Plague (2 page)

“Sorry,” Cabero said
.
“
Busy
.”

“Did you read the file?”

“Yes.”

“What do you think?”

“About what?”

“You didn’t read the file
,
did you?”

“I just told you I did.”

“I want to send a sample of his blood and have it tested with you. We don’t have the laboratories for it here.”

“Fine. Send whatever you like.”

“Have I done something to upset you, Jose?”

“I’m sick of these tourists coming here with dreams of finding lost cities and ending up dead. Then it’s my mess to clean and
I
get yelled at by every bureaucrat who sees tourism drying up. I’m just sick of the whole thing.”

“Sick of it or not this American is going to cau
se problems. We have over ten
tours a day
with
each person paying thousands of dollars.”

“I know,” Cabero said dismissively
.
“
Send
the blood. I’ll have someone look at it. What are we looking for?”

“Unknown pathogen.”

CHAPTER 3

Clifford Lane finished the tour near the Jutai River and thanked the five remaining guests
,
taking a moment to answer questions and exchange emails. A few of them told him they’d like to stay in touch and talk about another tour next year.

When he was done he gathered up his supplies, rolling his tent and strapping it to his backpack
, which
lay on the ground
. He went
to stand
on the edge of the river and dialed a number on his cell phone. Th
ere was still no reception. H
e turned the phone off and heaved the backpack on before taking a deep breath and starting the
two-
mile
hike
to the village and the
Jeep
that awaited him. From there, it was on
to a plane headed for
Brazil for a few days of relaxat
ion before go
ing back home to Honolulu.

As he trekked through the vegetation he felt an enormous amount of sweat pouring down his forehead. It made his shirt cling to his back and he
had
to stop every few minutes and guzzle down as much water as he could. His legs began to feel weak from the dehydration and he stopped underneath a large capirona tree and lay down, putting his arm over his face to shield it from the sun that was beating down through the canopy. He felt hot and
faint
and remembered that he hadn’t eaten since this morning. He pulled out a granola bar and some jerky and ate them slowly with a bottle of water. Waiting another few minutes, he felt better
,
rose
,
and began to walk.

Clifford climbed aboard the 747 bound for Rio de Jane
i
ro and collapsed into his seat. It seemed he couldn’t get the sweat to stop pouring out of him no matter how much water he drank. The fever had increased to the point that he couldn’t sleep and the previous night
, which
he’d spent in a hotel
,
he’d lain in bed with an icepack on his head, rubbing furiously
at
a rash that was developing on his chest.

He reached up and turned on the air
conditioning
, pointing the fan over his face. Leaning his head
back
, he closed his eyes and his eyeballs felt hot against his lids. He debated just gett
ing a
sooner
flight back home to Honolulu
where his girlfriend, a nurse, could get him in to a good doctor at a good hospital right away.

“You doin’ okay, buddy?” the guy next to him asked.

“Fine,” he said without opening his eyes.

Clifford felt vomit rising in his throat. It
came
in waves
,
up and down his esophagus. He unbuckled his belt to go to the bathroom and the motion exhausted him.

“Holy shit!”

Clifford opened his eyes. The man next to him was staring at him liked he’d fallen out of the sky. He was about to ask what was wrong when he noticed the backs of his hands. They were turning a deep black just underneath the skin. Drops of blood fell on them from his nose. The blood was bright red, almost comically red
;
he’d never seen a red quite that color. He stood up to run to the bathroom
when the man next to him screamed
. Clifford looked down and saw the
blood that had dripped over the man’s
face.

“Sorry,” he said to no one as he stumbled out into the aisle. He leaned on the seats and pulled himself forward though his legs were not responding. It was like
they were moving in slow motion;
heavy, weighed down by something he couldn’t see.

Clifford reached for the doorknob of the bathroom as people on the plane were alerting the stewardess. He grabbed the doorknob, felt its warmth in his palm, and then the world went black as he fell forward into the door.

CHAPTER 4

Dr. Samantha Bower loo
ked up from her textbook and at
the
clock on the wall of the cafeteria
at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. It was nearly
one
in the morning and her back was beginning to ache from an old soccer injury she’d incurred in high school.
The fact that she had gone skydiving earlier that morning and landed hard on a steeply inclined hill didn’t help the old injury.

She stretched from side
to
side and checked her iPhone. Her boss, the director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Diseases within the CDC, had decided to take a
three-
week
European
vacation. The tas
k of finishing the report on a
rare strand of i
nfluenza infections in Mongolia—
t
hat t
he
deputy
director
of Infectious Diseases wanted
right away for no reason at all
—
fell on her shoulders. It’d been ten days of eight hours in her actual work
,
fielding calls
, drafting research memos
,
and filing reports, and then eight hours on her own time
,
fielding calls
, drafting research memos
,
and filing reports.

