“There are other examples. The horsehair worm that causes crickets to drown themselves, the lancet liver fluke that causes ants to climb up to where they can be eaten by birds, and others. It would seem to me that, if we are dealing with an infectious agent here, it’s of a parasitic nature that causes its victims to bite other people to infect them. Nothing like this has ever been found in humans, but it’s not inconceivable. But this business of apparently killing the human being and animating their body somehow, that’s right out of the pages of a novel. And not a very good one, at that.”
“One last question, Doctor Booth,” the prime minister said. “Why are all these people … naked?”
“It’s called formication, ma’am. It’s the feeling that insects are crawling all over your skin. It causes many people to tear off their clothes and scratch themselves. We observed it in one of our patients right before the infection took over. Since it appears that this thing, whatever it is, attacks the nervous system, we assume that it’s caused by some reaction of the nerves in the skin. I’d have to study the transformation a good bit to tell more than that, but it’s definitely related.”
“Thank you for your help, Doctor.” The voice was Doctor Pawar’s. “Madam Prime Minister? Governor Mukherjee? Do either of you have any more questions for the doctor? No, then Doctor Booth, please stay on the line for a moment.” He said his goodbyes and the other two hung up.
“Evan, I want to tell you something,” Pawar continued when the other lines went dead. “I’m afraid it is quite terrifying. I ordered the man you examined be taken to the VY Hospital in Dunda. I understand that it is close to your clinic, no?”
“Yes, I’m quite familiar with it. We send a lot of patients there.”
“What is your opinion of it?”
“Well, as I said, we often refer patients there. It’s a private hospital. Really good, for those who can afford it.”
“Yes, I’ve heard the same. Well, Doctor Booth, you were right. The patient died. His heart stopped and he has no other vital signs. Neither do the other five victims the police have managed to capture. But here’s the thing, Evan. They’re all still conscious. Still aggressive. And apparently still quite hungry. Good evening, Doctor Booth, and goodbye. Chief Inspector Saha, please take me off of speakerphone.” The policeman put the phone to his ear and listened for a moment and looked sharply at Booth
“I understand, Mr. Secretary,” he said into the phone, and disconnected.
The inspector pocketed his phone and stood up. He seemed more relaxed now, Evan noticed, as though his mind had been made up on some important fact. “And now, Doctor Booth, there is a car waiting to take you and your two comrades to Nagpur, where you will be put on a plane to Hyderabad. The US Consul General in Hyderabad has agreed to facilitate your exit from the country with the utmost speed. I wish I could have you flown from here, but the airport probably isn’t safe for you.”
Evan jumped to his feet, outraged. “What are you talking about? I need to go back to my clinic! I have patients there!”
“Your clinic in Kandul?” The investigator called a number on his phone and spoke briefly in Urdu to someone on the other end. Then he turned the phone so Booth could see it. The feed showed a building on fire, flames reaching high into the night. With a shock he recognized it. “Your clinic, Doctor Booth? This is your clinic. Shortly after they arrived, that van load of injured you sent there from Dunda began to succumb to this infection, whatever it is. They spread through the town, killing and feeding on anyone they could catch. The disease spread quite quickly, and the troops which were sent there are still trying to contain it. A mob descended on your clinic and killed everyone they found there and set fire to the building.”
“Oh my God,” Booth whispered.
“Your clinic in Dunda also burned. So did the one in Anupam Nagar. Doctors Without Border’s activities have been suspended throughout the country.” He thumbed again through his phone. “Do you know this man?” He held up the phone again so Booth could see it. It showed a photo of Ramesh, the little assistant from his clinic, apparently the shot from his Health Worker’s Certificate. “He also became infected. He killed three of his four children. His wife and one child escaped, but both were bitten. I think you can imagine what happened next.
Booth sat back down, stunned. That poor, lovely little man, he thought sadly.
“No, Doctor Booth. You are leaving India. I believe your story, and do not find you at fault. But the street is angry, and they need someone to blame and right now, that someone is you.”
“My God, Ev. I’m sorry! What are you going to do now?”
“Doctors Without Borders has suspended me pending a hearing, and who knows how long that will take. I’ll probably have to resign. They’re really pissed off at me. You have to screw up pretty royally to get the organization tossed out of a whole subcontinent.” He sighed. “I haven’t seen my kids or grandkids in a while. I guess I’ll head to Chicago and figure out what to do next.
“You know,” he said sadly, “The infection was already spreading in Lalpur before we released those bite victims we treated, so we didn’t cause that, though I guess we fed the flames. But I should never have sent that vanload to our other clinic. I just didn’t think. Maybe I was more shook up than I realized after wrestling that crazy man, I don’t know. But all those deaths are on me.”
And now, Evan thought, once again I’ve lost everything. First Julie’s death, and now this. Everything I’ve worked for. Everything I’ve built here. Gone. And worse than gone, instead of helping, I destroyed lives.
“What about this… thing? Dead people infected with some parasite, running around biting people? That’s batshit crazy!” Owen said.
“I know! It’s like some John Carpenter movie. A zombie apocalypse!” Evan Booth loved old horror movies, but never thought he might be living one out.
