Kingdom of Bones

Book 16: Sigma Force

by James Rollins

Genres: Action & Adventure; Military Thrillers; Suspense; Mystery; Science Fiction

Synopsis

From #1 New York Times bestselling author James Rollins, the latest riveting, deeply imaginative thriller in the Sigma Force series, told with his trademark blend of cutting-edge science, historical mystery, and pulse-pounding action.

It begins in Africa . . .

A United Nations relief team in a small village in the Congo makes an alarming discovery. An unknown force is leveling the evolutionary playing field. Men, women, and children have been reduced to a dull, catatonic state. The environment surrounding them—plants and animals—has grown more cunning and predatory, evolving at an exponential pace. The insidious phenomenon is spreading from a cursed site in the jungle — known to locals as the Kingdom of Bones —and sweeping across Africa, threatening the rest of the world.

What has made the biosphere run amok? Is it a natural event? Or more terrifyingly, did someone engineer it?

Commander Gray Pierce and Sigma Force are prepared for the extraordinary and have kept the world safe, vigilance for which they have paid a tragic personal price. Yet, even these brilliant and seasoned scientific warriors do not understand what is behind this frightening development—or know how to stop it. As they race to find answers, the members of Sigma quickly realize they have become the prey.

To head off global catastrophe, Sigma Force must risk their lives to uncover the shattering secret at the heart of the African continent—a truth that will illuminate who we are as a species and where we may be headed . . . sooner than we know.

Mother Nature—red in tooth and claw—is turning against humankind, propelling the entire world into the Kingdom of Bones.

Release date: April 19, 2022

Publisher: William Morrow

Print pages: 448

Sample

October 14, 1894

Kasai District, Congo Free State

The Reverend William Sheppard silently recited the Lord’s Prayer as he waited for the cannibal to finish filing his teeth. The Basongye tribesman held a bone rasp in one hand and a mirror in the other as he crouched by the fire. He sharpened an incisor to a finer point, smiled admiringly at his handiwork, then finally stood.

The tribesman towered before Sheppard, standing nearly seven feet tall. The cannibal was dapperly dressed in long pants, polished boots, and a buttoned shirt. He could easily be mistaken for a fellow classmate of Sheppard’s at the Southern Presbyterian Theological Seminary for Colored Men in Tuscaloosa, from which the reverend had graduated. Only, as was typical for the cannibal’s tribe, the giant here had shaved his eyebrows and plucked his eyelashes, creating a frightening countenance, especially with his shark-toothed grin.

Sheppard sweated in a white linen suit and tie, and a matching pith helmet. He craned his neck to face the leader of the Zappo Zaps. The warlike tribe had allied themselves with Belgium’s colonial forces and served as King Leopold’s de facto army. The infamous Zappo Zaps had earned their name from the rattling blasts of their many guns. Sheppard noted the long rifle slung over the cannibal’s shoulder. He wondered how many innocents had died because of that one weapon.

Upon entering the village, Sheppard had observed dozens of fly-crusted bodies. From the piles of scorched bones, it was evident many others had already been eaten. Nearby, a tribesman set about carving a fresh bloody slab from a severed thigh. Another Zappo Zap rolled leaves of tobacco inside a hollowed-out skull. Even the fire that stood between him and their group’s leader served to smoke a set of severed hands, skewered on bamboo sticks above the flames.

Sheppard did his best to ignore the horrors here, even as his senses were assaulted. Clouds of black flies hummed in the air. The stench of burned flesh hung in his nostrils. To keep down his bile, he fixed his gaze on the tribesman. It would not help his cause to object or to show any squeamishness.

Sheppard spoke slowly, knowing the cannibal knew both English and French but was far from fluent in either. “M’lumba, I must speak to Captain Deprez. It is of utmost important that he hear me out.”

M’lumba shrugged. “He not here. He gone.”

“Then what of Collard or Remy?”

Another shrug, but the man’s expression darkened. “Gone with the capitaine.”

