Outbreak (8 page)

'Or
has
died,' Abele noted darkly.

Ben walked away from the house, checking the doors of the other huts in this ramshackle street. Red crosses adorned the fronts of almost half of them. 'What's wrong with all these people?' he breathed, his head suddenly spinning at the thought of so much death. He turned to Abele.

His face made it clear he had nothing to say on the subject; he just fingered the charm that hung around his neck.

Suliman had not accompanied Russell into the deepest part of the mine; it had not been necessary. As mine manager he had to attend to the workers excavating for tin elsewhere, so he had left the scientist in the hands of one of his colleagues, a rather surly villager who spoke no English but seemed very nervous as he held a torch to the exposed rock face positioned just by the underground lake from which Russell was taking his samples. It was hard work and Russell was soon damp with sweat despite the fact that it was cool in the caves. He would have liked to splash water from the lake over his face, but he knew how foolish that would be: cholera, tapeworms - it could be hiding all manner of parasites and diseases.

It was unusual to find Coltan down here. It was normally surface-mined, but there had been instances of it being discovered as an offshoot of other mining operations. And of course it would take him a while to do all the proper tests at his lab back in the UK, but he could already tell that this was a rich source of the good stuff, and he would be able to give his findings to Kruger and the others back in Kinshasa. That would please them, and at least he would feel as if one part of his excursion into Africa with Ben had gone the way it should. Russell had to admit that things hadn't really been going according to plan. If Ben seemed jumpy around everyone, it wasn't really much of a surprise. He was only a young boy, after all, and all things considered, his father thought he was coping quite well. If only he hadn't seemed so openly suspicious of Kruger and Suliman, two men who seemed to be doing their very best to make everything run smoothly.

Ah well, Russell thought to himself. That sort of maturity will come. In time.

He glanced at his watch in the torchlight. It was getting on, so he turned and nodded to his companion with a smile. 'We'll finish now,' he said in loud, overly pronounced tones that he knew the guy wouldn't understand, but he hoped he would get his drift.

The man nodded and turned round, eager to leave. 'I still need the light here!' Russell called, spinning round and grabbing him by the arm. The man uttered some harsh words in a deep voice, pulling his arm away from Russell, his face sinister and demonic by the light of the torch. As he lowered the torch, something caught Russell's eye. 'Shine it there,' he instructed, pointing out over the water. His companion did as he was told. A small animal - a bat, most likely, Russell thought - was flailing in the water, struggling.

And then, quite suddenly, it fell silent.

Its death seemed to bring an increased chill into the cave. Russell dragged his attention away and packed up his things, and the two of them started walking along the rickety wooden flooring that would eventually lead them out of the mine. They trudged along in silence, the black man holding the torch, Russell keeping his eyes firmly on the potentially treacherous ground.

As they were leaving the cave, he saw another dead bat, right in front of him, its body already decaying.

He said nothing, but his scientist's brain started ticking over. Clearly there was a colony down here somewhere, a great many of them, no doubt. With such a large population, the probability of seeing dead individuals was high. He smiled to himself. There was something satisfying about seeing statistics in action.

Had he directed the beam back across the water, however, Russell might have noticed a small opening into an adjoining cave. He could never have reached it to explore, even if he had wanted to, because the only way of accessing it was across the water. Had he been able to, however, he would have been horrified by what he saw on the banks of the underground lake.

Thousands upon thousands of bats.

All of them dead.

All of them piled high in a mountain of increasingly rotten and stinking flesh.

Ben's dad returned to the compound later that afternoon. Abele had insisted that he and Ben should go back, and Ben's recent discovery that half the huts in the village seemed to be housing the sick and dying had dampened his enthusiasm for exploring, so he had sought shelter from the heat and the increasingly intolerable humidity by lying on his bed in the half darkness. Now, though, it was beginning to cool down.

Russell looked grimy and tired - more tired than Ben had seen him in a long time in fact, with large, black rings under his eyes and a faintly haggard expression. He entered the compound with Suliman sticking close to him. Both men had sweat on their bald heads, though Suliman looked more comfortable with it than Russell.

'Good day?' Ben asked his dad.

Russell nodded. 'It's a rich source of good-quality Coltan. I need another day there, and then we can get back.' He turned to Suliman. 'Thank you for your kindness today,' he said politely. 'Same time tomorrow?'

'My people will be here to collect you.' Suliman bowed slightly, and made to leave.

'Just a minute!' Ben said sharply. 'I want to ask you a question.'

Suliman turned, and Ben felt both men's eyes on him.

'What's making everyone so ill? Why is everyone dying?'

'Ben!' Russell reprimanded. 'I don't want to hear you speaking to our hosts so rudely.'

