“I will say, though, that I am still having trouble reconciling its existence with the mutation of the illness from merely killing the living to raising the dead.” He was speaking to himself now, his voice almost in pigeon-English singsong.
‘That’s it,’ Tom thought to himself, ‘he is actually a goner. Not sane, gone mad for whatever reason. Or cuckoo to begin with.’
Not wanting to upset, Tom decided to indulge for a minute or two longer before finding a diplomatic excuse for making his retreat.
“So then,” he asked, trying to avoid any hint of ridicule, “where then is this castle exactly?”
Olivier visibly perked up at the question.
“It is around 20 miles north of Gono, reachable only by a purpose-built service road. There is a small airstrip next to it, too. Many planes used to come and go, but none of the passengers, let alone anyone else from there, ever came to the village. It was there for years. Actually, it still is.” Much to Tom’s frustration, his thoughts quickly drifted off again. “So many need help back in Gono, but I am but one man. So many are trapped there, with nowhere to go, lingering, waiting for death…”
His last sentence pinged Tom’s curiosity even more. Could it be that while all the others inside that white double container back there were busy finding ways how not to move their asses by politicizing even the most straight forward tasks, there was an area where people not only actually needed help more than anyone else in this mess, but one that was within easy reach?
Tom was intrigued by the prospect of living up to the expectations that had driven him here. He sat and listened as Olivier continued his detailed description of the village, providing landmarks along the way, which would make it easy to navigate and find it. He was far too calm and collected, far too precise and detailed to be the lunatic Tom had taken him for only moments earlier.
A plan began to take shape in Tom's mind. HQ had given them the mission to assess need where it was greatest. By all accounts, though, in this area, things seemed more or less under control. But if this man was telling the truth, then it was a different story back where he had come from. If the team were able to go there, Tom reasoned, not only would their mission be much more meaningful, but it would help put his organization squarely on the map of an international response, in which it to date it had been viewed as little more than a hanger-on, an entourage to the humanitarian circus that had descended on the Congo.
He sat with Olivier for a while longer. Not only did he need to get as much information as he could, but he wanted more of the stories of a man who, despite having been through a lot and seen much suffering in his lifetime, still felt so much genuine empathy for those around him. Olivier stroked the little boy’s hair as he told Tom about the boy’s parents and the farm they had owned and operated until that fateful day. The day something or someone had descended upon their village and robbed most of them of their very lives. Tom wished there was something he could do for Olivier and Fabrice, but given their current location and the few boxes of supplies they had packed for their field mission, he had little to offer.
"Do not concern yourself, my friend. Fabrice and I are well. God will take care of us." Olivier read his mind.
Tom accompanied them through the checkpoint and handed them over to the medical team; well-meaning professionals, but way too busy drowning in potential patients to pay special attention to Olivier's story, and probably scared themselves about what could and might happen if this thing ever jumped the fences and ran out of control. He gave Olivier his card and provided him with the phone number of his office back in Nairobi. He would try to help them as soon as he reached Kinshasa and before flying out to Kenya. Olivier, filled with gratitude, had bid him a tearful farewell, but Tom couldn’t shake the nagging thought that somehow the man had held something back; something that made the good-bye seem final and the hope Tom had tried to instil, seem fruitless against the backdrop of something so dark that Olivier had deliberately resorted to sounding a little nutty each time Tom had tried to probe deeper into his cryptic statements.
But it was the last thing Olivier had shouted, which puzzled him most. Just as Tom had turned to leave, already almost across the cold zone demarcation, the old man’s voice rose above the noise around them.
“If you want to win the war, you must stop the killing!”
It was as much a riddle as a chilling warning. It would take Tom the rest of the night to get it out of his head.
Back at the conference room, the meeting had just concluded. People were standing outside, chatting and laughing, holding steaming cups of coffee as they enjoyed the reprieve. Within the few minutes it took to walk back from the civilian area, Tom had formed a plan. A plan he was determined to see through no matter what the others thought or did. A plan he owed to Olivier and every man, woman, and child that were left behind in Gono.
“There you are!” The Thai doctor’s nasal accent screeched across the group. “We thought we had lost you.”
He walked over, and they were soon joined by their two Congolese colleagues. Both had reluctantly sat through the meeting with their limited English and, as a result, were visibly bored to bits. Tom directed them away to the improvised cafeteria consisting of two shipping containers a short walk from the meeting room.
They sat down at one of several plastic garden furniture tables away from the chatting UN crowd that otherwise occupied the outlet. Tom briefly explained his encounter with Olivier and Fabrice and provided the others with all the details he had received. Although the two local staff, Emile and Justine, said they did not know about a village named Gono, they did recognize descriptions of landmarks and roads, which only served to solidify Tom’s determination that this was a viable addition to their mission.
“They won’t let us go by ourselves. It’s in the no-go zone.” The Thai doctor remarked, her head bobbing awkwardly as she spoke.
Tom knew the UN was rather anal about having humanitarians willy-nilly running about the containment zone doing their thing. With its resources already stretched to breaking point, the agency was unlikely to approve such an excursion. But he had already thought this one through.
