In the suit room, he taped his socks to the scrubs. He laid a positive pressure suit on the steel table, attached it to the air supply, and inflated it to check for any leaks. Even a small puncture could be deadly.
Upon landing in the US, the CDC had held him at the airport while they tested him for the virus. The CDC and health agencies worldwide were now calling it “X1-Mandera,” as tests had confirmed that the flu and the hemorrhagic fever were in fact caused by the same virus, which mutated inside the body. Millen had breathed a sigh of relief when his results came back negative. He wasn’t about to take any chances of getting infected now.
When he was sure the suit was airtight, he disconnected the hose, taped his inner gloves to his scrubs and checked them for punctures, then slid into the suit and donned the helmet. He braced himself on the bar-height steel table while pulling on a pair of rubber boots.
The entrance to the lab reminded him of the entrance to a spaceship. A door with a keypad loomed. He punched in his code and watched the red light turn green. The door opened with a pop, and Millen shuffled in and made his way across the room, past several researchers hunched over computers and microscopes. He connected his suit to a hose hanging down, then activated the speaker.
“How’re you feeling today?”
Halima sat up on the bed, recognized Millen’s face through the helmet, and smiled. “Good.”
“Are they treating you okay?”
“Yes.” She pointed to a portable DVD player lying on the bed. On the table behind her was a stack of DVD box sets including seasons of Seinfeld, LOST, Alias, 24, and The Big Bang Theory. “They brought me some TV to watch. It’s incredible.”
The other villager, Tian, the young boy who didn’t speak English, was asleep on the bed beside Halima’s.
“How’s the food?” Millen asked.
“Fine.”
She glanced at the suited researchers behind Millen. “Are they close to finding a cure?”
He knew they had made little progress—and that the last few days had been pretty tough on the Kenyan teenager.
“They’re very optimistic,” he said. That was a bit of a stretch, but the truth seemed too harsh for what she was going through. “We appreciate what you’re doing very much, Halima.”
“I’m glad to do it.” She held up the small DVD player. “Wanna watch LOST? I’m on season two. They just got in the hatch.”
“Wish I could. My shift is about to start. I’ll come back after though, okay?”
Outside the lab, with his suit still on, Millen waded into the chemical shower that lasted three minutes. After doffing the suit, he showered his body, which was covered in sweat, and changed back into his clothes in the locker room.
Many of the offices in the building had been converted to bedrooms where staffers like Millen now lived. He wondered how long they’d be there. Everyone at CDC headquarters was stressed and sleep deprived, but also incredibly focused. They all knew that the next few days would determine the fate of the world. For those like Millen, who had seen firsthand what the X1-Mandera virus could do, there was an added sense of urgency.
Everyone working and living in the building had tested negative for the X1-Mandera virus. Some were CDC employees, but the vast majority had been assembled from the Department of Defense, Department of Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, and FEMA. There were a lot of new faces, and the place was chaos most of the time, but Millen was glad for the work. It kept his mind off Hannah—a little anyway. It was a losing battle though. He constantly came up with scenarios in which she was still alive. He imagined her escaping whoever had raided the village. Or that her captors had fallen sick, and now, being a physician, she was in charge; they needed her, couldn’t kill her. Above all else, Millen wished he could turn back the clock and take her with him that morning when he went to the cave. Or at least say a proper goodbye.
He pushed the thoughts out of his mind as he entered the Emergency Operations Center. He needed to be focused for his shift. He signed in and walked past the giant screen that displayed all the cordon zones across the US. Real-time stats displayed requests for supplies and personnel.
Not a single operator sat idle; a hundred conversations were going at once. They all began with, “BioShield Ops.”
A shift supervisor was rerouting a transfer truck full of medical supplies from the cordon in Durham, North Carolina to the one in Cary.
Riots had broken out in San Antonio; troops were being sent from Austin, and the CDC was routing additional medical staff with proper training.
Near Tulsa, a barge carrying oral rehydration salts had sunk.
In the conference room, the other shift supervisors were gathering for the mandatory meeting that took place an hour before their shift began. Millen braced himself for the updates; they were usually bad news. He sat down in one of the rolling leather chairs and waited.
Days ago, he’d watched Doctors Shaw and Shapiro attend a meeting in the same conference room. He had sat in the auditorium then, watching the people at the long conference table discuss decisions that would affect thousands, possibly millions, of lives. Now he was in the same position, literally. The weight of the responsibility was daunting, but there was nowhere he’d rather be.
The head of watch strode in and closed the door. His name was Phillip Stevens, and he was a senior epidemiologist at the CDC who had also been deployed to Kenya. Phil had led the contingent assigned to investigate the Mandera airport. His group had been evacuated after Millen’s team was attacked. He was tall, with short blond hair, and didn’t beat around the bush or mince words. Millen liked him.