'It's true, Dad. Every other house in this village has a red cross painted on the door. It means that someone is dying, or has died recently, in that house. We've been brought here without being told - I think we deserve to know what's going on.'

Suliman looked intently at him, his face hard before it suddenly dissolved into a softer smile. 'It's true, Ben,' he whispered, his rasping voice sounding almost snakelike. 'Many of our villagers are sick. You are taking your malaria medication, I hope?'

Ben nodded mutely.

'Good. It has been bad lately. A very vicious strain. The dead are as numerous as those who survive it. Few people can afford the medicine.'

Ben said nothing; malaria was a big problem in the area, that much he knew, and Suliman's explanation had the desperate ring of truth.

'Our people have no option but to accept this as a way of life,' Suliman continued. Then he nodded at Ben and his father in turn. 'Until tomorrow, then,' he said, and left.

There was a silence between Ben and his father, which Russell broke in his quiet voice. 'Now do you understand why I was so insistent that you took your malaria medication before we left?' he asked in that frustratingly smug voice Ben found adults often using with him.

'I suppose so,' Ben muttered. He knew he was being surly, but he couldn't help it. He was beginning to wish he had never come.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Russell Tracey's breathing was heavy, slow and measured. Ben hadn't noticed it the previous night - probably too busy worrying about creepy crawlies in the bedroom, he supposed. He lay drowsily in the darkness listening to it, wishing that he too could be visited by the sleep that had descended on his father.

Gradually, though, he became aware of another sound - a scratching in the courtyard outside. He concentrated on isolating that sound from any others and realized that it was footsteps walking across the dusty, gritty earth. And then he heard a tapping at the door. Three gentle knocks. A pause, and they came again -
tap
,
tap
,
tap
- a little louder this time. Russell's breathing remained heavy - clearly he had been undisturbed by the sound - so Ben climbed out from under his mosquito net and pulled on his clothes. He stepped towards the door before halting, turning back on himself and removing the gun from its place on the table. Then he walked to the door and, his finger nervously caressing the trigger of the gun, gently nudged it open.

The African night was sultry, and for a moment Ben thought he had been hearing things as there appeared to be nobody there. He noticed that he was suddenly breathing as heavily as his father, and he prepared to close the door and get back to the relative comfort of his bed when he saw a figure appearing from the shadows. Whoever it was was walking swiftly towards him and had their finger pressed firmly against their lips. Ben felt a sudden sickness of panic rising in his chest, and he felt his arm bringing the gun up to point in front of him.

It wasn't until the figure was almost upon him that he realized who it was.

Halima stopped in her tracks when she saw the gun pointing towards her, her wide eyes staring fearfully at Ben, who immediately let the weapon drop to his side. 'What are you doing?' he whispered at her.

'Come with me,' Halima breathed.

'Where?'

'I need to show you something.'

Ben thought for a moment. His dad would be furious if he sneaked off again, especially with the gun. But he was asleep, and showed no signs of waking up soon, so Ben decided on a compromise. 'Wait there,' he told Halima, before slipping back inside, placing the weapon in its place on the table, and then returning to see what this mysterious girl wanted with him.

'Come with me,' Halima repeated, and she led him out into the main square.

There was nobody about, but the square itself was almost eerily well-lit by the bright silver light of the waxing moon. 'We need to stay hidden,' Halima told Ben as they skirted quietly round the edge of the square towards the little street where her house was.

'Why?' Ben asked. 'What are we doing? Why did you ignore me earlier on today?' He had so many questions.

'I will explain everything when we get there.' Halima smiled at him a bit apologetically. Suddenly she raised her hand and gestured at him to stop. 'Listen,' she instructed.

Ben stood perfectly still. Somewhere, not too far away, he imagined, he could hear the faint sound of a drum. It played a simple rhythm - three short strokes followed by four quicker ones.

Dum, dum, dum, da-da-da-da.

Halima nodded to herself in approval, then gestured at Ben to follow her. They sneaked down the street, past Halima's house and on towards the clearing where they had been chatting before Suliman had interrupted them. As they moved, the sound of the drumming grew louder, and it seemed to Ben that it had grown a little faster too. Soon enough, they came to the clearing. On the other side of it, obscured by the thicket of dense trees and brush, Ben could make out the glow of a fire. He felt a tingle of apprehension run down his spine as he realized how foolhardy he was being, allowing this girl he barely knew to lead him around surreptitiously like this in the middle of the night. He stretched out and grabbed her lightly by the arm.

'Halima, I'm not going any further until you tell me what this is about.'

Halima looked down at his hand, but Ben did not move it away. 'We can't stay here out in the open,' she told him seriously. 'I am taking you to see a tribal ritual. The village elders would be very angry if they knew I was showing it to a white person. Some things are not allowed.'

Dum, dum, dum, da-da-da-da
. The drumming was closer.

