Plague (34 page)

She got far enough away that she couldn’t hear what they were talking about and
then
wondered
w
h
ether
she should go back. Instead, she went to find Benjamin.

She came to the hut and saw him standing outside in his boxer shorts, speaking with the guide. He was scratching his underarms and he glanced to her and stopped. When they had finished speaking, he walked over.

“We got news,” Benjamin said, “a town two days from here. There’s a rumor that the population was wiped out by a sickness. It’s where that can
ister that Holly mentioned might
be.”

“We need to talk about Donner.”

“What about him?”

“He’s not FBI.”

“Shit, you just figure that out now?”

“You knew?”

“Hell yeah I knew. What federal agent would quit
his job to follow my ass around?
But the fucker’s good at just about everything. He repaired this old truck the organization h
ad that mechanics didn’t think would work anymore. He got Cami a fake passport too.
”

“What did she need that for?”

“She’s illegal. She’s
not a doctor in the S
tates
;
she’s a doctor in Mexico. Or was, until sh
e helped out a journalist that the
cartels tried to kill. They went after her and she ran and kep
t running until she got
to
the S
tates.”

Sam shook her head. “He’s dangerous.”

“He’s weird, I’ll give you that, but I don’t know about dangerous. Best I can tell, he’s ex-military or something. Probably just looking for a cause and happened to find ours.”

“No, he’s too smart for that.”

“Oh, so now you
have
to
be dumb to believe in what
I’ve dedicated my life to?
”

“That’s not how I meant it.”

“Well, whatever, look, I’ve known him longer than I’ve known you so you can chill out or
take off. I don’t really care. We’re
heading
out to the village. If you’re
coming
, you
’ve
gotta pack up now. If not, I’ll ask one of the folks in the village to take you back next time they go into town. Might be a while
,
though.”

He turned and walked away, leaving her standing there. She glanced back to Duncan who was sitting against the same tree she had been and eating eggs with Donner. She caught movement off to her right and saw one of the villagers glaring at her. It was a middle-aged man with darkly tanned skin and missing teeth. He was looking at her with madness in his eyes and she knew, just knew, what he was planning to do to her the second he had the opportunity.
It was the man that had beaten the woman the previous day.

She thought about it a few moments, and then went inside her hut to pack.

CHAPTER 46

There was really no trail as Samantha was winding her way up the mountain, behind all the others and far behind the guide and Benjamin
,
who were pumping their arms like distance runners and trudging up
the
slope. It was
a
five-
hour journey to the village they were heading to but the five hours turned to two days because of the terrain. In many areas,
you
had to walk
so slowly
that if you didn’t keep your eyes on the ground
,
you couldn’t be sure you were actually moving.

The humidity would go from completely dry to soaking wet in a matter of minutes and they were having to constantly stop and r
est under the shade of a tree or next to a cool
stream. They could hear the mighty river in the distance now but the guide assured them they weren’t near it.

Duncan looked back to her and smiled, slowing his pace to allow her to catch up. She had told him earlier about the conversation with Donner and he shrugged his shoulders and just said, “Since when are they ever honest with us?”

At this point everyone was exhausted and dehydrated. Even to Sam the question of who Donner really was and who he worked for seemed to fade in the distanc
e. He was certainly government and he was certainly some type of law enforcement; that would have to be enough.

They made it to the top
of
either a large hill or a small mountain and they rested on some
boulders
,
the
tree-top view before them
a sea of green against the backdrop of a sparkling blue sky.

Sam took out a breakfast bar and ate half, washing it down with half a bottle of water. They didn’t speak much and that was fine with her. She removed her pack, feeling the sweet release of lightening weight
,
and the tightness in her muscles instantly began to disappear. She felt like she could sleep right now
,
like she could close her eyes and
lie
down on the rock behind her and not wake up for years. He
r
stomach was queasy and had been for two days. She was concerned that she may have picked up
a trematode worm from the water supply or the food. Iodine pills could only do so much.

“All right,” the guide said in his heavily acc
ented English, “it’s not far
.”

They continued down the path as Sam re-strapped her pack. It wouldn’t have been as bad if it was just clothing, food
,
and water, but she also
carried
biohazard gear and several laboratory kits to run preliminary tests in the field. Porters had offered their services in town for less than five dollars a day and she wished no
w she’d
taken them up on it.

The sun kept beating down on them but mercifully they declined in slope and were eventually on flat ground; the jungle canopy above them shielding most of the sizzling rays that were slowly cooking them.

They hiked until night fell and they set up their tents near what could be considered a path but was little more than a worn trail where animals and people had gone down before.
A
stream
flowed
near them but the guide warned that camping next to a water source was a good way to get killed
—
either by native Indians or the jaguars whose roars were ever-present in the darkness.

