Outbreak

by Chris Ryan

  The first thing Ben and Halima needed was an axe.

  Halima had suggested that there might be one near the mine – the workers were forever clearing trees to make room for new excavations – but Ben wasn't keen on the idea. The rains had cleared, and although the paths and tracks were still deep with puddles, the villagers had come out from their huts. The last thing Ben wanted was for them to be seen by Suliman and his men. Not yet, at least.

  'There is a man who lives near me,' Halima told him. Then she corrected herself. 'I mean, he lived near me. He is dead now, along with his family. But he used to cut wood. His hut is deserted, but I think we might find something there.'

  The pair kept their heads down as they crossed the square, doing their best to remain inconspicuous but acutely aware of the fact that they had no time to lose. At least, Ben thought, they had one thing in their favour: the area round Halima's house always seemed to be deserted, and if the inhabitants of the hut they were heading for were dead, there would be a red cross on the door and people would be avoiding the place anyway. Sure enough, when they got there, nobody was around.

  The door was locked. Ben sized it up and decided that it looked flimsy enough. 'Stand back,' he said to Halima, before stepping back a few metres and then running at it with his left shoulder. The door rattled a little, but it didn't give way, so Ben tried again. Only on the third attempt did he break in. They rushed inside.

  The hut was dark and unwelcoming. A couple of old, thin mattresses that had seen much better days lay on the floor, and there was a table and two chairs. All sorts of other paraphernalia of daily life were littered around, and Ben and Halima immediately set to work trying to find what they were looking for.

  It didn't take them long. A heavy-handled axe was lying on the floor, its blade covered by an old rag. It was Halima who found it, and she tried to pick it up, with difficulty. It was a very weighty thing, and even Ben didn't feel like he could carry it for too long. If only Abele were here, he thought to himself.

  But Abele wasn't there, so they were going to have to make do by themselves. 'I can't carry this all the way up to the mine,' he told Halima. 'It'll just get in the way. We're going to have to hide it somewhere and pick it up later.'

  They left the hut, Ben dragging the axe behind him, and headed for the road leading west.

  Once they were on the outskirts of the village, Ben started looking around for a suitable hiding place. Finding somewhere to secrete the axe wasn't a problem – there were plenty of low bushes that would have concealed it – but ensuring that he could locate it again was more tricky. In the end, they found a small pile of burned-out tyres in front of a patch of scrubland, and they hid the axe there. 'When we get separated,' Ben told Halima, 'we'll meet back here, OK?'

  And then they sprinted back through the village, towards the mine.

  The rainfall had done a little to ease the humidity, but nothing to reduce the terrible heat of the day. As he ran, Ben felt his wet clothes steaming and becoming hot from the sunshine, the water boiling against his skin. He did his best to put the scorching sensation from his mind and tried to focus on the task ahead. It was a foolhardy venture, but it was the only thing they could think of.

  Rather than take the main road up to the mine, Halima led them a more roundabout way that would keep them out of sight. It took them past the clearing where Ben had witnessed the dance to the ancestors a few nights previously, and through an area of forest that he would have found intimidating if he had not spent so much time in the jungle. They approached the mine from the south-east, and moved stealthily once they were away from the protection of the trees to avoid being seen by the occasional guard who was milling around with the standard AK-47. Before long, Suliman's office, with his old Land Rover still parked outside, was in sight.

  The two friends caught their breath. 'Are you sure you're happy to do this?' Ben asked Halima, though the steely look of determination in her eyes told him he needn't have worried.

  'Be at the meeting place as quickly as you can,' she told him, before flashing him a quick smile of encouragement. 'What is it you say?' She searched for the words. 'Break a leg?'

  Ben nodded. 'Break a leg, Halima.'

  And with that, the girl strode out into full view, marched towards Suliman's office and knocked firmly on the door.

