The Chimera Sequence (9 page)

Claire’s eyes lingered on each cot as she passed. She had never seen such a concentrated display of human suffering. Every combination of missing limbs was joined by burned faces and bandaged heads. Those were the obvious injuries, though. She couldn’t tell what was wrong with most of these anonymous Africans, and she honestly didn’t want to know. Claire felt the heaviness lift off as she refocused on the real reason she was here. There would always be more humans living and dying and destroying the rest of the earth while they were at it. The mountain gorillas, though, that was a species she could really care about. And they needed her help.

She quickened her pace to catch up with Olsson, who was bent over a bed at the other end of the tent.

“Thank you for the tour, Lars,” she called out, realizing too late that her volume was several levels too high for the hospital setting. Claire reached his side and continued in an exaggerated whisper that seemed more appropriate. “I appreciate this little peek into your operation here, but you promised that we could discuss that report about the gorillas.”

He put one finger to his lips and adjusted the position of a stethoscope with the other hand. Claire clenched her teeth but remained silent. She was not used to being shushed or ignored, especially when she had so clearly made her needs known. The man lying in front of her seemed to be in worse shape than most. He was in a real adjustable bed and hooked up to equipment that looked like it could have come straight out of a posh private hospital in London.

“I guess this is your little ICU ward, then?”

Another finger to the lips as Lars continued moving the silver bell over different areas of the man’s bandaged chest.
He’s doing that just to spite me
. Claire knew it wasn’t true as soon as the thought crossed her mind, but did this guy really need such an extended listening session? Finally the doctor removed the buds from his ears and replaced the stethoscope around the back of his neck.

“Sorry about that, but this gentleman is in a pretty bad way.”

Claire nodded her head and tried to force an understanding smile.

“You want to talk about the gorillas, then? Interestingly enough, our friend here might have been a good source of information. He was found a couple of nights ago near the old park headquarters at Rumangabo. Dropped off outside the hospital here nearly unconscious.”

“And that’s just outside the gorilla sector, right?” Now Claire was more interested.

“You’ve done your homework, yes. I can guarantee you that he wasn’t out there gorilla trekking, though, so I highly doubt he would have anything of interest to tell you.”

“Can I ask him some questions when he wakes up?” She looked into the man’s face, wondering if he might have seen anything that could jumpstart her unsuccessful investigation.
Endangered Mountain Gorillas Threatened by Warring Rebels in the Congo
. She already had the basic story written out, but it still needed at least a couple of decent quotations and all the photographs before it was ready for the public eye.

“If he wakes up, you mean? He’s only just hanging on.” Olsson shook his head and glanced at a clipboard that was hanging off the side of the bed. “Three gunshots to the chest and abdomen have left him septic and with only one healthy lung. Who knows how he crawled out of those mountains.”

Claire looked down at the man’s hand, resting along his side just inches from her own leg. An IV catheter was taped in place on top of it, feeding a steady stream of fluid and drugs in this last-ditch effort to keep him alive. Who was this dying rebel? Did he ever catch a glimpse of the majestic creatures who shared the forest with him? She gave in to a sudden impulse to run her fingers along the top of his arm, realizing with mild surprise that it was the first time she had ever touched a black man. Or maybe he wasn’t a rebel at all, but actually a gorilla tracker out to check on his endangered charges, ignoring the risk to himself?

“So quick to ignore my advice about those gentle caresses?”

The doctor’s words pulled her back to the present, and she jerked her hand away. Not because of what he said, though.

“Why does he have these little bumps on his skin?” Claire rubbed her fingertips instinctively against her jeans, then looked up. “I’m not going to come down with one of those flesh-eating worms or something awful like that, am I?”

“What do you mean, bumps?”

Olsson reached across her and began moving his own fingers across the man’s arm. She saw him pause in several places, pushing into the skin and tracing invisible circles with a long index finger. It looked like he was holding his breath. Suddenly he grasped the man’s hand in his own and lifted it into the air, turning it over to bring the palm up toward his face. It was covered in dark rounded bumps, even more obvious against the lighter pigmentation of the man’s palm.

