Catch and Release

Chapter 11

Chapter 11Zoe entered calculations into her computer. It was about all she could do to keep her mind occupied. Viral vector propagation was a waiting game, and she didn’t feel like waiting today. After the first half an hour, she found her mind going back to the morning’s attack. She knew it could have been worse, but not by much. The man still had Lex, and there was nothing she could do except follow the instructions he had left for her.

Her work-load had been pretty light for the last couple of weeks. Some contribution work toward a vaccine for the latest flu virus, which required little thought, and some research into how certain strains of herpes could be used to fight cancer, which was proving more frustrating than productive. Neither option offered much of a distraction. She opted instead for looking into how bad this new virus could be.

The program she had open was one she seldom used. The CDC had created it specifically to track the outbreak of contagious diseases in conjunction with the Model of Infectious Disease Agent Study, more commonly known as MIDAS. It was similar to another MIDAS program called TranStat, only a great deal more powerful. Instead of just storing and tracking infectious disease data, this program allowed for the input of potential diseases, which it could then overlay onto existing data and demographics. This allowed the CDC to determine how diseases would spread in the future for the purpose of ensuring that containment and treatment protocols were as effective as possible.

Zoe input the information of the new virus she was creating and set the computer to determine the spread and effectiveness of the disease if released from Atlanta. The computer’s fans purred and a map of Atlanta popped on the screen. A small red dot appeared in the middle of Atlanta and quickly started spreading with the map zooming out to compensate. Lightning fast, red enveloped the state of Georgia, then the entire southeast, then the whole of North America. After a few minutes, every land mass except Antarctica was covered in red. The results of the analysis showed that within 72 hours of release, the entire continental United States would be exposed, and 96 hours after that, the death toll would number in the millions.

Zoe felt as though she was about to throw up. This disease had the potential to decimate any population that was exposed to it. She knew she couldn’t let the man from this morning continue to hold her son ransom, but at the same time, she couldn’t hand over this plague and allow millions to die. She had to do something and was so focused on the problem she didn’t notice the door behind her had just closed.

“Hey, Zoe, I just had the strangest request come across my desk.”