knowledge. He spent years traveling across central Africa in search of the reservoirs of Ebola and Marburg viruses. He had virtually ransacked Africa looking for these life forms, but despite his searches he had never found them in their natural hiding places. No one knew where any of the filoviruses came from; no one knew where they lived in nature. The trail had petered out in the forests and savannas of central Africa. to find the hidden reservoir of Ebola was one of Johnson’s great ambitions.
No one around the Institute wanted to get involved with his Ebola project. Ebola, the slate wiper, did things to people that you did not want to think about. The organism was too frightening to handle, even for those who were comfortable and adept in space suits. They did not care to do research on Ebola because they did not Ebola to do research on them. They didn’t know what kind of host the virus lived in—whether it was a fly or a bat or a tick or a spider or a scorpion or some kind of reptile, or an amphibian, such as a grog or a newt. Or maybe it lived in leopards or elephants. And they didn’t know exactly how virus spread, how it jumped from host to host.
Gene Johnson had suffered recurrent nightmares about Ebola virus ever since he began to work with it. He would wake up in a cold sweat. His dreams went more or less the same way. He would be wearing his space unit while holding Ebola in his gloved hand, holding some kind of liquid tainted with Ebola. Suddenly the liquid would be running all over his glove, and then he would realize that his glove was full of pinholes, and the liquid was dribbling over his bare hand and running inside his space suit. He would come awake with a start, saying to himself, My God, there’s been an exposure. And then he would find himself in his bedroom, with his wife sleeping beside him.
In reality, Ebola had not yet made a decisive, irreversible breakthrough into the human race, but seemed close to doing that. It had been emerging in microbreaks here and there in Africa. The worry was that a microbreak would develop into an unstoppable tidal wave. If the virus killed nine of ten people it infected and there was no vaccine or cure for it, you could see the possibilities. The possibilities were global. Johnson liked to say to people that we don’t really know what Ebola has done in the past, and we don’t know what it might do in the future. Ebola was unpredictable. An airborne strain of Ebola could emerge and circle around the worked in about six weeks, like the flu, killing large numbers of people, or it might forever remain a secret feeder at the margins, taking down humans a few at a time.
Ebola is a rather simple virus—as simple as a firestorm. It kills humans which swift efficiency and with a devastating range of effects. Ebola is distantly related to measles, mumps, and rabies. It is also related to certain pneumonia viruses: to the parainfluenza virus, which causes colds in children, and to the respiratory syncytial virus, which can cause fatal pneumonia in a person who has AIDS. In its own evolution through unknown hosts and hidden pathways in the rain forest, Ebola seems to have developed the worst elements of all the above viruses. Like measles, it triggers a rash all over the body. Some of its effects resemble rabies—psychosis, madness. Other of its effects look eerily like a bad cold.
The Ebola virus particle contains only seven different proteins—seven large molecules. Three of these proteins are vaguely understood, and four of the proteins are completely unknown—their structure and their function is a mystery. Whatever these Ebola proteins do, they seem to target the immune system for special attack. In this they are like HIV, which also destroys the immune system, but unlike the onset of HIV, the attack of Ebola is explosive. As Ebola sweeps through you, you immune system fails, and you seem to lose your ability to respond to viral attack. Your body becomes a city under seize, with its gates thrown open and hostile armies pouring in, making camp in the public squares and setting everything on fire; and from the moment Ebola enters your blood stream, the ware is already lost; you are almost certainly doomed. You can’t fight off Ebola the way you fight off a cold. Ebola does in ten days what it takes AIDS ten years to accomplish.
It is not really known how Ebola is transmitted from person to person. Army researchers believed that Ebola virus traveled through direct contact with blood and bodily fluids (in the same way the AIDS virus travels). Ebola seemed to have other routes of travel as well. Many of the people in Africa who came down with Ebola had handled Ebola-infected cadavers. It seems that one of Ebola’s paths goes from the dead to the living, winding in trickles of uncoagulated blood and slimes that come out of the dead body. In Zaire during the 1976 outbreak, grieving relatives kissed and embraced the dead or prepared the body for burial, and then, three to fourteen days later, they broke with Ebola.