They would leave early in the morning, taking one of the local taxis, a handful of which were always parked outside to facilitate transport for agency staff members in need of urgent transfer back to Kisangani and even beyond. In an environment where income was hard to come by, and the world was pretty much crumbling around them, most of the drivers, Tom stipulated, would be receptive to the idea provided the incentive was big enough. They would then make the drive to Gono, deliver a few essentials, take GPS coordinates, and spend the day and potentially the night there. They would return the next day as if nothing had ever happened, then compile their report and get things ready for supply drops or whatever other assistance their organization was able to provide.
Even the Thai doctor, although apprehensive about the idea, eventually, and rather reluctantly yielded as she, too, had to admit that the area Tom suggested they travel to, at least based on the maps produced during their briefing, had not made a blip on the UN radar as yet. People there were thus more than likely in need of assistance.
They quickly settled on details and spent the rest of the afternoon going over the stocks they had brought with them. They separated what might be most urgently needed from the lesser items, as a local taxi was unlikely to fit both themselves and boxes of supplies. Justine would stay behind, along with their driver and vehicle, keeping up appearances should questions be asked about their whereabouts. He would also function as their emergency comms person, in the event that things didn’t go as planned.
As per the updates they had received from the UN military liaison, rebel activity in the sector had been minimal to non-existent. With few natural resources and no known diamond mines, the area held little interest for marauding groups looking to refill their war chests.
Despite this, that night they were woken several times by distant gunfire, ea
ch time preceded by some kind of howl.
‘It’s normally the other way round,’ Tom thought to himself. But as unsettling as it was, Tom figured it was peacekeepers or local militias having it out with the odd predator or two, the animals attracted by the smell of death and disease that often hung about unnoticeable for far less evolved human senses.
CHAPTER 3
The next morning, Tom and the team rose just as dawn broke and made their way out of the compound by vehicle, stopping just a few hundred yards down the road where local taxi drivers milled about their vehicles, drinking hot tea poured by an entrepreneurial local woman wearing a flamboyant African headscarf, the kind that always reminded Tom of Christmas wrap. Negotiations over fare and destination were brief, not because the drivers were pliable, but because only one agreed to take them; the others vehemently shaking their heads in fear and although having spoken reasonable English until then, suddenly saying they didn’t understand a word.
The driver would take them as close to Gono as possible. According to him, there was a bridge near the village which would probably prevent them from crossing by vehicle, but it was a short walk to the outskirts, so they shouldn’t worry.
Within minutes they were on their way, filled with the kind of excitement that comes with the forbidden, or at least the secret, and the uncertainty of what lay ahead. An hour into the drive along the rough road, the banged-up Toyota sedan suddenly swung left and, had it not been for the driver’s confidence in manoeuvring this way, Tom could have bet they were headed straight into the underbrush. Miraculously though, as the car veered towards the greenery, a path opened up, too narrow for a truck, but just wide enough for a small car like theirs, branches whipping its side and screeching along its rooftop. Bouncing up and down between boxes and backpacks, they tried to maintain composure as the car leaped over a small ditch and then settled back into a relatively smoother ride along the leave-covered forest floor. The path soon widened a little as the forest thickened, turning into an almost impenetrable wall on each side, light from above barely piercing the arbour of lush foliage.
They crossed shallow rivulets winding through the jungle, each one apparently bearing a name, at least according to the driver who kept them updated on progress. Going by their map, they were driving due north now, just on the outskirts of Okapi Wildlife Reserve, where apart from its namesake the forest giraffe, wildlife abounded in all its forms.
‘If only hell hadn’t descended on the country,’ or so Tom thought, ‘the park would have been the perfect destination for a weekend excursion.’
Soon the ground got soggier as here, too, deforestation resulted in large patches of open ground, where soil eroded and formed an impenetrable barrier holding back the water, which would form puddles and pools and before long, swamps, which quickly threatened to bog down the rickety taxi and put a premature end to their journey. Several times they would all need to get out to lighten the weight and eventually even push as the car’s wheels spun uselessly, spitting up lumps of mud and composted leaves, covering just about anything and everyone not getting out of the way fast enough in brown sludge and stagnant water. As tiring and difficult as the path increasingly became, it only added to their resolve in the knowledge that they were truly the first ones to visit the area.
Tom wondered for a second whether their ambition would be rewarded or punished in the end, but dismissed the thought as the kind of professional pessimism he had had to apply through so much of his career. He was no longer sure of himself the way he had been back then. Gut feeling or Cafeteria food, one of the two was aching through his gut. He wasn’t ready to throw all caution into the wind yet, but going on impulse, at least in small portions, was as intoxicating as had been pulling that trigger for the first time. For now, he decided he just had to go with it.
After a few hours of bouncing, sliding, and nearly missing branches and tree trunks, the energy in the cabin somewhat bottomed out. Spines had been realigned, neck muscles strained, and bent knees began to scream with the kind of excruciating pain reserved otherwise only for commercial airplane seats and government torture.
