He shouldn’t have come here. This time last year, he wouldn’t have. He would have shrugged Claire’s problems off as her own to deal with and gone about the rest of his life without much concern.
But when his grandmother died unexpectedly eight months ago, his whole world had tilted sideways. The foundation he’d built everything on had crumbled. He’d been determined to fuck and drink away the grief and had been doing a damn fine job of it until he’d crossed paths with a voodoo queen on Mardi Gras, and she’d cursed him with celibacy. Now Jean-Luc Laissez Les Bons Temps Rouler Cavalier was gone and he didn’t recognize the person he’d become. He wanted his old life back—go on dangerous missions and rid the world of some bad guys, come home and drink himself stupid, have some fun with a woman or two. Lather, rinse, and repeat. He’d liked it that way. Hadn’t seen any need to change a thing.
So why the fuck had everything changed?
Claire. It all came back and centered on her. His life had only been sideways and unstable until he met her. But that night in Martinique, when she looked across the poolside bar with those sea-blue eyes and flatly told him his rendition of “The Piña Colada Song” was off-key—that was when everything flipped fucking upside down.
He wished he could hate her for it. He didn’t. Even now, the need to find her chewed at him.
Jean-Luc heaved in a breath and straightened away from the bars of his prison. If he didn’t find a way out soon, he might as well dig his own grave in the hard-packed dirt beneath his feet, because this was where he’d bite it. He climbed to his feet, paced around the small space, looking for something, anything to aid his escape. A crack in the wall, a loose bar in the door…but his captors had known what they were doing when they chose his prison. Nothing short of a grenade was getting through these walls.
Dig a grave.
Now there was an idea. Maybe he could Shawshank his way out of here. Only problem was he didn’t have a rock hammer or twenty years to dig his way to freedom.
He looked down. His captors had taken his boots, and his feet were bare and filthy. He dug one toe into the dirt floor. It was hard packed, but not so much that it was like concrete. It could still be moved.
He gazed over at the barred door again. There were about three inches between the bottom bar and the dirt floor. He wouldn’t need to dig a hole deep enough to fit his entire body. Just one big enough to allow him to reach those damn keys. The throbbing in his arm spoke up right then, reminding him this would be a one-handed endeavor.
Mais, things could be worse.
He shook his head once, dropped to his knees in front of the door, and started digging.
Chapter Three
The village was perched precariously on the riverbank, a cluster of newer mud huts with rusted tin roofs mixed in with the more traditional stilt houses made of wood, bamboo, and palm fronds. A dripping rain had started during the bumpy drive over, and now drummed steadily against the roof of the old Toyota truck MSF took into Port Harcourt for supply runs. The truck had no a/c, so it was either keep the windows down and get soaked, or roll them up and potentially die of suffocation in the stifling heat. Claire chose the rain. With humidity sitting at 100 percent, her tank top and capri pants already felt waterlogged anyway.
Claire studied the village through the windshield as the wipers did their best to keep up with the now pelting rain. No sign of people. Because of the rain? Or because they were all dead or dying?
“Are you sure you want to do this now?”
She turned in her seat to smile at Dayo. She’d learned a bit about him during the drive. Like Sunday, he had left Nigeria for an education, though his had been in the United States, and had only recently returned to his homeland to help his people in the Niger Delta. He’d come from a village very much like this one, and the strain around his mouth told her he was playing the “what if” game in his head. What if this had happened in his village, to his family?
“I need to do this now,” she told him.
He didn’t argue. He only pushed open his door and went around to the back of the truck to start unloading the rattraps they’d brought.
Claire pulled up the hood of her raincoat, and tried to ignore the dark hole of dread opening up in her belly. She shoved open the door and hurried to help Dayo with the traps. “Do you know which house the index case came from?”
“I no no,” Dayo said, then corrected himself for her benefit, “I don’t know.”
She’d spent enough time in Africa to understand the many versions of Pidgin English, but she didn’t correct him. She picked up several of the rat cages. “All right. We’ll start with food storage areas and work our way from there.”
They worked quickly, placing traps in all the likely places, and saw not another soul. This wasn’t right. Even with the downpour, there should be people. Animals. Sound. But the village was a ghost town. She stopped in front of one of the houses. The rain sluiced off the thatched roof, obscuring her view inside.
“Dayo,” she called.
He finished placing a trap near one of the buildings and straightened.
“Did the villagers flee? The ones who weren’t sick?”
“They did before Sunday and her team got here. We convinced some to come to us, but not all.”
Then they were standing on the edge of a pandemic. If any of the villagers who fled were sick, she was going to need help containing this outbreak. She had to call her contacts in the CDC and USAMRIID…
Which meant painting a target on her back again.
But, really, what was her life compared to the potentially thousands that would be lost if she did nothing? No matter which way she weighed it, the scale didn’t tip in her favor.
She turned away from the house to tell Dayo to pack up, but movement inside caught her attention. Was someone in there? She squinted. A human shape shifted in the darkness.
“Hello?” she called out. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m here to help.”
