Robin Cook - Contagion

I would like to thank all my friends and colleagues who are always graciously willing to field questions and offer helpful advice. Those whom I’d particularly like to acknowledge for Contagion are:

DR. CHARLES WETLI, Forensic Pathologist and Medical Examiner

DR. JACKI LEE, Forensic Pathologist and Medical Examiner

DR. MARK NEUMAN, Virologist and Virology Laboratory Director

DR. CHUCK KARPAS, Pathologist and Laboratory Supreme Commander

JOE COX, Esquire, Lawyer and Reader

FLASH WILEY, Esquire, Lawyer, Fellow Basketball Player, and Rap Consultant

JEAN REEDS, Social Worker, Critic, and Fabulous Sounding Board

June 12, 1991, dawned a near-perfect, late-spring day as the sun’s rays touched the eastern shores of the North American continent. Most of the United States, Canada, and Mexico expected clear, sunny skies. The only meteorological blips were a band of potential thunderstorms that was expected to extend from the plains into the Tennessee Valley and some showers that were forecasted to move in from the Bering Strait over the Seward Peninsula in Alaska.

In almost every way this June twelfth was like every other June twelfth, with one curious phenomenon. Three incidents occurred that were totally unrelated, yet were to cause a tragic intersection of the lives of three of the people involved.

11:36 A.M.

DEADHORSE, ALASKA

“Hey! Dick! Over here,” shouted Ron Halverton. He waved frantically to get his former roommate’s attention. He didn’t dare leave his Jeep in the brief chaos at the tiny airport. The morning 737 from Anchorage had just landed and the security people were strict about unattended vehicles in the loading area. Buses and vans were waiting for the tourists and the returning oil company personnel.

Hearing his name and recognizing Ron, Dick waved back and then began threading his way through the milling crowd.

Ron watched Dick as he approached. Ron hadn’t seen him since they’d graduated from college the year before, but Dick appeared just as he always did: the picture of normality with his Ralph Lauren shirt and windbreaker jacket, Guess jeans, and a small knapsack slung over his shoulder. Yet Ron knew the real Dick: the ambitious, aspiring microbiologist who would think nothing of flying all the way from Atlanta to Alaska with the hope of finding a new microbe. Here was a guy who loved bacteria and viruses. He collected the stuff the way other people collected baseball cards. Ron smiled and shook his head as he recalled that Dick had even had petri dishes of microbes in their shared refrigerator at the University of Colorado.

When Ron had met Dick during their freshman year, it had taken a bit of time to get used to him. Although he was an indubitably faithful friend, Dick had some peculiar and unpredictable quirks. On the one hand he was a fierce competitor in intramural sports and surely the guy you wanted with you if you mistakenly wandered into the wrong part of town, yet on the other hand he’d been unable to sacrifice a frog in first-year biology lab.

Ron found himself chuckling as he remembered another surprising and embarrassing moment involving Dick. It was during their sophomore year when a whole group had piled into a car for a weekend ski trip. Dick was driving and accidentally ran over a rabbit. His response had been to break down in tears. No one had known what to say. As a result some people began to talk behind Dick’s back, especially when it became common knowledge that he would pick up cockroaches at the fraternity house and deposit them outside instead of squishing them and flushing them down the toilet as everybody else did.

As Dick came alongside the Jeep, he tossed his bag into the backseat before grasping Ron’s outstretched hand.

They greeted each other enthusiastically.

“I can’t believe this,” Ron said. “I mean, you’re here! In the Arctic.”

“Hey, I wouldn’t have missed this for the world,” Dick said. “I’m really psyched. How far is the Eskimo site from here?”

Ron looked nervously over his shoulder. He recognized several of the security people. Turning back to Dick, he lowered his voice. “Cool it,” he murmured. “I told you people are really sensitive about this.”

“Oh, come on,” Dick scoffed. “You can’t be serious.”

“I’m dead serious,” Ron said. “I could get fired for leaking this to you. No fooling around. I mean, we got to do this hush-hush or we don’t do it at all. You’re to tell no one, ever! You promised!”

“All right, all right,” Dick said with a short, appeasing laugh. “You’re right. I promised. I just didn’t think it was such a big deal.”

“It’s a very big deal,” Ron said firmly. He was beginning to think he’d made a mistake inviting Dick to visit, despite how much fun it was to see him.

“You’re the boss,” Dick said. He gave his friend a jab on the shoulder. “My lips are sealed forever. Now chill out and relax.” He swung himself into the Jeep. “But let’s just buzz out there straightaway and check out this discovery.”

“You don’t want to see where I live first?” Ron asked.

“I have a feeling I’ll be seeing that more than I care to,” he said with a laugh.

“I suppose it’s not a bad time while everybody is preoccupied with the Anchorage flight and screwing around with the tourists.” He reached forward and started the engine.

They drove out of the airport and headed northeast on the only road. It was gravel. To talk they had to shout over the sound of the engine.

“It’s about eight miles to Prudhoe Bay,” Ron said, “but we’ll be turning off to the west in another mile or so. Remember, if anybody stops us, I’m just taking you to the new oilfield.”

Dick nodded. He couldn’t believe his friend was so uptight about this thing. Looking around at the flat, marshy monotonous tundra and the overcast gunmetal gray sky, he wondered if the place was getting to Ron. He guessed life was not easy on the alluvial plain of Alaska’s north slope. To lighten the mood he said: “Weather’s not bad. What’s the temperature?”

“You’re lucky,” Ron said. “There was some sun earlier, so it’s in the low fifties. This is as warm as it gets up here. Enjoy it while it lasts. It’ll probably flurry later today. It usually does. The perpetual joke is whether it’s the last snow of last winter or the first snow of next winter.”

Dick smiled and nodded but couldn’t help but think that if the people up there considered that funny, they were in sad shape.

A few minutes later Ron turned left onto a smaller, newer road, heading northwest.

“How did you happen to find this abandoned igloo?” Dick asked.

“It wasn’t an igloo,” Ron said. “It was a house made out of peat blocks reinforced with whalebone. Igloos were only made as temporary shelters, like when people went out hunting on the ice. The Inupiat Eskimos lived in peat huts.”

“I stand corrected,” Dick said. “So how’d you come across it?”

“Totally by accident,” Ron said. “We found it when we were bulldozing for this road. We broke through the entrance tunnel.”