Plague

CHAPTER 34

Sam slept until nearly noon and when she awoke she found that Benjamin, Duncan, and Agent Donner had been waiting for her downstairs in the hotel lobby for over an hour. Duncan didn’t want to wake her. Besides, their flight wasn’t for another four hours and a hotel lobby was as good as any airport.

They eventually called a cab company, requested two vans, and headed back to LAX. The young doctor, Cami Mendoza, was with them as well and she mostly read on her iPad or listened to music. Sam sat next to her in the cab and noticed a tattoo of a dragon on her arm, running all the way down to the tips of her fingers.

“I like your work,” Sam said.

“Oh, thanks.”

“Does it mean anything?”

“I was born in the year and the month of the dragon. It’s not finished yet. When it’s done it’s going to run over my whole body. Except my face of course.”

“So, how’d you meet Benjamin?”

“At a rally actually. My daughter has autism and we began talking about that and just stayed in touch. In a few months I was working at his non-profit.”

“So do you practice at all?”

“Here and there, but mostly at free clinics. I don’t charge for my services anymore.”

Cami put her headphones back on and they didn’t speak again until they had stopped and were exiting the cab. Benjamin ran up from the other vehicle and said, “All right, so we’ve got a twelve-hour layover in Florida and then we head straight into Lima and take a charter flight into Iquitos. So, you know, call any jobs you need to call.”

“How long are we planning on being gone?” Samantha asked, realizing she jumped into this without asking any details.

“As long as it takes I guess. Could just be four or five days.”

They headed back into the airport and Sam sat next to Duncan as they flipped through a National Geographic he had bought at the gift shop. Her cell phone buzzed and she recognized Ralph’s cell number.

“How are you, Ralph?”

“Just tell me what I heard isn’t true.”

“What did you hear?”

“That you’re throwing your career away by following a psychopath into the jungle.”

“What do you want me to do? Go back to Atlanta and do phone interviews of flu patients in Arkansas?”

“That’s exactly what I want you to do.”

“Ralph, you’ve abandoned those people. If Agent X doesn’t abate on its own, the entire population of the island could be wiped out.”

“You think I don’t know that? You think I’ve actually slept these past three days and haven’t been in the bathroom vomiting? I’m sick with myself, Sam. I hate this. I’ve seriously considered quitting, but in the end, I knew it wasn’t the best thing.”

“Why not? Quit and come with me.”

He laughed. “Impulsivity’s the kingdom of the young and I’m not young anymore. We have to be utilitarian in this; the greatest good for the greatest number.”

“Why were we allowed to leave? Any one of us could be infected?”

“No one that was allowed to leave showed any symptoms of infection for longer than the incubation period.” He hesitated a moment before speaking again. “Where are you right now?”

“Hopping onto a flight in LAX. Why?”

“Where are you heading after that?”

“Florida and then Peru. I should be back to work within a week. If there’s work waiting for me.”

He paused a moment. “It’ll be waiting for you. Just be careful out there.”

“I will, Ralph. Thanks.”

As she hung up, Benjamin noticed that she had been speaking on the phone and he walked over.

“Who was that?”

“Ralph. Why?”

“You didn’t tell him where we are, did you?”

“I told him we were boarding a plane.”

“What are you so interested in that for?” Duncan said.

Benjamin said, “So, the whole island was abandoned on the off chance one person might bring the disease onto the mainland, right? How do you think it is that they’ve just let us fly out without so much as a doctor looking us over?”

“No one on that plane showed any signs of infection,” Duncan said. “Why wouldn’t they let us leave?”

Sam said, “No, he’s right. They’re sentencing people to death and they just let us walk away.”

“I don’t understand the big deal.”

Benjamin said, “The big deal is that they shouldn’t have just let us walk away. By right, we should be in quarantine.” He looked to Sam. “Did you offer where you were or did he specifically ask?”

“He asked.”

“If they wanted us in quarantine,” Duncan said, “they’d just ask us to go. We’d all comply.”

“Not if it was indefinite,” Benjamin added.

“They wouldn’t do that. That’s not quarantine, that’s prison.”

“Let me ask you this, Dr. Adams: is there anything the government is forbidden from doing in the interest of national security? Dick Cheney, Bush, and then Obama and Holder made sure that the government has unlimited power as long as they say they’re doing it for the interest of the greater good.”

“Within reason. Anything else is just basement conspiracy theory.”

Sam said, “Why would they book us a flight on a military charter?”

“Maybe someone was supposed to meet us when we landed that didn’t show up?”

Sam stood. “Enough guesswork, let’s get to our flight.”