We all fall down, p.16
We All Fall Down, page 16
“Minister, in all deference to your expertise in managing emerging epidemics”—Byron’s smile is pure frost—“in my experience, this outbreak is unique. We may not have a specific answer for weeks or more.”
Alana and Byron leave City Hall together and step out into the bright sunshine. Once out of earshot of the others, she asks him, “Why do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Antagonize people that way. Especially the minister.”
His nose crinkles. “You didn’t think she was challenging me?”
“Okay, maybe not the best example. But you have a way of goading people with that smile of yours. The way you do with Nico.”
“Ah.” The same grin reemerges. “That’s what this is about.”
“It’s only an example,” she says, maybe a little too quickly.
He views her with curiosity. “You’re very protective of him. You two have a . . . relationship that goes beyond the professional.”
It’s Alana’s turn to fold her arms. “That’s none of your business.”
“No offense intended.” He looks away. “Aside from your . . . um . . . credentials, I don’t know a lot about you.”
Byron seems awkward all of a sudden. Alana realizes she doesn’t know much about him, either, beyond his professional status. She’s not even sure whether he has a partner or children.
Before she can reply, Sergio Fassino strides up to them. “You need to come with me,” he announces. “Both of you.”
“Where?” Alana asks.
“The hospital.”
Byron lifts his chin. “What’s going on, Sergio?”
“Yasin Ahmed.”
Alana’s throat thickens. “He’s in hospital?”
Sergio walks on without answering.
Less than thirty minutes later, Alana, Byron, Nico, and Sergio—who appears fidgety and uncomfortable in his protective gear—gather around a bedside on the sixth floor of Ospedale San Martino. The man on the stretcher looks up at them from behind his hospital mask with wide fearful eyes.
It takes Alana a few moments to recognize the patient as Paolo, the contractor from the San Giovanni construction site. “Paolo has the plague?” she asks.
Sergio shakes his head. “He showed up at the emergency room an hour ago thinking he did.”
“He was terrified,” Nico cuts in. “But the blood tests and X-rays confirm that he only has a chest cold.”
“In his panic, though, Paolo has solved a mystery for us,” Sergio says.
“Which is?” Alana asks.
“Yasin Ahmed.”
Aside from the occasional cough, Paolo is breathing easily, but he seems to grow more anxious by the second as Sergio questions him, with Nico translating for the others.
“Paolo swears that on the morning they found Yasin collapsed at the site, the boy was already dead,” Nico says.
“Who is ‘they’?” Byron asks.
“Paolo and Vittoria.” Nico listens to the interrogation. “Vittoria was first to arrive . . . She found Yasin at the bottom of the pit. The boy had fallen in it during the night . . . He was sick the day before, yes, but they didn’t know he had remained on-site overnight.” He waits again. “Paolo says they panicked . . . They were behind schedule . . . under such tight time and money constraints . . . Vittoria reminded him of the time INAIL had shut down a site for a week after a worker died in a crane accident.”
“INAIL?” Alana asks.
“The Institute for Insurance Against Accidents at Work,” Nico explains. “Paolo says Vittoria convinced him they couldn’t take the chance . . . It would draw unnecessary attention to the site.”
Sergio’s tone grows pointed, and Paolo shakes his head frantically.
Nico grimaces behind his clear mask. “Paolo says they lowered Yasin’s body into one of the forms and poured him in concrete.”
“That would make him a bit tougher to find,” Byron grumbles.
Nico intervenes to ask Paolo a question. The contractor frantically waves his hands in front of his chest as he spouts his reply.
“Paolo swears Marcello didn’t know about Yasin,” Nico says. “That he and Vittoria decided to hide the body on their own.”
“Do you believe him?” Alana asks.
Nico shrugs. “Who knows with this bunch?”
