The Cobra Event Read Online Free PDF

“That’s why I have to call the C.D.C.” The man went on to describe how he had been eating a pizza at a local restaurant with his girlfriend when he’d found himself chewing on a piece of plastic. He’d pulled it out of his mouth and discovered it was a bandage strip stained with yellow pus. He was convinced that it had given both him and his girlfriend certain symptoms that he was reluctant to describe.
    “You could not get a sexually transmitted disease from eating a bandage,” Austen said. “You should go to an emergency room and get an exam, and your girlfriend, too. If it turns out you have gonorrhea, we recommend treatment with Cipro.”
    The man wanted to talk, and Austen couldn’t get him off the phone. She was a slender woman of medium height, with wavy auburn hair, a fine-boned face, and a pointed chin. She was a medical pathologist by training—her specialty was death. Her eyes were gray-blue and thoughtful, and seemed to absorb the light, considering the world in a careful way. Her hands were slender but very strong. She used her hands to probe among organs, bone, and skin. She wore no rings on her fingers, and her fingernails were cut short, so as not to break surgical gloves. It was Wednesday, uniform day at the C.D.C., and Austen was wearing a Public Health Service uniform—pants and a short-sleeved khaki shirt, with the gold oak leaf of a lieutenant commander on the right shoulder. It looked like a Navy uniform. The U.S. Public Health Service is an unarmed branch of the U.S. military.
    One would not describe Alice Austen as a lonely person, or a person incapable of love, for she had many friends, and she had had her lovers, including a man who had wanted to marry her, but there always seemed to be a distance between her and the world. Like many pathologists, she was a loner by temperament, independent minded, curious about how things worked. She was the daughter of a retired chief of police in the town of Ashland, New Hampshire.
    “We got a lawyer. We’re gonna sue over that pizza,” the man was saying.
    “The bandage would have been sterilized by heat in the oven. It couldn’t hurt you,” Austen explained.
    “Yeah, but what if the pus didn’t get cooked?”
    “Those ovens are pretty hot. I think the pus was probably cooked,” she answered.
    An older man walked into Austen’s office. He raised an eyebrow. “Since when has the C.D.C. been advising people on how to cook pus?”
    She pushed the mute button. “Be done in a minute.”
    “A minute? The C.D.C. advises people to cook pus for a minimum of five minutes. Tell the guy to use a meat thermometer. The pus is done when it says ‘pork.’ ”
    Austen smiled.
    The man sat down at an empty desk. He was holding a file folder, slapping it against his hand restlessly. His name was Walter Mellis. He was a public-health doctor in his late fifties, and he had worked at the C.D.C. for most of his career.
    Meanwhile, on the phone: “I got the pizza in my freezer. You folks want to check it out in your hot zone?”
    When she hung up she said, “Wow.”
    “You burned up a lot of time with that guy,” Mellis remarked.
    Austen did not know Walter Mellis very well, but she knew that something was up. He wanted something from her.
    “Anyway,” he went on. “I’m looking for someone to observe at an autopsy. You’re the only E.I.S. officer trained in pathology.”
    “I’m pretty busy writing up my last outbreak,” she said.
    “I just had a call from Lex Nathanson, the medical examiner of New York,” he went on, seeming to ignore her. “They’ve had two cases of something pretty unusual. He asked me if we had anyone to send up there to help him out. Quietly.”
    “Why don’t they use the city health department?”
    “I don’t know why.” He looked a little annoyed. “I know Lex from way back, so he called me.”
    Walter Mellis had a pot belly, gray frizzy hair, and a mustache. He refused to wear his Public Health Service uniform