grabbing handholds as the plane’s tires squealed. Rick and two Marines were strapped into jump seats at the corners of the gurney, having exchanged high-powered rifles for pistols in holsters. A fourth Marine, standing and braced, held a video camera to his eye. The doctor, nurses, and Isabel held on as the engines rose to full power for a long take off run.

On the noisy climb out, Isabel smiled at Emma and held her limp, gloved hand.

The nurses cut away Emma’s protective garb, soggy from disinfectant, using special care around her headgear. “Take a deep breath and hold it,” the doctor said. Emma complied with comically puffed cheeks. They swapped out her paper mask for a clear plastic respirator, whose ribbed tube led into a device mounted on a stand. The nurse told Emma that she could now breathe normally.

Emma was naked save her new respirator, face shield, and hood. Her hands were free, but she made no move to cover herself. Isabel tried pulling bed linens loose, but they would only reach Emma’s pointy hipbones and protruding ribs. She had a tiny, colorful tattoo on her hip of a wolf smelling a flower that caught Isabel totally by surprise.

One nurse said, “This is a little cold,” before applying adhesive monitors to Emmy’s small chest. Goosebumps rose from her ribcage—she was too thin—but she didn’t flinch. Tears welled in Isabel’s eyes. Emmy looked helpless as they slipped a blood pressure cuff on her arm, clipped a thermometer to her finger, and taped a tube to her face. “Drink,” the nurse directed, bending the tube to her mouth. Emma complied. “Just a pinprick,” the other nurse said as an IV found a vein amid holes from other recent sticks. “This one might hurt a bit,” she said of a thicker needle. Emma didn’t even blink. They spread her knees and inserted a catheter. Within minutes, Emma was clothed, and her new PPE sprouted wires and tubes. Racks of electronics sprang to life with a chorus of beeps.

“You okay?” Isabel asked, squeezing Emmy’s limp hand.

After a pause, Emma tentatively said, “Ye-Yes?” A nurse asked for a urine sample. Emma provided it with surprisingly absent inhibition.

Isabel leaned over and whispered, “Remember when you used to wait till the bell rang and the school bathroom cleared out before you could even pee?”

No trace of an expression found its way onto Emma’s face. Isabel felt crushed.

* * * *

The adhesive sensors warmed and receded from Emma’s notice, but the needles and catheter reminded her of their presence. The lights above the gurney left red blanks in her vision. She counted three men armed with pistols. There would be more on the plane.

“Emmy?” Isabel said. “Are you okay?” She repeated the question.

“Yes?” Emma replied, though not entirely certain what had been asked.

Isabel alternately rubbed, patted, and squeezed Emma’s arm, and interlaced their gloved fingers. Tears flowed down Isabel’s face. She reached up, but her hand collided with her clear face shield. “Are you in pain, Emmy?” she asked in a thick, congested voice.

Emma took inventory. “Here.” She reached up to touch her head. The tall Marine’s hand reached for his pistol, but he didn’t draw it. “This,” Emma said.

“Would you like something?” Isabel asked. “For the pain?”

Her sister must be asking if the doctors should administer narcotics. “No.”

Emma couldn’t read her sister’s expression. Eyes scrunched, brow knit, questions deliberate, voice unsteady. “The pain doesn’t . . . bother you?” she asked.

Pain should hurt, as was clear from its circular definition. And she had a lifetime of memories of pain. Of vigorously shaking her hand after a tennis ball came off her racket wrong. But what caused that reaction? Why had she hopped on one foot after stubbing her toe? It didn’t make sense. Why had her eyes watered after she hit her head on an open cabinet door? What had followed each incident should have been pain, but did pain really exist? “No,” was all Emma replied.

The doctor and nurses around her gurney exchanged looks. The Marine holding the camera, faintly visible outside the bright lights, peered around the viewfinder.

“Emmy, can we talk?” Isabel asked. “More than just, ‘Yes, No’? Please.” Emma nodded. “So, how, exactly, do you feel right now?” The same question Dr. Lange had asked. The correct response bubbled up. “Fine.” Emma was unable to use more words.

“Was it scary? Getting sick?”

Emma thought back to the Siberian isolation unit. “Yes. It was. Scary.”

“What were you scared of?”

The question seemed straightforward, but somehow missed its mark. Emma didn’t fully understand it. “Scared.” She knew the word. Walking down a dark street to your car at a bar’s closing time. Better to pick whichever guy had kept trying the longest to accompany her home. But the word now summoned no corresponding feeling. “Dying?” she answered.

“Are you scared now?” Isabel asked.

It was as if her sister’s questions were filled with holes. Missing necessary words. “No.” Emma searched for more to say. “No complaints.”

When Isabel tilted her head, Emma knew there was some kind of information in her bright green eyes, but wasn’t sure what it was. “Can you tell me, Emmy, in detail, how you got infected?”

