The Virophage Chronicles (Book 1): Dead Hemisphere

by Landeck, R. B.

  Now though, as the newscast’s host repeatedly emphasized, first reports indicated that they were dealing with something new. Something unforeseen and a resulting situation that was rapidly getting out of control, at least near the outbreak’s epicentre and the regions in its immediate vicinity. Stock footage of past responses came on as the announcer explained the ins and outs of the measures taken and challenges faced by the World Health Organization in collaboration with regional governments. This was actually nothing new at all, Julie thought, almost bored with what she had hoped would be some kind of revelation or at least useful.

  She was about to press the off button when the host paused and pressed his finger against his earpiece. He looked at the camera, unsure of what to say. Whispering as quietly as he could into his microphone, he asked for the person at the other end to repeat what they had said.

  “You really want me to say that? Are you sure…people are doing what?” He excused himself for a moment, and they cut to an airline commercial.

  Julie stared at the screen. Much to her surprise, she found herself chewing her fingernails. She looked at them and shook her head. There was a first time for everything. She laughed nervously as the broadcast resumed. The host had composed himself and now looked to be reading off a teleprompter. They no longer let him ad-lib his commentary, a sure-fire sign that something was up.

  According to reports from their correspondents in Uganda, Rwanda, and Kenya, the virus had not only spread beyond the Congo, but they had now confirmed that whatever had managed to jump the border was no longer the original strain. In fact, they now surmised, it wasn’t even the same disease anymore. According to officials, they were now dealing with something they had neither seen before, nor prepared for; something that, and it took a moment for the announcer to read and comprehend the actual words, caused people infected with the virus to attack others, spreading the infection far more rapidly than any epidemic before it.

  Specifics were unknown, but incubation times seemed so short and the onset so rapid that broader containment measures, as their sources asserted, would need to be taken. They announced that they would go live to the western border in a few minutes, and then the screen was flooded again with commercials of the usual kind, telling people to enjoy the next trip they couldn’t afford or offering luxury stays in places few people would ever be able to see.

  Julie got up and had another look around. Wanjiru was sleeping, hunched over the kitchen table where she had left her, and she could hear Anna rustle through the materials for her artwork while humming a tune. It was already afternoon. Julie had barely noticed how the day had flown by until she had to turn on the light in the living room. The sun was already low.

  The promised live feed came up, and as usual, some well-kempt reporter standing on a rooftop somewhere pointed into the background of the city behind him, which the screen identified as Kampala. He went on to repeat everything that had been said and then warned viewers about the graphic images they were about to see.

  The broadcast cut to scenes from earlier in the day. There were similar running battles to those in the jumbled transmission on the local Kenyan channel, but this one was much clearer, and the camera zoomed in and out of what was happening. There were people in Hazmat suits. According to the field reporter, they had been manning a health checkpoint along one of the arterial routes into the city. Their white suites were blood-stained, and some looked like they were nursing injuries. Behind them, off to the side, armed security forces were busy repelling what looked to be very angry people mounting an assault. Teargas was wafting through the air, and the cameraman retreated, rubbing his eyes. Several checkpoint personnel and civilians were now running towards the camera, and the coverage turned decidedly shakier. There were gunshots and screams, and it looked like the line of riot shields and rifle-wielding officers gave way to a wave of angry civilians.

  Just before the camera dropped to the ground, showing nothing but running and shuffling feet, people seemed to be tearing into the policemen with their bare hands. If she didn’t know any better, Julie could have sworn she saw some of them tear pieces of flesh from the officers’ limbs. Then the screen went black.

  ‘Why were people biting each other?’ Julie cringed.

  The news hour jingle now played over and over, presumably looped while they tried to resume the broadcast. She didn’t know a lot about Ebola or this alleged new strain, but people taking chunks out of each other wasn’t on the list of symptoms of any disease she had ever heard of. The more she thought about it, the more what she saw didn’t make sense. Dissecting the images in her mind, there were other things that didn’t add up. The angry people in the footage were black, of course, but their skin colour somehow seemed off. The only other time she had seen such a chalky, unnatural look on black people was on local women using whitening creams that made them look like ghosts and with prolonged use, had their veins and capillaries shine through their skin as if it were a piece of parchment.

  She had seen Ebola victims on the news and in reports Tom had brought home. All of them may have looked sick, but their colour was nowhere like this. And then there was their movement. Sick people may have trouble standing upright or moving with speed, but these people were stiff and uncoordinated, their limbs like wooden appendages, several of them walking around like on stilts.

  That was it!

  They were stiff and lifeless, and their faces pale as death itself. And yet they were alive and, for lack of a better word, rather animated in their pursuit of officers and checkpoint personnel. If that is what the new strain was doing to its hosts, then it was no surprise the locals had called it the devil.

  Julie’s thoughts went back to what Wanjiru had told her, and her fear for Tom reached a new level. She bit her knuckles in order not to cry out loud. Then she froze.

