were green until I got about four feet from the body of an adult woman, and then the lights all flashed red.
“Fuck me,” I said.
Top stood next to me as I passed the unit over the body in order to capture as much of whatever was triggering the BAMS sensors. It was uplinked to a satellite and sent data to Doc Holliday all the way the hell back in Greece. I heard her gasp as if she stood between me and Top.
“Outlaw,” she said, using my combat call sign, “discharge the filter and load a new one, then do a new scan.” I did. Doc said, “Boys, this don’t make any goldarn sense at all. I don’t know whether to scratch my watch or wind my butt.”
“Talk to me, Doc,” I said. “Not feeling real comfy out here. Do you know what this thing is?”
“Well, I know what the sensors say it is, boys, but that don’t make a lick of sense,” complained Doc. “It’s reading as better than ninety percent sure this is coccidioidomycosis. Shorthand is cocci or valley fever.”
“We’re not in a valley, are we?” asked Top.
“Even if you were,” she said, “you’re not in the right valley. The other name for this is California fever.”
Top and I exchanged a look.
“Say again?” I said.
“Cocci is a mammalian fungal disease found in the southwestern US and northern Mexico. It has no damn reason at all to be killing people in the Sahara.”
“Then why are we looking at about forty dead people?”
“Because someone is out there playing mad scientist,” she said.
“Going out on a limb here,” said Bunny slowly, “but am I the only one wondering if somehow we stepped into a big steaming pile of that millenarian bullshit out here?”
“How?” asked Top. “Those Silentium fucknuts are all about overpopulation, and these folks here are the exact opposite of that. Ain’t many of them at all.”
“You’re right, Pappy,” said Doc, using his call sign. “The Toubou are at cultural subsistence-level population growth, especially that far into the sand.”
“But someone killed them with a disease from the States,” said Bunny. “What the actual fuck’s that about if it’s not connected?”
“You got me, sweet cheeks.” She paused. “Listen, whether or not it’s connected is only part of the problem, and not the biggest part. The fact that these people are dead at all makes my ass itch, because cocci is rarely fatal.”
“Looks pretty fucking fatal from where I’m standing,” I growled.
“Well, no shit,” she said in her mock-pleasant voice. Doc always sounded like she was asking for a cucumber sandwich at a church social, but that was all show. Inside she was as hard as any of us, and smarter than all of us. “Okay, the CliffsNotes version of the science is that cocci develops in certain ecological niches where you have hot summers and mild winters, and where there’s very little annual rainfall. It’s generally found in alkaline sandy soil. Not in pure-sand deserts where there is no rain worth talking about, because the fungus grows in the periods of wet weather, then dries out and is spread by arid winds. It’s called ‘grow and blow.’”
“We’re in an oasis,” said Top. “There’s got to be water under the sand here and where the other deaths occurred.”
“Sure,” she said, “but not enough to do this. The growing cycle is wrong, and the location is mighty damn wrong. Also . . . the infection cycle is way too fast. Infection of cocci requires time, and generally an already compromised immune system. It might—might—explain this quicker and more pervasive infection rate if every single one of the nomads in those three groups were already HIV positive. But that’s unlikely because these groups don’t have a lot of physical contact with urban centers in that part of Africa where HIV is rampant. Maybe five percent of people exposed to cocci contract it, and of that group less than five percent fail to recover. None of the known infected die this fast. No, no, no. This isn’t Mother Nature being a bitch. This is some true mad scientist bullshit here.”