The Extinct Page 7

  He went in and saw she was sleeping; an IV hooked up to her arm. She rustled and awoke at the sound of his footsteps and a smile crept to her face. The television was on; the volume turned low, the open window letting in the salty air of a rain brought in from the Atlantic.

  “How ya doin’ mom?”

  “I’m okay,” she said, reaching out and holding his hand. “The IV’s just antibiotics. The police were here.”

  “Yeah, I talked to ‘em.”

  She looked out the window as the wind howled outside underneath the gray sky. Some pigeons were on the sill, trying to find shelter from the coming storm. “They said it’s going to rain all week.”

  “Mom,” Eric said softly, “I gotta go away for a while. I’m not sure when I’ll be comin’ back.”

  His mother didn’t look at him but he saw the slight quiver in her lower lip and the tears that glossed over her eyes. She was gripping his hand tightly, her knuckles turning white. “I don’t remember if I left any of the windows open,” she said. “The one in the living room will get the couch wet if I left it open.”

  Eric squeezed her hand, and let go. He kissed her cheek, wrapping his arms around her frail shoulders. “Bye, Mom.”

  His mother grabbed his sleeve, tears rolling down her cheeks and onto the bruises on her neck. “There’s ten thousand dollars in my savings account. Take my driver’s license and get the money. If they won’t give it to you they can call me here.”

  “I can’t take your—”

  “I couldn’t stand it if I thought you were on the street somewhere. Please.”

  He nodded. “All right.” Another kiss on the forehead and he pulled away from her, taking the driver’s license out of her purse. He looked back once when he was at the doorway and a deep sadness filled him and tightened his throat; he wasn’t sure if he’d ever see her again.

  *****

  Eric chose a female teller who appeared young enough to be in high school. She let him withdraw from his mother’s account and he took five thousand and left the driver’s license on the counter, knowing the teller would keep it for his mother.

  The drizzle had turned into a full drenching rain and he pulled up his collar as he walked across an intersection and toward the downtown city library. The city smelled like wet dirt and salt and it disgusted him.

  The library was a circular flat building across the street from a small public park. It was packed with the homeless, overflow from the only shelter in town. But the dusty book smell was pleasant as Eric waited patiently to get on a computer. It took nearly a half hour—that being the limit that each person was allowed on a computer—and he sat down and stared at the computer screen before starting to type. He Googled a world map and looked at it like it had some great secret to reveal to him if he just looked long enough. He spent nearly the entire half hour just examining maps of various countries and then looking up facts about them: cost of living, ties with the United States, cost of a one way ticket there. Mexico was cheap and the law was flexible but it was too close to the United States. Europe was too expensive for how little money he had. He thought about just going to another state but decided against it since if he was even pulled over for a traffic ticket a warrant for murder would show.

  There was one place he kept coming back to: Bangkok Thailand. It was one of the most populated cities in the world and a big tourist spot; he could blend right in. He found a last minute one-way ticket for three hundred dollars out of JFK in two days and reserved a seat online, printed the ticket, and rushed out of the library.

  When he was on the steps of the front entrance, he froze. His passport was at the dorms.

  CHAPTER

  15

  Eric sat on the stone steps of the library in the pouring rain, hardly noticing that he was soaked from his hair to his shoes. Jason wasn’t answering and he couldn’t trust anyone else to bring the passport to him without alerting the police that were no doubt combing the campus for him.

  He had no connections to get a phony passport; this was his only shot to leave the country. It was a risk he had to take. The water dripped from his bangs into his eyes and he wiped at them and stood up, grabbed his gym bag, and walked to the bus stop.

  It took nearly twenty minutes for the bus to come and by this time Eric was shivering and unable to keep his teeth still. When he got on he changed shirts and tried to dry his hair. There wasn’t anybody on the bus and about half-way to the university campus the driver, an elderly man with a constant scowl on his face and his name printed on his belt, pulled into a side-street and unbuckled his seat belt. He walked to the nearest seats, and lay down.

  “What’re you doing?” Eric said.

  “Break.”

  “Are you joking? I’ve gotta be somewhere.”

  “You got legs asshole.”

  Eric stormed off the bus back into the rain. The campus was a good mile away and he started a slow jog. The sidewalks were cracked and uneven, making running difficult and dangerous; the last thing he needed was a twisted ankle. He eventually reached the campus and waited across the street from the main parking lot, just watching the cars come in and out. He popped another Lortab and checked the bandage on his shoulder. The ten stitches felt like a zipper going up his arm but there was no blood; only swelling and tenderness.

  There weren’t any squad cars around but he knew detectives wouldn’t drive those. He saw a group of people running onto campus from a nearby coffee shop and he tagged close behind them as if part of the group.

  They made their way past the Field House gym and around the library. Eric left the group and sprinted into the library. He walked calmly across the linoleum floors, his soaked shoes squeaking with each step, and out another set of glass doors on the other side. The dorms were just across a small grass enclosure.

