by Bobby Adair
Like it had been in Chebonet two days prior, and like it had been in every hamlet and cluster of houses along the road, people who should have been at work, weren’t. Nobody was walking to the market, gossiping on a porch, or working in the fields. They were huddled in their homes, hiding from microbial monsters that stalked their streets. Anyone not afraid of catching Ebola was already sick or dead.
Sironko was a town on the plain in the western shadow of Mt. Elgon, four or five times larger than Kapchorwa. A month prior, the road Austin walked through Sironko would have been abuzz with cars heading north and south, with trucks hauling farm goods to market in Mbale or Kampala.
Now, the traffic was gone.
As the sight of another dying town dragged on Austin’s mood, he stopped walking and looked around. He was near the center of Sironko, in front of a closed grocery, just down the street from a modern gas station with brightly colored awnings. A man a few blocks down bounded over a wide puddle of stagnant brown water that had collected along the curb. He hefted a half-full bag of something, glanced suspiciously at Austin, and disappeared down a narrow alley.
Somewhere, a block or two distant, an unseen woman shouted angrily, and another woman argued back. A rickety generator chugged through a holed muffler. Several goats walked out of a side street and started lapping at the water by the curb.
Austin looked back up the road from whence he’d come, wondering for the hundredth time if he’d made a mistake in leaving Kapchorwa. He wondered how Dr. Littlefield was getting along. He wondered if Dr. Mills—Kristin—with her happy brown eyes, was going to die. He felt guilty for not making better time on his trek. Kristin had done her part, and was probably the reason he was alive. All he had to do was walk to Mbale to get her help and he was failing at that.
Austin breathed deeply as he looked up the road, coughed roughly several times before losing his balance and falling to his knees in the road. He realized—or more accurately, he accepted—what he’d suspected since he’d awoken that morning.
He was sick again.
His back ached. His throat was raw and painful when he swallowed. His nose was starting to run with mucus that grew thicker and more greenly opaque with each gob he snot-rocketed out. Some other tropical disease was making a cozy new home in his cells.
Austin laughed ironically as he looked at the dirty road between his hands. He laughed and watched his mucus darken the dust. It never even occurred to him back when he was in Denver that a fever and a sore throat could develop into something that could kill. Now he knew better. He also knew he couldn’t spend another night sleeping under the stars. He needed food. He needed to rest. He needed to get himself healthy before pushing on to Mbale.
Standing up and looking around again, Austin saw a woman in the shadows under an awning over the sidewalk. He waved a hand and said, “Hey.”
The wide, white eyes flashed fear, and the head slipped back inside a doorway.
Turning around to get his bearings, Austin recalled that an upscale hotel—upscale by African standards—was nearby. On one of his many trips between Mbale and Kapchorwa, he’d been riding in a bus that stopped at that gas station just up the road, the one with the colorful awning. Around the corner and several blocks down stood the hotel. He’d met some Canadian college students on the bus who were staying there, and they had nothing but good things to say about the place.
A good place.
Austin half smiled at the irony of it.
He didn’t care if the hotel had a one- or a five-star rating. If someone inside would take his money, he’d be glad to have a bed and a roof. If the hotel had a working phone, then he’d thank his lucky stars. A phone could solve so many problems. He dug around in his pocket and pulled out his wad of cash. It needed to be enough.
Austin removed one of his water bottles from the canvas bag, drank most of it down, and shuffled slowly down the street, keeping an eye out from side to side as he did. Ahead of him, doors were closed. Curtains were drawn shut.
He made a right turn at the closed gas station and saw his goal. Walking became a little easier.
At the hotel, he crossed a dirt parking lot containing a van and two cars. He felt a pang of hope. A well-maintained sign mounted over the door on the front of the building displayed the hotel name. A smaller sign with red letters hung above a glass door. It said, “Lobby.”
Rest was just a few steps away.
After crossing the porch, Austin grabbed the handle on the front door, and yanked. The door rattled against its lock.
“No.”
He pulled on the door again. It didn’t budge.
That’s okay, he told himself. Of course it would be locked, given what was going on. Austin knocked and pressed his face to the glass to see inside. Nothing but a small, dim lobby, and a front desk with no one behind it.
He knocked again and waited a patient moment. Someone had to be inside.
He waited.
Nothing.
He knocked again and was rewarded.
From a doorway behind the hotel desk, a man peeked around a corner. “Go away. We’re closed.”
“No,” Austin protested. “I have money. I can pay.” He grabbed for his wad of cash. He called, “Just one sec.”
The man stepped out of the doorway. “You are American?”
“Yes, yes,” Austin confirmed, while he pulled out his cash and pushed it against the glass for the man to see.
The man stepped closer and craned his neck to see out into the parking lot. “Do you have a car?”
“No,” Austin replied, looking out at the parking lot. “I walked.”
“From where?”
Does it matter? It was a stupid thought. Of course it did. He chose to lie. “I’ve been up in the mountains camping for a few weeks.”
“By yourself?” the clerk asked suspiciously.
“My guide dropped me off.”
“You said you walked.”
