Plague (32 page)

There was commotion outside. He looked down and saw a group of men trying to tear down the barrier that had been built at the entrance of the hospital. At first it was to keep people in and make sure the patients didn’t get out to infect others. But more and more, it was becoming a barrier to keep people out that were looking to raid the hospital
’
s supplies.

He ran downstairs
to find
the nurses
gathered
around the front entrance. Heather was standing with her hands on her hips
,
staring at the front doors.

“There’s a lot of ‘em this time,” she said.

“Has anyone told them we don’t have anything?”

“They’re starving
.
I don’t think they’re going to care.”

Amoy ran down the hall to check on the patients. Three days ago there had been over sixty in the ER. Now there were less than twenty. One of the major concerns had been what to do with the bodies. They didn’t
want
to leave them outside as he wasn’t entirely certain this virus wasn’t airborne, so instead they piled them up on the fifth floor, hoping that the height would
contain
the smell. It didn’t.

He found Doug, their only security officer, asleep on a gurney.

“Doug, wake up. They’re back.”

He roused himself awake and swung his legs over the gurney
. He
rubbed the sleep out of his eyes before standing.

“Yeah, so?”

“
There’re
a lot this time.”

Doug stepped out of the room and went down the hall, Amoy behind him. They came to the front entrance
where they
all stood around, staring at the doors as if an alien were about to land on earth and they were
to be
the first contact they would have.

“Fuck me,” Doug said
.
“
How
many
a ‘em are there?” He turned to Amoy. “I only got six rounds and a
Taser
.”

Amoy stared at the doors a long time. The furniture they had piled in front of the doors was slowly decreasing as the men outside patiently worked to clear a path.

“I’ll be right back,” Amoy said.

He ran upstairs and to the second floor. He went to a window facing down on the street and looked down.

“
We don’t have anything here,” Amoy shouted to the men. “There’s nothing for you here.”

One of the men, a white male
with
tattoos
over his bald head and no shirt on, wiped his brow with the back of his arm. He looked to Amoy and said, “Well that ain’t true now. You got yourself a few honeys in there. They be worth something.”

Amoy felt a chill down his spine. “They’ve stayed here to help the sick at the risk of their own lives. Leave them alone.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll take good care
a ‘em. They gonna get lots a lovin’ from the homies.”

Amoy stepped away from the window. He stood
there
silently;
his arms limp by his side. All he wanted to do was sit down, so he did. There was a chair behind the desk and he sat and put his feet up, his arms on his chest. There were at least thirty men out there.

He sat staring at the ceiling a long time and
began
doz
ing
off. After what seemed like an eternity, he heard yelling and screaming and the sounds
of
shoes running on linoleum
downstairs
.

Shots began to be fired.

He counted them. One
…
two
…
three
…
four
…
then there was silence. He heard a woman’s scream and then the laughter of men.
H
e felt no emotion at all
,
only
a dull ache in the pit of his stomach, but warm tears flowed down his cheeks. He stood up and headed for the stairs.

He walked up three more flights of stairs and went to the end of the hallway on the fifth floor.
A
nother set of stairs led to the roof and he took them.

The sunshine was bright and warm.
A breeze was blowing and it was the type of breeze that under normal circumstances he might have noticed. It carried the salty scent of the ocean and cooled his face
,
which felt hot though he hadn’t been outside all day.

Amoy walked to the edge of the roof and climbed the stone barrier. He looked down to the men that were still outside, and the few that were coming out. He thought they looked like bugs scrambling around and it gave him the adolescent pleasure of feeling bigger and stronger than those around him. He smiled.

And then, he jumped.

CHAPTER 43

Samantha followed Benjamin Cornell, who was led by a guide they’d hired in Iquitos, into the deadly green maze that was the
Amazon Rainforest
.
Ben had translated as the guide explained that, encompassing
1.7 billion acres
,
the Amazon
was
the planet’s largest eco-region on land
and contains—it’s believed—
m
ore unknown
species of insect, bird, rodent
,
and small mammal than there are catalogued and identified species
currently known to science
.
Wet
,
tropical rainforests are the richest biomes of life, and the Amazon is king among them all.
Sam, who had previously known this
,
had always wanted to visit the forest.

The bulk of the forest is found in Brazil with only a small fraction found in Peru. But that
small
portion is rough and uninhabitable for those not accustomed to its harsh climate, its deadly insects, and the constant threat of exposure. The days swell to temperatures over 130°
F
and the nights
, though
they
have the potential to not be much cooler,
can
dip to temperatures requiring
winter
clothing and sleeping bags, depending on the season.

Now
that
Samantha
was here, she couldn’t remember why she had wanted to come.

Her
mind travelled off and she
thought about the last
conversation she’d had back in town yesterday. It was with Ralph and they’d spoken over a landline at the hotel.

