Ebola K: A Terrorism Thriller: Book 2 (17 page)

Frustrated and looking at rows of brake lights down the hill in front of her and up the next, Olivia wanted to curse. The one tiny, positive thing she’d hoped would come out of Eric’s absenteeism speech ten days ago was lighter rush hour traffic. With so many people skipping work, what the hell were they all doing out here making the drive time worse? She just wanted to get home after another frustrating day, and wondered for the hundredth time why she lived so far from her office.

Her cell phone rang.

She answered without looking to see who was calling. “Hello?”

“Hello.”

“Mathew?”

“Yes,” he said. “Can you talk?”

“I’m stuck in traffic, but I can talk. I’m mostly parked, waiting my turn to creep forward.”

“I’m going to tell you something that needs to stay between us.”

“Straight to the ominous stuff.” Olivia laughed. “Remember, this is a cellphone we’re talking on.”

“I don’t imagine the news will stay under wraps for long, but—”

“But?” Olivia asked.

Wheeler sighed. “The new strain of Ebola is airborne.”

Olivia gasped weakly. Every surprise was bad these days. She was numb.

Wheeler waited a moment for a reply before he said. “I assume you understand what I just said.”

“Yes. I—” Olivia pulled over onto the shoulder and put the car in park. “I’m hoping this is one of your jokes.”

“Three labs got the same result.”

Olivia took a deep breath. “Okay, this isn’t the end of the world, but—”

“I’m not sure that’s a joking phrase anymore.”

“Don’t say things like that, Mathew.” Olivia collected her thoughts, saw a gap in the traffic, and pulled back out. “If I drive down to Atlanta tonight, how much can you show me?”

“You don’t have to come all the way down to Atlanta. I can email you. Still—”

“Honestly, I don’t want to go home. I could use some company, and with you, at least I can learn something and maybe even laugh a little. It’ll be late when I get there. Can I sleep on your couch? Do you mind?”

“I’d love to have you. There is a better place to sleep than the couch.”

“Really?” Olivia said, a little more harshly than she wanted to. “Ebola is airborne, and oh-by-the-way do you want to sleep with me? That’s the new pickup line?”

“When you put it that way, it loses its romance.” Wheeler laughed. “I was actually offering up the guest room.”

“I’ll bet you were.”

Wheeler admitted, “I left the invitation purposefully vague.”

“Back to this airborne thing,” said Olivia, thinking about everything flowing through the censorship queue she was working. Emails were in there too. “It’ll be better that you don’t email me.”

“Why?”

“More chance it’ll get leaked. I’m getting a little bit paranoid, maybe. So three labs have confirmed that the new strain is airborne.”

“Yes, two in Europe and one here.”

“No doubt, then?” Olivia asked.

“I’d be surprised if different results came back from further testing.”

“Excuse me if I sound stupid now. This is your field. I see data on this outbreak every day.” Olivia didn’t say that her primary sources lately were leaked data reported on the Internet by people whose governments didn’t want them to have it. “Would I be wrong to guess that this strain has a high r nought value?”

“That doesn’t sound stupid at all. r nought is the average number of secondary cases that can be expected to result from one infection, though there’s a lot of discussion about the effective r nought for any given outbreak.”

To make sure she understood, she said, “In other words, how many people will catch Ebola from someone who’s already got it.”

“Exactly. They calculate it based on transmissibility, the length of time an individual is contagious, and how much time that person might be in contact with others while infectious.”

“Sounds vague,” Olivia observed.

“Yes, it can be. Lots of factors not related to the infectious agent can affect the result. Only the amount of time a person is contagious is specific to the virus.”

“I can see where contact time might change with culture,” said Olivia. “I’d imagine New Yorkers who are always bumping into one another on the subway might spend more time in contact than some ranchers in Montana who only see each other at the weekly hoedown.”

Wheeler laughed out loud. “The weekly hoedown?”

“Don’t pick on me. I don’t know why I chose that as an example.”

“I haven’t heard that word in a long time, that’s all,” said Wheeler. “Your example puts a simple face on that part of the equation, but it’s exactly right. I’m sure you understand the range of complexity involved.”

“I don’t know, but I can guess,” said Olivia. “The part I don’t understand is why transmissibility would vary.”

“That has to do with the immunity of the population and some other factors,” said Wheeler. “If you have a population that’s already been exposed or vaccinated, a portion of the individuals will have immunity, so the disease can’t be transmitted to them, and the r nought is lower.”

“And lower is better, right?”

“Better for us, for sure,” Wheeler chuckled.

“Okay.” Olivia tried to recall the list of r nought numbers she’d seen. “Ebola has a low r nought, doesn’t it?”

“It comes in around two,” said Wheeler, “depending on the specific outbreak. These things are often estimated up front but calculated from epidemiological data after the fact.”

“Do you have numbers on West Africa yet?”

“One point five to two point five or so. For comparison, influenza comes in between two and three.”

“And SARS?” Olivia asked. “The medical community was in an uproar about that a few years back. Where is that one?”

“Rightly so,” said Wheeler. “It can be as high as five and very deadly.”

