Cold Silence

by James Abel

  The little plane lurched, every second taking us farther from the border. I went over Lionel’s list: throat closing, rashes, nausea, loss of walking function, hallucinations.

  “Please detail these hallucinations.”

  “He didn’t actually say he was hallucinating,” I explained. “He said he saw a gargoyle. Like on Notre Dame.”

  The effect of my words on the group was electrifying. The admiral shot up. Chris leaned forward, as if to see better. Burke’s gasp was audible, and everyone either gave significant looks to each other, or their gaze sharpened on me. I could not tell who was looking at who.

  The whole exchange made no sense. Why would the word gargoyle set them off?

  Gaines said casually, “Joe, please describe the gargoyle.”

  “Describe it?”

  “Saddle nose? Wide forehead? Flesh gone?”

  “What?”

  Burke snapped out, “It’s a pretty plain question. Were they winged figures or not?”

  Gaines said more quietly, “Colonel, did your man tell you that what he saw looked like a gargoyle or was one?”

  Eddie said, “Hmmph,” and fell back in his seat. I tried to remember Nash’s exact words. But the distinction was not something I’d paid attention to. “Looked like, I think.”

  “He thinks,” snorted Burke, as if I’d missed something obvious.

  Gaines looked encouraged. “Ah! So it’s possible that he spoke of exaggerated features, disfigurement, and not hallucination? Possibly he saw something that made him think of a gargoyle. A useful description. Nothing more.”

  “You could interpret it that way,” I replied.

  Burke was shaking his head in disgust. Ray Havlicek broke in thoughtfully. “I must point out that not all the figures on Notre Dame have wings. Wings are irrelevant.”

  “I disagree,” said Galli. “Wings would confirm a hallucination.”

  Chris said, “How is Colonel Rush to answer properly if we don’t keep him in the loop?”

  Burke snapped, “How secure is this damn line anyway?”

  Eddie nudged me and mouthed, What the fuck?

  Galli said, “Think hard, Joe. Other symptoms? Loss of vision perhaps? Confusion? Weakness?”

  Galli and Chris were trying to tell me something. Homza and Burke were not. Havlicek took notes. Celia looked fascinated. Gaines thrust his hands up and said with emotion, “The speed of this thing is frightening, and lab tests confirm—”

  Burke broke in. “Give us a minute here, Colonel Rush.”

  The screen read MUTE, except MUTE did not happen. For the first thirty seconds of their argument, a technical glitch worked in our favor. I heard snatches of their fevered conversation, far away.

  ADMIRAL: I want backup for Colonel Rush!

  HOMZA: Mutation! Or worse! Created! This is exactly what they were sent in to look for.

  GALLI: Then send your guys in, not mine!

  CHRIS: The situation in Galilee is getting worse by—

  The sound shut off for real. The picture went fuzzy and disappeared. Three bumpy, rainy minutes later they were back, the doctor nervous, Chris looking disgusted, Burke having made a decision, and Galli looking unhappy. That meant we were still supposed to go in.

  Burke ordered, “Check in with Admiral Galli every hour. And send photos the minute you can!”

  Eddie said as they signed off, “Galilee? Isn’t that in Israel? Did someone hit Israel?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  We flew lower to escape turbulence, and through mist/rain the ground came back into view, ten thousand feet below. We were over the Afro-Asian Rift, a gigantic gash in the earth, longer than the Nile, that started in Saudi Arabia and snaked south all the way to Zimbabwe, a prehistoric Grand Canyon formed eons ago when continents split. It was also the stage for many of humanity’s pivotal events, good and bad, legendary and real.

  In the north, the Rift was where Moses crossed the Red Sea, the Bible says. In Israel, it was the Golan Heights, where Syrians faced off with Jews. In Ethiopia, it was where anthropologists found Earth’s oldest human remains, Lucy, a biped 3.2 million years old. In Kenya, experts believed, those bipeds evolved on the west side into apes, and on the east, humans. The Rift was the Bible, medicine, and evolution. It was where human life may have started, and where, I’d realize soon, human life might end.

