Eph jumped up this time, angry, knowing now that his job, his vocation, was going to pull him away from his son tonight. He glanced at the caller ID, and this time the number bore an Atlanta prefix. Very bad news. Eph closed his eyes and pressed the humming phone to his forehead, clearing his mind. “Sorry, Z,” he told Zack. “Just let me see what’s up.”
He took the phone into the adjoining kitchen, where he answered it.
“Ephraim? It’s Everett Barnes.”
Dr. Everett Barnes. The director of the CDC.
Eph’s back was to Zack. He knew Zack was watching and couldn’t bear to look at him. “Yes, Everett, what is it?”
“I just got the call from Washington. Your team is en route to the airport now?”
“Ah, sir, actually—”
“You saw it on TV?”
“TV?”
He went back to the sofa, showing Zack his open hand, a plea for patience. Eph found the remote and searched it for the correct button or combination of buttons, tried a few, and the screen went blank. Zack took the remote from his hand and sullenly switched to cable.
The news channel showed an airplane parked on the tarmac. Support vehicles formed a wide, perhaps fearful, perimeter. JFK International Airport. “I think I see it, Everett.”
“Jim Kent just reached me, he’s pulling the equipment your Canary team needs. You are the front line on this, Ephraim. They’re not to make another move until you get there.”
“They who, sir?”
“The Port Authority of New York, the Transportation Security Administration. The National Transportation Safety Board and Homeland Security are winging there now.”
The Canary project was a rapid-response team of field epidemiologists organized to detect and identify incipient biological threats. Its purview included both naturally occurring threats, such as viral and rickettsial diseases found in nature, and man-made outbreaks—although most of their funding came thanks to Canary’s obvious bioterrorism applications. New York City was the nerve center, with smaller, university-hospital-based satellite Canaries up and running in Miami, Los Angeles, Denver, and Chicago.
The program drew its name from the old coal miner’s trick of bringing a caged canary underground as a crude yet efficient biological early warning system. The bright yellow bird’s highly sensitive metabolism detected methane and carbon monoxide gas traces before they reached toxic or even explosive levels, causing the normally chirpy creature to fall silent and sway on its perch.
In this modern age, every human being had the potential to be that sentinel canary. Eph’s team’s job was to isolate them once they stopped singing, treat the infected, and contain the spread.
Eph said, “What is it, Everett? Did somebody die on the plane?”
The director said, “They’re all dead, Ephraim. Every last one.”
Kelton Street, Woodside, Queens
KELLY GOODWEATHER sat at the small table across from Matt Sayles, her live-in partner (“boyfriend” sounded too young; “significant other” sounded too old). They were sharing a homemade pizza made with pesto sauce, sun-dried tomatoes, and goat cheese, with a few curls of prosciutto thrown in for flair, as well as an eleven-dollar bottle of year-old merlot. The kitchen television was tuned to NY1 because Matt wanted the news. As far as Kelly was concerned, twenty-four-hour news channels were her enemy.