patient. Be as calm as possible. I’ve trusted you with this information because I think you can handle it, and because I need your help. We can’t risk starting a mass panic. Our hope now is that we develop a way to neutralize the virus and contain it inside the Capitol. All our energy and focus must be directed toward those efforts. And most importantly, I need you to support me and my decisions one hundred percent.” Allaire turned to architect Jordan Lamar. “All hell is about to break loose, Jordan. This building is going to be our home for a while. I’m counting on you to make it as comfortable for everyone as possible. Even though it’s the middle of winter, I’m worried that with seven hundred of us, the rooms are going to warm up fast from body heat, so we might need to boost the air-conditioning levels.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“Gary, I need you to help me make two calls.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“First get me Paul Rappaport in Minnesota.”
“No problem. And the other?”
“I need the warden at the supermaximum federal penitentiary in Florence, Colorado.”
CHAPTER 10
DAY 2
12:15 A.M. (CST)
The guard’s riot stick, slamming against his cell door, intruded into Griffin Rhodes’s nightmare, but failed to drive it completely away.
The recurring dream was especially vivid this time, intense sounds and colors … and pain, like daggers thrusting through his eyes.
The dreadful ache was in his abdomen, too—a powerful cramping as if his intestines were strangulating. Griff felt his bowels let go, and knew the gush beneath him was blood.
Marburg virus! I … have … Marburg virus. Let me die! Please just let me die.
He tried to cry out the words, but there was no sound—only the terrible cramping.
Griff pounded impotently on the wall by his head.
“Dr. Rhodes.… Can you hear me?… Dr. Rhodes?”
The voice in the dream was a woman’s—a Kenyan physician named Marielle—Dr. Marielle. She had been incredibly kind to him.
How long had it been? How many days? How many weeks?
More of the slamming against the steel cell door. It was one of the guards’ favorite ways of tormenting him.
He was standing in front of his bathroom mirror now, supporting himself on the edge of his rusted sink, staring at the expanding bruises on his face and at his eyes. It was Marburg. His horribly bloodred sclerae told him so. He had feared becoming infected from the day his fascination with deadly viruses began. Now, it was happening. Marburg—most likely the Ebola variant. Hemorrhagic fever. Sweats. Unimaginable muscle aches. Blood spewing from the nose and GI tract. Blood in the tendons and the skin. Blood on the brain.
Eighty percent death rate.
Blood.
For years he had been fearing this encounter, waiting for this attack, or something like it. For years he had anticipated the moment when his precautions would not be enough, when living on the edge would prove disastrous—when he would go from being the hunter to being the victim.
Finally, because of a stupid miscalculation outside of a jungle cave not far from Kisimu on the eastern rim of Lake Victoria, he was going to die, and die viciously. The best he could hope for before he was gone was to have the cave sealed, and to have Level 4 precautions instituted at all the surrounding hospitals … provided he survived long enough to do so.
The devastating cramps intensified. Now he was on his hands and knees in a field. Blood was pouring in two steady streams from his nostrils, falling to the parched ground in thick, angry drops. In the distance he could see the outline of his lab, a sprawling, cinder-block monolith, cutting a broad, rectangular chunk from the azure African sky.
Overhead, airplane-sized vultures circled. One of them glided to the ground, landing awkwardly and waddling across toward him, intent on pecking at his flesh.
Not yet, dammit! Not yet!
Once again, his eyes began to throb. Griff had always wondered what Ebola
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“Gary, I need you to help me make two calls.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“First get me Paul Rappaport in Minnesota.”
“No problem. And the other?”
“I need the warden at the supermaximum federal penitentiary in Florence, Colorado.”
CHAPTER 10
DAY 2
12:15 A.M. (CST)
The guard’s riot stick, slamming against his cell door, intruded into Griffin Rhodes’s nightmare, but failed to drive it completely away.
The recurring dream was especially vivid this time, intense sounds and colors … and pain, like daggers thrusting through his eyes.
The dreadful ache was in his abdomen, too—a powerful cramping as if his intestines were strangulating. Griff felt his bowels let go, and knew the gush beneath him was blood.
Marburg virus! I … have … Marburg virus. Let me die! Please just let me die.
He tried to cry out the words, but there was no sound—only the terrible cramping.
Griff pounded impotently on the wall by his head.
“Dr. Rhodes.… Can you hear me?… Dr. Rhodes?”
The voice in the dream was a woman’s—a Kenyan physician named Marielle—Dr. Marielle. She had been incredibly kind to him.
How long had it been? How many days? How many weeks?
More of the slamming against the steel cell door. It was one of the guards’ favorite ways of tormenting him.
He was standing in front of his bathroom mirror now, supporting himself on the edge of his rusted sink, staring at the expanding bruises on his face and at his eyes. It was Marburg. His horribly bloodred sclerae told him so. He had feared becoming infected from the day his fascination with deadly viruses began. Now, it was happening. Marburg—most likely the Ebola variant. Hemorrhagic fever. Sweats. Unimaginable muscle aches. Blood spewing from the nose and GI tract. Blood in the tendons and the skin. Blood on the brain.
Eighty percent death rate.
Blood.
For years he had been fearing this encounter, waiting for this attack, or something like it. For years he had anticipated the moment when his precautions would not be enough, when living on the edge would prove disastrous—when he would go from being the hunter to being the victim.
Finally, because of a stupid miscalculation outside of a jungle cave not far from Kisimu on the eastern rim of Lake Victoria, he was going to die, and die viciously. The best he could hope for before he was gone was to have the cave sealed, and to have Level 4 precautions instituted at all the surrounding hospitals … provided he survived long enough to do so.
The devastating cramps intensified. Now he was on his hands and knees in a field. Blood was pouring in two steady streams from his nostrils, falling to the parched ground in thick, angry drops. In the distance he could see the outline of his lab, a sprawling, cinder-block monolith, cutting a broad, rectangular chunk from the azure African sky.
Overhead, airplane-sized vultures circled. One of them glided to the ground, landing awkwardly and waddling across toward him, intent on pecking at his flesh.
Not yet, dammit! Not yet!
Once again, his eyes began to throb. Griff had always wondered what Ebola
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