Sheppard frowned. Deprez, Collard, and Remy—all members of the Belgian army—led the Zappo Zaps in this region. Sheppard had come to know the trio after he had established a Christian mission along the Kasai River, a tributary of the Congo. The Belgians’ absence here was unusual, especially when their group collected its “rubber tax” from a village—not that any of the officers would have stopped the atrocities committed here. In fact, the trio encouraged such brutality. Deprez even carried a bullwhip, knotted out of hippo leather, that he used to flay the flesh from his victims at the least offense. For the past few months, the captain had been leading this group in a rampage along the Kasai River, terrorizing village after village, heading inexorably north.

It was for this reason that Sheppard had left his mission in Ibanj and sought out this group. Another tribe, the Kuba, had sent an emissary from their king to plead with Sheppard, asking for the reverend to stop the murderous Zappo Zaps from entering their territory. He could not refuse this request. Two years earlier, Sheppard had been the first foreigner allowed to enter the Kuba kingdom, mostly because he had taken the time to learn their language. After proving his fluency, he was treated graciously by the royal court. He found the people to be honest and industrious, despite their beliefs in witchcraft and a king who had seven hundred wives. While he had failed to convert any of them, he had still found them to be great allies in this hostile region.

Now they need my help.

He had to at least try to make his case with Deprez, to convince the Belgian captain to spare the Kuba from the spread of this slaughter.

“Where did Deprez and the others go?” Sheppard asked.

M’lumba looked to the east, beyond the Kasai River, which flowed a sullen course nearby. He cursed in Bantu and spat in that direction. “I tell them not to go there. It is alaaniwe.”

Sheppard knew the Bantu word for “cursed.” He also knew how ingrained superstitions were among the local tribes. They believed in ghosts and spirits, in spells and magic. As a missionary, he had found it nearly impossible to break through that veil of pagan beliefs and replace it with the bright word of the Lord. Still, he had tried his best, while also chronicling the horrific acts committed here, armed with only a Bible and a Kodak box camera.

Sheppard frowned his frustration. He knew it would take something significant to draw off all three officers. “M’lumba, why did Deprez and the others leave? What were they looking for?”

“Pango,” the tribesman muttered, using the Bantu word for “cave.” Then he scowled and pantomimed digging, while looking at Sheppard for comprehension.

Sheppard squinted, then understood. “Do you mean a mine?”

M’lumba bobbed his head. “Oui. A mine. In a bad place. At the Mfupa Ufalme.”

Sheppard stared across the river, translating the cannibal’s last words.

The Kingdom of Bones.

While it was an ominous-sounding title, Sheppard paid it little heed. He knew there remained many unexplored places hidden in the trackless jungle. In fact, he had even discovered a new lake himself and had been invited by the British Royal Geographical Society to speak of this accomplishment in London in a few months. Still, more prevalent than the superstitions rampant among these lands were the countless rumors of lost treasures and hidden kingdoms. Such tales had lured many men to their doom.

And now maybe three more Belgians.

“Why were they looking for this mine? Sheppard asked. “What were they hoping to find?”

M’lumba turned and barked to an aged tribesman, whose face was heavily tattooed, marking him as the group’s mganga,or witch doctor. The Zappo Zaps never traveled without a shaman among them, to help ward off visuka and roho, the vengeful ghosts and spirits of those whom they had slaughtered.

The wizened elder joined them. He wore only strips of a loincloth and a necklace festooned with carved ivory and wooden charms. His lips were greasy from his recent feasting. M’lumba made some demand to the mganga in a Basongye dialect that Sheppard could not follow.

Finally, the shaman scowled and shifted through the tangled mass of his charms. He freed a braided loop from around his neck. A single totem hung from it. It appeared to be a metal disk, no larger than a thumbnail. The elder shook it at M’lumba, who took it and passed it to Sheppard.

“Capitaine Deprez found this. Around neck of another village’s mganga. The capitaine whip and whip to make the peoples speak. Screams for two nights. Then mganga tell him where it come from.”

“From Mfupa Ufalme . . .” Sheppard muttered. The Kingdom of Bones.