  The dorms were cold but dry and Eric stood in the entryway for a minute building up his courage. He peeked down the hall; it was empty. There was music coming from somewhere, heavy bass thumping the walls. Slowly, he started his way down.

  Each sound was like an alarm going off and he’d stop and listen whenever he heard something. There was an argument coming from a room up ahead, a girl on the phone yelling over some indiscretion that happened the previous weekend. Two doors down was his room.

  His stomach was fluttering from adrenaline as he walked down and stopped at his door. He put his ear to it and listened, plugging up the other one with his finger. It was silent. He put in his key and unlocked it.

  The room was a little messier than he’d left it but other than that it looked the same. There were no dirty shoe prints on the carpet or anything else indicating a lot of people had come through. He ran to the closet and began throwing around clothes and old books and papers. In a shoebox with letters of academic awards he found his passport and social security card. He put them in his gym bag and changed his clothes and shoes, putting on his jacket and a gray beanie with the University of New Hampshire logo on the front before walking out.

  As he shut the door, relieved, he heard voices down the hall. He looked to see two men walking toward him. One was balding and older, Hispanic, wearing a cheap tan overcoat and the other was young and wearing a business suit that was wet at the shoulders.

  Eric jumped away from his door. He walked down and knocked on the girl’s door that was having an argument. The men were now only a couple dozen feet away, eyeing him. The girl opened the door wearing sweats, a cell phone to her ear.

  “Yeah?” she said.

  “Hi,” Eric said, “I’m David Russell with the UNH Student Committee and I’m just going around today talking to people about the upcoming elections and reminding them to vote.”

  She gave him a quizzical look and then said, “Oh, yeah, I’m gonna vote. When are the elections?”

  The two men walked behind Eric and he felt his heart drop. They’d walked past him and were going down to his door. He glanced at them quickly. The older one smiled and was about to turn back when he looked d
own and noticed the dripping wet gym bag Eric was holding. He looked up and they caught each other’s eyes. For a moment, neither did anything.

  Eric sprinted toward the entrance of the building at the same time the man yelled out “Police!” Eric heard the girl scream behind him as he rammed the doors open and turned toward the parking lot, the water on the ground splashing up around him as he ran through puddles formed in the small potholes, the shouts of the detectives muffled by the rain.

  He ran into the library and a guy was walking toward him with books held under his arm. Eric knocked them out of his hand and they landed on the floor behind him as the guy started yelling. The officers weaved around him and kept shouting “Police!” startling everyone nearby. Eric got through the door and looked back to see them not thirty feet behind him. He darted into the rain again, the gym bag hitting his knees as he sprinted past the Field House and into the main parking lot before hitting the street. He looked back and saw the older officer far behind him but the younger one was keeping up.

  There was a residential neighborhood across the street and Eric dashed for it, a black SUV having to slam on its brakes and blare the horn as Eric crossed its path. He ran down the sidewalk and saw the detective still behind him. He turned into a driveway and through the backyard, climbed a wooden fence and sprinted through another yard and past a trampoline.

  Eric jumped another fence and into another yard. He heard a scream and saw a woman on her back porch, bringing inside cushioned chairs that were getting doused in rain. He ran at her as she held up her hands and screamed again. He jumped through the open sliding glass door and shut and locked it behind him before shooting through the house and out the front door.

  He ran to an intersection and turned right, ran behind a McDonald’s and around the back into another residential neighborhood; cookie-cutter houses, all square two stories with small front lawns. He could hear sirens in the distance, coming from all directions. His adrenaline kept him going but he could feel the dull ache of lactic acid build up in his legs and his pace began to slow. The Lortab dulled his sensed and winded him. Soon, he wouldn’t be able to run anymore. He went to a white house with immense bushes on the front lawn by the doorway and shoved his money and wallet into the gym bag. Then he shoved the gym bag into the bushes before taking off again.

  Eric zigzagged through more streets, but he’d slowed down considerably by now, having sprinted more than a mile. As he turned a corner, a patrol car skidded to a halt in front of him and two officers jumped out with their guns drawn.

  “Down on the ground motherfucker!”

  Eric put his hands up and lay down on his belly, the wet pavement cold against his chest. He felt the pull of hands grabbing his wrists, and the steel handcuffs against his flesh.

  CHAPTER

  16

  Dr. Namdi Said had lived in Andhra Pradesh briefly as a child though he was originally from Somalia. He remembered only the droves of merchants lined up on the streets of Kavali, yelling and haggling with any tourist that wandered by. A sight that, still in existence, had died down with modern conveniences like the internet. He had not seen the plains—named by the locals “Gold Mines of India” because of the color of the landscape given by the tall yellow grass—until he was in his late twenties and out of medical school.

  The jeep he drove in was well past its prime, rust adorning the underside and a constant clicking sound accompanying every rotation of the front wheels. The road to Saint Anthony’s Medical Outpost was bumpy and littered with old bones from animals that had happened in front of moving vehicles. It was rough terrain. More than one tourist died every month in the plains. From animal attacks, from getting lost, from disease . . . there were thousands of deaths awaiting them here.

