'So the itsy bitsy spider climbed up the spout again…'
A woman in a white lab coat tapped on one of the windows. 'Sammy!' she called out.
Samantha couldn't make out what the woman was saying, so she set down the autopsy instruments and shuffled to the window, awkward in her space suit. 'What!?'
The woman leaned forward and shouted something, but Samantha couldn't hear over the hum of the air blowers. She leaned forward until her hood was inches from the glass. 'What?' she mouthed.
The woman shook her head in exaggerated fashion. 'They voted no,' she yelled, enunciating each word for Samantha's benefit.
Samantha closed her eyes tightly. She tried to count to ten to quell her rising temper, a device her youngest had learned from his kindergarten teacher and in turn imparted to her, but by the time she reached four, her mind was rife with images of the fever that was sure to befall the pilot and flight attendant. The sweats, the shaking, dappled bruises taking shape under the surface of the skin. Because of legal concerns, the PHS and FDA were going to send them to their graves, wrapped in red tape.
Samantha turned to the lab tech. 'Take over,' she said. She banged on the glass. 'I'm scrubbing out.'
The uniformed and suited men and women sat around a large confer-ence table, sipping coffee and talking. A plate of Krispy Kremes sat untouched on a silver tray. Folders were stacked around the pitchers of water, and a single telephone sat at the end of the table, before an older woman in a gray Chanel reproduction. The others were just rising to leave when Samantha banged through the doors, a metal briefcase bal-anced on her hand like a cocktail tray.
She slammed the briefcase down on the table and opened it. Two syringes filled with liquid lay in the spongy bedding.
The older woman stood, her expression hardening. A rose blush col-ored her cheeks one shade short of absurd. 'Samantha, we knew you'd be difficult about this, but we can't be expected to approve a treatment of this magnitude for humans based on animal experiments alone. There are precedents, legal complications. Maybe next week, we'll be able to get the results back from the autopsy and run some experi-ments…' Her voice faded as Samantha unbuttoned and rolled up her shirt sleeve. 'What are you…'
Holding the first syringe vertically before her, Samantha smiled sweetly. 'Bolivian hemorrhagic fever,' she said. 'New strain.' She bit the tip protector off the needle and spit it onto the floor.
Two women fell back into their chairs. 'Jesus Christ,' one of the men cried, covering his nose and mouth with his tie.
Samantha deftly ran the needle into her arm, sinking the plunger.
'Goddamnit,' the older woman cried. 'Where's her senior officer?'
Two people crept around the table, backs pressed to the walls, and fled the room.
Samantha raised the second syringe. 'My antiserum,' she said. She shot it into her arm, just below the mark the last shot had left.
The older woman's lips were quivering with anger. 'Well, you've done it this time,' she said. 'This cowboy routine of yours is going to land you in a heap of trouble.'
'Yippee kay yay,' Samantha said.
The woman leaned over and hit a button on the phone. 'Get her in the slammer.'
The slammers, run at Biosafety Level Four, were in the medical section, just beyond the hot suites. Two- room units with locks only on the out-side, the slammers each had two beds. Crash doors led to small operating rooms; in the event of a medical emergency, doctors could enter the slammers in full space suits. The survivors of the Bolivia trip had been individually quarantined in three of the units since their arrival at Fort Detrick.
As the slammers' main function was to isolate and observe people who'd been exposed to hazardous agents, each featured an enormous window running the length of one wall. A cluster of technicians and virologists crowded around the Slammer Two window. Inside, Samantha sat on the bed, humming to herself.
One of the virologists, an overweight man with a bushy beard, clasped his hands and shook them in the air. 'All right, Sammy!'
She stood and bowed, and went to the far wall and pretended to run against it, like a hamster on a wheel. The crowd outside cracked up. Then, she grabbed a coffee mug from the counter and ran it across the length of the window, as if drawing it across prison bars. More howls. Finally, the crowd began to dissipate, but not before her colleagues called out their good-byes.
Samantha sat on the bed and lowered her head into her hands, thinking of the week before her. She'd been instrumental in developing a new test that could detect early BHF-specific antibody response in twenty-four hours-a test she'd soon take. If it showed that the antibodies were present in her blood, they'd have to clear the antiserum for use on the pilot and flight attendant. Even so, they'd need to hold Samantha for at least a week to be certain that the antibodies had cleared the virus from her body. She felt fine so far, but it was way too early to tell anything. Placing the palm of her hand across her forehead, she closed her eyes. The antiserum would work; she was convinced her methods were sound.
She glanced down at her watch and shot to her feet when she noticed the date. December 25. She had three children and a nanny waiting for her at home by a half-decorated tree, and she wouldn't be out of the slammer until New Year's. A sudden rush of guilt flooded through her. They hadn't had time to unwrap gifts this morning, and she'd promised she'd be home before dinner. How could she do this to her children?
Crossing to the telephone on the counter, she asked the operator to patch her through to home.
Kiera almost didn't hear the phone ringing over the blare of her stereo. She lay on her stomach sideways across her bed, flipping through Cosmo Girl, kicking her one leg lazily in the air behind her. Her skin was dark, betraying her Guatemalan heritage, and a chevron scar remained on her abdomen from the liver transplant she'd received as a five-year-old when she'd first entered the country nine years ago. Her walls were adorned with colorful posters: Timmy Mandalay sulking on a rocky shore; Daddy Trippilicious decked out in gangsta garb; the Ebola virus blown up to 10Kx magnification.
The song ended, and she heard the shrill ring of the phone. She stood, hopped over to it, and answered, having first to unearth it from beneath a mound of clothing. 'Yeah?' The expression on her face changed to one of weary irritation. She lowered the phone, pressing the mouthpiece to her shoulder.
'Mom's in the slammer again!' she shouted.
Chapter 14
The creature felt something moving within her; it was time. Turning her head, she scanned the dark forest for a suitably protected location. She rustled through the understory of the Scalesia forest, twigs whispering against the smooth hard shell of her cuticle. The ground dipped slightly, the blanket of trees following the contour of the slope.
Suddenly, the ground moaned and vibrated beneath her feet, but she did not rear up on her hind legs; she was accustomed to the sound. The lava tube that ran beneath the stretch of the forest was catching the wind and sucking it along its innards.
About 350 meters in length, four meters wide, and five meters high, the tube had been formed centuries ago when lava had spread quickly out of a volcano crater. The surface of the lava had cooled quickly and hardened, but the inner flow had continued to rush downhill. When the lava flow ceased, an empty tube had been left behind, ringed with a hardened crust. Additional lava flows over the years had buried the tube, except for the two ends, which broke through the forest floor like gaping mouths.
Her front legs hanging before her, the creature nosed her way through the ferns shielding the southern entrance of the lava tube. They fell back into place after she passed through, camouflaging the hole.
She all but filled the entrance, her antennae brushing the ceiling. Inside, the tube was cool and damp. Water dripped against the black lava floor, the sound amplified up and down the tunnel. A few thick Scalesia roots twisted into the cave at the entrance, running along its mouth. She moved forward, pulling her swollen abdomen to the base of the wall.
Though she was close to nine feet tall, the creature was not tremen-dously heavy; most of her height was in her long, spindly legs and neck. The significant length of her body made up most of her mass, but it too was light,