  ‘Wanjiru!’ The thought shot through her mind like a bullet.

  Would she be Ok after having been bitten? It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know that most, if not all, viruses could be transferred through body fluids. And a bite was about a fluid as they came. She jumped up and returned to the kitchen, where a moment earlier, Wanjiru had sat up and was now rubbing her eyes.

  “How are you feeling?” Julie asked with apprehension, watching the woman’s every move as she woke.

  “Much better, Miss Julie,” Wanjiru sounded tired. “I think I will take some medicine, though, and rest some more. Best to sleep it off and be fresh tomorrow.” She managed a weak smile.

  Julie went over to the kitchen cabinet and retrieved a packet of Panadol she kept there as a matter of routine.

  “Take a couple of these every few hours and let me know if you need anything, Ok? I will wake you for dinner later on.”

  She handed Wanjiru the pills and watched her as she lumbered to her room in the back of the house, just past the laundry near the back entrance.

  “Thank you, Miss Julie.” She heard her say before Wanjiru pulled the door to the servant’s quarters shut.

  A little relieved, Julie put the kettle back on and began to think about what to cook for dinner.

  CHAPTER 18

  It was already after seven when Anna finally made an appearance, proudly rolling out her finished, welcome banner on the living room floor. This was the longest time she could remember ever having been away from her dad, having been much too young to recall his tours of duty when she was but an infant, and she was giddy with anticipation of his return, which she knew would be soon.

  Even Christmas Eve didn’t come close to the excitement she felt when she imagined him finally standing under her piece of artwork and the hugs that would undoubtedly follow, as would the quality time the two spent together reading and laughing, whenever his work allowed it. Julie put out the plates, a simple dinner of chicken and pasta she had whipped up with her mind far away and in thought of what lay ahead. She served Anna and set aside a portion for Wanjiru, whom she would check on later. She also did another round of the house, peeki
ng through every window, tense and focused, waiting for something to happen at any moment. And yet, nothing stirred outside or beyond the compound walls. Perhaps traffic was less than usual, as was the army of day labourers on their way home from work, who ordinarily would pass by in an endless stream. For all intents and purposes, things seemed rather quiet.

  In a city like Nairobi, this could only mean one of two things, and since it wasn’t a public holiday, the most likely and only other scenario was that something was afoot, something was brewing, waiting to be unleashed and burst forth into the streets.

  Even with less than a month in town, Julie had already experienced this calm before the storm on several occasions, one of them seeing her narrowly escape one of the almost weekly violent protests, which routinely ended in street-battles, overstretched hospitals and occasionally, funeral homes. Whatever it was that had caused the lull in general activity, when combined with Wanjiru’s story and the images now increasingly filling live segments on every channel, it was big and menacing enough to raise the hairs on her neck.

  She called Anna down for dinner, and they ate in virtual silence. A few times, Anna wanted to ask about her father, but she could see that Julie was lost in her own thoughts as she stabbed away at her meal. It was already dark outside when they returned to the living room, and Julie, despite her urge to keep watching the news, took great care to skip the channels as they looked for something to entertain them for the evening.

  Here and there, Julie looked over her shoulder and into the kitchen, where usually the light from under Wanjiru’s room’s door would bathe the tiled floor in a soft glow. The tiles remained dark now, and Julie began to worry. She tip-toed over and pressed an ear against the solid wood door.

  Nothing. Not a sound. No movement.

  She knocked. There was no reply.

  With even the smallest sound amplified in her ears, she pressed on the door handle, opening the door just enough to look inside. Light flooded in from the kitchen through the gap and crept forward into the room inch by inch until it covered Wanjiru’s bed in the far corner of the room.

  There. Julie could make out the housekeeper’s outline beneath several layers of blankets. The room smelled musky, sickly sweet even. Julie coughed, but only in part to make herself heard. The blankets remained still. With careful steps, Julie entered the room and approached the bed. On a nightstand were old black and white photos of family members, depicting village life in a gone-by era; a time she knew Wanjiru cherished, often having referred to this part of her past as the best years of her life. She had always remained silent about what had changed things for her, and each time Julie had tried to get close enough to find out, she had seen a cloud descend over Wanjiru and immediately felt the need to change the subject.

  Now the lively, even bubbly woman she had come to know her as was once again silent, but as Julie now feared, not by her own volition. Careful to avoid unnecessary noise, Julie made her way to the top of the bed, where she could see Wanjiru’s headscarf peeking out from under the covers. Even before her hand reached her face, she could feel the heat of the fever emanating from Wanjiru’s head. She pulled back some of the blankets and inspected the bandage. It was intact, and the bleeding had stopped, but the surrounding areas looked angry and infected. Wanjiru’s clothes were sweat-soaked, and as much as Julie tried, she barely woke. Her blood-shot eyes rolled back, and she had lost all muscle tone, her pale arms, and legs but flapping limply. Unable to lift or turn her, Julie changed the sheets and blankets as best as she could.

