Treatment Protocols for Dragonpox Virus-Infected Persons

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. Or rather, there wasn't always Dragonpox in The Valley. In fact, there wasn’t much of anything in this small valley in the American South. Located in rural Alabama, and comprising a total of less than 3000 acres, the valley—or The Valley, in CDC and governmental circles—was the best-kept secret in the fight against the next zoonotic pandemic disaster.

We left the newly-erected DPP (DragonPox Protectorate) Bio-Containment facility in sealed shuttle buses, already fully suited-up. I was excited to be allowed into The Valley at last. But I won't lie. I was also so scared I felt like I had to pee again already, and I'd just gone back into the dressing room after going through decontamination. I'd come this far, however, and I wasn't going to turn back now. This was the biggest story of my career.

As the shuttle rolled down the winding road into The Valley, I thought about how I was going to formulate this piece. I was an investigative journalist, true. But my story might end up veering into a more personal piece, an opinion piece. I had done the research and I had the facts down. I just needed to see how this visit played out, on the ground.

The facts surrounding the start of the Dragonpox epidemic are these:

Everyone from infectious disease researchers to containment experts had been warning of 21st-century humanity’s increasing susceptibility to zoonotic infections, meaning those which are transferred from animals to humans. Throughout human history, diseases resulting from contact with, or consumption of, infected animals, have resulted in many millions of infections and deaths. The COVID-19 pandemic which spread across the world beginning in 2020 was originally believed to come from the sale of mutated-coronavirus-infected animals in a Wuhan, China “wet market,” although that theory has proven inconclusive. The Monkeypox epidemic which followed COVID-19 was originally detected in 1958, in colonies of monkeys kept for research, and spread to the human population in 1970. The Avian influenza virus, or “Bird Flu,” A(H5N1), first emerged in 1996 on Asian poultry farms, when infected birds spread the disease to farm workers. And there were many other notable zoonotic pandemics throughout history (see graphic).

With the harsh lessons of the COVID-19 Pandemic in mind—and determined not to repeat the mistakes of the past—the current administration tasked the NIH and the CDC with formulating a plan for containing the spread of the Dragonpox virus, treating the infected, and providing a secure location where those who do not respond to treatment may live out their lives in a safe environment.

And we were about to be the first civilians allowed to tour The Valley and its facilities, meet selected residents, and report back to our various news outlets.

In our bulky white haxmat suits I could hardly tell whether the other reporters on the shuttle were male, female, or other, but when the one across the aisle from me spoke, the voice sounded female, if a bit husky.

"Are you as jittery as I am?" she asked with a small laugh. She reached her double-gloved hand out to shake. "Melissa Cooper, CNBC."

I took the hand briefly, then let it drop. "Alexandra Buonovicchi," I said in response. "TG1 Edizione Straordinaria."

"What are you doing here in America?" she asked. "Sightseeing?"

Behind the plexi faceshield I grimaced.

I wish!

"I am American, by birth," I said. "My husband is...was Italian. I've lived in Rome since we were married in 2019. And I'm here for the same reason as you," I said. "Covering the news."

"So, are you?"

"Am I what?" I replayed this brief conversation in my head. "Oh. Jittery? Yes, I suppose so."

I turned to look out the window at the now-overgrown fields around us. A couple of areas looked like they'd been burned off for planting, but from the briefing I knew that wasn't the case.

It was dragon-flaming damage.

This had been a complicated operation from the very beginning, and I had to give the US government kudos for handling it so quickly. Was it any wonder—

The first step once Dracopoxvirus has been isolated and identified, had been to secure a suitable location to contain the infected. That was completed in early 2025 with the eminent domain seizure of The Valley. Once existing residents were relocated, construction teams were deployed by the Army Corps of Engineers to build hospital and treatment facilities, as well as apartments for residents undergoing treatment. All medical and research facilities were required to be at Bio-Safety Level 4 (BSL4), while infected residents’ domiciles were built to specifications for BSL3. All staff residential facilities and domiciles were required to meet the BSL2 standards, on paper at least. But when the higher ups at the NIH and CDC got wind of the lower—and cheaper to construct—rating, they refused to move forward until the bio-safety standards were raised to BSL3 across the board.

An Act of Congress was passed to require the removal from anywhere in the fifty United States, by force if necessary, any person testing positive for the Dragonpox virus, and their immediate removal to The Valley. Everyone either living in or visiting the US was required to undergo weekly testing, or risk being removed to The Valley for enforced quarantine.

