The Deep Zone Preview
A figure walked into the picture wearing a blue Chemturion Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) suit. Inflated to maintain positive pressure, it looked like the space suits in Buck Rogers movies, right down to the clear, bucket-shaped hood and futuristic backpack containing the battery-powered life support system. The attendant opened a locker door and rolled out a stainless steel rack. She unzipped the orange cadaver bag and pushed it open, exposing the body inside. Hallie came half out of her chair, gaping. "Jesus Christ. Did terrorists do that?" "No. Iatrogenic. It happened in the medical unit at Combat Outpost Terok in Afghanistan." "How?" "Just watch for a bit." The camera moved. Hallie saw closeups, plate-sized patches of skin and flesh missing, exposing white bone. She had seen skinless cadavers in graduate school at Hopkins, but, treated with formaldehyde and phenol, they looked more like pink wax. This body was like fresh red meat. The screen faded to black.Barnard turned to Hallie. "That is...was Army Specialist DeAengelo Washington. A fine young soldier, from what I was told." "Was he captured? Tortured?" "No. He wasn't even wounded. That young man is in another locker in the same morgue. He contracted ACE and it spread. Washington was one of the first victims." "Acinetobacter? Can't be. ACE doesn't do that." "This is a new ACE." "The old one was bad enough. Contagious as smallpox and multiple drug resistant." "This one is even worse. No antibiotic has even made it blink." "So this is biowar, finally?" she asked. "Possible, but the intel people don't think so. More likely, antigenic shift." "How did it do that to him?" "This new ACE apparently grows in the bloodstream, then attacks organs and skin from inside out." "Bacteria usually burrow deeper, where it's easier to propagate." "This ACE does just the opposite. It wants out. And it gets out fast." "Like being skinned alive, slowly," Hallie said. "That COP is quarantined, right?" "It is now," Barnard said, looking down. "Cases got out?" Hallie couldn't believe it. "Two to FOB Salerno. Two more to CENMEDFAC in Kabul." She hesitated to ask, but had to: "Stateside?" He nodded. "Where?" "Reed got one, Bethesda another, and four to the big burn center in Georgia." "And they all had to come through Landstuhl in Germany, right?" "Yes." "And they arrived before anyone knew about this mutated ACE?" Hallie asked. "Correct." "My God, Don," she said, as the enormity of these developments swept over her. "This is horrific. You've got thousands of sick and wounded soldiers in facilities all over the country. They might have survived combat only to be killed in our own hospitals. How many inpatients are there now?" "As of six p.m. yesterday, 217,452," he told her."The other ACE was more contagious than smallpox. Do the math." She did. "Exponential growth. A million in two weeks, unless countered." The ramifications spun out in her brain."And not just hospitals. Military bases here and abroad. Naval vessels. The Pentagon. Washington, D.C.The entire armed forces could be decimated." "Yes." "Do we have any reason to believe it can't jump to the general population?" "None whatsoever." Neither spoke for several moments. Then Barnard said, in a tone Hallie had never heard him use " 'Potentially the worst threat since Pearl Harbor.' Those are not my words. They're President O'Neil's." She thought for a moment. "Can we synthesize replicant?" Barnard shook his head. "Tried. And tried. Can't get the mitochondrial disseminations right. It could be months. Or never." "While those hospitals become..." "Death camps," he said. Hallie took a deep breath, sat back, rubbed her eyes. She hadn't slept for eighteen hours now. She needed a hot meal, shower, sleep. But others were in much worse shape. Sleep could wait. "We have to go back to Cueva de Luz," she said. "There's nothing else." "You cannot imagine how much I was hoping to hear you say that." Barnard looked, and sounded,if not hopeful, at least less devastated. She had said it, but not without dread. Cueva de Luz was a true supercave, the deepest on earth, a serpentine labyriinth miles long, miles deep, filled with bizarre and exotic dangers and located beneath the remote jungles of central Mexico. She had gone there once before, two years ago, part of an expedition searching for undiscovered, extreme life forms from which new antibiotics might be derived. The expedition had found such a life form, but it had also become an odyssey of horrors. "It won't be as easy as last time," Barnard said. "Easy! Don, I didn't think any of us were going to make it out." "Bad choice of words on my part. But there are other complications now." "Such as?" He glanced at his watch. "I can fill you in later. Now--" "Don, we'll need a team. It will take at least a week. Not to mention all the equipment, supplies, and--" He smiled for the first time since they had met. "Already done!" "What? There's a team? Who? Where? When do we meet them?" "Right now. They're all downstairs. You were the last to arrive." |
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