Kane wagged a tail.
“I’m going with you,” Charlotte said. She seemed to sense an objection building and stepped forward against it. “I have patients there. They’re still my responsibility.”
“It’ll be a long walk back,” Frank warned.
Charlotte’s spine straightened. “I’m not giving up on them.”
Monk gave her a small smile. “With that attitude, can you be my doctor, too?”
22
April 25, 4:11 A.M. CAT
Ituri Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo
Gray fought the ATV up a difficult terrain of lichen-scribed boulders and mossy rocks. The vehicle’s headlights speared through the darkness under the heavy canopy. The beams bounced all about. Massive tires chewed across the landscape, riding over obstacles like a rampaging monster truck. The cabin tilted one way, then crashed down on the other, jarring everyone side to side.
Benjie and Faraji rode in the back. Though strapped to their seats, they still braced their arms and legs in all directions, looking like a pair of squirrel monkeys struggling to keep their perches in a storm-swept tree.
Next to Gray, Kowalski snored, competing with the rumble of the engine. His head snapped back and forth, but failed to wake him, proving there was likely nothing inside his skull that could be rattled.
Gray had taken over the wheel two hours ago, just as the night’s storm had finally ended. Still, the humid jungle continued to weep and drip all around. He searched the eastern skies for any sign of dawn, praying for some hint that this interminable night would come to an end.
Unfortunately, the world ahead rose in a wall of forested mountains, cliffs, and volcanic cones. Some of the peaks rose to over fifteen thousand feet. Their path climbed from the western half of the continent, topographically known as Low Africa, to the high plateaus and mountain ranges of High Africa. Splitting the two regions was the great Eastern African Rift. It stretched four thousand miles long, cracking down its length into many smaller pieces. According to the topo map, directly ahead of them was the most inhospitable section of all, called the Albertine Rift.
The blue line that Gray had drawn on the topo map headed straight into the heart of that broken landscape, where the Somali tectonic plate shoved high, forming an impenetrable barrier of sheer cliffs and jagged mountains.
As they climbed toward it, Gray hoped that the forest would thin, but instead it only grew taller and thicker, as if the jungle were trying to push those highlands back down by the sheer weight of the vegetation.
The trunks of palms and red cedars grew to gargantuan sizes. Ropy lianas netted them all together, while stands of bamboo formed impenetrable barriers that had to be skirted around. The entire landscape—shrouded with moss, entangled with vines, and festooned with giant ferns—looked prehistoric, like some Jurassic holdover.
The jungle tried to push into the cabin through the missing windshield. It smelled of a rotting sweetness. Leaves slapped at them. Mosquitoes and black flies swarmed inside, plaguing them with stings and bites. The only reprieve came when they slowed enough to allow the diesel fumes from the ATV’s exhaust snorkel to drive off the haranguing hordes. But as soon as their vehicle started moving again, the clouds would swamp back inside.
But such tiny nuisances were the least of the threats. Gray constantly searched the jungles for any bigger dangers. Back a mile ago, a herd of wild hogs, curl-tusked beasts, had trampled around their ATV, skirting them like a boulder in a river. But the hogs had moved onward, ignoring them, leaving them unmolested.
Gray found himself holding his breath for long stretches. Tension tightened the muscles between his shoulder blades. He felt exposed with the window missing. They had not been attacked in hours, so he expected another assault at any moment. He glanced all around as he forced the ATV up the next steep incline.
When he reached the top, the terrain finally leveled out for a stretch. He followed a swollen stream, where a recent flash flood had cleared much of the undergrowth and brush from along its banks. Able to travel faster, he felt more hopeful.
Still, the dark jungle around them remained daunting. The Ituri rain forest covered over twenty-five thousand square miles. A fifth of it was preserved and managed under a conservancy, but the rest was wild and untamed. Especially this remote eastern corner, where the land was a confounding maze, all buried under thick forest.
Anything could be hidden here.
The same worry must have drawn Benjie to release his vicelike hold on his armrests and lean forward. “I’ve been thinking about the source of this virus,” he said.
Gray looked back to him. “What about it?”
“If it truly lies somewhere ahead of us, it must have remained dormant for ages, possibly for millennia.”
“At least going back to the time of Prester John and his lost kingdom,” Gray agreed.
“Exactly. But what set this virus off now? After so long? Something had to trigger it. That’s what I’ve been struggling with.”
Gray frowned at the biologist. “I thought we believed it was the recent flooding, that it flushed that virus loose into the greater world.”
“I have no doubt that the heavy monsoons exacerbated the spread of the virus. But I think its initial release predated the storms. By several months. Probably longer. Especially after what we’ve seen.”
“How do you mean?”
“I keep thinking about those jackals. The rains and flooding must have forced them to migrate from their normal territory. Wherever the pack had come from, the virus must have been smoldering for at least a year in order to generate those biological changes.”
Gray considered this. According to Benjie’s earlier discourse, a jackal’s gestation period, followed by the time it took for a pup to grow to maturity, spanned nearly a year.
Benjie continued, “But if that jackal pack had always lived within the scope of the virus, I would’ve expected more divergence from their normal appearance, especially after so many generations of exposure. They wouldn’t be just bigger versions of themselves.”
“So, you think the animals were exposed within the past year, causing them to be only mildly altered. Then the floods drove them farther afield.”
He nodded. “If I had to guess, I would say the virus began its spread abruptly, but it only reached a limited area at first, effecting local species. After that, it slowly spread outward. Passing from species to species.”
“Until the storms came.”
Benjie nodded. “The flooding would’ve triggered a mass migration, a huge shift in the environment, leading the virus to eventually spill over into the human population.”
“Which we know was a recent event. But you’re thinking the virus was brewing out there for far longer.”
“I do. Which worries me.”
“Why?”
“We’ve been focused on trying to figure out where the virus originally came from, but I think it’s equally important to know what triggered its initial spread, after millennia of being dormant.”
Gray suspected he was right. “Do you have any thoughts on that?”
“Maybe . . .”
Gray heard the hesitancy in the biologist’s voice. The young man was clearly gifted, able to work out puzzles, maybe as well as Gray could. Benjie was a kindred spirit in this regard.
“What are you thinking?” Gray pressed him.