The Hot Zone: Part 3, Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis

At 4:30AM on Friday, December 1st, Jerry Jaax gets up and puts on civilian clothes in order to head to the Institute. Gene Johnson is already there with his gear from Kitum Cave: spacesuits, rubber gloves, needles, dissection tools, flashlights, biohazard bags, and handheld sprayers to decontaminate spacesuits. Meanwhile, the Washington Post has run a story about the Reston monkey house, stating that Ebola has been found in Virginia, and quoting C. J. Peters, who asserts that there’s no reason for panic. The article does not state that a vast military biohazard operation is about to take place “in a suburb of Washington,” a fact that would surely cause widespread panic. Peters hopes that his comments have created an appearance of calm and control, but acknowledges that a large part of the operation is going to be media control.

C.J. Peters privately acknowledges that he doesn’t know whether or not the operation is safe. He thinks about the 500 monkeys within the building, knowing that it is possible that more and more will fall ill very shortly.

After arriving at the Institute at 5 AM, C. J. gives the order to move out at 6:30 AM. A line of unmarked cars is followed by an also-unmarked Level 4 biocontainment ambulance, which contains an Army medical-evacuation team, and a biocontainment pod—called a bubble stretcher—designed to get someone who has been attacked by a monkey from the building to the Slammer. Because of traffic, it takes two hours to reach the monkey house. As the team begins to unload, they hear the shouts of children at a nearby day-care center. Jerry Jaax and Gene Johnson decide to have their team put spacesuits on inside the building so that television crews can’t film them. Jerry resolves to go in first, accompanied by Mark Haines, a veterinarian and former Green Beret. The men put on surgical scrub suits and enter the storage room, where an ambulance team led by Captain Elizabeth Hill helps them put on their orange Racal spacesuits. Over these they tape gloves and bright yellow rubber boots. Jerry Jaax and Mark Haines enter the corridor of the monkey house and realize that they have forgotten to bring flashlights. Still, they decide to continue going forward, making their way to the far end of the corridor and the monkey rooms beyond.

Meanwhile Nancy wakes her children at 7:30 AM and reminds them that she and Jerry will be working late. She watches as they walk to school and remembers being told that the kind of work she is about to do was not appropriate for a “married female.” When she arrives at the preparation room, it is crowded and confused. Nancy trains the soldiers as they suit up, reminding them to always check their spacesuits for rips, and to put extra tape on their ankles to repair rips and tears in order to keep outside air out of their suits. She also warns them of the danger of monkey bites, and the risk of potentially being exposed to Ebola. Last, she reminds them to rinse the blood off of their gloves frequently in order to spot holes or tears. Preston notes that these types of suits have a battery life of six hours—after that, the person inside won’t be able to breathe.

Jerry Jaax and Mark Haines enter the hot zone, hearing monkeys screaming as they do so. The temperature in the building is above ninety degrees. As they continue walking, Jerry sees two unauthorized Hazleton employees who have entered the monkey rooms through a back way—they are wearing respirators, but no other type of gear. The workers are shocked by the soldiers in spacesuits, and Jerry at last asks them which way to Room H. Afterwards, the two report to Dan Dalgard, who shows up in Room H wearing a respirator. Jerry is shocked that Dalgard is not protected, while Dalgard is unhappy about the potential news panic that the spacesuits may cause. He shows them the room, and the monkeys panic at the sight of the spacesuits. Jerry decides to look at all the monkeys. He and Captain Haines go from room to room, finding other monkeys that appear ill. Jaax and Haines both sense that something’s wrong—“[s]omething lived here other than monkeys and people.”

Nancy gets into a scrub suit, puts on her spacesuit, gathers boxes of syringes, and goes into the building with Captain Steven Denny. They head into Room H where Jerry is with his team. Dan Dalgard, meanwhile, picks four monkeys that look the sickest and gives them injections to sedate them and then stop their hearts. More and more people come in, and the room becomes increasingly crowded and confused. Nancy, meanwhile, sees that Sergeant Curtis Klages has a rip on his suit, which she tapes for him. She then removes the dead monkeys from their cages, double bags them, sprays Clorox bleach on both bags, and loads them into biohazard containers, which she sprays as well. Last she loads these containers into another plastic bag, which she also sprays. Finally she exits, and is sprayed with bleach for five minutes in the airlock. The support team then takes off her suit, and, soaked with bleach and freezing cold, Nancy changes back into her civilian clothes. As she does so, the containers are loaded into a refrigerator van. Nancy rides the van back to Fort Detrick to dissect the monkeys.

After Nancy has left, Jerry counts sixty-five more monkeys in the room. He uses a special device that Gene Johnson brought back from Africa to inject them: a pole with a socket on the end for a syringe. It is also necessary to hold the monkeys down as the needle comes towards them, and for that the soldiers use a mop handle with a soft pad at the end. Captain Mark Hanes immobilizes the monkeys with this tool, while Jerry injects their thighs with ketamine and general anesthetic. After this, Jerry gives them a shot of a sedative. Last, the team takes blood samples from the monkeys and then injects them with a lethal drug called T-61. After the monkeys die, Captain Steven Denny dissects them, taking samples of their livers and spleens, and their remains are put into biohazard containers. During this process, Dan Dalgard heads to his office, where he stays for the rest of the day.

The operation in Room H is finished by late afternoon. As parents pick their children up from the nearby daycare, the team exits the hot zone in pairs, looking pale and weak. Preston notes that the wind is strong and cold, and that Jarvis Purdy is resting comfortably not too far away.

At USAMRIID, Nancy Jaax and Ron Trotter stay up till 1 AM dissecting monkeys. This time, the monkeys clearly have Ebola. Their guts are filled with lesions, their intestines are brimming with blood, and they show signs of massive blood clots. Some of the monkeys are so liquefied that they’ve “become essentially a heap of mush and bones in a skin bag, mixed with huge amounts of amplified virus.”

On Monday, December 4th, Dan Dalgard drives to the monkey house and notices that one of the monkey caretakers is outside in a mask and a jumpsuit. Furious, he goes over to tell the man, named Milton Frantig, to get back inside. Suddenly Frantig begins vomiting uncontrollably.