In the Time of Man

Chapter Nineteen

The road was long and tiring but Elliot Anders had nowhere else to go. After he had lost contact with Phil Traynor in Africa, Elliot had called both the U.S. State Department and several African nation embassies in Washington in an attempt to get a special exemption to travel to the continent. None, however, was being granted.  Elliot stayed in Phoenix for several weeks until his publisher suggested resuming the book tour while waiting for matters regarding the mystery pandemic in Africa to become a bit clearer.

Elliot Ander’s book, Monumental Proof, turned into an even bigger bestseller than anyone might have anticipated. Elliot discovered that it gave him a chance to talk about history and Egypt and Africa in a complex manner and that for the first time in his career as a writer and researcher people were truly listening. In the past, he had felt his books had enjoyed modest success because readers were looking for real life adventure and stories of discovery but he was suddenly encountering interviewers and audiences and readers who were eager for understanding. They knew that travel to Africa had been banned because of a generally inexplicable disease and that there were scattered reports that it was beginning to spread to the Americas. They did not, of course, have Elliot’s experience and knowledge of Africa and their questions ranged far beyond his controversial science regarding the Great Pyramid. He had been to Africa and he was suddenly their expert. 

Slogging from city to city and hotel to hotel he began to experience the notion of meaningfulness and purpose in his life that transcended the personal and yet he was also beginning to feel disconnected. Faces gathered in front of him almost in an amorphous singularity and questions rose out of the crowd sometimes like an assault, as if he were responsible for the presently incurable disease. His interaction with the world was confined to journalist interviews, book talks and signings, airline counter agents, hotel desk clerks, limo drivers, and the internet. Whenever he had a free moment, he thought about Phil Traynor and how Elliot had, inadvertently, possibly sent his young assistant to an early death. Elliot knew, of course, it was not his fault but fate seemed especially cruel by stranding Phil and leaving Elliot to live his life of relative adulation and luxury in America. The visit he had paid to Phil’s parents and the subsequent phone calls were emotional and he felt inadequate in his efforts to reunite them with their son. In fact, he had to admit he had made no real attempts to do that beyond his inquiries of relevant government officials. Phil’s parents called Elliot at least twice a week hoping for news or insight but Elliot never had anything to offer.

At the end of another week of appearances, Elliot found himself at the Holiday Inn in Santa Monica, California. He was to speak at the Barnes and Noble just off of the promenade that evening and had been told by his publisher that they were anticipating an overflow crowd. Elliot Anders loved California, not necessarily what it had become, but for the kind of dreams it had always symbolized. Often, he had thought about having been among the soldiers coming home from World War II who had ventured out west as ideas and opportunity were blossoming or he daydreamed about having been with Mark Twain when he arrived in San Francisco in the 1800s.  California’s beauty and potential back then, Elliot thought, must have been incomprehensible and staggering to the senses.        

What it was now was not too bad, either. He loved the ocean and how it drew people.  Elliot put on a pair of baggy cargo shorts, a tee shirt, and some old Nikes and crossed the Pacific Coast Highway to walk on the Santa Monica pier.Children were squawking and giggling on the carousel and reaching their arms out to their parents as they whirled past on porcelain ponies. Haze obscured the hills to the north toward Malibu but the ocean’s roll was loud and blue-white from beneath his feet to beyond the reach of his eyes. Elliot watched the young couples gathering in the deepening evening and wondered what they thought about as they stared out at the great seam made by the water and the sky. Were they worried for the future or were they simply oblivious like his generation had been? Why in the hell did everyone have to learn everything over and over again? Our interests, understandably, are always in ourselves and the people we love but he wondered whether mankind could last if it did not think more broadly.

Elliot shook his head and laughed at himself for ponderous thinking. He walked back down the pier and along the boardwalk toward Venice for a mile or so and sat on the beach and waited for night. A few stars rose up out of the water and he watched the sky and the offshore twinkle of passing ships before returning to the hotel.

