Ebola K: A Terrorism Thriller Read Free Page B

outbreak ever.”
    Austin raised his hands in frustration. “You
convinced me that the odds of us getting Ebola are so
astronomically small that I shouldn’t worry about it.”
    “That’s the same thing I told Najid.”
    “But?”
    “He worries. He told me to get on a plane and
come home. He said he had a ticket waiting for me in Entebbe.”
    “When’s the flight?”
    “It was this morning. He said if I didn’t get
on that plane, he’d come here and grab me by the ear, put me on a
plane, and take me home. His worries are infecting me, I
think.”
    “Look, Rashid, I don’t know much about Ebola.
Somebody has to bleed on you or something. And I read it has a long
incubation time.”
    “How do you know this?” Rashid asked.
    “I did a little bit of research before I came
over,” said Austin. “I came across an underreported story about a
small outbreak in Sierra Leone and that piqued my curiosity. Mostly
what I wanted to know was what I could catch while I was here, and
how I could avoid it.”
    “What are you telling me?”
    Austin said, “We left the village last week.
Six days ago. There was no Ebola here when we left. If by some
really bad luck somebody caught it from a monkey or whatever, it
would be, like, one person. That’s it. There is no such thing as a
whole village full of patient zeroes. So if somebody got it, their
caregiver might get it, too. And so on, and so on. It could take a
month or two before enough people get it for anybody but the local
doctor to even notice.”
    Rashid didn’t say anything.
    Austin sat back down on the couch. “Take a
deep breath. Make the tea. We’ll drink some. Then we’ll go. For all
we know, Benoit and Margaux will come back while the water is
coming to a boil and we can ask them what’s going on. If not, we’ll
go over to the hospital and ask Dr. Littlefield. He’ll know.”

Chapter 5
    At first, Salim hated Pakistan. Every single
thing about it was unlike America. Of course, he expected that. But
after living nineteen of his twenty years in a Denver suburb, and
only one year in Hyderabad, the romantic idea of Pakistani
life—the basis for his expectations—was nothing like the
reality.
    From the moment he landed in Lahore and
walked off the plane, it started. The air was pungent with the
smell of curry, diesel fumes, a whole range of plant smells, and
even a bit of rotting garbage. All the smells of a city that one
gets used to and doesn’t even notice, until suddenly replaced by a
whole different set of smells, becoming a constantly noticeable
reminder of alien-ness.
    But that was just the first thing.
    The people spoke English with an accent that
Salim had a hard time following. Of course, his parents spoke with
a similar accent. However, they used good grammar in calm, slow,
educated speech—not the rushed slang of people on the street.
    Salim’s accent was distinctly American, and
that earned him suspicious glances from everyone he spoke to. His
sense of alienation made the suspicion feel like hate. Back on that
day, as he waited three hours for his tardy contact to come forward
and collect him, he sulked near a ticket counter, trying to figure
out how to turn his meager cash into a ticket back to Denver.
    In fact, he’d been looking at his watch as he
sat there, and had picked the top of the upcoming hour as the time
when he’d stop waiting and call his father to beg him for money to
buy that ticket. But ten minutes before the hand reached twelve on
the clock face, a man walked up to him. “Salim?” he asked.
    From there, Salim and his bag were hurried
out of the airport, rushed into a taxi, and dropped off on a
crowded street. He was hustled through block after block of pushing
and shoving people, and finally trundled off in a rickety white
van. Five others, silent young men with worried faces, shared the
rear seats of the van with Salim. A driver and the man in charge
sat in front.
    They spent the better part of two days
heading north in