Ebola K: A Terrorism Thriller Read Free

back
over his shoulder with a grin.
    “Worried is a better word.”
    Rashid laughed. “A billion people in Africa,
and maybe a few thousand cases of Ebola ever, and you think you’re
in trouble.”
    Put that way, it made Austin’s fear of Ebola
embarrassing. Nevertheless, he said, “Ebola kills everybody who
gets it.”
    Rashid laughed again. “Not everybody .”
    The boda rode up on a crest and the jungle
thinned. They were well up on the north slope of Mt. Elgon. Below,
Kapchorwa’s houses and huts seemed to grow out of the intersection
of a few dirt roads—some short, some snaking off east or west.
Paving for the roads hadn’t made it from the capital out to the
distant districts yet. And the Kapchorwa District, bordered on the
east by Kenya with its hundred thousand farmers, was just about as
far from Kampala as one could get and still be in Uganda.
    The boda driver stopped and announced,
“Here.”
    Austin stepped off the bike. “Thanks.”
    Rashid got off, hitched up his pants, and
adjusted his man parts. “Next time, I’ll get my own boda.”
    “You do that, Rashid.” Austin reached into
his pocket to pull out a few more shillings as a tip, but the boda
driver was already hurrying to get back up the trail and apparently
away from Kapchorwa. He flashed a white palm in a wave and smiled
as he revved the whiny engine to speed back up the bumpy trail.
    Still thinking about the Ebola virus, Austin
said, “He got out of here in a hurry.”
    Rashid watched the boda driver zip back up
the trail, not seeming to care how quickly the boda left. “It’ll be
dark soon.”
    Austin looked west toward the sun sinking
over the brown and green plain. The smoke of a few fires drifted up
and dissolved in the wind. They were too large to be cooking fires,
but too small to be wild fires. Probably charcoal production. At
least, that was the guess that Austin attached to forested spots in
the distance that leaked smoldering gray into the sky. He stopped
staring at the vista and started walking down the trail. Rashid
went along.
    The small town of Kapchorwa, with its hundred
or so dwellings, sheds, and businesses, seemed quiet. Looking down
the slope, Austin didn’t see anyone moving around, nor did he hear
the distant shrill sounds of children playing before dinner. He did
smell peanuts roasting—groundnuts, to the locals—along with the
savory smell of onions cooking. He realized he was hungry
again.
    Down on the village’s main road, an
overturned semi-tractor-trailer still lay as it had since rolling
over during Austin’s first week of teaching. Every day since, when
it wasn’t raining, village kids played on the overturned vehicle.
And though no rain clouds were in the sky, the kids were
absent.
    Halfway down the slope, they left the
meandering trail and cut across a lush sweet potato field.
    They neared a house, mud-walled on a wooden
frame under a tin roof rusted as red as wet clay. It stood alone
among the crops. A rope draped with wrinkled clothes was strung
from one corner of the house to a lone tree. Plastic tubs of
different colors—all-purpose and dirty—leaned against the walls
outside. From the deep shadows inside the open doorway of the
hovel, a pair of silently wary eyes watched Austin and Rashid
pass.
    Softly, Rashid said, “That man is
frightened.”
    Austin looked back at Rashid. “Of us?”
    Rashid shook his head.
    “How do you know?” Austin asked.
    “Are you joking? You couldn’t see the fright
in his eyes?”
    “I think you’re reading too much into
it.”
    Rashid pointed down to the village. “Where is
everybody?”
    Sarcastically, Austin answered, “Maybe Ebola
killed them all.”
    Rashid ignored the comment and instead cut a
path through the bushy sweet potatoes, heading toward Isaac Luwum’s
whitewashed cinderblock house on the western edge of town.

Chapter 4
    Isaac Luwum, their sponsor, maintained a
hedge of unruly native plants around the edges of his front yard.
Austin and