Whiteout Read Free Page A

tidy, and empty.
    She spoke to the others over the headset. “No one home.” She could hear the dejected tone of her own voice.
    Why had he left his house unlocked? Perhaps he was never coming back.
    This was a blow. If Michael had been here, the mystery could have been solved quickly. Now there would have to be a search. He might beanywhere in the world. There was no knowing how long it would take to find him. She thought with dread of the nerve-racking days, or even weeks, of anxiety.
    She went back out into the garden. To be thorough, she tried the door of the garden shed. It, too, was unlocked. When she opened it, she caught the trace of a smell, unpleasant but vaguely familiar. It must be very strong, she realized, to penetrate the suit’s filter. Blood, she thought. The shed smelled like a slaughterhouse. She murmured, “Oh, my God.”
    Ruth Solomons, the doctor, heard her and said, “What is it?”
    â€œJust a minute.” The inside of the little wooden building was black: there were no windows. She fumbled in the dark and found a switch. When the light came on, she cried out in shock.
    The others all spoke at once, asking what was wrong.
    â€œCome quickly!” she said. “To the garden shed. Ruth first.”
    Michael Ross lay on the floor, face up. He was bleeding from every orifice: eyes, nose, mouth, ears. Blood pooled around him on the plank floor. Toni did not need the doctor to tell her that Michael was suffering from a massive multiple hemorrhage—a classic symptom of Madoba-2 and similar infections. He was very dangerous, his body an unexploded bomb full of the deadly virus. But he was alive. His chest went up and down, and a weak bubbling sound came from his mouth. She bent down, kneeling in the sticky puddle of fresh blood, and looked closely at him. “Michael!” she said, shouting to be heard through the plastic of her helmet. “It’s Toni Gallo from the lab!”
    There was a flicker of intelligence in his bloody eyes. He opened his mouth and mumbled something.
    â€œWhat?” she shouted. She leaned closer.
    â€œNo cure,” he said. Then he vomited. A jet of black fluid exploded from his mouth, splashing Toni’s faceplate. She jerked back and cried out in alarm, even though she knew she was protected by the suit.
    She was pushed aside, and Ruth Solomons bent over Michael.
    â€œThe pulse is very weak,” the doctor said over the headset. She opened Michael’s mouth and used her gloved fingers to clear some of the bloodand vomit from his throat. “I need a laryngoscope—fast!” Seconds later, a paramedic rushed in with the implement. Ruth pushed it into Michael’s mouth, clearing his throat so that he could breathe more easily. “Bring the isolation stretcher, quick as you can.” She opened her medical case and took out a syringe already loaded—with morphine and a blood coagulant, Toni assumed. Ruth pushed the needle into Michael’s neck and depressed the plunger. When she pulled the syringe out, Michael bled copiously from the small hole.
    Toni was swamped by a wave of grief. She thought of Michael walking around the Kremlin, sitting in his house drinking tea, talking animatedly about etchings; and the sight of this desperately damaged body became all the more painful and tragic.
    â€œOkay,” Ruth said. “Let’s get him out of here.”
    Two paramedics picked Michael up and carried him out to a gurney enclosed in a transparent plastic tent. They slid the patient through a porthole in one end of the tent, then sealed it. They wheeled the gurney across Michael’s garden.
    Before getting into the ambulance, they now had to decontaminate themselves and the stretcher. One of Toni’s team had already gotten out a shallow plastic tub like a children’s paddling pool. Now Dr. Solomons and the paramedics took turns standing in the tub and being sprayed with a powerful