Then we got lost.
Zoe took the wheel, and we asked a taxi driver on how to get outta town and to Kilkis. The taxis here are blue, but pimped up with electronics just as well. The driver was kind enough to give us directions and we were back on our way to our destination.
After an hour or so of uphill climb we were at Kilkis. Yup, it was a small town.
Turns out it had two hotels to choose from, so we picked one at random.
A boy was at reception. He was playing a videogame.
“Hello,” I said.
He glanced at me and resumed killing zombies. “Mooommm! Customers.” he said loudly.
“Hey, you go to school right?”
He nodded.
“Do you know this girl, Emma Foinos? I suppose you were at school together.”
“Nai, I know her. Something happened to her,” he said but kept on gunning things down.
“Do you know what?”
“The teachers said it was from mad dogs. They said to keep an eye out for wild animals and not go near them.”
“That’s right, I said. But what about before? Did you know her before?”
The boy shrugged like only kids know how. “She was a nerd.”
The boy’s mother came up and smiled. “Hello there, nice to have visitors this time of the year. One room or two?” She looked alternatively at our faces.
“Tw-”, I began to say and Zoe interrupted me. “One.”
The boy’s mother eyed me as if I was just another silly boy.
We took the key and got comfortable upstairs.
“Don’t get any ideas,” Zoe said while opening her bag and taking out her stuff. “This is simply cheaper, I want to get left with some cash out of this.” She took of her blouse and stayed with a black t-shirt that was way too tight.
I raised my hands in surrender. “No funny ideas. Promise.”
Zoe picked up the hard plastic case we’ve been lugging around and laid out the vaccines and leaflets. She saw me looking so she explained. “These are rabies vaccines.” She picked up a couple of medical bags of clear liquid. “These contain rabies serum. Think of it like this, the vaccine is for prevention and treatment, the serum is the heavy stuff, for treatment of a confirmed category III exposure.” She gestured a rewind with her hand. “Lets back up. Category I exposure is petting an infected animal, contact with saliva, feces or urine but with intact skin. No scratches. It’s effectively a non-exposure but you never know. Category II exposure is a scratch or a bite, that does not bleed. Category III is the most severe, the bite or the scratch that makes a wound and allows the virus to get into the bloodstream, or contact of saliva, feces, urine or brain matter with open wounds.”
She showed me a piece of paper with diagrams. “This is the algorithm, pretty much all you need to know is on this piece of paper.”
I sat down on the bed and read it thoroughly.
Zoe pulled up my sleeve and held a needle on the other hand.
“Whoa!”
She rubbed a cotton ball moist with alcohol on my arm and prepped the injection. “What? We are going into a positive rabies infected population. You are required to get a shot.”
“Yeah, I know, but…”
“Oh come on! Don’t tell me you are one of those stupid anti-vaxxers!” She stood up and paced around the room menacingly with the needle in hand. “You know, people underestimate rabies because it’s curable. But it’s still deadly. You need one of these babies within 48 hours or you are dead.” Then she was rambling. “Sure, you can get it at any hospital pretty much everywhere, but you still have a better chance if you have been vaccinated in the last 5 years.”
I coughed and tilt my head down. “Yeah, it’s not that. I’m afraid of needles.”
She laughed.
“Men.” She came to my side again, rubbed the skin with alcohol and plunged the needle. I winced and stood still, looking out the window at a suddenly interesting light pole.
“Ouch!”
“Shuddup.”
Chapter 13
We were dressed in casual black. Zoe pretty much was always dressed like that, and I guess I subconsciously didn’t want to break the pattern.
We drove up to the house and knocked on the door.
A woman opened, tired and weary. It was Tina Foinos, the girl’s mother.
“Hello.”
“Hello madam, we are CDI, from the Hellenic Centre for Disease Control and Prevention,” Zoe said and presented her card. I held up mine a bit too proudly, and she slapped my hand down.
Miss Foinos tucked her nightie in a defensive gesture and crossed her arms. “This is not a good time. Leave.”
She shut the door to our face.
Chapter 14
Neighbour’s report #1
I saw, well, yes I saw.
Well, the gel was quiet. Well, good gel. Always playin’ with her doggie in the yard. Good doggie. Not one of them sceery ones. A good doggie. Oh gawd, maybe it’as the doggie?
No?
Ow Kay then. Well, if it ain’t the doggie, then it must ha’e been the rabbits.
I seen a rabbit.
No? They don’t?
Ow Kay then. Well, if it ain’t the rabbit, mebbe it’as Spiro’s ol’ dankey.
Wha? Can’t hear you. Wha?
Did it bite any’ne?
Dunno. Guess it didn’t.
