Free Plague by Victor Methos Page B

telling you, your job puts mine to shame.”
    “It’s rewarding work. But it’s hard to have time for everything that you want. I travel so much I sometimes feel like a stranger in my home town.”
    “That’s not necessarily a bad thing if your home town sucks.” He sat next to her on a chair, removing an old issue of Sports Illustrated that was open on the cushion. “So what does somebody need to do to be on that expedition to South America?”
    “You wouldn’t want to go, trust me.”
    “Why?”
    “It’s government travel. That means charters and the cheapest lodging and food available. They’re rarely fun.”
    “Well if I wanted to, what would I have to do?”
    She stood up. “You’d have to work for the CDC. You ready?”
    “Um hm.”
    They walked down the corridor together, Duncan asking her about how she began with the CDC and why she remained there when she was clearly qualified to work anywhere in the world she wished. They left through the back entrance and came to the second building , which was crowded with military vehicles, police cruisers , and news vans.
    “Man, must be a slow news day,” Duncan said.
    “You don’t think this is deserving of attention?”
    “You kidding me? Do you have, well, yeah you do, but do you think the general population has any idea how many deadly epidemics are just at their doorstep? Every day in Africa, somewhere, there’s an Ebola outbreak. It infects one or two people, spreads to a few dozen or one or two hundred and then disappears. Some people are in the same room with an Ebola infected patient and they contract the disease and others get blood coughed into their mouth s and don’t get it. That’s what creeps me out about it. It seems like the viruses almost choose who they want to infect and who they don’t.”
    “ They can’t choose anything,” Sam said.
    They worked their way through the cords from the cameras and sound mics that coiled on the ground like thin, black snakes. They showed identification to the MPs at the entrance and went inside.
    Everyone seemed to be going in one direction down a hallway so they followed. This building was much different than the hospital proper. The floors were carpeted and clean and there were no fingerprint marks on the glass doors or the walls from children. Samantha guessed this was probably an administration building.
    They finally came to a small auditorium and took seats in the back, Duncan sitting next her. Samantha took out her phone and began reviewing notes of the three patients that had been admitted during the night. Two women and a fifteen-year-old boy. They were all displaying fever s , rash es , vomiting , and diarrhea. The boy had developed what had become the telltale sign of the illness: a spreading, smooth black surface just underneath the skin.
    “I guess you lost your seat,” Duncan said.
    At the table set up at the front of the room sat a man Samantha recognized from long nights in cramped laboratories. In front of him, a nameplate with her name had been pushed to the side and replaced with one that said, DR. PUSHKIN .
    The reporters filed in and took their places as Wilson, Pushkin, the director of the hospital , and a man in a military uniform with three stars pinned to his chest took their places at the long table before the cameras.
    Wilson took out two pills in a cellophane wrapper and popped them before taking a sip of water . Samantha knew them to be beta- blockers to calm his nerves and remove any performance anxiety.
    A man in a suit with a nametag came up to Wilson and made a few adjustments to the papers in front of him. Samantha heard him say, “Ready when you are” and the reporters took out iPads and notebooks.
    “Ladies and gentlemen,” Wilson began, “I don’t need to explain to you exactly what we’re facing. However you did it, many of you knew about this before many of us sitting up here did. It’s extremely important that we not cause a panic. When people panic,