Except this one, this line that is flexing and spiking and pulsing in bright red, marked BOTULINUM. A callout, recording estimated concentration per sample taken. Lethality is measured by median lethal dose, or LD50, the amount of any given agent that will kill 50 percent of a population exposed to it. Bell is thinking about botulinum, thinking about context, remembering VX nerve agent. A lethality of roughly thirty micrograms to one kilogram of human being, or, to put it another way, in aerosol form, one breath of it delivers enough toxin to kill 150 people.
That’s VX, Bell remembers.
But botulinum toxin, appropriately weaponized, has a theoretical LD50 of three nanograms per kilogram. That’s a thousand times more lethal. This is the same stuff that Aum Shinrikyo tried to manufacture before giving up on it and switching to sarin when they attacked the Tokyo subway system. They gave up on it because they could never get the vector to work properly.
A problem somebody else seems to have solved.
It’s not an instant death. Symptoms on average begin to present at six hours to two days after exposure, but there have been cases of incubation within two to three hours, and within as long as four days. Unlike VX or sarin, which cause seizure and paralysis, botulinum causes muscle atrophy, loss of control, and, inevitably, respiratory failure. Victims suffocate, their diaphragms literally unable to work their lungs.
Bell doesn’t know how many people are in the park today. He doesn’t know how many people are at Disneyland, or Knott’s Berry Farm, or even how many live in Irvine and its environs. But he’s pretty damn sure that if the Spartan II is reading botulinum and if it’s telling the truth, then there’s more than enough traveling in the air to spread far and wide beyond the confines of WilsonVille.
Nuri has the phone ready, hands it to him as he reaches out, then puts an extension to her own ear. Bell doesn’t look away, staring at that monitor. The Spartan II that he just doesn’t trust. The Spartan II that maybe is lying to him, but is maybe telling him the truth, and he has to push, and push hard, to keep the thoughts of Amy and Athena from overwhelming his reason. Nuri at his elbow, and she’s watching him carefully, and he shakes his head just barely.
Marcelin’s voice on the line now. “Jad? What’s going on?”
“Waiting on Porter,” Bell says.
“I’m here. We’ve got alarms relaying through the office, I was just about to-”
“The Spartan tripped for airborne botulinum, now at forty-three micrograms per sample.”
“Jesus Christ,” Marcelin says.
“We’ve got a diagnostic running, but it’s going to be”-Bell looks at Norman Struss, who holds up his left hand, shows him five fingers, then five fingers again, then five fingers a third time-“fifteen minutes before it’s completed, before we know whether it’s a system fault or not.”
There’s a fraction’s pause, both men at the ends of the lines absorbing, digesting. Marcelin speaks before Porter, his voice controlled. “Could it be a false positive?”
“No way to tell at the moment.”
“It doesn’t fit the profile,” Porter mutters, speaking more to himself than to them. “It doesn’t fit their profile, you can’t just weaponize botulinum, it’s not something you can do in a high-school chem lab, it’s not in their profile.”
On the monitor, the pulsing line jumps, the machine bleats again, repeatedly. Norman Struss taps keys quickly, silencing the Spartan. “New readings, now central north side, from Fort Royal to the coaster. It’s spreading. Jesus, it’s spreading.”
“You guys hear that?”
“It doesn’t make sense. If this is retribution, they’d take a suicide run at the gates, blow themselves and take whoever they can with them, go out like true believers shouting it to the clouds. Run a truck loaded with ANFO into the parking lot, that’s the profile. This doesn’t make sense!”
“How long will it take to evacuate the park?” Marcelin asks.
Bell looks to Nuri, about to ask her, sees that she’s been writing on a piece of paper. She holds it up before he can ask the number: 49K AS OF 1030H.
“We’re over forty-nine thousand,” Bell says into the phone. “Best case, we can clear the park in twenty minutes. That’s best case, Matt. And I’d want to second-sweep for stragglers.”
“Shut it down, evacuate the park,” Porter says. “Jesus Christ, shut it down now, Matthew!”
“Jad?”
Bell is still staring at the monitor. His head believes what he’s seeing, but he can feel it in his gut, there’s something not right about this. Something about the way the sensors are tripping, the way the toxin seems to be spreading, but he can’t articulate it, can’t find words to fit the feeling.
“You’re going to have to intake, treat, nearly fifty thousand people,” Bell says, the image, unbidden and imagined, Athena lying on a gurney, pumped full of antitoxin, unable to even gasp for breath behind a bag valve mask. “You’re talking about men, women, children, the elderly, all the staff-”
“You want to take that chance?” Porter is quietly ferocious. “You’re thinking about WilsonVille, I’m thinking about Southern fucking California. This shit doesn’t care where the park ends, Bell!”
“If that’s what it is.”
“What else can it be?” Marcelin asks.
“You want to take the chance it’s a false positive? You want to take that chance? Because I sure as hell won’t.”
“I agree,” says Bell. “Doesn’t matter, Eric’s right. We have to clear the park.”
“Do it,” Marcelin says, and there’s no hesitation or doubt in his tone.
Immediately, over the line, Bell can hear Porter shouting for Wallford. Send up the balloon, local, state, federal, call them all, we’ve got a biotoxin event originating in the WilsonVille theme park.
Marcelin continues, “Eric, get on the PA, make the announcement. Jad, get my park empty and then get yourself and your people out of there.”
“On it.”
“Make it happen.”
Bell hangs up his phone, sees again all the faces watching him, this room of twenty-odd people, twenty-odd Friends. All of them, plus one, a new addition, and everyone feels it, wondering if it’s already seeping into their lungs. Wondering how much time they have. Nuri is at the duty officer’s desk, has the big blue binder out, and nobody else is moving, waiting for him, waiting to hear it. He knows what he says now matters, and he hopes to God he can get it right.
“We are evacuating the park,” Bell says. “We are evacuating the park. Hear me, hear what I’m saying. You know what I know. You know what it might be. What it might be, not what it is.”
Nuri is back, opening the binder and setting it on the console in front of him. Bell can read the heading on the open page: PROCEDURE IN EVENT OF EVACUATION. She looks at him, and he nods, and she moves away, toward the line of radios locked down and sitting in their chargers.
“I’m going to give you your posts,” Bell says. “Take a radio, take a light, take your posts, clear the park. That’s all you have to do, just that. Just that, and one thing more.
“You cannot lose your nerve. Not a single one of you, not now. We have to get this right. The wrong word will start a panic. The wrong word will get people killed. You know that word, you’ve heard that word, but that’s all it is right now. That’s all it is, just a word. It’s just a word.”
He stops, feels that he’s spoken too much, that his own words-just words-are inadequate. But people are watching him, and he sees the resolve, a few of them nodding. They’re getting to their feet, and Nuri has the radios out, ready to distribute them, and so Bell takes the binder, and starts calling people by name.