Emma bridged the indecipherable gaps. “Tell you?” she repeated. Isabel nodded. “Infected?” Another nod. Tell in detail how infected. Emma gave Isabel the long answer she wanted. The helicopter landed near the rig. Men attacked from the woods. Corporal Leskov tackled one. Sergeant Travkin stabbed him. Travkin put his pistol in the sample bag. Both got sick. Leskov died. Travkin killed three people, came into the tent, and was shot in the face.

Isabel asked, “Your sample collection bag?”

“The bag had been on the Russian army helicopter from Anadyr.”

“Emmy, who shot Travkin?”

The question of who sounded perfectly normal but was baffling. “He was shot. In the tent.” Isabel asked whose tent. “The tent he came to after breaking out of isolation.”

There was a beep on a machine. One of the Marine guards was replaced. Emma updated her count of armed men. Four.

“Did you shoot him, Emmy?” Isabel asked in a very soft voice.

Again, Emma should have understood the question, but again didn’t. She tried to make Isabel understand by repeating her answer clearly. “He was shot with the gun he put in the sample bag brought in on the helicopter. The gun was under the pillow in the tent.”

“Your bag?” Isabel asked. “Your pillow? Your tent?”

Emma could think of no reply that made sense. What was she saying that was different from Emma’s explanation? Isabel kept glancing at one Marine in particular. She’d always described tall, rugged men like him as “her type,” then been too timid ever to approach any. “Emmy, it must have been traumatic. Remember when Granddad shot those, whatever, skeet or traps? You practically jumped out of your skin. Remember?”

Emma nodded. Isabel had run back to the house. Emma had shot all afternoon.

“Did Sergeant Travkin say anything?” Isabel asked, her voice quivering. Another tear streaked her cheek until it was absorbed in the darkening upper edge of her blue mask.

“He said, ‘You might need this’.”

“When he gave you the gun? No, I meant did he say anything in the tent?”

Emma shook her head. “On the flight in, he kept looking at me. He wanted sex.”

Isabel again glanced at the tall Marine. “Emmy,” Isabel said, rubbing Emma’s arm, “I’m so sorry.” Emma asked why. The massaging stopped. “That you had to shoot that man.” The nurse adjusted the flow rate of the fluids dripping into the IV. “Emmy, can you tell me how you feel? Any emotion you’re feeling? Right this instant?”

Emotions again. Emma shook her head. “No. Everything is fine.”

Isabel looked tired. Her head hung and her eyes closed. Her big sigh fogged her face shield. She got up and left. There was another shift change among the guards. Five, was her new count.

Several beeps from the electronics later, Isabel returned. Her mask was dry and her congestion cleared. “Emma, I’m gonna be straight with you, okay? There’s something different about you.” Isabel’s voice broke. “You’re not acting like you did before.”

The pause that followed seemed to call for a reply. Emma said, “Okay.”

“She’s exhausted,” Isabel said to the tall Marine before breaking down and leaving again. The Marine gave orders—he must be an officer—then followed Isabel. As he passed, Emma concluded he too was her type. Good for a late night escort home.

He returned with Isabel, who had a notepad, pen and yet another dry mask. “Okay. We’re gonna get to the bottom of this. Science, right? Let’s focus on the science.” That sounded correct. “Let’s start with memory. Do you have any gaps in what you recall?”

Gaps, recall, memory. “The only blank,” Emma answered, “is from the fever getting bad, till the soldiers shooting sick people at the drilling site.”

“Shooting?” Isabel asked. “Was there trouble?”

“No. No trouble. Only the soldiers had guns.”

Isabel’s brow was oddly creased. Emma had always known what her sister was thinking. Her face had always been transparent. And they had joked that they had two halves of the same brain. But now, Isabel was a mystery. Her expression, tone, and body language were all . . . alien.

On request, Emma recounted the point-blank executions. Isabel touched her arm until Emma looked down at it. She then described the long ride to Anadyr. Watching on tiptoes through the window of the locked jail cell as small boats fled the burning airport across the river. Falling asleep to the sounds of screams and rips of gunfire on the street outside. The next day, a cold, open boat ride, hiking up to the burned-out terminal, more shooting of sick people, the noisy French turbo-prop.

“Do you recall,” Isabel whispered, leaning close, “asking a French doctor, Hermann Lange, to warn me and Noah? Something about ‘preparing’?”

Emma thought back. “He’s a disease theorist, and Swiss. Did he warn you?”

Isabel nodded. Lange kept his part of the bargain. Emma wanted to record the observation somewhere to help her to remember, and to understand why he would do such a thing? Isabel asked, “Don’t you want to warn me yourself?” Emma said nothing. “Buy food, supplies, . . . and guns? Does that make sense?”

“Yes. That would help you and Noah survive what’s coming.”

Isabel looked from the rapt medical team, to the tall Marine ready to shoot Emma, to the camera recording everything. “What’s coming, Emma?”

“The end of civilization,” Emma replied, taking a sip of water and urinating.