Terrified, Marissa stayed where she was. There was always the faint chance that they were CDC scientists checking on some ongoing experiment. That hope faded quickly when she realized they were coming directly toward her. It was at that point she noticed that the smaller individual was holding a syringe. Her eyes flicked to his companion, who lumbered forward, his elbow fixed at an odd angle, stirring an unpleasant memory.
Marissa tried to see their faces, but the glare off the face plates made it impossible.
“Blumenthal?” asked the smaller of the two in a harsh, masculine voice. He reached out and rudely angled Marissa’s mask against the light. Apparently he recognized her, because he nodded to his companion, who reached for the zipper on her suit.
“No!” screamed Marissa, realizing these men were not security. They were about to attack her just as she’d been attacked in her house. Desperately, she snatched the bicycle lock from the freezer and threw it. The confusion gave Marissa just enough time to detach her air hose and run toward the animal area.
The larger man was after her in less than a second, but as he was about to grab her, he was pulled up short by his air hose, like a dog on a leash.
Marissa moved as quickly as she could into the dark corridors between the stacked animal cages, hearing the frightened chatter of monkeys, rats, chickens and God knew what else. Trapped within the confines of the lab, she was desperate. Hoping to create a diversion, she began opening the monkey cages. The animals who weren’t too sick to move, immediately fled. Soon, her breathing became labored.
Finding an air manifold, which was not easy in the darkness, Marissa plugged in, welcoming the rush of cool, dry air. It was obvious the larger man was unaccustomed to being in the lab, but she didn’t really see that it would give her much of an advantage. She moved down the line of cages to where she could see into the main area of the room. Silhouetted against the light, he was moving toward her. She had no idea if he could see her or not, but she stayed still, mentally urging the man down a different aisle. But he was unswerving. He was walking right at her. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.
Reaching up, she detached her air hose and tried to move around the far end of the row of cages. Before she could, the man caught her left arm.
Marissa looked up at her assailant. All she could see was the slight gleam of his face plate. The strength of his grip made resistance seem useless, but over his shoulder she glimpsed a red handle marked Emergency Use Only.
In desperation, Marissa reached up with her free hand and pulled the lever down. Instantly an alarm sounded, and a sudden shower of
phenolic disinfectant drenched the whole lab, sending up clouds of mist and reducing the visibility to zero. Shocked, the man released Marissa’s arm. She dropped to the floor. Discovering that she could slither beneath the row of cages, she crawled away from the man, hoping she was headed back toward the main lab. She got to her feet, moving forward by feel. The disinfectant shower was apparently going to continue until someone replaced the lever. Her breathing was becoming painfully labored. She needed fresh air.
Something jumped in front of her, and she nearly screamed. But it was only one of the monkeys, tortured by the lethal atmosphere. The animal held onto her for a minute, then slid off her plastic-covered shoulder and disappeared.
Gasping, Marissa reached up and ran her hand along the pipes. Touching an air manifold, she connected her line.
Over the sound of the alarm, Marissa heard a commotion in the next aisle, then muffled shouts. She guessed that her pursuer could not find a manifold.
Gambling that the second man would go to the aid of his accomplice, Marissa detached her own air hose and moved toward the light, her arms stretched out in front of her like a blind man. Soon the illumination was uniform and she guessed she had reached the main part of the lab. Moving toward the wall, she banged into the freezer and remembered seeing a manifold just above it. She hooked up for several quick breaths. Then she felt her way to the door. The second she found it, she released the seal and pulled it open. A minute later she was standing in the disinfecting room.
Having already been drenched with phenolic disinfectant, she didn’t wait through the usual shower. In the next room, she struggled out of her plastic suit, then ran into the room beyond, where she tipped the lockers holding the scrub clothes over against the pressure door. She didn’t think it would stop the door from being opened, but it might slow her pursuers down.
Racing into her street clothes, she flicked all the circuit breakers, throwing even the dressing rooms into darkness and turning off the ventilation system.
Once outside the maximum containment lab, Marissa ran the length of the virology building, across the catwalk, and to the stairs to the main floor, which she bounded down two at a time. Taking a deep breath, she tried to look relaxed as she went through the front lobby. The security guard was sitting at his desk to the left. He was on the phone, explaining to someone that a biological alarm had gone off, not a security door alarm.
Even though she doubted her pursuers would have enlisted security’s help after having tried to kill her, she’d trembled violently while signing out. She heard the guard hang up after he explained to the person he was talking to that the operators were busy searching for the head of the virology department.
“Hey!” yelled the guard, as Marissa started for the door. Her heart leapt into her mouth. For a moment, she thought about fleeing; she was only six feet from the front door. Then she heard the guard say, “You forgot to put the time.”
Marissa marched back and dutifully filled in the blank. A second later she was outside, running to her car.
She was halfway to Ralph’s before she was able to stop shaking and think about her terrible discovery. The missing ball of frozen Ebola couldn’t have been a coincidence. It was the same strain as each of the recent outbreaks across the country. Someone was using the virus, and whether intentionally or by accident, the deadly disease was infecting doctors and hospitals in disparate areas at disparate times.
That the missing sample from vial E39 was the mysterious reservoir for the Ebola outbreaks in the United States was the only explanation that answered the questions posed by the apparently long incubation periods and the fact that, though the virus tended to mutate, all of the outbreaks involved the same strain. Worse yet, someone did not want that information released. That was why she’d been taken off the Ebola team and why she had just been nearly killed. The realization that frightened her most was that only someone with maximum containment lab access-presumably someone on the CDC staff-could have found her there. She cursed herself for not having had the presence of mind to look in the log book as she signed out to see who’d signed in.
She had already turned down Ralph’s street, anxious to tell him her fears, when she realized that it wasn’t fair to involve him. She’d already taken advantage of Tad’s friendship, and by the next day, when he saw her name on the log, she would be a total pariah. Her one hope was that her two assailants would not report her presence in the lab, since they would then be implicated in the attempt on her life. Even so, she couldn’t count on their not devising a plausible lie about what had gone on. It would be their word against hers, and by tomorrow, her word wouldn’t mean much at the CDC. Of that she was sure. For all she knew the Atlanta police might be looking for her by morning.