Ebola K: A Terrorism Thriller: Book 2 (3 page)

Salim Pitafi awoke disoriented. He’d dozed off sitting in a chrome-framed, brown-cushioned chair in an attached group of four that made up something of a couch. The chair was of pretty much the same design he’d seen on the concourses of airports in Lahore, Nairobi, Dubai, Frankfurt, Milan, Miami, and now...where was he? Atlanta?

Yes.

Atlanta was still a long way from home, but at least he was on American soil, no longer a foreigner with an alien accent.

He stared at an expansive, glossy terrazzo floor, and his eyes followed a pattern of glaring reflections toward a bank of windows. Outside in the rain sat a couple of big twin-engine jets, waiting for a refill of rushing, tense travelers, anxious to get to their important, personal somewhere.

Was it morning or was it afternoon? The clouded sky gave no hint. With countless layovers and time zone crossings, whenever he woke—
wherever
he woke—he felt lost. His world was a series of vignettes and déjà vu variations of a place he’d been before; different enough to instill confusion in his thoughts.

Salim didn’t know what day it was until he read it on his phone and confirmed it by looking at the ever-changing arrival and departure screens always hanging from ceilings, passively informing fliers of details for their comings and goings. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept in a bed. His body was rebelling. His stomach tormented him with heartburn, his knees and elbows ached, and his head throbbed. Gurgles in his abdomen were promises of unpleasantness to come.

Salim yawned, stretched, and rolled his neck around to work off a painful crick he’d developed when he’d dozed in his seat. Taking his bag off the cushion beside him, he pulled it into his lap, opening it to remove the envelope containing his travel documents. Searching through them was turning into a compulsion, an exercise in assertion, a claim to the tiniest bit of control over his life. Through the cumulative discomforts and pains of his ordeal, Salim counted the remaining flights until he’d reach his end. He told himself—no, promised himself—he’d then make a claim to his freedom.

Paul Cooper’s brownstone faced east, so the front patio was shaded by the two-story shadow of his townhouse in the late afternoons and early evenings. Paul liked to sit at the wrought-iron patio table after work, feeling the cool crispness in the air while listening to the birds and the squirrels as he finalized any leftover work tasks, checked email, or generally killed time chatting with his friends on Facebook. Tonight, his laptop was open and animated browser ads tempted him to click. Inoculated against the allure of the flashy colors on his computer, Paul stared across the marigolds and deep purple petunias in the planter on the porch railing. He looked at the brickwork façade on the townhouse across the way. He wasn’t looking for anything, just staring, letting his eyes fixate on the pattern of gray mortar between tumbled red bricks. The wall looked so fashionably old—a century old perhaps—but was new construction only ten years prior. The bricks were a subtle detail; one of the reasons Paul had purchased a townhome in Town Center.

Off to his right, a jogger, a woman who ran by nearly every evening, trying to keep up with her lean gray Weimaraner, no worry on her face. She glistened with sweat, absently focused on the next step, the next hill. She didn’t have Paul’s problems to worry over. Her kids were probably at home watching scripted reality shows, eating potato chips, playing on their iPads, and worrying about whether their overpriced t-shirts and jeans looked fashionably old and raggedy enough around the seams.

Where was Austin?

Why didn’t he call?

What about that Mitch guy Heidi kept calling at the embassy in Kampala? Where the hell was he? His assistant, Art McConnell, wasn’t any help, either. He’d told Heidi—like, four or five days ago—that Mitch was on his way to Kapchorwa on other business and would call with word of Austin.

No word ever came.

Now both Austin and Mitch were gone, fallen into the African analogue of the Bermuda Triangle. Messages left for either of them were swallowed in the passive apathy of cyberspace. Art McConnell’s responses, cagey at first, were now not even that. He didn’t answer when Heidi called. Inquiries to other embassy personnel were now ignored. Dogged persistence hit a granite wall, and Heidi, for the moment, had met her match. Paul bet himself that by tomorrow Heidi would be calling higher-ups at the State Department in Washington. Then things would get interesting for Mitch Peterson and Art McConnell.