The development team in charge of designing the facilities here had put in place measures to ensure the physical and mental health of those in residence. There was a large gym and a Olympic-size swimming pool, and even a small golf course. Group activities were required in the early stages of the disease, while things still remained somewhat normal for the residents living here, to ensure mental stability. A state-of-the-art computer lab also made video calls with family and friends possible, so that victims of the Dragonpox virus didn't feel isolated and become depressed.

Even so, in the early days the suicide rate was high. The scientists had solved that problem by adding antidepressants to the food, although that was privileged information. I had a source inside The Valley, but that bit of information would never find its way into my story.

I was actually writing a three-part series for my news program, which would feature the "talent" superimposed over still photo backgrounds and government-sanctioned video. The station wouldn't risk the lives of their bright and shining faces by sending them into a hazardous situation like this. It was just too dangerous. So I was handling the investigation.

I realized I was trying to scratch my inner arm through my suit and immediately stopped. I didn't want anyone to spot this nervous tic I'd developed. And I certainly didn't want to damage my suit and get sent back without being allowed to complete the tour.

When the shuttle bus rolled up in front of the glass-front CDC hospital, we were herded into a tent set up outside the building. There we were subjected to reinspection, to make sure there were no rips in our hazmat suits. Then we were escorted inside to begin the tour.

I must say that my first sight of the interior of the facility reminded me very much of the drug and alcohol treatment center I'd visited in Bern, Switzerland, a few years earlier. There was one notable difference, however. Patient areas were behind glass, and staff only entered those areas fully-suited and with portable oxygen tanks, larger than the ones we had built into our suits, for the longer periods spent in close contact with the infected.

We were led into the recreational area and lined up along a glass wall, behind which residents were engaged in a number of activities. There was an art class going on, with people working on half-finished paintings propped up on easels. A man and a woman were sitting near an outside window with a garden view, conversing. Others played games: board games and card games. Several were working on laptops, or perhaps they were videochatting with someone. Most of them just looked like ordinary people.

The man in the hazmat suit beside me suddenly gasped loudly, planting a hand on the glass and leaning forward. "Is that—"

One of the people in charge of our tour group stepped forward. Through her face shield I recognized one of the military doctors. "Hands off the glass, please," she said. "Yes," she went on. "That is a patient in the early stages of infection. Benny there is listed at Stage 2."

The doctor tapped on the glass, capturing the attention of the man in question. He grinned, then rose from the table where he'd been working a jigsaw puzzle and stepped up to the other side of the glass wall. He tilted his head back to expose his throat, pulling the collar of his polo shirt to one side to allow us visitors a better view.

Several gasps resounded among our tour group, muffled as they were by the hazmat suits we wore. There, clearly visible along one side of the man's neck from his ear (which was now flattened against his head) across his collarbone and down beneath his shirt, was a patch of brilliantly-colored scales, cobalt and lavender shimmering metallically beneath the florescent lighting. Behind his neck we could see just a glimpse of a scaled ruff emerging from beneath his collar. It was startling to see this transformation, to say the least.

We all remember the first images of the infected which spread across the media in the early days of the epidemic. Those images were seared in our minds. The first tiny scales spreading in patches across peoples' skin. At first they thought it was something like eczema, until the other changes began. Limbs shortening. Spines stretching. Tails growing. Neck fringes erupting.

And the wings...

Some YouTuber infected with Dracopoxvirus had posted daily videos of the changes to his body over a four-month period. Most shocking was when his wings started grow, first appearing as a slight swelling of his shoulderblades, which grew to the size of tennis balls, then softballs, then—

The last live video he posted was nearly twelve hours long. The guy had been writhing on his bed in agony as his freshly-scaled back tore open and the wings emerged like a butterfly from a crysalis. His screams haunted my sleep for months afterward. Until...

Anyway, the live stream ended when CDC troops in hazmat suits broke down the door of his apartment and rushed in, wrapping him up in steel-mesh nets and carting him off.

Rumor has it he was one of the first residents of The Valley, although after his transformation was completed he couldn't give his name or any other personal information. No vocal chords. The only they knew about him was his handle on the YouTube channel. A fake name, of course.

The guy behind the window didn't seem phased by his transformation. In fact, from the gleam in his eye it looked like he was enjoying this...viewing. I've heard that for some people, especially for the earlier infectees, many of whom were living in homeless encampments (hotbeds of infection, for all major diseases), life as a dragon was a huge step up.

A warm bed. All you could eat. Better than prison, even, when you could roar and claw and—

Anyway...

As the guy grinning behind the window turned away, I could see definite protusions beneath his shirt, where his wings were starting to develop. Shuddering, I turned to follow the doctor into the next area on our tour.

We were led down a long corridor into the bowels of the building. As we walked, I found myself next to the woman from the shuttle bus, the one from CNBC.