Ow Kay then. Well, if it ain’t the dankey, Spiro’ll be glad. Be glad.
Good ol’ dankey.
Chapter 15
“Now what?”
“Now we talk to the doctor, the girl’s teachers. We’ll try the mother tomorrow.”
Doctor Gounaris required an appointment. So we asked for one, and his assistant put us on the next day. We went to the school.
It was filled with screaming monsters. People call them “kids”, but no, when lots of them are placed in the same yard its like all bets are off and whoever screams the loudest wins.
You’d think giving them smartphones would quieten the thing down a bit, but all it did was to provide another reason for fussing between them and one more source of ear-shattering noise.
We found the principal’s office. I dodged a melted chocolate. At least I hope it was chocolate.
“What a nice young couple. Are you coming to sign up your child to school?” the man said.
Zoe froze. She was twenty-five, and never imagined anyone mistaking her for a mother. She looked at me and I held down a laugh. Back in Athens, no one expected you to be married with child before thirty. Here in the country, you were obliged to have at least two by then.
“Ohi,” I said and presented my CDI card with contained enthusiasm. The principal took it and read it with some effort, while holding his glasses in front of him. “I’m Polybios Nicomidis, this is my partner Zoe Vasilidou. We are here to investigate the case of Emma Foinos.”
The principal exhaled and gave me my card back. “Yes, I see.” He was the kind of man who instilled fear in 10-year olds. Not a remarkable feat, in retrospect. “It’s for the best if we all cooperate. What do you need?”
Zoe said, “First of all, a word with Ms. Foinos would be nice. I understand she is devastated but we need to talk to her. This is a small town, I’m sure you know her personally?”
“Yes, I do. I’ll see what I can do about it. Let me call the poor girl’s teacher too, she’s in recess for now.” He picked up the phone and called internally. “What else?”
“It would be nice if you could spare us an hour to educate the students. Your whole area has had rabies cases before, and quite a lot of them spend time in farms.”
“Rabies?” The principal thought about it for a while. “We’ll see. Write down your number and we’ll call you,” he said, with the tone of someone not really meaning to call.
“We’ll be here for two more days, it’s important that you fit it into your busy schedule,” Zoe said with venom in her words, and I had to pull her arm and thank the principal for his time.
Out in the corridor the screams had ceased. All the kids were wrangled in classrooms. A woman was walking towards us.
“That fucker!” Zoe made stabbing motions towards the door.
“Chill out, he is helping us.”
“Helping us my ass. He thinks a school hour is more important than rabies prevention education in a rural-fucking-rabies-hotspot.” She lit up a cigarette.
The teacher reached up to us, and said firmly, “You can’t smoke in here!”
Zoe stomped on the cigarette and forced a big smile at her. “Let’s go somewhere we can then.”
Chapter 16
Schoolteacher’s Report
Agni A.
I hate the little brats. This is confidential, right? All you care about is the facts, right?
Well I hate them. It’s their parent’s fault really. Buying them smartphones at age seven and getting them unlimited data plans cause, “The kids need their social media to develop social skills.”
Bullshit I say.
In order to develop social skills you actually have to talk to people. Their parents just drop them at school and think, “Oh, there’s a bunch of kids there, have fun, here’s lunch money” and afterwards, when they actually take some time off to check up on them, six months have gone by and they find out their kid beats up its little cousins on the family gathering.
So no, it wasn’t that weird that little Emma kept coming to me with cuts and bloody sleeves all the time.
I thought it was just some bullying, I scolded the usual suspects and went on to making people out of the little shits.
I have thirty kids in the class. Thirty snotty, ruthless, foul-mouthed, Youtube uploading kolopaida.
My ass has been uploaded more times than I myself have looked at it on the mirror.
I come home with wrecked nerves every day and ruined two perfectly good relationships. It’s taken me as far away from the idea of having kids myself as possible.
Yes, sorry, lets talk about that.
I guess it began from Mr. Athanasiou, the science teacher. He taught the kids a few stuff about our blood.
You know, blood cells, veins, oxygenation and things like that. I bet most of them never gave a crap. Emma asked me some questions about it, I pointed her to a book in the library appropriate to her age. Naturally, she asked me how to get it online while waving her phone around and I told her that maybe no one bothered to scan it. The concept was as foreign to her as VHS cassettes. The book was an old cartoon educational series “Once upon a time… Life,” that explained various processes to the kids. In Greece it was translated as “My Body.” To be honest, everything that I remember about biology has stuck with me through that cartoon. The accompanying videotapes were in the library as well, but I was sure that we couldn’t find anything to play them on.
When I explained her about the tapes, she asked me, “But Mrs Agni, why couldn’t they put the cartoon files next to the books?”
