by Mark Morris
After just one ring, White’s clipped voice said, ‘Yes?’
As concisely as possible Purna told him what Mowen had said.
Excitedly, White asked, ‘Will he take you there?’
‘He seems reluctant. He wants to know what’s in it for him.’
‘Tell him I’ll pay him whatever he wants. He’s done jobs for me in the past and he knows he can trust me to keep my word. Time may be running out, but money’s something I’m not short of.’
‘It could be a dead end,’ said Purna.
‘Or it could be exactly what I need – what we all need. It’s just too good a lead to ignore, despite the extra time involved.’
‘OK,’ Purna said. ‘How is your wife, by the way?’
‘Deteriorating. But stable enough for now. Listen, keep in touch, OK? Let me know what’s going on.’
‘If I can,’ said Purna, and broke the connection.
Chapter 14
MAD SCIENTIST
THE JOURNEY TO the laboratory would take almost three hours.
Because they hadn’t all needed to go, and because none of them were happy about leaving the van unguarded, it had been decided that Xian Mei would stay behind with Jin.
Mowen’s boat was a small ex-army tug. He had negotiated the waterways skilfully, standing proud astride his vessel like a pirate captain on the High Seas. Occasionally he had flipped his rifle off his shoulder to fire at what Logan had at first thought were drifting logs. ‘Friendly looking fuckers, aren’t they?’
‘Crocodile,’ Mowen had explained. ‘I shoot so they stay scared. If scared they not attack.’
At times the waterways had been nothing but dark, narrow swampy channels through dense green tunnels of vines and creepers; at others the banks had widened out and the overhanging treetops above them had separated like sliding shutters to admit a vast blue vista of sky. Mowen had been happy for Purna, Sam and Logan to bring their weapons along, and in fact seemed reasonably laid back about the entire venture, despite his initial reticence. Purna had been watching him closely the whole time, eyes narrowed, as if she didn’t really trust him.
For his part, although he felt a little unsettled about venturing into unknown territory, Sam was just glad to get a break from the relentless rage and hunger of the infected. And although he had initially thought Logan a bitter, over-pampered douche-bag, he was now glad of the guy’s company. In a strange way, what had happened had actually been good for Logan, or at least had shown him in a more favourable light. Deprived of the drugs and alcohol he had evidently started to become dependent upon since his accident, and given something other than his own woes to worry about, the ex-football star had proven himself to be a witty and likeable companion. He could be relied on to keep people’s spirits up with a quip or an irreverent comment when things got too heavy. Sam thought that even Purna liked having Logan around, though the Australian girl was hard to read – harder even, in many ways, than Mowen, despite the trader’s mirror shades and uncertain grasp of the English language.
Eventually they had come to a small jetty in the middle of the jungle, where Mowen had tied the boat up.
‘Now we walk,’ he’d said, gesturing off into the jungle.
‘How far?’ Purna had asked.
Mowen shrugged. ‘One hour maybe.’
At Mowen’s recommendation, they had each brought a rucksack of provisions, which they hoisted on to their backs, and a machete to hack their way through the jungle. Mowen had led the way at a brisk pace, occasionally pointing out hazards for them to avoid – snakes, spiders, plants that would sting or scratch or otherwise irritate their skin. It was not long before Sam and Logan had been dripping with sweat and even Purna’s flawless brown skin had gleamed with a light sheen of perspiration. Only Mowen ahead of them had seemed relatively un affected, though as Sam used his soggy bandanna to wipe sweat away from his forehead for perhaps the twentieth time, he had eventually been gratified to see a small damp triangle forming on the back of Mowen’s T-shirt, between his shoulder blades.
It had seemed considerably more than an hour’s walk before they had finally reached the ‘laboratory’. What surprised Sam most about it was the way it appeared, with no prior warning. One minute they were tramping through thick jungle, hacking encroaching vegetation out of the way, and the next they had stopped at the edge of a clearing where a good half-acre or more of trees and bushes had simply been excised, as if by a devastatingly corrosive energy beam from a passing alien spacecraft.