  Ben held his breath as he watched her jog a few metres back so as to put some distance between herself and the mine manager when he opened up. If the situation hadn't been so serious, the look on Suliman's face when he saw Halima would almost have been funny. Clearly he had never expected to see her again; clearly he thought that by now she was nothing more than a rotting or half-eaten corpse in the rainforest. He stared at her in astonishment for a few moments, allowing Halima time to turn and run, before calling out at his guards in Kikongo. Ben watched in satisfaction as his guards ran past the place where he was concealed, followed by Suliman as they chased Halima into the cover of the trees, barking instructions at her.

  He just hoped Halima was fast enough to get away. She had done a great job of getting both Suliman and his guards out of his way, and now it was up to him to do his part.

  The coast now clear, Ben made his move. He sprinted towards Suliman's office, and slipped inside. His eyes flickered over to the satellite phone, and he was tempted to make another attempt at calling; but that was going to have to wait. He didn't know how long he had, and it was imperative that he found the key to Suliman's battered Land Rover. Ben desperately started searching, upturning papers and opening drawers – it had to be here somewhere, but for the life of him he couldn't find it. Suddenly he smiled. He ran outside, opened the driver's door, and nodded in mute satisfaction.

  The keys were still there, in the ignition.

  Ben climbed in, took a deep breath, and started the engine.

  He had never driven a car before. I've flown a microlight over the burning skies of Adelaide, though, he told himself. How hard can it be? He knew the principle – he just had to put it into practice.

  The gearbox choked in protest as he tried to pump the vehicle into first gear. He pressed gingerly down on the accelerator, then lifted the clutch. It jumped forward, shaking Ben's body violently, then stalled.

  Ben turned the key and tried again. This time he managed to get the Land Rover to move a few metres before it shuddered to a halt. He banged on the steering wheel in frustration. 'Come on!' he shouted, half to himself, half to the vehicle. Then, realizing that getting angry was not going to achieve anything, he took a deep breath to steady himself and tried again.

  This time he managed to bring the clutch up slowly and without stalling. He started moving, and steered his way towards the road that led into the village, ignoring the screams of the engine that told him he was driving too fast for the low gear he was in. Ben didn't want to risk trying to change gear and stalling again – besides, he was fearful of going too quickly and having the vehicle veer out of control – so he stayed like this all the way into the village, concentrating furiously on steering the Land Rover around the huge potholes that littered his way as he bumped and jolted away from the mine.

  He drew strange looks from the villagers as he headed through the central square. They knew it was Suliman's Land Rover – it was almost the only vehicle in the village, after all – and the sight of this young white boy driving it inexpertly through the streets, beeping his horn in panicked, staccato bursts whenever anybody got his way, was the most exciting thing many of them had seen for months. That Suliman would get to hear of it was inevitable, but Ben couldn't worry about that now. He had work to do.

  Eventually the village and the villagers melted away as Ben approached the western outskirts of the city. In the distance, he could see the pile of rubber tyres where they had hidden the axe.

  But there was no sign of Halima.

  They were close behind her. Too close. As Halima ran through the trees, she could hear their voices and the crashing sound as they pounded after her. Th
ey were full-grown men with guns; she was a teenage girl. It was only a matter of time before she felt their strong hands on her – or their bullets in her shoulder blade. Her instinct was to hide, but if she did that, Ben would have to leave on his own, and she knew he needed her help. Besides, she didn't have time to find a good hiding place, and she couldn't be sure that they wouldn't find her. No, hiding wasn't an option. She had to go through with it. She had to succeed. And so, as she ran, she prayed to the ancestors that they would not catch her before she reached the rendezvous point.

  Suddenly she tripped and fell crashing to the ground. She gasped in pain as she felt a sharpness rip through her twisted ankle. Lying there for a couple of seconds, stunned, she thought she might not be able to move. Something had torn badly at the bottom of her leg, and she knew that if she put pressure on it, it would be excruciating. Already she felt dizzy with the pain.

  But the alternative was not an option. Suliman's men were closing in. They had already tried to kill her twice, and Halima had no intention of giving them a third chance. She pushed herself up with difficulty and tentatively put pressure on the damaged foot.