Ben nodded. Halima scurried away to the left, with Ben following. Down the side of the clearing was a pathway with a few trees and straggly bushes providing a little camouflage. It wasn't much, but it was something, and they ran as light-footedly as they could towards the foliage, the light and the sound of the drums.

Once they were in the thicket, they could move with less fear of being seen, but Ben soon found that he had to tread more carefully; the sound of dried wood breaking under his feet made his heart stop every time it happened - he was thankful that the drumming, almost frenzied now, was loud enough to disguise what he felt was his terrible clumsiness.

Dum, dum, dum, da-da-da-da.

They came to the edge of small clearing, and Halima stopped, gently resting her hand on Ben's arm to indicate that he should do the same. In the middle of the clearing was a fire - clearly the one that they had seen from a distance - and sitting around it, about twenty metres from where Ben and Halima were hiding, were eight or nine elderly men. They wore simple clothes - dark-coloured all-in-one tunics mostly - but round their necks they wore what looked like heavy ceramic jewellery. Two of them wore headdresses made from the fur of animals. Standing a little way apart from these men was the drummer, bent double over a large wooden
djembe
drum, intently beating out the increasingly wild rhythm.

Dum, dum, dum, da-da-da-da.

The eyes of all the men were trained on a figure Ben could not see clearly. It was positioned on the other side of the fire, so all he could make out was a silhouette of what appeared to be a man, fairly tall and, as far as Ben could make out, naked, at least from the waist up. He was dancing in time to the rhythm of the drum, not in a wild, frenetic way, but making short, jerky movements.

Ben found himself transfixed by the sinister sight. How long he watched before Halima interrupted his trance he could not have said. 'It is a dance for the ancestors,' she told him.

Ben blinked and turned to look at her. 'What?'

'A dance for the ancestors. The man you see dancing has great power.'

'I don't understand,' Ben whispered. 'Who are the ancestors?'

Halima gazed into the middle distance. 'The dead. Those that have gone before us. It is our duty to ensure that they should not be disturbed.'

'What do you mean, disturbed? How can you disturb dead people?'

Halima gave him a sidelong glance. 'You asked me before why everyone seemed so scared of this village.'

Ben nodded. 'I think I'm already beginning to understand,' he said. 'I know what the red crosses on the doors mean. I know that lots of people are dying here.'

'But do you know why?'

'Suliman told me it was malaria. We were warned about it before we left England.'

Halima smiled faintly. 'Malaria.' She nodded. 'Yes. That is what everyone in the village will tell you. But it is not what they believe.'

'But you told me yourself that your parents died from malaria.'

Ben was puzzled, and Halima clearly understood that from the look on his face. 'You have to understand,' she told him quietly, 'that things are not always what they seem to be in Africa. You are a stranger, so people will not always tell you what they really believe.' She was looking at him intently now. 'I have seen many people die, and I nursed my parents to their graves. What killed them was not malaria. Similar, maybe. But not malaria.'

'Then what was it?'

Halima gazed towards the fire once more. 'My father worked in the mine,' she told him. 'When the mine-owners came, people were worried. They wanted to dig near the burial grounds sacred to our ancestors. But there was nobody to stop them, and besides, they offered jobs and money. We are very poor here, and the village elders welcomed them. To start with there was no problem. But not long ago they extended their excavations, and that was when the mine-workers started to fall ill.'

'All of them?' Ben asked, his attention rapt.

Halima shook her head. 'No. Not all of them. My father and two others first. Then my mother.' Her voice was expressionless as she explained what had happened. 'He woke up one morning vomiting and unable to stand up. His head ached so badly that he could barely speak, he was hot all over and I could hear the breath rattling in his chest. He could eat nothing. My mother became ill the following day. They both died on the same night, eight days after my father fell ill.'

'I'm sorry,' Ben breathed, his expression of sympathy seeming desperately inadequate.

'At first I too believed it was malaria. Even after they died I was not sure I wanted to believe what is so obvious to me now. But it cannot be ignored. Two thirds of the men who have gone down the mine have succumbed to the same illness. Of those people, three quarters have died. In addition, certain members of the mine-workers' families have started to succumb. Everyone in the village knows somebody who has died.'

Ben felt a trickle of sweat drip down the side of his face. The night was warm enough as it was, but the fire was sufficiently large for him to feel it against his skin, despite the fact that they were perhaps twenty metres from it. 'Why have you brought me all the way here to tell me this?' he asked, his voice cracking.

Halima nodded towards the scene in front of them. 'What you are watching is a ceremony to appease the ancestors.' She smiled at him again, and Ben noticed for the first time the orange of the fire reflected in her dark eyes. 'You haven't asked me yet how it is that I speak English.'

This was true - it was something that Ben had wondered, but he hadn't yet had the opportunity to ask.