Black Rose

CHAPTER 31

The village of Sao Bendito was gripped with fear. Candles burned day and night in the church. There was always someone kneeling and beseeching God to remove the affliction He had sent upon them. If the villagers had known who was really responsible, they would have stopped praying and headed for the clinic with their machetes instead of their rosaries.

The clinic was overwhelmed. Bodies lay everywhere, wherever there was space on the floor, or outside under an improvised shelter. By the time they got to the clinic they were already in the latter stages of the disease. No one lay there for long. A day, perhaps two, spent in the illusion of a possible cure and then they were carried off in a makeshift shroud and buried in a mass grave. Funerals were no longer held at the church. The priest had been an early victim. An ancient backhoe that had been the village pride and joy worked overtime digging pits to bury the bodies.

Karl Schmidt looked out over the chaos and tried not to breathe the stench through the surgical mask hooked over his face. A woman lay coughing and moaning in pain on a makeshift bed on the floor of the clinic. He looked down at her and made a few notes in a small notebook he carried. He knew she would be dead before the day was out.

The woman was nineteen years old and had been beautiful, only a week before. She lay in a pool of urine and blood, a ghastly shell of her former self. Cracked, black blotches that looked like poisonous flowers had spread over her body.

Schmidt's scientific curiosity had gotten the better of him and he'd stayed longer than he'd planned. Besides, he had faith in the vaccine he'd developed. Even so, there was no need to push his luck. Sao Bendito was isolated but it was only a question of time before word got out and the area was quarantined by the government. He'd give it another day and then he was going back to Europe and civilization.

Doctor Silva was away from the clinic, out on the Indian reservation where the plague had already killed hundreds. By the time he returned, Schmidt would be gone.

There was nothing more to do here. He stepped out of the foul-smelling shack and into the clean, humid air of a sub-tropical morning and stripped off his mask. Schmidt took a deep breath and dropped the mask in a trashcan by the door. Somewhere a chorus of monkeys chattered. A flock of brilliantly colored parrots rose from the tops of the trees, the sun lighting up the vibrant red and gold and blue of their feathers. He watched them take flight.

Schmidt took another deep breath and smiled. Yes, it was a beautiful day.