M’lumba nodded with a deep scowl, clearly angry about something.

Sheppard examined the charm. It appeared to be a coin, blackened by age, drilled through its center to hang from the braided cord. One side had been rubbed enough to reveal the sheen of gold.

Sheppard felt a sinking despair.

No wonder Deprez had been so brutal . . .

For such a depraved man, the promise of gold had to shine far brighter than any quota of ivory or rubber. Of all the rumors of secret cities and treasures hidden in the jungle, none stoked the lust of the greedy more than stories of lost gold. For ages, explorers had been scouring the jungles, searching for such caches. Legends continued to persist of mines dug out by vanished Roman legions or even by the Old Testament forces of King Solomon.

Sheppard sighed, knowing all too well how many explorers had died in such foolhardy pursuits. He started to lower the bit of gold—when a glint of sunlight revealed writing on the coin’s opposite side. He lifted it again and turned it askance to reveal what was faintly inscribed there. He squinted, then his eyes widened in shock. He rubbed it clearer to be sure, revealing a name, written in Latin.

Presbyter Iohannes.

He gripped the token tighter.

It cannot be.

Though the name was in Latin, Sheppard knew this particular gold coin had not been minted by any Roman legion. Nor had the gold been mined by the forces of King Solomon. Instead, what was written here hinted at another story, one as fanciful as those other tales.

“Prester John,” he mumbled, translating the Latin.

During his theological studies, he had learned of the formidable Christian priest-king of Africa. According to accounts dating back to the twelfth century, Prester John had ruled ancient Ethiopia for close to a century. He was said to be a descendant of Balthazar, the black Magi, one of the trio of kings who had visited the Christ child in His manger. Prester John’s kingdom was believed to be one of astronomical wealth and secret knowledge. His legend was even tied to the Fountain of Youth and to the lost Ark of the Covenant. For many centuries, European rulers had sought out this illustrious personage. They sent forth emissaries, many of whom vanished into the jungle and never returned. Even Shakespeare mentioned this lost African patriarch in his play Much Ado About Nothing.

However, most historians of today dismissed this tale of a black Christian king who ruled over a vast swath of Africa as mere myth.

Sheppard stared down at the name written in gold. He wanted to discount what he held as some bit of fakery. Still, as the son of a slave, he could not. Instead, he felt a shiver of a kinship to this legend, to another black Christian from centuries earlier.

Could there be some truth behind all those stories?

While the promise of gold might have lured Captain Deprez into the forest, Sheppard could not dismiss his own longing—not for riches, but for the history hinted at by this coin.

He lowered the token and faced M’lumba. “How long have Deprez and the others been gone?”

M’lumba shook his head. “Twelve days. They take twenty men.” A deep sneer of anger showed sharp teeth. “And my brother, Nzare. I tell him not to go. But Capitaine make him go.”

Sheppard sensed that here was the root of the cannibal’s ire—which offered an opportunity. “Then let us make an mkataba. A pact between you and me.”

M’lumba’s hairless brows bunched warily. “Nini mkataba?”

Sheppard placed a palm atop his shirt, over his heart. “I will travel to Mfupa Ufalme and fetch your brother back to you—but only if you swear that you and your men will remain here and go no farther into Kuba lands.”

M’lumba stared across the ruins of the village, contemplating this offer.

“Give me three weeks,” Sheppard pleaded.

M’lumba’s scowl only deepened.

Sheppard waited stiffly for a response. If nothing else, those weeks would allow time for the villagers in the Kuba territory to evacuate and hide themselves within the forests. He prayed such a gambit might protect those fifty thousand souls from the barbarity on display here.

M’lumba finally held up three fingers. “Tatu weeks. We will stay.” He stared at the sprawl of bodies. “Then I will get hungry again.”

Sheppard hid a shudder of revulsion at the threat in those last words. He pictured the well-kept streets of the Kuba’s royal village, lined by life-sized statues of former kings, echoing with the laughter of women and children. He imagined those happy sounds replaced by screams, the clean avenues awash in a tide of blood.

