by Julie Rowe
Alicia, Bull and Tom followed suit.
Max’s cousin pulled one up out of the scarves around his neck and hooked it around his ears.
There were fourteen people that he could see on the cots and pallets.
“Are there more sick inside the house?”
“Yes, cousin.” The man’s voice was sad. “Many more. All day the sick have been coming to see grandmother, but she died an hour ago and we have no more medicine. Did you bring any with you?”
Not enough for all these people. “Is there somewhere I can show you?” Max glanced at the other bags.
“Yes, yes. Come.” Cousin led them into the house and to what might have been a bedroom, but it was mostly empty. Two dirty and stained windows filtered the winter sun, turning the room a hazy grayish brown.
Max put his duffel down and nodded at Alicia, Bull and Tom to do the same. He stepped close to his cousin and said in English, “Are we safe?”
Cousin replied in kind. “No. My name is Jonah Cornett. I’m with ACT, a French disaster relief organization. Dr. Amanda Beaulieu from the WHO contacted you...Dr. Maximillian?” For the first time the man sounded uncertain.
“Yes, Colonel Maximillian with the US Army’s Biological Response Team. Dr. Beaulieu asked for an infectious disease specialist to come and identify the pathogen making all those people sick.” Max glanced back through the doorway into the house full of sick people. “Where is Dr. Beaulieu?”
“We thought we had an influenza,” Cornett said absently. He shook himself like a wet dog trying to dislodge water, and continued in a stronger tone. “But half the people who were sick last night have died.”
“How many is that?”
“Thirty.”
“Where are the dead? I didn’t see any bodies as we came in.”
“The locals have a place up in the hills where they bury their dead. I don’t know if they’re all in the ground, but most of the bodies were taken away.”
A cold rock formed in Max’s gut. “Thirty, that’s eighteen more sick and twenty-six more dead than I knew about.”
“In the past four hours, a dozen people have stumbled into this house, three of them are already dead.”
Holy fuck. “Of what?”
Cornett shrugged. “Pneumonia?”
“What symptoms did they present with when they arrived?”
“A high fever, vomiting, dehydration and a wet, racking cough.”
Pneumonia? Sudden onset of fever and vomiting followed by dehydration, pneumonia and death. Pneumonia was a common secondary infection of flu, but it didn’t usually happen so fast. Could this be a swine flu outbreak?
“It’s the blood that’s upsetting people.”
Cornett’s words took a moment to register. “Blood?”
“Come, let me show you.”
Max stepped in his path. “Where is Dr. Beaulieu?” Behind him, he could feel Alicia and the boys tensing up, preparing for...anything.
Cornett’s eyes looked sunken and black above his mask. “That’s who I want you to see.”
He led them to another room next door. This one was furnished with bedroom furniture, but the person on the bed was shrouded with a sheet. There were three other bodies stacked against the far wall, also wrapped in blankets and or sheets.
Cornett unwrapped the sheet from around the head of the body.
She appeared to be a woman in her early thirties. There were blood trails leading from the corners of her mouth and both nostrils. The skin of her face was unblemished.
“I need to see her arms and torso.”
“Why?” Cornett asked.
“I’m looking for lesions or blisters.”
Cornett unwrapped her upper body and Max helped him push her clothes aside so he could see her skin.
“No lesions,” he reported aloud.
“Is that good or bad?” Tom asked.
“Since she’s dead, it doesn’t mean much,” Max explained. “I need a sample of mucus from the nose or mouth of a person who’s recently begun showing symptoms. Actually, I’d like to test samples from a half-dozen people.” He looked at Cornett. “Will that be a problem?”
“No.” Cornett’s shoulders were hunched and his head hung like it was too heavy. “Everyone is frightened now and afraid they’re going to die.” He glanced at the body, then turned to Max and said, “You can start with me.”
“Fuck,” Bull said behind him.
“Rewrap the body,” Max told Cornett. “I’ll have a swab ready when you’re done.” He walked back into the room where he’d left his bag and crouched down to open it. Alicia and the boys added their bags to his.
“What do you need?” Alicia asked in a voice only one decibel louder than a whisper.
“I need to set up my equipment and gather the samples. The first test is quite quick. Takes about fifteen minutes. That test isn’t very specific, though, so if it’s positive for flu, I’ll have to do a second one that takes a little longer.”
“What do you need from us?”
“Keep people from interrupting me.”
She smiled—he could tell from the wrinkles dancing around her eyes. “We can do that. Bull is especially good at roadblocks.”
“One of my favorite things to do,” the soldier said with a nod.
“Just don’t be a pain in the ass when you do it,” Tom told him.
“Don’t worry, Max,” Alicia whispered loud enough for the two men to hear. “I’ve got you covered. I’ll keep these two bozos from tripping you up.”
They were making fun of the situation, a common coping strategy among soldiers. Soldiers who had a bond with each other. Trust. And they’d invited him in. “I feel so much better knowing that.” He glanced over his shoulder at Alicia, who crouched next to him, and the two men standing behind her. He gave them all a nod. “Carry on.”
