The Ares Decision (15 page)

M
EHRAK OMIDI GRIPPED THE
dashboard as the open jeep bounced through a series of muddy ruts. The humidity was just starting to ease, and despite the fact that Bahame was piloting the doorless vehicle like the maniac he had proven himself to be, Omidi reveled in the sensation of air flowing across his skin.

The cult leader made a great show of sleeping with his troops and insisted that his guests bed down in a similar manner, exposing them to the biting insects and sudden downpours that plagued this forsaken part of the world. Beyond nodding off for a few moments here and there, Omidi spent his nights swatting malarial mosquitoes and listening to the drunken fights and sexual activity of those around him.

God willing, it wouldn’t be much longer. If all went according to plan, he would soon leave this place to collapse beneath the weight of its own decadence. And with the help of the Almighty, he would never have any cause to return.

Bahame drifted the jeep around a blind curve and then slammed on the brakes, skidding to a stop behind an eighteen-wheeler making a U-turn on a rare piece of open land.

The trailer was jerking back and forth—not with the contours of the land but seemingly with a will of its own. Holes about thirty centimeters square had been cut from the steel, and desperate arms were shoved through, tearing on the sharp edges and sending fresh blood rolling down old stains. Hands grabbed futilely at the air as frustrated, animal-like screams overpowered the sounds of the jungle.

The truck came to a stop and a group of armed men climbed out of the cab, dragging a terrified young boy along with them. Their faces were painted with something that looked like white chalk, and all wore elaborate amulets that Bahame had promised would protect them from the demons they were hauling. Interestingly, though, he had also equipped them with goggles and surgical gloves. Obviously, the medicine man had a practical side.

Despite their protective gear, the three men looked only slightly less frightened than the child they were pulling along behind. They gave the trailer a wide berth, keeping at least five meters between them and the bleeding arms reaching so frantically in their direction.

“Come,” Bahame said, jumping from the jeep.

He passed much closer to the trailer than his soldiers had, though he still kept well out of range as the rocking increased to the point that, for a moment, Omidi thought it might tip.

He followed the African to the rear, where a long chain leading from the bolt in the door was being secured around the struggling boy’s neck. The trailer’s locking mechanism seemed far too complex for this part of the world, but Omidi was unwilling to get close enough to inspect it.

The boy immediately began trying to get free, his bawling rising above the inhuman sounds coming from inside the truck until he saw Bahame approaching and fell silent.

The cult leader knelt and spoke a quiet prayer, dipping his thumb into a can of reddish powder and streaking the child’s cheeks with it. The soldiers watched transfixed as their leader called to gods and demons, blessed the boy, and demanded victory. The man’s charisma was almost as astounding as his lack of shame in wielding it.

When the ceremony was finished, he motioned for his men and Omidi to follow him into the jungle. They took a position that provided both excellent cover and a view of the boy, who was opening cuts on his hands and throat as he pulled helplessly against the rusty chain.

They were crouched there for almost five minutes before Omidi pointed to the radio control in Bahame’s hand. “Are you going to release them?”

“In time. First, we must leave their minds.”

Bahame had carried out similar operations many times and obviously had learned a great deal about how to use this weapon without it destroying himself along with his enemies. Some of the people in the trailer would have seen them go into the woods, and they would be a significant danger if they remembered that when they were freed. Omidi wondered idly how many young soldiers had died during the early attempts to use the parasite.

Another ten minutes passed before Bahame flipped the protective cover off the remote in his hand and held it out. “It’s your honor.”

Omidi hesitated for a moment and then pressed the exposed button. There was no sound, but from his position he could make out the simple electric actuator on the trailer beginning to pull back the bolt. The chain holding the boy dropped and he ran, dragging it behind him as he headed for his village a short distance down the road. The infected wailed inconsolably as they watched their quarry escape.

The bolt kept moving, though. After another forty-five seconds, there was a loud crack and the doors flew open, spilling a tangle of writhing bodies to the ground. The tone of their screeches went from frustrated to excited as they gained their footing and took off after the boy.

It was a primitive system, but one that seemed to work. Without the child to focus on, the infected would just disburse randomly, becoming disoriented and eventually dying in the jungle. With him, though, they would be led directly to the village Bahame had targeted.

Y
OU SEE IT?”
Peter Howell said.

