Enlightenment [Book 2: SEKTOR V Trilogy]

Chapter 31: The Buenos Aires Experiment (Part I)

Chapter 31: The Buenos Aires Experiment (Part I)

Antonio Correa was still in shock. How couldn't he be? Over the past ten days, he'd helplessly and painfully watched his family die around him. His mother was the first to go. She was an ox of a woman who'd raised Antonio and his three brothers alone, without the help of a father. He'd died in a mining accident when Antonio was a small boy. Camila Correa never remarried. She had no time for such silly things as romance. She held down three jobs and still somehow managed to raise a family. And yet, as strong as she was, she died at 69, one day after catching "Il gripe" (the flu).

And that was just the beginning of the misery. Helpless, Antonio was forced to watch his four-year-old daughter Maria succumb to "il brote" (the outbreak) a mere three days later. Next, his son Rico contracted a fever of 41ºC (106ºF) and was admitted to Hospital Dr. Raúl F. Larcade in San Miguel Partido, just outside of the city of Buenos Aires. Six days later, he remained in intensive care. And earlier today, his beautiful wife Gabriela, passed away in her sleep after battling pneumonia for five days.

And yet, here he sat...in a kitchen that normally bustled with life, with noise, with laughter, and, yes, sometimes with tears. Today, however, he was the only one left capable of producing tears. What he wouldn't do to trade his life in exchange for theirs. Throughout it all, he wanted nothing more than to absorb their suffering and extinguish their pain. His anguish cut excruciatingly deep, but it was also incomplete. None of this made sense. He had to know why...he had to understand. The anger inside was growing alongside the anguish. Antonio knew it was a dangerous mix.

He was not alone. Misery was everywhere in San Miguel these days. It was also in the neighboring Partidos of and Hurlingham, where the same infections had ended the lives of over 100,000 people within the past month. In San Miguel, the death toll now exceeded 85,000. The country was in complete shock. Everyone was in abject fear as to what was next.

When would it stop? Would it ever stop?

And yet, inexplicably, il brote did not kill everyone. Here he sat, no worse for the wear, despite literally holding his family tightly in his arms as they collapsed around him. He wondered, why was he still alive? The health officials were equally baffled and were utterly useless to the public. When pressed for information, they had no answers. The one tangible fact that they could proclaim was that il brote was the exact strain of the virus that infected millions in 2009 and 2010. Back then, it was known as H1N1, or the swine flu virus. At that time, the virus was not nearly as virulent. It killed one in every 5000 people that became infected. This time, this same bug was killing fifty percent of its victims. Something the doctors said was impossible. And yet, the impossible was (indeed) happening. Now health officials were trying to blame the municipal water supply. But Antonio knew that made no sense since he'd been regularly drinking from his faucet right up to the day they declared this new emergency.

No, something else was going on. Gabriela, on her deathbed, had told him that it was the "lure of the night air" that made her sick. In her very weakened state, she'd been saying this to him for days, but Antonio didn't understand—not until yesterday. That was when he spoke to his neighbor Vitoro, who repeated a similar story that his wife described the night she'd become ill. Vitoro, who remained fast asleep through it all, told him that his wife Magda sleep-walked that evening, but somehow remained wide awake the entire time. She called it "el mal trance" (the evil trance).

Since Antonio worked nights at a computer chip manufacturing plant, he was unable to confirm any of this. Still, he'd heard of anecdotal reports from Hurlingham weeks earlier that suggested many of the victims experienced similar unexplained nocturnal behaviors before they became sick. Of course, the clueless local health professionals and the inept Argentine government officials brushed all of this talk aside as unproven and irrational nonsense. Yet, the rumors from the masses persisted. More and more people were demanding real answers from their incompetent leaders. As each day passed, however, their questions remained unanswered.

For Antonio, all of this faded into the background as deep sorrow once again took hold of his being. In the end, he knew that none of it mattered. He'd lost three-quarters of his family in a matter of ten days. He now sat alone with tears rolling down his face in an empty room that once abounded with the sounds of life and joy. Answers to the questions about how this happened and why no one could stop it all rang painfully hollow. None of that would ever bring back his loved ones.

As that crushing realization lingered in his mind, he stared at the loaded 9mm handgun that sat in front of him on the kitchen table. He'd bought it years ago for protection, despite the objections of Gabriela, who urged him to get rid of it out of fear that one of the children would somehow find it and use it accidentally. The irony of that argument was not lost on him as he contemplated using it with purpose. But with his son still alive and fighting for his life, Antonio knew his mental musings would never come to pass. While the searing pain was a constant reminder of what he'd already lost, Antonio realized that he still had everything to live for.