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plague had been treatable with a very high success rate with antibiotics for over a half century , the amount of funding that went into bubonic research was 0.0092 percent of the total CDC budget. The Black Death was a thing of the past — accounting for less than a thousand cases and only a handful of deaths per year. Compared to Malaria with its 225 million people infected each year? The plague’s research had been relegated to this crumbling facility.
    Only now it looked as though the Black Death had just been taking a break.
    Guess the joke was on the naysayers. Unfortunately , all those naysayers were arriving on Plum Island in droves . It was one of those awkward mountain - com ing- to - Mohammed moments. They couldn’t move Amanda’s zoonotic research to the mainland without a literal act of Congress. The pathogens she studied were some of the most lethal in the world. Therefore , al l the CDC brass had to come to the island . And not just the CDC , either . Beyond their normal complement of Homeland Security staff , Plum Island now hosted agents from nearly every U . S . law enforcement agency.
    Which was fine and all, but seriously , w hy did they need ATF agents? This was the plague . Nevertheless , that forced a conference room meant to hold thirty to somehow cram in over seventy people.
    At least Amanda was already seated next to her assistant, Jennifer Neffer , rather than coming in late , trying to find a place , like the stragglers who entered now . Plus , her grad student was somehow able to transmute her anxiety into a type of excitement . Her hands were shaking, but not from fear , like Amanda’s .
    This was her very first agency -wide briefing , and the only thing she hoped for was to be passed over . Just don’t call on me , she chanted in her mind, making sure that the fates had plenty of warning . But how could she not be called on ? She was the only one in the room whose sole research subject was the plague and since well, the Black Death was making a comeback , s he was going to get tapped — no doubt about it .
    Before Amanda could formulate a plan to divert any questions, Dr. Art Henderson, the recent ly appointed head of Plum Island’s languishing facility , rushed into the room , with three assistants hot on his heels . What should have been a nice pre-retirement position had become a lightning - rod post .
    “Hello, all,” the silver-haired Southern gentleman said as he set a stack of papers on the end of the table with a thud .
    Was it the sudden noise , or his stature , that made Amanda cringe ? Sure , she had seen her boss around the building over the last few days, but never this close .
    E very time she had almost crossed paths with him, she had ducked into someone’s office, the bathroom, or even just turned around and gone back the way she came . Amanda knew her intimidation was silly . He wasn’t that tall . Maybe six feet three inches, but he towered over her . He wasn’t that fat . Well, for a physician , he was way too overweight . It was even rumored that he snuck out onto the roof and smoked a few cigarettes . Quite the scandal .
    But it wasn’t even that . No, every time she was about to pass him, she knew he’d look down and say, “Who is this uneducated imp ? Get her from my sight.”
    Or something akin to that .
    He had the look of a man who could figure out in an instant that Amanda was out of her depth . So what if she carried a 4.25 grade point average throughout college ? Who cared that she had gotten into med school at the age of twenty ? Who cared that she finished a doctoral program at the same time ? Who cared that her doctoral thesis on atypical disease transmission routes had gotten her a keynote speaker position at the AMA pathogens conference ?
    That was research . That was all accomplished within the incredibly safe confines of college campuses . This was the real world . The big, fat, overwhelming real world.
    Amanda took a deep breath . This was all