Chapter 14
I slowly open my eyes only to see total darkness. It is pitch black and I can’t see anything. I feel a little woozy like I have been drugged. I open and close my eyes rapidly trying to clear my head. I am tied to a tree, bound at my feet, midsection, and neck. I try to scream, but I can’t. Something is tied around my mouth, like a handkerchief or a scarf. As I struggle to get free, I hear something coming from the darkness right in front of me. THEY are coming, I hear the twigs breaking on the ground and I can just sense it…getting closer.
I can’t make out what is out there coming for us and then I hear the growling. It’s the dingoes. I whine and grunt trying to make any noise I can, and I hear someone next to me doing the same thing. I can’t see who it is. Then, I hear a whistle. I hear something running away from us. What the hell is going on? Suddenly, there are headlights shining right in my face. I glance around and see Derrick, Monti, and Dane tied up the same as me. Then, I hear a voice.
“Well, well…what have we here? What are you people doing out here and why do you have all of this gear? Who are you?”
Obviously, we can’t answer him because our mouths are gagged, but I don’t think he really expected an answer. He is a massive man with such authority, and very intimidating. I hope he gives us a chance to explain ourselves.
“I am Dr. Stolz Johannsen, and this is my friend.” A woman emerges into the beam of light and he introduces her as Marci. This is the female doctor that Geoff is looking for.
“So which one of you wants to talk? How about this pretty lady?”
He walks over to me and removes the handkerchief that was in my mouth. “Who are you and what do you want with us?” He asks.
“I am Kobi Reed and that’s my husband Derrick. There are a lot of people looking for you both.” I tell him what happened at the lab and that they were deliberately infected with a very aggressive parasite, but he doesn’t want to hear it. He hits me across the face and calls me a liar. I raise my head and tell him again that we want to help and that he is in danger.
“The doctors at the lab and the CDC are trying to find an antidote. If you don’t get an antidote, you are probably going to die. Why would I lie, I have nothing to gain from lying. I am telling the truth. If you don’t believe me, get my husband’s phone and call the CDC team leader, Geoff. He will tell you everything just as I have. Trust me, we only want to help you both.”
For a split second, I have his attention. But then Marci steps forward and
says, “Stolz, just kill them. We don’t need this headache; we are fine. Let the dogs have them.”
Stolz responds, “Marci, just relax and have a seat. I want to hear what they have to say.” He removes the scarfs from all of our mouths and sits down right in front of us. “One by one I am going to ask you a question. If I don’t like the answer, I will kill you.”
“What’s your name?” he says.
“Dane.”
“Dane, why are you here?”
“We are here to kill the three dingoes because they have been infected with a very aggressive parasite just like you have. Remember the experiments you were doing on the dingoes at the lab? It’s those dingoes I’m talking about. We are working with the CDC to track down and kill the infected dingoes. The doctors back at the lab are working around the clock to find an antidote so this can be controlled. We learned about all of this from Dr. Trevor Tomblim. He is the one who found out about the parasite. Trevor is at a lab in Darwin working hard to find a cure.”
“Trevor? Is he infected?”
“No, he is fine. You were infected at dinner the last night you were there. You didn’t know it but Dr. Elliot was developing an infectious biological disease and everyone at the lab was a guinea pig for him including the dingoes. Dr. Elliot put the parasite in everyone’s dinner. Trevor didn’t eat with you that night because he was in his room preparing for the presentation,” he explains.
“Really? So is it fatal? Can it be cured? How long do we have?”
“There are a bunch of folks trying to find the answers to those questions.
Right now they don’t know,” Derrick says. “Why are you and Marci here with the dogs?”
“We are hiding out here because all we can remember from that night is the two doctors lying dead on the floor. They had been shot. I remember being very angry that night and to be honest, I don’t know who killed them. It might have been me. It’s all a blur, so we have been hiding out here with the dogs trying to figure out what to do. When the four of you showed up, we naturally thought you were the bad guys, here to kill us. I’m so sorry I hit you, Kobi.”
“Well, let us take you back to the lab and put you in quarantine with Sevi and Evan. Hopefully, the doctors can find a cure for this before it’s too late.” Derrick says.
