by Matt Miksa
Wang moved on to the JPEG. He opened the image file, and his heart leapt into his throat. “No,” he mumbled to himself in disbelief. He slammed the heel of his palm into his desk with a loud smack. Shit! Wang tried to concentrate, but his stomach churned, his face flushed.
The lieutenant fumbled with the computer mouse. He closed the JPEG and promptly deleted the email. Before his computer finished logging off, Lieutenant Wang was already racing out of the office.
CHAPTER
18
Dzongsar Village, Tibetan Autonomous Region, People’s Republic of China
PERFORMING SURGERY ON a patient infected with Blood River virus was perilous. The disease’s hemorrhagic nature made the potential blood loss from shaving nicks dangerous, let alone deep surgical incisions.
Amy and Jo had completed the tracheotomy on Dr. Sun with the help of two Tibetan nurses, a powerful sedative, and an iron focus forged over years of stressful fieldwork. The patient now drew breath through a tube inserted directly into his esophagus just under his Adam’s apple. He’d remain sedated until morning, but no one realistically expected Dr. Sun to survive the night. The man was a swollen, oozing pile of flesh, and there was no bouncing back from that. At least now he wouldn’t drown in his own blood.
During the surgery, Jo had untied the patient’s hospital gown. She’d needed to clear his neck, but she had another reason for doing so. She suspected Amy had been wrong about the man’s identity. Ru, her ex-husband, had a crescent-shaped scar with a line through the middle under his left collarbone. Jo used to tease him that it looked like a hammer and sickle, the mark of a true communist. When Jo pulled down the front of the patient’s gown, his shoulder was completely clear. The man lying on the operating table, writhing in pain, swimming with virus, was not her ex-husband. He was Ru’s brother.
* * *
Amy led Jo and Olen to the monastery’s kitchen, which the clinical staff had converted into a break room. They sat around a cheap folding table drinking day-old coffee. Olen observed Jo carefully. Why wasn’t she more distraught? Blood River virus had ravaged that man’s body—a man she’d once loved. Something felt off.
Jo broke the silence. “We still don’t know where this thing came from. Do we?”
“The reservoir is a complete mystery,” Amy answered. “We’re no closer to figuring it out.”
“Reservoir?” Olen asked.
“The reservoir host,” Amy clarified. She refilled Olen’s chipped coffee mug and got up to make herself a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. “No virus intends to kill its victims. It’s the microbial equivalent to suicide. Viruses crave one thing—to replicate. And they need the healthy, living cells of another creature to do it. That creature dies, it’s game over. That’s why every virus survives within a natural host—something it can infect without causing major harm. This animal or insect serves as a reservoir for the little bug. Viruses can sometimes live for millennia, safely replicating within the population of their reservoir host.”
“So, find the reservoir host and you can stop it from infecting more people,” Olen interpreted.
“Well, it’s certainly a good place to start,” Amy agreed. “Unfortunately, it’s not always so easy. About sixty percent of diseases that infect humans are zoonotic, meaning they jump from animals to people. We’ve tested more than a hundred and fifty species living around Dzongsar Village. Bats, pigs, birds, mosquitoes, even bedbugs. They all came back negative for BRV45. We may be running out of places to look. It’s like Ebola all over again.”
“What happened with Ebola?” Olen asked.
Amy’s mouth was stuck with thick peanut butter. She yielded to Jo with a quick nod.
“Ebola virus appeared out of thin air in Central Africa forty-five years ago,” Jo explained. “The disease went on a murderous rampage. Only rabies is deadlier, as viruses go. Hundreds died. And then it just vanished.
“A couple of years later, a variation of the virus flared up on the opposite side of the continent, in Sudan. Again, those infected fell quickly, and then Ebola retreated into the jungle, that time for almost fifteen years. No one knows where it comes from or where it goes when the outbreaks fizzle out. We’ve searched for Ebola’s reservoir host for decades. Researchers have tested thousands of species without success. We think it’s a mammal, probably forest dwelling. The fact that Ebola can survive in the shadows for such long intervals makes us think the reservoir host rarely comes in contact with people. Quite possibly, it’s a species we’ve yet to discover. The same could be true for Blood River virus. It would help if we knew what specific part of the forest patient zero had spent time in before entering the village. Otherwise, it’s like searching for a needle in a thousand haystacks.”