Claire watched as he shook his head slowly and dropped the hand. It caught on the side of the bed before rolling off the edge in a heavy collapse.

“Oh, shit,” he whispered.

Cole stepped into a pair of giant rubber boots as he pulled the latex glove tight over his left hand. Protection complete. He smiled as he realized what a far cry this was from the Biosafety Level 4 labs he trained in at USAMRIID the year before. The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Disease. He had spent three months at the sprawling research complex in Frederick, Maryland, mastering some of the molecular techniques he was now using in Rwanda.

The Tyvek suit and N95 respirator mask were not really an adequate substitute for the positive pressure space suits he’d used at USAMRIID, and after the all-nighter in the lab he wished he had more. It didn’t make a lot of sense—the clinical signs and genetic testing both indicated monkeypox all the way, but monkeypox didn’t usually kill so efficiently. The speed with which the virus must have gone through those mountain gorillas was incredible.

At least the world of science had never formally documented an outbreak like this. It was rare to find a virus that spread so quickly and easily while also causing severe disease and death. Highly transmissible and highly pathogenic at the very same time. Bugs like that tended to burn themselves out, plowing through a susceptible population until there was nobody left to infect. It wasn’t a great strategy for long-term survival, and that’s why most diseases stayed away from the deadly combination.

There was a lot of life and death happening in central Africa that was invisible to the rest of the world, though. Someone had to be there to find the dead, identify what killed them, and tell the story. Cole knew he was lucky to be in the right place at the right time.

This was his chance to be that someone.

“Hey, you planning to stand out there all day?” Marna’s voice brought him back to the little entry area outside the infant gorilla’s nursery room. “Poor little Endo has been waiting all morning to say hi!”

“Yeah, sorry, just gearing up out here.” He opened the door and stepped into the improvised isolation ward. “Someone’s got to stay alive to tell the rest of the world what happened here, you know.”

“Very funny.” Marna’s inviting smile was a welcome sight. Or at least the peripheral evidence of it was—the bright eyes and tone of voice. The smile itself was hidden behind her round white mask. “Don’t worry, though, as much as I hate this protective equipment stuff, I’ve been doing everything just like you said.”

Cole walked across the room to the recliner. She was curled up looking relatively comfortable, feet tucked under her and a book resting on one arm of the chair. If it weren’t for the biohazard gear and infant gorilla sleeping on her chest, she would have made for a perfect picture of home.

“Endo, you said?”

“Yep, the Virunga rangers decided to name him after his dad, Rugendo.”

“Gotcha.” Was it really only yesterday that they discovered the massive silverback’s stiffened form? “At least we assume he’s Rugendo’s baby. You know those blackbacks occasionally get a little action on the side, too.” Each mountain gorilla family was usually made up of one mature silverback male, several younger blackback males who weren’t really supposed to be breeding, and a larger number of females with their young.

Cole caught the sly humor creeping around Marna’s eyes.

“Yes, I’ve heard,” she said. “No reason the big old daddies should be the only ones having fun, right?”

“Exactly.”

He knelt down beside the chair and pulled a small digital thermometer from the pocket of his coveralls. There was a quick vibration against his leg. An incoming text message. It would have to wait.

“So how do you think he’s doing this morning?”

“Not great, honestly. He’s hardly woken up for me since I took over from Innocence a couple of hours ago, and he would only drink about half an ounce of the formula.”

She was right. The fluffy black form nestled against her had barely stirred when he entered the room and started talking. He watched the long dark hair rise and fall rapidly. The respiratory rate was obviously higher, and there seemed to be an increased effort behind each breath.

“I’m going to get a temperature on him, see if that fever has changed at all.”

He placed one hand over the gorilla’s tiny rump, rotating it away off Marna’s chest. It reminded him of similar slightly awkward interactions with female pet owners over the years. Why did they always insist on holding those puppies and kittens so close to themselves?

He glanced up at Marna’s face. “Sorry, not trying to come on to you here!”

She laughed, an open and honest laugh he had come to love over the past few months.

