I would like to thank all my friends and colleagues who are always graciously willing to field questions and offer helpful advice. Those whom I’d particularly like to acknowledge for Contagion are:

DR. CHARLES WETLI, Forensic Pathologist and Medical Examiner

DR. JACKI LEE, Forensic Pathologist and Medical Examiner

DR. MARK NEUMAN, Virologist and Virology Laboratory Director

DR. CHUCK KARPAS, Pathologist and Laboratory Supreme Commander

JOE COX, Esquire, Lawyer and Reader

FLASH WILEY, Esquire, Lawyer, Fellow Basketball Player, and Rap Consultant

JEAN REEDS, Social Worker, Critic, and Fabulous Sounding Board

June 12, 1991, dawned a near-perfect, late-spring day as the sun’s rays touched the eastern shores of the North American continent. Most of the United States, Canada, and Mexico expected clear, sunny skies. The only meteorological blips were a band of potential thunderstorms that was expected to extend from the plains into the Tennessee Valley and some showers that were forecasted to move in from the Bering Strait over the Seward Peninsula in Alaska.

In almost every way this June twelfth was like every other June twelfth, with one curious phenomenon. Three incidents occurred that were totally unrelated, yet were to cause a tragic intersection of the lives of three of the people involved.