He stared past the Kasai River to the dark jungle beyond. He did not know if there was a lost gold mine out there. He doubted there was even any truth to what was written in Latin on the coin. And he definitely did not believe in any ancient curses rooted in a Kingdom of Bones.

Instead, the smoky stench of burned flesh reminded him of one certainty.

I must not fail.

1

April 23, 7:23 A.M. CAT

Tshopo Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo

A sharp sting woke Charlotte Girard to the harsh reality of her situation. She had been dreaming of swimming naked in the bracingly cold pool at her family’s country estate on the French Riviera. She slapped at her neck and sat up abruptly inside the hot, humid tent. The air stifled and swamped. Another sting struck the back of her other hand. Startled, she shook her arm, tangling it in the gauzy mosquito netting around the cot.

She cursed in French and fought her limb free. She stared down at the culprit, expecting to see one of the biting black flies that plagued the refugee camp. Instead, a red-black ant—as long as her thumbnail—perched on her wrist. Its mandibles had latched deep into her flesh.

Aghast, she knocked it away and sent the insect flying into the netting, where it scrabbled up the gauze. With her heart pounding, she pushed through the drape around her cot. Lines of crawling ants traced the dormitory tent’s floor and zigzagged up the walls.

Where had they all come from?

She retrieved her sandals and donned them, knocking loose a few stray ants. She then tiptoed across the flowing map on the floor. Thankfully, she was already dressed in blue scrubs and a white vest.

She caught a peek at herself in a standing mirror, momentarily shocked by her appearance. She looked a decade older than her late twenties. She had tied her ebony hair into an efficient ponytail, but it hung askew from sleeping on it. Her eyes were still puffy and shadowed by exhaustion. Her complexion was peeling from days under the sun. Her dermatologist back in Montmartre would be aghast, but out here in the bush, she had no time for niceties like expensive sunscreens and moisturizers.

Last night, well past midnight, she had dropped, exhausted, onto her cot. She was the youngest of the four-member medical team from Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders, at the camp. They were severely shorthanded with more refugees still pouring into the village camp as the jungles to the east continued to flood from the near-constant rain.

Eight days ago, she had been airlifted here via helicopter from the city of Kisangani, where she had been assisting UNICEF with their Healthy Villages program. Once here, she had quickly been overwhelmed. She had only finished her residency in pediatrics at USPC—Université Sorbonne-Paris-Cité—two years ago and had decided to give something back by applying for a one-year stint with MSF. At the time, her plan had seemed like a grand adventure, one she was determined to experience before settling into a routine at some clinic or hospital. Plus, she had spent part of her childhood in the neighboring Republic of Congo, at its capital of Brazzaville. Ever since then, she had always wanted to return to these jungles. Unfortunately, the passage of years had colored her perspective of the Congo region. It certainly had not prepared her for the hardships out in the rural bush.

Like the fact that everything here tried to eat, sting, poison, or swindle you.

She crossed to the dormitory tent flap and shouldered through to the morning’s cloudy sunlight. She squinted at the brightness and shadowed her eyes with a hand. The village’s thatched huts and tin-roofed shacks spread to her right. A good portion of the homes had already been swept away by the neighboring storm-swollen Tshopo River. To her left, a sprawl of tents and makeshift lean-tos spread far into the forest, occupied by refugees from other villages who had been forced to flee the rising waters.

And more people continued to flock here every day, overwhelming the area.

The smoke from a score of campfires did little to push back the smell of raw sewage. Cholera cases were already climbing, and the medical team was running low on fluids and doxycycline. Only yesterday, she had treated a dozen malaria cases, too.

It was hardly the bucolic natural world she had envisioned back in Paris.

As a further reminder, thunder rumbled ominously in the distance. Over the past two months, storm after storm had swept the area, flooding lands that were already swamps, even during the dry season. It had been the worst recorded rainfall in over a century—and more storms were forecast. Floodwaters threatened the breadth of the central Congo, and between corruption and bureaucratic red tape, relief aid was slow to keep up. She prayed for another drop-shipment of U.N. medical supplies before the situation became even more dire out here.

