Catacombs Read Free Page A

collapse if you keep on at this pace–you were up all of last night."
    "I feel fine." In truth she had experienced dancing spots before her eyes, and palpitations, as a result of jumping too quickly out of bed. Erika blinked hotly at the frieze of lizards around the screen door, and heard someone groaning inside the ward. "Shouldn't we know what it is by now? You sent the blood and sputum samples to Mbeya over three weeks ago."
    He shrugged. "The laboratory there is primitive. The samples may have been mishandled; they often are. Or perhaps they were spoiled in transit to the virus lab in Dar."
    "This can't be an isolated outbreak; there must have been something like this fever before. There must be a vaccine."
    "I don't know, Erika. Mutations of deadly viruses are common in Africa. It takes a very long time to isolate the new strains and cultivate antiviruses. By the time that happens, the disease may run its course."
    "Leaving how many dead?" She was panting for breath. She leaned against the wall; the lizards rearranged themselves watchfully. "But that's it, isn't it? That's why the government can only spare us one doctor and a few nurses when what we really need are virologists, epidemiologists, a well-equipped field laboratory. Does USAID or the World Health Organization know what's happening in Ivututu? No. Because someone in power in this country will be bloody well pleased if every single member of the Chapman/Weller expedition dies here!"
    Whenever she touched on this sensitive subject, he pretended to have great difficulty in understanding her Swiss-accented French.
    "Virologists are scarce in East Africa. But I must admit I would welcome some help, if only for a few days." He dragged on his cigarette, then stubbed it out on the railing and pocketed what was left. "They'll be coming with the supplies soon enough; I want to be sure my requisition slips are in order. Even then it's a guessing game each time I open a parcel."
    Erika, her face flushed, turned without another word and went inside. They had received supplies on a steady basis, some of which were still in Red Cross crates airlifted to East Africa to combat health emergencies nearly a decade ago. They had ample fuel for the generators and more than enough food, but she knew she was right: No one in authority really cared that they were being slowly wiped out.
    Edith Esmond, an archaeologist from the University of Chicago, had been the first to sicken and then to die, her throat impassably swollen, her tongue black, her skullbones soft as a baby's. Then Brant Luradale, the expedition's photographer, and the epigrapher Evangelos Trimakis succumbed within a week after symptoms appeared. Each man was past fifty and Edith, a robust fifty-seven, had been the senior member of their group. Of the thirty-two nonnative members of Chapman/Weller, all alive and well six weeks ago, one was missing and unaccounted for–Jack Portline's murderer.-and seven were dead (their bodies, presumably on someone's orders, had immediately been packed in dry ice and removed, by military helicopter, from the mission; but Erika had no idea to where the bodies were taken, and Raymond Poincarré, if he knew, wouldn't talk).
    Twenty more of the explorers and scientists had fallen ill. Paul Boneparth, a forty-six-year-old computer programmer, had been at the point of death for two days, then rallied. His symptoms had abated mysteriously, but his mind seemed to be gone. Of the four members of the expedition so far untouched by the bug, Erika at thirty-six was the oldest.
    In the high room dimmed by shutters where the sick lay sweltering, nearly naked, bronzy from fever like fallen pharaohs in temporary pyramids of net, she found another black nurse asleep sitting up, head pillowed against her chubby hands on the back of a metal chair. She had a lollipop secure in one cheek, and nursed it unconsciously between dragging snores. The victims of the fever announced their distress in mutters,