by Bobby Adair
She looked at Gonzalez. “What? You sighed dramatically like Austin’s in Godzilla’s backyard.”
Dr. Gonzalez pulled a face. “I thought Austin was in Texas.”
With a dramatic eye roll, Olivia said, “My brother’s name is Austin, Austin Cooper. Now tell me what’s wrong? Why the sigh?”
Dr. Gonzalez seemed to think about Olivia’s request for a moment as his face went through changes of expression. “You’ve heard of the Marburg virus?”
“Yes,” she answered, using information she’d gleaned from Dr. Wheeler’s presentation. “It’s similar to Ebola. The first Filovirus discovered. Named for Marburg, the city in Germany where factory workers at a company making polio vaccines got sick, I think. Thirty-something infected? Seven or eight died?”
“Good memory,” Dr. Gonzalez was impressed. “Not to put too much of a scare into you, but the monkeys that carried the virus to Marburg were imported from Uganda.”
“That’s enough, Steve.”
Olivia shot Dr. Wheeler a disapproving look, then shifted attention back to Dr. Gonzalez. “No, it’s not. So, the monkeys came from Uganda? That’s not necessarily insignificant. Tell me what else.”
“In 1980 and again in 1987, Mt. Elgon was connected to outbreaks of the Marburg virus.”
“I didn’t know that,” Olivia replied. “How many died?”
Dr. Gonzalez continued, “Only one in each case. It’s not clear how either patient was infected, but both spent time on Mt. Elgon prior to turning symptomatic.”
“So there might be a species there that carries the virus, but isn’t affected by it.” Olivia looked at Dr. Wheeler. “What did you call it? Something of a Typhoid Mary species…a reservoir species.”
Dr. Gonzalez paused. “What do you do here, again?”
“Analysis,” Olivia answered.
Dr. Gonzalez looked at Dr. Wheeler. “You must give a riveting Filovirus presentation.”
Dr. Wheeler said, “She’s a worrier, but she’s a smart one.”
Olivia shot Dr. Wheeler a harsh glare with a little smile.
“Is your brother the adventurous type?” Dr. Gonzalez asked. “Is he likely to climb the mountain and go spelunking?”
Olivia’s face lost its color. She fumbled around in her purse for a moment then remembered she left her cell phone in her car. Cell phones weren’t allowed inside the building. She looked up at Dr. Wheeler and then at Dr. Gonzalez. “He sent me some pictures a few weeks ago of him hiking up the mountain and standing in front of Sipi Falls.
Dr. Wheeler searched for Sipi Falls in another browser window. After a moment, the map showed the location up on the side of Mt. Elgon.
Dr. Gonzalez frowned. “Oh, my.”
Dr. Wheeler stood up and walked around the conference table, moved a chair, and leaned against the table beside Olivia. He put a hand on her shoulder. “Listen, the world is full of infectious diseases. We talked about those before Eeyore showed up.” Dr. Wheeler glanced at Dr. Gonzalez for emphasis. He then looked back at Olivia. “You know as well as I do, the chances of Austin catching anything like this in Africa are almost zero.” He turned to Gonzalez. “That was two deaths in—what, five cases—since 1980, right?”
“Right,” Gonzalez confirmed.
Looking back at Olivia, Dr. Wheeler asked, “Do you have any idea how many people go up that mountain for camping and whatnot? Do you know how many coffee farmers or goat herders or whatever live on that mountain?”
“No.”
“Neither do I, but I’ll bet it’s a bunch. And if you think about all the people who go up there every year for all these years, and only two of them came down with Marburg, I’d say the odds are way in your favor that nothing bad will happen to your brother. Hell, there’s never been any proof they got infected with a rare Filovirus on that mountain. At this point, Mt. Elgon is only a coincidence in those two men’s lives.”
Olivia looked up at Dr. Wheeler. “I’m sure you’re right.”
