Robin Cook - Outbreak

They attached their air hoses for a moment. Then they moved through a final door into the lab itself. Marissa followed close behind Tad, moving her air hose and connecting it where he did.

Marissa was confronted by a large rectangular room with a central island of lab benches surmounted by protective exhaust hoods. The walls were lined with all sorts of equipment—centrifuges, incubators, various microscopes, computer terminals, and a host of things Marissa did not recognize. To the left there was also a bolted insulated door.

Tad took Marissa directly to one of the incubators and opened up the glass doors. The tissue culture tubes were fitted into a slowly revolving tray. Tad lifted out one and handed it to Marissa. “Here’s your Ebola,” he said.

In addition to the small amount of fluid the tube contained, it was coated (on one side) with a thin film—a layer of living cells infected with the virus. Inside the cells, the virus was forcing its own replication. As innocent as the contents looked, Marissa understood that there was probably enough infectious virus to kill everyone in Atlanta, perhaps the United States. Marissa shuddered, gripping the glass tube more tightly.

Taking the tube, Tad walked over to one of the microscopes. He positioned the airtight specimen, adjusted the focus, then stepped back so Marissa could look.

“See those darkened clumps in the cytoplasm?” he asked.

Marissa nodded. Even through the plastic face mask, it was easy to see the inclusion bodies Tad described, as well as the irregular cell nuclei.

“That’s the first sign of infestation,” said Tad. “I just planted these cultures. That virus is unbelievably potent.”

After Marissa straightened up from the microscope, Tad returned the tube to the incubator. Then he began to explain his complicated research, pointing out some of the sophisticated equipment he was using and detailing his various experiments. Marissa had trouble concentrating. She hadn’t come to the lab that night to discuss Tad’s work, but she couldn’t tell him that.

Finally he led her down a passageway to a maze of animal cages that reached almost to the ceiling. There were monkeys, rabbits, guinea pigs, rats and mice. Marissa could see hundreds of eyes staring at her: some listless, some with fevered hatred. In a far section of the room, Tad pulled out a tray of what he called Swiss ice mice. He was going to show them to Marissa, but he stopped. “My word!” he said. “I just inoculated these guys this afternoon, and most have already died.” He looked at Marissa. “Your Ebola is really deadly—as bad as the Zaire ’76 strain.”

Marissa reluctantly glanced in at the dead mice. “Is there some way to compare the various strains?”

“Absolutely,” said Tad, removing the dead mice. They went back to the main lab where Tad searched for a tray for the tiny corpses. He spoke while he moved, responding to Marissa’s question. She found it hard to understand him when he wasn’t standing directly in front of her. The plastic suit gave his voice a hollow quality, like Darth Vader’s. “Now that I’ve started to characterize your Ebola,” he said, “it will be easy to compare it with the previous strains. In fact I’ve begun with these mice, but the results will have to wait for a statistical evaluation.”

Once he had the mice arranged on a dissecting tray, Tad stopped in front of the bolted insulated door. “I don’t think you want to come in here.” Without waiting for a response, he opened the door and went inside with the dead mice. A mist drifted out as the door swung back against his air hose.

Marissa eyed the small opening, steeling herself to follow, but before she could act, Tad reappeared, hastily shutting the door behind him. “You know, I’m also planning to compare the structural polypeptides and viral RNA of your virus against the previous Ebola strains,” he said.

“That’s enough!” laughed Marissa. “You’re making me feel dumb. I’ve got to get back to my virology textbook before making sense of all this. Why don’t we call it a night and get that drink you promised me?”

“You’re on,” said Tad eagerly.

There was one surprise on the way out. When they had returned to the room with chalky walls, they were drenched by a shower of phenolic disinfectant. Looking at Marissa’s shocked face, Tad grinned. “Now you know what a toilet bowl feels like.”

When they were changing into their street clothes, Marissa asked what was in the room where he’d taken the dead mice.

“Just a large freezer,” he said, waving off the question.

Over the next four days, Marissa readjusted to life in Atlanta, enjoying her home and her dog. On the day after her return, she’d tackled all the difficult jobs, like cleaning out the rotten vegetables from the refrigerator and catching up on her overdue bills. At work, she threw herself into the study of viral hemorrhagic fever, Ebola in particular. Making use of the CDC library, she obtained detailed material about the previous outbreaks of Ebola: Zaire ’76, Sudan ’76, Zaire ’77 and Sudan ’79. During each outbreak, the virus appeared out of nowhere and then disappeared. A great deal of effort was expended trying to determine what organism served as the reservoir for the virus. Over two hundred separate species of animals and insects were studied as potential hosts. All were negative. The only positive finding was some antibodies in an occasional domestic guinea pig.

Marissa found the description of the first Zairean outbreak particularly interesting. Transmission of the illness had been linked to a health-care facility called the Yambuku Mission Hospital. She wondered what possible points of similarity existed between the Yambuku Mission and the Richter Clinic, or for that matter, between Yambuku and Los Angeles. There couldn’t be very many.

She was sitting at a back table in the library, reading again from Fields’ Virology. She was studying up on tissue cultures as an aid to further practical work in the main virology lab. Tad had been helpful in setting her up with some relatively harmless viruses so that she could familiarize herself with the latest virology equipment.

Marissa checked her watch. It was a little after two. At three-fifteen she had an appointment with Dr. Dubchek. The day before, she’d given his secretary a formal request for permission to use the maximum containment lab, outlining the experimental work she wanted to do on the communicability of the Ebola virus. Marissa was not particularly sanguine about Dubchek’s response. He’d all but ignored her since her return from Los Angeles.

A shadow fell across her page, and Marissa automatically glanced up. “Well! Well! She is still alive!” said a familiar voice.

“Ralph,” whispered Marissa, shocked both by his unexpected presence in the CDC library and the loudness of his voice. A number of heads turned toward them.

“There were rumors she was alive but I had to see for myself,” continued Ralph, oblivious of Mrs. Campbell’s glare.

Marissa motioned for Ralph to be silent, then took his hand and led him into the hallway where they could talk. She felt a surge of affection as she looked up at his welcoming smile.

“It’s good to see you,” said Marissa, giving him a hug. She felt a twinge of guilt for not having contacted him since returning to Atlanta. They’d talked on the phone about once a week during her stay in L.A.

As if reading her mind, Ralph said, “Why haven’t you called me? Dubchek told me you’ve been back for four days.”

“I was going to call tonight,” she said lamely, upset that Ralph was getting information about her from Dubchek.

They went down to the CDC cafeteria for coffee. At that time of the afternoon the room was almost deserted, and they sat by the window overlooking the courtyard. Ralph said he was en route between the hospital and his office and that he had wanted to catch her before the evening. “How about dinner?” he asked, leaning forward and putting a hand on Marissa’s. “I’m dying to hear the details of your triumph over Ebola in L.A.”