Unnatural Exposure (Kay Scarpetta, #8)

by Patricia Cornwell

New viruses were discovered all the time, and I often wondered if they would one day rule, at last winning a war with us that began with time. For a while, I sat in the kitchen listening to the clock ticktock while the light changed beyond the window as the day fled. I was in the throes of a full-blown anxiety attack when Crockett’s peculiar voice suddenly hailed me from outside. “Ma’am? Ma’am?” When I went to the porch and looked out the door, I saw on the top step a small brown

“You know, monkeypox has been worrying me for years,” he said. “We survey the hell out of West Africa, from Zaire to Sierra Leone, where cases have occurred, along with whitepox. But so far, no variola virus has turned up. My fear, though, is that one of these days, some poxvirus in the animal kingdom is going to figure out a way to infect people.”