Ebola K: A Terrorism Thriller: Book 2 (19 page)

Austin spent most of his first day as The General’s houseboy, thinking. In reality, there wasn’t much for him to do. The General had a chamber pot—a rectangular plastic pail with the remnants of a mayonnaise label peeling off the side. The General expected Austin to empty the bucket every time he pissed or defecated.

The only significant thing Austin did was to construct a broom from materials he found in the forest close to The General’s hut. With that broom, fashioned from a long stick and some leafy tropical plants bound to the end, Austin swept The General’s dirt floor. It was an activity meant to demean rather than to clean. At least, that was Austin’s guess.

The General dismissed him late in the evening.  Austin walked across the dark camp, seeing only a few shadows of rebels; some squatting in the darkness by their huts, some smoking and walking the perimeter. Austin thought for the hundredth time that day of quietly running into the trees and losing himself in the night. Each time he entertained the fantasy of escape, he also thought about the hostage who’d lost half his foot that morning. That bleeding stump of a foot was a powerful deterrent. That and the periodic, mournful moaning of the mutilated man who shared the hostage hut—with the others.

As Austin approached his new home, he noticed two guards sitting with their backs to a tree a short distance across the clearing. No one could enter or leave the hut without being seen. The guards’ interest seemed focused on their conversation and some trinket they were showing one another. Neither did or said anything to indicate that they noticed Austin entering the hut.

Inside, a kerosene lamp hung from the ceiling, casting a dim light and dancing shadows across the faces of the hostages. A Chinese man sat on one side of the hut, his butt on his bedding, eyeing Austin suspiciously. The man who’d had his foot hacked lay on his own bedding mat, with bloody, crusty bandages wrapped over his stumped foot. A frail Chinese man was soothing and trying his best to care for the wounded man. The white man—the last of them—sat across the hut from the glaring Chinese man.

Austin looked around. There appeared to be enough mats only for the men already there. All were occupied with the exception of an empty one beside the angry-looking Chinese man’s mat. From the way the man glanced at the mat and then glared back up, Austin understood the mat was taken.

Austin looked at the white man and asked, “Where do I get a mat to sleep on?”

The white man pointed to the man with a stump for a foot.

Austin looked at the crippled man, then back at the guy who’d pointed. “What?”

In accented English, he said, “Take his, or wait until he dies, then take it. You decide.”

“Take it?” Austin shook his head and glared at each of the sitting hostages before turning around and going back out through the door. Immediately upon stepping outside, the two guards showered him with angry words. Austin stopped. He tried to speak, but both guards jumped to their feet and their words grew angrier as they advanced.

“I need a mat,” Austin said, pointing back inside the hut, “a sleeping mat.”

When he looked back up, one of the guards punched him in the face. The other punched him in the stomach. Austin fell to his knees. A boot kicked but glanced off the side of his face and hit his shoulder, knocking him back into the hut. One of the guards leaned in, shouted something Austin didn’t understand until it was punctuated with “Stay.”

The guards went to their place by the tree. Austin touched a hand to a bruise swelling on the side of his face. He pulled his hand back but saw no blood. He rolled over onto his knees. Outside, the voices of the two guards returned to the low tones of private discussion that they’d been using before coming over to give Austin a lesson in the rules.

He wondered how many rules he’d have to learn.

The guy with the cut foot cried out in a particularly pained series of moans, then hushed.

The white man in the hut said, “We’ve only got four mats. That’s it, no matter how many of us are in here.”

“Four,” Austin nodded. “And don’t go outside at night. I guess that’s a rule, right?”

The white man nodded.

Austin crawled over to an empty spot along the wall of the hut near the other white man. “If I sleep here, will they beat me? Is there a rule about where I sleep?”

The man smiled and almost laughed. “They don’t care what we do in here as long as we don’t go outside until morning.”

“Got it,” said Austin.

The man pointed at the crippled man. “You should take his mat. He won’t live.”