  It was bad. Very bad. But she had to go on.

  Limping desperately, she tried to run. It was difficult to move quickly – and agonizing – but she screwed up her face and tried to forget about the pain. Gradually she increased speed, but her limp stopped her from moving as fast as before. Her face was wet with sweat, and her mouth was dry.

  'La voilà! ' she heard one of the men shouting behind her. 'There she is!'

  'Shoot her down!' another called.

  Tears of pain were streaming down her cheeks now, and every step sent a tortuous flash up her wounded leg. But she didn't let up. She couldn't let up.

  The road was not far now, she thought.

  She hoped…

  A million different possibilities flitted through Ben's brain. She had been caught; imprisoned; shot. Maybe now Suliman was forcing her, on pain of death, to tell him what she and Ben had been up to. It didn't bear thinking about.

  He was by the tyres now, so he put his foot on the brake. The truck came to an abrupt and jolting stop, and Ben quickly climbed down and started scrabbling around in the undergrowth for the axe. It was there, but where was Halima?

  Suddenly she burst through a nearby copse of trees. 'Hurry, Ben,' she shouted, her voice hoarse and weak but still urgent. 'They are behind me, they are close!'

  Ben squinted his eyes. It looked like she was limping – certainly she wasn't running as quickly as he knew she could. He started moving towards her to help her, but she just screamed at him. 'No! The axe!'

  He nodded briefly, spun round and yanked the axe up from the ground, then hurled it into the back of the Land Rover. By now, Halima was a few metres away, limping terribly, and he could see four armed men emerging from the trees behind her. 'Get in!' he yelled.

  They both jumped up into the vehicle – Halima with the greatest difficulty. 'What happened?' Ben asked.

  'It does not matter,' Halima told him through gritted teeth. 'I'll tell you later. Just move.' She clutched her leg as Ben turned his attention back to the Land Rover.

  'Please don't stall,' he whispered to himself as he turned the key. The engine spluttered into life and he quickly knocked it into gear.

  Crash! Halima screamed as her window shattered on the impact from a bullet, the glass showering into her arm. Ben felt a shard splinter into his forearm, but he couldn't waste time tending to it. The men were nearly upon them. He slammed his foot down on the accelerator and slowly raised the clutch. The Land Rover started to move.

  Behind him he heard the sound of gunshot. He was going to have to increase the speed. The engine was emitting a high-pitched whine as the revs grew too high, and it refused to go any faster. 'Here goes,' Ben muttered. He slammed down the clutch and slipped into second gear, then brought his left foot up again. Success. He moved up into third gear, then fourth, and they zoomed down the road, leaving the sound of gunshots behind them and trying not to think about the dangers of landmines on the road. Abele had said they had done most of their killing, and he hoped he was right. He didn't want his first time behind the wheel to be his last.

  Halima looked terrified as Ben tried to steer the speeding vehicle around the potholes in the road, and they were both thrown around by the bumpy surface. But Ben didn't dare slow down. They needed to get a good distance from the village if what they wanted to do was going to work.

  And they needed to get there quickly.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Suliman's men had run after the Land Rover, but when it became clear that they weren't going to catch it they slowed down and regrouped. Just then, Suliman himself burst out from the trees. 'Where are they?' he screeched in Kikongo as he ran towards them. 'What have you done with them?'

  The men – there were five of them – looked embarrassed as their boss approached. 'You!' Suliman pointed at one of them. 'What happened?'

  The man looked nervously to his comrades. 'She got away,' he mumbled finally.

  Suliman's eyes narrowed. 'What do you mean, she got away? Are you trying to tell me that a girl got the better of you?'

  'The boy was waiting for her,' the man stuttered. 'They had your Land Rover…'

  'My Land Rover?' Suliman spat. 'What were they doing with my Land Rover?'

  But no one answered. They knew Suliman's moods, and they recognized the dangerous look in his eyes. He stared each one down in turn before settling his eyes finally on the man he had been speaking to.

  'You,' he said to him. 'You speak too much.'

