Chapter Sixteen

It was early, the sun only just up and the morning relatively cool. Eli was seated on an overturned crate, outside the mobile lab, drinking a mug of coffee, eating jelly beans and watching the almost constant stream of traffic coming into camp. More medical staff and soldiers. Lots of them. They were going to be needed. He’d heard that things were deteriorating rapidly in the village. There had been ten more deaths during the night, and around 25 percent of the villagers were already showing the later symptoms.

Somehow, he had to stay focused. To think in terms of cold hard facts. To be logical…scientific. That was the only way he could help these people. Except images of Rosita’s body kept impinging on his thoughts. There would be so many more.

He’d also tried Henry again, thinking this early in the morning, he might get straight through—his mentor had always been an early riser—with no success. A different woman but the same answer. And he couldn’t shake the sense of unease that everything was falling apart.

A vehicle pulled up beside him. Riley was driving, Leo in the passenger seat next to her.

Riley opened her window. “You look very un-busy sitting there.”

“Hah. I’ve been up for three hours.” He’d been going through the results of the tests he’d set up when he got back the previous evening. He’d woken early and hadn’t been able to get back to sleep. Something about the meeting with Sister Clara had unsettled him. He didn’t know the woman. He didn’t want to care. He couldn’t save her. Right now, he suspected nobody could. There was a chance that she would pull through. Maybe she would fight off the virus, but something told him that was unlikely.

The virus had been present in the brain tissue; he’d been expecting it from the symptoms. This wasn’t rabies, but the symptoms were similar.

If you caught a rabies infection early enough, it could be stopped by administering rabies immunoglobulin and vaccine. However, once it entered the nervous system, it was almost always fatal. Though, as he’d told Sister Clara, there had been six cases where they’d successfully used what was known as the Milwaukee treatment, where the patient was put into a chemically induced coma and treated with anti-virals.

“Care to go on a drive?” Riley asked.

“Where are you going?”

“To look for bats.”

Suddenly, it seemed like a good idea to get out of camp for a while. There was nothing else he could do until the last set of tests was ready. Chasing bats seemed as good a plan as any.

He got up and swallowed the last of his cold coffee. “I’m in.”

He climbed into the back seat, and Riley pulled away as he fastened his seat belt. “Does anyone know if Sister Clara left this morning?” he asked.

“Not as far as I know,” Riley said from the front. “The ambulance arrived at six, but it’s still sitting there.”

Shit. He would have liked her away from here. The truth was, he didn’t want to have to watch her die. He pushed the thought aside. No one could force the woman to leave. “So…bats?”

“Apparently, there’s a colony in a cave system a couple of miles away,” Leo said. “One of the villagers gave me directions. Even if the infection method isn’t an actual bite, likely this is a crossover from an animal virus. We go get ourselves a bat or two, you test them for the virus. If they’re carrying, then we’ve likely found our source, and it’s one less thing to worry about. Then we destroy the colony, and hopefully that will stop the spread.”

“Sounds like a plan.” And a little too optimistic.

“Did you get anything from the autopsy samples?” Riley asked.

“Yeah. The virus is everywhere, but it’s mostly concentrated in the brain tissue. It’s also in the spinal fluid, so it’s traveling through the nervous system as well as the bloodstream.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“It’s not. I’m guessing the kid your guy shot was hallucinating. Probably had no clue what was happening.”

“That ties in with what Sergeant Carter—the soldier who shot him—said. It was like he was high or something.”

He sat back in his seat and stared out the window. They were driving slowly, along more of a track than a road, dense vegetation on either side. In front of him, Leo was doing something on his laptop. He glanced over his shoulder. “Shelly passed on your latest results. I’m just putting them into the simulator. You want to have a look?”

“The simulator?”

“Yeah, something Adam and I put together.”

“Where is Adam?”

“Talking to his publisher. Anyway, the simulator builds models of theoretical pandemics. You can plug in all the information you have, the infection rates, time frames, fatalities, and work out how and where it’s going to spread and how fast.” He tapped a key and handed the laptop over to Eli. The screen showed a map of the world. A purple dot sat over Mexico, where they were situated.

“The good news is that right now, we think we have it contained. There have still been no cases outside the quarantined areas. No reports from any hospitals of suspected cases. It’s staying put. Adam’s still convinced it’s going to follow the same pattern as Ebola. But let me show you something.” He took the laptop and tapped in some new information. “This is a simulation I’ve been working on. What happens if we have just one person getting out of here and, say, going to…the airport in Mexico City.” He handed the laptop back.

Eli watched as purple radiated out from the original point. There was a timer in the corner, and at ten days, the whole world was purple. “Jesus.”