“If I remember correctly—” Olivia said.

“You probably do,” said Wheeler.

“If I remember correctly, measles topped the list I saw with an r nought between twelve and eighteen.”

“It’s the kind of number that makes me question the thinking of anti-vaxxers.”

“And where does the new strain of Ebola land on the list?” asked Olivia.

“We don’t know.”

“That’s bullshit, Mathew.”

Wheeler sighed.

“Don’t get all chivalrous now. Keeping me in the dark isn’t going to protect me from anything. Tell me what you know.”

“Oh, why am I so attracted to strong-willed, young women?” Wheeler mused.

“I’m not going to say what I think you are attracted to, and a strong will has nothing to do with it. Stop avoiding the question, and answer me.”

Wheeler surrendered. “One estimate came in at six.”

“And?”

“One came in at sixteen. The consensus seems to be that it’ll be around eight, give or take.”

“Six to sixteen?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll need to look at this with a spreadsheet, but if each person infects eight more, and—“ Olivia tried to do some quick math in her head. “How long after infection does someone turn contagious with the new strain?”

“As early as forty-eight hours. We had one result in twenty-four, but no one has duplicated that result yet. Then maybe as long as three weeks. That’s a guess so far based on the strain of Ebola in West Africa.”

“The median?” Olivia asked.

“Let’s say five days.” Wheeler went on to ask, “What math are you doing in your head while you’re stuck in traffic?”

After a pause to finish her mental estimate, Olivia said, “It seems to me, the whole world’s population could get infected with this new strain in somewhere between four weeks and four months.”

“I’ll dig up a paper on that subject that you’ll enjoy. Very mathematical. It’s right up your alley.”

“Okay,” said Olivia.

“The problem gets complicated. Your assumption by doing your mental simulation based only on r nought is interesting but incorrect. It doesn’t take into account heterogeneous and geographically isolated populations.”

“Like people in Hawaii, perhaps.”

“To oversimplify, yes,” said Wheeler. “The upshot of the paper is that it’s nearly impossible to infect everybody.”

“Even if they’re not immune or vaccinated?” Olivia asked.

“Even if the whole population is susceptible.”

“So the good news is at least everybody won’t die?” Olivia laughed at the gallows humor.

“Yeah,” Wheeler joined in. “At least
everybody
won’t die.”

The joke about dying made her think about her dad and that turned into an emotion that she’d been trying to hide from all day. A sniffle that held back a tear escaped.

“What was that?” Wheeler asked. “Are you okay?”

Olivia didn’t want to say anything but with weighty topics on the table, what did one infected parent matter? “My dad caught it.”

“Ebola?” Wheeler was taken aback. “Your dad caught Ebola? How?”

“I don’t know. My stepmom called. They took him to the hospital. The test came back positive today.”

“Where?”

“Denver.”

“Your dad is the case in Denver?” Wheeler tried to hide his surprise. “I’m so sorry.”

“There’s more. I might as well tell you everything.”

“Okay.”

“I can’t tell you how I know this, but Austin—”

“Oh, no.”

“I don’t even know how to say it.” Olivia sighed in a way that sounded a lot like one of Wheeler’s dramatic sighs. “He caught it too.”

“My God,” he said. “How is he?”

“I don’t know. I said I couldn’t tell you details. I can say the only detail I got was that he had it and he wasn’t doing well. That news is nearly three weeks old. And that’s all I have.”

“I’m so, so sorry.”

“I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck.”

“You hide it well,” said Wheeler. “Listen. Get down here. I’ve got wine. I’ve got a guest room. I may try to get you a little drunk. You sound like you could use some inebriation. And I promise. I’ll be a gentleman. No worries there. Okay?”

“I’m on my way if I can ever get through this traffic.”

Paul lay in his multi-adjustable hospital bed blankly staring at a television hanging from the ceiling across the room. He was confused and trying to put the pieces together. Everything seemed jumbled, like broken snippets of video, spliced together and running through his memory—incomplete, out of order.

You might be confused
.

That phrase, in a doctor’s authoritative voice, repeated itself. Sometimes Ebola affects the brain.

You might be confused
.

Paul wondered if he’d suffered brain damage. He wondered if he was going to die.

Wait, he’d been given some drug but couldn’t remember which one. He felt better. He was watching TV.

You might be confused
.

The news was on the television. It was a story about him, Paul Cooper, complete with an image taken from his Facebook page. The video showed someone on a wheeled stretcher, covered in a thick pup tent of clear plastic, surrounded by faceless people in protective suits, pushing the gurney along.

Paul went to sleep.

Austin sat alone in a weathered grass hut, looking through the open door, seeing rebels pass in the clearing outside, and hearing the voices of those rising to start their day. Smoke from the morning cook fire wafted in and aroused Austin’s hunger for a meager breakfast that would come later.

It was his third day in The General’s camp on the southern slope of Mt. Elgon. The routine was the same each day. Austin sat in the hut. Once in the morning, they brought him something to eat. In the late afternoon or early evening, he’d eat again, never anything like a full meal. He was given water when he asked for it, and a few times a day walked out into the woods to the camp latrine. They’d take him more frequently if he begged enough and the guard on duty wasn’t feeling lazy.

