Carrion (The Bren Watts Diaries #1)

Chapter 3

DAY ONE; the Creation of a Deadly Plague

Meanwhile, off out on the coast of Mozambique...

While I was busy trading jabs against my bullies at the airport, a new development occurred worldwide. I didn't know it at the time until later, but I will try to portray the turn of events of how the plague came to be, based on several accounts of survivors and the various theories I heard along the way.

I will try to make it as close to the truth as possible.

A recent graduate from Johns Hopkins University Medical School, Dr. Ryan Krasinsky, the son of a prominent Republican Senator from Ohio, succumbed to a high fever after contracting an unknown illness.

Dr. Krasinsky was a recent addition to the Doctors Without Borders program, assigned to Mozambique in south-eastern Africa, joining an international team of twelve in the coastal town of Lucete. He was twenty-eight, handsome from the pictures paraded on the news after his illness and the media firestorm that followed after his death.

As I got ready for my flight in my own home during the early hours of April 9th, it was already noon in Mozambique. Dr. Krasinsky and six other doctors, given a weekend break, took the opportunity to board a charter plane to the Comoros Islands less than two hundred miles off the coast. On that same day, they prepared for a hiking trip.

They took a helicopter ride to the town of Badjanani, where Dr. Krasinsky and his friends flew close to the rim of Mount Karthala, the island's active volcano, intending to hike around it. It was an excellent opportunity for Instagram-worthy pictures that would no doubt accumulate thousands of likes. I believed that was what Dr. Krasinsky intended to do. The doctor was trendy on social media, garnering over eight hundred thousand followers due to his popularity on Buzzfeed's list of: "The Most Handsome Sons of Politicians You Don't Know!"

After an hour of hiking, the group arrived close to the rim by mid-afternoon. They took pictures against the stacks of thin mist rising out of the rocky vents, the pitched-black blanket of volcanic earth, and then ate their lunch that they brought with them to the summit, enjoying the beautiful vista of the island. Dr. Krasinsky had a few biscuits and jerky with him, including an apple and a banana, per the report I read.

While they rested, a massive swarm of fruit bats flew over them. And while it unquestionably would be awesome to see it, let alone perfect for social media, Dr. Krasinsky didn't notice that a little fruit bat landed on his lunch box and took a nibble out of his apple.

At some point, Dr. Krasinsky scared the bat away. He then finished his lunch, took a bite of the same apple, not knowing that the bat got to it first. It was a perfect day, the sun was shining, and Dr. Krasinsky was satisfied with his mini-vacation, not knowing that a growing plague had entered his system. The group hiked back to the helipad and returned to Badjanani for a fun night of drinks and festivities.

A scientist deduced that the fruit bat that bit the doctor's apple died hours later of a bat-related fungal infection it already had in its brain. This disease was akin to the fungal infection found in ants in the tropics, the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, a disabling pathogen that could alter the behavioral pattern of the infected host. In bats, it was a relatively new disease and hardly found anywhere else in the world...Only in the Comoros Islands.

It wasn't until later that it was named Cordyceps Pteropodidaesus Comoros (CPC), or Cordyceps of the family Pteropodidae, the family the fruit bats belonged to in Comoros.

The report theorized that the bat might have burrowed deep in its cave with a proper humidity of around sixty percent to die. This allowed the fungal parasite to sprout out its fruiting bodies from the bat's orifices--and sometimes, broke out of their skin--and rupturing to release the fungal spores, allowing it to infect more of the bat's colony.