As was his habit, when Elliot entered his room he picked up the TV remote and clicked to CNN. He liked the white noise of world events in the background whether he was sleeping or working on his laptop computer. He opened the top of his Fujitsu notebook and pointed his web browser toward Amazon to see how his book was listing. Absurdly, he thought, Monumental Proof remained the top selling book in the country. When he scanned the list he noticed that several other books about Africa, both contemporary and historical, were in the top 100, including Beryl Markham’s remarkable West With the Night. An aviatrix in the 1920s, Markham made her living as an African bush pilot in the nascent days of aircraft and in 1936 became the first person to solo across the Atlantic from East to West. Markham’s autobiographical narrative of her years in Africa, which had remained in the top 5000 selling books from the day Amazon was founded, had been called by Ernest Hemingway some of the finest prose he had ever read. The failing health of the continent’s population seemed to be spurring her posthumous literary career. 

Elliot checked a few of the news web sites to see if there were any developments regarding Africa’s status but found nothing beyond meaningless political babble from the U.S. and the U.K. As he always did, he went to the Drudge Report to see the conservative spin Matt Drudge was putting on world events when he noticed a short paragraph about books. Drudge often reported book sales by listing how many had been scanned in a particular week. Usually, he did this only when political books like screeds from Ann Coulter or Bill O’Reilly were doing well so that he might affirm the beliefs of the American right. Instead, Elliot saw that Monumental Proof had scanned almost 50,000 copies in the past week. He was astounded. His publisher had told him the book was doing exceedingly well and was expected to remain number one on most lists for several weeks but he had not been given any numbers. These were unrealistic Harry Potter figures and Elliot was humbled. 

When he turned away from his computer and looked at the television Elliot saw that CNN had switched to a live discussion by the United Nations. The president of the general assembly, Antonio Hurenberg of Germany, was in the midst of what sounded to Elliot like a technical explanation. 

            “…………in London, Abu Dhabi, and Lisbon. These will be the only three global cities where relief flights and ships will be cleared to the African continent. If the full assembly approves this resolution by the security council, nations willing to donate aircraft, medicine, ships, food, technology, construction materials, or whatever else may be deemed as essential to the quarantined Africans, will be asked to assemble those resources in these three designated cities for transshipment to the continent.”

Immediately, Elliot was confused. Were they changing their minds and allowing Africa to interact with the outside world? Hurenberg, a former actor who had become president of Germany before moving onto the international stage, appeared to be losing his poise. Lean and elegant in his tailored suits, the white-haired Hurenberg had always seemed the confident leader the UN had needed in the years it spent recovering from the battering it took from the Bush administration and Israel’s disproportionate response to an attack by Hamas, which razed Gaza and killed tens of thousands of civilians. 

“Members,” Hurenberg continued, “We do not know the future of Africa or even of our own world. The volunteers who assemble to travel to Africa may never return home.  They may fall ill and die upon their arrival. Each of them may be committing a final act of humanity by sacrificing themselves. But this is the only solution we can presently manage. We ask the nations of the world to send their materiel and volunteers to Abu Dhabi, London, and Lisbon where they will be dispatched to Africa. If we solve this crisis, cure this spreading disease, these committed caregivers of the planet may some day return to their families in health and safety and with the glory of knowing they were part of saving humanity. If we fail to find a cure, there may be nothing for them to return to and they will have given themselves to an honorable effort.”

Hurenberg paused, raised a kerchief to his nose, and turned his head away in a dramatic gesture Elliot thought perfect for a former movie star.

“I ask your vote now,” he said, “on the Security Council resolution. And I ask god to offer us grace and mercy as we attempt to save others and ourselves.”

As the members cast their votes, a prematurely gray newscaster whose stylishness almost exceeded that of the U.N. president’s came on the air to offer details of the resolution.

“This may be the most historical moment in this body’s history, perhaps in our nation’s, maybe in the world’s,” he said with disturbing overstatement. “What the U.N. is expected to approve here momentarily, is a plan that will allow one way travel into Africa for volunteers and resources like food, technology, and medicine. No one will be allowed to return until the health crisis is contained. This means not even pilots or ship’s captains. Planes and ships will be considered donated to the African nations where they make port or land. Almost anyone and anything will be allowed entry to the continent but nothing will be allowed to leave. All commercial transportation from the continent is still prohibited and there are increasing coastal patrols by the U.N. in both the air and water to make certain private travel is also stopped. The U.N. has not suggested it will use military might to enforce the ruling but the patrols we have been monitoring all appear to be heavily armed. The idea is very clearly to enforce a quarantine of the entire continent, even with military firepower, if necessary.”