He began pulling out what he needed to get the samples. Given that there were a lot of people in the vicinity, he left the analyzer in the bag.
“Is Cornett close by?” Max asked Alicia.
She moved away, but was back in only a couple of seconds. “He’s talking to someone in the hallway.”
“As soon as he’s finished, ask him to come in. I want to give him some of the extra medical supplies I managed to jam into these bags.”
“Sure.” She left the room.
Max pulled out six sterile swabs for collecting mucus and set them aside. He then went through all the bags and pulled out IV sets and bags of saline. Of all the symptoms the patients seemed to be experiencing, dehydration was the easiest to combat. A liter of fluid would go a long way to helping the sick survive long enough for the flu virus to run its course.
As long as there were enough trained people to set up the IVs.
If Dr. Beaulieu was dead, who was left to treat the sick?
Cornett came into the room and looked at all the stuff on the floor. He seemed only mildly curious.
“Do you have medical training?” Max asked him.
“Some,” he replied. “But not enough to put one of those into someone’s vein. I’m here to determine the needs of areas like this one. Food, shelter and other necessities. I’ve already told my people not to send anyone else here. Until you determine what’s causing the deaths, they’re going to coordinate with the UN and the WHO to make sure no one else sends in relief teams.”
“Good. The last thing this place needs is more people. Any other doctors or nurses in the village?”
“A couple, but we’re overrun.” Cornett’s face turned bleak for a moment and he looked like he was about to be sick. “There were more, but when I went looking for them, I couldn’t find them. Their tent, yes. Them, no.”
Max sighed. “I didn’t come here with the intention of running a hospita
l.”
“How could anyone plan for this?”
Max considered the situation. If these people didn’t get help now, a lot of them were going to die. He had only a finite number of IV sets and when they were gone, they were gone.
Tom was standing with Bull in the doorway.
“Tom,” Max said.
The Special Forces soldier strode over and crouched next to him. “Yeah?”
“You and I are going to triage the people in this house. I need to collect samples and you’re going to set up IVs for as many as you can. Got it?”
Max turned to Cornett. “You’re going to get a cot or whatever set up in here for yourself and lie down. I need someone in this room to keep an eye on the equipment when I have to step out. Okay?”
“Yes, cousin,” Cornett said in Arabic.
Max glanced out the door. A couple of men stood there arguing with Bull about talking to a doctor. They were staring at the IV sets and bags of saline.
Cornett walked over to them. “This is my cousin, a doctor in a hospital in the city. He took some supplies with him when he left, but it wasn’t enough. So many more people are sick today than yesterday.”
One of the men said, “Give it to the children. To my son. He’s twelve years old and strong, but now he lies on the ground breathing like a winded horse. His lips are blue.”
Max paused. Rapid breathing resulting in not enough oxygen? He stood and joined them in the hallway. “Take me to your son.”
Chapter Eleven
Alicia followed Max, Cornett and the man whose son was sick out of the house and down a stone street strewn with rocky debris from explosions and gunfire.
Bull and Tom stayed behind. Tom was already starting IVs for the sick while Bull guarded their gear and watched Tom’s back.
She’d argued briefly with Max about the wisdom of making this house call. Briefly, but vehemently. His own mission parameters didn’t include caring for the sick. Not an hour had gone by in the village and he was violating his own orders.
It was also damned near impossible to guard a body in motion. They weren’t staying in the primary location—they were wandering through a village full of an unknown number of sick people, many of them armed with Russian-made rifles. Instead of the four of them together, they’d split up, making themselves far more vulnerable to attack.
Max had shut her down and told her the situation had changed. She disagreed. It hadn’t changed that much, but Max refused to listen to any other complaints.
Fine. She’d ream him out when the mission was over. One of the reasons why she was assigned to him was to give him sound advice regarding security.
Checking out a sick child was the humane thing to do, but it sure as hell wasn’t safe.
They entered another house, this one in poorer condition than the one they’d left. It had taken some hits from bullets and probably a grenade or two, leaving debris and rubble all around.
Two women backed themselves into a corner of what looked to be the kitchen while a parade of strange men went through their home. Well, mostly men. They probably thought she was a young man or teenage boy.
The rifle in her hands didn’t look at all out of place.
The men ahead of her entered a small, dark room. There wasn’t space for her, so she hovered in the doorway keeping an eye on them as well as the way out.
Max crouched next to the pallet on the floor with his stethoscope in his ears as he listened to a boy’s chest. The boy’s breathing was audible several feet away, sounding like popping bubbles as he struggled to take in air. His whole body looked involved in the effort, not just his diaphragm. She’d witnessed something like this during an advanced conditioning training event. One man had to drop out when he experienced one of the forms of altitude sickness where his lungs filled with fluid. Alicia had ended her training to help get him down the mountain and she’d never forgotten the sound of his breathing—wet popping of air mixing with the fluid in his lungs.
This boy sounded just like him.
Max swabbed the boy’s nose and mouth, then pulled out a small handheld device, which he swiped across the kid’s forehead.