Chapter 34
Everything ached. Austin didn’t know if it was the Ebola, the work, or both. He stepped around Nurse Mary-Margaret’s blood-soaked body with a bucket in each hand. She’d been lying there all night. They could’ve had Austin and Littlefield carry the body out but leaving the body there sent a strong unspoken message.
Austin went out through the back door. One of the yellow HAZMAT guys with one hand lazily resting on his weapon stood about ten paces behind the building and watched Austin. Austin breathed in deeply through his surgical mask. There was a time when it had smelled fresh, but so much stink had coated the mask that every breath, whether inside or outside, smelled and tasted the same.
Austin nodded a greeting at the yellow clad Arab, a way to silently say, I’m friendly. Please don’t shoot me. Not that it mattered. The more Austin saw the people inside suffer, the less he wanted any part of it. Perhaps a bullet was the merciful path to whatever came next.
The guard didn’t react to Austin’s nod. No surprise. He hadn’t responded to Austin, even once, through the course of the night. Austin suspected the guard didn’t see him as human, or didn’t want to see him that way. Seeing him as human would make it harder to kill him. In a way, Austin’s nod was a lottery ticket of hope in case the disease didn’t do him in. Each nod was a purchase. Maybe one would pay off.
Austin rounded the corner of the building and walked over to the pit, which was situated far enough from the back of the building that the contents could be burned. At least that was Dr. Littlefield’s plan. Austin doubted that was going to happen. He dumped the buckets one at a time, careful to do it slowly, lest coagulating lumps drop into the muddy liquid and splash up in his face. When he turned around to head back, he saw the second guard—the one whose job it was to keep an eye on the pit and anyone who came out to dump a body or other waste.
But the guard wasn’t standing. He was sitting with his back to the wall and his AK-47 across his lap, resting beneath limp hands.
Austin’s first thought was that the guard was dead, but that made no sense at all. How would that have happened? Austin looked to his left. The first guard was out of sight. He looked back at the second. Was the guard asleep?
That was more than possible. It was probable. Austin felt sure that if he sat down, it would only be a matter of seconds before unconsciousness set in. Could it be that much different for the guard? How many hours had they all been on their feet?
But what to do? Walk over to the guard? Say something to see if he was asleep and chance waking him? Put all his chips on the guess that the guard might be sleeping and run for the tree line?
Austin looked left again. The longer he stayed out back, the more likely it was that the other guard would come around the corner to see what was going on.
Austin thought about what he knew and what he didn’t know, and it all came down to one thing. His odds of surviving Ebola were maybe as low as ten percent. He recalled what Najid’s man had done to Nurse Mary-Margaret, and though he had no idea why Najid hadn’t just killed them all—driven by whatever was driving him—he felt sure that his odds of living past his usefulness to Najid were zero.
Ten percent seemed huge compared to zero. So, with buckets in hand, Austin shuffled toward the tree line. He hoped that a shuffle would earn him a warning from the guard instead of a bullet, if it turned out the guard was awake. The guard didn’t move, not in the slightest. Austin shuffled faster.
When the trees were just a step or two to his right, Austin quietly sat the empty buckets on the ground. The guard did not react, so Austin ran for the trees, crashed past some bushes, and nothing happened. No gunshots followed him.
Out of breath and weak—whatever he was infected with stole his stamina—he tore off his mask so he could breathe. After a moment, he ran.
With the fever and the fatigue, Austin couldn’t sustain a running pace. Within a few hundred yards, he was jogging and feeling enough pain with each step that he might have stopped had he not been sure
that angry men with machine guns would soon be on his heels.
He came to a fork in the trail. The path to the right led down the hill and eventually to a speck of a village called Chebonet. The left led up the mountain. There was one thing he could be sure of. Once the guys in yellow Tyvek suits realized he was gone, he wouldn’t be able to outrun them. He’d have to outsmart them.
Putting himself in their shoes, he guessed they’d follow the downward path, thinking that he’d do the same. After all, no one in Austin’s condition, even acclimated to an elevation of six thousand feet, would make the choice to head up a path toward Mt. Elgon’s crater, fourteen thousand feet up from sea level.