Olen was unnerved. In his line of work, he found the bad guy, destroyed his cache of biological or chemical weapons, and then celebrated over beers. His targets had addresses and cell phones. Sure, some of the assholes were pretty clever and could be difficult to track down, but none could make themselves invisible for decades at a time. Jo’s enemies sounded far more elusive.
Amy finished her snack, licking her fingers, and picked up where Jo left off. “Finding the reservoir host allows us to do more than just contain the spread of the disease. We need its juju.”
“You need what?” Olen asked.
“Antibodies,” Jo said. “For some reason, it doesn’t get sick. Studying the host’s peculiar immunity to the virus is critical to developing a vaccine. If we inoculate everyone, the virus won’t stand a chance of reemerging on the same scale. In the field of public health, prevention is still our most powerful weapon.”
“Why can’t you just extract antibodies from the survivors?” Olen questioned.
“We can, and we do,” Amy said. “But even the survivors still got sick. They recovered because they had dynamite immune systems. Their serum helps us understand how to beat the virus, but we still need antibodies from the reservoir host to figure out how to render it inert. Typically, the most important thing we can get from survivors is information about how they contracted the disease in the first place. If they work with animals or ate a bat or something, we can often trace back to the source.”
“The problem is that BRV45 kills too fast,” Jo added. “The infected are too delirious to remember any useful details, and so far, we haven’t identified any survivors.”
“Well, that’s not entirely true,” Amy corrected.
“What do you mean? We found a survivor?”
Amy grinned, a glint in her eye.
DAY 10
CHAPTER
19
Dzongsar Village, Tibetan Autonomous Region, People’s Republic of China
THE POISON QUEEN sat motionless in a hickory rocking chair. Amy had given Sumati the grisly nickname in homage to Zhou Zuofeng, a fishmonger from Guangzhou who’d kick-started the SARS epidemic. Like Zuofeng, Sumati was a superspreader, Amy explained. The average person infected with BRV45 transmitted the disease to just two or three others. A superspreader exposed upwards of twenty. Sumati had been the first villager to come into contact with patient zero; she’d served the man tea. With cruel irony, Sumati’s kindness toward a suffering stranger had brought about the devastation of her entire community.
Sumati circulated the virus throughout Dzongsar with breathtaking efficiency. According to Amy, the middle-aged Tibetan woman had infected thirty-three people. Her friends, neighbors, family members—they all died. Brutally. Perhaps a punishment worse than death, Sumati recovered, just like Zuofeng, the Poison King. Whether it was the disease or the hulking guilt that ravaged Sumati’s mind, no one could be certain. Whatever the case, by the time Jo and Olen met her, the light had vanished from Sumati’s eyes, replaced by something much darker.
Jo approached cautiously. The rocking chair enveloped Sumati’s emaciated body. She sat stone-still except for the ping-pong ticking of her glassy eyes, which had locked on the swinging pendulum of an old clock. Blood River virus had ruined her
body. Most of her hair had fallen out, leaving behind scrappy patches of gray and black. Her skin sagged in folds and flaps around her neck. To Jo, she looked seventy, but Sumati’s medical file said forty-eight.
A teenage girl—a daughter or niece, maybe—spoke slowly, her voice thick with exhaustion. “She is not accepting visitors today,” the girl uttered pointlessly. In the Q-Zone, the investigation took top priority. The Ministry of Health required permission from no one, not even to enter this woman’s home to ask intrusive questions. Or to take biological samples. Jo noticed the black-and-blue tracks of bruising puncture wounds stippling Sumati’s forearms.
“No blood today,” the girl whimpered, and began to tidy up the parlor. Jo knew the clinic’s medical staff probably came around three, four times a day, demanding Sumati’s serum. The woman’s antibodies could save others. Jo looked at Sumati’s colorless form. Dried drool caked her lips. She’d survived Blood River virus, but if this was surviving, why bother?
The girl placed a vase of purple orchids on the table beside Sumati’s chair, rotating it to catch the light. She pruned the dead blooms with a pair of garden shears, trying her best to ignore her unwelcome visitors.