Elliot Ander’s watched the final vote and then went back to his computer to send an email to his editor in New York to inform him that the endless book tour was coming to an abrupt end. He turned off his cell to avoid the inevitable call from the publisher and then he purchased an airline ticket online that put him on a first class flight from L.A. to London at 10:20 the next morning.    

                                    *                      *                      *

The motocross cyclists were on a trail they had never ridden and were unaware they were anywhere near a highway. The lead biker saw a short, sharp mound of sand and rock in front of him and rolled back his throttle to go airborne as he peaked the trail.  He was twenty feet into the air before he saw the upended car.

“Oh no.” He actually screamed to himself inside of his helmet. As he placed his body weight on the foot pegs and dropped the back wheel for a landing, he realized it was possible he was going to hit the wrecked car. He leaned to the left, which took his body off the centerline of travel and meant he was going to crash but landing on desert rock and sand was much preferred to dropping his rear wheel into the chassis of a crashed automobile. 

The back wheel of his Husquvarna motorcycle skidded in gravel and the handlebars cranked hard to the side when the front tire touched the ground. He let go of the grips and rolled through the prickly pear and rocks, watching his bike tumble and bend as it pulled away from him with its greater inertial energy. 

“Maybe I was going 50 as I went airborne.” The thought passed in an instant as he waited for his arms and legs to stop flailing. “I’ve got to stop spinning.”

When he finally did, he saw through his dark helmet visor that his riding partner was stopped at the top of the hill he had just used for a launching pad. His friend looked down and then slipped his clutch and rolled to the spot where rider and motorcycle lay in the desert.

“What the hell happened, Rod?” He dropped his helmet, put his bike on the kickstand, and ran toward his friend.

“I made a blind jump. I was headed toward that wreck. I had to lean out of it or I was dead.”

“Jesus, man. You never learn.”

“Now, I have.”

“You okay?”

 “I’ve got some cactus needles in my ass.”

 “Yeah, well, you deserve ‘em.”

 “’Spose.”

Rod stood slowly and began to pull long prickly pear needles out of his leather suit. 

“What do you think happened there?” He nodded in the direction of a late model hybrid with its wheels in the air.

“Nothing good, obviously. But why do you suppose it’s still here?”

“Dunno, ‘Mando. Let’s go check it out.”

“What about your bike?”

 Rod looked at the bent front wheel. “It ain’t goin’ anywhere; that’s for sure.”

The Toyota was not more than twenty feet from where Rod had stopped rolling and as they approached they saw where his tire had gouged the desert floor on impact. Only a few feet separated his landing spot from the car’s passenger side door.

“You could be dead, dude,” Mando said.

“But I ain’t.”

Standing on the passenger side they looked at the caved door frame and scratch marks indicating the car had skidded or rolled on this side. Rod reached up and spun a wheel. 

“This is weird man. Where the hell is the road?” ‘Mando stepped around the back to examine the rear of the hybrid and heard what sounded like a truck flying in the sky.

“There’s the damn road.” He pointed up and about 50 feet over their heads they saw the unpaved shoulder of a roadbed and watched the rooftop of another passing car.

“Shit, this thing must have come off of there?” ‘Manda stepped around to the driver’s side as Rod knelt to examine the front end. “Holy crap, Rod, somebody’s in here. An arm. There’s an arm sticking out.”

‘Mando was staring and pointing at the driver’s window as Rod slid around the front of the hybrid. Rod dropped to his knees, took off his riding gloves, and reached inside the car.

“It’s a woman. Quit standing there and help me get her out of here.”

“Aren’t you supposed to leave people in place in case they’re backs are hurt?” ‘Mando asked. “How do you know she’s alive, anyway? This thing could’ve been sitting here for weeks.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Let me see if she’s warm or has any kind of pulse.”

Rod put his hand on the woman’s neck and felt for her carotid. Her skin was cool and dry and he was unable to determine if she was dead. After finding what he thought was the carotid, he laid his first two fingers against the slight bump in her skin and thought he felt a hint of a pulse. 

“I think she’s alive,” he said. “I think she’s got a pulse. Let me check her wrist. Yeah, yeah, it’s there, definitely. But she’s alive. We’ve gotta get her help, man. Get your cell.”

