“Of dying?” Dr. Giovanni asked.
“Something worse.”
The Italian doctor waited silently for the explanation.
“Are you familiar with the Ebola Reston strain?”
“Of course. Named for Reston, Virginia. Did I say that correctly?”
Dr. Littlefield shrugged at the accent. “Close enough.”
“There was a company there that quarantined monkeys imported for scientific research. I believe they had five hundred monkeys on the premises.”
“Yes, that’s the place. In the monkey house.” Dr. Littlefield’s heart sank just to be talking about it—the thoughts had been haunting him for days. “Maybe fifty or a hundred monkeys died before they figured out it wasn’t Simian Hemorrhagic Fever, but Ebola. The Army came in and destroyed all the monkeys. I think four people became infected, but didn’t die. That strain was damned lethal for monkeys, but it let humans off easy.” He stood up straight and looked out across the town.
Dr. Giovanni waited patiently for Dr. Littlefield to finish.
“The monkeys didn’t get infected through direct contact. Monkeys in one room had come into the facility with the virus, then monkeys in other rooms became infected and started dying. There was no physical contact between the monkeys.”
“What are you saying?” Dr. Giovanni asked.
“Like Ebola Reston—” Dr. Littlefield hesitated. It was a frightening thing to think, a hard thing to say. “I think this one is airborne.”
Chapter 20
Nurse Mary-Margaret finished crying. Sufficient tears had fallen to let her find her strength again.
Austin was sitting on the ground by then, not caring that the smell was still coming from the buckets or even that it seemed to be permanently burned into his nostrils. He was watching the late afternoon shadows grow across the town.
“Are you okay?” Nurse Mary-Margaret asked.
“I’m okay.”
“After you clean those, you should rest,” she said.
Austin shook his head and said nothing. He still had a lump in his throat. His thoughts were on Rashid, Margaux, and Benoit. They’d grown close in the previous seven weeks.
He thought about their hike up to Sipi Falls that first time. It was a little bit dangerous, but thrilling and magical. They’d met a coffee farmer up there who’d let them sleep in his storehouse. It was far from fancy—just a dirt-floored shack—but the family’s kindness eclipsed the accommodations. To think that a coffee farmer who made less in a year than his dad made in a week was happy to share what he had with some wide-eyed mzungu kids gave Austin optimism for the future of humanity. They’d all become friends after that, and the kids had been up to visit the farmer several times. It was the kind of experience neither he nor his friends would ever dream of back in Denver. It was so much more real than a t-shirt from the Louvre or a postcard from Rome.
Austin looked away from his thoughts and said, “I’ll be okay, Mary-Margaret. You go ahead. I’ll be inside in a minute.”
“Okay.” Nurse Mary-Margaret turned and headed back to the hospital.
The familiar sound of tires on gravel caught Austin’s attention. On the road coming into town from the east were two Land Rovers, with paint shiny under red dust. Curiosity kept his eyes on the Land Rovers until they came to stop on the road in front of the hospital building. Car doors opened. Men in bright yellow Tyvek suits with hoods, gloves, goggles, and surgical masks got out.
Thank God. The cavalry had arrived.
Chapter 21
The sky was getting dark and the cicadas started their nightly ruckus. Austin walked in through the back door of the ward with clean buckets in hand. Immediately, he sensed something wasn’t right.
The guys in the yellow HAZMAT suits nearly glowing in the lantern light had arrayed themselves around the ward, seemingly doing nothing except watching. One was kneeling over Rashid, hands busy. In the center of the ward, three of the Tyvek-clad guys were squared off, facing Dr. Littlefield and Nurse Mary-Margaret in their pitifully inadequate—by comparison—protective gear. Between them stood a tall man in some kind of light blue protective suit.
Austin couldn’t make out what was being said, but it sounded tense. The body language was combative.
He quietly crept through the ward, trying not to be noticed, placing the empty buckets back in the spots where they’d been, and carefully navigated around the rows of patients to get to the center aisle, a six-foot wide strip up the center of the building. It was the only part of the floor not covered by a cot or colorful plastic woven mat.
Careful not to get too close to Dr. Littlefield and the others, he worked his way across the rows of villagers lying on the floor. He approached Rashid from the opposite side of the man who was tending to him.
Things weren’t making sense. The HAZMAT-covered aid workers weren’t rendering aid to anyone except Rashid. Austin looked down at Benoit as he stepped over him. Benoit was unconscious, pale, and splotched. Austin knelt beside Rashid and said to the person in the yellow suit, “Who are you?”
The man in yellow looked up at Austin, said nothing, and went back to his work.
Seeing that one of the men in yellow was coming toward them, Austin said to the man at Rashid’s side, “I’m Austin Cooper. This is my friend, Rashid.” When the man didn’t respond, Austin ventured a guess. “Are you Najid? I’m the one who called you.”
The other Tyvek-clad man arrived and roughly put his hand on Austin’s shoulder.
The guy at Rashid’s side gestured to the other and the hands came off of Austin. He said, “I am a doctor. Mr. Almasi brought me here.”
“Najid Almasi? Rashid’s brother?” asked Austin.
“The same.”
Austin looked down at Rashid. “Can you help him?”
“I don’t know.”
Austin was finding it very strange talking to a man clad in a yellow Tyvek suit, with goggles and a duckbill-shaped surgical mask. He felt like he was talking to a mannequin. “Is it Ebola?”
“It would seem.”
“Do you have a name?” Austin asked.
“Yes.”
Austin waited for the name, but the yellow doctor didn’t share it.
The doctor pointed at a big cardboard box in the center aisle that had gone unnoticed by Austin until the doctor pointed. The doctor said something in Arabic, and the man with the rough hands knelt down and dug into the box, coming out with a few IV bags. He brought them over and elbowed Austin aside.
Keeping his comments to himself, Austin stepped to the other side of Benoit, becoming aware of raised voices coming from the people at the center of the ward. Looking around, he figured the guys in yellow Tyvek were together. The guy in the blue plastic suit, with goggles and mask, had to be the doctor from the WHO Nurse Mary-Margaret mentioned. He was pissed and raising his voice as he towered over the other men in yellow. The angrier he got, the more pronounced his Italian accent became, until Austin heard a word that took his breath away.
“Airborne.”
Airborne?
Oh my God.
Austin had no medical training but he knew enough to understand that the words Ebola and airborne were a bone-chilling combination.
“Ebola is not an airborne disease.” The man at the center of the yellow trio was doing the talking for the Tyvek-clad group. His stance and the tone of voice indicated he was in charge. Austin surmised he was Najid Almasi.
“Look around, you fool!” the Italian man yelled. “There is no explanation for all of this except Ebola. Even if it isn’t airborne, how could you take the chance? Do you know how many people you would kill if it is airborne? Do you? Including yourself? Is that what you want?” The Italian doctor looked past Najid at the other HAZMAT guys, and yelled, “Is that what any of you want?”