As she crossed toward the medical tent, she watched a young child squat and loose a wet stream of diarrhea. Ants climbed over the little girl’s bare feet and mounted her legs. She cried out from their bites, until a woman, likely her mother, scooped her up by the arm and brushed at her legs and feet.

Charlotte hurried over and helped pick off the last of the ants. She pointed to the clinic tent. Her Swahili was poor at best. “Dawa,” she said, guiding the woman and child. “Your daughter needs medicine.”

Dehydration—whether from cholera or a thousand other etiologies—could kill a child in less than a day.

“Kuza, kuza,” Charlotte urged the woman and led the way.

All around, locals scurried about. Many wielded brooms of palm leaves and fought the invading ant horde. She skirted behind a Luba native who swept a path toward the medical tent. Following in his wake, she safely reached the tarp above the clinic entrance. The smell of disinfectant and iodine wafted out, momentarily holding back the stench of the encampment.

Another of the doctors—Cort Jameson, a gray-haired pediatrician from New York—noted her arrival. “What d’ya got, Dr. Girard?” he asked in English, the de facto language among the clinicians.

“Another case of diarrhea,” she answered and started to follow the woman and child inside.

“I’ll handle it.” He passed her a steaming tin cup of coffee instead. “Fuel up first. Looks like you barely got your eyes open. We can hold down the fort for a few minutes.”

She smiled her gratitude and took the cup in both hands. She inhaled the aroma. The smell alone set her heart to beating faster. The coffee here was as thick as syrup, far from the delicate petit café at her favorite Parisian restaurant. The team had all grown dependent on the brew and only half-jokingly debated taking it in intravenously.

She stepped to the side to savor both this brief interlude and the dark, bitter elixir.

Her gaze fell upon the stocky figure of Benjamin Frey, a twenty-three-year-old biology post-grad from Cambridge, who was working on his doctoral thesis. The auburn-haired student wore khaki safari gear and a slouch hat. He also had on a pair of white trainers, which he inexplicably kept spotless. She suspected from his abrupt manners, along with a few tics, that he might be on the autistic spectrum, but if so, he was clearly high-functioning. The young man could also dive deep into an esoteric subject, oblivious of his audience’s interest—or lack thereof.

She headed closer as he crouched near a thick trail of ants and held one up in a pair of tweezers. She was curious at this invasion, this newest plague to strike the camp.

Frey glanced over a shoulder as she joined him. “Dorylus wilverthi,” he explained, lifting the captured specimen higher. “The African driver ant. Also called siafu. One of the largest genus of army ants. Soldiers, like this one, can grow to be a half-inch long, with their queen up to two inches. They have mandibles so strong that the indigenous tribes here use their bites to suture lacerations closed.”

She felt the man ramping up into one of his lengthy discourses and cut him off. “But where did they all come from?”

“Ah, they’re refugees, like everyone else here.” He lowered the ant to the trail, then stood. He pointed his tweezers toward the rolling flow of the Tshopo River. “Looks to me like they were flooded out of their regular nesting grounds.”

It took her an extra moment to realize that the black islands floating in the current were not piles of debris, but massive rafts of dark-red ants all latched together.

“Why aren’t they all drowned?” she asked.

“From a little dunk in the river? No problem for them. They can survive an entire day underwater. Ants are hardy little soldiers. They’ve been around since the time of dinosaurs and have colonized every continent. Except Antarctica, of course.”

She felt sickened, especially as she watched one of those rafts break apart against the shore and disperse outward. The invaders all acted in unison, as if they had strategized this assault in advance.

“Smart buggers, too,” Frey added, as if noting the same. “Two hundred and fifty thousand brain cells each. Makes them the smartest insects on the planet. And that’s just one of ’em. Put forty thousand together, and they’re equal to our own intelligence. And mind you, some Dorylus supercolonies have clocked in at more than fifty million ants. Can you imagine? All led by a queen who can live to be thirty years old, longer than any other insect. So don’t underestimate them.”

