Thomas Prescott Superpack (86 page)

Gina surveyed both children. Gina had memorized the pictures down to the last detail and neither of the children on the ground fit the profile.

Gina wasn’t sure where to start. The settlement was much larger once you were inside it. She suspected there were more than fifty of the small thatch huts. Was she just supposed to poke her head into each one? Surely someone would take offense to this. Two villagers, both men, both with spears, crawled out from a hut. Both walked up to her, eyed her for a moment, then walked past.

Gina figured she was not the first white woman to enter the village. Maybe there had been missionaries before her, or other doctors that had visited. She knew the WHO had many doctors stationed in towns throughout sub-Saharan Africa. It was possible she would meet a fellow doctor. Gina thought about what she would say. Would she tell them why she was here? Or make up some absurd story? She decided she’d cross that bridge when she came to it.

For the first time, Gina noticed the smell of the village. For all its brightness, it smelled dark. Dank. Just underneath the wafting aroma of whatever the women were baking was the smell of decomposition. Decay. Firm and musty. Gina took a couple steps to her left and drew in a breath from her nose. Yes. It was there. And it was strong. It was the smell of death.

Gina quietly walked the small settlement. As she strode past the many villagers, they would quickly glance up, but only for a moment before going back to their task at hand. Many of the women were now sweeping the dirt away from their huts. Sweeping dirt off the dirt. The men were few and Gina wondered if they were having a secret meeting somewhere, or if they were out in the surrounding hills hunting and pillaging. Each time Gina came across a small child—usually running past her, or engaged in some game, something resembling hopscotch for the girls, wrestling for the boys—she would appraise them intensely. Most of the children she encountered were either toddlers or teenagers. In fact, Gina saw only three children that could have been the children she was searching for, but none was the right one.

Gina didn’t want to think why there were no
children
, but she had a theory. If the toddlers were in fact infected with AIDS, it was silently ravaging their insides, and they would fall victim to the disease in another couple years. As for the teenagers, they had so far escaped the reaches of the disease. But according to the statistics, of the ten teenagers standing in a circle taking their turn wrestling, nearly half would contract the disease when they became sexually active. And the children; the four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten-year-olds. They were all dead.

But again, this was just a theory.

When Gina reached the far edge of the village, she noticed six thatch huts far off in the distance. She began hiking in that direction. After a half mile, the dirt stopped, and dense grass began. The effervescent chamomile of the grass was unable to mask the stench wafting in from the huts. Gina knew immediately what she was looking at. The village quarantine.

When she was within a dozen steps of the first hut, she stopped. The perfume of death was so overpowering she could no longer take it. She opened her backpack and pulled out a small tube of mentholated chapstick. She ran the stick underneath her nose and drew in the satisfying fumes of menthol.

The opening to the hut was much larger than in the heart of the settlement. Flies and other insects darted in and out of the darkness. Gina took a deep breath, swatted away at the insects, then pushed inside. The sun poked through the thatching in a couple different areas and the space was surprisingly well lit. The hut was filled with tables, twenty or so. Sprawled out on each table was either a very sick person or a very dead person. The hut was filled with the sound of wheezing, coughing, and groans.

Gina walked to the nearest bed. Gina peered down at the young women, no older than twenty, on the bed before her. Her skin was pulled taut against her face, her red eyes glaring upward. Even against her dark black skin, the typical Kaposi sarcomas were visible; purple blotches and mush-like deep bruises on the body’s surface. Gina peered in her mouth and saw another tell-tell sign of AIDS, bulbous growths—oral carcinomas—inside and around the mouth. The lymph nodes on the woman’s neck looked like walnuts hidden beneath the skin.

Gina knew the progression of AIDS was not pretty. The young women probably contracted the virus four to seven years earlier, but noticed no ill effects until a couple years earlier. Her T-cell count—her fighter white cells—would begin to plummet, activating the virus. The virus would begin sweeping through her body, infecting her spleen, skin, lining of the abdomen and lining of the lungs. The stem cells in her bone marrow would die. The virus would invade the nerve and brain cells. The young woman would notice a lower level of cognition, mental precision, and motor skills. Going about her usual routine she might experience growing apathy, tremors, gait unsteadiness, slowing of the reflexes and loss of hand-eye coordination. Her speech would become slurred. She might even become mute.

In the final stages, the woman likely experienced a dry cough, severe weight loss, shortness of breath, high fevers, night sweats, diarrhea, fatigue, and skin rash. The virus would open the way for the opportunistic infection of other organisms resulting from the weakening of the immune system, often pneumonia.

She watched the chest of the woman before her rise and fall. Her open eyes pleaded to Gina.

Gina pulled one of three bottled waters from her backpack and poured water into the woman’s mouth. It gurgled down her throat. If the water appeased the woman, she didn’t show it.

Gina suddenly felt angry. Had this young woman been born in the United States she would have led a normal life. She would have had access to antiretroviral drugs—
the cocktail
as westerners called it—that would keep her T-cell count in check. But in a nation where the average life span is 75 years, this could be said for many different ailments. In Los Angeles, you might have to worry about the occasional earthquake, or getting killed on the interstate, but you didn’t have to worry about twelve types of snakes, thirty species of spiders, thousands of viruses, unfriendly tribes, malnutrition, and a thousand other things Americans take for granted that can kill you in an instant. In the remote village of Ptutsi, where you were probably lucky to see your thirtieth birthday, things were different.

Very, very, different.

Gina slowly walked through the tables. It was the same sad story. Women, men. In the hut, there were twenty people. 11 were dead. Nine were well on their way. There were two children, both dead. Gina scrutinized both, almost like a mother gazing down at their offspring on the cold steel table of a morgue. At each bed, she readied herself to see one of the children she was searching for. But she never did. She moved on to the next hut. Then the next. It was all the same. Every single one of these people had either died or was dying of AIDS.