A child— ten, twelve years old at most—appeared in the doorway. She was skinny, her arms little more than flesh-covered bones. The skin around her eyes had sunk into deep hollows and her cheekbones stood out in sharp peaks. She was saying something, but Claire couldn’t understand the language. She called Dayo over.
After listening for a moment, he translated. “She says they all died. Her mom, dad, siblings. Aunts, uncles, cousins. They’re all dead.”
“Ask her if she’s sick.”
He did, then shook his head when the girl answered. “She says she was. She thought she was going to die too, but then she got better.”
A survivor. The virus was survivable. And now they had someone with antibodies that could be studied. This little girl could be the key to saving all of those people at the MSF field hospital.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
The girl must have understood, because she responded without needing translation. “Ebiere.”
“Ebiere. Okay. I’m a doctor from the United States. Do you know where that is?”
Ebiere looked to Dayo for a translation then nodded and inched from the house. The rain plastered her colorful dress to her body, highlighting how thin she was.
“Okay. Good.” Despite her bulky protective gear, Claire knelt down so the girl could see her through her facemask. “I’m here to stop people from dying, and you might be able to help me. Would you be willing to come back to the hospital with me? We’ll get you some food and fresh clothes. You’ll be safe. And you might be able to help us save some people.” She held out a gloved hand and waited for Dayo to translate. The girl hesitated, then reached out and placed her hand in Claire’s. It was tiny, frail. Claire had always been a petite woman, too thin and too short, but she felt like she’d break the child’s hand if she held too tight.
“Did you place the last of the traps?” she asked Dayo as she straightened.
He nodded.
“All right. Let’s go back to the hospital. Ebiere.” She waited for th
e girl to look up at her. “Do you know who got sick first?”
As they made their way back to the truck, Dayo translated. The girl spoke for a long time, gesturing to the south. Claire glanced in that direction, saw nothing but a thick tangle of mangroves and palms. Dayo asked some questions, Ebiere responded.
Finally, Dayo nodded and turned to Claire. “The first was a local boy, Joyful Solomon, who had run off to join the Egbesu Fighters. They have a camp not too far from here and recruit from the village often. He left earlier this summer, but returned home about two weeks ago because he was sick. Within three days, it had spread to his whole family. By the end of the first week, over half of the village was infected. By the end of the second week…” He motioned to the village with a sweeping gesture. “This.”
Claire shook her head in awe. If this started two weeks ago, then the virus spread and killed at alarming rates. They had to contain it now, before it spread to nearby cities like Port Harcourt.
She spotted one of the traps she’d laid, and knew without a doubt their efforts of the last few hours weren’t going to turn up anything. If Joyful Solomon was the index case, he didn’t contract the virus here. He brought it here, which meant he contracted it elsewhere—likely the Egbesu camp. Which also meant he may not be the index case.
She had to go to the camp.
Dayo must have been reading her thoughts, because before she even opened her mouth, he said, “No. Claire, it’s not safe.”
“Nowhere will be safe if this virus makes it to the cities.”
They reached the Toyota and she paused as Dayo helped Ebiere into the cab through the driver’s side. He shut the door, met her gaze over the hood.
“I have to go,” she said, “with or without you. It’s your choice.”
Dayo swore colorfully in both his native language and in English. “You’re going to get us killed.”
“You’ve seen what this virus does to people. We’re all dead if we don’t stop it. Your family, Sunday’s, mine. We’re on the precipice of a Black Plague-level event here.”
He said nothing for a long time. Lifted his face to the sky and let the rain pelt his face shield. Finally, he looked at her again. “Do you truly think it will get that bad?”
“With nearly one hundred percent fatality rate? Yes, Dayo. I really do.”
“All right. All right.” He opened the truck’s door again. “I’ll take you to the Egbesu camp.”
Chapter Four
Coordinating Ebiere’s return to the field hospital was more time consuming than Claire anticipated. Sunday was as thrilled about the survivor as Claire had been. There were questions to ask, an exam to perform, blood to draw. Three hours after Ebiere was given her own cordoned off space within the hospital, the thrill had worn thin, and Claire was restless to check out the Egbesu camp. It took far too much time to gather rattraps and supplies for any sick they might come across. Sunday insisted she take more protection than Dayo with her, and so now three local police escorts huddled in the back of the truck, hunched into their jackets against the driving rain.
The ride to the camp felt endless. She’d never been one of those children to ask “are we there yet?” every five minutes during a road trip—mainly because her parents would never do something as low-class as a road trip—but she had to refrain from it now. She all but twitched with restless energy.
Dayo smiled over at her. “You believe we’re on to something here.”
“I know it.” She realized she’d been tapping her foot on the underside of the dashboard and made herself stop. She looked out the window at the passing tropical foliage. In some places, it was so thick, she couldn’t see beyond the edge of the road. “Have you ever heard of Joyful Solomon before?”
“No, but I wasn’t raised here. My village is more west. Closer to Lagos.”
Claire heard the worry in his voice and set a hand on his muscular arm. “It hasn’t spread that far yet.”
“I hope not.”
