by Bobby Adair
Olivia laughed. “It’s a date.”
“Not that the two are connected, the date and what I’m about to say, but that Dr. Littlefield you mentioned, I’ve talked to him on the phone. Mitch put me in touch. There’s a strain of the virus there now with a damn good survival rate. At least I think it’s a new strain based on the severity and survival rates.”
“What do the numbers look like?” Olivia asked.
“Nearly eighty percent live.”
“And it’s not a new therapy?”
“I wish it was,” said Wheeler. “They’re in Mbale. They’re lucky to have a bandage or aspirin. I think it’s a new strain.”
“What are you thinking?”
“Samples might help us save lives. I want to try to get a plane sent that way but like I said, it’s getting hard.”
“Anything I can do?”
“Mostly it’s not a case of permissions. Some governments don’t want anybody in their airspace or crossing their borders. Nobody. Not for any reason. In other places, there’s no government to speak of. But you know that. At lots of airports, there isn’t anyone there to refuel a plane. Nobody there to do anything. We don’t even know if the runways are clear.”
“I can help with the logistics,” said Olivia. “I can be pretty good at figuring things out.”
“Let’s do this. Austin is going to Mbale. I’ll have Dr. Littlefield draw and prepare some samples for travel. We’ll see if we can find a way to designate Austin as the courier for the samples. He can carry them back here.”
“What about Mitch?”
“You think he’ll want to come home?”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“Maybe we can get them both back.” Olivia felt hope. “You think it’ll work?”
“Don’t know. Let’s try.”
Chapter 12
Jimmy Kerr pulled his pickup beside the Honda sedan, driver’s door to driver’s door, both cars facing in the opposite direction.
The guy behind the wheel of the other car looked at Jimmy, or that’s to say Jimmy’s customer looked at the black-tinted window of Jimmy’s pickup and saw his own dark reflection. The windows were tinted much darker than legal, but who cared about that anymore?
They sat on acres of parking lot patterned in engine-sized oil spots surrounded by white stripes—chipped, worn, and repainted a dozen times. Abandoned cars, some collecting dust into layers of dirt broke the regular pattern of the parking lot. Other cars with less tenure in the mall’s endless acres of asphalt still tried to shine. Some had broken windows. One streamed the remnants of yellow police tape in the wind.
Some of those cars belonged to employees harangued into opening stores by bosses who were probably huddled in their homes in the mountains as far away from infected people as they could get. Some belonged to shoppers, brave or stupid enough to think Ebola wouldn’t find its way through their protective gear. Others belonged to people who’d been carted away in ambulances or stuffed into body bags after dropping dead on the mall’s shiny floor.
What Jimmy was looking for was police cars, military vehicles, or anything that might belong to somebody with the legal authority to impose their will on him. The few people he saw hurried on determined feet toward a goal, a mall door, or back to a car. They all wore masks and goggles and gloves. One was an overweight man. The other, a smallish woman—maybe—under the layers it was hard to tell. What Jimmy felt sure of, neither was a policeman and neither was watching him. And why would they be? The police and Army were so thinly staffed and overwhelmed with bigger problems, they didn’t have time to follow a black marketer, collect evidence, and prosecute. Hell, maybe they didn’t even do that anymore. Maybe they just carted suspicious people off to the nearest Ebola farm. They had that kind of authority these days.
Jimmy thought about the times he’d sat on his couch, smoking weed with his buddies, watching hyped-up pseudo-history on basic cable about some atrocity somewhere in the past and saying, “Yeah, but that could never happen here.”
The world changes.
Even Jimmy was smart enough to know people had no idea who they really were until the world shifted in a new direction. See how much you love animals when you’re guarding the front of your house with a rifle you lifted from your dead neighbor’s house, you haven’t had a meal in three days, and there’s a poodle squatting to take a shit in your yard.
Shoot sharp, motherfucker.
Still, Jimmy had no intention of spending his final days being bled dry in an Ebola farm.
He rolled down his window and a freezing wind cut through the pickup’s cab.
The driver in the other car nodded at Jimmy and his face went through an indiscernible change in expression behind his mask and goggles. “Do you have it?”
Jimmy nodded, reached into the lunchbox cooler in the passenger seat and lifted out a thick plastic medical bag full of yellowish plasma. He held it up beside his shoulder just above the edge of the door so that the man in the Honda could see it. Anyone who might happen to be collecting photographic evidence with a long-lensed camera from a different angle would see nothing. As soon as Jimmy spotted recognition in the other man’s eyes, he put the pouch into a brown paper lunch sack and took another long look around.
“How do I know it’s real?” the customer asked.
Shaking his head, Jimmy said, “I don’t give a shiny shit what you know. I’ve only got about two seconds of patience for dickin’ around. Did you check the reference I sent you?”
“I did,” the customer said. “But how do I know that was real?”
“And you asked him if he checked the reference I gave him, and so on?” Jimmy congratulated himself on that part of his plan. He knew he’d need credibility to get top dollar. So he’d devised a little network of recovered or recovering customers who’d act as references for new customers. Not for free, of course. “That’s the way this works,” said Jimmy. “And when you get better, if you want to recoup some of your cost, I’ll give you a hundred bucks if you let me use you as a reference and one of the people I send to you decides to buy.”