  Our plane was spit from the clouds like a bit of food propelled from a gullet. The shaking stopped. The sky was still gray, but we had visibility now, and as we lined up for the dirt strip landing, I saw the runway guarded by Toyota Technicals, four-wheel-drive trucks converted into mobile battle platforms, and mounted on each, ragged-clothed militiamen aimed .50 caliber weapons.

  Any one of which could rip apart the little plane.

  “You didn’t tell me about this,” said the pilot stiffly, looking at the guns straight on.

  “Bring us in. It’s just a precaution.”

  Somalia. As we came down toward the clan runway, I saw, a mere half mile east, a gorgeous strip of white beach, looping palm trees, and the calm blue waters of the Indian Ocean. Nomads on loaded-down camels rode in rhythmic up-and-down single file along the beach. In many other spots, there would be hotels in a place like this. Swimming pools. Golf courses. Fenced-off vacation resorts. Trillion-dollar tourist shoreline.

  I thought, About a hundred armed men down there. And behind them lots of screaming women in black chadors and veils.

  “Sharks,” the pilot said, nodding toward the sea, as the wheels touched down on hard dirt.

  He was not an Aidid, but had been born to a different clan, also Muslim, farther north.

  “The people here are liars and thieves and they will sell you into slavery and steal this airplane,” he said.

  “Then why did you agree to fly here?” Eddie snapped.

  “For the triple price. But now I am thinking if I have to wait for you, I want more.”

  “No,” barked Eddie. “And of course you wait. We told you that before we took off.”

  “Yes, you’ll get more,” I said. “But if you leave without us, you will be the one to pay.”

  The pilot flashed white teeth, an offended look. He was a handsome man with fine features, and he wore an old bomber jacket against the AC in the plane, which was turned up full. “No need to make threats, sir. I do not lie,” he said.

  —

  I ducked from the plane into a wet heat that seemed to absorb anything else around us—wind, birds, breathing. And then even more. It sucked up momentum, aspiration, rational thought.

  The props had stopped and small sounds whispered back into the world: the creak of rubber-soled sneakers on a Technical truck bed, the slow swivel creak of a .50 caliber barrel, the crunch of desert boots on Earth as a very tall, thin man in billowy khaki trousers and a red-and-black-checkered short-sleeved shirt detached himself from the clan fighters—stringy, muscular guys in shorts and flip-flops, grouped around trucks. Nobody looked friendly, scared, or even angry, the usual variations when med-help arrived. The emotionlessness was the message, You are nothing to us. The guy walking toward us also wore tortoiseshell glasses, like the lawyer who owned a summer cottage down the road from me in Massachusetts. The left-top section of the frame had been repaired with gray duct tape.

  And now a new sound exploded. Ululating. The high-pitched cacophony sent up by the black-clad women. Ululating marks happy celebration in the Mideast and in the Horn of Africa. But it also marks grief and lament.

  “I don’t think they’re celebrating,” Eddie remarked.

  The man stopped as if he’d hit an invisible border twenty feet away, quarantine distance. He regarded me boldly. I had a feeling that this was whom I’d spoken to on the phone. He had a small pot belly and muscular arms, wore a soft-brimmed camouflage cap, unlike the other guys, who wore checkered scarves over
their heads, if they had cover at all. Closer up, the posture was military. His black skin seemed to glow. He carried a knobby walking stick of dark wood, but he did not move as if he needed it. Perhaps the stick was symbolic of authority. Certainly the fact that everyone else but him had an AK told me that. His sidearm was holstered, and the holster was snapped shut.

  “You are Rush?”

  “Where are the scientists? And who are you?”

  He ignored my questions and rapped out instructions. “You will surrender any weapons and phones. We will connect by means of the three-way radio I told you to bring. You will disrobe now and put on clothing we will provide, and wear your protective gear over that.”

  “Disrobe? Why?”

  “Because I said so.”

  Eddie whispered, “Control freak.”

  But I thought it was about humiliation. He wanted to make us more vulnerable, more scared.

  Hassan said, “We will wait for thicker cloud cover, and then you will follow us in your own truck. Keep your distance. This is for your security. After all”—he smiled thinly, conveying more menace than amiability—“after you do your examination, I wish you to go safely home.”