“Probably not any service,” ‘Mando answered as he was running to his motorcycle.  Flipping open the phone, he punched the power button and looked to see if a signal registered. There was nothing.

“No service, Rod.”

“Then get your ass on your bike and get into Bisbee before this woman dies. I’ll stay here.”

‘Mando did not speak but his exhaust pipes quickly coughed and in a few seconds Rod saw the bright yellow dirt bike climbing a steep incline toward the road.

                                                *                      *                      *

Injuries sustained by Becky Acuna were not life threatening. Her L-4 and 5 vertebrae had hairline cracks, her left shoulder was dislocated, and three of her ribs were fractured. However, trauma to her head had sent her into a coma and she had lain upside down in her car for almost five days. The dessert heat and cold had left her dangerously dehydrated and in the hours that it took for her husband Gene, her children and her mother to reach her side at the Bisbee Hospital, she was still unconscious and doctors were uncertain whether swelling and the lack of water had done damage to her brain. Dehydration was also a great risk to her organ function. 

When she awoke eleven days later Gene had almost stopped believing she would ever recover. He was reading a magazine at the foot of Becky’s bed when he heard the ruffling of bed covers.

“Beck?  Beck?  You there?” Gene dropped the magazine on the floor and leaned over his wife. Her eyes were closed but she was mumbling and rolling her head slowly from side to side. He stroked her forehead and matted hair. “It’s okay, baby. You’re coming back and then you’re coming home. I’ll wait. Don’t worry. We’re gonna make it.”

Becky’s face was turned away from her husband when her eyelids fluttered and opened and she looked out the window at the startling sunlight on the hills beyond Bisbee. She smiled and did not see Gene.

“Beck. Beck. It’s me, honey. Gene, god you’re back. Can you see me? I’m right here.”

She turned her head in the direction of his voice. 

“Gene?” Her voice was soft and coarse.

“Yeah, me. Your husband. God, I can’t believe you’re back. You woke up?”

“What happened?”

“There was wreck. You were coming to meet me and the kids at your mother’s. The car was in a gully and nobody spotted it from the road. You were out there several days. But you’re okay, honey. You’re okay.”

“Where kids?” she whispered and fluttered her fingers as a signal for Gene to take her hand.

“At the hotel with your mom.”

“What hotel?”

“We’re in a hospital in Bisbee, Beck. It’s where they brought you.”

“K.”

“Beck, let me press your call button so I can get the charge nurse in here and tell them you’re awake.”

“Wait.”

“Wait? Why, honey?”

“Not a wreck, Gene. I remember. Bumped my car. Pushed me into canyon. Tried to kill me.”

“What. Who would do that? Why? Don’t be ridiculous, Beck.”

“Not.”

“Look, you need to rest. Let me go see where the nurse is and I have to call your mother and the kids and tell them the great news. I can’t use my cell in here. I’ll be back in a minute.  I love you.”

“Love you, Gene,” she whispered, and then closed her eyes and returned to the safety of sleep.

Becky Acuna knew, of course, who would have an interest in seeing her dead. She just did not want to think about whether they were trying to scare her off of the Slims Disease story or if they actually intended to kill her. There were certainly more efficient means of making certain she was dead, though she assumed running her off of the road was intended to look like an accident. Barton Crawford’s death was the obvious indication that she was dealing with determined and deadly characters.

Becky Acuna was in the hospital almost three more weeks as doctors waited for her vertebrae to begin healing. Her strength came back to her rapidly and friends from KSUN-TV drove down from Phoenix for brief visits, though they always seemed to avoid her questions related to the television station and Becky was not her usual persistent self. Upon discharge, she was given an electric wheelchair to avoid straining her back or the healing dislocated shoulder by pushing against hand wheels. She was not supposed to walk for a several more weeks.

Initially, during her recuperation, Becky Acuna showed no interest in the endeavors outside her own house. Friends called to wish her a speedy recovery and tell her they were looking forward to seeing her on the news again and she offered polite responses and ended the conversations as soon as she could without being rude.  Her laptop, which had been in an open side pouch of her leather briefcase, had flown loose as her car tumbled in the crash and the Macbook had been destroyed. Not even the data was salvageable and Becky had neither the interest nor the enthusiasm for going through her backup files and rebuilding lost databases. She even stayed away from the flat screen desktop in the utility room. The larger machine was used to keep household records and run the kids’ games but Becky worried that if she logged on she would confront information she did not care to learn.