Austin huffed, “Yeah, he dropped me off at the gas station,” pointing at the bright awnings down the street. “He needed gas.”
“They are closed,” said the clerk.
“He didn’t know—” Austin’s temper flared. “Look, you see I have money. Just give me a room for the night, please. I’ll be gone tomorrow.” Austin needed more than one night with a bed, but he figured he could negotiate a second night later.
The clerk had crossed the small lobby by then and was standing just a few paces behind the glass.
“Please,” Austin waved the cash. “I’ll pay twice the rate. I need a place to stay tonight.”
The clerk stepped close to the door and reached out as if to unlock it. Then he froze, his eyes on Austin’s face. The clerk raised a hand and brushed a finger under his nose. “You’re sick.”
Austin shook his head as he reached up to his own nose. Crap. It was running again. “No, not sick. Just allergies.”
“Sick.” The clerk stepped back, shaking his head. “Go away. No disease here. Go away.”
“I’m not sick,” Austin pleaded as he wiped his nose. “I’m not sick.”
The clerk hurried around his counter, disappeared through the doorway from which he’d emerged, and slammed the inner door shut behind him.
Austin hung his head, leaned on the glass, and groaned. “Damn.”
He turned around and sank down to the ground. Feeling despair, he put his head in his hands. He was sick. He was hungry. Anything that didn’t ache from the growing fever in his blood ached from pushing his weak body too many miles. And just on the other side of the glass was access to a bed, a shower, food, and a phone.
He thought about breaking the glass and punching the cowardly clerk.
Where would that lead? No place good. Not in a country full of fear. If he was lucky enough not be shot for breaking in, the police would surely come, and how would he explain himself then?
So Austin sat and looked at the empty street as he rested in the shade of the porch, thinking instead about w
hat to do next. Mbale was still a dozen miles south along the highway. Surely someone there would help him. Somebody had to have a working phone.
“Go away,” the clerk called from inside.
Austin held up a middle finger to the glass and yelled, “Fuck you, little man!”
Chapter 30
Sironko, like Kapchorwa, was an agricultural town made up of farmers and merchants, but mostly farmers. Late summer crops were being harvested before Ebola came to town. Just like in Kapchorwa, agricultural warehouses—some small, some large—were scattered up and down the streets and out on the edge of town. As Austin sat in front of the hotel, he gave some serious thought to breaking into one of those storehouses. Such a place would be safe and out of the elements. It might even be free of bugs and vermin—the farmers had to have a way of controlling those. With any luck, he might find something edible in its raw state. A parade of juicy, ripe fruits passed through his imagination, and his stomach rumbled in response.
While his stomach was convincing him to go ahead with the plan, he spent a moment thinking about what the farmers might do when they discovered him in their warehouse, eating their produce. He’d be in the same trouble he’d have been in for breaking into the hotel.
Desperation—and that’s what Austin was feeling at the moment, desperation—was driving him to seriously consider bad choices.
“Think, Austin, think,” he told himself out loud. And why not? Nobody was around to hear.
Austin thought about Kapchorwa and how the virus had spread so quickly through the village. He thought about all those people in the hospital, those who were dead in their homes, and realized that Sironko was in much the same state Kapchorwa had been. He realized that there might be houses, a lot of them, with no living occupants. Either the residents had gone off to the local hospital, fled from town, or they were dead inside. Any one of those houses might have everything Austin needed for a few days of recovery.
It felt wrong just to consider it, but he knew what he needed to do. He stood up, turned back to the glass door, and pressed his face against it. The clerk was nowhere to be seen. Austin kicked the door as hard as he dared and yelled a curse at the glass. With the dissatisfaction of no response at all, he turned away, crossed the dusty parking lot, and continued up the road.
The afternoon shadows were starting to grow long. Down the dirt road, houses stood on both sides, packed closely together on small lots. The further he walked from the center of town, the further the houses were spaced apart and set further back from the road, hidden among the trees and generally more primitive. Those were the houses Austin was going to visit.
Feeling fatigue start to weigh heavy on his bones, he reached his first candidate. He stood at the ill-defined property boundary, that part of the ground where the grasses had been trampled into red dirt, maybe fifteen feet or so from an entrance protected only by a curtain.
“Hello,” Austin called.
He heard some sounds from inside. A metal container hit the ground. A figured appeared in the shadows. The figure said something Austin didn’t understand, but the words were accompanied by a gesture one might make when waving away a fly.
Austin understood.
He looked around. Up through the trees on the same side of the road, houses of cinderblock with tin roofs were scattered among round thatched rondavels, traditional buildings for much of central Africa. Austin walked along a path that led to the nearest dwelling. It was one of the round huts.
Before Austin even came to a stop, a thin and angry man stepped out. He scowled at Austin with arms crossed, almost daring Austin to come closer. One glance at the man’s boney, balled fists was all the urging Austin needed to hurry by. A second glance at the blood-red color that had replaced the whites of the man’s eyes confirmed beyond a doubt that the virus was in this part of town.