Disgust dripping from his tone, the customer said, “You want me to be your salesman?”
“Don’t be an asshole,” Jimmy told him. “I can drive off. I got more customers than I can supply. You want this or not?”
The man raised a clear Ziploc bag with gold rings and other jewelry—the only kind of gold most people had access to—and a bundle of cash.
“I told you to separate the stones from the gold.” Jimmy was pissed. He hated prying that little crap apart.
The man started to reach them out the window.
“No!”
The customer pulled his money and jewels back.
“Inside something. I told you to bring a sack.”
Nodding and sheepish, the man fumbled around with crinkly plastic in his lap. A moment later, he reached out with a bundle wrapped in an old grocery plastic bag.
Jimmy accepted the bag and set it in his lap to open it up and examine. It looked like the right quantity. He reached into a cardboard box on the passenger side floorboard and took out a digital scale about the size of a paperback book. He placed the scale on the dashboard. Next he took a magnet out of the box and pushed it inside the bag. A plump gold chain stuck. “Damn.”
Jimmy snatched the gold chain out of the bag and flung it out his window. It hit the customer in the face. Jimmy spat, “That ain’t real. I told you. No gold-plated. None.”
“I got that in Mexico. The cruise line’s shopping guide told me—”
“I don’t care!” Jimmy shouted. “Not my problem.” He looked back down at the bag. It might still be enough. Barely. He took a piece of unglazed terracotta tile out of the cardboard box and laid it on his thigh. Not all plated jewelry was magnetic. He then went to work on each piece of jewelry, rubbing them over the rough orange surface of the tile. The video he saw online said that if a piece was plated, the gold would rub off quickly and leave a bl
ack streak on the terracotta.
Jimmy found a pair of earrings that rubbed black. He threw those across the gap at the customer. When he’d finished, he weighed what was left. And stared at the numbers for a minute while he decided what to do.
“The blood?” the customer asked.
Jimmy glared at him. “Not yet.”
“What?”
“Cash and stash, my friend. That’s what the ad said. No negotiating.”
The customer slumped. “We don’t have much.”
Jimmy bundled up the jewelry with a quick twist of plastic and held the bundle back out the window.
“No, no,” the customer said, near frantic. “I’ve got the food too.” He turned in his seat and lifted another bag, this one straining with a dozen jars and cans. He held it out the window.
Jimmy took the bag and hauled it through his own window, glancing inside to see that he’d scored enough to eat for several days. “All right.” Jimmy passed the bag of serum to the customer.
“I don’t know how to use this,” said the customer.
“Everything you need is in the bag,” Jimmy told him. “I printed a page with the URLs for YouTube videos with instructions. When you recover—”
“It’s not for me.” The customer looked into his lap and mumbled. “My daughter.”
“When she recovers,” said Jimmy, “email me if you want to be a reference. You can earn some of your money back.” And who cares—Jimmy knew cash was nearly worthless but it didn’t hurt to have a pile of it for paying dumbasses like this guy. And just in case. Then Jimmy got an inspiration. “And maybe save somebody else’s life.”
Chapter 13
Najid sat on the edge of his bed holding a crutch in each hand. He was feverish. His left leg and hip were a patchwork of wounds stitched and stapled together. The doctors had removed seventeen pieces of shrapnel and bits of stone embedded in his flesh. All put there by exploding cruise missiles. The Americans had tried to kill him, and they’d failed.
That thought made Najid feel strong in his heart despite the weakness in his body as he wrestled with the choice of whether to try and stand, to try and make his own way to the bathroom.
Bedpans were degrading.
The trip to the restroom would mark a concrete step back to health, to strength.
Someone knocked at the door.
“Enter.”
Hadi came in, smiling, but worried. He crossed an expansive floor covered in the finest silk carpets. “You should not be out of bed without help.”
Of course, Hadi was right if Najid was the kind of man who would readily trade humiliation for the luxury of constant assistance. “Watch me if you wish, but do not help.”
“The doctor says you’re healing.” Hadi looked at Najid’s bandaged leg, still seeping pus through the gauze. “You could have died. Please give it time.”
The same had been said to Najid a dozen times already by Hadi, both doctors, and each of the nurses. What none of them realized was that such cautions were for lesser men, regular men, men who were not destined to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with history’s immortals. Najid Almasi was such a man. The Great Satan’s inability with its formidable military might and technology had been able only to wound, not even maim him. All they’d given him were scars. All warriors were scarred by their battles.
Najid pulled himself up on his crutches and felt a dizzy rush in his head. He willed himself to keep his balance. The crutches were a necessity, but he would show no other weakness in front of Hadi. Najid started across the room. “Fetch your computer and meet me on the veranda.”