“It hasn’t, but it will if we don’t get ahead of it. We need more information.” She dropped her hand and gazed out the windshield. The rain seemed to be letting up. Less downpour and more steady drizzle. It was the best she could hope for at this time of year in Southern Nigeria. “Joyful Solomon is definitely our first case in the village, but we need to know if he was patient zero or if someone else gave it to him while he was at the camp.”
Dayo’s grip tightened on the steering wheel. “We will run into resistance with the Fighters. They won’t want to help you.”
She made a noncommittal sound. She wasn’t going to say it out loud, but she suspected they wouldn’t find anyone alive at the camp to resist.
They rode in silence until Dayo pulled the truck to a stop in the middle of an overgrown, barely there road. “We have to go on foot from here.”
Claire pushed open the door and jumped out. “Everyone, listen up. Masks, face shields, and gloves from here on out. You may feel like you’re suffocating, but do not take any of the equipment off until I tell you we’re clear.” She studied the three police officers. They all wore uniform shirts, but that was the only thing that indicated they were police. One was in shorts, another in flip-flops, and the third had on rubber rain boots. She shook her head and pointed at the trio. “If we come across any bodies, you are not to go anywhere near them.”
…
It took another hour of walking before they reached the camp, and Claire’s clothes were soaked through with sweat under her protective gear. Her facemask kept steaming up, turning the already muggy air unbearably oppressive. She wanted the bottle of water in her backpack, but didn’t dare drink it this close to the camp. At least not until she got a look at what was going on within its borders. If what she suspected turned out to be true, they were entering a very biologically hot zone.
Dayo held up a hand, indicating they should stop, and took cover behind some foliage. Claire crouched by his side. The three officers stopped moving and dropped the rattraps they carried with a clatter of noise.
Claire shushed them, then turned her attention back to Dayo. He scanned the clearing up ahead with a pair of binoculars. If his mask was as clouded as hers, she didn’t know how he could see anything. It also didn’t help that fog had rolled in from the river, giving everything an eerie, dream-like quality.
“What do you see?” she asked.
He replaced the binoculars in his pack. “Nothing.”
“I’m not surprised. Your mask is clouded and the fog—”
“No.” He turned to her. “I don’t see any movement. There should be movement. This time of day, there should be smoke from campfires. They would be making dinner. It’s quiet.”
“Like the village?”
He gave a solemn nod. “Exactly like the village.”
Their gazes locked and held for a beat. In his dark eyes, she saw sadness and also anger. He knew what was coming as well as she.
Behind them, the officers chatted and joked like they weren’t standing on the edge of a terrorist organization’s camp. One laughed loudly enough to startle a flock of birds into the air. Claire and Dayo both glanced back at the trio, then looked at the camp again.
Waited.
Nobody came to investigate the noise.
Claire huffed out a breath that fogged her mask and pushed to her feet. “I don’t think we need to worry about being shot. Either this camp is abandoned or…” She let the thought trail off as Dayo’s jaw tightened. His expression was one of thinly veiled rage. She couldn’t blame him. It was hard not to get angry when you felt so powerless. She turned to the officers. “Bring the traps. Set them around livestock and food storage areas. And be careful not to disturb the bodies.”
The officers’ smiles faded and they looked at each other.
“Bodies?” one asked.
Sure, now they understood the gravity of the situation. “We don’t know if they’re still contagious. Do not put yourselves at risk.”
She left the officer
s sharing concerned glances and marched out into the cleaning. The camp sat right on the edge of the Niger River. The buildings were mostly wood with palm frond roofs, though she noticed one covered with a green tarp instead. Despite the rain, the air smelled strongly of oil, and the mud beneath her boots was black with it. They passed several large metal vats and oil drums, dented and burned.
“What is all this?” Claire asked.
“A refinery,” Dayo said. “They were bunkering—siphoning oil from the big companies and refining it themselves.” He stopped moving and gazed down into a barrel of crude oil. “It’s the only work available to people here. The only way they can survive, feed their families.” He looked up, eyes wet with tears. “These aren’t bad people, Claire. They’re desperate.”
Claire glanced around. The refinery was a giant scar on the land, everything around it blackened, oil-slicked, and burned. It looked like something out of a post-apocalyptic movie. “Desperation can make good people do bad things.”
In a shocking burst of temper, Dayo kicked over the barrel. Oil gushed across the ground like blood from a fatal wound. “Doesn’t matter now, does it? They’re all dead.”
“We don’t know that—”
He snatched a rattrap from one of the officers and stalked away.
Claire took a breath. Even behind her mask, the smell of oil was strong enough to make her eyes water. But under that was a scent she recognized. Rot—the particular odor given off by human remains.
This was going to be bad.
She closed her eyes, gave herself a moment, then pushed back her shoulders and followed. The first body she found was a young man, barely out of his teens. He sat slumped over in a rickety plastic chair near one of the huts. That was one of the most disturbing things about hemorrhagic viruses. The virus killed slowly—until it didn’t. One minute, a victim could be talking to you. The next, they’d be gone. The kid probably never even realized he was dying when he sat down there.
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