Chapter Seven

Eli stood under a cold shower for ten minutes when they got back to camp. He was trying to clear his mind of the whole plague thing, but Sister Clara’s face kept intruding. He liked her. Something about her reminded him of Amber maybe.

And she was infected.

Christ, he hoped this wasn’t going to go badly. Early indications suggested that the rapid response team was a huge overreaction, even with the infection rate, and it would blow over. Except something wasn’t right. Protocols had been broken, which meant someone, somewhere had a reason to break them. A reason that this someone—whoever it was—wasn’t sharing.

When he’d finally stopped oozing sweat from every pore, he dried himself off and dressed in clean clothes. Shorts and a T-shirt. Sandals. Then headed for the mess tent. He was eager to get started and once he began, he was unlikely to stop for food, so best to get some inside him now.

He found the place empty except for Leo. Again. “Do you live here?” he asked.

Leo grinned. “Fast metabolism. I need to eat a lot and often.” He raised his cup. “Plus, I do not function without constant access to caffeine.”

Eli crossed to a table where a hot plate had been set out. He picked up a lid: some sort of vegetable stew, and another with tortillas. He spooned some stew into a bowl, added a couple of tortillas and a bottle of water—he was definitely dehydrated from his time in the suit—and headed back, taking the seat next to Leo.

They ate in silence. The food was good, and once he’d finished, he went back for more. Then sat back in his seat, blew out his breath.

“So what do you think?” Leo asked.

He had some ideas that he wasn’t ready to share. He didn’t want to send people off on a tangent until he was surer of the facts himself. “Nothing yet. I’m going to go have a look at the samples and hopefully get some idea of what we’re dealing with.”

“I’ve never come across a spread rate like it. I’ve been working on the numbers, and if this gets out, then it’s going to be all over.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t get out, then.”

“Even if it’s not fatal, that could have a huge effect on the world economy.”

“Yeah.” Maybe that was why they were here. God forbid that some nasty disease impinged on the ability of the world’s rich to make even more money. He shoved his chair back. “I’ll see you later.”

The lab was a work of art. But then Eli had helped to design it. While he might not be interested in doing fieldwork, he had an excellent idea of what would be needed. There was everything he required to find out everything possible about the virus they were dealing with. Time was maybe the only thing he wouldn’t have.

The interior was about ten feet wide by thirty, and every inch was utilized. The whole thing was powered by a generator. There was a biosafety cabinet along one wall, a fridge for keeping samples. A thermocycler for PCR testing. A cabinet with chemicals and, best of all, a top-of-the-line scanning portable electron microscope. He almost rubbed his hands together. He was actually looking forward to getting busy.

He placed his bag with the samples in the biosafety cabinet, collected the chemicals he’d need for preparing the blood samples for viewing and the various other tests he could set up from here, plus the samples for sending back to his lab at Johns Hopkins. He could do a lot from the mobile lab, but the next-generation sequencing needed access to the university servers if he was to get the results within the next few days. Shelly would have to find a way to get the samples delivered. He sealed the cabinet and then slipped his hands into the gloves.

An hour later, he’d set up PCR tests for the most common viruses—the ones they had DNA primers for on-site. Antibody tests, again for the common pathogens. But he had an idea that he wasn’t going to get lucky. The symptoms just didn’t fit neatly anywhere. He’d also set up various cultures but didn’t hold out much hope of getting anything useful. Right now, he was just throwing as wide a net as he could. Unfortunately, that wasn’t very wide. Finally, he was preparing the slides to view in the electron microscope.

He’d look at Sister Clara’s first. In all likelihood, she was the newest infection. Then Maria’s and finally Rosita’s. He got them all prepared—they’d take thirty minutes to process. He withdrew his hands and crossed to the small desk, opened the laptop, and started typing in notes from the meetings that morning. He found the interviews in the shared folder and watched Sister Clara’s again, taking notes of the symptoms. Then Rosita’s. If she was the first infected, then it looked like approximately three days of minor symptoms, followed by a lull where the subject appeared to be recovering and then…well, right now, they had no clue. That would soon change.

He looked them over, compared them to the WHO database. Rabies came out as the greatest match, at least as far as the symptoms were concerned. However, when you added the infection rate and possible methods of infection transmission, then it was no longer such a good fit.

Could they be looking at something totally new?