Chapter 14
They sat on the roof of the hospital in Mbale. Not the best place to get a view of anything, but it was one of the few places doctors could go on the hospital grounds for a respite from responsibility. Dr. Littlefield said it reminded him of sitting on the porch at the old hospital in Kapchorwa. Dr. Mills didn’t have an opinion on it, but Mitch had scrounged some bottled beer, and that was good enough for her. Austin figured he couldn’t go wrong with a beer or two even if it were warm.
“I won’t draw the samples from the patients until just before you’re ready to leave,” Dr. Littlefield told Austin. “With no refrigeration, we’ll have to hope the plane they send has a little fridge or something.”
Dr. Mills said, “Maybe they’ll send a container for it. It is biohazardous material.”
Dr. Littlefield laughed. “There’s so much in the environment, does it matter anymore?”
“It always matters,” she told him.
Mitch stopped the discussion with, “Don’t you two start again. You know how things are. If we can get the samples to the CDC and the samples help, who cares about protocol?”
“The protocols exist for a reason.” Dr. Mills took a big drink of beer and relaxed into her folding chair. She wasn’t going to argue the point anymore. “This is a going away party for Austin.” She smiled.
Austin took a drink. “Thank you, but I haven’t decided if I’m going home or not.”
“You’re getting on that plane,” said Mitch. “Your sister told us so.”
Austin shrugged. “I’m still thinking about it.”
“Why?” Mitch looked frustrated. “Haven’t you been through enough?”
“Good point,” Dr. Littlefield agreed. “You should go home and write a book about it.” He laughed. “It might sell.”
Dr. Mills leaned forward and looked at Austin. “Why wouldn’t you go?”
Austin took a moment, putting his thoughts into words. “Plenty of people here still need help.”
“Plenty of people in the States need help, and plenty more are going to,” said Mitch. “Things there are bad, but not as bad as they’re going to be if the cities I’ve seen are the rule.”
Dr. Mills looked at Mitch. “Let’s hope not.”
“Hope.” Dr. Littlefield raised his beer.
The others joined the toast.
“Seriously,” said Dr. Mills to Austin. “Why not get on that plane and go home?”
“I should.” Austin rolled his beer between his palms. “I’m not sure. I guess I’d feel like I was running away from all the problems here. I think that’s it, honestly.”
“Don’t be stupid.” Dr. Mills stood up, put a hand on Austin’s cheek and said, “You’re young and still idealistic. After everything. That’s special. Go home, make a difference there. You’ve done enough in Africa.”
“Somebody’s drunk,” said Dr. Littlefield.
“You wish.” She turned to head for the ladder. “I need to take care of a little personal business.”
“Are you coming back?” asked Mitch.
“Is there more beer?” She looked back at Mitch like she was interested in more than drinking.
Mitch reached down and lifted a pair of unopened bottles.
“See you guys in a few minutes.” She walked away.
Dr. Littlefield leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. He locked Austin in a serious stare. “Let’s be honest, when you were in Kapchorwa teaching those kids, you were making a difference. When you were helping in the hospital after the outbreak, it probably seemed like everything we did was futile, but you were helping. Now, Africa is stabilizing. People are still dying. Who knows what will happen politically. In Africa that always means militias and murder. But we have help here at the hospital. You met some of the volunteers when we were down in the wards earlier. All the volunteers are survivors like you. They’re just like you would be, a pair of hands. There’s nothing you can do here that these people can’t do for themselves. If you really want to make a difference, go home. Go to med school or something. Take what you’ve learned here and make the world a better place.”
Austin didn’t know what to say.
Mitch leaned forward and tilted his head at Dr. Littlefield. “I think the doctor drank a little too much. Listen, as long as everyone is going to give you advice, I will too. Go home. Hug your sister. She’s all the family you have
left. Help out if you want, but when this is all done, finish school. Get a good job. Find a pretty girl. Have some kids and live a happy life. Don’t come back to Africa. I think things will be screwed up here for a generation or more. Forget all the shitty stuff that happened to you here. Remember the good things you did, and remember the things you tried to do. Remember the good things about your friends—the ones who lived and the ones who didn’t. That’s your recipe for happiness. Go home.”
Chapter 15
Larry looked at the screen on his contraband cellphone to see who was calling before he answered it. It was the only person who ever called. “Hey Jimmy.”
“Larry Dean, my brotha’. What’re you doing?” The signal was clear and Jimmy’s voice came across without static, very uncommon in the airwaves of late, as parts of the system had failed and hadn’t been repaired. “Larry? You there?”
Larry didn’t feel like anybody’s brother. Since his conversation with Millie, he’d been brooding on his junior partner share. No, not even that. Larry was getting paid like the hired help. “I’m here.”
“You okay? You don’t sound good.”
Larry looked around his hooch—camp slang for the dumpster-sized metal box that served as his private, modular dorm. He didn’t like it. It had no windows. No fridge. No bathroom. It was big enough for his metal-frame bed and tiny table. A television was mounted on the wall at one end of his bed, but it only received three snowy broadcast signals, no cable. He hated being in the camp. “Doin’ my part.”
“You sound pissed.”
Looking at the phone, Larry nodded emphatically and stretched his face into the same expression he mocked the special ed kids with back in his elementary school days.
“You feeling okay?” Jimmy asked.