by Bobby Adair
The catwalk moved. The sensation was disconcerting.
Disgusted by what might be on the handrails, but worried about balance, Paul put his hands on the rails as he proceeded. Once he came to Salim’s cage, he grabbed hold with both hands to keep himself steady.
The screamers were syncing their rhythm and the metal structure swayed with a grind of embedments pulling out of the silo’s concrete walls.
Taking a quick look at the ladder, Paul put a panicked thought to work on calculating how fast he could get down to the bottom and out the door.
The metal structure swayed again and slammed one wall with a clang that rang through Paul’s feet and hands. The prisoners erupted in celebration and the whole structure vibrated with their jumping and throwing themselves at the walls of their cages.
“You don’t need to worry.”
Paul turned to Salim, who’d stood up on the other side of the metal barrier to face him.
“They do this every night. Usually a couple of times. It all falls apart when they hit the wall.”
Paul surveyed the rickety structure. “This thing could collapse.”
“And if it does?” Salim shrugged.
Paul’s brow furrowed at the nihilistic response. “You don’t care if you die?”
Salim looked away, found something in the darkness that was his answer, and looked back at Paul with defiance. “Why are you here? Are you going to take me down and drain me dry?”
Paul shook his head and felt shame for having threatened the kid. And he was a kid. He indeed could have been one of Austin’s classmates.
“You don’t remember me?”
Paul shook his head again.
“I used to come to your house to play video games with Austin. I’ve had dinner at your table five or six times.”
“Was I there?”
“You were usually on business trips and stuff. You never paid much attention to me when I was around.”
Paul felt guilty about that even as he wondered whether Salim was lying. He often didn’t bother to learn Austin’s friends’ names, let alone remember what they looked like. Why had he done that, he wondered? Was he that caught up in his work or was it that he didn’t care about Austin’s friends as long as they looked like normal kids with decent manners.
“Mrs. Cooper made us those homemade ravioli one time.” Salim ran a tongue over his lips.
Most of Paul’s doubts evaporated. How could Salim know about the ravioli unless he’d been there? That’s not the kind of thing that anybody could find out after the fact. Paul took a big step towards belief. He took a deep breath to clear his head. “Tell me what you know about Kapchorwa.”
“So you believe I was there?”
“I’m listening.” The implication was mostly true.
Chapter 26
After listening to Salim’s circuitous stories for nearly an hour while the silo settled down and mostly went to sleep, Paul started down the ladders.
He needed time to think, to put the pieces together?
Salim’s story was a mix of true things and falsehoods. Some of the lies were easy to spot. Some of them sounded true but defied logic. On the whole, Paul only knew he’d heard a meandering pastiche of truths and lies that left him with no way to tell for sure which was which.
As he worked his way down, questions came to mind, ones he’d have to ask the next time he had the kid in his clinic. Why was this unnamed aid group that Salim was a member of in Kapchorwa? Why were there so many of them? Well, that was a lie that fell apart as quickly as it had been told. Salim’s count of coworkers drifted all over the place. Was it a handful or a hundred? Why did they have to leave after the fire? Why not take Austin with them when they went? How did Salim get out of Africa so fast and why didn’t he report to someone that Austin was still alive?
Paul had a headache. He wanted to make his way to his thin-mattressed donation beds to get some sleep but with all the thoughts swirling in his head about Salim and Austin, he doubted he would.
“Dracula.” It was little more than a whisper.
Paul glanced at the gangbanger but didn’t change his direction or slow his feet.
“Man, don’t ignore me like I’m nothing.”
Paul stopped and glared. “What?”
The gangbanger looked up. “What were you and Brownie whispering about up there?”
Paul shook his head and turned away.
“Wait. I have information.”
Derisively amused, Paul turned with an insulting smile on his face. “Sure you do. I’m sure everyone in here has a story about my dead son. Is that the game? One of you assholes found something out, and now everybody has a story.”
“No. I don’t know nothin’ about your son. I want to make a trade.”
“I’m sure you do.” Without having consciously chosen, Paul was walking toward the gangbanger’s cell.
“I know something you need to know.”
“Fine. What do you want?”
Waving Paul within range of his whisper, the gangbanger said, “You need to help me get out of here.”
Paul spun around and stepped away. “No chance.”
“Wait. Wait.”
The pleading stopped Paul.
“Don’t go.”
Paul turned and walked back within whisper range. “Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t get you out. Even if you got out, you wouldn’t get past the guards. Even if you got past the guards, you’d never get past the perimeter.” Paul pointed up. “The Army has machine gun nests outside the base with their guns pointed in. They’ll shoot anything that goes over the fence. Hell, maybe I should help you get out.”
“Good. Now we’re talking.”
“No.” Paul was not letting a rapist or murderer or whatever he was out of his cell.
“You would if you knew what I was going to tell you.”
“You’re wasting my time.”
“Okay.” The gangbanger’s words were quick, his tone pleading. “A favor then.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. We’ll decide later. You just have to agree.”
Paul sighed. This was worse than dealing with a two-year-old. He never should have stopped. “I’ll do you a favor, but I’ll veto anything I think is dangerous to anybody. You got that?”
