Deadly Strain (Biological Response Team) Read Online Free Page A

to give a more detailed report to...” She glanced at Leonard.
    “Sergeant Bart, communications,” he said with a chin gesture in the right direction.
    She picked where Leonard left off. “While I begin my assessment.”
    The soldier saluted and walked toward Bart.
    “I need all the homes checked for possible survivors,” Grace said to Leonard. “Who do you—?”
    “Rasker,” Leonard barked. “Do a perimeter check. Williams, Lee, start checking the rest of the village. Make sure the patrol didn’t miss anyone.” He looked at her as they headed off. “Anything else, Doc?”
    “No, you’ve got everything covered.”
    With a nod to Sharp, who hovered behind her, she approached the first house. Grace pulled out a small digital video recorder, sucked in a deep breath and prepared herself to see whatever awful thing was waiting for them.
    She walked inside. Sharp followed.
    The house was small. A hearth dominated the middle of the room, probably so it could heat the space evenly. The bodies were huddled together against the far wall under blankets as if they’d just gone to sleep.
    Sharp shone his flashlight on their faces. Blood trails ran down from their noses, eyes, mouths and ears. Everyone had bloody lesions on their exposed skin. The victims’ eyes were all open and varying expressions of agony had been frozen on their faces.
    Whatever caused their deaths involved pain and suffering.
    This kind of kill rate narrowed the field of possible agents to a viral hemorrhagic fever caused by something like the Marburg or Ebola viruses, another virus that attacked the liver or even anthrax. The problem was, none of them killed in just a few hours. An influenza virus like SARS or MERS could kill quickly, but the timeline was still too short and the symptoms were off.
    What the hell was this?
    She shunted shock, horror and fear into a locked box deep in her head. “Are these all the occupants of this house?” she asked Sharp. “If someone died before the others, would they have moved the body somewhere else?”
    “Maybe.” He turned around and said to someone, “Check the rest of the house and outside for more bodies or recent graves.”
    She took a closer look at the victims. Three adults and three children.
    The lesions on the faces of the children looked no different from the ones on the adults. That might mean the disease progressed the same way, regardless of age.
    She reexamined the position of the children, between the adults, wrapped tightly head to toe in blankets. The adults were clearly positioned to protect the children and keep them warm, indicating that they likely got sick at the same time as the adults.
    Grace went back to the hearth and lifted the lid on a small pot sitting on top. It was filled with something that looked like water. She poured some out into a bowl sitting in a stack on the floor close by. Tea?
    No other recent source of food was immediately evident.
    Was this the source of the agent that killed them?
    From the condition of the bodies—no burns, evidence of seizures or skin discoloration—she could cross off chemical weapons.
    Was the agent airborne or did the victims have to have direct contact with infected fluids or tissue?
    So many questions and, so far, no answers.
    “I want to look in the other homes.”
    “Is it me or does everyone look the same?” Sharp asked.
    He had a good eye for details. “It’s not just you.”
    They left the first house and entered another and another. The same horror greeted them in each home: entire families, young and old, men and women, all of them dead. All of them with bleeding eyes, noses, mouths and ears. All of them with bloody lesions.
    It appeared that everyone in the village got sick at the same time. The chances of that happening by accident were nonexistent.
    Water, food, air or more than one?
    Grace and Sharp went through a half-dozen homes before she decided she’d seen enough. She needed to collect samples and determine what