Read Online THE VIRON CONSPIRACY (JAKE SCARNE THRILLERS #4) by Lawrence de Maria - Free Book Online
Authors: Lawrence de Maria
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broke up. And made up. The makeup sex was always thrilling, but Scarne wanted more. He proposed. She turned him down. He drank too much. His friends despaired. But she came back to him and agreed to marry. They picked a church.
Then she ran away, out West somewhere. He probably would have fallen to pieces but he had just made detective and was closing in on a child killer and was able to subsume his own problems. That, and the constant ministrations of Dudley Mack, who felt responsible for what happened with Kate, got Scarne through it.
But he was a changed man.
***
Scarne heard the rumble of the reverse engines and felt the slow deceleration of the catamaran. He stood and realized he was slightly drunk. He always knew he would see Kate again, but not like this. He walked off the ferry and hailed a cab.
CHAPTER 8 - POOR INDIA
Dr. Satyavrata Venkataraman lit a cigarette, his 20th of the day, and sat wearily on the wooden box outside one of the medical tents on the outskirts of Thakkar, a village near India ’s border with Bangladesh. The other doctors in his team had dubbed it “Venka’s smoking box.”
Despite his fatigue after a 16-hour day, the 36-year-old physician still cut an attractive figure. The nurses in his home hospital called him Dr. Bollywood because he had the rakish handsomeness of a movie star. Tall and thin, with a small mustache and bedroom eyes, he was catnip to females, especially since he was as yet unmarried.
As the chief epidemiologist at the Gauhati Medical Center in Chandmari, a city known as an educational hub in the Northeastern Indian state of Assam, Dr. Venkataraman, considered a rising star in Indian medical circles, was often called on to identify disease outbreaks in rural communities before they could spread to the nation’s overcrowded cities. He thought he had seen just about everything a malevolent nature could throw at the human race. Now, he wasn’t so sure. He was at a loss, and not a little frightened.
For all the publicity and dread generated by Ebola and other viral outbreaks in Africa, he knew that some of the diseases in the Indian hinterland had the potential to be more dangerous in the long run. To be sure, Venkataraman wanted no part of Ebola and other hemorrhagic viruses, such as Marburg. They were horrific and killed most of their victims, turning internal organs into soup. But their potency had an upside, savage as it was. The viruses usually burned their way through a local human population quickly, since they soon ran out of hosts.
Like most epidemiologists and scientists, Dr. Venkataraman feared viruses that killed more slowly and less efficiently. The influenza virus of 1917-18 slaughtered 50 million people around the globe before enough people built up immunity to halt its spread. Moreover, the origins of Ebola and its deadly siblings were usually quickly identified: apes, bats, rodents and other so-called reservoir vectors and carriers.
But Dr. Venkataraman and his team still had not identified what was sickening the people living in Thakkar. Not that the medical sleuths lacked suspects. Sanitation in the village, where most of the dwellings consisted of mud huts with bamboo roofs, and families slept six to a wooden platform, was abysmal. The huts were poorly ventilated and stifling. Insects buzzed about and it was not unusual for livestock to wander in and out at will. Bowls of corn, rice, mangoes and bananas lay exposed everywhere and attracted flies and rats. Villagers drank from a well that had mosquito larvae floating in the clouded water. The village elders were partial to desidaru, a fermented liquor made from the sap of litchi trees. They often left half-full pots of the noxious brew lying around, where they were invariably contaminated with drowned insects, bat feces and urine.
Yet for all of that, the doctors and scientists knew, the villagers remained fairly healthy, having over generations built up immunities to germs that would
Then she ran away, out West somewhere. He probably would have fallen to pieces but he had just made detective and was closing in on a child killer and was able to subsume his own problems. That, and the constant ministrations of Dudley Mack, who felt responsible for what happened with Kate, got Scarne through it.
But he was a changed man.
***
Scarne heard the rumble of the reverse engines and felt the slow deceleration of the catamaran. He stood and realized he was slightly drunk. He always knew he would see Kate again, but not like this. He walked off the ferry and hailed a cab.
CHAPTER 8 - POOR INDIA
Dr. Satyavrata Venkataraman lit a cigarette, his 20th of the day, and sat wearily on the wooden box outside one of the medical tents on the outskirts of Thakkar, a village near India ’s border with Bangladesh. The other doctors in his team had dubbed it “Venka’s smoking box.”
Despite his fatigue after a 16-hour day, the 36-year-old physician still cut an attractive figure. The nurses in his home hospital called him Dr. Bollywood because he had the rakish handsomeness of a movie star. Tall and thin, with a small mustache and bedroom eyes, he was catnip to females, especially since he was as yet unmarried.
As the chief epidemiologist at the Gauhati Medical Center in Chandmari, a city known as an educational hub in the Northeastern Indian state of Assam, Dr. Venkataraman, considered a rising star in Indian medical circles, was often called on to identify disease outbreaks in rural communities before they could spread to the nation’s overcrowded cities. He thought he had seen just about everything a malevolent nature could throw at the human race. Now, he wasn’t so sure. He was at a loss, and not a little frightened.
For all the publicity and dread generated by Ebola and other viral outbreaks in Africa, he knew that some of the diseases in the Indian hinterland had the potential to be more dangerous in the long run. To be sure, Venkataraman wanted no part of Ebola and other hemorrhagic viruses, such as Marburg. They were horrific and killed most of their victims, turning internal organs into soup. But their potency had an upside, savage as it was. The viruses usually burned their way through a local human population quickly, since they soon ran out of hosts.
Like most epidemiologists and scientists, Dr. Venkataraman feared viruses that killed more slowly and less efficiently. The influenza virus of 1917-18 slaughtered 50 million people around the globe before enough people built up immunity to halt its spread. Moreover, the origins of Ebola and its deadly siblings were usually quickly identified: apes, bats, rodents and other so-called reservoir vectors and carriers.
But Dr. Venkataraman and his team still had not identified what was sickening the people living in Thakkar. Not that the medical sleuths lacked suspects. Sanitation in the village, where most of the dwellings consisted of mud huts with bamboo roofs, and families slept six to a wooden platform, was abysmal. The huts were poorly ventilated and stifling. Insects buzzed about and it was not unusual for livestock to wander in and out at will. Bowls of corn, rice, mangoes and bananas lay exposed everywhere and attracted flies and rats. Villagers drank from a well that had mosquito larvae floating in the clouded water. The village elders were partial to desidaru, a fermented liquor made from the sap of litchi trees. They often left half-full pots of the noxious brew lying around, where they were invariably contaminated with drowned insects, bat feces and urine.
Yet for all of that, the doctors and scientists knew, the villagers remained fairly healthy, having over generations built up immunities to germs that would
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