The gangbanger stepped away from the door of his cage and pretended to think about it for a minute. “Okay.” He motioned with his eyes toward the cells above. “Brownie and all those others up there, you know what they’re in for?”
“Does it matter? They’re all convicts like you.”
The gangbanger put on a hurt face. He looked at the tattoos on his arms and showed them off. “You think just because I look like this I’m a thug.”
Paul shrugged, not committing to an answer.
“You think because I was in jail and because I’m a Mexican-American I’m guilty. Yeah whatever, Holmes. I’m innocent.”
“Yeah.” Paul rolled his eyes. “I’m sure everybody here says that, but none of us is innocent. At least be honest about that.”
“Exactly right. We’re all tokens in a for-profit prison system. Corporations make money from keeping people like me in a cage. That’s why I was in jail. That’s why I’m here now.”
“Yeah.” Paul sighed to demonstrate his boredom. “I’m sure it had nothing to do with you breaking the law.”
“I made a few mistakes but I paid for ‘em.” The gangbanger took on a righteous air. “Now I’m here because somebody makes money on me. It’s that simple. It’s the same reason they volunteered us to take that Ebola drug, to make more money off us.”
“You have immunity.” Paul was offended. This guy got for free what Paul had gone to a lot of trouble and paid a high price for.
“You know how many of us died after the injection?”
“What?” The question made it out of Paul’s surprised mouth before he had a chance to stop it. “Died? Why would any of you die? You were given plasma to build up your immu
ne system. It was like a vaccination.”
The gangbanger laughed angrily. “Is that what you tell yourself when you put your head on the pillow at night? It ain’t right. The doctors came into my block and injected us all. The guards held us down. We didn’t have no choice. My block had eighty-three guys on it. Seven of us lived. The rest bled and suffered. They didn’t give us no medical care to speak of. They just injected us and waited.” The gangbanger grabbed the cage from his side and his arms flexed under the strength of his grip. “They cried all night. They called out. Tough guys doing life for the shit they done. Mean guys. The whole place stank of bloody shit.”
Paul saw the picture in his mind but didn’t want to hear. He feebly offered a response. “You should be thankful. You’re going to live through the epidemic.”
“No, I’m not.” All of the gangbanger’s anger was gone. He was resigned. “You’ll drain me until I die. You’ll see.”
Shaking his head at the unfounded accusation coming so close to the truth in his heart, Paul couldn’t come up with a response.
“Ain’t nobody leaving this place alive.” The gangbanger ran out of steam, as if he had no more words. “Go if you want to.”
Paul stood in silence for a moment, looking at the metal floor. “You said you had some information.”
The gangbanger pointed up. “None of those guys up on seven and eight were in prison.”
That confused Paul. “How’d they get here then?”
“Terrorists.”
“What?” Paul’s skepticism was back in full force.
“All arrested as terrorists or some shit. Maybe the police just picked up all the Muslims they could find. I don’t know. I’m just sayin’ that’s what I heard.”
“Terrorists?” Paul’s mind started to spin. He’d read a million rumors on the Internet before the police had brought him to the Ebola farm. He’d heard a thousand news reports and one thing was certain, plenty of people were blaming the epidemic on a cadre of infected terrorists coming out of Africa. The government denied it all, but arrests of Muslims ramped up faster than anyone had believed it could in a Western democracy.
And that’s how it all fit together.
If all of those terrorist rumors were true, then that was a story that could tie all of the broken bits of Salim’s story together. He had been one of those terrorists in Africa, becoming infected exactly where Paul’s son had contracted the disease.
Salim was a terrorist, and he was responsible for the deaths of more people than would fit into Paul’s imagination.
Paul didn’t know whether the gangbanger was ever going to see sunshine again, but he did know one thing in that moment. Salim Pitafi wouldn’t.
Chapter 27
Austin woke to Mitch nudging him on the shoulder. “I’m awake.” He lifted his head off the window.
Mitch pushed a bottle of water into Austin’s hand. “Drink that.”
The truck was idling but sitting at an angle with the driver’s side tires on the asphalt and the passenger side tires in a shallow ditch. Austin straightened up in his seat, unlatched the seatbelt, and yawned. “You made it all night. You were supposed to wake me.”
“I was doing fine.” Mitch gulped down some water from a plastic bottle that matched Austin’s.
Leaning his head back against the window, Austin gazed blearily across a rolling plain of green grasses and trees that turned to jagged ridges and mountainous cliffs below white-capped crags. Zebras grazed nearby. Elephants loitered in the distance. “Where the hell are we? Is that snow up there?”
“Yeah.” Mitch pointed at the mountain. “We’re still in Kenya, maybe fifty miles north of Nairobi. That’s Mt. Kenya there.”
“Lots of wildlife.”
“It’s a national park. They’re protected.”
By whom? There’s nobody left. Austin didn’t say that. He drank some more water and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. “You could have woken me up. I’d have split the driving with you. I didn’t sleep worth a crap anyway.”
“I would have wakened you if I didn’t feel up to it.”
Austin looked around. “I need to take a leak.”
