“Among humans, the infection rate of Marburg-2 is approximately the same as we find for the H5N1 virus in animals,” the biologist said from his seat at the little table in Laramie’s room. “M-2’s symptoms are far more severe and progress more savagely-although the forecasted avian flu mutation could do similar damage.”
The task force called the local filo Marburg-2-M-2 for short-due to its similarity to and evolved improvements over the Marburg filovirus. The biologist seated before Laramie was an infectious diseases specialist who did freelance work for the Centers for Disease Control.
Laramie thought of something.
“Marburg-2 hit animals,” she said, “just as hard as people?”
“Yep-I’d say this is your basic avian flu doomsday scenario, but with more deadly results once the symptoms kick in.”
“So how wide did it spread in the animal kingdom-birds, rabbits, deer? Frogs? Crickets? Cicadas?”
“It killed just about everything it came into contact with.”
“What about ants?”
“Ants?” The biologist shifted in his chair. He was a little heavy, a tight squeeze at the little table. “We haven’t really had the time to fully analyze the impact on the insect population, but my guess would be no.”
“Why not?”
“Ants, scorpions, and cockroaches aren’t typically susceptible to viral in fection. In fact, they aren’t susceptible to much of anything. Cockroaches and scorpions, for example, would be the primary surviving species following a global thermonuclear war. Ants aren’t that hardy, but they’re pretty tough.”
“But whatever consumes ants,” Laramie said, “would have died.”
“Pretty much across the board within the infection zone,” the biologist said.
Those ants, Laramie thought, took over the Emerald Lakes housing development, and took a few chomps out of my ankle while they were at it, because no predator survived to eat them.
Their population was probably multiplying geometrically.
“According to your report,” Laramie said, “M-2 infected animals, and spread across species, following the gathering places of those animals-swamps, streams, pine barrens. Geographically speaking, how far did it reach? In the animal world, I mean.”
“It spread across a slightly wider range-about double the human infection zone. The quarantine we set up was engineered to stump the spread of the filo on animals too; it took a little longer than the human quarantining, but it worked-mostly due to the preponderance of housing developments and golf courses.”
“What do you mean?”
“The wetlands over here are mostly landlocked, so an infected fish couldn’t, for instance, swim more than a couple miles south before bumping into a berm designed to keep the swamp water off the fairway of the eighteenth hole, or somebody’s backyard.”
“‘Over here’?”
“Sorry?”
“You said something about the ‘wetlands over here,’” Laramie said.
“Oh,” he said, “I’m not sure exactly what I meant. I suppose it’s my fear of what could have happened if we didn’t contain it, or if the perp disseminated M-2 twenty miles east or south of here.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“Well, ‘over here,’ so to speak, we’re cut off from large portions of the Everglades. But if you were to disperse more of the perp’s stash of Marburg-2 a half hour to the south or east-no quarantine’s going to shut down that epidemic anytime soon.”
Laramie thought about this.
“I get the remaining portions of the Everglades being south of here,” she said. “But why would the same thing happen if you blasted the filo into the wind an hour to the east?”
The biologist nodded-a scientist in his element, laying out the facts. “Lake Okeechobee’s one of the main faucets keeping the Everglades wet. The water supply runs south into the ’Glades from the lake. A little over twenty miles away-to the east. And it isn’t so much the water, but the creatures that inhabit, or frequent it-kind of works like an infection spreading pipeline.”
“So if Benjamin Achar’s garage were on the banks of Lake Okeechobee, the filo would still be spreading.”
“Among animals? No doubt.”
“What about people?” Laramie said.
“Them too.”