Austin trudged on, thinking of alerting the authorities and trying to figure out how he was going to do that. His phone was crushed. If only he still had that. From up on the mountain he could have picked up a signal from one of the cell towers down in Mbale. He realized he was walking and dragging the toes of his shoes with each step. Setting thoughts of alerting anyone aside, he breathed deeply, painfully, and focused on moving forward, escaping.
Chapter 35
He’d been off the path for a few hours. Running, by that time, was an activity he only aspired to. Even walking fast was too much of an effort. He managed to work his way through the dense forest slowly, the only speed at which it could be transited. That took the running advantage away from his pursuers. So, doing his best to keep quiet, he kept going up, driving himself on through the power of a single hope, that he was outsmarting Najid’s HAZMAT guys.
Austin became confused as he climbed the forested slope, working his way around trees as tall as buildings, with trunks as wide as cars, brushing away nettles that stung his skin, staying off the game trails that always looked like the easier path. He was sweating. He was dizzy. No matter how rapidly he breathed, he couldn’t get enough air.
Thankfully, he came to a place where the trees grew sparse and the ground leveled. He found himself walking down a row of cultivated plants, waist-high on both sides. The sun was up in the late morning sky, and though a cold breeze was blowing, sweat was rolling down his face and stinging his eyes.
Austin tripped and landed face first in the dirt. In his mind he knew he had to keep going. But when he stood, the mountain was gone. Instead, he looked down a long lush slope and out onto a plain far below, checkered with cultivated fields, speckled with green copses, and veined with rivers.
Where did the mountain go?
In his confusion, he slowly spun around and saw the mountain again. He pushed himself to move, only making it a few more steps before everything went black.
Chapter 36
Eight men—men just like himself, Salim assumed—were in the van already. By the time the van had stopped at two more corners and picked up four more men, Salim dozed off, hypnotized by the hum of the engine beneath his seat.
When he awoke again, they were so far out of the city that the paved highway had turned to dirt. The sun was up and shining brightly through the van. Salim’s head bounced against his window as he thought about the map of Kenya he’d seen on the airplane. Nairobi was in the south central part of the country. To the east and north of the capital was the Rift Valley. He didn’t know much of anything else about Kenya, except for the fact that it was a popular place for safaris, mostly of the photographic type. He’d seen countless allusions to the Rift Valley and its abundant wildlife while channel surfing late at night back when finding something to watch among a few hundred cable television channels had been his biggest problem.
As the morning wore on, the van passed through ever-shrinking towns, over rougher and rougher roads. Great swaths of farmland spread out in all directions. And eventually a lone mountain rose up out of the horizon until it dominated the western view.
A few times when they were in some deserted part of the road, the van pulled over. The men relieved themselves in the bushes and walked around to stretch. Among them, there were a few whispers between men who seemed to know one another. Beyond that, there was no talking.
Late in the morning, they were fed a simple meal of sun-dried fruits and nuts. But never a word was said about where they were going, how long it would take, or what they would do when they got there. The men were all heading into ambiguity, based on nothing more than faith in their god and their masters.
It was when they were driving north, with the big mountain’s thickly-jungled slopes on the left, that the van took a sudden turn onto a narrow path of a road squeezed between the trees and bushes. For five or six miles the van lumbered over rough rocks and large holes, while branches screeched across the paint.
When they’d zigzagged five hundred or a thousand feet up the slope, the van came to the end of the road. Three other safari vans were already parked there, all empty. Waiting in the shade by the vehicles were two menacing men armed with the very familiar AK-47s.
Everybody got out of the safari van. The driver and his partner removed their own AK-47s from luggage bins. Instructions were passed. Drink if you need it. Relieve yourself if you need to. Prepare to hike.
Salim wandered around the clearing, getting the knots out of his muscles after so many hours spent sitting numbly, drooling in his sleep, with his head banging against the side window. He breathed deeply of the cool thin mountain air and found himself walking up next to Jalal, who’d perched himself on the edge of a drop off with a view between the crowns of trees. Twenty, or fifty, or maybe a hundred miles across the plain, a mountain of clouds was building, stretching to the horizon while pouring rain and lightening into the black shadow below.