  She rushed back to the kitchen and retrieved some painkillers, but in the end, had to give up when she found Wanjiru’s mouth clenched tight from the throes of fever and pain. Instead, she dabbed her forehead with a cool, wet cloth, each touch of the cold material answered by a painful moan as the infection got the upper hand against all remedies. Julie sat with her for a while until Anna called from the living room.

  “You rest, Wanjiru. I promise I will get help.” It was all that she could offer for the moment.

  She thought she could hear a sigh in response, but it was hard to tell. Julie folded the blankets back gently and made her way back to Anna. Bored, she had flicked through the channels and, with excitement, was now pointing at the TV.

  “That’s dad’s! That’s dad’s company, isn’t it?!”

  Sure enough, there on screen, a responder of some sort was being prodded with a microphone by a zealous reporter. In the background, the familiar logo of Tom’s employer. The segment was short, and there was not a lot of information. By the time Julie had finished fumbling with the remote to increase the volume, the piece was almost over. Yet from the few things she managed to catch, it wasn’t so much what was being said, but what wasn’t.

  In the brief recap, delivered by a suitably frazzled reporter in a flak jacket, they mentioned the influx of patients displaying unusual symptoms. They highlighted that border checkpoints, despite government assurances to the contrary, were ill-equipped to deal with the sheer volume of new arrivals and that some people had chosen the long and dangerous trek through the countryside to completely evade border patrols and medical support units. They even spoke of incidents of violence whereby victims had fought medical staff with their teeth, and that casualties had been reported all along the border. But there was not a single mention of Nairobi; about what was clearly changing in a city that on the nightly news was usually the first to feature.

  Anna waited patiently by Julie’s side as they continued to watch and wait for updates, sitting through every annoying commercial and every repetitive ad for yet another mediocre talent show copied from international formats that had long done their dash and faded into oblivion. The news kept switching back and forth between different areas of the country, covering anything from cattle rustling up north to a blind woman turning recycled plastics into wearable art, but Nairobi never featured, not even once.

  “Media blackout,” Julie grumbled and turned off the TV. “A bloody media blackout.”

  “What’s a media blackout?” Anna raised her eyebrows and gazed at her mum.

  “It’s when the government forbids newspapers and TV channels to broadcast news they don’t want them to…It means something is going on. Something they don’t want people here to know.”

  Julie gritted her teeth. She was furious. The dim street light on the other side of the compound wall cast long shadows across the room.

  Hugging Anna tightly, Julie gazed out into the gloom. Their familiar surroundings now seemed foreboding, menacing even, as her thoughts got caught up in a whirlwind of uncertainty that carried them across the border to Tom.

  CHAPTER 19

  A breeze rippled the waters of the lake, and they shimmered and glistened, the early morning sun’s rays flittering across the water in a tremolo of light, before reaching land and piercing the armoured windows of the APC.

  Tom greeted the day, still reclined in the driver’s seat. He stretched, shedding the sleep from his brain. Had it not been for the scene around them, this could have been a perfect day to spend lazing about the shore, drinking cold beer and watching the small outrigger boats bring in their still wriggling catch to be fried or barbecued at one of the many little food stalls along the waterfront.

  He enjoyed the brief moment of wistfulness before the undeniable reality of things once again came crashing into view. As things stood, for now, beachside R&R was a thing of the past, and the buzzing of legions of flies above the endless blanket of corpses stretching out in all directions now even penetrated the relative sound-proofing of the thick armour.

  As daylight became more intense, so did the heat and soon temperatures began to climb. Tom figured they had no more than an hour or two before their temporary refuge would turn into an oven.

  The others slowly woke as well, and, trying to avoid any unnecessary noise, they rose and stretched their aching limbs before digging into the remaining rations they had found the night before.

  “I have to pee.�
� The little boy was the first to speak, crossing his legs and shifting his weight from side to side as he looked up at his grandfather.

  Someone produced an empty plastic bottle and, slightly embarrassed, the boy managed to use it while his granddad provided cover as best as he could.

  “Houston, we have a problem.” Amadou nodded towards the two.

  It was clear that sooner or later, all of them would need to use the bathroom, which in their present predicament would pose a unique and potentially deadly challenge.

  “I guess holding it in is out of the question?” Tom made a vague attempt at humour as he tried to come up with a solution.

  A quick peek through the windows revealed what they had already suspected. Even though the previous day’s commotion had died down, many of the victims, having succumbed to their wounds, had since risen, adding to the already massive number of the dead staggering about or just standing still, swaying back and forth waiting for some kind of stimulus.

  The eerie calm belied the threat the thousands of dead posed in their present state. Any noise, any movement from within or atop the vehicle would see them descend on the survivors from miles around.

  “So, what’s the plan then?” Amadou had seen enough.