The
Virus
I am E?. The first person I infected was Britni
Rangold, a mother on a family vacation in Egypt. I attacked her central nervous system and
produced fever, nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, cough, hematomas, and bleeding from
her mucous membranes. Before she died,
Britni Rangold passed me onto 100 other individuals. Those 100 individuals each passed me on to
100 more. My time had come.
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In the 1300’s, The Black Death
wiped out 100 million people, and killed between 30-60 percent of the population
in Europe. It took 150 years for
Europe’s population to recover.
In 1918,
The Spanish Flu, H1N1, killed 75 million people, almost six percent of the
global population.
Noted
molecular biologist and Nobel Laureate Joshua Lederberg, once said, “The single
biggest threat to man’s continued dominance on the planet is a virus.” He was right.
---
No one
knows where it started. Africa is the
likeliest suspect I suppose. That’s
where Ebola outbreaks first occurred in the 20th century. The deadliest outbreak, Zaire, 1976, had a
case fatality rate of 90%. This virus
has a case fatality rate of 99%.
It isn’t Ebola though. It’s something else. When the virus first occurred, we took blood
and tissue samples from the first cases we found, and tested them for all five
known strains. None were a match. It presented exactly like Ebola, influenza
like symptoms, nausea, abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, cough, hematomas,
bleeding from mucous membranes. Whatever
it is, it is the deadliest virus we’ve ever encountered as a species.
The basic reproduction number,
or Rnought, is the number of cases one case generates as an average over an
infected period. Measles had the highest
Rnought in recorded history, where one person with Measles passed the disease
on to as many as eighteen other people.
The Rnought for E? is 100. It has
gone airborne. We don’t have long.
---
I am Dr. Heather Kline. After Yale, I went to Harvard Medical
School. I did my residency at Johns
Hopkins, before being offered a position as an Emergency room attending
physician at Lenox Hill Hospital.
After four years at Lenox Hill, I was offered a new position created by
the city of New York in response to 9/11.
I am now the Chief Medical Emergency Responder.
Anytime a mysterious case shows up at any of
the New York City hospitals, I am sent in to investigate. I can be at any hospital in the city in less
than twenty minutes. I have seven
different cars at my disposal, a full time bodyguard, a police escort when I
need it, and use of an NYPD helicopter.
It was April 10th,
2019. I was at home with Roscoe, my
three year old Beagle. My cell phone
went off. It was the Chief of Medicine
at Mount Sinai hospital, a man I had never met, Dr. Steve Simkins. He was yelling inaudibly.
“Dr. Simkins, calm down, what
is the situation?”
“The situation is critical Dr.
Kline. In my forty years of practicing
medicine, I’ve never seen anything like this.
We are doomed.”
“I need to know exactly what
you do. Give me as much information as
you can, and be as specific as possible.
I will be recording this conversation.
It may be useful later.” As Dr.
Simkins began to speak, I hit the panic button that I wore around my neck that
immediately alerted my bodyguard, George Hartman, that we needed to move. George was in my apartment in less than
thirty seconds. I jotted a quick note to
call for the helicopter and to ready my team.
“Patient zero presented with a
104° fever. Patient was unresponsive to
painful stimuli. Patient had no pupil
response. Patient had no gag reflex upon
evaluation. Patient had no patellar
reflex upon evaluation. Patient’s
husband reported 36 hours of vomiting and diarrhea. During evaluation, patient began hemorrhaging
blood from ears and eyes. Shortly
thereafter, blood began to appear at the nose, the fingernails, and the
toenails. Ambulatory services were
called to their house this morning because patient had had what appeared to be
a fainting spell. At the present time,
the patient, the patient’s husband, their two children, the two EMTs, and the
nurse that evaluated her, all appear to have contracted the virus. They are all infected Dr. Kline.”
“Dr. Simkins, I am on my way
now, my team will meet me there. I need
you to quarantine all of the infected in a communicable disease ward. We’re lucky, only your hospital and Lenox
Hill have a quarantine room capable of handling a level 4. Contact the CDC and request immediate
support. Tell them I am on my way, they
will want to speak to both of us when they arrive. Their best response time to NYC has been six
hours, so until then it’ll just be you and me Dr. This is Kline; over and out.”
I followed George to street level, where four
police cruisers had blocked off traffic in both directions for a square landing
area 30 X 30. George and I looked toward
the sky as the helicopter approached for landing. It touched down and George, myself, and three
SWAT team officers boarded. We took off
and headed in towards Mt. Sinai.
---
When I hit New York
City, I knew that my day had come. The
day of E?. After being loose in the city
for three days, I had infected 99.9% of the population. After day five, I had killed over 65% of the
population. I was winning. There was nothing they could do to stop
me. Nothing.