  'Sorry, boss,' the man replied.

  'Oh, you will be sorry,' Suliman whispered, before looking around again at the others. 'You will all be sorry.' With a serious frown, he addressed the man standing next to the one he had been picking on. 'You,' he said. 'Kill him.'

  The man blinked at him in surprise. 'But boss, he's-'

  'Don't argue with me!' Suliman shouted, his eyes bright with an awful fire. 'Kill him now.'

  The man looked at his new prey, who was staggering backwards with a look of untold terror on his face, shaking his head and whispering, 'No, please.'

  'Do it,' Suliman barked.

  The man glanced uncomfortably around at the others, then raised his Kalashnikov. His prey screamed once, then turned and ran back towards the forest.

  Bang!

  The bullet hit him squarely in the middle of his back and he fell to the ground. One of the men ran towards him to see if he was dead or just wounded, but Suliman called him back with a bark. 'Leave him!' Then he stared ferociously at the others. 'I don't want any more failures,' he said.

  There was a horrible silence, then the man who had been forced to kill his friend spoke. 'But boss, how are we going to get them? They have taken the only vehicle left in the village.'

  Suliman smiled a dead smile. 'No they haven't,' he said. 'Come with me.'

  He turned and started jogging back into the village, his men following nervously behind.

  They were perhaps seven or eight miles out of the village – Ben couldn't tell for sure as he had been concentrating so hard on just keeping the Land Rover on the road – when they came to a halt. The forest on either side of the road was very dense – it would be impossible to drive any vehicle off the road and round any obstruction – and this particular stretch of road was long and straight; from where they had stopped, they would be able to see people coming – in either direction.

  'This'll do,' Ben said, pointing just ahead of them and to the side of the road. If they could block the road just here, there would be no way anyone could reach Udok by car and it would be a long walk with the dangers of the jungle either side; if Ben could get his message through to Sam Garner again, perhaps they would have gained the time they needed to seal the village before anyone else could get in and be infected. And, of course, no one could now leave by this road and take the virus out of Udok either. He hoped.

  The two
of them opened their doors simultaneously and climbed down. Halima was clearly in great pain, but she said nothing about it. Wordlessly Ben took the axe from the back of the truck and headed to the side of the road.

  He had his eye on a tall tree – tall enough, he estimated, to cover the width of the road once he had felled it. It was not as thick as some of the trees around, but it was thick enough – if he was going to hack it down, it would take some work. Ben raised the axe over his right shoulder and brought it down with all his force onto the side of the trunk that was furthest away from the road. The blade stuck into the bark and he had to give it a mighty yank to pull it back out again. The second swipe entered the tree several centimetres higher than the first cut. Ben's brow furrowed – this was going to be more difficult than he had imagined.

  Meanwhile Halima was in the road, keeping watch. Their plan was to cut down the tree to stop any busload of workers being able to gain passage to the village; and they needed to have as much advance warning as possible if Suliman and his men were following. They didn't think there was another vehicle still in the village for them to use; but they weren't sure.

  Ben kept hacking away. The sun was high and hot, casting short shadows on the ground; before long, sweat was dripping down his face into his eyes, and the handle of the axe was slipping in his perspiring palms. He felt his muscles burning with the exertion, and it was all he could do to keep going. But he gritted his teeth and thought of his father, bleeding and weak on that bed. If he didn't stop this busload of people from arriving in Udok, they would meet the same fate.

  He was a third of the way through the trunk now. He continued cutting the tree, the occasional grunt of exertion the only sound punctuating the silence between him and the ever-observant Halima.

  Suddenly she shouted, 'There is someone coming!'

  Ben stopped, automatically looking back towards the village to see if Suliman was upon them. But there was nothing coming from that direction. With a sick feeling he turned round. Sure enough, indistinct because of the heat haze but definitely there nonetheless, he could see a minibus. It was impossible to say how far away it was, or how quickly it was travelling, but Ben didn't allow himself the time to stop and watch it, instead running back to the tree and redoubling his efforts with the axe.