She decided she’d had enough f
or today and stood up, picking up
her book, Kann’s
DNA Virus Replication
, and headed out the doors to the parking lot. It was warm and the moon was up in the dark sky. The lighting over the lot was dim
, as
many of the bulbs were out. Few things in the building were maintained well but
no one
that worked there
seemed
to mind. As the director had said in a recent speech, they were
at
the forefront of medicine and microbiology. Using t
heories to predict outcomes in
real-life scenarios. It was, as far as she could tell, the most exciting place for a physician or microbiologist to work, though few of her colleagues from medical school would think so.

She hopped onto Interstate 75 and headed home in her silver Jeep Grand Cherokee. She rolled down the windows and let the air flow over her face and through the car, rustling some papers in the back. Atlanta at this time of night was no place for her to be out but she had never been afraid. Her father had warned her that Atlanta had more car-jackings per capita than any other major American city. But she saw instance
s
, like car-jacki
ngs, as statistical probabilities
not real threats
.
By driving at night she had increased her probability of being car-jacked but the
chance was
still so remote that she wasn’t worried. Then again, lightning had to strike somewhere.

It took her thirty-five minutes to reach her brownstone in a quiet suburb just near Sandy Springs.
She parked in the driveway, too tired to open the garage, and set the alarm to her car before deactivating the alarm to her house.

The house was cool and the air conditioner clicked off as she entered. It was decorated modestly with little extravagance other than a few photographs and paintings related to music
,
a career as a violinist being her first choice since she was a child. Sam kicked off her shoes, set her alarm, and crawled into bed without brushing her teeth
or changing
.

Sam awoke
at
ten in the morning. It was Saturday and
the sun was streaming through the window
s,
lighting up the open spaces in her home
. She considered calling her sister Jane in San Francisco and then decided
to
shower first.

After
showering
and changing into denim shorts and a black Calvin Klein shirt, she turned on her iPhone and grabbed a prot
ein shake out of the fridge. S
he stepped outside and wondered
whether
she should
take a quick walk around the park tha
t was located a few minutes
up the block.

Jane didn’t answer and
Sam
left a message
asking her
to give her a call back when she
got
up.
Three houses down was a small bungalow with an Ame
rican flag up over the porch
, a
carvin
g up on the door
of
marines putting up the flag at Iwo Jima. Sam took out a key and unlocked the door before entering.

The house was decor
ated in a style that belonged to
decades past; she
had
always guessed the sixties but had no evidence for that other than a black velvet painting of Elvis. She walked through the house and shouted, “Hello?” There was no reply.

Making
her way to the north side of the house
, she
entered the master bedroom. An elderly woman lay in bed
,
staring at a television that had the sound turned down all the way. Sam pulled up a stool and sat down next to her.

“How are you, Ma?”

“Your uncle Johnny needs to get into the house. Don’t forget to leave your key above the door frame.”

Sam reached over and began to straighten her sheets. “Uncle Johnny’s been dead for over twenty years, Ma. Remember, we talked about this yesterday.”

“He needs the key so that he can get his albums. Oh
,
him and those albums. I swear he loves those things more than he loves me.”

Sam looked at her a moment;
the innocence in her eyes penetrated her. “No, he loves you more than anything.” Sam cleared her throat, choking back the emotion that bubbled inside her. “Where’s your nurse, Ma?”

“Oh that one, that’s another one. The Mexican.”

“Rosa’s very nice
. She really likes working here.”

Her mother shrugged. It w
as confusing for Sam at first
: t
he moments of lucidness coupled with the immediate comment or question that revealed her mother did not know where she was or what time she was in. But Sam was used t
o it now, as much as someone could
be, and she tried
to ignore it as much as possible.

“Do you know where Rosa is?”

“She went out for some
milk
of
magnesia
. We’re all out. She’s a nice girl to get my
milk
of
magnesia
.”

Samantha saw a bowl of cereal on the side
table. “Let’s finish the cereal
,
” she said, taking the bowl and spooning some cereal gently into her mother’s mouth.

She stayed with her mother
, rubbing her head until she fell asleep.
Rosa got home
shortly after
.
Sam spoke a few minutes with
her
about the medication situation
and told her she would be back tonight to take her mother on a walk in her wheelchair.

Sam stepped outside and had to lean against the door for a moment. She remembered when her mother stood at the oven
,
stirring delicious stews or baking cakes with generic ingredients bought in bulk because they could only afford to get groceries every other week. Though Sam could afford expensive restaurants now, somehow the cheap cupcakes and beef stroganoff her mother made were the best things she had ever eaten.