The Hot Zone: Part 2, Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis

Preston describes the city of Reston, a wealthy suburb about 10 miles to the west of Washington, DC. It is an idyllic place with prosperous businesses and lovely houses. Near the main street in town, Leesburg Pike, is a “small office park” across the street from a McDonald’s. In 1989 this building is occupied by a company called Hazleton Research Products, a division of Corning, Inc. This unit deals with importing and selling lab monkeys, and is also known as the Reston Primate Quarantine Unit.

The international monkey trade, Preston explains, brings 16,000 wild monkeys a year to the US. Before they are shipped anywhere, they must be held in quarantine for a month at a secure facility such as the Reston monkey house.

We next meet Dan Dalgard, the consulting veterinarian at the Reston Primary Quarantine Unit. Dalgard is a respected physician with a specialty in “primate husbandry.” In October 1989, a shipment of one hundred wild monkeys comes in to Reston from the Philippines. They have been jammed into cages on a boat and taken to Amsterdam, and from there they have been flown to New York City, and driven down to the Reston monkey house. The monkeys are crab-eaters native to Southeast Asia, and are called long-tailed macaques. Strong creatures with sharp canines and human-like hands, they tend to be mistrustful of humans. Preston describes their life in the wild, from their ability to catch crabs in the river to their strict hierarchy, dominated by an aggressive alpha male. The monkeys are placed in the twelve holding rooms (designated alphabetically from A-L) within the monkey house. When they arrive in October, two are already dead. This is not unusual, but in the next three weeks, more of the monkeys begin to die.

That same October, the Jaax family experiences a tragedy: Jerry’s brother, a businessman from Kansas named John Jaax, is mysteriously and violently murdered. A homicide officer named Reed Buente takes the case, but is unable to solve it, although the family suspects John’s business partner John Weaver, with whom he had a difficult relationship. His brother’s death throws Jerry into a deep depression. He becomes obsessed with solving the murder, and even fantasizes about killing John Weaver himself.

Preston introduces Bill Volt, the Reston monkey house manager. On October 1st he calls Dan Dalgard to tell him that an unusual amount of monkeys are dying—twenty-nine out of a hundred monkeys, particularly in Room F. At the same time, the heating system in the monkey house is refusing to turn off, meaning that the house itself is sweltering. Volt speculates that the heat may be killing the monkeys. Dalgard arrives at the monkey house the following week. The men put on surgical masks and enter Room F, where Dalgard observes that one of the monkeys appears dazed and ill. Donning thick leather gloves and pinning down the monkey, Dalgrard feels that it has a fever, and sees that it has a runny nose. Finding that another monkey appears sick as well, he theorizes that it might be the heating system. The next morning, Volt finds both of the monkeys dead, and decides to dissect them. Disturbed by the autopsy, he calls Dalgard over. The two men note the monkeys’ enlarged spleens, and find blood in their intestines.

Another shipment of monkeys arrives the same day, and Bill Volt places them in Room H. Dan Dalgard, meanwhile, becomes worried that the monkeys have a disease called simian hemorrhagic fever, which is lethal to monkeys but harmless to humans. On November 10th he decides to check on the monkeys, and finds three more dead in Room F. He autopsies them immediately afterwards. Dalgard then begins to keep a diary, where he describes the animals’ dry, swollen spleen, enlarged kidneys, hemorrhages, and lethargy. As far as Dalgard can tell, the monkeys simply became lethargic, stopped eating, and died. What he does not realize is that the hard, enlarged spleen was in fact full of a giant blood clot. On November 12th, Dan Dalgard returns to the monkey house and finds three more monkeys dead. He carries one of them, a specimen named O53, up to the autopsy room. He removes a large piece of spleen and collects mucus from the monkey’s throat as samples.