“Yup. A worldwide pandemic in less than two weeks. This thing is fast. Faster than anything I’ve ever seen before. Shelly is updating CDC. So far, we’ve only sent details out to local hospitals. She’s recommending they issue a similar warning to hospitals and clinics worldwide. Adam believes we’re being premature but better too early than too late.”

“What’s the difference between a pandemic and an epidemic?” Riley asked.

“A pandemic is like an epidemic on steroids,” Leo said. “It’s a contagious bacterial or viral infection that spreads. Where an epidemic is limited to one specific geographic region, a pandemic has the potential to include billions of people in all areas across the globe.”

“Many people believe that a global pandemic is inevitable,” Eli said. “Either a mutation of a virus already out there or an entirely new one—they’re calling that Disease X. Or maybe an act of terrorism with a weaponized pathogen. The way people move around the globe these days, once it’s out there, it’s going to spread.”

“Well, let’s make sure it doesn’t get out there.” Riley stopped the car. “This is it. I think.”

It looked like more of the same to Eli, but when he peered closer, he could make out a rock face through the vegetation and a dark hole showing the entrance to some sort of cave system.

“Whoever goes in there is going to have to suit up,” Eli said. He hoped that wasn’t why they’d brought him along. “You know that, right?”

“That’s why we decided to go in early, and Leo volunteered for the job.”

Leo was already climbing out of the car. “I like bats,” he said as he walked around and opened the back. “My professor at college was a bat freak. They’ll be sleepy right about now. Should be easy to catch a couple.” He didn’t bother to strip off his clothing, just pulled the yellow hazmat suit on over his clothes. Eli climbed out to help him, running the tape around his wrists. Riley had also gotten out and was peering toward the cave opening.

Leo pulled on the last bit of kit, the rubber over-gloves, and he was ready to go.

“Be careful when you’re in there that you don’t snag the suit,” Eli said.

“I will.” He picked up a net and a container from the back and shuffled off toward the cave entrance.

“Let’s wait in the vehicle,” he said to Riley. “I’d rather not risk getting bitten by anything that might have already bitten our friends in there.”

“Good point.”

They got back in and she turned in her seat so she was facing him. “So what are the chances of you finding a cure for this thing? Or creating a vaccine?” she asked.

“Pretty low.”

Riley blew out her breath. “You know, usually I like honesty, but right about now I could have done with a little more prevarication.”

“Formulating a vaccine usually takes months, if not years.” He took pity on her. “It’s not all bad news. I’m running some tests now to see if I can pinpoint how it gets into the host’s cells, which might give us an idea of how to fight it, how to stop it from entering.”

“Really?” She sounded skeptical. “That could work?”

“Well, while it’s a long shot, it ties in with my work with the HIV virus. Did you know that about one percent of the population is immune to HIV? They can be in frequent contact with the virus but don’t catch it.”

“No, I didn’t.” She tilted her head and studied him out of narrowed eyes. “Hey, are you making this up to get me to feel better?”

“Of course not.” He grinned. “Maybe providing a little distraction, though.”

“Hmm. Distract away. So why don’t they catch it?”

He settled back in his seat. “The HIV virus enters host cells by attaching onto something called the CD4 receptor and its co-receptor, CCR5, on the cell surface and then utilizing them to enter the cell. Once inside, they can reprogram the cell to make viral DNA. But certain people have a genetic mutation that manifests as an abnormality to the CD4 receptor. The virus can’t attach, and therefore it can’t enter the cell.”

She frowned. “Okay. How does that help the rest of us who don’t have the mutation?”

“That’s where the clever stuff comes in. We’re working on a way to cut out the genetic material that causes the mutation and then add it in to people who don’t have it and thus passing on the immunity.”

“Your scissors. I remember you telling me.”

“Yeah. Though it’s actually enzymes not scissors—proteins that drive reactions inside the cells—that do the cutting.”

“And that really works?”

“Well, we’ve never done it on people. And while it’s worked at the cellular level and there’s been some success with mouse embryos, there are problems with delivering the new genetic material to adults. So it’s unlikely to be of help in this particular case. But there might be other ways to mimic the gene mutation. First, we’d need to find someone who’s actually immune. We have a one hundred percent infection rate so far. Let’s hope some of them pull through.”

A movement caught his eye, and he looked out the window. “Leo’s back. That was quick.”

Leo had come to a halt about ten feet away. Eli got out, went around to the back, and got the disinfectant sprayer. It took as long to take off the suit as to put it on. Everything went in a plastic bag, and Leo zipped it up afterward. Then the container went in a second bag, and he put them both in the back of the vehicle.

Riley handed him a bottle of water as he climbed in the car. “What did you find?” she asked.

He drank down half the bottle of water in one go. “They were there. Looks like we might have found our culprits. I got a couple of them for you to test, but they’re dead—something killed them all.”

The virus? Maybe this was that piece of luck they needed so badly. “Let’s get back.”