rage. Rage against her father, her uncle, and most all men. A cloud of despair, along with her own suicidal thoughts, followed her like a shadow.
She found temporary escape from her ills by marrying a young soldier named Sadler. A daughter arrived, bringing new joy to her world, then her husband was taken from her to serve in the Middle East. The gloom and depression returned, along with a failed suicide attempt. Things turned up when Frasier McKee entered her life. His bright, enthusiastic, fun-loving personality swept her away, promising a happy life. That, too, came to a bitter end.
McKee put her hands to her face and peered at her reflection. As she had done so many times before, she willed away her doubts and depression with anger. Clenching her hands into fists, she squeezed until her knuckles turned white, and took a deep breath. Rising from her chair, she extended her body erect, then strode from the room with vengeance on her mind.
35
Dr. Susan Montgomery inserted a slide into the chamber of the electron microscope and activated its power controls. Once the machine created a vacuum and scanned a beam of electrons over the inserted specimen, a dark, blurry object appeared on the attached desktop monitor. She adjusted the magnification until a trio of oblong shapes appeared on the screen. They were blackish in color with a fuzzy perimeter, and resembled a handful of licorice jelly beans.
The epidemiologist for the CDC Surveillance and Data Branch compared the image to a stock photograph of Vibrio cholerae stored on the computer. Visually, at least, the bacteria sample on her glass slide was a dead ringer for the cholera-inducing bacteria. But a battery of other biochemical tests had told her that it was not the same.
Montgomery knew that not all forms of the cholera bacteria were toxic. The bacteria in the water sample from Cerrón Grande, however, showed clear evidence of toxin production. And it passed most of the biochemical tests for V. cholerae O1, the classic subset, or serogroup, most commonly found in lethal outbreaks of the disease. Yet several of the test results were inconsistent, leading her to believe she had something different on her hands.
She was well aware that cholera, as a disease, had been a scourge of mankind for centuries, if not millennia. No less than seven worldwide pandemics had been attributed to cholera since 1817 alone, killing millions in the process. The disease, still common in developing countries, was normally spread by water supplies or food contaminated with fecal matter. Children are most harmed by the disease, often succumbing to rapid dehydration.
Cholera as a modern danger was exhibited in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. Aid workers from Nepal inadvertently contaminated the Artibonite River, Haiti’s largest waterway and a major source of drinking water. The outbreak has led to over ten thousand deaths in the devastated country in the intervening years.
Montgomery stared again at the magnified image on her monitor, when the door to the lab swung open and a bushy-haired man in a green lab coat entered. He carried a binder under his arm and a grimace on his face. Montgomery knew the division’s Lab Research director to be an ebullient jokester, and she immediately noted the change in his demeanor.
“Hi, Byron,” she said. “Are those my DNA homology reports?”
“Yes. You might want to remain seated while you read them.”
He pulled up a chair and passed her the binder.
“Troubling results?”
“I’ll say. Preliminary analysis shows exactly what you suspected. The El Salvador sample bacterium does indeed have a different genetic makeup than Vibrio cholerae O1. DNA analysis shows an additional seventeen gene clusters in the genome structure. At this point, we’re not sure of the significance.”
“Seventeen?” Montgomery said. “That is a notable difference. Likely an isolated mutation, which has reproduced in the El Salvador reservoir.”
Byron gave her a sober stare, then shook his head. “I’m afraid not. The computer found the same, or similar, bacteria in two of the three other water samples you sent down for analysis. In addition, we made a hit on five additional baseline control samples in our database.”
Montgomery nearly popped out of her chair. “What did you say?”
“You gave us suspected pathogen water samples from Cairo, Mumbai, and Haiti. Both Cairo and Mumbai resulted in virtually the same results as your El Salvador specimen. In addition, we found evidence of similar pathogens in water samples we were testing from Karachi, Rio, Paris, Shanghai, and Sydney. Only the sample from Haiti came back different.