The ‘laboratory’ comprised a jumble of ugly grey prefab buildings surrounded on all sides by an unbroken, three-metre tall security fence. Armed guards, dressed in black combat fatigues and black baseball caps despite the heat, patrolled the perimeter. Attached to each of the guard’s baseball caps was a headset and microphone. Concealed behind bushes at the clearing’s edge, Mowen, Purna, Sam and Logan spent a minute or so observing proceedings. Logan made a wry comment about the apparent friendliness – or lack of it – of the guards, but no one replied. Instead Mowen raised a hand and whispered, ‘You wait here one moment.’
‘Why? What are you going to do?’ asked Purna suspiciously.
‘I talk to them,’ Mowen said and tapped his chest with the flat of his hand. ‘They know me.’
Before anyone could respond he stood up and walked out of the bushes. Immediately half a dozen AK 47s swung up and around to cover him, but Mowen seemed unconcerned. He simply raised his hands and strolled forward, and after a few seconds all but two of the guns were lowered. Purna, Sam and Logan looked on as the guards silently watched Mowen approach. The trader walked right up to the fence and started talking to one of the two guards who still had his gun raised.
‘What’s he saying?’ hissed Sam.
‘I don’t know,’ said Purna, clearly not liking the fact. ‘I can’t hear.’
The muttered conversation continued for maybe another thirty seconds, then the guard turned away and they saw him speaking earnestly into his microphone. Eventually he returned to Mowen to relay what instructions he had been given – whereupon Mowen turned and made a beckoning gesture.
‘Come out,’ he shouted. ‘Is OK.’
It was clear from Purna’s face that she was not happy with the situation, but she stood up and walked out into the clearing.
‘Well, here goes nothin’,’ Logan muttered to Sam, as the two of them rose and followed her.
Immediately the guns, which had been lowered when the guards had recognized Mowen, now snapped up again. ‘Hands up!’ one of the guards shouted, a swarthy-looking man with a thick black moustache. The three of them complied, though as they walked forward Purna muttered out of the corner of her mouth, ‘They better not ask us to give up our weapons.’
Sam wasn’t entirely sure what she meant by that statement. Did she mean she would rather go down fighting than be rendered defenceless? He hoped not.
Registering the mistrust on Purna’s face, Mowen made a placatory gesture with his hands and said, ‘Is OK. Is cool.’ He turned to exchange a staccato burst of conversation with the moustached guard and then turned back and said, ‘You can put hands down.’
They lowered their hands, but Purna still looked mistrustful, her movements considered and cautious, the muscles in her arms and legs tight with tension. Her eyes darted left and right, taking in every tiny movement of the armed men on the other side of the fence. She reminded Sam of a big cat, a puma or a panther, wary of its human captors, or perhaps even of those trying to give it back its liberty.
The moustached guard gestured with his gun that they should move to the right. Sam wondered why, and then saw there was a gate about ten metres in that direction. Beyond the gate a caged tunnel led to another gate. They were ushered through one at a time, Purna first, then Sam, then Logan. The moustached guard pointed at Purna’s gun and said something she didn’t understand. She shook her head and turned to Mowen, who was still standing on the other side of the fence.
‘Tell him we’re
not giving up our weapons,’ she said. ‘They’re all we’ve got out here.’
Obediently Mowen complied, and again a burst of conversation rattled between the two men. Then the moustached guard shrugged, and Mowen turned to Purna.
‘He say OK. But you keep them on back. You not touch them.’
‘We won’t touch them unless we have to,’ muttered Purna.
Logan was the last to be ushered through the caged tunnel. When he realized the guard was locking the gate behind him, he turned to Mowen. ‘You not coming with us?’
‘I wait here. You honoured guests. I … ?’ He shrugged and laughed.
‘I don’t like this,’ Purna murmured as the moustached guard indicated they should follow him and another four flanked them, two on each side. ‘Something’s happening that we don’t know about.’
‘Just take it easy,’ said Sam. ‘If they were gonna do anythin’ bad they’d have done it by now.’
