the virus was sufficiently potent to begin infecting new victims who were exposed to their host. After thirty-six to forty-eight hours, the fatal brain enzyme produced by the virus was in sufficient concentration in the victims’ bodies to cause death during their next period of deep sleep.
On Tuesday, the mild cold symptoms were starting to be felt by many of the people infected during the previous day. The infected inhabitants of the Glens Falls area were already spreading the disease to their family, friends and work contacts. By the end of the day, SDC had spread to almost five hundred residents of Glens Falls.
In the New York area, the contagion was also growing rapidly. By the end of Tuesday, more than three hundred people were infected. In Boston, Washington, Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta, Miami, Denver, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Ottawa, small pockets of SDC were taking hold, with more than a hundred people infected. In Europe, the contagion had spread to London, Rome, Paris and Stockholm.
In the teaming European airports, those infected in New York mingled with passengers from around the world and the SDC virus continued its deadly journey to all continents on Earth.
On the flight to Los Angeles and in LAX after landing, the infection was passed on to travelers to Mexico, Brazil and Australia.
On Tuesday night, Elaine and her children went to bed early after an exhausting and distressing day. Elaine’s mother, Jean, had come to stay with them from Albany. Jim’s parents were arriving from Chicago the next day.
Elaine still had no idea about the cause of Jim’s death. The chief medical examiner at the hospital had reviewed his case and ordered an autopsy. The autopsy had been carried out in the afternoon, but no reason for death had been found. Further blood and body fluid tests had been ordered for the following day. At this point, Jim’s death was a single isolated case without any explanation or potential diagnosis. No one saw any cause for alarm or the need to initiate any kind of emergency isolation program. Even if they had, it would have already been too late.
Michael finally went to sleep at about ten. Elaine and Susan stayed awake in their grief and worry about the future for another hour. Finally, the stress and fatigue won the battle and they both fell asleep.
Jean looked in on them just after eleven. She did not go into their rooms, for fear of waking them, but was relieved to find all three were still and quiet. She went to bed in the spare bedroom and quickly fell asleep herself, not knowing that Michael had already stopped breathing and that Elaine and Susan were close to death. They would expire before midnight. The SDC virus had claimed three more victims.
On Wednesday morning, Jean woke up late, at about ten. She was surprised, on seeing the time on her bedside alarm clock, that the house was still quiet and Elaine and the children were not yet awake. Surprise slowly changed to worry as she lay in her bed for another half-hour, waiting for signs of life from the rest of the family. Her wait was futile.
She finally got up and quickly got dressed. She first went into Elaine’s bedroom to wake her. Elaine had been dead for several hours. In panic, Jean screamed for Susan and Michael. Her anguish multiplied tenfold when she discovered they were also dead. Finally, she called 911 and in an ominous repeat of the previous day, an ambulance was quickly dispatched.
The ambulance crew was the same one that had come to the house after Jim’s death the day before. They immediately recognized something was seriously wrong and felt the first feelings of concern for their own well-being.
They made an urgent radio call to the hospital and talked to the chief medical examiner. He directed them to transport the three latest victims to Albany General Hospital for more comprehensive post-mortem examinations. The ambulance crew put on gloves, masks and gowns in a vain attempt to avoid being infected themselves. They could not have realized that the SDC virus had already infected them twenty-four hours earlier, during their first visit to the Henderson home.
The Glens Falls medical examiner phoned the Albany General Hospital chief medical examiner with the details of the Henderson cases. He added a strong, but hardly necessary, warning to take every precaution in handling the bodies and performing the required autopsies. He also sent an urgent email to the New York State Health Department in Albany. After some further consideration, he sent a copy of the email to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta.
The Monday SDC infections that started in Glens Falls and New York through contacts with the Henderson family were now more than thirty-six hours old. The deadly enzyme was now present in lethal concentrations in the bodies of the more than two hundred next victims. The only symptoms being felt by these people at this time were the slight headache and runny nose of a mild summer cold. They continued to be safe until they went to sleep.
They carried out their normal Wednesday activities, spreading SDC to many more people in Glens Falls, Albany, New York City and other locations across the country. The contagion was now also being spread rapidly in Canada, Europe, Africa, Asia, South America and Australia. This was all due to the direct and indirect contacts made by Jim Henderson during his Monday trip to New York.
By the end of day on Wednesday, almost five thousand people on all continents except Antarctica were infected by SDC and were doomed to die. Because there had been only four deaths and because all were in one family, no newspaper, radio station, or TV station had yet picked up on what soon was to become the biggest news story ever.
On Wednesday night, this was about to change.
As night fell in Europe, the first deaths outside Glens Falls came in Italy, England, France and Sweden as the infected victims went to bed and fell asleep. Five to six hours later, as the night progressed on its east-to-west path, the first victims in eastern North America went to sleep. In less than two hours, most of them were dead. As happened with the Hendersons, most of the deaths were not discovered by family members until Thursday morning.
The isolated deaths in Europe did not cause much of a stir except among the family members and friends affected directly. In Glens Falls and New York, this was not true. By noon Thursday in Glens Falls, about a hundred deaths had been reported. In New York, more than fifty “died in their sleep” fatalities had been discovered. The numbers would grow during the day as family, friends and co-workers missed people who lived alone.
The concern and sometimes near-panic reactions by people who heard the breaking news on TV and radio was understandable, especially for those closest to the reported deaths. On Thursday afternoon, some farsighted people recognized and acted on the need to get away from where the unexplained deaths were occurring. The people of the Glens Falls area began to leave town in large numbers. Because many of them were already infected, this action caused SDC to spread more widely and more rapidly.
In New York, the reaction was somewhat less dramatic. The proportion of people in the larger population directly affected was so much smaller. The result, however, was the same. People began to leave the New York area in growing numbers, some of them taking the infection with them. Isolated deaths in Boston, Washington, Chicago and Atlanta were not yet connected to the events in New York State.
The information about the Glens Falls and New York deaths was communicated in an urgent email bulletin to both to the mayor of New York City and the governor of New York. After conferring with their respective health-administration officials and with each other in a brief conference call, they concluded, correctly, that they now had a major health emergency on their hands. A designated emergency-response task force was initiated to plan and coordinate the response for the city and the state. They also communicated with the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta and with the senators and congress representatives from New York.
An urgent call was placed to the president’s office at the White House. The president was informed about the health emergency