  He indicated a rusty, sand-scoured olive-colored Land Rover parked beneath a lone skinny palm. It seemed to have more bullet holes on it than steel. The hood was half caved in from a collision or an explosion. The extra clothing, he said, would be in the Land Rover.

  “Remember, Doctor, if you approach us, after you see your Crusaders, we shoot.”

  Eddie whispered, “‘Crusaders’?”

  “Scientists. Westerners. Christians. Even aid workers.”

  I kept my face impassive. We undressed and stashed our neatly piled clothes in the plane. We donned freshly laundered jeans, white T-shirts that smelled like Irish Spring soap, Converse basketball sneakers without laces, and floppy hats against the sun. All donated aid, I guessed. Or rather, hoped it had been donated, not stolen from murdered people. We loaded our med supplies—antibiotics and hydration fluids, level two biosuits including neck hoods, double glove layers, fluid-resistant leg and shoe coverings, plastic eye shields, and white masks—into our Land Rover, which reeked of sweat and goats, of sweetish dried blood on the backseat, and of spicy curry.

  We would talk by headset and keep it on at all times. I felt a lone bead of sweat run from my right armpit down my side. The AKs pointed at us like eyes. Our pilot stayed in the plane. The high, annoying ululating never stopped. Then—as the sky darkened from thick clouds—further blinding any satellites above—most of the Technicals formed into a convoy, some behind us, some in front.

  “Reassuring escort,” Eddie said.

  I took the wheel, and despite its dilapidated appearance, the Land Rover roared to life. Our plane receded in the rearview mirror. The muzzle of the .50 caliber gun in front of us bounced each time the vehicle hit a rut, and there seemed to be more ruts than flat areas.

  “At least that howling stopped,” said Eddie, removing fingers from his ears.

  I downshifted and we followed the convoy along a dirt/sand yard–wide footpath through tall grass, with the .50 caliber barrel pointing at us the whole time. A few fat raindrops fell. The air smelled of alkali salt. Only our left wiper blade worked. I passed a lone conical hut and drove through a pathetically small vegetable garden, crushing some farmer’s yams, and across a trickle stream and past a fat-trunked baobab tree against which a large baboon reclined, watching us, hands linked behind his head like he was Tom Sawyer on a Mississippi River summer day.

  We crossed through an old abandoned banana plantation. Now the rows of plants were half blasted by artillery, and shredded blue plastic sheeting hung like shrouds over long-rotted fruit. I saw a human skeleton rib cage lying in a furrow.

  Ten minutes later, Eddie sniffed and turned to me, frowning. The wind came from ahead, a rise.

  “You smell it?”

  “Yes.”

  Rot again, but different. It wasn’t just vegetables now. I’d smelled this on battlefields.

  The Technical in front of us hit a rut so deep that the chassis bounced, and Eddie and I winced, watching the gunner’s hands squeeze the dual handles.

  Then we topped the rise and a hundred scrubby yards ahead saw the deserted-looking research camp . . . about one acre in diameter, a collection of sun-bleached, rain-washed canvas tents.

  “I don’t like this. Where’s the people, One?”

  The camp lay inside a man-made barrier of rolled thorn bushes, nature’s concertina wire, to keep lions and hyenas out. Rectangular two-person tents ringed the inside perimeter, flaps closed. A larger dining or research tent centered the lot, with an area outside for cooking, long picnic-style tables and benches, and a stovepipe sticking above the tent, not emitting smoke. Lionel had told me that researchers here studied sediments, ground layers. Lionel had said that due to warfare in Somalia, important work on African climate, evolution, and ocean current patterns had stopped for the past twenty years. Lionel had said that his expedition opened a new era of cooperation, albeit one that had been bought by hefty bribe payments. Looking at the silent mass of tents, I knew that everything Lionel had told me was wrong.

  As we drew closer, our escorts broke away to join a half dozen other vehicles surrounding the camp.

  They would go no farther. Only we doctors could do that.

  “Where is everyone, One?”

  “Inside the tents, I guess. Sick.”