‘Not necessarily,’ she replied. ‘We’re immune, remember. That makes us valuable.’
‘Yeah, but they don’t know we’re immune,’ said Logan.
‘Don’t they?’ she muttered darkly.
They were led to a door in the wall of one of the grey buildings, where the moustached guard pressed a button and spoke into a metal grille beside it. After a moment there was a buzz and the door clicked open. The moustached guard led them down a bare, narrow corridor, and from there through an interconnected series of functional low-ceilinged rooms. They reminded Logan of the claustrophobic Antarctic base in one of his favourite movies, The Thing.
Eventually they passed through another door and found themselves in a well-appointed laboratory, almost the entirety of one wall of which was dominated by stacks of cramped cages containing a variety of animals – monkeys, wallabies, rats. Running round the other three walls was a waist-high counter cluttered with items of gleaming hi-tech equipment and several computer consoles, on each of whose screens were displayed graphs or diagrams or simply tables of fluctuating data.
Examining the readings on a piece of equipment that looked to Sam like some kind of over-elaborate cappuccino machine was a wiry man in his thirties with close-cropped sandy hair. Although he was wearing a white lab coat, he didn’t match Sam’s idea of a mad scientist at all. He’d been expecting someone older, with wild hair and maybe a pair of spectacles perched on his forehead. This guy, however, looked more like a mountaineer or a marathon runner. When they entered the room, he turned sharply to look at them, his eyes so startlingly pale and blue that for a moment he looked almost other-worldly. Then he smiled and bustled across, hand outstretched.
‘Welcome! Welcome! I’m Dr West. How nice to have visitors. Way out here it happens so rarely.’
Of the three of them, Sam was the one who automatically put out his hand. The scientist’s grip was surprisingly strong as he shook it.
‘What’s with all the animals?’ Logan asked.
For a moment West’s smile faltered and he glanced at the moustached security guard.
‘Something wrong?’ asked Purna.
‘I was informed that you came here with Mowen? And that you had important information about a recent virus outbreak in the city?’
‘That’s pretty much it,’ said Sam. ‘So?’
West looked at Logan, his eyes piercing. ‘So why ask me about the animals?’
Perplexed, Logan shrugged. ‘Just askin’, that’s all. Hey, it’s no biggie. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.’
West’s face and body remained tense for a couple more seconds and then he relaxed, his shoulders slumping.
‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I thought for a moment you had got in here under false pretences.’
‘What false pretences would those be?’ asked Purna.
West glanced at the caged animals almost guiltily. ‘Well … the nature of my research doesn’t always meet with … shall we say “universal approval”?’
‘You’re a vivisectionist?’ said Purna coldly.
West winced. ‘Please. That’s such an emotive word.’
‘What would you call it?’
‘I’m a research scientist. I’m currently engaged on a programme of cosmetic testing.’
‘On animals?’ said Sam.
‘Would you rather I used human beings?’ snapped West.
Sam shrugged. Animal experimentation wasn’t something he approved of exactly, but neither did he feel strongly enough about the subject to engage the doctor in a moral debate. ‘Hey, you gotta do what you gotta do,’ he mumbled. ‘Stuff’s gotta be tested somehow, I guess.’
‘Exactly,’ said West. ‘Though try telling that to the animal activists.’ Perhaps realizing he was getting a little too emotional, he made an obvious effort to relax, and eventually managed a tight, somewhat twisted smile. ‘That’s why we’re right out here in the … ah … boondocks, as it were.’
‘Is that the only reason?’ asked Purna.
West’s expression was now one of polite puzzlement. ‘What do you mean?’
‘This virus we came to talk to you about,’ said Purna. ‘There are people out there who claim you’re responsible for it.’
West laughed. ‘Do they now? Well, that’s a new one, I must say.’
‘It was Mowen himself who claimed it originated from here. He told us it was common knowledge among the local people.’
‘The mad scientist lurking in his jungle hideaway, unleashing all manner of monstrosities on the world?’ West said, and laughed again, longer and harder this time. ‘I’m afraid the local people are a superstitious lot. They don’t trust anything they don’t understand.’
