Biohazard

Both inner zones had their own air supply system. Noisy generators pumped air through an overhead latticework of exposed pipes, keeping the atmosphere inside at pressures slightly lower than normal to prevent contaminated air from seeping into Zone One. Hydrogen peroxide was sprayed into the air from nozzles in the ceiling. The distinctive smell of that particular disinfectant will stay with me forever. It wasn't just its smell that made an impression: for the dozen or so years I worked inside the labs, my black hair was bleached a dirty blond.

It was a world of invisible perils. One false step, a fumble, an unthinking gesture, could unleash a nightmare. We all knew enough to fear the hazards of the two hot zones, but we were young and felt invincible. We saw ourselves as custodians of a mystery that no one else understood, warriors or high priests of a secret cult whose rituals could not be revealed.

Late one Sunday night in March 1983, the phone rang in our apartment. I reached over to pick it up, trying not to wake Lena.

It was Nazil, one of the lab chiefs on night duty at Building 107.

"You'd better get down here," he said tersely. "We've got a problem."

I dressed quickly in the dark and hurried to the compound.

Once inside I went directly to the corridor that led to Zone Two. The corridor, called the "sanitary passageway," was a warren of small sterile rooms linked by a series of connecting doors. We entered through a sealed door with a coded lock. The door would be opened with a latch or by turning a heavy wheel, like a submarine. The codes changed once a week.

I stripped my clothes off and stuffed them into one of the lockers lining the walls. Then I walked into a second room, where a young nurse sat behind a desk. I had a nodding acquaintance with her outside the lab, having seen her walking her large dog, and was embarrassed at first to appear before her naked. But she always maintained a businesslike air as she wordlessly stuck a thermometer under my armpit and examined every inch of my body, including my teeth and gums. Any sign of bleeding from a cut or bruise, even from a nick while shaving, was grounds for barring further entry.

The buzz of the ventilators grew louder as I passed through the next rooms, picking up the separate items of my anti-plague suit: white socks and long johns, hood and cotton smock, respirator, goggles, boots, and gloves. The entire procedure was reversed on the way out, although the gloves were always the last to come off. Even with long practice, I never managed to complete the process in under fifteen minutes. That night, I was faster than usual.

Nazil was waiting for me inside Zone Two.

As we walked together down the corridors, he told me what had happened. The air pressure in the pipeline feeding one of the tularemia rooms had begun to drop precipitously. A technician had been working there an hour or so before, but she had gone home. She may have forgotten to reset the valves.

Nazil was anxious to get back to work before his shift ended. It was 11:00 P.M. He brought me to the room where the drop in pressure had been reported and hesitated at the door.

"Don't worry," I said. "Go back to your lab. I'm sure I can handle this."

Mollified, he set off down the corridor. I opened the door and took a few steps inside. It was pitch black. I reached back, groping in the darkness for the light switch. When I finally hit the switch and looked down, I found I was standing in a puddle of liquid tularemia.

It was milky brown — the highest possible concentration. The puddle at my feet was only a few centimeters deep, but there was enough tularemia on the floor to infect the entire population of the Soviet Union.

I called for Nazil, frozen in place, and heard him rustling toward me down the hall.

I was only two feet or so from the doorway, but I was trapped. If I tried to back out I would bring the disease with me into the corridor — and, potentially, into the rest of the zone.

Keeping my voice as calm as possible, I told Nazil to bring disinfectant quickly — anything he could find. I reached my gloved hand behind me and grabbed the bottle of hydrogen peroxide he handed through the partly open door.

I poured the solution over my boots. He handed me more bottles as I moved backward, tiny step by tiny step, pouring all the time.

By the time I was out of the room, three military scientists working in other parts of the zone had rushed to the scene, alerted by the commotion. The change in air pressure must have caused the culture to escape through the filter system. I closed the door and told them to disinfect everything I had touched, as well as the room itself.

I went back through the sanitary passageway, eased off my boots and protective suit, took a disinfecting shower, and submitted myself to a quick checkup by the nurse. She assured me that I was fine.