The sound of two people speaking just outside piqued Austin’s interest. A moment later, The General entered the hut. He smiled and said, “Good Morning, Ransom.”

Austin said, “Have you contacted my family yet?”

The General waved Austin toward the door. “Get up. I have something to show you.”

Wary, Austin pushed himself to his feet.

The General turned and exited the hut. “Hurry.”

Austin did as told. Once through the door, four guards in their late teens or early twenties fell in around them. Each of the guards carried an assault rifle, distinct from the others. Two of them wore ugly green and black camouflage military pants. One wore a grease-stained, olive-colored t-shirt with the sleeves cut off. The others wore clothing that could have been worn by a bunch of high school kids—a t-shirt with a football team logo, a red and blue soft drink t-shirt, beige cargo shorts, and silky athletic shorts. Except, all of their clothing was filthy and stained in reddish dirt and green forest hues. Natural camouflage.

Glancing back, The General said, “You are my new houseboy, Ransom.”

“What?” Austin asked, understanding the words, just not the meaning.

Ahead, three painfully thin, bruised men—two Asians, and one Westerner—were being herded out of another hut as The General’s entourage neared. One of the Asians tripped over his feet and was summarily yanked back up. The General gestured at them. “From now on, you will sleep with them in that hut. You come to me at sunrise. When I dismiss you at night, you go back there and you sleep.”

The malnourished prisoners fell in behind The General’s entourage. Each of the prisoners had a length of frayed rope tied between ankles crusted with oozing scabs and buzzing with small, iridescent flies.

The General said, “Their names are Ransom too.” He loved his jokes.

“How long have they been here?” Austin asked.

The General replied, “I know what you are thinking right now.”

Austin, assuming The General was going to say more, waited. Instead, he stopped, and the whole entourage stopped with him. He looked at Austin, his face suddenly harsh. “Ask me.”

“Ask you?” Austin queried.

The General nodded slowly. “Yes, ask me to tell you what you’re thinking.”

Expecting some kind of punch or kick, and wondering a thousand things at once, Austin asked, “What am I thinking?”

The General pointed at the abused foreigners. “You want to know why those men stay when they only have a rope around their feet. They could untie the rope and run. They have no guard, though that may change.”

Austin didn’t know the other hostages had no guard, but he decided it was best not to point that out.

“They can go anywhere in the camp.” The General gestured grandiosely at the muddy ground, the trash, the huts—
his kingdom
. “They serve. They fetch water. They feed us. They do the women’s work. They are not watched. Yet, they do not run. They wait patiently for their ransoms to be paid, so they can go home.”

Austin looked around the dirty camp. Men were congregating lazily around a central clearing. The jungle rose up on all sides—thick, and full of places to hide. Austin figured he was about to be shackled with a piece of flimsy rope and told like a dog to stay. Well, bad news for The General. Austin knew he didn’t have the strength to escape into the jungle that night, not even the next day. Three or four days from now—maybe a week—as soon as his captors got used to the idea that Austin wasn’t going to run, as soon as he had a little more of his strength back, he’d melt into the jungle, and run he would. And they’d never find him. Of that, Austin was sure.

The men who’d been gathering into a mob around the center of the camp parted to let The General through. Austin, the guards, and the other hostages followed along. Thirty or forty of The General’s fighters started chanting and dancing, with weapons raised in the air.

At the center of the circle, beside a dying cook fire, an emaciated Asian lay in the mud. Two rebels stood on his hands, pinning them in the sludge. One soldier sat on the Asian’s right leg. The Asian’s left leg was held with the foot lying on a thick log. The prisoner was crying and pleading in Japanese, or Chinese, or something.

Around the ankle being held down on the log, Austin saw a ring of worn skin and pus-leaking sores. The ankle matched the look of the other prisoners’ ankles, only the crying man had no rope.

Growing nervous, Austin looked around for clues as to what might happen next. No one was talking in a language he could understand. The chanting was riding up a crescendo.

A soldier with a worn piece of stained roped walked up to the crying Asian, knelt and pushed it roughly across his face. The soldier cursed and spat. He held the rope up and showed it to The General.

The General nodded in Austin’s direction.

The soldier came over, knelt in front of Austin, and tied the rope around each of Austin’s ankles. When he was finished, he stood up, drawing a machete out of a frayed canvas scabbard and presenting it to The General. Without any hesitation, without any thought, without any emotion, with all the ceremony of signing a check or entering a pin number while buying gasoline, The General hacked down at the foot lying across the log.

Blood sprayed. The prisoner screamed. Half a foot rolled off the log into the mud.

The General handed the bloody machete back to his soldier and looked at Austin. He pointed to a hut, different from the others, except that its metal roof appeared to have little rust. “Houseboy, be there when the sun rises. Sleep with your fellows at night. Stay until your ransom arrives.” He glanced down at the screaming, bleeding man who’d just lost half his foot. “Or run.”