“How long has he been sick?” Max asked the boy’s father.
“Since yesterday. At first he had a fever, headache and a cough. A few hours later the cough got so bad he was bringing up blood, and no matter how fast he breathes, he feels like he’s drowning.”
“Your son has pneumonia and a high fever,” Max said. “He needs to be in a hospital.”
“We have no way to get to a hospital,” the man exclaimed, putting his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Please help my son.”
Max didn’t say anything right away. He stared at the young man dying on the floor, then motioned for his father to follow him. “I don’t have the medicine or equipment he needs,” Max whispered urgently. “If you don’t take him to a hospital, he will die here.”
“Can you do anything to help him?” the man asked.
“I can give him fluids and some pain medicine, but that’s all I have.” Max shook his head. “I should have brought a pharmacy.”
He knelt next to the boy, got an IV started and hung a bag of saline on a nail in the wall above the boy’s head.
“This will help a little, but probably not enough,” Max said to the father. “When the bag is empty, pull the needle out of his arm, understand?”
The man had lost all color in his face. He nodded after a moment, then Max strode out of the house like the damn thing was on fire.
She didn’t blame him.
He’d come to this village thinking all he’d have to do was test for the pathogen. He forgot the first law of war.
No plan of operation extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy. Helmuth von Moltke the Elder may have died in 1891, but his basic understanding of war was timeless.
Alicia liked to put it this way: no matter what hell you’ve planned for, reality will be infinitely worse.
They reentered the hospital house and Max went directly to the room where his equipment was mostly still inside the duffel bags. Cornett came to a stop next to Alicia and watched him for a moment.
“We’re all going to die,” he said softly in English. “Aren’t we?”
Alicia decided to answer him. “None of us gets out of life alive.”
He seemed to think about that for a minute, then he stiffened and turned to examine her face. “You’re a woman?”
She shook her head slowly. “I’m a weapon.” She angled her chin toward Max. “His weapon.” Then she decided to let Cornett in on another secret. “We weren’t told that the illness was so widespread. We expected a couple dozen sick and a handful dead, not all this.”
“So, we really are all going to die.”
“Maybe,” she said, a little frustrated with his defeatist attitude. “But you’re still alive and so are we. As long as you’re breathing you can make a difference.”
“For a weapon, you sound awfully smart.”
“Every soldier has to face their mortality at some point.”
He straightened a little, walked into the room and said to Max in Arabic, “Can I offer you a sample?”
Max glanced at him and nodded. He pulled out more swabs and took one from Cornett’s nose and one from his throat.
“Where’s Tom?” he asked Bull in Arabic. Since anyone could be listening in, it was a smart choice.
“He’s trying to figure out who gets the IVs and who doesn’t.”
“Ask him to come back here. I need him to get some more samples for me.”
Bull headed off while Max pulled out a compact machine Ali’d seen but never used before. Max called it a Sandwich. It was some kind of analyzer that could identify a long list of bugs and viruses.
&nbs
p; He did something with the swabs, turned the machine on, then pressed go.
“How long until you know?” Cornett asked.
“A few minutes. I haven’t heard you coughing.”
“No, but I had a fever last night.”
“The illness seems to progress quickly, so perhaps you don’t have it.”
Tom came back and Max handed him a handful of swabs. “Try to get samples from the most recently sick. They’re more likely to be contagious and have lots of whatever is making them sick in their mucus.”
“Will do.” Tom left.
“Stone,” Max said quietly. “Would you mind having a look around to get an estimate of how many people there are in this village, both new and old residents?”
“Send Bull,” she said.
Max turned to look right at her. “You’re the better choice. You don’t look like a walking tank.”
“I can’t guard a body I’m not with,” she hissed at him under her breath.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he muttered, glaring at her.
Cornett spoke up. “I’d estimate between one and two thousand people. I don’t know how many sick, but a lot.” He glanced at Alicia and added, “Your son should stay here. I’ll go for a walk and see how many sick there are.”
Max glanced at Alicia, who shrugged.
Max nodded his assent and Cornett left.
No one spoke as the Sandwich did its thing. The house was quiet, the only noise the sound of weak coughing from a variety of throats. Too few.
Tom came back in with some swabs and gave them to Max. “Half the people I checked are dead.”
Max stared at him like Tom had spoken a language he didn’t understand. “How many?”
“Fifteen.”
The machine beeped.
Everyone either took a step toward it or leaned forward to see what the results were.
“Both samples are positive for influenza,” Max reported. “No other infections.”
“If this is the flu, why are people dying so fast of pneumonia? Is this some kind of bird flu?” Tom asked.
“It’s possible. I have a piece of equipment here that will differentiate between specific flu variants, but it takes longer.” He glanced around. “And even if I know which variant it is, people aren’t dying of the flu specifically. They’re dying of the body’s response to the flu. It’s called a cytokine storm, an overreaction by the body’s immune system. We’re seeing one of the ways the immune system reacts. Your lungs fill up with fluid and you drown.”