The Emerald Virus Read Free Page B

that two weeks ago most of the population
of 890 people had come down with the same affliction, a severe reddening of the
face and upper torso, much like rosacea. In fact rosacea is pretty common in
our coastal villages and the local doctors treated the rash as a difficult and
widespread case of rosacea. The Emerald Virus manifests itself visually like
rosacea in that the face becomes acutely flushed and covered with small bumps,
the small veins in the face become red and take on the appearance of spider
webs, and the eyes become dry, red and irritated. The other early symptom is
that every victim feels a little bit sick. It was described to me like the
first day of a cold where you know you’re coming down with something but you
aren’t yet sick. Worse than that, within days almost all of our coastal
villages were reporting the same phenomena and we are getting reports of
villages on the northwest Irish coast reporting the same malady.”
        
“Harry, are you sure it’s a virus?
        
“I’m sure. The first thing we did was dispatch a medical team to Emerald and
took blood samples. We brought them to our lab. We concluded the tests this
morning and not only is it a virus, but it is a filovirus of some sort. We’ve
named it the Emerald Virus after the village.”
        
“Any other areas affected?”
        
“In the past 48 hours we’ve received word of the same thing occurring on the
southwest coast of England, the Atlantic coast of Norway and early this morning
we received word of the virus reaching the Atlantic coast of France.”
        
“Have there been any additional symptoms?”
        
“Yes, the disease progresses to a second phase on the third or fourth day. The
extreme redness in the face fades to a light pink but becomes splotchy; on the
seventh or eighth day all feelings of discomfort or illness disappear.”
        
“And the pink facial splotches?”
        
“That’s one of the funny things about this disease. The patient feels much better
at the start of the second week and at that point the pink splotches migrate
downward until they have reached the feet after three more days or so. The
disease spreads visibly but the patient feels perfectly healthy. The timeframes
for these different phases are remarkably consistent from patient to patient.”
        
“That takes us up to what, the tenth or eleventh day?”
        
“That’s right.”
        
“Okay, what happens next?”
        
“The patient begins to feel sick, real sick. Within 24 hours they’re bed ridden
with extreme flu like symptoms.
        
Jack didn’t like the tone in Harry’s voice, which had changed from an
unemotional reporting tone to a tone with a hint of desperation. Jack asked,
“Harry, how bad does it get?”
        
“The patients start dying. The first deaths were reported yesterday and people
have been dying continuously since then.”
        
“What was the exact time of the first death and how many deaths have occurred?”
        
“The first death reported occurred at 5:30 AM yesterday, Nov 2 nd .
That is local time or GMT. The deaths are happening so fast it is hard to be
accurate at any given moment, but it seems that 50% or more of the village has
died in the last 32 hours.”
       
Jack was shocked and said, “Harry, 15% of the population is about 130 people,
that’s almost unbelievable.”
      
“Jack, it’s not 15%, it’s 50%. We have over 450 confirmed deaths and by the
time we get off the phone that number will have grown substantially. Worse than
that, other villages in both Ireland and Scotland are now also reporting
deaths. I’m afraid panic is about to begin and it is going to get much worse.”
        
“Do you know the cause of the disease? Are you sure it’s a virus? Could it be
terrorists at work?”
        
“Let’s take one thing at a time. We know it is a virus based on the blood tests
I mentioned earlier. We also sent public