Jo tingled with anticipation. BRV45 destroyed nearly every living creature it touched. It penetrated every cell, feeding on its victim’s flesh from the inside out. Millions of virus particles. It liquefied vital organs and dissolved muscle tissue until the body collapsed into a shapeless pulp. Billions of virus particles. Yet this woman had somehow defeated the onslaught. Her immune system had overcome the invasion. She had not died. Jo needed to know why.
“Sumati, please pardon our intrusion,” Jo said. The virologist hunched down to kneel at eye level with the woman. “Tell us, how did you get sick?”
“She can’t help you. Her mind is gone,” the teenager explained weakly. With a trembling hand, she put down the pruning shears and turned to face Jo. A thin layer of moisture coated the girl’s anguished black eyes. “She’s a ghost.”
Sumati’s vacant gaze and acute lethargy reminded Jo of the Ebola patients she’d seen in northern Gabon. The fever had cooked their brains. They babbled incoherently, overwhelmed by delirium. The Gabon strain killed eighty-eight percent of its victims, but the lucky few who survived recovered completely. The dementia and hallucinations simply disappeared. Blood River virus was different. Sumati had expelled the disease but not the unshakable madness it caused. Jo found that fact irresistibly fascinating.
* * *
An hour with Sumati produced no answers, and Jo grew impatient. This ghost-woman had been the first person to encounter patient zero. Had she noticed where he entered the village? If so, maybe Jo could retrace his steps, look for nests or burrows. But Sumati couldn’t focus on anything other than that maddening clock.
Jo rose to her feet and moved into Sumati’s line of sight, blocking the woman’s view of the clock’s swinging pendulum. The doctor crossed her arms and pleaded with the feeble creature. “Sumati, you must concentrate!”
Something clicked in the woman’s tortured mind. A wave of clarity rippled through her viscid consciousness, clearing narrow channels that allowed a few imprisoned thoughts to slip through. Sumati’s eyes squeezed into a razor-blade squint and locked on to Jo’s. Her cracked lips formed words—a mishmash of Tibetan and Mandarin. “His blood was poisoned,” Sumati hissed. Her voice grew louder and more intense. “I should have known! He came from the sun. Why didn’t I see it? Now it’s too late, too late, too late.”
“Yes,” Jo answered, her heart racing. “You’re talking about the sick man who wandered into Dzongsar. You saw which direction he came from. You must try to remember.”
The teenage girl perked up. Sumati hadn’t spoken in days.
“The sun! Listen to me. He came from the sun. I didn’t see it before. He was poisoned.” Sumati wept. Her face twisted, arms stiffened, fingers spread wide. Her entire body rattled against the chair.
Jo moved closer to the tortured woman. “Who? Who hurt the sick man?”
“Gdon! Gdon! He was possessed. He brought death to our village. I couldn’t stop it,” Sumati blubbered. Mucus dripped from her nose. She stomped her feet, marching in place. Her mouth opened unnaturally wide, and she gasped for breath in lung-scraping rasps.
Sumati knew something that could help the investigation and save lives. Before she could stop herself, Jo reached for the woman’s shaking arm and pinned it to the wooden armrest, attempting to pacify her. “What did you see?” Jo shouted.
Sumati wailed. “Deeeee-mon. You want my blood? Take it. Take it all back to hell!”
The old woman snatched the pruning shears, which still rested on the table beside her chair. She swung the weapon violently through the air and then stabbed its sharp point into the crook of her own arm. Dark-red streams spilled from Sumati’s abused veins as she hacked at her own flesh, striking her arm over and over. Flaps of skin tore away from the muscle underneath, and the metal blades chipped away at bone. The teenage girl shrieked in horror and tried to wrestle the weapon from Sumati’s grasp, her feet slipping in the gathering pool of blood.
Warm, crimson drops splashed across Jo’s face and neck. She backed away, frozen in shock. Sumati had recovered from the infection, so the woman’s blood was safe. Still, Jo’s stomach crawled up her throat. The American journalist rushed past her to help the girl subdue the manic woman. Sumati thrashed ferociously despite having seriously injured herself. Her eyes swelled with tears. “Take it all, demons! Take all of my blood and let me die!” she shrieked.
