The Hot Zone

by Richard Preston

Then comes a sound like a bedsheet being torn in half, which is the sound of his bowels opening and venting blood from the anus.

“Mom! Mom!” he cried excitedly. His voice sounded like Jason’s. “What?” Nancy said. Then she realized it was the parrot.

he understood her better than anyone else on earth.

Ebola does in ten days what it takes AIDS ten years to accomplish.

At that moment, to hold Ebola virus in her hands was what she wanted more than anything else in the world.

This suggests that Ebola is an ancient kind of life, perhaps nearly as old as the earth itself.

A hundred million crystallized polio viruses could cover the period at the end of this sentence.

“I’M OUTTA HERE, MAN. CAN YOU FINISH?”

There was another possible reason why the Ebola Sudan virus vanished. It was exceedingly hot. It killed people so fast that they didn’t have much time to infect other people before they died.

they proceeded from shot to shot without rinsing the needle, moving from arm to arm, mixing blood with blood.