She nodded back towards the observation window we'd just left. "Scary, huh? I remember the first time I saw someone with the full-blown infection. There was a woman in Central Park, a drummer. She used to busk on the sidewalk near Strawberry Fields. By the time they picked her up both her arms were fully-scaled, and you could tell by the way she moved that her bones were transforming. One day some kids were harrassing her and she let out this roar, scared all the birds out of the trees for blocks in either direction. The containment unit finally showed up and took her into custody. This was before anyone knew how contagious Dracopoxvirus was, of course."

We stopped in front of an oversized elevator and the doctor pushed the DOWN button. Oversized so that they could haul equipment, or maybe gurneys? Or was this how they moved fully-transformed people dragons around?

"Have you known anyone who was infected?" Melissa Cooper apparently thought we were best friends now, since I'd spoken to her on the bus.

I didn't want to be rude, but I didn't need any new friends. Not under these conditions.

"No," I said shortly, pushing through the group to the back of the elevator when the double doors swished open. She seemed to get the message, because she stayed near the doors as they slid closed.

When we got off on B6, I realized what had been haunting me about this place. The silence. Granted, I couldn't hear much through the speaker on my suit, except when someone spoke directly into their microphone. But in any hospital I'd ever been in there was always the low murmur of people talking, as well as the ambient music playing softly over hidden speakers. I heard none of that here.

It was eerie.

"If you'll follow me," the doctor's tinny voice sounded in my helmet as we walked forward. Another wall of glass loomed ahead. "We are coming to the Level 3 isolation ward. Here we not only treat the symptoms of the disease—fatigue, headaches, muscle pain, etc.—we begin psychological counseling for the changes yet to come."

Behind the glass several fully-suited staff were circulating between curtained alcoves, each containing a single patient in a hospital bed. It was obviously mealtime. Most of the patients were sitting up, attempting to eat from the trays placed across their beds. Only one still had noticeable fingers, but even for her managing the silverware was clearly a challenge. The others were learning how to spear the chunks of barely-seared meat with their newly-grown claws, bringing the bloody, dripping chunks to their mouths where they tore into them with apparent relish for the gory food.

I cringed at the thought of eating fresh meat. I was a vegetarian, had been since I was teenager. I couldn't imagine what it would take to make me actually want to eat an animal carcass. Yet, this is what the disease turned people into.

Admittedly, going into this tour—and this story—I knew it would be difficult to confront some of these aspects of the Dracopoxvirus, and what it did to a human body. How many of the people in the beds I was looking at through this wall of BSL4 glass had been vegetarians, like me? Had been civilized, refined people, who would never dream of eating with their fingers claws, defecating outdoors or in a corner of a cave, or mating out in the open for anyone to see, an animal in full rut?

This was the tragedy of Dracopoxvirus. It wasn't fatal, granted. But what it turned a person into...

You might as well be dead.

The military doctor stepped up beside me and glanced down at my arm with a pointed look. I realized that once again I was scratching an invisible itch through the fabric of my suit and stopped guiltily, my hand dropping.

"You want to be careful of that," she said. "If you tear your suit you'll be quarantined here until you test negative. Two to four weeks. And you could end up like them," she indicated the monsters in the hospital beds.

As she turned away, I shuddered.

"We're going to move on now to the Level 4 containment area. Please remember not to touch the glass, and to speak softly, if you must speak at all," the doctor said, waving us onwards down the corridor.

I followed my colleagues around a corner into a darkened section, where the glass wall was tinted black. Behind the glass, red dim lights were set into the high ceiling. Below us, at least two floors lower it appeared, the area was partitioned off into cubicles by stone walls.

Set in a row above the tinted glass was a series of screens, with night-vision video tinted green. In two or three of them, hulking reptiles stalked around their enclosures, chasing shadows. But...no...

Looking closer, I could see that the shadows were small mammals. Live mammals. Rabbits. Raccoons. Opposums.

"I was under the impression," I could hear Melissa Cooper's voice coming through the speaker in my helmet, "that Level 4s didn't eat?"

"They don't eat a lot," the doctor's voice took over as she explained the situation. "At this stage, patients are still trying to learn how to manage their new forms. They have the urge to hunt and to kill their prey, but they don't manage to eat very much. It's a definite learning curve."

The nearly-completely transformed human victims of Dracopoxvirus were learning to hunt for their own fresh meat. In the confined area of these enclosures, the small animals didn't stand a chance.

I shuddered, stepping back. Turning away, I saw that the doctor was standing just a couple of feet away, watching me. So I had a weak stomach! What of it? But there were two soldiers holding cattle prods close behind her.

