T-minus 12 days to DEADLINE.: seanan

T-minus 12 days to DEADLINE.

Atlanta, Georgia, July 17th, 2014.

"We have a problem."

Ian Matras looked up from his computer screen, and blanched, barely recognizing his colleague. Chris looked like he'd managed to lose fifteen pounds in five days. His complexion was waxen, and the circles under his eyes were almost dark enough to make it seem like he'd been punched. "Christ, Chris, what the hell happened to you?"

"The Kellis cure." Chris Sinclair shook his head, rubbing one stubbly cheek as he said, "I don't have it. I mean, I don't think. We still can't test for it, and we can't afford to have me get sick right now just to find out. But that's what happened. That's what's happening right now."

"The McKenzie-Beatts TB treatment." It wasn't a question. Ian was abruptly glad that he hadn't bothered to stand. He would have just fallen back into his chair.

"Got it in one." Chris nodded, expression grim. "They died, Ian. Every one of them."

"When?"

"About an hour and a half ago. Dr. Li was on-site to monitor their symptoms. The first to start seizing was a twenty-seven year old male. He began bleeding from the mouth, eyes, nose, and rectum; when they performed the autopsy, they found that he was also bleeding internally, specifically in his intestines and lungs. It's a coin-toss whether he suffocated or bled out." Chris looked away, toward the blank white wall. He'd never wanted to see the ocean so badly in his life. "The rest started seizing within fifteen minutes. An eleven year old girl who'd been accepted into the trials a week before the Kellis cure was released was the last to die. Dr. Li says she was asking for her parents right up until she stopped breathing."

"Oh my God..." whispered Ian.

"I'm telling you, man, I don't think he's here." Chris rubbed his cheek again, hard. "You ready for the bad part?"

Numbly, Ian asked, "You mean that wasn't the bad part?"

"Not by a long shot." Chris laughed darkly. "Everyone who had direct contact with the patients—the medical staff, their families, hell, our medical staff—has started to experience increased salivation. Whatever this stuff is turning into, it's catching. They're sealing the building. Dr. Li's called for an L-4 quarantine. If they don't figure out what's going on, they're going to die in there."

Ian said nothing.

"The malaria folks? We don't know what's going on there. They stopped transmitting an hour before the complex blew sky-high. From what little we've been able to piece together, the charges were set inside the main lab. They, too, decided that they needed a strict quarantine. They just wanted to be absolutely sure that no one was going to have the chance to break it."

There was still a piece missing. Slowly, almost terrified of what the answer would be—no, not almost; absolutely terrified of what the answer would be—Ian asked, "What about the Marburg trials in Colorado?"

"They're all fine."

Ian stared at him. "What? But you said—"

"It was spreading, and it was. Half of Denver's had a nosebleed they couldn't stop. And nobody's died. The bleeding lasts three days, and then it clears up on its own, and the victims feel better than they've felt in years. We have a contagious cure for cancer to go with our contagious cure for the common cold." Chris laughed again. This time, there was a sharp edge of hysteria under the sound. "It's not going to end there. We don't get this lucky. We can't get this lucky."

"Maybe this is as bad as it gets." Ian knew how bad the words sounded as soon as they left his mouth, but he didn't—he couldn't—call them back. Someone had to calm Cassandra when she predicted the fall of Troy. Someone had to say "the symptoms aren't that bad" when the predictions called for the fall of man.

Chris gave him a withering look. "Say that like you mean it."

He couldn't, and so he said nothing at all, and the two of them looked at each other, waiting for the end of the world.

***

The CDC has no comment on the tragic deaths in San Antonio, Texas. Drs. Lauren McKenzie and Taylor Beatts were conducting a series of clinical trials aimed at combating drug-resistent strains of tuberculosis...

When will you Rise?

wendyzski

May 19 2011, 15:12:35 UTC 6 years ago

New comment

The fact that it's bright and sunny out today while I read this somehow makes it even more chilling.

guruwench

May 19 2011, 15:26:12 UTC 6 years ago

I am very much enjoying these snippets, and (since my birfday is very soon) I am going to give myself your books as prezzies for my birfday.

paradisacorbasi

May 19 2011, 15:34:02 UTC 6 years ago

Poor, poor overworked doctors.

And what a "nearly made me fall out of my chair" shock to read that they blew up their complex rather than risking the newly mutating germs to get out.

Thank you thank you.

Poor Ian and Chris. Poor Alex. Poor Masons.

Poor Matt.

And Poor stupid, stupid, stupid Brad and Bob.

kengr

May 19 2011, 20:05:01 UTC 6 years ago

Alas, blowing it up isn't likely to stop viruses. Now if they set a fire hot enough to turn it into a puddle of glass, *that* I'd believe would have a good chance of stopping it.

6 years ago

mel_redcap

tygerversionx

sumeria

May 19 2011, 15:55:08 UTC 6 years ago

So, I've got to ask... have you seen what the CDC is doing on twitter right now?

Because, particularly when I've been reading your countdown, it is NOT COMFORTING.

janetmiles

May 19 2011, 16:08:39 UTC 6 years ago

Oh. Dear. Ghod.

Now I wonder if someone at the CDC is a fan of the series. Because this is just too damn coincidental.

