Dr. Creepen's Dungeon - S5 Ep199: Episode 199: Viral Outbreak Horror

Episode Date: December 10, 2024

Tonight’s all-time epic feature-length story is ‘Basilisco’, an original work by Chili 1220, kindly shared directly with me for the express purpose of having me exclusively narrate it here for you all.  https://www.reddit.com/user/Chili1220/

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The idea that a microscopic organism can disrupt entire societies, challenge modern medicine, and turn daily routines into a fight for survival, forces us to confront our fragility. Add in the primal fear of isolation, the unknown, and the devastating speed at which outbreaks can escalate, makes no wonder they grip our imagination with dread, as we shall see in tonight's feature-length story. Now, as ever before we begin, a word of caution. Knight's tale may contain strong language as well as descriptions of violence and horrific imagery. That sounds like your kind of thing. Then let's begin. Part one.

If one were to travel down the Caribbean coast of Panama, down to the farthest regions of the isthmus, near to the border with Colombia, they'll find themselves in a region of singular and majestic isolation. So far from the glitz and grime of the cosmopolitan world, it's entirely possible to forget what decade, even what century one lives in, so ageless it seems, with so few, if any, monuments to mankind's progress infiltrating it. Since time immemorial, the cool, clear waters of the Caribbean have gently lapped the pale sands of its many beaches, calm shores that stretch for miles in both directions, but are narrow and course, with only a short stretch of space between the edge of the water to the brilliant green wall of foliage, the short ways inland.

Marking the stark transition from calm and flat ocean to dense and wild jungle, standing at the edge of the water and looking in through the stand of looming palm trees that form the boundary. The chorus of jungle wildlife can be faintly heard, even over the steady gurgling of ocean waves, giving off an astounding and even somewhat ominous impression. The palms in particular reinforces powerful and forbidding impression with the way they stand tall and even at the perimeter of the forest, almost like posts of a great fence or the ramparts of a castle that are simply sprouted from the jungle itself,

only occasionally punctuated along its length by the various murky streams that work their way out of the foliage. But even in such a remote and seemingly isolated region such as this, pockets of human civilization persist in small and easily hidden villages, often situated in small clearings in the jungle, hidden from the beach, or tuck cozily in the curve of short peninsulas that form small harbors.

Here in the Gunayala province of Panama, dwell the descendants of the Gunah people, a native culture that has lived upon these verdant shores for centuries, and whose modern relatives pursue their lives in a quite similar fashion. In these small fishing villages, the residents still largely subsist on the bounty of the ocean, supplemented by small agricultural plots and earning an extra living on their handicrafts and entertaining the occasional tourist who stumbles upon their rustic corner of the world. My sweat and toil They've hammered out in existence that

Though far from glamorous It's simple and independent And largely provided by the land itself With few exceptions Their self-reliant way of life Has always sustained their basic needs In spite of occasional Misfortunes and the vagaries of nature

Be they hurricanes, crop failures disease and poor fishing And a general encroachment of an uncooperative and often hostile world however painful such misfortunes may be for them to bear, the people still persist undeterred, firmly believing that, with enough hard work, the land shall always provide. Yet as far as these people are from urban civilization, they are hardly the ignorant provincial peasants that one might assume them to be. They are well aware of the conveniences and

comforts of a more urban and upscale way of life, and how their own hand-to-mouth existence must seem paltry by comparison. Indeed, many villagers, especially the young, have opted to try their luck among the more cosmopolitan fellows, leaving their homes behind with sincere well-wishes from the families who intend to stay. Many residents maintain close family connections with relatives living in the city, connections that have acted as a conduit for modernity to work its way into the more remote communities. But however distance from civilization they may be, Elevents of modernity have steadily infiltrated their way of life over the course of many generations

and even some quite obscure and random trinkets of cosmopolitan life can be found in their mist. One man wears an athletic tank top with an Adidas label prominently displayed. One child wears a faded red San Francisco giant's baseball cap. A fishing boat owned by a family is powered by a motor that still bears a faded logo that says Honda on the side. houses of wood, plaster, cinder blocks and corrugated sheet metal are erected alongside straw huts that seem to be from another century. The twin villages of Baja de Paz and Pliasola are no different in this regard, having selectively allowed elements of modern living in unique ways.