They were on the crest of a tall butte, lying in the middle of the dirt road that they’d spent the last hour switchbacking up. Smith adjusted the focus on his binoculars, sweeping across verdant valley until he found the cause of the dust plume.

“Yeah. Open personnel carrier. Two men in front, another six in back. All armed.”

“And since that’s the only motorized vehicle we’ve seen for going on fourteen hours, I reckon it’s safe to say they’re following us.”

“President Sembutu told us to call him if we had any problems,” Sarie said. “Maybe he sent those men to make sure we don’t get in any trouble.”

They both looked back at her.

“Just a thought.”

“I agree that they’re probably Sembutu’s men,” Smith conceded. “But I’m not sure their intentions are so benign.”

“Well, one thing I can tell you for certain is that someone in his office has been calling ahead,” she said. “We’ve driven through three military checkpoints without so much as anyone even looking in the car. I’m guessing that’s a first in this part of Africa.”

Smith rolled onto his back and looked up into the unbroken blue of the sky. “I think you’re right about Sembutu greasing the skids for us…”

“The question is, why?” Howell said, finishing his thought.

Sarie pulled her new rifle from the backseat and sighted through the scope at the approaching truck. “I don’t think there’s much we can do at this point. There aren’t a lot of intersections and we’re leaving a pretty obvious trail.”

“Maybe I’m just being paranoid,” Smith said, putting a hand out and letting Howell pull him to his feet. “He might think we’ll find something he can use. And how does it hurt him if we find out that Bahame is using a biological weapon? I don’t think he’d object too much if the U.S. unloaded a few B-52s on Bahame’s camp.”

“Or maybe he believed the ant story,” Sarie said.

Smith shrugged. “Anything’s possible. And there’s no telling when you might need a little extra firepower.”

“Depending on who it’s aimed at,” Howell said, sliding back behind the wheel of their vehicle and slamming the door behind him.

“He doesn’t seem all that happy,” Sarie said, shouldering her rifle.

“No, he doesn’t, does he?”

“Something happened to him here,” Sarie said. “Something horrible.”

It was a reasonable hypothesis that he himself had considered. But it left the question of what exactly that thing was. He knew Howell and men like him—hell, he
was
a man like him. After everything the Brit had seen over the course of his career with the SAS and MI6, what could affect him like this?

“You should ask him about it,” Smith suggested.

“Me?” she said, lowering her voice to a harsh whisper. “Are you kidding? I mean, he’s an interesting guy to have dinner with, but have you noticed that he always looks like he’s about thirty seconds from killing you with a pocketknife?”

“I think that’s an exaggeration.”

“Yeah? Then why don’t
you
ask him? You’ve known him for years, right?”

“Yeah, a long time,” Smith admitted. “But our relationship is…Well, it’s complicated.”

Sarie tilted her head a bit and concentrated on his face. “Why is it I get the impression that all your relationships are complicated?”

Howell started the engine and revved it loudly, giving Smith cover for a strategic retreat. “I have no idea. I’m just a simple country doctor.”

O
KAY, WE’RE LOOKING
for a turn,” Smith said, running a finger along the fuzzy satellite photo Star had printed for him. She’d marked distances on both axes, which was a testament to her thoroughness but completely useless in the real world of African roads. “I assume it will be an obvious left in the next twenty clicks or so, but it’s hard to be any more precise than that.”

They entered a small village and Smith waved through the open window at the children running alongside them. It was impossible not to be taken by the ease of their laughter in the midst of poverty unimaginable to most Americans.

“It’s incredible, isn’t it?” Sarie said from the backseat. “These people have nothing of value to anyone—no running water, no electricity, no money. But even that’s too much for people like Bahame. He can’t just leave them alone to enjoy the simple life they can carve out for themselves.”

She leaned through the window, briefly clasping the hand of the most persistent kid as they rolled out of the village.

“Any one of those children could end up being forced into Bahame’s army,” she continued. “Or worse, they could end up like the people who attacked those soldiers in the video you showed me. If we’re right and this is a parasite, Bahame’s eventually going to lose control of it. The more he uses it, the harder it’s going to be to contain.”

The apparent contradiction broke Howell from his trance. “It seems that the more practiced he becomes at using it, the less likely he is to lose control, no?”

Sarie stretched out on the seat, laying her rifle next to her and using her hat to block the sun streaming through the window. “Not exactly. What I’m worried about is that by using it like he is, he’s going to weaken it.”