The reporter finally seized the pruning shears and tossed them aside. The flustered teenager grabbed Sumati’s shoulders and pleaded for her to be still. The man pushed his flat palms onto the woman’s gushing wound to stem her bleeding. Jo heard the metal shears scrape across the hardwood floor, creating a sinister harmony with Sumati’s unearthly howl.
CHAPTER
20
Singapore, Republic of Singapore
HUDSON REECE WAITED for the screen door to snap shut and then strolled into the Singapore Zoo’s manufactured jungle, careful to blend in with the other tourists, who craned their necks and ogled the exotic wildlife. Like Reece, most of the world’s creatures were active after dark, emboldened by the veil of night. Tonight visitors were sparse, probably due to the heat. The afternoon humidity had seeped into the evening, offering no reprieve from the island’s unrelenting mugginess.
The leaves rustled overhead. A shadow danced across the canopy. Tiny goldenrod eyes watched Reece’s every move. The zoo animals could be dangerously unpredictable. Last year a grounds keeper had lost his footing and tumbled into the habitat occupied by the park’s two white tigers, Omar and Winnie. They pinned the man to the wet rocks, and Omar’s three-inch teeth expertly punctured the grounds keeper’s neck, extinguishing his screams with a swift crack.
Reece had entered an enclosure that housed far less menacing residents. He spotted one of the exhibit’s red giant flying squirrels resting on a high branch, illuminated by the soft moonlight. The rodent glared suspiciously but posed no danger. Reece blinked, and the skittish animal vanished.
A middle-aged couple gawked, mouths agape, scanning the spindly tree limbs for a peek at the elusive squirrel. The husband fumbled with an expensive, professional-grade Nikon he probably rescued from the basement once a year. Bits of cheese crackers clung stubbornly to his beard. The wife’s bulky fanny pack cinched her pudgy waistline. Reece imagined it bursting with spare ketchup packets and sanitizing Wet-Naps.
The exhibit’s fourth human occupant, an elegant woman with sultry features sitting alone on a bench, seemed out of place. She wore a turquoise evening gown and clutched a three-thousand-dollar Lady Dior handbag. She was probably Indonesian, but Reece couldn’t be sure. He’d met her only twice before and knew her as Kalina. It wasn’t her true name, of course. HELMSMAN, their leader, had determined that aliases were safer and had instructed all of them to keep their true identities hidden, even
from one another. After a few short minutes, the enchanting woman rose and floated past Reece on her way to the exit. The ethereal fabric of her gown brushed against Reece’s trousers.
The cheese-bearded tourist finally located a squirrel among the dewy leaves and snapped a photograph. The camera’s flash startled the animal. It leaped from its perch and glided across the habitat. The chubby wife squealed in delight.
Reece turned to the screen door exit. The beguiling woman had evaporated into the humidity, probably headed back to whatever gala or premier she’d slipped away from earlier. Soon she would unfold the scrap of paper he’d dropped into her handbag. His scribbled message would be unambiguous. Olen Grave is in Dzongsar. Terminate the investigation. Kalina, a skilled assassin, would know what to do.
He waited ten minutes before departing the zoo and then hailed a taxi to the airport. Hudson Reece would take one final flight before retiring for good. Lieutenant Wang had taken an enormous risk in using the false identity to slip out of China, but he’d had no other option, given the urgency of the situation. If Kalina succeeded, HELMSMAN would be pleased. But first, Wang needed to return to Beijing before someone noticed that one of his old aliases had resurfaced.
CHAPTER
21
Dzongsar Village, Tibetan Autonomous Region, People’s Republic of China
OLEN BOUNCED ON his toes, weaving through the mob of giggling children. The littlest ones didn’t seem to understand the rules. A grinning toddler, no older than two or three, clung to Olen’s leg as he dribbled the soccer ball through the thick grass. Spotting an opening in the gauntlet of tiny feet, Olen swiftly passed the ball to an older kid. The lanky boy sprinted across the field and fired a shot between two large branches marking the makeshift goal. All the children, even those on the opposing team, threw their arms up and whooped. The boy superstar hurled his body into a backflip before his teammates tackled him to the ground in a noisy dog pile. Olen chuckled and walked off the field toward the bonfire. The kids had brought some levity to an otherwise heavy couple of days.