The morgue, which was in a separate building across the parking lot, was full to capacity. The people could see the orderlies outside it, wondering what to do with the bodies that kept coming. There was a blue tarp covering a mound outside the entrance, about six feet high, and it was obvious the sheet was covering corpses.

“What are they doing over there?” Sofia said.

The man next to her wore a green orderly uniform.

“They’re at capacity,” he said.

“Tell them to start the furnace. They can’t just keep piling up the bodies like that.”

“It’s cold enough,” he said. “They won’t turn.”

Sofia looked daggers at him and he turned and hurried toward the morgue.

Two large trucks drove by and Sofia was overwhelmed by the wave of chlorine that sprayed out of them. She fell into a fit of coughing and Olga had to help her.

“They’re using too much,” she said when she caught her breath.

They’d been hosing down the streets with chlorine all day and it was getting to the point where people’s eyes were starting to sting.

Olga nodded. Both women had done everything they could to get the military to break the quarantine, they’d called health officials and military commanders, Sofia had called the institute to see if Vasily could do anything, they’d even called local news media. No one could do anything. The order to contain the hospital had come directly from Moscow. Short of a stampede, there was no way the guards were going to stand aside. And a stampede was something that was looking increasingly likely.

The soldiers, from inside their hazmat suits, were getting as antsy as the people. They’d been ordered to point their guns at their own people, and had even less idea of what was going on than the people inside the hospital.

“Let us out,” a man in overalls shouted at the guards.

Inside his suit, the soldier couldn’t speak back.

The man in overalls picked up a stone, it was about the size of an egg, and flung it at the soldiers. It hit one of the vehicles parked behind them and bounced off the windshield, leaving a large crack.

Some other men cheered him on.

“Let us out,” he shouted again, and this time his demand was backed by more voices.

“There’s going to be a massacre,” Sofia said. “We have to get these people back inside.”

She pushed her way to the front of the crowd and grabbed the man in overalls.

“Hey,” she said. “You’ve got to calm down.”

“Calm down?” he said. “They’ve got machine guns pointed at us.”

“Yeah, and if you keep throwing rocks, they’re going to use them.”

Another wave of chlorine passed over them and everyone started coughing. Sophia was on her knees, gasping for breath, and the man in overalls bent down to help her.