Blowback

“To brief you on what exactly it is that they found, I’m going to turn the floor over to Colonel Michael Tranberg. For those of you not familiar with Colonel Tranberg, he is the commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland. I have asked him here because USAMRIID is the Department of Defense’s lead laboratory for developing medical countermeasures, vaccines, drugs, and diagnostic tools to protect U.S. troops from biological warfare agents and naturally occurring infectious diseases. After the CDC in Atlanta, USAMRIID houses the only other Biosafety Level Four laboratory in the entire country, which allows Colonel Tranberg’s team to study highly hazardous viruses in maximum biological containment. I think that’s about it introduction-wise. Colonel Tranberg?”

“Thank you, General Currutt,” said Tranberg, a tall, gray-haired man in his sixties. He picked up a digital remote from the conference table, pressed a button, and the two plasma monitors at the front of the room came to life with the revolving USAMRIID logo. “The footage you are about to view was shot a little over a week ago in northern Iraq by the aforementioned Christian humanitarian aid workers from a group called Mercy International out of Fresno, California. Three of Mercy International’s workers had been based in the remote village of Asalaam, about one hundred fifty kilometers southwest of Mosul. When they failed to check in with Mercy’s main Baghdad office, calls were made, and eventually soldiers from one of the U.S. Army’s Stryker Brigade Combat Team were sent to check up on them. It was these same soldiers who uncovered this footage. We’ve edited it down to the most important parts, but I have to warn you, it’s not easy to watch.”

Tranberg pressed another button on the remote and sat down.

Everyone in the room watched with rapt attention as a young female aid worker, who couldn’t have been more than twenty-two years old, chronicled a strange flulike illness, which was sweeping through the village. By the second day, though, the woman, as well as her two colleagues, fell ill and quickly grew too sick to continue filming. “From this point on,” narrated Tranberg, “we believe it’s one of the villagers, maybe a local person who had been working with the aid workers, who continues the filming.”

The group watched as the video further chronicled the sickness spreading throughout the village. Those who were infected needed to be physically restrained. All of the patients eventually exhibited extremely aggressive behavior, with many trying to bite their caregivers, or anyone who came across their path. In many of the afflicted, a bizarre state of heightened sexuality was also observable. Many of them complained of severe insomnia and headaches. They were hypersensitive to odors, particularly garlic, and couldn’t stand to see their reflection in anything from a mirror to a bedpan. In addition, they seemed to suffer from hydrophobia and had to be completely nourished intravenously, and even then, the few IV bags the village had available had to be hidden beneath towels, as patients who saw anything even remotely resembling water would fly into a rage and their throats would swell up, making it impossible for them to breathe. They were hypersensitive to light, and their skin had taken on a very strange pallor. The presentation cut to the final footage of the aid workers in the end stages of the illness.

Everyone around the table watched in silence as the aid workers began convulsing. Soon a strange, dark fluid began to pour from their nostrils, and moments later they were dead.

In the background of the video, villagers who had not yet become infected recoiled in horror.

When the clip was over, the video footage was replaced once again by the spinning USAMRIID logos. For a moment, no one spoke. It was obvious from the faces around the table that the footage had scared the hell out of everyone, including the president.

Dr. Donna Vennett, the surgeon general and a family medicine physician by trade, was the first to speak. “What is it? Some sort of Ebola strain? Hemorrhagic fever?”

“No on both counts,” responded Tranberg. “This is not like anything we’ve seen before.”

“What was that substance running out of the nasal passages before the victims died?”

“That’s a mystery as well.”

“Well, what do we know?” said Steve Plaisier, secretary of Health and Human Services. “We’ve obviously been called here for a reason. Is there a chance we might see an outbreak of this thing in the U.S.?”

“There’s more than just a chance,” responded General Currutt. “We’re counting on it.”

Homeland Security Secretary Alan Driehaus cleared his throat and said, “Why?”

“Because the village of Asalaam wasn’t infected by chance. It was specifically targeted.”

“Intentional infection?” said Plaisier.

Currutt nodded his head.

“What makes you so sure?”