The day wore on, and the road showed little improvement, bar a few stretches of smooth forest floor, each time resulting in a collective sigh of relief as the car stopped its seasick movements and sped up as if on a piece of new tarmac road. The sun was already beginning its descent towards late afternoon, when the sedan slid to a sudden halt, snapping its passengers out of their heat-induced slumber.
The vomity road had ended abruptly. Before them lay a river. Wider than anything else they had seen along the way and by the look of its dark, deceptive waters much deeper, this was the place the driver had indicated as their motorized journey’s end. The bridge across it, if that’s what one could call it, was in a state of more than ill-repair. Barely fit to support any weight at all, much less so a small car along with its occupants, it slouched like a lazy angler, its spine limp and broken, the few intact sleepers across reminding Tom of misplaced piano keys.
They quickly unloaded the trunk and put on their packs. The driver would come with them for safety reasons. Leaving one man behind in a banged-up taxi in the middle of ‘predator central’ was probably not the best idea. Besides, they figured, he would prove useful in helping to carry their rather large load.
They managed to get across on foot, the structure swaying and creaking and even a few boards falling off the hanging bridge construction, each time sending hearts jumping and stomachs into throats as they imagined what lurked beneath the rivers surface a few yards below them. What the driver had described as a short walk ended up not exactly living up to the description, and daylight almost turned to dusk when they got their first glimpse of the outskirts of Gono.
Their boots caked with mud and clothes soaked in sweat, mosquitos now buzzing around their heads in thick swarms, they were glad when they finally reached the much firmer single-lane road that ran through the village. Traditional dwellings were grouped in several circles, each homestead with separate huts for their assigned purpose; one for the kitchen, one for storage, one for the family and often several for different wives, polygamy very much part of the culture just as it was in many parts of the continent.
In the slowly fading light, they could see a small community hall or schoolhouse and a quaint chapel with a thatched roof and a giant crucifix reaching skyward from its gable. A tired dog moped across their path. Barely acknowledging their presence, it disappeared into the ring-fence of dense bush that surrounded the village like a boma. Otherwise, nothing stirred. The air was dead still, almost stagnant. Not even the sounds of the forest, normally ever-present, dared to venture here. The grass was silent, as were the trees, their leaves rigid, two-dimensional like in an abstract painting. The group dropped their kit and boxes of supplies and started moving closer to one of the clusters of dark-red mud huts at the centre of the small town.
Tom’s senses were on high alert. Flashing images of Afghanistan gasped, premonition wrestling with reality. Over there, approaching a village had routinely resulted in deadly encounters, and he had seen friends return home in body bags more often than he should have.
Dealing with Hyperarousal had been part of his struggle with PTSD, but now, here in the middle of the rebel-infested bush, he welcomed every bit of it. The hairs on his neck stood on end, and he relished the burst of adrenaline as he signalled the others to follow. Single file. Keep your distance. Fan out. They moved with each gesture. The doctor looked pale and frightened, the reality of the situation finally setting in. They were an uncomfortably far cry from their desks now. Up ahead, a body lay face down near a basket of rotting vegetables.
Instinctively hands dove into pockets, quickly retrieving surgical masks as a second body, and then yet another came into view the closer they got to the dwellings. There were children and adults, men and women, all in various stages of decomposition. Sprawled, stiff, and twisted, they laid scattered like discarded pieces of a human kraal in the ce
ntre of the circle of huts. Some were bloated from the heat, while others appeared strangely flat. The sickly sweet stink of decay filled the air, faint at first, but soon assaulting senses and stomachs alike with overwhelming intensity.
The driver stopped in his tracks and refused to go any further, while the doctor donned her surgical gloves and approached a cluster of corpses near one of the huts. Tom hung back a little, letting her go in first as he scanned the area. He had seen death before. His value-add lay elsewhere. The doc knelt down beside the corpse and, after a brief examination, called over to him and Emile.
“Have a look at this?”
She pointed at the skull of what had once been a young woman, perhaps in her early twenties. Tom thought she was wearing rather modern clothing, now filthy and blood-soaked as she lay face-down in the dirt. Her skull had caved inwards, cracked open by one or more heavy blows that had sent her brain spilling out through her hair and over her shoulders, caking everything in its path in coagulated black matter.
“Look at the others!” The doctor frowned.
Nearby were the bodies of two children, their stiff hands still grabbing the hem of the shirt of an older man whose limp body grotesquely still sat upright against the wall of the hut. All three had had their heads crushed to one extent or another. But that wasn’t the only injury. All had wounds elsewhere. Some smaller, some large, but going off his limited medical knowledge, Tom figured none of them lethal.
“They were wounded before they were killed.”
He surprised himself at his lack of emotion. Anna was barely a year older than these two youngsters, and since her arrival eight years earlier, he struggled to watch anything even remotely related to the death of a child.
And yet what he was seeing now just didn’t seem real, a parallel universe so far removed from his world that his mind refused to accept the possibility. When it came to field situations, he had learned to compartmentalize. It had saved him more than once.
The Virophage Chronicles (Book 1): Dead Hemisphere Page 4