They don’t learn much more. According to Paolo, no one had asked Yasin about his illness. Apparently Vittoria had assumed that the youth was just hungover and had refused to let him go home early. The next time they saw Yasin, he was dead in the pit, and they impulsively hatched the plan to hide the body before the authorities started sniffing around. Paolo even offers to lead Sergio to the precise slab where they encased Yasin but concedes it would be of little help, as they had already built on top of it.
They leave the unit together. Nico and Alana emerge out of the decontamination station at nearly the same time, but they have to wait a few minutes in the lobby for Byron to appear. When he finally joins them, his expression is grim.
“What is it?” Alana asks.
“I just got a call from Geneva,” Byron says. “They finally have a match for this strain of the plague.”
“Which is?”
“Yersiniai pestis orientalis.”
Nico shakes his head. “I’ve never heard of this subtype.”
“Because it hasn’t been seen in hundreds of years,” Byron says. “Not since the Middle Ages.”
“No . . .” Alana murmurs.
Byron locks eyes with her. “It’s one of the only two known variants of the medieval plague.”
She goes cold. “The return of the Black Death.”
Chapter
Thirty-Four
Armageddon. Perhaps it has descended already without any form of divine intervention.
He feels dirty just being here. He read up beforehand on Scampìa, the crime-ridden neighborhood in northern Naples, but only in person does he appreciate the ungodliness of the place. A modern-day Sodom or Gomorrah. The dilapidated buildings are protected by chain-link fences and locked gates. The street is littered with garbage, much of it in the form of humans. Drunks and addicts totter down the streets, a few push their possessions in shopping carts. The neighborhood stinks of sin—body odor, tobacco, and rotting garbage.
He crosses at an intersection and passes two young women who stand on stiletto heels under the bluish haze of a streetlight. Both smoke cigarettes. Each of them is squeezed into a tube top and tiny skirt. One of them is taller than him, with shoulders as broad. And the other one with the purple-dyed hair, who looks to be no more than fifteen or sixteen years old, can’t stop giggling. It’s obvious they are intoxicated. He wonders if cocaine or even amphetamine—the crystal meth he read was so rampant in this neighborhood—is to blame.
“Hey, lover boy,” the taller one calls to him in a deep voice. “Want to play?”
He is shocked to realize that she must have once been, or possibly still is, a man. He shakes his head and continues walking, but the girls follow, falling into stride on either side of him.
“For seventy-five euros, I’ll blow you good,” the purple-haired one offers.
“And for a hundred fifty, you can do us both,” the masculine one coos. “Bet you’ve never had a threesome, lover boy. Not as special as one with the two of us, anyway.”
O Lord, what has this world come to?
“Don’t be shy, lover boy.”
“Tend Your sick ones, O Lord Christ,” he mumbles to himself. “Rest Your weary ones. Bless Your dying ones. Soothe Your suffering ones. Pity Your afflicted ones.”
“Ooh, we got a religious one here.” The taller one claps her hands gleefully. “My absolute favorite kind to corrupt!”
“Looks like your pants are saying yes,” the purple-haired one cries out as she points at his crotch.
To his horror, he realizes that his member has stirred to life. The shame and guilt overwhelm him. He has worked so hard to banish those urges. He wants to vomit. He wants to run. Instead, he just mutters, “I have no money.”
The jezebels seem to lose interest and fall away. He scampers on for three or four more blocks, until he’s convinced they are no longer following. Then he doubles back to the streetlight where he met them, but the two whores are nowhere to be seen.
He surveys the landscape around him. Ten or twenty feet to his right, a man lies slumped at the foot of a chain-link fence, either unconscious or dead. The woman sitting beside him ignores the fallen man altogether. Instead, she jabs a needle into the crook of her elbow.
O Lord, this is so much better than the railway platform, he thinks. Please forgive me for defying Your earlier command.
But his prayer, like all the others he has uttered since leaving the train station, goes unanswered.