He sounded weak, as if he hadn’t gotten any sleep the few days before they’d talked. He coughed incessantly
,
every few sentences, but when Sam would press him on it all he’d say was, “I’m fine, I’m fine,” and then move on to a different topic.

“I’ll be back in eight days,” Samantha had assured him. “Four in the forest and four to get back to Atlanta. Hopefully there’ll still be a job waiting for me.”

“Always
,
my dear,” he said wistfully. “Always.”

They’d said goodbye and Ralph told her that he’d like to speak with her again after they found whatever it was they thought they were looking for. But he’d said that in case they didn’t speak again, he wanted her to know that careers in the government didn’t last.

“You’ll love the CDC,” he’d said, “but she won’t love you.”

He sighed and said goodbye and Samantha had sat
for nearly five minutes afterwa
rd, pondering why he would have ended the conversation the way he had.

Sam stopped and took a sip out of a Nalgene bottle that was attached to a backpack that carried her supplies.
V
illages along the way
would offer food and shelter for next to nothing
,
but just in case, their guide had told them, it was best to bring your own camping gear. You never knew who would offend one of the local Indians and
cause the
group
to be denied
entry to the village for the night.

Duncan, Cami
,
and Agent Donner were behind her. All of them
,
panting and sweating
and
red-faced
,
had
to stop every mile or so for a sip of water. The humidity soaked
their
clothes and made
them
feel sticky and wet; like
they’d
taken a bath in cola. The heat cooked it onto
their
skin so that it would begin to itch
. The guide told them
if
they
didn’t stop and rest
to
air
themselves
out
, the skin that was covered by clothing
could peel
.

“You doin’ okay?” Duncan
looked at Sam and
wip
ed
his forehead with a bandana.

“Yeah,” she said, taking another sip of water. “How far you think we’ve gone?”

“Twenty miles maybe, give or take a few. I have a pedometer on my iPod but that
ran out of juice
. Anybody’s cell working?”

They all checked; none of them were getting reception.

Benjamin yelled out behind him, “Don’t slow down. We
’ve
got a village
a
bout ten miles from here. We can make it before nightfall if we hurry.”

They continued the slow, grinding work of putting one foot in front of the other
as their feet swelled in their boots
an
d the last drops of moisture
leaked
from
their
skin.
Sam kept her head low but would occasionally glance up at the beautiful scenery around
her. It appeared like something out of an Ansel Adams photo. It was haunting and beautiful simultaneously
,
and somehow, perhaps subconsciously, it frightened her. The fear of the unknown. Deep in this jungle were things that lay undiscovered
, just
waiting for a living organism to pass by.

The day grew hotter and the insects seemed to get worse. They were a constant blanket around
her
, their buzzing growing unbearable in her ears. They went for the moist parts of her face
:
her nostrils, eyes, mouth. And they were unrelenting. She would bat several of them away only to have double that amount swarm in to take their place.

Soon her Nalgene bottle was empty and she began getting pasty-mouthed. It amazed her how quickly dehydration set in.
When her lids closed they felt like sandpaper against her eyeballs and the warm breeze that was blowing gently through the rainforest wasn’t helping.

The terrain grew rough for a while,
turning
uphill on a steep slope, but it soon declined and she leaned back and relaxed her thigh muscles, letting gravity do the work.

“There’s a bug out here,” Duncan said from behind her, out of breath and panting, “that stings you on your lips or in your eyes. But it’s not a sting, it’s an injection. It lays its eggs inside you and you won’t even know until you get a big bump that eventually hatches.”

“Thanks,” Sam said.

Sam counted three and
a
half hours before the dense vegetation began to clear and they were in a valley. She could see huts in the distance and as they drew closer she could make out children playing in front of the village, goats tied to stakes, a couple of donkeys, and the glistening brown figures of the villagers. They dressed modestly compared to what she expected; the women’s breasts were exposed but other than that, they covered up everything that would have been covered back home. Some of the men wore sneakers and
T
-shirts
. The
Nike slogans
and
80s mantras on the
T
-shirts—thrift store donations all of them—looked out of place in the serene and majestic background of this lush wilderness.

The guide began speaking with a group of men that had come out to meet them. Sam noticed that two of the men were carrying rifles
,
a gift from the modern world. No doubt along with cigarettes and alcohol and chewing tobacco. Indigenous tribes rarely adopted anything good from civilization; there was no money in teaching them about books and computers. Instead, Coca-Cola and Marlboro were the greeters at the door.

The guide turned and spoke to Benjamin in hushed tones before Benjamin turned to the others.

“Okay,” he said
.
“
He
says we can stay here for fifty cents apiece.
That includes dinner tonight and breakfast tomorrow.”