May 19 2011, 16:05:12 UTC 6 years ago

*shakes like a wet dog*

Guh.

beccastareyes

May 19 2011, 16:22:24 UTC 6 years ago

One thing I like about this is it shows scientist as (flawed) human beings who take sensible precautions. Dr. Kellis was all 'releasing this into the wild without testing is a terrible idea and it scares the crap out of me that idiots did it'. The whistle-blower was a biochem grad student, IIRC. The Marburg Amberlee team presumably tested the contagiousness of their cancer cure and had no way to know that a virus not even out of animal trials would change things. The CDC folks are working their asses off to track the disease and do damage control. And those poor people with the TB and malaria trials basically are paying with their lives, since otherwise something worse than KA will get out.

Too often it seems like in horror films they require someone to do something stupid, and the researchers or doctors become the obvious target. Here everyone seems believably stupid, given how many articles I've seen on 'the thing Big Pharma doesn't want you to know'. Which makes it feel more real, and thus makes it more delightfully painful to watch it.

'Course, then it makes me terribly glad not only am I not a medical researcher or biologist, I'm not even a lab scientist and all my instruments and study samples are currently about a billion miles from my desk.

May 19 2011, 16:44:01 UTC 6 years ago

The Marburg Amberlee doctors had certainly tested it for non-contagiousness, because one of them said (a few posts back, my connection is being slow so I can't find it) that it being transmitted was impossible (well, obviously not since it was happening, but impossible according to what was known at the time).

I agree, the scientists here are feeling guilty but it's not their fault (unless one believes that There Are Things Mankind Should Not Know), they took all of the precautions they knew. Even the ones who broke in weren't causing it deliberately, they were ignorant and criminally negligent but that's very believable (like people who break into mink farms and "set them free").

I think that's the scary part, it's all very believable without any massive stupidity (a lot of traditional horror just won't work without a level of stupidity which I hope no one I know has), and therefore all too possible. I can laugh at the "ooh, a dangerous thing in the house, let's split up and look for it" type of horror, I can't laugh at Kellis-Amberlee.

tikiera

biomekanic

May 19 2011, 17:11:33 UTC 6 years ago

Just had the goosebumps.

Nicely done.

artbeco

May 19 2011, 17:46:45 UTC 6 years ago

I love the carefully thought-out process and progression of development. It makes it all so very believable and both heart-wrenching as well as more horrifying than seems possible. It's partly the dispassionate writing style and the logical consequences of one small event leading to the next... so well done.

(Goes off to get a jacket to stave off the shivers)

trektone

May 19 2011, 19:55:29 UTC 6 years ago

Is "Got it in one" a CDC catch-phrase? Or an Atlanta-ism?

May 19 2011, 19:59:10 UTC 6 years ago

Neither. It's short for "you got it in one guess" and I've heard it all over the country.

fullcontactmuse

May 19 2011, 22:04:41 UTC 6 years ago

Oh my. That left me a tad wobly.

"Maybe this is as bad as it gets."

These have been amazing!

Deleted comment

yellowblackhaze

May 19 2011, 23:53:39 UTC 6 years ago

These are just so well done and so well thought out, they make me really scared.

lysystratae

May 20 2011, 17:34:14 UTC 6 years ago

The hell with destroying their work, they destroyed themselves to keep the rest of us safe from what they found. That's dedication.

azurelunatic

a3starmom

May 20 2011, 01:15:35 UTC 6 years ago

I don't know how you can sleep at night with all this horror rolling around in your brain. I totally can not wait to get this in my hands.

May 20 2011, 05:06:00 UTC 6 years ago

She gets it out and gives it to us so we can be insomniac along with her?

deire

May 20 2011, 01:18:07 UTC 6 years ago

1. I'm guessing that the explosion took care of things because it needed a living host to be viable and was fragile outside that environment?

2. What was the mechanism with the TB phage? A totally new pathogen wreaking havoc all alone, or setting off a massive immune response that kills? Was it a bacteriophage?

3. What does Marburg Amberlee become when it mixes with a malaria cure? :shiver:

I don't expect answers to all of necessarily any of these. But wow, is my brain coming up with unpleasant ideas.

May 20 2011, 01:19:22 UTC 6 years ago

edit to 1. And that the new pathogen was not airborne.

ironed_orchid

May 20 2011, 01:44:06 UTC 6 years ago

OMG!

Also, it would be remiss of me not to forward this link The Centers for Disease Control Is Officially Prepared for a Zombie Invasion

May 20 2011, 14:04:43 UTC 6 years ago

We're all gonna die!

elorie

May 20 2011, 02:39:47 UTC 6 years ago

I spotted a copy of Deadline in the Books-A-Million in Statesboro, GA :)

deakat

May 20 2011, 03:06:41 UTC 6 years ago

This is very not good news. It messes with the sales figures. :(

kightp

May 20 2011, 04:56:47 UTC 6 years ago

The CDC has no comment on the tragic deaths in San Antonio, Texas.

Don't be too sure about that:

http://emergency.cdc.gov/socialmedia/zombies_blog.asp

May 20 2011, 04:57:48 UTC 6 years ago

Drat. I should have read through the thread first. But when a friend send me the URL, my first thought was "Seanan has *got* to hear about this..."

thedorkygirl

June 17 2011, 03:29:34 UTC 6 years ago

Oh man.

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