Undeterred, he backs into an alcove, a shadow away from the streetlight. He extracts a glove from his pocket, removes his backpack, and lowers it to the ground. He reaches his gloved hand inside until his fingers find the cordlike tail. As soon as he pulls on it, the rat squeaks in protest. He can feel the pressure of the bite around his finger, but the teeth don’t penetrate the glove. He pulls Cacio out by the tail.
The rat stills with fear as it dangles in front of his face.
His sympathy stirs for the petrified animal. “Not to worry, Cacio. You will love it here. So much to eat. So many places to hide.”
The rat stares back with dark blank eyes.
Then he parrots the same phrase his mentor sometimes says to him: “You should feel honored. After all, you will be doing the Lord’s work.”
Chapter
Thirty-Five
The second vodka neat tastes better than the first. Alana finds the slight buzz welcome after this deflating day. Byron is still nursing his first beer while she’s already considering a third drink, as she toys with the straw in her glass.
She can’t even remember which one of them suggested drinks. Byron gave her a ride back to her hotel and their conversation regarding potential containment strategies continued into the lobby and up to the bar. Now, after midnight, they’re sitting at a table with the whole bar to themselves. No wonder, Alana thinks again. Who would visit this doomed city?
“Back in the Middle Ages, it wasn’t called the Black Death,” she says apropos of nothing. “That term wasn’t coined for centuries.”
“What did they call it?” Byron asks.
“The Great Mortality.”
Byron studies the rim of his beer bottle. “It does kind of fit.”
“You figure?” Alana is aware that alcohol sometimes brings out an edge in her, but she makes no effort to suppress it. “Truth is, ‘The Great Mortality’ was a massive understatement.”
“It does explain a lot, though. Like why this outbreak is so much deadlier than what we’ve seen with the modern-day bubonic plague.”
“That’s about the only thing it explains.”
“It’s as if they’re not even the same bug. Like comparing a cold virus to Ebola.”
“You’re gonna tell me about Ebola?” She taps her chest indignantly. “I was there. In West Africa.”
“So I’ve heard.” His eyes glint with sarcasm.
“Then again, the plague does have one major epidemiological advantage over Ebola that will make it far deadlier.”
“Which is?”
“Ebola kills most of its sufferers. It’s too damned lethal. It usually burns itself out by running out of fresh victims. But if we are looking at a survival rate of one-half or two-thirds for those infected, then the plague can just keep spreading and spreading.”
He nods grimly. “And it has a separate animal reservoir—in rats and fleas—whereas Ebola only infects primates.”
“Yup. The Black Death could be as big a killer now as it was in medieval times. Half of Europe gone in three years. We’re talking tens of millions of people in today’s terms. Maybe more.” She hums the tune to a familiar nursery rhyme and then, as she lets the straw topple to the table, mutters, “Ashes, ashes. We all fall down.”
“Come on, Alana. You’re getting a little carried away.”
“Am I?” She raises her empty glass and shakes it in the direction of the waiter. “We might be truly fucked this time around, Byron.”
“So this is you after two drinks, huh?”
Alana laughs. “Yeah, but they’re doubles.”
“Can’t wait to see what a third does for you.”
“Puts me to sleep, I hope.”
His smile fades. “Tell me about West Africa, Alana. Seriously.”
“What’s to know?”
“I heard it’s why you left the WHO.”
“You heard right.”
He leans closer. “What went so wrong?”
“I’ve seen a lot of pointless death in my day. I’ve been to some of the most hopeless places the world has to offer. And before the WHO, I was stationed for four months in Afghanistan. Christ, I almost died there. But Liberia . . .” She closes her eyes. “That was worse. Way worse.”
“Worse how?”
“The WHO sent us in unarmed and unprepared. We were as useless as a rescue boat without life preservers . . . or rope . . . or a fucking rudder or compass, for that matter.” She looks up at him. “There were only three of us on my team. It was so bad, so much worse than what we expected. I warned Geneva every single day. And they just sat on my reports. All we wanted to do was to protect local doctors and nurses who were caring for the sick and dying. They were begging us for simple stuff like sterile gloves and masks, body bags for the dead. The most basic infection-control gear. And all I got from Geneva was the runaround.”