Stolz gets up and unties all of us. Derrick gets on the phone and calls Geoff. Geoff is very pleased to hear that we have found Marci as well, and that she and Stolz are cooperating with us. He still wants us to kill the dingoes though. I don’t see why we need to. They are not being aggressive towards us at all, so why should we kill them? I guess the dingoes aren’t attacking us because they don’t feel threatened. Maybe if we take them into the facility with Marci and Stolz and keep them fed, they can be saved.
I get on the phone and plead with Geoff to please let the dogs come. Finally, after a few minutes, he agrees. Of course the dingoes will be muzzled and restrained during transport and quarantine. Having them in captivity may even prove to be useful if more blood samples are needed during the process of finding a cure.
“Geoff said it will take them about an hour and a half to get here with the truck and the cages.” I say.
“So, after that night at the lab, what happened?” asks Monti.
Stolz recalls, “I remember we left late, around 10:00 p.m. and headed south to get away from the lab. Marci and I are together, engaged to be married, so we decided to stay together. Neither one of us can remember exactly what happened that night--just the two doctors dead and being very angry. We got in my car and left in a hurry. I don’t remember where we spent the night, but the next day we went to the store and bought some camping gear and camped out for five or six days. Then we decided to fly out to New Zealand where Marci lives.
We were at the airport buying tickets at separate counters when these security guards grabbed me and told me I had to come with them. I asked them why, and they wouldn’t tell me. Of course I thought it had something to do with the lab, but I wasn’t sure. I was just terrified, so Marci and I ran. We came back down here yesterday and found the dingoes. I didn’t know they were the dingoes from the lab. They were just here and seemed friendly, so we fed them and they just stayed.”
Marci asks, “How do you know these are the dingoes from the lab?”
“Remember the chips that were inserted into them?” I ask.
“Yeah, I remember now. Trevor did that just in case they escaped.” Marci replies and nods her head up and down.
Derrick speaks up and asks, “Are either one of you feeling strange in any way?”
Marci says, “No not really. I have been a little sore in the abdomen and thought it was due to poor diet.”
Stolz looked at Marci and seems surprised. “You didn’t tell me you weren’t feeling well.”
“I didn’t want to scare you, but I have been having a lot of pain right here.” Marci points to her right side and raises her shirt. I am shocked to see that her side has a huge bruise on it.
“Marci, you are all bruised up. What happened?” Stolz asks.
“I don’t know.” Marci says.
Derrick, Dane, Monti, and I know what it is. We saw the same thing on the dingo that we wrapped up and brought back to the lab for an autopsy.
“Marci, we saw this on one of the dingoes. The doctors back at the lab in Darwin think it is from the parasite,” Dane explains to her.
When we get back to the lab, we’ll let Nicola check the rest of her body for bruising. I glance at my watch and see that it is now 8:00 p.m. and Geoff should be pulling up any minute. I mention to everyone that it might be a good idea to pick up the campsite and have everything ready to go when Geoff gets here so we can get on the road. They all agree, so we start to clean up when we see headlights coming down the dark road. There are at least three vehicles coming--two CDC trucks and an animal control van with cages in the back.
“Sorry, it took us so long. These roads can be a little tricky when it is dark. It is pitch black out there when the moon is obscured by cloud cover. It was very hard finding the turn off to get here; there was no sign or anything,” Geoff explains. “So, what is going on here? Where is Stolz, and what happened to your eye, Kobi?”
“Well, a funny thing happened here Geoff.” Dane explains. “We were so focused with our discussion of how we were going to bring down Sasquatch over there, that we didn’t see his friend Marci sneaking up on us. So, when she yelled as us, we were very surprised to see her standing in front of the car pointing her shotgun at us. I think you can figure out the rest. We finally convinced them that we weren’t here to harm them and they untied us.”
“Untied you? Explain.”
“Yeah, we were tied to those trees over there and gagged. Kobi got a nice shiner out of it though.”
Geoff looks in my direction and says, “Yeah, I can see that.”
All I can do is shrug my shoulders and smile. Geoff just shakes his head.
Dane continues, “So, after explaining the situation to them, they are more than willing to return to the facility and get help. Marci is already showing the initial symptoms; bruising around her abdomen and on her right side.”