Absently, Jalal said, “It’s beautiful.”
Though Jalal wasn’t looking, Salim nodded. “It reminds me of home.”
After a moment, Jalal asked, “The forests in Colorado are this lush?”
“The trees are different, but the mountains are the same. Whenever I stand on one and look down on the world, it takes my breath away.”
Jalal turned with a smile. “I never thought of you as the poetic type.”
Salim shrugged. “I’m in a weird mood.”
Other men shuffled in the dirt and the weeds around the vans. A few found places far enough away for private conversation but with a view of the storm over the plain far to the east.
Salim asked, “Do you ever feel like you’re a pawn?”
“A pawn? You slipped pretty quickly from poetic to trite.” Jalal smiled at Salim.
“You know what I mean.”
“I’ve felt that way my whole life,” Jalal agreed.
Nodding for emphasis, Salim said, “I thought all this would be different.”
“How so?”
“I thought maybe I’d feel like somebody. Maybe I thought I’d feel like I was doing something important, making choices, maybe even changing the world.”
Jalal laughed. “That’s what we’re doing, mate. We’re going to change the world.”
“Into what?”
That confused Jalal. “Into what? What do you mean?”
Salim looked around to make sure no one could hear what he was about to say. “What if it’s the same thing?”
“How do you mean?”
“What if we’re still powerless, invisible, disposable people, making greedy men more powerful?”
Jalal shook his head and watched the clouds grow and change. “You think too much, mate.”
One of the men in charge called to get everyone’s attention, pointed at a trailhead, and told them to get going. Everyone moved in that direction. Salim fell in line as they all headed out on foot along a trail that ran across the slope.
Chapter 37
Emmanuel Muhangi was surprised when he saw Austin stumble, then fall in his coffee field. Not being an excitable type, he squatted in front of his small house and watched for a moment, but Austin never got back up.
It wasn’t until his seven-year-old son—who recognized Austin from previous visits—asked why Austin had fallen. It was then that Emmanuel decided to get
up and investigate.
After crossing his coffee field, he found Austin—not just fallen, but fainted. Emmanuel shook him but was unable to wake Austin. Upon turning Austin over, he felt his skin, which was burning hot with fever. He’d vomited on himself.
Emmanuel turned to his son and told him to quickly go back to the house and get Emmanuel’s wife. Emmanuel, wire-thin but strong from hoisting heavy bags of coffee onto his shoulders, lifted Austin in much the same fashion. He carried Austin to the shed where he and the other mzungu kids slept during their visits.
Emmanuel’s wife came in with a bucket of water and some cloths. His daughter was right behind her. They both went to work dabbing the cold water on Austin’s skin with the cloths and squeezing dribbles into his mouth.
It was obvious to Emmanuel that Austin was very sick. Sick beyond his wife’s abilities to nurse him back to health. After much discussion, Emmanuel left his wife and children with the sick young man and took off at a run down the path that led to Kapchorwa and the closest hospital.
Chapter 38
The trailhead was deceptive. It started out running on a level path across the slope of the mountain. Around a bend it turned upward and forced the group of Pakistani-trained jihadists to hike uphill through the middle of the day. By the time the troop of hikers crested a rise and started to head back down in earnest, they were sweating, thirsty, and spread over a quarter of a mile of the trail.
Salim, walking beside Jalal, could see a group of three about forty or fifty meters ahead. The pair behind was at least that far back.
“What do you think?” Jalal asked.
Salim looked around. “About?”
“This bloody hike through the mountains.”
“I’m tired.”
“No, mate.” Jalal shoved Salim playfully. “You’re so morose. Do you think they’re going to hide us up here?”
Salim thought for a moment. “They could have put us in any one of those thousand isolated houses we saw on the way out here. Why hide us on the mountain in the forest?”