  Eddie nudged me and pointed. The first body—a woman from the size and long hair—lay half sprawled on the picnic table. A second—a fat man—lay draped over the thorn barrier, as he’d been crazy enough to try to climb over it instead of walking out. Maybe he’d tried to escape at night, to get away from the militia.

  Eddie pointed at a tall tree. The branches were moving. They were covered with vultures, I saw, scrawny, gizzard-necked scavengers. All seemed focused on the bodies below.

  “Blow the horn, One. Get them out of here.”

  I did. The birds did not leave.

  Eddie said, “Shit. You think they’re all dead?”

  I reached back for my biosuit. The stillness seemed exaggerated. But then a couple of flaps moved on the sleeping tents. Slowly, figures began to emerge into the day. It was hard to believe what I was seeing.

  Eddie whispered, horrified, “Jesus Christ, Uno. Lionel said that all of this happened in under two weeks?”

  THREE

  I was so stunned by the spectacle in front of us that at first I missed the clues behind. The heat, the palm trees, the camel caravan in the distance, the white beach a quarter mile off, and the blue ocean all added to the sense of disembodiment. I was cast back in time. I was witnessing something I’d not seen since boyhood Sunday school. Only too late would I remember the metallic clicking and growl of engines, the arguing militia behind.

  “My God, what the hell . . . it looks like leprosy,” I said to Eddie over the neck mike, stunned at the number of sick people we faced. At first glance, it looked like at least three quarters of the population of this research camp.

  “In two weeks? In a group? Never! Gotta be some kind of chemical blistering agent, you ask me. Or something in the sediment they pulled up, some toxin out of the ground.”

  “We were sent here to look for something new.”

  “We need to call in the cavalry,” Eddie said, meaning more people.

  “You heard Hassan. Won’t happen.” We started forward.

  Ahead, more canvas tent flaps had opened, and one by one, men and women were still emerging into the gray light, in a sight I associated with Sundays back in Massachusetts, with Pastor Brad in the Smith Falls Protestant Church droning on about Jesus while I cringed at drawings in Bible Images for Kids.

  Some of the ill leaned on makeshift crutches—a crooked tree limb, a tent pole swathed in a towel. Healthier people
helped the worst ones, but the most extreme cases came by themselves, crawling, hands rising and falling like crash victims in a desert, more tropism than human.

  But the juxtaposition of twenty-first-century clothing—Gap blue jeans, a T-shirt reading GREAT DANE . . . UNIVERSITY AT ALBANY, aviator sunglasses, and Day-Glo Reebok running shoes—none of it went with the associations in my head.

  Our biosuits sounded like crumpling cellophane. Moon men, that was us. We sweated inside Nebraska Center’s mandated protection for Ebola workers. Baby blue plastic gowns and double glove layers; plastic hoods over our heads and necks; goggles and fluid-resistant leg and shoe coverings. But the suits were designed for an air-conditioned hospital, not a desert country where the mercury could top ninety degrees in the shade.

  “At least we’re wearing only level twos,” Eddie said. Threes would have stuck us inside sealed hoods, breathing through pack filters, temperature rising inside the taped-up body suit and rubber gloves. We’d have only twenty minutes before we either needed water, or had to get the hood off before our sweat made us blind.

  “Remember the Cameroons, Eddie?” Volcanic lakes in that country had suddenly erupted with poison gas bubbles a few years back, wiping out a village of three hundred people.

  The lead man dragged himself through the thorn bush barrier opening, his face so swollen and red that it was hard to see his eyes. They seemed buried in folds of skin, with patches peeling away, showing gristle, meat, a fly in the wreckage, crawling. The eyes looked like a prizefighter’s after a tough bout.

  “This is like Lourdes,” Eddie said, over the creaking of hand-cut crutches, the moaning and coughing. He referred to the French town in the Pyrenees where, in 1858, rapt fourteen-year-old Bernadette Soubirous told townspeople that the Virgin Mary, a “beautiful lady,” appeared to her in a vision. Since then, two hundred million pilgrims have visited the site, and five million more come each year, deluded supplicants the way I see it, desperate and praying for miracle cures for their cancers and deformities, prayer against virus, hope against prognosis,