The man soothing the invalid turned and gave Austin a look that dared him to try and take the mat.

Austin replied, “I’ll sleep in the dirt.”

The white man shrugged.

Austin reached out a hand to shake. “I’m Austin Cooper.”

The man looked at the hand as though going through some lengthy evaluation on whether to commit to the handshake. In the end, he did. “Sander Desmet.”

“Desmet?” Austin asked. “Where are you from?”

“Belgium.”

“I’m from America.”

“I know.”

“From my accent?” Austin asked.

Sander didn’t answer. He looked over at the Chinese and back at the dying man. “You should take his mat. His effeminate friend won’t do anything.”

“I won’t,” Austin reiterated. “How long have you been a hostage? What’s the deal here?”

In a tone just above a whisper, Sander said, “When I said the guards don’t care what happens in here, I should have added they sometimes get perturbed if they hear loud talking. Best not to agitate them, yeah?”

Austin nodded.

“The General treats it like a business.”

“The kidnapping?”

Sander nodded. “If he gets his money, he sends you home.”

“How long does it take?”

“A month or two, sometimes three.”

“Did he tell you that?” Austin asked. “How long have you been here?”

“Eight months.”

Austin slumped along with his hopes.

Sander pointed at the wounded man, “That’s Tian. His boyfriend there is Min.”

Min looked over his shoulder and nodded at Austin. Austin smiled in return.

“The silent one over there is Wei. He’s always pissed, so he won’t say much. They arrived together about a month ago. They work for a mining outfit across the Kenyan border. Too many Chinese are crawling all over Africa right now, trying to schmooze the governments and lock up natural resources. Their companies pay the ransom and they’re usually gone inside of a month or two. The General knows that, so he likes to grab the Chinese as much as he can. It’s easy money for him.”

Austin didn’t care about any of that. “If Tian’s ransom was going to get paid, why’d he try to run? That is why The General chopped his foot off, right?”

Sander nodded. “He should have stayed but the guards beat him a bit. Maybe a lot.”

“Why him?”

“Watch them two,” Sander nodded at Min and Tian. “You’ll figure it out.”

Austin asked, “Why have you been here for eight months?”

“The General likes to grab whites, too. He thinks we’ve all got rich families.”

“We don’t,” argued Austin.

“You don’t feel rich, but to them, you are,” said Sander.

“Is yours not rich enough?” asked Austin.

“My mother’s got no money. My dad passed away a long time ago. The General asked for something like a million in US dollars to give me back. He likes to start high. Now he’s down to ten thousand. If he can come down to a thousand, like I keep telling him, my mother can pay it. Until then, I’m stuck here.”

“How does he contact the families?” Austin asked.

“The General sends one of his men to Kampala. In a couple of days, the man comes back and tells The General what he knows. Nothing ever happens quickly. The General wants to feel out your family to see how much he can get. He stalls. He dickers. In the end, they pay. He sends you on your way.”

Austin pointed at the groaning man. “What about that? Is that normal?”

“No,” Sander shook his head. “We get beaten. We get fed shit and not enough of it. Sometimes The General cuts off finger or ear to mail to your family. Mostly, fellows leave with all their parts.”

The hospital had converted six rooms at the end of the hall on the fourth floor into an isolated recovery ward for Ebola patients. The stairwell door had been welded shut, most certainly a fire code violation. Extraordinary exceptions were being made for Ebola quarantine. Sheets of plastic were taped in layers inside the door. Paul assumed the other side of the door was similarly shielded.

In the hall itself, an elaborate anteroom had been constructed of thick sheets of plastic, which provided the doctors and nurses a means of entry and egress, and a safe area to don or shed their protective gear. If Paul had taken any live virus into the isolation recovery area, they planned for it to stay there.

Paul was the only current resident, though the nurses promised him company soon.

