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, the tethers lying empty on the dirt. There was no breeze, just an unsettling motionlessness. In the distance 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 his 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 shooting 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 with 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.
“I killed her, Sam. And I deserve to go to hell for it. Please let them know. Her family will have a suit against the CDC and the US government; they deserve some sort of compensation. I don’t…I don’t even know if she had children. If you talk…just tell them that I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Goodbye, Dr. Bower.”
He hung up the phone and threw it on the table, getting back to his feet and hobbling down the steps to the basement. He fumbled in the dark until his hand hit a thin metal cord and he pulled it and the lightbulb flicked on. The light revealed several canisters of gasoline and lighter fluid along with stacks of matches. He tossed his crutches.
The jarring movement of pouring gasoline over the basement and the wooden beams that supported the main floor caused him to begin coughing and this time he couldn’t stop. The blood kept spewing and he noticed that his vision blurred. When he reached up and wiped his eyes his fingers came away stained a dark red.
He kept pouring as he kept coughing and bleeding. Eventually, he couldn’t see. The blood was pouring so quickly, he couldn’t wipe it away fast enough. His heart was pounding from the exercise and it was causing the blood to shoot out like a fountain. He was eventually left looking at the ceiling but he didn’t remember collapsing.
He tried to stand but found his legs weren’t responding. His head was throbbing so badly he thought that he had gone blind but realized it was just the pain, searing his vision with white hot flashes. He glanced to the matches on a metal worktable. He could no longer stand or didn’t have the will to so he just rolled over and rolled over again until he felt the metal leg of the table against his ribs. He took a moment to rest and then reached up, gripping the side of the table, and pulled himself up enough to grab a set of matches before falling back down again.
He was blind now, the blood filling his eyes and not draining. He felt the matches with his fingertips, the grainy surface of the strike pad, the smooth wood of the match. He held them a long time, inhaling the fumes of gasoline that made him feel like he could faint and fall into a deep sleep at any moment.
He struck the match, and threw it on the floor, the crackle of flames immediately filling his basement.
CHAPTER 48
Samantha walked into the first hut through the open doorway. It smelled…like nothing. Dirt perhaps. It was bare except for the everyday items found in any household: dishes, quilts, sandals by the entrance, decorations up on the walls. There was a bed with a quilt over it laid flat. It was just a slab of stone with a few furs and she went and removed the quilt.
“You see something?” Duncan asked, coming up behind her.
“No.”
“I don’t see anything either. Let’s go.”
They exited the hut and made their way to the next one. There was nothing there. They searched two more and then two more, each one barer than the last. In the center of the village was a large pit that looked like it had been used for fires. It was the village’s meeting place, Sam guessed. Serving the same function as the forums in Rome and the capitol buildings, or maybe the shopping malls, in modern cities.
“I think there must’ve been a mass exodus,” she said. “Everyone took off in a real hurry.”
“If Agent X infected this village, there should be bones.”
“They probably buried them in the jungle and the animals got them after that. I don’t think there’s much wasted here.”
Duncan glanced around. “We haven’t checked out those huts over there. Let’s hit them and then head back.”
They went to the first hut and found it just as bare, but the second hut had bowls with food in them lying out on the floor. The food was rotted, maggots finishing off the remnants. There was a quill of arrows in one corner. Sam ran her hand over them; they were sharp and made of smooth iron with jagged edges that made them more difficult to pull out of flesh once they’d entered.