  The medical outpost had been established by a United Nations relief effort to help the outlying villages attain medical care. It was little more than a couple of operating rooms and a limited pharmacy, but it was better than nothing. In years past the various bureaucrats sapped the villages of whatever value they possessed. Sometimes it was just taking livestock and precious metals. It was rumored by the locals that other times it was pushing the villagers into forced labor. If the government here couldn’t use them they would be rented to other nations. These were people in the lowest caste of society and even their own government saw them as little more than animals. Though the thought of the Indian government selling slaves to other nations was too much even for Namdi to believe.

  But Namdi had seen such brutality in the diamond mines of the Congo in his work with Doctors Without Borders. An entire village in the Congo was ransacked. The girls and women were forced into prostitution, chained up on a military base. The boys and men were taken to the jungles, a mine called N’su havu.

  He remembered the stink of the mines more than anything else. Since work was never allowed to stop the laborers would have to urinate and defecate on themselves. They slept in a nearby cave and were given the barest minimum sustenance to survive. Usually some type of gruel made from animal entrails and whatever else happened to be in the vicinity of the mines. They were given a few cups of water. In the soaring heat and humidity three cups led to severe dehydration. Most of the laborers died because of the lack of water. They would fall in the mines and their bodies would remain there the rest of the day.

  When the day ended the other workers would haul the bodies to the surface and throw them in a ditch or leave them out in the jungle. It was rumored that the Congolese government recycled the corpses as meat, claiming it to be beef, and mixed it with real beef to sell in foreign markets. Namdi hadn’t personally seen it, but he had no doubt it could be true. Once dehumanization occurred, anyone was capable of anything against their fellow men.

  The medical outpost was off the side of the road about a hundred yards and made of gray cement with a black roof. There was a policeman’s car out front and a tall Indian in a green uniform sat on the hood smoking a cigarette. He put the cigarette out and hopped off the hood when he saw Namdi’s jeep pull in and park.

  “Dr. Said?” the policeman said in broken English.

  “Yes.”

  “I am Inspector Singh, we spoke on the phone.”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “The bodies are kept inside. There is no icebox. It is not cold.”

  “I understand. Please take me to them.”

  Namdi followed the policeman into the building. The reception area was one open space with a nurse sitting behind a large gray desk. There were two corridors going off in different directions and the policeman led him down the left one and into a small room tiled white from floor to ceiling.

  On a metal autopsy table were the remains of a woman. The body was torn apart. The only things left were part of a leg, the ribcage, and a skull with shoulder length blond hair still attached. The face was gone.

  Namdi’s heart raced at the sight. He took out a pair of glasses from his breast pocket and put them on before approaching the table. “Could you hand me those rubber gloves please?” Namdi said, pointing to a shelf loaded with supplies.

  The officer didn’t move for a time, obviously not accustomed to doing favors. He took the gloves down and handed it to him without saying a word.

  The rubber gloves were tight and pulled on the hair of Namdi’s wrist. He ignored it and reached into the woman’s ribcage, looking at the marks on the bone that covered the underside. All the organs were missing and part of the spine was gone.

  “When did you find her?”

  “Two days ago.”

  “Where?”

  “Outside a rented home. The rich can stay in those homes. They are for tourists. She has a husband. He said his two children are missing.” The policeman leaned back against a sink and folded his arms. “I’ve seen tigers there. I think they must have been very hungry to attack a person close to the city.”

  “This was not a tiger,” Namdi said, running the tip of his finger over deep markings carved in the bone.


  “How do you know?”

  “Part of the spine and ribs has been eaten; tigers do not eat the bones. The bite marks are too large as well,” Namdi said, flipping off his gloves and throwing them in a nearby trash bin.

  “What do you think it was?”

  Namdi put his glasses back in his pocket and stepped away from the body. “I do not know. Can you take me to the husband?”

  The policeman pulled out another cigarette and lit it. “Yes.”

  *****

  Namdi followed the police car along the bumpy road for half a mile before they turned off and began driving through the edge of the plains. There were lush green bushes and immense rock formations, boulders stacked one upon the other that looked like giants in the distance. It was a warm day and Namdi had the top of the jeep down but it wasn’t helping. His shirt still clung to him with sweat.

  They pulled in front of a white house with a plaque over the porch that said “The Hemingway,” though as far as Namdi knew, Hemingway had never visited India. There was a tire attached to a rope and slung over the branch of a nearby tree.

  They walked up the porch and the policeman opened the front door without knocking. The interior reeked of alcohol and vomit. The television was tuned to a show in English and a tall man in his underwear was sprawled on the couch, empty bottles of beer and vodka around him.

  “Mr. Berksted,” the policeman said, “this is Dr. Namdi Said. He would like to talk with you.” He turned to Namdi. “I will wait outside.”

  Namdi stood by the door, waiting for acknowledgement, but received none. He went in and moved a bottle off the couch, sitting down next to the man. “I’m very sorry,” he said.

  There was no response.

  “If you could tell me what happened, I think we may be able to stop this from happening to others.”