“Kenya closed its borders with Uganda.”

Paul looked up to see Heidi with two salad bowls in her hands. She set one on the placemat in front of Paul and the other on her placemat before seating herself. “I just heard it on the news while I was making dinner.”

Paul nodded. “I read a bunch about it on the Internet today. Ebola.”

“In Uganda?” Heidi stretched her face into a sad look. With her smile gone, her age showed through. “I’m worried.”

Paul nodded. He was worried, too. “The salad looks good.” He poked a slice of pear with his fork. “Craisins, pecans—”

“I candied them in the oven, the way you like…” Heidi didn’t finish. She started to cry.

Paul laid his fork down and leaned over to hold Heidi.

He held her until she sniffled what seemed like the last of her tears. She wiped her face on his shoulder and laughed about leaving a streak of snot. Paul let loose and sat back in his chair. Heidi was a crier. She cried about anything. He’d stopped being distressed by her tears years ago. Trying to make it sound like he believed what he was saying, Paul said, “Austin’s probably fine. You know how he is.”

Heidi smiled weakly. “Everything always works out for him. But—” More tears.

Paul leaned over to hold her through another round.

When he let go the second time and sat back in his chair, he said, “If you don’t stop, our salads are going to wilt.”

Heidi laughed and wiped her damp cheeks. She stabbed her fork into her bowl. “I grilled the chicken with that new lemon pepper seasoning I got from that deli Lexi told me about.”

Paul tossed a chunk into his mouth. “Mmmmmm.”

Heidi smiled.

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Paul told her again. “Thanks for making dinner.”

Heidi shrugged. “You said you were tired of going out to eat.”

“That’s a habit that might break itself if this Ebola thing gets out of hand.”

“Do you think it will?” Heidi asked.

Paul took a bite of salad and thought about it while he chewed. TBut thinking about it wasn’t necessary. He already knew his answer to that question. He liked giving his answers the gravity of contemplation, false or not. He nodded.

Heidi laid her fork in her bowl.

Paul said, “I need to go back to Costco and get another load.”

Heidi looked through the guest bedroom window, through its open door, and into the kitchen across the house. “How long will our calories last?”

At first, the question was a joke. After Paul’s second trip to Costco and his explanation of calorie values to Heidi, she’d ask the question whenever the subject came up. He couldn’t tell if she was serious or placating.

“We’ve got six months so far,” answered Paul. “I’m going to get another six months’ worth tonight. I think I’m going to go by Home Depot and see what they have for storing water. I don’t know. Five-gallon buckets or whatever.”

Heidi lightly touched Paul’s hand. “Are we overreacting?”

“You see the news,” said Paul, suspicious of Heidi’s question and immediately on the defensive. She watched CNN all day, nearly every day. “Nearly twenty-five thousand cases in West Africa now. Reported cases. It’s gotten out of hand.”

“This isn’t about prepping for Ebola, Paul. This is about Austin, and we need to talk about it. You need to talk about it. I know you—I can tell when you’re depressed, and I don’t think you’re being rational.”

Paul opened his mouth to rip through a rant but cut himself off. He looked around at nothing in particular while he thought about what he should say.

Heidi took advantage of the silence to repeat her favorite point on the subject. “We don’t know whether Austin is alive, but we have to deal with how we feel about it.”

Paul said nothing for a moment, but went back to work on his salad. “They quarantined the eastern half of Uganda today. That’s why the border with Kenya got closed. Kapchorwa, where Austin was teaching, it’s in Eastern Uganda.”

“Paul, this would be hard for any parent.” Heidi tried her best to force a smile. “Maybe...maybe you should see somebody.”

“A shrink?” Paul scoffed.

“Your doctor?” Heidi suggested. “Maybe he could just give you something to help for the next month or two. You know, until we find out if—”

Paul started to say something until his voice cracked. He blinked over his tears a half dozen times, but still they escaped and rolled down his cheeks.

Heidi reached over and held Paul.