“Do you think it could spread?”
“I don’t know. It’s possible, I suppose. If this is just a local outbreak, they can probably contain it. But if it’s more widespread...” He didn’t finish the thought. He didn’t need to.
When the call ended, the old man started combing his news feeds again. No mention of a disease but a story from China talked about a chemical leak at a plant in Chengdu which had caused a whole section of the city to be cordoned off, and another one about riots in Xinjiang province blamed the Uighur minority. A story from South Korea talked about an apparent suicide cult which had included cannibalism, and authorities in Myanmar had instituted a communications blackout along the Laotian border and weren’t letting the press in to investigate.
He reached for a pad of paper, flipped it open to a blank page, and began making lists.
Democratic Republic of Congo
March 19th
Derek Hesse sat on a bench in a camouflaged blind raised above the jungle floor, watching the chimpanzees in the trees above him, and idly scratching at a bug bite on his arm. The blind extended about seven feet wide and just as high, with a thatched roof and an open window wide enough for two people to sit side by side. A feeding station with bananas and other fresh fruit sat across the clearing. The troop seemed jumpy, and easily startled. He attributed this to the presence of the chimpanzee, a big male in his prime, sitting on a large tree that had fallen partway over, held up by surrounding trees, and now rested at a 45-degree angle. The day before, after days of grunting and displays, he and the troop’s alpha male had finally fought a running battle that lasted about ten minutes. It ended with the now former alpha, badly bitten and bloodied, running off into the woods. Derek hadn’t seen him since and doubted he ever would again.
Derek had left his home in Leipzig and traveled to central Africa to join the University of Berlin’s chimpanzee study in the Maiko Reserve in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and to work on his doctorate in anthropology. His specific area of study involved chimpanzee tool u
se and how it compared to early hominids, and in the eight months he’d been here had already noted several behaviors which, to his knowledge, had never been cataloged before. His thesis was beginning to shape up nicely, he thought. He’d spent a three-day shift in the blind, camping a few hundred yards away, and he was due to be relieved soon. He couldn’t wait to finish the long hike back to base camp where he could begin to transcribe his notes.
The chimp on the tree bore the formal designation of G-122, after his troop and birth order, but everyone in the camp knew him as Lefty. Much of the primatology community considered whether chimpanzees displayed “handedness” to be an open question, but to Derek and the others in the camp it was settled science. Lefty clearly preferred his left hand for tool use, actions like for sticking twigs into termite mounds to get at their larva or breaking off large sticks and threatening encroaching neighboring troops with them.
Derek possessed a special fondness for Lefty. He had, for a big male chimp, a fairly easy-going nature, tolerant of youngsters and not prone to unnecessary violence. The alpha male he had overthrown, who everyone called Rambo for his broad shoulders and aggressive manner, was, in Derek’s professional opinion, an asshole. He had a foul temper, routinely making threats and dominance displays at the other males and taking food from females when food was plentiful. And woe unto any juvenile who strayed too close. Several had received serious wounds from the large canines he sported.
Often when an alpha is popular with his troop, other males will join him to fight off any rivals, but in this case Rambo had fought Lefty alone, a testament to his crappy personality. Derek smiled as he thought of it. Rambo reminded him of that other jerk, the one back at camp named Martin Wallace. Martin, a big good-looking American made the hearts of several of the female researchers in camp flutter like schoolgirls. Derek, on the other hand, had graduated from college two years early, and his boyish looks and small frame made him appear more like sixteen than his real twenty-three. On his first day in camp, the bilingual Martin had dubbed him “Das Junger,” which roughly translated meant “The Kid.” The appellation stuck, and now everyone in camp called him Junger. He smiled at it outwardly, but inwardly he seethed.
He scratched himself more vigorously as the itch seemed to travel up his arm. He stood up and checked around the blind. More than once he had been so caught up in his observations that he had been surprised by ants, sometimes several at a time, which had marched up an arm or leg and delivered a painful bite. He found none. He sat back down and checked the battery level on his videocam and began taking notes again.
Over the next quarter hour, the itching came and went, each time a bit stronger than before. His stomach grew queasy, and his neck started to ache. Truth to tell, he’d been feeling a bit unwell the last day or so. There wasn’t anything unusual about that. Derek, who admittedly did have a pretty sensitive constitution, had suffered three bouts of dysentery since he’d been here, two unidentified fevers, and more boils and bug bites than he could remember. It came with the territory, quite literally. But this business with the itching was something unpleasantly new.
Soon another wave of itching, coupled with a burning sensation, spread across his entire body. His hands and feet itched. His rectum and genitals felt like they were on fire. His mouth burned and he dug his knuckles into his eyes to relieve the itch there. Convinced his body must practically swarm with insects, he jumped up and stripped off his clothes, and checked his body. Instead he saw faint dusty blue patches at his inner elbows and wrists, and on his palms and fingertips, like deep bruising only paler. Lines of blue seemed to travel under his skin, and where the blue showed clearest, the itching burned most intensely. He felt quite light-headed, so he sat back down quickly.
