The Viral Epiphany Read Online Free Page A

hemorrhagic fever is very deadly, but this seemed to be an excessive toll for a village of only about a hundred people.
                Chuck continued driving on the narrow jungle road, all four wheels often spinning a few moments in the slippery mud before catching a grip on a buried rock.   Steamy wisps of humid air rose from the mud in the morning sun.   Off to the side, light filtered through the trees and undergrowth and dense shade seemed to dominate in all directions, only occasionally penetrated by a brilliant shaft of sunlight from above.   Jim stared into the passing forest looking at the soft earthen floor, noting the usual moss and ferns, but he was really looking for something else – pools of standing water.   There were none.   The forest seemed relatively dry today; not a good breeding ground for mosquitoes, the carrier of dengue fever.
                Thirty minutes, and then an hour passed as they wound through the forest.   Then, suddenly, there was a clearing.   Bright sunlight filled the space and in the distance, beyond the wavy refractions of the rising air they saw the thatched roofs of the small village.   But it was the area just before the houses that caught Chuck’s eye.
                “Look at that, Jim,” he said, pointing his finger at a large expanse of green, “Rice.”
                “Sure is.”
                “There’s the standing water we’ve been looking for.”
                The orang asli, the native people of the jungles, did not traditionally grow rice but had led lives as hunter-gatherers.   Over the past fifty years the government had made efforts to civilize them and many groups had become farmers.   This group, one of the most remote that inhabited the great Malaysian rain forest, had recently begun trying to cultivate rice.   None of them had thought they were also creating a nurturing soup for the carriers of a disease that would rise in the shades of the evening twilight and steal into their homes on dark, drifting currents of air.
                The large community building in the center of the village had been hurriedly transformed into a hospital and now housed six patients, all suffering from severe hemorrhaging from all their body orifices.   A Malaysian medical team was quietly attending the sick people, but as usual with hemorrhagic fever, most of the cases would prove fatal.   Chuck and Jim walked into the building and were met by the leader of the team, Dr. Krishna Govin.  
                “Thank you for coming so quickly,” he said, “I only recently sent out our distress message.”
                “Oh, that’s our normal response, doctor.   UNAPS always has teams on standby, ready to be dispatched at a moment’s notice in cases like yours,” Jim replied.   “It looks like you have a very serious outbreak on your hands. Do you think it’s something other than the usual dengue hemorrhagic fever?”
                “At first I thought it was the usual type of hemorrhagic fever that we see now and then,” he replied, “but I’ve never seen it progress so fast as this before. I think it has already killed at least fifteen per cent of the people and it shows no sign of abatement!   This is most unusual and I am believing that it must be something else.   Otherwise, how can it be that so many are dying so soon?”
                “How many patients do you have?”
                “There are six in hospital, but there are eight others from the village that are missing.   These are people who live a bit away from the main group of houses.   No one has seen them for days and we are not sure of their condition, but everyone is afraid to go and search for them because they think the spirits of the jungle cause the disease.”
                Jim recalled the vulture he had seen earlier but said