Kaede Johnson
A distant, mysterious traveler explores a “black shadow under the Milky Way.” Beneath him, a blood red road. He disembarks before an extinct volcano, bushwacks through poisonous forest, cowers while beasts march near. At last: Kitum Cave. It is magnificent. It is horrible. Crystals sprout from fossilized bone. A vibrant green guano paste cakes the floor. Further in, the traveler stares off a precipice, transfixed by a pile of carcasses.
Something alien stares back.
Our traveler is already possessed before departing this “isolated world.” Headaches precede spontaneous bruising. Bruising precedes his face slipping away from his skull. Blood clots swarm his body as the fever rages; he curdles like boiling milk. Soon his brain is suffocating, reducing him to a zombie who vomits black blood. This continues until it cannot. Then the alien jumps to nearest living host, only happy to torture more of the species that invaded its home.
This is not the plot of a tawdry Pre-Code Hollywood monster movie. It is reality, and it’s how writer Richard Preston chooses to open his 1994 book The Hot Zone, a nonfiction account of what few outbreaks of filoviridae – that is, the Ebola and Marburg viruses – the world had theretofore seen.
Make no mistake: this is first and foremost a work of horror. While framing a Frenchman’s exposure to Marburg virus as a sort of first contact with cosmic terror, Preston only includes details to cultivate dread. Those crystals growing in Kenya’s Kitum Cave? “As sharp as hypodermic needles.” The aforementioned pile of carcasses, meanwhile, refers to all the baby elephants who took a wrong step in the dark. With imagery as gratuitous as it is gloomy, Preston fulfills the book’s mandate while punishing those shameless enough to seek it, much the same way Marburg is the inevitable answer to our anonymous explorer’s raw curiosity.
Those hoping for respite when the story moves from Kitum Cave to tamer incidents in the States will be disappointed. US Army scientist Dr. Nancy Jaax is busy responding to an Ebola outbreak near Washington, DC the day her father succumbs to cancer. Her husband euthanizes monkeys while burdened with the grief of his brother’s unexplained murder. Banal days are fraught with a pet snake performing jump scares in the home office or, arguably worst of all to this American, family dinner at McDonald’s. We are constantly reminded of the tangible pain lurking in our humdrum lives. It proves the pain lurking in deepest Africa’s dank caves is that much greater.
If Preston knows when to flesh out his account, he understands the art of holding back as well. Before our first look at the eponymous hot zone – a sealed virus research lab entered only with a biohazard space suit – he suggests Dr. Nancy Jaax “did not inspect her space suit as closely as she should have” before entry. Our thoughts can only exaggerate the impending catastrophe. Back at Kitum cave, we know neither the Frenchman’s name nor his reason for emigrating to Kenya. We know only of his love for animals. It is hard not to appreciate such a pure soul – especially when the narrative glosses over his questionable relationship to neighboring women. Of course, Preston only plays this trick so it pains us to watch the Frenchman later emit “a sound like a bedsheet being torn in half… the sound of his bowels opening and venting blood from the anus.”
Ouch.
In case it wasn’t clear, this book is not for the faint of heart. Our only sustained relief comes in the form of microbiology, epidemiology, and power dynamics between government offices. Through his case studies Preston quietly covers everything from microscopic imaging to the intricacies of wild virus hunting. Though some information may be out of date, what he metes out is always appropriate, always welcome, and always designed for the uninitiated. Professors, take note: here we have an enduring lesson in training your audience to find new academic material soothing.
Released in 1994, the book does show its age – and I do not mean with the bits about the Jaaxs sleeping on a waterbed. Necessarily absent is the 2010s Ebola outbreak that killed more than ever, introduced human-to-human spread to Europe and the United States, and led then-President Obama to hug an Ebola survivor on camera (disclaimer: those hoping for a Presidential hug are not advised to contract Ebola for it). Additionally, the book’s Western focus is limiting if not narrow-minded; concerning our temperament at the time of the outbreak near Washington, DC, US Army virologist C. J. Peters concludes “North America was not ready” for “an agent that turned people into bleeders” – as if watching a family member upchuck their tongue’s skin has ever been easier in Africa.
Yet the most glaring limitation in the eyes of today’s reader is also what makes this book fascinating to revisit. Before coronavirus, learning two Army scientists hid the fact that they whiffed an Ebola variant from the Philippines directly into their nostrils might’ve left me incredulous. Now I know better than to trust anyone under threat of quarantine. While reading about the variant’s tear through research primates in Reston, Virginia, the surprising part was not private lab workers wandering through a de facto hot zone without protective gear. It was seeing them listen calmly when ordered to escape with their lives. Reporters giving up on explaining US Army activity at a primate research facility feels quaint, as does a government statement in the newspaper being met with trust. There is little in the way of public reaction to the Reston outbreak here; doubtless it wasn’t all that varied or unpredictable. Now imagine public reaction in today’s world, where the well is so poisoned some would freely drink its Ebola-laced water until their eyes bled.
The book’s closing chapters benefit most from time. “Whether the human race can actually maintain a population of five billion or more without a crash with a hot virus remains an open question,” he sagely observes. This mere pages after journeying into Kitum Cave for book research and wondering “what bat guano would taste like” as hundreds of bats circle overhead (research conducted in 2007 would confirm bats to be Marburg’s source in Kitum Cave). These chapters resemble nothing if not the moment you yell at the slasher film’s clueless character for investigating those suspicious murdery noises behind the bloody door.
Except, read in 2022 and beyond, one realizes we are all clueless characters. Eight billion of us, with many more to come in Africa, where paving the Kinshasa Highway marked “a crucial event in the emergence of AIDS.” Where Kitum Cave already has Google Reviews. We have less trust in the scientific community and our governments than ever, are strangely entranced by books like this one, and curious enough – especially as children – to spelunk where we shouldn’t.
And all the while, just “a twenty-four-hour plane flight from every city on earth,” something alien watches us fly ever closer to the Sun.
Written by Kaede Johnson
Proofread & corrected by Maria Travaglio Ramirez