Neither Paul nor Heidi said much through the rest of dinner. They washed the dishes. They put the salad dressing back in the fridge, and the croutons back in the pantry. Paul was trying to find a way to shoulder the emotional burden of a dead son, telling himself that he shouldn’t give up hope, and at the same time telling himself to be realistic.

Without discussing it further, Paul and Heidi found themselves in his truck on the way to Home Depot and Costco. Paul was driving while Heidi busied herself with her telephone. They were waiting at a long stoplight when Heidi looked up from her phone and said, “We don’t need to go to Home Depot.”

Paul’s raised eyebrows asked the question. Speaking suddenly seemed an onerous and risky exercise—risky for the possibility of losing his emotional control again and crying, like...like...Heidi.

She held up her phone in front of Paul’s face. He reached up and pushed her hand back, feebly smiling. They both knew he needed his reading glasses to see anything up close.

“You’re old.” Heidi smiled. The two always found a way to joke their way through the hard times. Not always at first, but eventually.

Paul returned the smile. “What is it?”

“It’s a waterBOB.”

Paul squinted at the tiny screen. The traffic light turned green, and Paul drove through the intersection.

Heidi said, “You put it in the bathtub and fill it up from the faucet. Made of food-grade vinyl. I just ordered one on Amazon. We can put it in the garden tub in the master bath.”

“So it’s like a big water balloon that fits in your bathtub?” Paul asked.

“Yes,” Heidi answered. “Only sturdier. It even has a little hand pump that comes with it. I got the hundred-gallon size. That’s a big tub.”

Paul said, “We have three bathtubs in the house.”

“You think we should buy more for the other tubs?”

Paul nodded. “Do they make them to fit the smaller bathtubs?”

“Yes.”

“Order a couple more. Okay?”

Heidi looked down at her phone. She touched the screen several times, and Paul mostly didn’t pay attention.

After a few moments, Heidi said, “I ordered two more. I paid for one-day shipping.”

Paul nodded and weakly smiled even though he knew the one-day shipping was just a way to make him think she was on his side with all this prepper stuff. “I know I’m kind of freaking out about Austin, but—”

“It’s okay.” Heidi leaned over and put an arm over Paul’s shoulders. “It’s hard for me, too.”

“I’ve been thinking about some stuff that’s going to sound pretty crazy, but at the same time, it isn’t.”

Heidi sat back, worry all over her face. “What?”

“I may try to contract Ebola on purpose. I know it sounds insane—”

She slowly shook her head. A tear rolled down each of Heidi’s cheeks. It wasn’t the reaction Paul was expecting. He would have bet on yelling.

After a moment, she softly said, “I can’t lose you, Paul. I know...I know you’re—”

“I’m not depressed.”

“You are. It’s affecting you. You’re not thinking clearly. You just can’t see it.”

Paul glanced at her. Here came the yelling.

“You do nothing all day but look at every stupid little rumor-mill website you can find on the Internet. You’ve practically stopped going to work. You don’t sleep at night. Yes, I hear you get out of bed after you think I’m asleep. Paul, you’re depressed. It’s normal for a parent in your situation. Let me help you do something about it.”

“I’m fine. This isn’t about Austin.” Paul wasn’t sure himself how much he was lying.

Heidi sniffled.

Paul rubbed a hand over his face, took a deep breath, and launched into the set of rationalizations he’d used to convince himself. “You know me. I’m forever the analytical type. This is about the epidemic.”

“You’re lying to yourself.”

Paul ignored her and said, “That doctor and the aid worker they flew into Atlanta from Africa—the ones with Ebola—they lived.”

“And?” Heidi asked.

Trying to shore up his belief in his argument as he spoke, Paul continued, “Only one in ten survive Ebola.”

“That many?” Heidi asked.

“I’ve been looking at the little bit of data available, but it looks like with modern medical care, the chances of survival might be as high as forty percent. That means if you get Ebola and can go to the hospital, your odds of living are four times higher than otherwise.”

Heidi rubbed at her temple as though massaging the tension away.

“Heidi, this thing is blowing out of control.” Paul shook his head. In his inner dialogue, the reasoning had sounded so rational. Out loud, it was another matter. “Ebola is going to spread all over the world. It’s going to come to Denver. Everybody, and I mean
everybody
, will be exposed. They’ll catch it. They’ll turn symptomatic, and ninety percent or more will die.”

