Page 9 of Deadly Strain

Rasker hadn’t been coming from the village, but toward it. “Someone leaving or returning?” she asked him when he got close enough.

He shook his head. “Not people.”

Not people?She’d thought she couldn’t get any more afraid of whatever this was.

She was wrong.

Any disease affecting animals as well as people, especially bacteria or viruses, ran a much higher risk of becoming a pandemic. A worldwide killer.

“Show me.”

Chapter Three

Rasker led her pastthe houses and into a partially fenced pasture. Over a small rise was a carcass. A cow, bloated to a grotesque size. A quick examination revealed none of the lesions evident on the human bodies.

“There are thirty of them,” Rasker said.

“Thirty?” She looked out over the field. Dead cows, their distended legs sticking out at unnatural angles, seemed to be everywhere.

An ice-cold rock settled in the pit of her stomach. “I don’t suppose you know when the cows started dying?”

“We’ll have to check to see if it was reported by the last patrol through here,” Sharp said, his voice so calm she knew he was anything but.

“You do that.” Her whole body shook. If the same disease had killed the cows and the people here, it would be her worse nightmare come to life. “You do that.”

* * *

He stared at Grace’sface for a moment. She looked like she was about to pass out. “What’s special about cows?”

“Any disease capable of jumping from one species of animal to another is dangerous. Rabies, malaria, and bird flu are good examples. If the animal is a common one, the bug can be easily transmitted to people. Cows, aside from mad cow disease, are not common vectors, but they’re everywhere. They also represent a significant cost to buy and own, so people will hesitate to destroy them.”

“Yeah, I remember the mad cow scare. Maybe people won’t be so slow this time.”

A grimace came and went on her face, telling him she wasn’t just worried, she was terrified. He’d only seen that look on her face once before, the night he found Colonel Marshall talking to her outside of her quarters.

“Mad cow is a prion disease you can only get if you eat infected brain and nervous tissue,” she told him. “It can take weeks for infected persons to show symptoms. This disease appears much more contagious. It kills in hours. There’s no comparison. This agent has the potential to become an outbreak.”

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