Charlotte suddenly wished she had never approached the biologist.

“Until this army moves on,” Frey warned as she began to leave, “expect a lot of bite injuries. Besides being smart, driver ants have nasty tempers, along with the armament to go with it. Those jaws are as tough as steel and sharp as razors. When on the march, they’ve been known to consume everything in their path, even killing and stripping the flesh off of tethered horses. Or dogs trapped in houses. Sometimes infants, too.”

She swallowed queasily. Like we need more problems here. “How long until they’re gone?”

Frey frowned, setting his fists on his hips. He watched the lines flowing from the river through the camp. “That’s the strange thing. Behavior like this is unusual. Typically, driver ants avoid areas of commotion like this camp, preferring to stick to the shadows of the jungle.” He shrugged. “But this flooding is certainly atypical. Maybe that’s what’s made them extra aggressive. Regardless, they should eventually calm down and move on.”

“I hope you’re right.”

He nodded, still watching the spreading mass with a worried pinch of his face. “Me, too.”

11:02 A.M.

Charlotte flashed her penlight across the eyes of the three-month-old baby. The boy rested in his concerned mother’s arms. He held a thumb in his mouth but didn’t suck on it. He sat quietly, his back unusually stiff and straight. He pupils were dilated and only responded minimally to the light. Except for his breathing, he looked like a waxen doll. His skin had a feverish sheen, but his temperature was normal.

“What do you think?” Charlotte asked without turning.

Cort Jameson stood at her shoulder. She had called the American pediatrician over for a consultation. They had gathered behind a thin privacy curtain, set off from the main ward and its crowded cots.

“I saw a similar case yesterday,” Jameson said. “A teenage girl. Her father said she had stopped speaking and would barely move unless prodded. She presented with swollen lymph nodes and a rash across her belly. Like this lad. I thought it might be late-stage trypanosomiasis.”

“Sleeping sickness,” she muttered, considering his potential diagnosis. The disease was caused by a protozoan parasite transmitted by the bite of the tsetse fly. Early signs of sickness included swollen glands, rashes, headaches, and muscle soreness. Later on, if untreated, the organism attacked the central nervous system and led to slurred speech and a sluggish difficulty in walking.

“What happened to the girl?” Charlotte asked.

Jameson shrugged. “I gave her a bag of fluid since she was dehydrated, then pumped her up with doxy and pentamidine. I covered all the bases that I could. I tried to get her father to leave her, but he refused. I heard later that the man sought out his own village’s shaman.”

She heard the disdain in her colleague’s voice. She reached a consoling hand to Jameson. “Her father was just covering all of his bases, too.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

Charlotte could not malign the tribesman for this choice. Many village shamans knew herbal treatments and cures for local ailments, regimens that medical science had not yet discovered or substantiated. She had studied several herself. Locals had been treating urinary infections with grapefruit long before the benefits of citrus were confirmed by Western medicine. Shamans also used Ocimum gratissimum—African basil—to treat diarrhea, which, if the camp ran out of supplies, their team might have to resort to.

“I don’t think this boy suffers from sleeping sickness,” Charlotte concluded. “Initially, from the minimal pupillary response or menace reflex, I thought it might be onchocerciasis, or river blindness. But I couldn’t detect any of the parasitic worms in his eyes that cause it.”

“Then what’re you thinking?” Jameson pressed her.

“His mother says he was fine two days ago. If she’s right, then the onset of symptoms was too fast for any parasitic disease. Protozoan or verminous. The rapidity makes me think of a viral infection.”

“There are certainly enough of those out here. Yellow fever, HIV, chikungunya, dengue, Rift Valley, West Nile. Not to mention—from the pebbling rashes on the boy and the girl yesterday—all manner of pox viruses. Monkeypox, smallpox.”

“I don’t know. The symptoms don’t match any of those. We could be dealing with something novel. Most new viruses arise from disturbances of a natural landscape. Digging new roads, deforestation, hunting exotic bush meats.” She glanced back to the pediatrician. “Also from heavy rains, especially in viruses transmitted by mosquitoes or other insects.”