“Besides the fact that you’re sounding nuts, Paul. Why would
more
die?”

“We don’t have the medical facilities or staff to treat that many. At some point, there won’t even be basic services. We won’t be any better off than the people living in mud huts in Africa. We might even be worse off. We get our food from the grocery store. Our water comes out of the tap. At least those people can take care of themselves, grow their own food, and get their own water. If modern Western society breaks down, we can’t do that. I analyze financial data. You develop professional educational curricula. The most food we’ve ever grown is a handful of tomatoes.”

Paul took a moment to look out the window at the blazing red Costco sign up on the building, and his eyes fixed there while he finished his point. “The people in America who get sick early will be the lucky ones. They’ll get the best care in the world. Forty percent of them will survive. Those are pretty shitty odds, but they’re a hell of a lot better than ten percent. It’s that simple.”

Heidi started shaking her head, drawn into the argument. “What about vaccines and treatments? They’ll develop something—”

“No.” Paul said with a certainty that bothered even him. “That’s just it. The history of humanity is written in epidemics.”

“Paul, the Black Death was—”

“No!” he yelled. “The Black Death is the only plague people ever learn about. They think that’s the only plague that ever killed a bunch of people.”

She felt her own anger rise. “Paul, modern medicine—”

“It’s a joke. It’s a fucking joke, Heidi.” Paul’s anger was running, and he didn’t know why. “Do you know how many people died of the Hong Kong Flu?”

Heidi said nothing.

“A million, and that was in the late sixties. At the end of World War I, the Spanish Flu killed a hundred million people, depending on whose estimates you believe. But a hundred million, Heidi, that’s like seven or eight percent of everybody on the planet. Hell, you’ve got seven hundred Facebook friends. That’s like having fifty of them fall dead.”

Heidi said, “Those epidemics happened a long time ago.”

“How about right now, then?” Paul argued. “Thirty million died of AIDS, and another twenty million have HIV. Ebola comes from the same damn monkeys in the middle of Africa. You don’t hear that much about all these other epidemics, because the truth is that governments don’t want you to know. They don’t want you to know they can’t protect you.”

“Take off your tinfoil hat,” Heidi fought back. “What about SARS, or that H1N1 thing a few years back?”

Nodding, Paul said, “I think the government handled SARS well. H1N1 was a good job, but do you know how many people died worldwide?”

Heidi didn’t say anything.

“Maybe as many as half a million. Maybe a little less. That’s a lot of dead people for something we think we did a good job on.” Paul stared out the window again at the glowing Costco sign.

The two sat in silence for a long, long time, Paul fuming and Heidi refusing to look at him. Finally Paul asked,  “How do you shut down half of Uganda in the space of a week? Last week Uganda was fine. Now it’s quarantined. That’s almost like saying half of Uganda got AIDS last week. It doesn’t make sense with what we know about how AIDS spreads. It doesn’t make sense with what we know about how Ebola spreads.”

“Those people over there are just scared. They’re overreacting.” Heidi turned and glared at Paul, clearly implying he was overreacting too.

“Heidi, Ebola is coming. When it gets here, the people with the right kind of immune system will survive. Everybody, and I do mean
everybody
else, will die. My choice—and this proves I’m not depressed—is to get infected early so I have a chance to live. I think you should, too.”

“That doesn’t prove anything,” Heidi sobbed.

Paul let her cry while he stewed in his anger.

Finally she choked back her tears enough to speak. “You’re scaring me, Paul. It’s like you’re a different person. I know you’ve given up hope. You think Austin is dead. Maybe if you just face up to that, it’ll be a first step.”

It was hard to admit, but Paul nodded. “And that Mitch Peterson guy you talked to, he went to Kapchorwa, so he’s dead, too. That guy you nag—Mitch’s secretary, Art what’s-his-name—he’ll be dead pretty soon. All those people at the embassy in Kampala, they’re going to die. Then Ebola will come here.”