But she already knew what was happening without reading news stories online or picking up a newspaper or turning on KSUN to watch the 6 p.m. broadcast. Everyone on the other side of her front door was probably still in a state of denial. Becky was certain people were still dying and the government was continuing to deny anything unusual was happening. She did find herself wondering what was happening at Luke with Barton Crawford dead. Occasionally, she took the electric wheelchair out to the deck and watched the planes as they approached the base. They were all jumbo jets now, 747s and C5As and DC10s. She doubted there was capacity in all of the hangars for the hundreds of people arriving and she began to contemplate the possibility that something more sinister was underway behind those walls. Were people being exterminated before their disease could spread? Surely not. What would they do with all those bodies? 

Although she asked herself these questions, Becky did not want to know the answers. The entire situation was beyond her ability to affect or control and her attempt to inform the public had put her and her family in jeopardy. She knew she needed to exercise restraint. If she went back to working on the story, she was likely to be visited again by whoever forced her car into a canyon or the man who had tried to break into their house. Becky left it all alone. She was at a point, psychologically and physically, where her obliviousness to facts and unfolding events was sweetly reassuring.    

Her experience, training, and what were generously described as reporter’s instincts, almost seem to have been injured in the crash of her Toyota. Becky knew, however, almost from the moment she returned from consciousness that Gene and her friends were failing to tell her things that she might find disturbing. Normally, she would have taken offense at such condescension but just then she considered it an act of love and she was not worried about matters over which she had no control. Becky had every confidence she would eventually be able to return to her job as a TV news correspondent and handle any assignment with her full range of skills.

She thought little of work, however, until the afternoon she was taking her first cautious steps across her living room and her cell phone buzzed. On the caller ID, Becky saw the name of the only person she might have wanted to speak to about the TV station and their jobs. She anxiously flipped open the phone.

“Uncle Pierre,” she said. 

“Acooooner……How the heck are you?”

“I’m getting better. Slowly. Starting to think about work again. But not that much.”

“Smart woman, as always. Nothing’s changed, ya know. Stupid cop shop news conferences and business announcements, a murder here and there, and the ever-present weather story. Did you know there’s a drought in Arizona? Did no one tell these people we live in a desert?”

Becky laughed. “It’s still that bad, eh? No travel or adventure or anything? You usually are good at scamming some kind of trip.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve been up in beautiful Detroit on some of this Eddington stuff. Doing follows and all that.”

“Eddington stuff?”

“Yeah, you know, the baseball guy. He got your disease, ya know.”

“I was there at the news conference, Uncle Pierre. I remember. So we are still actually pursuing the story?”

“Sort of, I guess, Beck. But it was mostly stuff for his obit and reaction stories.”

“Obit. Jesus, he died?”

“You didn’t know? Seriously, Beck?”

“No. I have avoided the news. I had no idea.”

“Well, he did. He didn’t make it a month after that news conference. We did an hour-long live special on his life from Detroit. It was pretty damned depressing, not to mention scary.”

“Is anyone writing about Slims?”

“A little bit. But it’s weird, Beck. Even at Eddington’s funeral, it hardly got mentioned.  There’s this constant reference to an undiagnosed illness, weight loss, organ failure, but nobody ever gives it a name.”

“Oh god. It’s so awful what’s happening and nobody seems to be doing a thing.”  Becky paused.  “Phil, I almost don’t want to ask you this next question.”

“Must be a serious one since that’s the only time you ever call me Phil.”

“The morning Burke and I got out of jail I spoke with Ed Smith before you and I went to Eddington’s news conference. He said something about calling Walter Robbins up in Colorado to inform him of our mess. He said Robbins had gotten sick or something and wasn’t coming back until he felt better. He doesn’t have…………”

“Jesus, Becky. Has Gene told you nothing? Look, I’m sorry to be the one telling you this stuff. Are you sure you’re okay to be hearing this now all at once?”

“What is it, Phil? What about Robbins?”

