A soldier hurried over and hit the monkey with a double load of ketamine, and the monkey went limp.
During the crisis, Peter Jahrling spent every day wearing a space suit in his lab, running tests on monkey samples, trying to determine where and how the virus spreading, and trying to get a pure sample of the virus isolated. Meanwhile, Tom Geisbert pulled all-nighters, staring at the cellscapes through his microscope.
Occassionlly they met each other in an office, and closed the door.
“How are you feeling?”
“Tired, but otherwise I’m okay.”
“No headache?”
“Nope. How are you feeling?”
“Fine.”
They were the discoverers of the strain, and it seemed that they would have the chance to give it a name, provided they could isolate it, and provided it didn’t isolate them first.
Jahrling went home for dinner with his family, but later he had read his children their stories and put them to bed, he returned to the Institute and worked until late. The whole Institute was lit up with activity, all the hot labs full of people and operating around the clock. Soon he had stripped nude in the locker room, and he was putting on his scrubs, and then he was wearing his space suit, feeling sleepy, warm, and full of dinner, as he faced the steel door blazzed with the red flower, reluctant to take another step forward. He opened the door and went through to the hot side.
He had been testing his and Geisbert’s blood all along, and he wondered if the virus would suddenly show up in it. He didn’t think it was likely. I didn’t stick the flask close to my nose. I kind of just waved my hand over it. They used to do that all the time in hospital labs with bacteria. It used to be standard procedure to sniff cultures in a lab—that was how you learned what bacteria smelled like, how you learned that some kinds smell like Welch’s grape juice. The question of whether he, Peter Jahrling, was infected with Ebola had become somewhat more pressing since the animal caretaker had puked on the lawn. That guy had not cut himself or stuck himself with a needle. Therefore, if that guy was breaking with Ebola, he might have caught it by breathing it in the air.
Jahrling carried some slides containing spots of his own blood serum into his closet, shut the door, turned out the light. He let his eyes adjust to the darkness, and had the usual struggle to see anything in the microscope through his faceplate. Then the panorama swam into view. It was the ocean of his blood, stretching in all directions, grainy and mysterious, faintly glowing with green. This was a normal glow, nothing to get excited about, that faint green. If the green brightened into a hotter glow, that would signify that his blood was inhabited by Ebola. And what if his blood glowed? How would he judge if it was really glowing? How green is green? How much do I trust my tools and my perceptions? And if I’m covinced my blood is glowing, how am I going to report the results? I’ll need to tell C.J. May be I won’t have to go to the Slammer. I could be bicontained right here in my own lab. I’m in Biosafety Level 4 right now. I’m already in isolation. Who can I infect here in my lab? Nobody. I could live and work in here if I go positive for Ebola.
Nothing glowed. Nothing reacted to his blood. His blood was normal. Same with Tom Geisbert’s blood. As to whether their blood would glow tomorrow or the next day or the day after that, only time would tell, but he and Geisbert were climbing out of the incubation period.
At eleven o’clock at night, he decided it was time to go home, and he entered the air lock and pulled the chain to start the decon cycle. He was standing in gray light in the gray zone, alone with his thoughts. He couldn’t see much of anything in here, in the chemical mist. He had to wait seven minutes for the cycle to complete itself. His legs were killing him. He was so tired he couldn’t stand up. He reached up with his hands and grabbed the pipes that fed chemicals into the shower, to hold himself up. The warm liquid ran over his space suit. He felt comfortable and safe in here, surrounded by the sloshing noises of virus-killing liquids and the hiss of air and the ruffling sensation across his back as the chemical played over his suit. He fell asleep.
He jerked awake when the final blast of water jets hit him, and he found himself slumped against the wall of the air lock, his hands still gripped around the pipes. If it hadn’t been for that last jet of water, he would not have woken up. He would have slid down the wall and curled up in the corner of the air lock, and probably would have stayed there all night, sound asleep, while the cool, sterile air flowed through his suit and bathed his body, nude inside its cocoon, at the heart of the Institute.
Specialist Rhonda Williams was standing in the main corridor of the monkey house, afraid she would end up in the Slammer. There was no sound except the roar of air in her helmet. The corridor stretched in both directions to infinity, strewn with cardboard boxes and trash and monkey biscuits. Where were the officers? Where was Colonel Jaax? Where was everybody? She saw the doors leading to the monkey rooms. Maybe the officers were in there.
Something was coming down the corridor. It was the loose monkey. He was running toward her. His eyes were staring at her. Something glittered in his hand—he was holding a syringe. He waved it at her with gesture that conveyed passionate revenge. He wanted to give her an injection. The syringe was hot with an unknown agent. She started to run. Her space suit slowed her down. She kept running, but the hallway stretched on forever, and she couldn’t reach the end. Where was the door out of here? There was no door! There was no way out! The monkey bounded toward her, its terrible eyes fixed on her—and the needle flashed and went into her suit… She woke up in her barracks room.
DECON
December 7, Thursday
Nancy Jaax awoke at four o’clock in the morning to the sound of the telephone ringing. It was her brother, calling from a pay telephone at the hospital in Wichita. He said that their father was dying. “He’s very, very bad, and he’s not going to make it,” he said. Their father was in cardiac failure, and the doctor had been asking if the family wanted him to undertake extreme lifesaving measures. Nancy thought only briefly about this and told her brother not to do it. Her father was down to ninety pounds, just skin and bones, and he was in pain and miserable.
She woke up Jerry and told him that her father would probably die today. She knew she would have to go home, but should she try home today? She could arrive in Wichita by afternoon, and he might still be alive. She might be able to have a last farewell with him. She decided not to fly home. She felt that she couldn’t leave her job in the middle of Reston crisis, that it would be a dereliction of her post.
The telephone rang again. It was Nancy’s father calling from his hospital room. “Are you coming home, Nancy?” he asked. He sounded wheezy and faint.
“I just can’t get away right now, Dad. It’s my work. I’m in the middle of a serious outbreak of disease.”
“I understand,” he said.
“I’ll see you at Christmas, Dad.”
“I don’t think I’ll make it that long, but well, you never know.”
“I’m sure you will make it.”
“I love you, Nancy.”
“I love you, too.”
In the blackness before dawn, she and Jerry got dressed, she in her uniform, he in civilian clothes, and he headed off for the monkey house. Nancy stayed at home until after the children had awaken up, and she fixed them some cereal. She sent the children off on the school bus and drove to work. She went to Colonel C.J. Peters and told him that her father was probably going to die today.