‘You know something about the virus, though, don’t you?’ pressed Purna, her tone remaining just this side of accusatory. ‘Otherwise why would you have been so willing to see us?’
‘Perhaps it’s just that I crave company. It does get terribly lonely out here, you know.’
Purna smiled tightly. ‘Do you honestly think we’re that stupid, Dr West?’
Another disarming laugh. ‘Of course not. I was curious, that’s all. Why would the three of you come all the way out here to talk about a virus endemic to the local tribesmen? It struck me as odd that you would even know about such a thing. And then, of course, there is your appearance.’ He gestured towards them. ‘Raoul informed me that you looked as though you had just emerged from a pitched battle. And he was right.’
Purna stared at him hard and long. ‘You really don’t know what’s been happening?’
‘Communication networks are unreliable out here at the best of times. These past twenty-four hours they have been non-existent.’
‘Oh, man, are you in for a shock,’ said Logan.
West frowned. ‘Why? What has happened?’
Sam looked at his companions and blew out a long weary breath. ‘Who’s gonna start?’
They spent the next thirty minutes filling West in on the grim events of the past twenty-four hours. The scientist reacted with horror and shock, but he didn’t seem quite as surprised as they might have expected. When Purna questioned him on this, he said, ‘I confess, I was aware of the virus, and was concerned that it would eventually spread into the wider population. But I must say, what you’ve just described is way beyond any worst-case scenario I might have envisaged. When I first came here six months ago, a delegation from the Kuruni – that’s the local tribe – asked me to examine a man who was suffering from the virus. From what I could gather, the Kuruni have been afflicted with it for generations, and have come almost to accept it. It’s a cumulative illness that can strike at any time during a tribesman’s – or woman’s – adult life, and it eventually leads to dementia and death. However, what the Kuruni seemed to be telling me was that recently the nature of the virus had changed, and that somehow the villagers who were dying from it were then returning from the dead as … I don’t know … demons? Evil spirits? To be honest, I took a great deal of what they were saying with a pinch of salt; I simply a
ssumed they were hysterically interpreting the symptoms of extreme dementia as some kind of … supernatural mumbo jumbo. Anyway, I examined the man’s blood and discovered that his symptoms were reminiscent of Kuru, a prion disease that affects the brain. To put it in its most basic terms, it’s like a human version of mad cow disease, and it is believed to be caused by cannibalism.’
‘Cannibalism?’ repeated Logan.
West nodded. ‘The Kuruni are cannibals, have been for generations.’ He hesitated, then said, ‘Although I managed to separate and identify the virus, what particularly disturbed me about it was that it was not only highly contagious, but it was also unstable, constantly mutating. However, the puzzling thing was why – given that the virus was so contagious – the entire Kuruni population had not long ago been wiped out by it.’
‘They had a natural immunity, you mean?’ asked Purna.
‘Not all of them, but a significant proportion of them, yes.’
‘Like us,’ said Sam.
‘So what’s to stop you taking a sample of our blood and whipping up a quick vaccine here and now?’ asked Logan.
West smiled. ‘Maybe I could – if I had a stable form of the virus. The thing is, though, your immunity may be simply an anomaly, something that works for you, but doesn’t necessarily work for everybody.’
‘So what would you need to maximize your chances of creating an effective vaccine?’ asked Purna.
West said, ‘Ideally a blood sample from an immune Kuruni villager, in which the genetic signifier would be dominant and therefore unmistakeable, plus a sample of the stable form of the virus.’
‘A stable form?’ said Logan. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It means one that hasn’t reached the stage where it’s constantly mutating.’
‘From someone who died a while ago, you mean?’ said Purna.
West nodded.
‘So when you say “a while ago”,’ said Sam, ‘how long ago we talking here exactly?’
West shrugged. ‘A year. Maybe two to be certain.’
Sam looked nonplussed. ‘So you need a blood sample from an immune villager, plus a blood sample from some dude who died of the virus two years ago?’