I admitted my poor grasp of computers and deftly changed the topic by coughing out dust from the bookshelves.
Emma was delighted to check out a book from the library. All I thought at the time was, one down, twenty-nine to go. It’s a neverending job.
A few weeks later (at a 25th March parade) her parents told me about how delighted they were that little Emma was showing an interest in biology. They thanked me for educating their kid and mentioned that they bought her a microscope as a present.
Silly parents. Everyone thinks their kid is sooo clever and advanced. I mean, their daughter was barely 9 years old and they were bragging as she had made it to medical school!
Anyway, that was it for those days. I didn’t notice anything strange until days later, when Emma came to me with a rather nasty cut in her arm. I disinfected and bandaged it as usual. No, it wasn’t weird. Kids get cuts and bruises all the time!
When I asked her how she got it though, she said, “I needed to see the oxygen bubbles on the red blood cells.”
Chapter 17
Back at the hotel, I showered, got dressed and leaned down on my side of the bed. Zoe had already picked her side, the right one. She was leaning on both pillows and checking out her phone.
“Oh, here,” she said and gave me my pillow back. She got comfortable face-down, giving me an ample view of her illuminated breasts.
This was gonna be a tough arrangement.
I fished out my book and started reading to relax.
“Whatcha reading?” she asked, not taking her eyes of the phone to actually glance at the cover.
“History,” I said casually, knowing that it never got me any girls and never would.
“Oh.. Interesting. What part of history?”
“Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War. It’s about the Plague of Athens.”
“Light reading then. Why. The hell. Are you reading that?”
“I’m a historian!”
“Figures,” she snorted and put the phone down. She turned the right way around and leaned over to peek at the book.
“It seemed the best of both worlds, what with me training to become a CDI. Thucydides gives an objective description of the epidemic.”
Zoe lit up a smoke. “Huh. No wonder you were unemployed. Don’t you know historians have the worst time finding a job?”
“I didn’t care. I love history.”
“You do care now!”
I laughed. “Nai. Now its hard. Still no regrets, to be honest.”
“So, what did CDI Thucydides have to say about the plague?”
“Well, he was sceptical about the superstitions of the cause of the plague from a prophecy, that said Gods favoured Sparta. He believed in the prevailing medical theory of his day, which was the Hippocratic theory, and gathered evidence through direct observation.”
“Smart man!”
“He noted, that birds and animals that ate plague-infested carcasses died as a result, so he concluded that the disease had a natural rather than supernatural cause.”
“Do you sweet-talk like this all the girls who climb on your bed?”
“Just the clever ones,” I said.
Zoe squinted a bit and pointed with her cigarette. “Good answer.”
I calculated that by statistical equilibrium the next thing coming out of my mouth would be a bad choice, so I just smiled and said nothing.
“Lets sleep. We have lots to do tomorrow, we’ll start early.”
Chapter 18
The man in uniform was wearing rubber gloves. “So you object.”
“Yes! I object to having my cavities searched! Why would I ever agree?”
The man looked disappointed and took off the glove with an audible snap. “I’ll have to file you as non-cooperative with authorities.” He sighed. All that preparation and rude old me didn’t let him stick his fingers inside me.
“I honestly don’t care,” I told the police officer.
He sat down and wrote things in his report. I made a mental note to actively not look intimidating like that when I wrote things down myself.
“We have found suspicious substances and injection needles in the hotel room,” he read out loud.
“They have little red stickers on them, that describe their contents. Hardly suspicious.” I tried to keep my cool and be polite.
“And the needles?” he asked while raising an eyebrow at me.
“Vaccines are injectable.”
“Why do you carry around these whatsyoucallem rabies vaccines?”
I smiled as I thought about playing it clever. “I admit I’m in training, so I suppose they are in case someone has a category III exposure to rabies, which is a bite or a scratch that bleeds. Instead of looking for an emergency ward at the hospital we have them at hand. We are going in a rabies positive area to investigate, you know.”
The police officer had a perfect poker face. I had no idea if I had succeeded or not. He jotted things down and let me wait for a few minutes.
The silence was making me wanna
fill the void with words, but this was exactly what the man wanted. I bit my tongue and looked around. The police station wasn’t much, in a town this small. I looked outside into the night. It was made yellow by sparse streetlights, the old kind, the ones you only saw in older movies. For some reason I wasn’t sure about, city people’s nights back then were black and yellow. It gave an eerie glow to the night streets. Not much going on either, a car now and then, nothing like the busy nights of Athens.
Myth Gods Tech - Omnibus Edition: Science Fiction Meets Greek Mythology In The God Complex Universe Page 25