In that instant I knew that they weren't armed in case of a breakout attempt by one of the transformed.

"Ms. Buonovicchi," the doctor said, obvious sympathy in her eyes. Even through her face shield I could tell that she regretted what she was about to say. She gently placed a gloved hand on my arm, leading me away from the other reporters, still clustered in fascination at the wall of glass. "I'm afraid we've found an anomaly with your test. If you'll just go with these gentlemen, I'm sure we can clear everything up in no time."

There was no use in resisting. I went along with the two soldiers willingly. What anomaly had they found? It had been nearly four months...

And all of my weekly tests had been negative!

They led me into a brightly-lit lab, the lights shocking after the dimness of the last section we were in. "Sit," one of the two said brusquely.

I perched on the steel-seated stool he indicated.

Within moments, a fully-suited doctor entered the room. "Remove your helmet, please," he said, not looking at me, his attention on the tablet he held in his gloved hands.

"What?! But..."

Infection.

Dracopoxvirus.

No one who was uninfected was allowed to enter the facilities here in The Valley without wearing full biohazard containment gear. I couldn't move. The doctor waited, unmoving. I reached up and pulled my helmet off, nestling it in my lap.

"All of my tests have been negative!"

"You were married to Paolo Buonovicchi, is that correct?" he asked, looking down at his tablet. "Italian national, here in the US on a work visa for Alleanza contro il cancro," his Italian pronounciation was abysmal. "The Italian National Institute of Health. Is that correct?"

My heart sank. Of course, they would know all about Paolo's case. He'd been locked up here for eleven weeks. We'd had video calls since then, but nothing in the past nineteen days. Two weeks ago I'd received an email notification that my husband had entered Level 4 infection. I'd applied for this assignment in hopes that I could see him one more time...

Before Level 5. Before he completely transformed. Before he became a dragon.

I had to see him again.

"Yes," I said in a sick voice. "Am I—?"

The doctor pulled up another stool and sat down facing me, putting his tablet aside. "Ms. Buonovicchi, are you aware that you are sixteen weeks pregnant?"

My hand dropped to my abdomen and I carressed the small bump that was the infant growing inside me. "Of course," I said. "But all of my tests—"

His head dropped and he sighed. "We've never faced a situation like yours," the doctor said. "This is a fairly new virus for humankind. We're still trying to figure out how to stop it. But at this point in time, we have no clue. You're the first parents, you and Mr. Buonovicchi, to conceive a child when one of the couple was infected."

My blood turned to stone in my veins. This couldn't be!

"Your husband was apparently already infected when your child was conceived. He passed the virus on to your fetus. You are carrying a dragon baby inside you."

"What...what does that mean?" I could barely breathe, let alone think. I'd come here hoping to see Paolo one last time, to tell him that we were about to become parents. To have the baby we'd both wanted so desperately. "Can I—?"

"There are only two viable options," the doctor said, leaning back on his stool and putting a bit of distance between us. "Abort the fetus—"

"Abortion is illegal now, since Roe v. Wade was overturned! How can I have an abortion?"

"The United States Congress is pushing through a constitutional amendment which would allow a woman to seek an abortion in cases like yours," he said in a low voice. "The NIH has a fully equipped medical suite which can handle the procedure for you, right here, today. Or..."

I've lost my husband, the love of my life. I was already facing raising our child alone. Now, this damned disease was going to steal the little piece of Paolo I had left to hold onto. I might as well be dead.

My heart already had stopped beating, when they hauled Paolo away. But the doctor said there was a second option...

"Or?"

***

The dose of the pure Dracopoxvirus they injected me with worked quickly. In less than three weeks I was fully transformed and ready to start my new life. When the handlers pulled open the door of my cage and released me into the wild, I could already smell him on the air. Paolo. The love of my life.

We were finally going to be the family we'd always dreamed of.

But with scales.

Thank you for reading! Likes, comments, shares, follows, tips, and pledges are always cherished.

Author's Note:

While some sources for the facts pertaining to zoonotic infections were consulted, my research was not as extensive as it would be if this were not a work of fiction. And of course, all references given for Dracopoxvirus are purely a figment of this author's imagination.

I have challenged myself to write twenty-seven dragon prologues/stories for the Vocal.media Fantasy Prologue Challenge, one for each day the challenge runs. Here's a link to my next entry:

***

Sources:

https://www.prb.org/resources/avian-flu-and-influenza-pandemics/

https://www.phe.gov/s3/BioriskManagement/biosafety/Pages/Biosafety-Levels.aspx#:~:text=The%20four%20biosafety%20levels%20are,and%20other%20types%20of%20research.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/5-stages-of-infection