Mitch’s eyes stayed on the empty road ahead. “I haven’t seen anyone or anything for miles.” He looked left and right. “No trees close by. We’re safe. That’s why I picked this place to stop.”
Austin opened the door. A brisk, clean wind blew into the truck, shoving the warm, stale air out and sending a shiver up Austin’s spine. He stepped out of the truck and reached back inside for his AK-47. Clearly, he and Mitch were the only people for miles, but Austin kept telling himself that he didn’t want to be caught unarmed again. He walked a ways out into the grass and did his business as Mitch came up a few paces away and took care of his necessities.
Austin zipped up and rubbed his hands uselessly on his filthy pants. “Seventeen hundred miles to Djibouti. How many do you think we made last night?”
“Maybe three hundred.”
Austin drew in a deep breath, smelled the air, and savored the feel of the breeze on his skin. He asked himself why he was leaving Africa. It was starting to become part of him. “You going to sleep while I drive this morning?”
“Yeah.” Mitch walked to the back of the truck and opened the rear door. He shuffled through the supplies. “You want to get something to eat?”
Austin took in another lingering gaze at the snowy mountains with the elephants and zebras incongruously below. It didn’t fit his preconceptions, but one thing he’d learned during his first trip out of the country was that many, many things didn’t fit his apparently provincial view of the world. He headed over to get himself some food.
Mitch was munching on some nuts when Austin walked up. “Get all you need for breakfast—lunch too if you want. With any luck, I’ll sleep until sometime this afternoon. I don’t want to stop.”
“Right.” Austin searched around in the big cooler. “Not for anything?”
“Don’t drive too fast. Keep it around forty-five, or sixty, or maybe eighty kilometers per hour if the road is clear and safe in front of you.”
“Got it.”
Mitch stepped out into the road and looked both ways. “I had to work around some roadblocks last night.” Mitch pointed north. “This is the main highway going to Ethiopia. It’s good road most of the way. All paved.” He rubbed his tired eyes. “Never know what you’ll come across. And we’re bound to come across something.”
Austin walked out into the center of the long, flat road and watched it disappear into the horizon. “If I see anything I’m not one-hundred-percent cool with, I’ll wake you.”
Mitch nodded a few too many times as if trying to convince himself that driving in shifts was a good idea.
“It’ll be cool.” Austin smiled and smacked Mitch on the back for reassurance. “There’s not a lot out here.”
Mitch looked at Austin with an expression of mild disappointment.
Austin laughed. “Trust me. I know danger lurks. Just because we can’t see people doesn’t mean they aren’t out there. Everybody is afraid of everybody right now. Besides, you know what I’ve been through. I’ll stay on my toes. Driving in shifts is the only way we’re going to get the samples there before they deteriorate too much to be useful.”
Mitch headed for the passenger side of the truck. “And keep an eye out for anything that looks like it might be a good place to get some gas.” He knocked on one of the gas cans strapped to the roof. It sounded full. “We’ve got plenty, but not enough to get all the way there. We have to scrounge the rest.”
Chapter 28
An hour into Mitch’s nap the countryside changed from wild savannah to cultivated fields dotted with houses in clusters and by themselves. Not long after, the houses grew more closely spaced and looked like the outskirts of a town—Nanyuki, or so a sign said. Mt. Kenya still towered to the southeast. At seventeen thousand feet tall, coupled with their slow progress, Austin figured it’d be visible in the rearv
iew mirror for most of the day.
When they drove past a big sign with a black silhouette of the African continent on a yellow background marking the point where the Equator passed through town, Austin had the useless and nostalgic urge to stop and get a picture. Perfect Facebook fodder for his friends. How many of them had ever crossed the Equator? None.
Worse. Most wouldn’t. Not ever. A significant fraction was likely dead. Many might currently be lying on soiled mattresses sweating out blood as their innards liquefied. Austin put the thoughts out of his mind. He’d seen too many deaths in person, holding hands of the dying, smelling death, seeing it drip, hearing how it sounded in the voices of those soon to breathe their last breath. Austin didn’t need to feel more pain for people he might never see again.
And how many more would die? It had been months since Austin and Rashid had shared a boda ride from Mbale to Kapchorwa to find that village sick. Now, the airborne strain was around the globe.
Damn you, Najid Almasi.
How many people were going to die before it all ended?
At least he and Mitch had the samples in the truck. The strain of Ebola in those samples only killed twenty percent.
Only.
Austin was darkly amused at the sad truth of what now passed for optimism. Only twenty percent dead.
But twenty percent was so much better than what Austin had seen in Kapchorwa initially where nearly everyone had died. That strain of Ebola could drive humanity to the point of extinction. A twenty-percent death rate truly was optimistic.
Austin nudged Mitch awake. “It looks like there’s a gas station up ahead.”
Mitch straightened up in his seat and took a second to orient himself. “Where are we?”
“Nanyuki.” Austin looked back and forth at houses along the road, wary. “Sorry. You didn’t get to sleep long.”
“That’s okay. We need the gas.” Mitch coughed up some phlegm, rolled down the window, and spit. Cold air filled the truck.
“You okay?”