As if summoned by this statement, a large driver ant climbed over the boy’s shoulder and latched onto the child’s neck. Blood dribbled as its mandibles gnashed the tender flesh. She remembered those painful bites from earlier this morning, but the boy didn’t move. He never lowered the thumb from his mouth to cry out. He didn’t even blink in pained startlement. He simply sat stiffly, his eyes dull.

Wincing in sympathy, she reached a gloved hand and removed the ant. She pinched it hard and tossed it away.

Jameson watched her, his brows bunched with concern. “Pray you’re wrong about it being a new virus. With the overcrowding here, the displacement, the shift in population . . .”

It could be a disaster in the making.

“Until we know more, maybe we should heighten our safety protocols,” Charlotte suggested. “In the meantime, I’ll collect blood and urine samples.”

Jameson’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know if it’ll do any good. With the chaos out here, it’ll take weeks until we can get any samples to a proper lab.”

She understood. It might be too late by then.

“But I know a researcher, a friend, over in Gabon,” Jameson said. “A wildlife veterinarian who works for the Smithsonian’s Global Health Program, specifically the new Global Virome Project. He’s collecting samples, helping the group create a surveillance network for still-unidentified viruses. More important, he has his own mobile lab for testing samples. If we can radio him, convince him to come out here . . .”

He looked to Charlotte for support in such an endeavor.

Before she could respond, raised voices, full of panic, sounded from the entrance of the medical tent. They both stepped clear of the privacy curtain. Two men rushed into the tent, carrying a stretcher between them. Another of the team’s doctors, a forty-year-old ob-gyn from Melbourne, hurried forward—only to fall back in shock.

Jameson headed over, drawing Charlotte with him.

The two men who carried the stretcher were a FARDC Congolese soldier and a Swiss triage nurse who had been canvassing the outer ramble of the camp. The latter was a tall blonde, who seemed incapable of tanning. Only now his face had drained even whiter.

The nurse panted as he lowered the stretcher to the floor. “I . . . I found him at the camp’s edge. There were four others. All dead. Place was overrun. He’s the only one still living.”

Charlotte cleared around Jameson’s back to note the ravaged state of the victim on the stretcher. An elderly local man lay there, struggling weakly to sit up. Blood soaked the scraps of his clothes and ran through the shreds of his skin. Half of his face was just red muscle and peeks of white bone. He looked as if he had been mauled by a lion, but the true predators involved in this attack were far smaller.

Ants still coursed through the gore or burrowed into the raw flesh.

“We found his body weakly stirring under a mountain of ants,” the nurse explained. “They were eating him alive. We used pails of water to wash off the worst of them.”

“Why didn’t the man simply run from the ants?” Jameson asked. “Was he passed out? Drunk, maybe?”

The pediatrician knelt closer to examine the bloody patient. The tribesman had finally managed to sit up. He opened his mouth, as if to explain what had happened to him—only a black swarm of ants boiled forth from his throat and flowed down his chin and chest. His body sagged and fell slack to the stretcher.

Jameson scooted away with a gasp.

Charlotte remembered the biologist’s earlier warning: Expect more bite cases. She also pictured what the researcher had described, how driver’s ants could strip the flesh off a tethered horse. She glanced back to the privacy curtain. The mother stood there, holding her stiff son, a child too dulled to respond to an ant’s bite.

She suddenly found it harder to breathe, as if the air had grown heavier. A fearful certainty welled inside her. It’s all connected somehow. She turned and grabbed Jameson’s shoulder. “Radio your friend, the virus hunter. Now.”

The pediatrician frowned at her for a breath, horror dulling his understanding. Then he blinked back his shock and nodded. He gained his feet and ran out, heading for the communication tent and its array of tiny satellite dishes.

Charlotte still had her arm raised. Movement drew her eye to her wrist. Three black ants wiggled there, latched onto the gap of skin above her glove. Their pincers were dug deep. Terror grew inside her at the sight of them—not at the violation, but at a sudden realization.

She hadn’t felt a single sting from those bites.