“Really? I think you’ve just been looking for an excuse.”

He felt the blood rush to his cheeks and thought of that hint of a kiss they shared the night before.

“Guess I can’t deny that.” All those hours in the lab had given Cole time to think, and he was finally ready to see where this thing might go. “But I’ve gotta be honest, any daydreaming I may or may not have done on this subject definitely didn’t involve so many layers of synthetic petroleum byproducts.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“You know, all this latex, Tyvek, nylon, that’s what it’s made of.”

“Well, if you can one day learn to tone down your science-speak for us regular ol’ countryfolk, you might just have a chance to fulfill some of those daydreams of yours.”

Cole’s quick smile froze when the thermometer beeped three times, and he pulled it out of the infant gorilla’s tiny rear end. The fact that Endo had barely stirred when subjected to such an indignity was not a good sign. Neither were the numbers that flashed on the instrument’s stamp-sized screen.

“Well, what is it?” Marna asked.

“101.8. A little higher than what Dr. Musamba got overnight. He’s still fighting the infection, but we don’t want to see it get any higher than that.”

“And if it does?”

“Then we might start thinking about some meds. Anti-inflammatories, maybe even one of the anti-virals we’ve got back in the pharmacy.”

Cole wiped the thermometer with an alcohol swab and put it back in the coverall pocket. He looked at the gorilla’s fragile black hands, clasped tightly on another old blanket. It was a poor substitute for his mother’s long dark hair. Why did those little hands keep drawing his attention? Each petite fingernail seemed a stark reminder of the creature’s strange humanity.

Cole felt the vibration against his leg again, but this time it continued. That was a major problem with the full biohazard get-up—it was impossible to access anything left inside the suit.

He ran an index finger along one of the little gorilla’s hairless forearms. The rash had turned into barely perceptible bumps in the paper-thin skin. Classic monkeypox, sure, but why was each stage moving so quickly? It didn’t match any of the case reports he read through in the lab overnight.

“Let’s see if he’ll eat anything for you,” Marna said, reaching for a formula bottle on the table beside her. She moved the nipple gently across Endo’s pouting lips. After a few seconds, they responded, answering the instinctive call known by every newborn, and opened just enough for her to push it all the way in. A few tiny bubbles rose inside the bottle.

“Hey hey, success!”

But he’d spoken too soon. The baby gorilla erupted in a series of fragile coughs, spraying formula in a fine mist through the air. The coughing sputtered out, and with a delicate moan Endo turned his face away from the still-hovering bottle and into the blanket.

“And that’s why we wear these masks,” Cole said, unconsciously checking the seal of his own where it crossed the bridge of his nose.

“I’m beginning to understand how all those new mothers feel when they complain about their kiddos not wanting to eat.” Marna shook her head. “I mean, how long can he survive if he doesn’t start taking more of this stuff?”

“Not more than—”

A quick pounding on the door startled them both.

“Dr. Cole, Dr. Cole, are you there?” Proper Kambale’s voice.

“Yeah, everything okay?” He stood up and strode over to the door, which had now been opened a crack from the other side.

“We have been trying to reach you from the office. Someone is waiting on the phone for you, calling from Goma.”

So that explained the repeated calls to his cell. “Thanks, Proper. Let me just get out of this stuff and I’ll be right behind you.”

The tall man nodded his head. He looked very similar to his brother, Innocence, but without the disfiguring scar across his cheek. Cole turned back into the room with a quick shrug and a wave for Marna, and then stepped out into the entry area.

“Any idea who he is?” Cole called after the departing park ranger.

Proper turned around.

“A doctor, from Médecins Sans Frontières.” The French rolled off his tongue easily. “He says it is about your ProMED message.”

“Hello, this Dr. McBride.” Cole spoke into the phone, trying to mask the breathlessness resulting from his run across the grounds. He was on a landline in the Gorilla Doctors administrative office.

“Dr. McBride, nice of you to take my call.” There was a characteristic northern European flourish to the man’s sarcastic introduction. “I’m Lars Olsson, medical director of the MSF hospital across the border from you here in Goma.”