It was three tenths of a mile from the main building to the CDC’s recently constructed Antibiotic Resistance Unit. Led by Heidi Johnson, the small group trooped there through a muggy, seventy-five-degree morning. The ARU, an expansive, single-story blockhouse-like rectangle, was constructed of gray cinder block. Dense low shrubbery surrounded it, but there was little in the way of artistic landscaping. Lou wondered if the designer had been intimidated by the notion of the germs the building was to contain or had simply been instructed not to make the place too inviting.

As if validating his suspicions, security protocols commenced upon entry. An armed guard, young and fit and not the least bit engaging, came out from behind a small, unadorned desk in an equally uncluttered lobby. He took IDs and registered fingerprints using a biometric scanner. Moments later, another armed guard appeared from behind a locked steel door, this one secured by a keypad entry system. Escorted by the second guard, Lou followed the others into a long, windowless corridor, with unframed, foot-square photos lining the wall on each side—unlabeled, unappealing, colored microscopic and electron microscopic images of germs, mostly bacteria.

The air, possibly filtered through some sort of recirculation system, tasted stale. Passing in front of a glass interior door, Lou spied a trio of scientists dressed in white knee-length lab coats at the far end of a hallway to their right. He glimpsed them just before they vanished through a side door into what might have been yet another corridor … or a stairway.

Creepy.

The mystery of what lay beyond that passage tugged at Lou’s curiosity and had him suspecting that there was more to the facility belowground than above. The labs housed germs that were resistant to treatment. The battles that must be raging within those unappealing walls were intriguing. How many lethal forms of microscopic life were being cultured and studied? Could the scientists he had seen be working on something other than antibiotic resistance—weapons of mass destruction, perhaps? He kept pace with the others but let his imagination run on high.

Following a maze of shorter corridors, the group passed through an open doorway and entered into a space with no scientific equipment inside—a conference room and library, with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Tomes and bound periodicals, neatly arranged and labeled, occupied the entirety of two walls, and there were half a dozen bridge chairs set in front of a large flat-screen television positioned at the front of the room.