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“Are you getting all this, Lamont?” Dr. DaSilva asks. Her own voice is filled with anxiety.

“Yes, I’m getting it,” I say.

“The material I’ve just sent you will clarify a great deal,” she says. Then she adds, “Prepare yourself for the descriptions of the symptoms. The effects of this mutated virus are horrible beyond anything we’ve seen.”

We wind down our conversation. Before I accuse Townsend, before I download the info from Dr. DaSilva, before anything else, I must share this awful news with my team.

The fifteen-minute wait is up.

The small, smart, brave group assembles in front of me. I’m about to start talking when I realize that not everyone is present.

“Where’s Maddy?” I ask. “Where’s Burbank?”

Margo speaks first. “Maddy called. Belinda’s apartment was broken into. The girl doesn’t want to intrude on our family anymore, so Maddy’s taking her to a hotel for the night.”

“And Burbank is lying down,” Hawkeye supplies.

“Lying down?” I repeat, shocked that my teammate would take a nap with so much at stake.

“Yes,” Margo says, clearly worried. “He said he has a really terrible sore throat.”

CHAPTER 101

HOW STUPID OF me. How ridiculously, blindly stupid of me. When we arrived back in New York, I had actually convinced myself that our extraordinary amount of bad luck had come to an end. How much horror could the world bring down upon us?

As you have most likely realized… I was wrong. Horribly wrong.

Burbank’s sore throat only worsens, giving us no doubt that Newbola Strong is present among us, bringing with it exceptional pain and suffering. It takes only thirty minutes for the horrid disease to explode and infect every person in the house.

Large red and yellow pus-filled sores begin to spread across our necks, backs, and legs. Elbows and knees seem particularly vulnerable. It is in those vital joints that Newbola Strong not only disfigures the skin but penetrates to the bones themselves, causing excruciating pain.

I am not spared. Along with the same throbbing painand mutilated skin that are cursing my family and friends, I am flushed with an alarmingly high fever and a headache so severe that I think I can hear the pulsing of the veins that surround my brain.

I am trying to figure out what, if anything, I can do to help all of us.

Then, unexpectedly, Grandma Jessica—her own voice raspy with pain—announces that Dr. DaSilva is calling on the video screen.

Sure enough, Dr. DaSilva looks calmly—even happily—out at me. It’s understandable that she is calm. She does not yet know that the new plague has exploded in my specific world.

“Did you get the documentation and analysis I sent you, Lamont? I’m anxious to hear your thoughts.”

I sputter and stammer.

“Is something wrong on your end?” she asks. “I’m having trouble hearing you.”

“Anna, it’s here!” I say. “It’s in my home! It’s inside my family and my friends!”

The woman on the screen looks confused.

“What do you mean?” she asks.

I realize that my voice is soft and weak. I try again.

“Newbola Strong. The new strain. We all have it,” I say, my throat on fire. My lips and tongue are quivering.

“I warned you that it was spreading,” Dr. DaSilva says. But there is no “I told you so” tone to her voice. She is clearly as alarmed as I am.

“Hold on a moment,” she says.