Austin told himself he need only persist. Persistence would yield a result. He headed toward a yellowish-orange house that the dirt seemed to be trying to pull back down into its bosom. It reeked of death. Looking back over his shoulder as he neared, the scowling man still watched him, though from a less-threatening posture. He was leaning with his forearm against the wall of his hut, looking like he might retch at any moment.
Austin passed on by the stinking yellowish house.
When he reached the next house, the trees and bushes obscured his view of the scowling man. Nobody was in sight. Austin approached to within a dozen feet of an open doorway, making his way to the squarish little cinderblock house under a rusty roof.
“Hello?” Austin called.
He waited. He smelled the air. He looked around.
“Hello?”
With no response, Austin ventured up to the doorway until he was close enough to rap on the open door. He did so, to no effect. Again, he asked, “Hello?” He listened.
Nothing at all. No verbal response, no sound of movement from within.
Austin gathered up his courage, took a step and a half forward, and peeked inside.
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He saw the corpses of a woman and three children under a buzzing fog of flies.
In a basket on the back wall, he saw fruit. In another, he saw yams. Austin looked again at the bodies as he leaned in the doorway. He thought about his aches, and his fever. There was plenty of room on the floor to lie down. He despised the thought of lying down near the dead family, but he didn’t have the strength to move the bodies, not even the bodies of the children.
Feeling like a ghoul, Austin stumbled over the dirt floor as he let himself inside. He fell to his hands and knees and decided to lie down in the cool dirt for a moment before he’d trouble himself to peel a mango for a meal. He fell asleep.
Chapter 31
He’d gotten on the road later than he’d hoped. Some mornings, when the weight of his sadness was on him, it was hard to get out of bed. How does a man deal with the loss of a son? The world had turned into a flavorless, bleak place, where music no longer made him reminisce about the good old days, and even the foods at his favorite restaurants lost their spice.
Paul knew he was numb, not dealing with Austin’s death in a healthy way. As if there was a healthy way to mourn a child. He also knew the melancholy mood would eventually break, and he would smile again. One day. Until then, he could only go through the motions of living, making the best choices he could along the way.
He’d been on the road for an hour, rolling down Interstate 25, coming into Colorado Springs from the north, seeing Pike’s Peak, standing above the Front Range at fourteen thousand feet, its early snows painted pink by the rising sun. Rush hour traffic in The Springs, as the locals called the town, was just starting to pick up. Paul looked at his watch. He was still too early for the stop-and-go worst of it. He’d be out of the other side of town in ten minutes.
On radio’s AM dial, where it seemed the earliest news was always breaking, two men were talking about Ebola cases in Beijing and Mumbai. They didn’t have numbers, but implied that counts would dwarf anything seen so far in the West. Paul always took AM news with a grain of salt, but lately, the rumors so often passed for fact in that medium, were getting picked up and confirmed by the mainstream media.
He thought about Ebola for the millionth time: the few hundred cases in Western cities, the quarantine in Uganda, the scary news out of Nairobi, and Olivia’s warning to start working from home based on the discovery of a new, more virulent strain. Then there was the outbreak in Dallas—the reason for Paul’s trip. It wasn’t an outbreak, not yet, not really. A half-dozen cases so far, all tied through direct contact to that nameless guy who collapsed in the airport.
Paul passed out of the south side of Colorado Springs, thinking about Heidi. When he’d told her he’d made up his mind on what he had to do, she stopped talking to him. That had been days ago. She told him he was emotional, depressed, and that he needed to go see a doctor. When she was really riled she told him he was irrational, crazy. Paul was t
ired of hearing it. He argued that his choice was based on data and reasoned conclusions, and that she was the one being irrational. She couldn’t accept that an unstoppable Ebola epidemic was coming.
Heidi clung to a baseless hope that a last minute vaccine or serum would arrive to save everyone. She couldn’t accept the very real possibility of death. Dying only happened to other people—poor people in faraway lands, people without modern medical care.
But Austin was dead. He was one of those people.
Rumors were all over the Internet about the mutated Ebola strain being airborne. No government agency or reputable medical organization would confirm those rumors. Still, the officials’ non-denial denials—as Paul had heard them described in a movie he’d seen a long time ago—came so frequently that Paul took them as affirmations.
Heidi said airborne Ebola was a suspicion he’d had all along, and that he was seeing the evidence through the filter of his fears. That had sparked a fight, one of many. The more they argued, the more they each dug in their heels. They each took every bit of news as proof they were right, even when it was exactly the same news.
How the hell does that even happen?
They were two intelligent, rational adults. They saw the same news on the television. They shared articles and videos they found on the Internet, usually with the statement, “See, I told you so.” Nothing was ever proof enough.
Now the discussion was over. Paul was on his way to Dallas to infect himself before the epidemic got out of hand. It was the only sure way to get medical help while it was still available. Afterwards, he’d drive back from Dallas, careful to protect himself and not infect others. That was the reason he had eight full five-gallon gas cans in the back of his truck. He’d need those for the trip. His plan was to stop his truck on remote sections of the road, refill his gas tank, and drive on. He had no intention of making contact with any person on the way back. He didn’t want to be the source of an outbreak in Amarillo, Raton, or some such place.