In the fourth hut, Gina encountered a man moving in and out through the tables. He wore a heavy beaded headdress. He laid beads on some of the people and spoke in low tones. Gina wondered if he was a shaman. Regardless of whether he was a witch doctor or an actual doctor, he wouldn’t be able to save any of these people. The man didn’t even register her presence and she exited the hut.

Gina was about to turn around and head back to the village when she noticed a small dip in the landscape between the final hut and the outside fence. As if they were digging a hole for a swimming pool. She cocked her head to the side and started in that direction. As Gina approached the drop off, the unmistakable sound of buzzing insects resounded in her ears. She edged to the sheer artificial cliff and peered down. Through a thick cloud of humming insects, Gina could make out the outlines of hundreds of dead stacked one on top of the other.

Gina fell to her knees.

Why didn’t the villagers burn the bodies? Why would they want this constant reminder of death? Maybe it had something to do with their beliefs. In Bolivia, they believed that if they burned the bodies, their souls wouldn’t ascend to heaven. Gina wished she had Timon by her side to ask questions, or at the very least translate her questions to the villagers.

Gina stood. And then she heard it. A long, hollow wailing. A child’s cry.

Gina ran back to the hut closest to her and ducked through the entrance. The screaming was coming from the back corner. The young girl was naked, sitting upright on the bed, her mouth open, giant tears streaking down her face. The girl couldn’t have been more than four of five. How had Gina missed her? Gina picked the girl up and started rubbing her small back.

The child relaxed in her arms and Gina carried her from the hut and into the hot sun. She sat the young girl on a rock in the grass and gave her a thorough inspection. She had a rash on her neck and chest, a fever, her glands were swollen, and her liver and spleen were larger than normal. This child was sick. But not from AIDS. Some of the symptoms were the same, but the swollen spleen told the story. AIDS destroyed the spleen, it did not make it swell.

The little girl had mono.

She would feel lousy for another week or two, but she would be as good as new in a month. Gina couldn’t blame the villagers for believing the child had AIDS, but she could blame them for simply casting the girl aside. Just leaving her to die. How could the mother let this happen?
Did the mother have any control? Or was the death of a child such a common occurrence that it just was.

In her haste to inspect the girl, Gina had failed to get a good look at her. Now, the girl sitting up on the rock, her tears drying in the afternoon sun, Gina noticed the large dimple that danced in her cheek.

Gina smiled.

One down, two to go.

SHOW LOUNGE

12:1
7 p.m.

“I have to piss.”

Tupac gave me a sideways glance, smiled, and said, “So peas.”

As if being duct taped to the chair wasn’t bad enough, now this asshole wanted me to stew in my own urine. Not that I could blame him. If I’d come from where he’d come from, seen the things he’d seen, I wouldn’t hesitate to make a rich westerner piss in his pants.

Anyhow, I did have to pee. But, I could hold it. What I wanted was for one of these idiots to untie me and take me into the bathroom. If I could get into the bathroom, I thought there was a good chance I could get my hands on the gun, then either hide it on my person, or do my impression of Billy the Kid.

That was starting to look like a pipe dream.

From my seat near the entrance, I had a commanding view of all the hostages, well, at least through my left eye. My right eye was almost swollen shut. But I wasn’t the only one who was hurting. We had entered day three of this nightmare and it had taken its toll on the passengers. Other than a bag of chips over twenty-four hours earlier, no one had eaten anything. Apart from Susie, it didn’t appear anyone was in any danger of actually dying, but the sense of dread in the room was palpable. And yet, these people had no idea what they were up against. In less than twenty-four hours, this ship was going to explode, and every single person in this room would be incinerated.

Part of me wished that I was among those in the dark. Yes, most of these people were miserable and scared, but at this point I think most felt they would survive this mess. They would just have to wait it out. And before their brains could even comprehend what had happened, they would be dead. Vaporized. But for nine of us, that wasn’t the case. We were on death row. We were waiting for the chaplain, waiting for that last meal. We would slowly tick away the seconds to the explosion that would ultimately end our lives.

I peered at Tupac with my good eye and yelled, “You know what time it is?”

He ignored me.

I tried another approach. “Yo shithead. I’m having dinner with your mom in her hut. She’s making zebra stew and I don’t want to be late. Could you tell me what time it is?”

He found this humorous, gazed down at the thin black watch attached to his wrist and said, “Twel-twenny.” The way he said it, you would never have thought the man had ran through a list of different ways that he wanted to kill me.

I smiled my thanks.

12:20.

I did the math. It took me a minute, but I finally got there. 86,400 seconds to live. Well, now it was 86,040.

86,039.

86,038.

86,037.

Wasn’t this going to be fun?

I looked at Lacy. She was looking over her shoulder at me. I wondered if she was doing the same thing. Probably not. She was probably praying. Or maybe thinking about her fiancee. She wasn’t counting down the seconds until she died.

The door opened and Ganju walked through. I cut my eyes at him, then faced front, trying to act frightened, which wasn’t a complete act. Maybe over the course of the last ten hours, he’d seen the light. The light being he was being paid handsomely to do a job, and he’d come to kill me. He said something under his breath to Greg and Tupac, then made his way over to me.

I tensed, pulling the duct tape taut.

Ganju stood over me, then I felt a heavy sting across the left side of my face. He’d slapped me. I felt my head wrenched backwards and his brown face nearly touching mine. His face was contorted in a sneer. He whispered, “I visited the computer center.”