“He’s gone, Beck. He’s in the ground, too. He died up in Colorado and they buried him right there at his sister-in-law’s apple orchard. People are getting weird. Rumors are going around about the government confiscating bodies of people they suspect have died of this thing so burials are happening fast. Robbins wife, what’s her name, Ann, story is she called a funeral home and when they asked her cause of death and she started to explain and ask for how to contact a coroner, the guy just hung up. They decided to bury Robbins right there on the mesa. Beck? You still there?”

“Uh, yes, yes. Sorry. It’s just a lot to process, you know.”

“Sure, I’m sorry. Are you really okay to hear this stuff, Beck? I don’t want to upset you or get Gene mad at me.”

“I had to hear it, eventually, Phil. I can’t hide from it forever.”

“Yeah, I guess so. Well, your story’s still out there and nobody’s really doing it any justice.  ust vague little references to it or paragraphs in the bottom of obits; stuff like that.”

“Well, how is everybody else at the station? Is Smith still a shit?”

“Like I said nothing much new. Michelle’s gone now, though, I guess you must have known that.”

“Phil, please. ‘Gone?’ What’s that mean? She didn’t get………”

“No, Beck. No. She exercised some option in her big shot contract and she’s gone to New York. They gave her some lifestyle segment on the Today Show. She left about a week after the Robbins’ memorial here in Phoenix.”

“I can imagine she wanted to get away from all of the rumors.”

“Well, she certainly didn’t do anything to diminish them, Beck. She came to the memorial and sat in the back pew wearing sunglasses and a scarf, constantly fidgeting and left without speaking to anyone. I imagine if half the stuff going around about her and Eddington and Robbins is true, she’s scared as hell that she’s next to get sick.”

“Yeah, probably. She looks okay, though, right?”

“Oh yeah, of course. She’s still her perfect physical self. Only woman I’ve ever known who could make mourning look glamorous and mysterious.”

Becky exhaled slowly. “I better go, Phil. I need to rest before Gene and the kids get home. But thanks for calling.”

“Sure, Beck. Any idea when you are coming back?”

“No, not yet. But I am coming back. Hey, one last thing: any word on Barton Crawford? How’s that investigation going?”

“It isn’t, that I know of. Cop shop says it’s a federal investigation and the feds won’t tell us anything. There hasn’t been any arrest or anything, though, if that’s what you are asking.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was wondering about. Talk to you soon, Uncle Pierre.”

“Ha. See ya, Beck.”

Feeling like she needed some air, Becky took the cautious steps to reach the sliding glass door leading to the deck in the rear of her house. She thought her back felt fine and was mostly healed. Generally, Becky felt weak but she knew that was something that could be conquered. 

Outside, the sky was summer blue and cloudless and she saw in the distance another jumbo jet parked on the Luke tarmac. Unloading must have already been completed because there was no activity around the slate gray aircraft. Becky looked off to the far line of jagged mountains ringing the valley and leaned on the deck’s railing. Just being alive felt good and she realized she was unafraid. Everything was at risk and cautiousness on her part was not going to alter the state of the world.

The pitch of the big jet’s spinning turbines interrupted her introspection and she watched as the pilot turned the nose westward into the hot July breeze. Another gray, indistinguishable aircraft was rolling out to some unknown destination. As the pilot lined up for takeoff, however, Becky thought she noticed something unusual. Every other jet she ever saw at Luke was unmarked but this one appeared to have a number on the tail’s vertical stabilizer. It was too far away to read so she reached inside the glass door and grabbed the binoculars off of the shelf and a pencil and post-it notes pad they kept by the phone. Becky stared intently through the glass of the binoculars and focused on plane’s tail. There were numbers. She read them to herself out loud three times and then wrote them on the yellow pad. She looked again to be certain she had them right as the jumbo began its takeoff roll and the engines rumbled and shook the air. She had written the ID of the aircraft correctly. 

Becky watched as the nose of the great machine tilted toward the sky and the landing gear curled up into its belly as it leaned gently toward the south and away from the sun. She went back into the house and started scrolling through phone numbers she had salvaged from the SIM card of her old cell, which had been destroyed in her accident. She was certain she could find out about the airplane’s identity and she sat on the couch and started making phone calls. 

Becky Acuna, grateful and determined, still had work to do.