Every day, somebody came to interview Paul. First it was a detective Curtis, along with a contact tracer from the CDC. Then it was a pair from the FBI. The Colorado State Police stopped by. Each day he sat in a chair on one side of a double plastic wall and talked to officials who sat on the other side. He’d answer the same questions over and over and over again. At first, Paul was sympathetic. The police, the FBI, the CDC, were dredging his memory for any clue that might help them find Colorado’s patient zero.

As days passed, activity in the quarantine rooms up the hall grew frenzied with the influx of patients from around Denver. Soon their questioning took on the tone of an interrogation. The investigators reviewed Paul’s story for the tiniest inconsistencies, making Paul nervous. He masked it with anger that he finally vented on Detective Curtis. Not quite yelling, but far from civil, Paul asked, “Do I need a lawyer, here?”

“I don’t know,” Detective Curtis answered. “Do you?”

The interview ended shortly thereafter. Paul went to his room, sat in the chair by the window, and tried to recall any mistakes he might have made in the telling and retelling of his lies.

By then, the news channels had ridden his Good Samaritan story for all the mileage they could get out of it. He was out of mortal danger now so the story had lost its appeal. More interesting was the projection released by the CDC that Dallas would top a thousand Ebola cases by the end of the week. Two hundred were already dead. The hospital dedicated to Ebola looked like it was under siege. It was protected by uniformed men, all wearing some level of protection—either a surgical mask and gloves, or gas masks and chemical warfare gear. Protestors camped outside wanted the patients moved far from the city. They didn’t seem to realize that the hospital was not the source of the Dallas epidemic. Ebola was already on their streets and in their houses. The hospital was simply where the sick went to die.

Atlanta was becoming a big story on the Ebola front as well, and that worried Paul. Olivia lived near Fort Gordon, a few hours east. One of the news channels was projecting that Atlanta would soon overtake Dallas as the most infected city in the country. At least a few dozen other cities had outbreaks in the range of twenty to a hundred cases. Denver was up to forty-three, including Paul. Every time one of the channels discussed Ebola numbers, it was always followed with assurances that government agencies—both locally and nationally—were doing all that could be done, and that the public should take precautions listed on the channel’s website, but shouldn’t panic. “Go to work. Go to school. Avoid physical contact. Don’t let the terrorists win.”

Terrorists?
Paul wondered. That was a new addition to the news blurbs. He wondered if he’d missed something while he was out of it. He needed a computer and an Internet connection, neither of which were available to him.

A rustling of plastic sheeting from out in the hall alerted Paul that someone was coming through the makeshift anteroom. Paul looked toward the door and waited. Any distraction was welcome.

A few moments later, Nancy, his day shift nurse came in, wearing her protective gear, carrying no syringe, no medication, and no tablet for notes.

“Hello, Nancy,” said Paul, curiously.

“Paul.” Nancy smiled behind her mask. “How are you feeling?”

“Okay. I don’t think I could run a mile, but I could walk it.” Paul grinned. “I’m assuming I’m still Ebola-free?”

“Yesterday’s test came back negative.”

Paul exaggerated a look at Nancy’s empty hands. “No blood test today?”

Nancy’s expression changed to seriousness. “Have you seen the news today?”

“I’m tired of watching TV.” Paul glanced back out the window at the rain falling from the gray sky. “I’ve been reading a book that Katrina, the night nurse, recommended it’s—”

Nancy was ignoring Paul and fumbling with the television’s remote control, but getting no result. She stopped and looked at him. “They’re saying things that you should be aware of.”

“Saying things?” Paul asked, worried. “What are you talking about?”

Nancy shook her head, and looked at Paul with eyes that he couldn’t read. She handed him the remote. “I know you’re tired of the news.
We all are
. You should watch.”

Paul accepted the device and laid it in his lap.

Nancy turned and walked to the door, where she paused and looked back. “I’ll be in to check on you later.”

Paul nodded. He looked down at the remote. He looked up at the television with uneasiness. Could it be something about Heidi? Austin? No, surely if something had happened to either of them, the police would come and tell him in person. He turned up the volume.