Gene Johnson’s Ebola experiment was simple. He would infect a few monkeys with the virus, and then he would treat them with drugs in the hope that they would get better. That way, he might discover a drug that would flight Ebola virus or possibly cure it.
Monkeys are nearly identical to human beings in a biological sense, which is why they are used in medical experiments. Humans and monkeys are both primates, and Ebola feeds on primates in same way that a predator consumes certain kinds of flesh. Ebola can’t tell the difference between a human being and a monkey. The virus jumps easily back and forth between them.
Nancy Jaax volunteered to work as the pathologist on Johnson’s Ebola project. It was Level 4 work, which she was qualified to do, because she didn’t need to be vaccinated. She was eager to prove herself and eager to continue working with lethal viruses. However, some people around the Institute were skeptical of her ability to work in a space suit in Level 4. She was a “married female”—she might panic. They claimed that her hands looked nervous or clumsy, not good for work with Level 4 hot agents.
People felt that she might cut herself or stick herself with a contaminated needle—or stick someone else. Her hands became a safety issue.
Her immediate superior was Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Johnson (he is not related to Gene Johnson, the civilian who was the head of the Ebola project). Tony Johnson is a soft-spoken man and a cool customer. Now he had to decide whether to allow her to go into Biosafety Level 4. Wanting to be sure he understood the situation, he sent word around the Institute:
Who knows Nancy Jaax? Who can comment on her strengths and weakness? Major Jerry Jaax, Nancy’s husband, showed up in Lieutenant Colonel Johnson’s office. Jerry was against the idea of his wife putting on a space suit. He argued strongly against it. He said that there had been “family discussions” about Nancy working with Ebola virus. “Family discussion” Jerry had said to Nancy, “You’re the only wife I’ve got.” He did not wear a biological space suit himself at work, and he did not want his wife to wear one either. His biggest concern was that she would be handling Ebola. He could not stand the idea that his wife, the woman he loved, the mother of their children, and would hold in her hands a monstrous life form that is lethal and incurable.
Lieutenant Colonel Tony Johnson listened to what Major Jerry Jaax had to say, and listened to what other people had t say, and then he felt he should speak with Nancy himself, and so he called her into his office. He could see that she was tense. He watched her hands as she talked. They looked fine to him, not clumsy, and not too quick, either. He decided that the rumors he had been hearing about her hands were unfounded. She said to him, “I don’t want any special favors.” Well, she was not going to get any special favors. “I’m going to put you in the Ebola program,” he said. He told her that he would allow her to put on a space suit and go int the Ebola area, and that he would accompany her on the first few trips, to teach her how to do it and to observe her hands at work. He would watch her like a hawk. He believed that she was ready for total immersion in a hot zone.
As he spoke, she broke down an cried in front of him—“had a few tears,” as he would later recall. They were tears of happiness. At that moment, to hold Ebola virus in her hands was what she wanted more than anything else in the world.
1300 Hours
Nancy spent the morning doing paperwork in her office. After lunch, she removed her diamond engagement ring and her wedding band and locked them in her desk drawer. She dropped by Tony Johnson’s office and asked him if he was ready to go in. They went downstairs and along a corridor to the Ebola suite. There was only one locker room leading into it. Tony Johnson insisted that Nancy Jaax go in first, to get changed. He would follow.
The room was small and contained a few lockers along one wall, some shelves, and a mirror over a sink. She undressed, removing all of her clothing, including her underwear, and put everything in her locker. She left the Band-Aid stuck to her hand. From a shelf, she took up a sterile surgical scrub suit—green pants and a green shirt, the clothing that a surgeon wears in an operating room—and she dragged on the pants and tied the drawstring at the waist, and snapped the shirt’s snaps. You were not allowed to wear anything under the scrub suit, no
