whenever there is an overthrow of a government or a grab for power,” Charlie began to explain, “the first thing that is done is to seize and control the media. That way whoever is taking power can limit the news and information the citizens receive. Last night was a warning to us, the media, that this is a whole new playing field, and the government isn’t fooling around.”
Maggie began to nod her head in agreement. “I had a teacher in high school,” Maggie said, folding her arms, “who said to worry about anyone or any group who doesn’t like the media or who wants to censor it.”
“Your teacher was right on the money,” Charlie began to say, when someone began pounding on the apartment door. Maggie and Charlie stared across the table at one another. The pounding grew louder and Charlie, pushing away from the table, headed for the door, Maggie close behind.
It seemed as if the person knocking was determined to bring down the door, threshold and all. Charlie had just turned the knob and was trying to crack the door to peak out, when it suddenly burst inward, shoving Charlie aside and almost knocking him off his feet. A black, female police captain stood panting above Charlie. She quickly scanned the room, stared at Maggie for a moment, and then turned to quickly shut and lock the door behind her.
“What the hell, Shade!” Charlie snapped. “You almost knocked me on my ass.” The policewoman ignored Charlie. She moved toward the window, peeked out, and looked both directions as if she thought someone was following her. Then she quickly grabbed the heavy cloth curtains and pulled them shut. Standing beside the window, she rested her back against the wall, eyes closed, catching her breath.
Maggie’s mind was racing as she noticed Shade’s bizarre, paranoid behavior. Shade could get wound up but was typically afraid of nothing. Maggie and Shade had often sat together at the hospital when Charlie’s wife was in the Intensive Care Unit.
When Charlie was growing up, his parents were missionaries traveling to some of the unknown parts of the Third World, including countries in Asia, Africa, and South America. Charlie was a little boy when they traveled to Nigeria to perform work for their church. His parents had returned home from the African nation with two reminders of their trip – Malaria and his new baby sister, Shade.
Events had been put into place weeks before Charlie and his parents stepped foot on the African continent. An aging priest, the spiritual leader of the jungle region, had rescued the sick and malnourished Shade from a village devastated by the deadly Ebola virus. Other nearby villagers had alerted Father Russo of the epidemic and even led him within sight of the huts and outbuildings. However, none would come near. In the same manner their fathers and forefathers had prevented the spread of disease outbreaks, they had sealed off all paths to the village with piles of logs and then set fire to the brush and trees outside the hamlet. A scorched-earth policy had always worked in the past, so they continued it into the present.
Father Russo had squeezed through an opening in the logs that the local men had created just for him. He had barely stepped through it when a noise made him look over his shoulder. The passageway was already being sealed behind him. The village was only three hundred feet away. A small haze of smoke from the brush fires encircling the village made it difficult to see. Father Russo wondered which saint he should pray to when facing a deadly disease zone. He continued to walk forward and remembered the square cloth surgical mask a nun had placed in his hand as he had left the mission. He dug it out of his pocket and tied it over his mouth and nose, not really knowing if it provided much or any protection from the invisible germs ahead.
As he neared the village, Father Russo saw the first line of bodies lying in a neat row near the dirt path as he entered the maze of run-down buildings. Smoke rose from them and the odor of burning flesh assaulted his senses. Someone, at some point in the early outbreak of the disease, had tried to burn the bodies of the dead. The priest quickly crossed himself and walked beside a rough, wooden picket fence and into the heart of the village. He came to an abrupt stop, taking in the sight before him. For a moment he stood silent. The priest tried not to think about the vultures that fluttered overhead. It was as if everything in the priest’s world had suddenly come to a stop. He heard dogs barking in the distance, fighting over something.
Father Russo placed a hand over his cloth mask and looking right to left, estimated a hundred bloated bodies lying in the sun. As his hearing suddenly returned, Father Russo became aware of the din of millions of flies whirling around the bodies like a gray cloud. Sickened by the nightmare scene before him, Father Russo slowly began to back away down the path he had just come. He turned and began to walk faster away from the bodies, when he heard the cries of a baby. He stopped, trying not to breathe in the death-filled air around him. He stood silently listening . . . nothing. He began to take a step when he heard it again, the unmistakable sound of an infant. Father Russo began to look around him, and then his eyes settled on the open door of a cinder block shanty to his left. He walked to the entrance and tried to peer inside, but the small room was black and frightening, with the horrible smell of death emanating from within. As he finally gathered the courage to take a step inside, he saw the body of an older woman who sat with her back against the wall at the entrance. A trail of dried blood ran from her eyes down her cheeks, and from her ears and mouth. The baby cried again in the dark, bringing the priest’s attention from the dead woman back to the dark doorway.
He could barely see, but it was almost impossible for him to miss the shapes of the dead on the floor. The stench of the rotting corpses caused him to retch, but he continued to slowly thread his way among the bloating bodies of Shade’s family. A stiff forearm stuck out from a tattered sheet on a mattress inside the doorway. The rest of the victim lay covered. Several others lay upon the earthen floor where the deadly virus had ended their lives. Trying to hold his breath, Father Russo crept deep inside the cinder block windowless hovel, his heart beating as if it were going to leap out of his body and escape the nightmare on its own. Stepping over and around the bodies in the dark, the priest focused on the faint noises radiating from a far corner. There, he found the filthy baby, lying on the floor wrapped in an old, dirty blanket, barely breathing.
Making his way back to the barricade with the baby, Father Russo found himself facing another serious problem. The village men were furious when they learned he held a survivor from the desiccated village in his arms. Most of the men ran away terrified, but one large black man would not back down. It was obvious from his angry demeanor and gestures that he wanted the baby dead. He even motioned menacingly at Father Russo with a machete to go back, pointing at the village and making a stabbing motion with his weapon.
Father Russo wasn’t to be intimidated, not after the hell he had just been through. To the old priest, the bundle in his arms was the reason God had sent him to the village. As Father Russo stepped toward the man who now held the machete raised high over his head, the priest spotted the look of terror on the villager’s face as his eyes locked on the crying infant. Father Russo suddenly jumped toward the man, holding the baby out like an offering. With a scream, the man turned and fled down the path away from them, as if he were being chased by the devil. Father Russo, with the dying baby cuddled in his arms, began the walk back toward his church.
Father Russo and the nuns in the convent hospital treated and tended to the frail baby. The priest spent the first night sitting beside the old bassinet the nuns had pulled into the room. He stayed awake all night, praying beside the small baby, stopping only to change a dirty diaper or to hold her in his arms while she nursed hungrily on a bottle. Father Russo saw the concern on the nun’s faces and knew deep down the small infant would probably not survive her ordeal. Perhaps she already carried the Ebola virus. The priest himself might have possibly contracted the deadly virus, especially after his risky visit to the village. “What happens is God’s will,” Father Russo had whispered to the baby, kissing her softly on her forehead. He gave a quick thanks, realizing that the baby’s head was cool, and not burning with fever, like the other virus victims.
The nuns finally persuaded Father Russo