Lefty noticed his quick movement and eyed him suspiciously. The chimps knew the man-thing sat there, of course. This troop had been under observation since before any of them were born. The blind had not been constructed to fool them, but to help remove the people from the scene a bit so the chimps could focus on normal behaviors. Still, Lefty watched him carefully, raising his head occasionally to sniff the air.
Derek’s head swum with a sudden vertigo. His joints ached, his lips felt numb, and his itchy eyes watered. I’m definitely coming down with something, he thought. Some new kind of jungle crap, no doubt. As if to confirm it, his gut rumbled and began to cramp up. I hope I don’t puke, he thought. He started to sway and fell heavily against the window frame, causing the whole blind to rattle.
All the chimps stopped what they were doing at the sudden sound and swiveled their heads in his direction. Lefty sniffed again, bared his fangs for a moment and began pacing up and down the fallen tree in agitation.
“Scheisse!” Derek muttered to himself. “I’m really sick! I need to get back to camp.” He tried to move toward the ladder but found he couldn’t get his body to respond. He fell over backwards off the bench, struggled to get up, and then rolled onto his back, staring at the thatched ceiling.
I think I’m in trouble, he thought. Real trouble. It was the last rational thought he had as the parasite spread through his brain, shutting it down.
Lefty continued to sit on his tree, picking and chewing on a leaf. He could smell the man-thing’s sickness coming from the blind. Humans had been observing chimps for decades, but of course the chimps had been observing the humans too, and Lefty had never seen anything like this. He considered leaving, but curiosity got the better of him. So he watched and waited, wondering what the man-thing might do next.
He stood up to go have a look for himself when the man-thing’s head popped up in the window, its eyes darting about wildly, and then it locked onto Lefty. It looked him right in eye and bared its teeth. It thrust itself awkwardly out of the window, and fell onto the ground below, then rose to its feet and began to move toward the fallen tree with an odd stiff-legged gait. As it moved, its pace quickened, and then it was running, its hands hanging loosely at its side, as if forgotten. Lefty rose up and hooted loudly, bouncing on his feet, waving his arms in the air and screeching in a clear warning. He had nothing against the man-things. They were harmless and were often interesting to watch, and the troop appreciated all the free food. But this one was engaging in some very un-man-thing behavior and was about to get its ass kicked if it wasn’t careful. The rest of his troop hooted in response, raising a racket that carried through the jungle.
But his displays didn’t work. The man-thing had reached the tree and rapidly climbed up the slanted trunk on all fours toward Lefty, its eyes fixed and staring. Lefty scurried down the trunk, his muscles bunched, and as he reached the man-thing he struck it with a powerful backhand swipe that launched it into the air. An observer, if one existed, might even have noticed he used his left arm. The man-thing fell to the ground below, striking hard among the leaves. But it rose up almost immediately and limped toward the fallen tree again.
Lefty hooted to the troop and ran up the fallen tree into the canopy and hurried off deeper into the jungle. Enough of this! The strange behavior and sick smell told him the time had come to leave. The troop followed close behind, and in seconds they were gone.
The thing that had been Derek Hesse looked around in confusion. First the food was here. Now it was gone. And it was very very hungry. Then from nearby it heard a noise. It limped off to investigate.
Martin Wallace, field researcher and doctoral candidate, paused to adjust his backpack and wipe his forehead. The hike up here had taken almost three hours and his shirt stuck to his chest with a vee of perspiration. He wondered if he’d ever get used to this heat. His pack contained several recording devices, a laptop computer, and a shotgun mike for picking up chimp vocalizations. His doctorate centered on language development among chimps, and he’d made some real progress using a computer to classify their calls and replies. Just ahead he heard the warning cries of an alpha male, followed by answering hoots from the troop. Maybe Rambo has come back for
another round, he thought. Well, once he’d relieved Junger at the feeding station he’d get his equipment set up and maybe get some good stuff.
The trail made a sharp turn and he stopped short. In front of him stood Junger, stark naked. He looked terrible. His thin pale body looked garish and unhealthy in the thin jungle light, with blue-ish patches around his mouth and eyes and veins of it down his arms and across his chest. His eyes were blank and his mouth hung open.
“Derek?” he said, stepping forward. “Are you okay?”
The troop didn’t return to the feeding station for nearly three months. When they finally showed up, there was no one left to care.
Heathrow Airport
March 20th
The sleek Cessna Citation touched down gently on the runway. It taxied past the crowded passenger terminals, past the VIP terminal with its luxurious private lounges, and made its way instead toward a nondescript building. The plane came to a stop and the side opened with a gentle hiss as the cabin step unfolded. Two men came down the stairs. One, a tall man in his early fifties, walked with a military bearing. The other, of average height, shuffled along with his head down, as though he’d blown the winning goal in a championship match. The bitingly cold wind whisked around their faces, a dramatic change from the heat and humidity of India.
They were greeted by a young man in an overcoat, his collar pulled up to avoid the chill. “Doctor Whitman, Major Deevers? Come with me, please?”
“Actually it’s just Doctor Deevers now. I’m retired.”
“Not anymore, sir” the man said. “You’ve been reactivated.”
“Really? What’s this all about, then?”
The Old Man & the End of the World | Book 1 | Things Fall Apart Page 4