Howell pondered that for a moment. “I’m still not following. Weaker is better.”

“The word ‘weak’ doesn’t mean what you’re thinking,” Smith said. “Right now the parasite—assuming it even exists—is fairly unsophisticated. Call it poorly evolved where humans are concerned. It infects people every few decades, those people infect a few others, and they all die within a time frame short enough that it never spreads very widely.”

Sarie picked up his thought. “But these types of infections can become more effective by getting weaker. Killing your host quick is a bad survival strategy—particularly when the population concentrations are well separated.”

“Exactly. The longer the host lives, the more copies the parasite can make of itself—both in the original victim and because it has more opportunity to jump to a new host.”

“And that’s only part of it,” Sarie said. “Other mutations could be beneficial too. If this infection was ever widespread enough for natural selection to really start working on it, you could see less-violent behavior.”

“Definitely,” Smith agreed. “All the parasite wants its host to do is open a few cuts in an uninfected person so it can find a new home. Better to attack and injure instead of attack and kill. A dead body is no good to it.”

“I’d also expect to see the onset of symptoms slow down,” Sarie said. “Which would allow the parasite to travel farther to find a new host. Right now, I’d hypothesize that fast onset is beneficial because a lot of the victims are so badly injured in the process of transmission, they don’t have much time left. Their strength and speed actually might not even be an adaptation to help them infect new victims—in a way it makes them too dangerous. That might just be a by-product of the parasite trying to animate a person who, under normal circumstances, would be too badly hurt to do much more than lie there.”

“Interesting. I hadn’t thought of that,” Smith said. “But what if—”

“You people spend a lot of time on mental masturbation, don’t you?” Howell interrupted.

“It’s more productive than the other kind,” Sarie said with a quiet chuckle.

“So what you’re telling me is that if we just sit back and do nothing, the parasite might eventually become harmless.”

“It’s not unprecedented,” Smith said. “There are some formerly nasty bugs out there that aren’t much worse than a cold now. The problem is the millions of people who would die while we sat around waiting for Mother Nature to help us out.”

M
EHRAK OMIDI RAN ALONGSIDE
Bahame, trying to stay close but occasionally having to dodge around trees and other obstacles. They and the armed guards surrounding them were moving as quickly as they could without making undue noise, paralleling the road at a distance that provided an intermittent view of it.

Most of the infected had outpaced them, but two stragglers remained visible through the leaves. One was a child of no more than four—too young to understand his own rage and how to exercise it. The other was even more disturbing: an old man with a severe compound fracture of the lower leg that he didn’t seem to be aware of. He repeatedly stood, lurched forward a few meters, and then collapsed with a spurt of arterial blood. Omidi slowed a bit, transfixed by the man’s struggle as he finally became resigned to dragging himself forward with his elbows.

It took another five minutes to reach the village, and Bahame grabbed his arm, pulling him to a place that provided sufficient cover but still afforded a partially blocked view of what was happening.

Again, Omidi found himself stunned. The village men were fighting desperately—with sticks, with machetes, with farm implements. One man had an old rifle but was taken down while he was still trying to get it to his shoulder. The infected were everywhere—their speed and strength making them seem like a much larger force than they actually were.

A fleeing woman crashed into the trees directly in front of them, causing Bahame to pull Omidi beneath the bush they were crouched behind. She barely made it ten meters before a young boy drenched in blood chased her down and dove onto her back. It took only a few moments before she succumbed to the brutal beating, but he didn’t stop. The dull thud of his fists mixed with the screams and panicked shouts coming from the village until he finally collapsed. Whether he was unconscious or dead was impossible to determine.

One of the huts was on fire now, and Omidi glanced at Bahame, seeing the flames reflected in eyes glazed with power. It was at that moment he realized the African wasn’t playing a role or pandering to his followers. He truly believed in his own godhood.

The wails of an infant began to emanate from the burning hut, and an infected man ran in like a savior. A moment later the child went silent.

When he reappeared, the long, bloodstained robe he wore was burning. Despite the increasing intensity of the flames, he rejoined the fray, sprinting toward a woman trying to find refuge in a corral full of panicked goats. He fell just short of reaching her, collapsing with his hands on the rickety fence as he was consumed.

Omidi slipped from beneath the bush as the remaining villagers were run down. He no longer saw rural Uganda, though. He saw New York, Chicago, Los Angeles. And it was magnificent.