attention: photographs of cars piled up atop one another on the 101 freeway, and people being pulled from the wreckage.
In the middle of it all was a green SUV.
STANTON STOOD WITH Davies in the morgue, deep in the basement of the hospital. The driver’s body lay on one metal table; beside them, on a second table, lay Volcy’s.
Davies made an incision from ear to ear on the driver’s skull, then draped the flap of skin and removed the skullcap to expose the brain.
“Ready,” he said.
Stanton stepped forward, cut the central cortex away from the cranial nerves, and disconnected it from the spinal cord. Reaching inside, he removed the brain from its skull. Hidden in the folds of this organ was his best hope for figuring out VFI. He placed the brain on a sterile table, trying to ignore the fact that it was still warm.
Stanton and Davies began to slice. During his gross exam of the thalamus, Stanton saw clusters of tiny holes; under the microscope he saw a wasteland of craters and deformed tissue. Textbook FFI. Only much, much more aggressive.
“Anything?” Davies asked.
“Give me a second.” Stanton rubbed his eyes.
“You look knackered,” Davies said.
“I have no idea what that means.”
“You look like shit. You need to sleep, Gabe.”
“We all do.”
Davies snickered. “I’ll sleep when I’m like these blokes.”
“Come on.”
“Too soon?”
Once they finished with the driver’s brain, they performed the same operation on Volcy’s distended body. When they had sections from both brains ready, Stanton put his eye to the microscope again, upping the background light. The craters in Volcy’s brain ran deeper and the cortex looked more deformed. He had definitely been infected first.
Stanton had suspected as much, but until now he hadn’t realized what he could do with the information. “Make images of all these sections,”he told Davies. “And I want you to find the MRIs we took of Volcy when he was still alive. Figure out how fast the disease was spreading in his brain, then model everything backward. If we can figure out the rate of progression, then we can estimate when they both got sick.”
Davies nodded. “A timeline.”
If they could determine when Volcy took ill, they might be able to figure out
where
he’d gotten sick. With luck, they could do the same for the driver. The driver was the key: Someone in this city knew him. Once the driver was identified, there’d be bank statements and credit-card receipts showing where he bought his groceries, where he ate. A paper trail leading straight to the source.
“Cavanagh’s on the line,” Davies said, holding out his cellphone.
Stanton peeled off his second layer of gloves. Into the phone he said one word: “Confirmed.”
Cavanagh took a deep breath. “You’re sure?”
“Same disease, different stages.”
“I’m getting on a plane right now. Tell me what you need to keep this under control.”
“An ID on the driver. We have two patients, and they were both John Does when they came in.” The Explorer was unregistered, and its driver, like Volcy, carried nothing to identify him. The worry was that this somehow wasn’t a coincidence. But what would that mean?
“The police are working on it,” Cavanagh said. “What else?”
“The public needs to know we found a second case. And they need to know it from us. Not from some blogger who makes half of it up.”
“If you’re asking for a press conference, the answer is no. Not yet. Everyone in the city will think they’re sick.”
“Then at least get the grocery stores to put a hold on dairy, and meat too, just to be safe. Get USDA to investigate all possible imports from Guatemala. And tell people they need to throw away the milk and all the rest in their refrigerators.”
“Not until we confirm the source of the disease.”
“If you want confirmation, get all of our agents here checking thepupil size of every patient in every hospital,” he said. “And
In the middle of it all was a green SUV.
STANTON STOOD WITH Davies in the morgue, deep in the basement of the hospital. The driver’s body lay on one metal table; beside them, on a second table, lay Volcy’s.
Davies made an incision from ear to ear on the driver’s skull, then draped the flap of skin and removed the skullcap to expose the brain.
“Ready,” he said.
Stanton stepped forward, cut the central cortex away from the cranial nerves, and disconnected it from the spinal cord. Reaching inside, he removed the brain from its skull. Hidden in the folds of this organ was his best hope for figuring out VFI. He placed the brain on a sterile table, trying to ignore the fact that it was still warm.
Stanton and Davies began to slice. During his gross exam of the thalamus, Stanton saw clusters of tiny holes; under the microscope he saw a wasteland of craters and deformed tissue. Textbook FFI. Only much, much more aggressive.
“Anything?” Davies asked.
“Give me a second.” Stanton rubbed his eyes.
“You look knackered,” Davies said.
“I have no idea what that means.”
“You look like shit. You need to sleep, Gabe.”
“We all do.”
Davies snickered. “I’ll sleep when I’m like these blokes.”
“Come on.”
“Too soon?”
Once they finished with the driver’s brain, they performed the same operation on Volcy’s distended body. When they had sections from both brains ready, Stanton put his eye to the microscope again, upping the background light. The craters in Volcy’s brain ran deeper and the cortex looked more deformed. He had definitely been infected first.
Stanton had suspected as much, but until now he hadn’t realized what he could do with the information. “Make images of all these sections,”he told Davies. “And I want you to find the MRIs we took of Volcy when he was still alive. Figure out how fast the disease was spreading in his brain, then model everything backward. If we can figure out the rate of progression, then we can estimate when they both got sick.”
Davies nodded. “A timeline.”
If they could determine when Volcy took ill, they might be able to figure out
where
he’d gotten sick. With luck, they could do the same for the driver. The driver was the key: Someone in this city knew him. Once the driver was identified, there’d be bank statements and credit-card receipts showing where he bought his groceries, where he ate. A paper trail leading straight to the source.
“Cavanagh’s on the line,” Davies said, holding out his cellphone.
Stanton peeled off his second layer of gloves. Into the phone he said one word: “Confirmed.”
Cavanagh took a deep breath. “You’re sure?”
“Same disease, different stages.”
“I’m getting on a plane right now. Tell me what you need to keep this under control.”
“An ID on the driver. We have two patients, and they were both John Does when they came in.” The Explorer was unregistered, and its driver, like Volcy, carried nothing to identify him. The worry was that this somehow wasn’t a coincidence. But what would that mean?
“The police are working on it,” Cavanagh said. “What else?”
“The public needs to know we found a second case. And they need to know it from us. Not from some blogger who makes half of it up.”
“If you’re asking for a press conference, the answer is no. Not yet. Everyone in the city will think they’re sick.”
“Then at least get the grocery stores to put a hold on dairy, and meat too, just to be safe. Get USDA to investigate all possible imports from Guatemala. And tell people they need to throw away the milk and all the rest in their refrigerators.”
“Not until we confirm the source of the disease.”
“If you want confirmation, get all of our agents here checking thepupil size of every patient in every hospital,” he said. “And
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