“That surprises you? You know how the bureaucracy creaks along at the WHO. Takes a special task force just to get the printer paper refilled.”
“Tell that to Moses Conteh.”
“Who?”
“A local doctor who ran a clinic in Ganta, in the north. Maybe the bravest guy I’ve ever met. Moses worked day and night with Ebola victims. He used to plead with me for supplies to protect his staff. Right up until the day the virus killed him.” She shakes her head. “Moses was thirty-four years old.”
The waiter drops off a fresh vodka for her and sweeps the last glass away with a quick “Prego.”
“Okay, time for me to drink and for you to talk,” Alana announces. “Tell me your story.”
“I’ve never been to West Africa.”
She rolls her eyes. “Why the WHO?”
“You ever been to Montreal in February?”
She swallows such a big sip of vodka that her throat burns. “Bullshit.”
“You’d be surprised what a Quebec winter can drive you to.”
“For real, Byron.”
He studies the label on his beer bottle. “I was at McGill University for seven years—on a full professor tenure track—but I got tired of academic life. Too competitive and cutthroat, even for me. Besides, I always preferred fieldwork. One day, three years ago, a colleague at the WHO made me an offer I could have easily refused—for even less money than my academic salary—but I took it.” He hesitates. “I needed a change.”
“What about the wife and kids?”
“No kids. Dana and I tried for a while, but . . . just wasn’t to be. Maybe for the best, because we didn’t last.” He looks down again. “Apparently I’m not the easiest guy to get along with.”
“You?” Alana feigns shock. “Hard to even fathom.”
Byron grins self-consciously. “Dana and I were still colleagues at the university. It was hard after we split. That, more than anything, sent me to Geneva. I needed a fresh start or change of scenery or whatever you want to call it.”
“Aha! You’re still in love with her!” Alana wags a finger at him. Tomorrow she knows she’s going to be embarrassed by her behavior, but right now she doesn’t care. “Admit it!”
He rolls his shoulders. “Change isn’t easy for me. Plus, you might not have noticed, but I’m kind of stubborn.”
“No! The shocking revelations are coming fast and furious.”
“Okay, okay.” He laughs. “This soul-baring is exhausting. Your turn. Tell me about you and Nico.”
“There’s not much to say.”
His grin widens. “That’s kind of cute.”
“What is?”
“The way your eye twitches when you lie.”
She doesn’t even bother denying it. “I met Nico when I started at the WHO. We dated on and off for a year or so, but it ended about eight years ago.”
“It’s not really over, though, is it?”
“Yes, it is. He’s married with kids.”
“That doesn’t always make a difference.”
“Well, it sure as fuck does for me!” She slams her glass down, spilling some vodka.
He reaches out and touches her wrist, so fleetingly that she wonders if she imagined it. “I know how it feels, Alana.”
Her face heats up, and she suddenly feels almost sober.
She’s thankful when he changes subjects. “It’s pretty obvious that Yasin Ahmed was no terrorist,” he says.
“Yeah, it looks more and more like the poor kid was our actual Patient Zero.”
“So where did he get his infection from?” he asks. “The Black Death hasn’t existed in hundreds of years. Not even in a lab.”
“Got to be the construction site. It’s an eight-hundred-year-old monastery they ripped apart. One that, according to Brother Silvio, barely survived the Black Death. God knows what the excavators dug into over there.”
“Say that were true. How would the bacteria survive for more than six hundred years underground?”
“Who knows? Maybe it survived in some kind of spore form? Other bacteria do. For example, C. difficile can live dormant as spores for years. A kind of suspended animation.”
“Six hundred years? Seems like a stretch.” He frowns. “Even if we assume the microbe did originate somewhere in the monastery, how did it travel all the way across the city to Parco Serra Gropallo to become endemic in the rat population there?”
Alana just stares at him, lost for a plausible explanation.
