Most of the infected had outpaced them, but two stragglers remained visible through the leaves. One was a child of no more than four — too young to understand his own rage and how to exercise it. The other was even more disturbing: an old man with a severe compound fracture of the lower leg that he didn’t seem to be aware of. He repeatedly stood, lurched forward a few meters, and then collapsed with a spurt of arterial blood. Omidi slowed a bit, transfixed by the man’s struggle as he finally became resigned to dragging himself forward with his elbows.
It took another five minutes to reach the village, and Bahame grabbed his arm, pulling him to a place that provided sufficient cover but still afforded a partially blocked view of what was happening.
Again, Omidi found himself stunned. The village men were fighting desperately — with sticks, with machetes, with farm implements. One man had an old rifle but was taken down while he was still trying to get it to his shoulder. The infected were everywhere — their speed and strength making them seem like a much larger force than they actually were.
A fleeing woman crashed into the trees directly in front of them, causing Bahame to pull Omidi beneath the bush they were crouched behind. She barely made it ten meters before a young boy drenched in blood chased her down and dove onto her back. It took only a few moments before she succumbed to the brutal beating, but he didn’t stop. The dull thud of his fists mixed with the screams and panicked shouts coming from the village until he finally collapsed. Whether he was unconscious or dead was impossible to determine.
One of the huts was on fire now, and Omidi glanced at Bahame, seeing the flames reflected in eyes glazed with power. It was at that moment he realized the African wasn’t playing a role or pandering to his followers. He truly believed in his own godhood.
The wails of an infant began to emanate from the burning hut, and an infected man ran in like a savior. A moment later the child went silent.
When he reappeared, the long, bloodstained robe he wore was burning. Despite the increasing intensity of the flames, he rejoined the fray, sprinting toward a woman trying to find refuge in a corral full of panicked goats. He fell just short of reaching her, collapsing with his hands on the rickety fence as he was consumed.
Omidi slipped from beneath the bush as the remaining villagers were run down. He no longer saw rural Uganda, though. He saw New York, Chicago, Los Angeles. And it was magnificent.
38
Caleb Bahame slowed the jeep, increasing the distance between it and the lumbering truck turning twenty meters ahead. The terrified faces of the villagers they’d captured peered at Omidi through the holes cut in the trailer, fighting for air and trying to understand what had happened to them and their families.
All were injured, but only superficially. The seriously wounded villagers had been executed where they lay and their bodies burned. The few who had managed to avoid contact with the infected had been allowed to escape in order to spread word of Bahame’s sorcery and power.
It was the slightly injured villagers who were the unlucky ones. They had been herded into the truck to replace the infected who had disappeared into the jungle and would eventually die there, lost and bleeding.
Bahame had calculated the time to death after infection took hold and the range of one of his demons on foot — making sure to attack only villages remote enough to not allow a chain of infection.
Details, however, were not of great concern to the African. Could animals spread the parasite? Was there variation in the way it attacked the brain? Could it mutate? What if one of the infected came upon and attacked a herdsman or traveler who then returned to their village?
All these important questions were answered the same way: with assurances that his network of spies would recognize and kill anyone infected by the parasite who managed to escape his makeshift quarantine.
It was a system that would work for a time in Africa but that would be completely unscalable. No, to use the parasite in Europe or America, a good deal more sophistication was needed.
It took another half hour to reach camp, and when they finally pulled in, it was to the deafening cheers of Bahame’s soldiers. They surrounded the jeep, falling silent only when their shaman stood on his seat and raised his arms. He recounted his tale of victory, the rich baritone of his voice rising over the buzz of the jungle and the pleas of the people packed into the sweltering truck.
Omidi slipped out of the jeep and weaved through Bahame’s mesmerized troops. A quick glance behind him confirmed that it wasn’t only the ragged children who were captivated — Bahame himself seemed completely lost in his own delusions. A perfect time to exercise a bit of curiosity.
The Iranian made his way to a cave glowing with electric lights. There were two guards at its entrance, one no older than twelve and the other looking a bit queasy from the cloud of diesel fumes spewing from the generator next to him.
Omidi carefully ignored them as he approached and scowled dismissively when they started speaking to him in their native language. Both had undoubtedly noted his favored position with Bahame, leaving them wide-eyed and unsure whether to try to stop him.
The benefit of being a psychotic messianic leader was that your terrified followers were desperate to succumb to your will. The drawback was that they sometimes couldn’t be sure what exactly your will was. If they challenged Bahame’s honored guest in error, they would almost certainly be slowly and horribly put to death. On the other hand, if this wasn’t an authorized visit and they didn’t intervene, their deaths were equally assured and would be equally unpleasant.
In the end, they were swayed by his calculated confidence and let him pass into a natural corridor narrow enough that he had to occasionally turn sideways to get through. Bare bulbs hung from cables secured to the cave’s low roof, and he followed them, ignoring branches leading into the darkness. The temperature and humidity diminished as he penetrated deeper, but the stench of blood, excrement, and sweat became increasingly oppressive. Finally, the passageway opened into a broad chamber and Omidi stopped a few meters short, examining it unnoticed.
He recognized the elderly white man as the one who had arrived with the man Bahame beat to death. He was wearing a stained canvas apron and goggles as he leaned over a partially dissected corpse. At the back of the chamber was a wall of blood-spattered plastic set up in front of a hollowed-out section of stone fitted with steel bars. Inside, an infected man lay on the dirt floor, panting like an animal and watching an outwardly healthy woman sobbing in a similar cage some three meters away.
When Omidi finally stepped into the chamber, the infected man let out a high-pitched scream and rammed an arm through the bars with enough force that the sound of crunching bone was clearly audible.
The old man looked up and took a few hesitant steps back, holding the scalpel he’d been using out in front of him.
“Be calm,” Omidi said in English. “I’m a friend.”
“A friend?” the man stammered. “My name is Thomas De Vries. I was kidnapped from my home in Cape Town. I was taken—”
The Iranian held up a hand for silence as he scanned the equipment around him. It was in poor condition and a bit haphazard, but most seemed functional — including a modern microscope and small refrigerator. “What have you learned?”