Dead Drop - Rise of the Elites (Chapters 1-5)

CHAPTER FOUR

May 5 – Rohnert Park, CA

At 5:30 a.m., Shannon pushed the door open with her butt and backed out of the OR holding a tray of clean surgical instruments. All non-emergency surgeries had been cancelled just after she arrived for work. She entered the prep room and carefully placed each of the surgical implements inside a stainless steel container. The tech who usually did this hadn't shown up for work.

She was worried that she hadn't been able to reach her parents who had been vacationing with relatives in Mexico City. She was about to pull her phone out of her pocket when Dr. McKenzie poked his head in the room, his brows pinched together. "Have you seen Dr. Tomaso?"

"He left about fifteen minutes ago. But I heard him say that he was going to his office."

"Thanks—I'll check there." He paused for a moment. "You have a daughter right?" Before she could answer, he said, "I remember her, smart kid. Big brown eyes. She looks just like you." He reached into his pocket, pulled out a flat-fold style surgical mask. Don't leave this room without this on. Go to the supply room and take a box of disposable masks home."

"What's going on?"

"I think we're going to have a big problem. I suggest you go home as soon as you can. There's nothing for you to do right now. I'll make sure you get signed out. I have to go," he said and started back to his office leaving her with unanswered questions.

Shannon bumped into another nurse, whose first name she couldn't remember, as she stepped from the supply room into the hallway.

"What's with the mask? Are you feeling sick?"

She pulled the mask down to speak. "Dr. McKenzie suggested I put one on. Here you should probably put one on too." She held out a disposable mask. "I don't know how much it's going to help, but it's all we have. From the look on Dr. McKenzie's face it must be something bad, but he wouldn't tell me what it was."

"I heard some interns talking in the break room. They said about a dozen people with the flu were admitted this morning. They're isolating all of them on the second floor. But I haven't heard anything else. I got here about a half hour ago. I'm sure I'll find out more. I'll talk to you later," she said as she put on the mask.

She remembered the email she received from Cooper on her smartphone a few hours ago. Distracted, she almost bumped into Dr. McKenzie as she headed towards her locker to retrieve her purse. He stepped out of his office with Dr. Tomaso. He nodded, his face covered with a surgical mask, and walked past her. Both doctors were former Army Reserve trauma surgeons in Iraq. She had never seen anything faze them.

"Why are you still here?" Dr. McKenzie asked. "You should be on your way home."

"You know more than you're telling. I want to know exactly what's happening."

"I don't want to start a panic, so keep your voice down." He grabbed her arm and pulled her closer. "The first patient came in two days ago, a thirty-five-year-old male. He presented with flu-like symptoms. Within an hour, he was in a coma with an elevated temp of a hundred and four. The patient had mentioned he had a stomach bug last week, so the admitting doc thought his immune system might have already been compromised."

The doctor took a deep breath. "His temperature wouldn't budge with meds or ice bath immersions. The orderlies had to put restraints on him because he got violent. He was thrashing around and grabbed one of the nurses by the throat. Nearly choked her to death."

She reflexively put her hand to her throat.

"These are not the kind of flu symptoms we usually see, so the admitting doc sent an image of the patient's blood to a friend at the CDC who said they were getting calls and samples from all over the country. The CDC confirmed that what we're seeing is a new virus—very nasty and highly likely that it's manmade. A strain of avian flu that we've never seen before. It started out similar to the Spanish Flu, but it's mutating. Unofficially, they're calling it the Rapture virus, for obvious reasons.