Chapter Three
The village was perched precariously on the riverbank, a cluster of newer mud huts with rusted tin roofs mixed in with the more traditional stilt houses made of wood, bamboo, and palm fronds. A dripping rain had started during the bumpy drive over, and now drummed steadily against the roof of the old Toyota truck MSF took into Port Harcourt for supply runs. The truck had no a/c, so it was either keep the windows down and get soaked, or roll them up and potentially die of suffocation in the stifling heat. Claire chose the rain. With humidity sitting at 100 percent, her tank top and capri pants already felt waterlogged anyway.
Claire studied the village through the windshield as the wipers did their best to keep up with the now pelting rain. No sign of people. Because of the rain? Or because they were all dead or dying?
“Are you sure you want to do this now?”
She turned in her seat to smile at Dayo. She’d learned a bit about him during the drive. Like Sunday, he had left Nigeria for an education, though his had been in the United States, and had only recently returned to his homeland to help his people in the Niger Delta. He’d come from a village very much like this one, and the strain around his mouth told her he was playing the “what if” game in his head. What if this had happened in his village, to his family?
“I need to do this now,” she told him.
He didn’t argue. He only pushed open his door and went around to the back of the truck to start unloading the rattraps they’d brought.
Claire pulled up the hood of her raincoat, and tried to ignore the dark hole of dread opening up in her belly. She shoved open the door and hurried to help Dayo with the traps. “Do you know which house the index case came from?”
“I no no,” Dayo said, then corrected himself for her benefit, “I don’t know.”
She’d spent enough time in Africa to understand the many versions of Pidgin English, but she didn’t correct him. She picked up several of the rat cages. “All right. We’ll start with food storage areas and work our way from there.”
They worked quickly, placing traps in all the likely places, and saw not another soul. This wasn’t right. Even with the downpour, there should be people. Animals. Sound. But the village was a ghost town. She stopped in front of one of the houses. The rain sluiced off the thatched roof, obscuring her view inside.
“Dayo,” she called.
He finished placing a trap near one of the buildings and straightened.
“Did the villagers flee? The ones who weren’t sick?”
“They did before Sunday and her team got here. We convinced some to come to us, but not all.”
Then they were standing on the edge of a pandemic. If any of the villagers who fled were sick, she was going to need help containing this outbreak. She had to call her contacts in the CDC and USAMRIID…
Which meant painting a target on her back again.
But, really, what was her life compared to the potentially thousands that would be lost if she did nothing? No matter which way she weighed it, the scale didn’t tip in her favor.
She turned away from the house to tell Dayo to pack up, but movement inside caught her attention. Was someone in there? She squinted. A human shape shifted in the darkness.
“Hello?” she called out. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m here to help.”
A child— ten, twelve years old at most—appeared in the doorway. She was skinny, her arms little more than flesh-covered bones. The skin around her eyes had sunk into deep hollows and her cheekbones stood out in sharp peaks. She was saying something, but Claire couldn’t understand the language. She called Dayo over.
After listening for a moment, he translated. “She says they all died. Her mom, dad, siblings. Aunts, uncles, cousins. They’re all dead.”
“Ask her if she’s sick.”
He did, then shook his head when the girl answered. “She says she was. She thought she was going to die too, but then she got better.”
A survivor. The virus was survivable. And now they had someone with antibodies that could be studied. This little girl could be the key to saving all of those people at the MSF field hospital.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
The girl must have understood, because she responded without needing translation. “Ebiere.”
“Ebiere. Okay. I’m a doctor from the United States. Do you know where that is?”
Ebiere looked to Dayo for a translation then nodded and inched from the house. The rain plastered her colorful dress to her body, highlighting how thin she was.
“Okay. Good.” Despite her bulky protective gear, Claire knelt down so the girl could see her through her facemask. “I’m here to stop people from dying, and you might be able to help me. Would you be willing to come back to the hospital with me? We’ll get you some food and fresh clothes. You’ll be safe. And you might be able to help us save some people.” She held out a gloved hand and waited for Dayo to translate. The girl hesitated, then reached out and placed her hand in Claire’s. It was tiny, frail. Claire had always been a petite woman, too thin and too short, but she felt like she’d break the child’s hand if she held too tight.
“Did you place the last of the traps?” she asked Dayo as she straightened.
He nodded.
“All right. Let’s go back to the hospital. Ebiere.” She waited for the girl to look up at her. “Do you know who got sick first?”
As they made their way back to the truck, Dayo translated. The girl spoke for a long time, gesturing to the south. Claire glanced in that direction, saw nothing but a thick tangle of mangroves and palms. Dayo asked some questions, Ebiere responded.
Finally, Dayo nodded and turned to Claire. “The first was a local boy, Joyful Solomon, who had run off to join the Egbesu Fighters. They have a camp not too far from here and recruit from the village often. He left earlier this summer, but returned home about two weeks ago because he was sick. Within three days, it had spread to his whole family. By the end of the first week, over half of the village was infected. By the end of the second week…” He motioned to the village with a sweeping gesture. “This.”
Claire shook her head in awe. If this started two weeks ago, then the virus spread and killed at alarming rates. They had to contain it now, before it spread to nearby cities like Port Harcourt.
She spotted one of the traps she’d laid, and knew without a doubt their efforts of the last few hours weren’t going to turn up anything. If Joyful Solomon was the index case, he didn’t contract the virus here. He brought it here, which meant he contracted it elsewhere—likely the Egbesu camp. Which also meant he may not be the index case.
She had to go to the camp.
Dayo must have been reading her thoughts, because before she even opened her mouth, he said, “No. Claire, it’s not safe.”
“Nowhere will be safe if this virus makes it to the cities.”
They reached the Toyota and she paused as Dayo helped Ebiere into the cab through the driver’s side. He shut the door, met her gaze over the hood.
“I have to go,” she said, “with or without you. It’s your choice.”
Dayo swore colorfully in both his native language and in English. “You’re going to get us killed.”
“You’ve seen what this virus does to people. We’re all dead if we don’t stop it. Your family, Sunday’s, mine. We’re on the precipice of a Black Plague-level event here.”
He said nothing for a long time. Lifted his face to the sky and let the rain pelt his face shield. Finally, he looked at her again. “Do you truly think it will get that bad?”
“With nearly one hundred percent fatality rate? Yes, Dayo. I really do.”
“All right. All right.” He opened the truck’s door again. “I’ll take you to the Egbesu camp.”