We arrive at the lab in Darwin very late. Marcus escorts Marci and Stolz into the quarantine area. Of course, they are allowed to clean up and eat something. Then Stolz insists on seeing Sevi and Evan, so Marcus takes them to the rear of the building where they are staying. The three of them start talking about the last thing they remember, and it is amazing how similar the stories are. They remember working that day and sitting down for dinner, but everything after that is just a blur. Stolz remembers seeing the bodies outside of the vault area, but has no recollection of the events that occurred. Sevi and Evan both remember being very angry as well.
Meanwhile, another CDC employee takes the dingoes to a separate area, in the rear of the lab, to be quarantined. Unfortunately, there are no outside facilities here to accommodate the dingoes, so they will need to be caged. At least they are alive and being given a second chance. It will also be interesting to observe how the parasite affects them.
It is late, so we decide it would be best if we all meet at the lab first thing
in the morning. We say our good nights and head toward Dane’s house. It is around midnight when we pull into his driveway. The boys immediately grab a bottle of Scotch, four glasses, and walk out to the front porch. Everyone pours a shot of Scotch, clanks glasses, and shoots it down the hatch. After the day we’ve had, this tastes really good.
“If you guys don’t mind, I am going to take a shower. I’m feeling a little grimy tonight,” I say, standing up out of my chair. I give Derrick a kiss on the cheek as I pass him.
My shower feels fantastic! As I am drying off, I glance at myself in the mirror and notice I have a nice shiner on my left eye, compliments of Mr. Stolz. I’m clean and in some fresh clothes headed back to the front porch ready for round two with the Scotch bottle.
Derrick looks at me and says, “Nice eye.”
“I know. I feel so tough now, like a boxer or something. But it really hurts when I touch it right here.”
“Then don’t touch it right there,’ Derrick says laughingly. It reminds me of my father. He used to say that all the time. I would say, “It hurts when I do that,” and he would say, “Then don’t do that!” It’s funny how certain situations trigger memories.
Monti excuses himself from the gathering to take his shower. Dane, Derrick, and I are sitting quietly on the porch, listening to the squeaky windmill and the cadence of the insects. It is a beautiful night with half-moon hanging low in the sky. It’s hard to believe that anything bad could be happening when it is so peaceful out here. I can’t help but wonder about the people at the lab who are infected with the parasite. Not knowing whether you are going to live or die has got to be one of the worst feeling imaginable. I hope they can find a cure for this thing.
Dane speaks up and says, “I’ve got a bad feeling that this crisis is not over yet.”
“Let’s just wait and see what the CDC, Trevor, and Nicola have come up with. Maybe it’s good news,” Derrick says with an upbeat tone.
“I hope you’re right.”
Derrick and I say good night and retire to the bedroom for the night. Derrick still has to take a bath, so while he is showering, I pull out a piece of paper and a pen and start making my own timeline, based on what Trevor said.
It was ten days ago when the plane crashed into the facility and the dingoes escaped. It was just a few days before that when Dr. Elliot’s notes said the dingo was infected with the parasite. The family at Katherine’s Gorge was attacked and killed the day after the dingoes escaped. Could it have been those dingoes? Did the alpha male infect the rest of the dingoes too? How many more dingoes are infected that we don’t know about. We can’t track those. A person could go crazy worrying about all of this.
Also in Dr. Elliot’s notes, it mentioned that he was going to infect the rest of the staff there in the facility, especially Dr. Tomblin, because he was scheduled to meet with the government investors the next day. There was an asterisk and the following statement in his notes, ‘The parasite will be unleashed into the government tomorrow’. What a perfect way to unleash the parasite, from the top down. Is there something else about the parasite that we don’t know? Can it be transmitted with a sneeze or a hand shake? How was Trevor going to spread it during his meeting? With whom was Dr. Elliot working? Is he a terrorist or just a mad scientist? Too many questions.
Derrick comes out of the bathroom, sees me on the bed and asks, “Hey, what are you doing, Honey?”
“Just thinking and trying to figure out some things.” I shared my thoughts with him, and he suggested I shut off my mind for the night and turn it on again fresh in the morning--at the lab. Discussing things in a group can oftentimes improve the thought process and provide answers.
As usual, he is right. So I fold up my timeline and put it in the pocket of my jacket so I am sure to have it tomorrow at the lab. I glance at the clock on the nightstand, and it says 1:30 a.m. No way it’s that late already. I reach over and turn off the light and wiggle myself down into the bed. I feel Derrick’s arm touch my shoulder, so I turn over and put my head on his chest and close my eyes.