The morning came and Sam placed Duncan’s pack on him and he did the same for her. He looked to her and brushed aside a strand of hair that was in her eyes.

“We need to have another dinner when we get back to the S
tates,” he said.

“We will.”

They began the day’s long trek before the sun was even up but soon the rejuvenation of sleep
was gone and the same exhaustion of yesterday was there.

Sam kept checking her watch incessantly. S
he tried to fight it
, but every few minutes her eyes would wander down to her wrist seemingly on their own. She counted three hours of torturous jungle hiking before they came to a small clearing and the guide stopped and began speaking with Benjamin. He nodded several times and then came back to speak with the group.

“Well,” he said when everyone was gathered, “the village
is just up ahead past that
patch of trees. What do you guys want to do?”

“I’ll go,” Duncan said, placing down his pack.

“Me too,” Sam said. She glanced at Cami to see if she wanted to come but she had already sat down cross
-
legged on the dirt, leaning against her pack.

“Okay,” Benjamin said, “you guys check it out and tell us when we can head up.”

It took nearly twenty minutes for both Sam and Duncan to suit up in the yellow biohazard suits they had brought with them. The suits were thinner than those
found
at USAMRIID or the CDC, but they had two underlayers and thick plastic helmets that had been designed for the handlers responsible for testing chemical weapons.

They walked past the group of trees and saw the outline of huts in the distance. The suits kept
the heat
and
their sweat
contained, but
abandoning their heavy packs
was well worth the trade.

They didn’t speak as they neared the village.
Duncan was readying sample casings, checking and re-checking the thin glass tubes to make sure any samples he took wouldn’t expose everyone else to what was inside.

“I don’t know
if I love this or hate it,” Sam
said.

“Hate it. Definitely hate it.”

The first thing Sam noticed
as they neared the village
was a lack of inhabitants, and then the vegetation that engulfed the structures. It eerily reminded her of some of the buildings in Honolulu once maintenance had been halted.

The path they were on led them to the center of the huts. There weren’t more than ten of them. It appeared less like a village and more like
the encampment of
a breakaway family. There were posts around each hut like there had been in the village they’d been to before, posts meant to tie
up
wildlife, but
nothing
was
tied to them now
,
t
he tethers lying empty on the dirt. There was no breeze, just an unsettling
motionlessness
. In the di
stance Sam could still
hear the
river.

“Well,” Duncan said, “I guess the first hut’s as good as any other.”

CHAPTER 47

Ralph Wilson sat on the edge of his bed and vomited into a bucket.
When he was through, he lay flat on his back, in a coughing fit so violent he was afraid it would tear his esophagus.

The coughing settled after half a minute and he breathed as deeply as he could and stared at his ceiling. He reached over and rubbed his hand over the empty space next to him, the mattress still dipping where his wife used to
lie
. Every morning he woke up and thought of her and every morning the pain would be so deep it would feel like hot needles in his guts.

But not today. Today, he was actually glad his wife wasn’t here.

He sat up, pushing against the bed with his arms, and swung h
is legs over the side
. His chest felt compacted and it was like
he was breathing through water. He sat motionless a while, enjoying the lightheadedness that came with a brain that was starved of oxygen and slowly dying.

He knew what he needed: immediate thoracentesis to remove the fluid that was pooling inside and around his lungs
,
a
blood transfusion, pain
medication
, preferably Demerol, and supplemental oxygen.

But he also knew that all these had been applied to the patients in Honolulu, and it had only delayed their pain. Perhaps it had
even
extended their lives by a couple of days, but no more.

He stood up and reached for the crutches he kept by his bedside and rose to his feet, his stomach spasming and causing a coughing fit that spewed blood over
his carpet. When he was done, he wiped his lips and chin with the back of his arm before hobbling out of the room.

He headed down to the basement by way of the kitchen. His cell phone was on the table and he glanced at it and then stopped and turned around to retrieve it. He sat down at his table with a grunt, pain shoot
ing through him as if rats were eating his bones and spitting them out in his veins. Every inch of his body was in
agony
. His eyes were on fire
;
his heart pounded so hard in his chest he felt it in his throat
;
his joints felt like they could tear w
ith just the slightest movement. He
leaned back in the chair and tried to remain as motionless as possible, but the pain didn’t recede.

He picked up his phone and dialed a number. It went to voicemail.

“Sam
…
I just
…
I don’t know what I’m calling for. I don’t know what happened. This all went so bad I can’t even remember when it was good.” He paused. “Sam, I killed someone. A young woman that was infected with the virus in Los Angeles. She was going to infect other people
…
I did it for the greater good. That’s our job. That’s what we signed up for.”

Ralph began to cry. He let himself float away on a wave of emotion and when he was through he noticed the message had ended and he redialed.