Bahia de Paz or the Bay of Peace is a fishing village tucked into a corner on the north side of a short peninsula that forms a natural harbour known for its calm waters. populated by many aging piers and fishing boats. A short distance north, in a small coastal clearing and connected by an unpaved road, is its immediate neighbouring village named Playa Sola, or the lonely beach. In addition to their close proximity, the two villages are very closely connected in both trade and family relations. In fact, the leaders of the two communities who traditionally refer to themselves as the cacique in the indigenous fashion are actually cousins whose families

have resided there for decades. In reflection of these close ties, both Bahia De Paz and Playa Sola are collectively referred to by the locals as Las Alteas Hermannas, or the sister villages. What change occurs in one village is often closely followed by the other, for good or ill. Together they have weathered many storms and willingly shared in their hardships, and borlested by their family ties and strong communitarian values, have recovered from many disasters and persisted in the face of considerable adversity. Quite often the resilience of a population is better explained by their ability to recover from disaster, as opposed to simplywithstanding the damage it causes.

Rodrigo Olmos de la Vargas, the Cacique of Baya de Paz, an intelligent and philosophical man with a great knack for creating his own proverbs, describes it thus. He can cut us down. They will never pull us up by the root. At first glance, one might wonder how many disasters he may have possibly survived. Despite his seniority in the village, he is a relatively young man, not much older than 40, and not the wisened patriarch one might expect in a place such as this. Indeed, a keen observer may notice upon exploring the two villages that many of the inhabitants

are relatively young, typically under 30 years of age, with quite few middle-aged individuals and only a handful of people who could be described as elderly. However, proudly Rodrigo, or his cousin in Playa Sola, may proclaim their strength and pride. One can easily tell that the subject of past disasters is a very sore one, and no amount of pride or bravado can conceal it. On one particularly painful subject, this bravado may diminish entirely, a listening only hushed and fearful replies. Indeed, asking any one of the village inhabitants old enough to remember the events of the summer of 1991,

about the events of that time will leave them stricken with fear, their eyes betraying a look of great trauma and emotional pain. If they can collect themselves for long enough, they may tell, in hushed whispers and trembling voices, what it is they remember. They'll tell the story of the two Canadian doctors who visited their village and offer what they know of the curious case of Sandra LaRoche. Sandra Helena La Roche was 27 years old when she arrived in the Twin Villages in the summer of 1991 A native of Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. She was a recent graduate of the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine who'd volunteered for Oxfam shortly after completing her program. During her time in medical school, she befriended another young woman in the program named Emily Brady

who hailed from Kitchener, Ontario, and who volunteered, along with Sandra, to be an aide. worker, hoping to bring her skills and medical knowledge to impoverished nations. Both were general practitioners whose goals included offering inoculations, instructing in hygienic practices and rendering general medical services in underdeveloped regions with limited access to health services. With Oxfam, they chose to be assigned to a location in Panama, which was only recently reopened to foreign aid workers, who before were not considered welcomed by the military junta of Manuel Noriega.

Following Noriega's ousting from power in early 1990, locations in Panama were once again open to foreign aid workers, and so Sandra La Roche and her friend Emily Brady were sent to the twin villages of Bahia de Paz and Pliasol. They flew into Panama City on the 29th of May, 1991, and a few days later arrived in Bahia de Paz, where they were welcomed by the town Kassi, but were greeted with some coldness and skepticism by the villagers.

Such treatment of outsiders was not necessarily unusual for the people of the villages. They were generally suspicious of new faces and tended to keep to themselves whenever the two women were around. Though this attitude would eventually soften, it was a very slow process that was never quite completed. Increasing numbers of people began to appreciate the services the doctors had to offer, but earning the trust of the older residents of the village proved to be far more difficult. despite having two knowledgeable and well-equipped physicians at their disposal, many villagers still made an effort to avoid visiting them, sticking with folk remedies and even ignoring medical conditions

for as long as possible to avoid soliciting medical services. The inoculation program intended to vaccinate children and young people for measles and whooping cough was greatly delayed as many families resisted allowing their children to receive the inoculations. In one case, an elderly man died from serious complications. complications from an abdominal hernia, which he refused to see the doctors about. Even though Dr. La Roche and Dr. Brady could not have performed the lifesaving operation, they could easily have referred him to a hospital in Panama City, but the man instead withheld it until he eventually died.

Few of the villagers could really name any reason for their suspicion of the two doctors, even though the outwardly had no real reason to fear them. Some would say that it was the elder residents of the villages who warned off the other, distrusting the unfamiliar modern medicine brought by La Roche and Brie. Such suspicions grew when rumours circulated that the two doctors were actually agents of the American government who were conducting human experiments. Though such rumors were entirely unfounded,

they nonetheless confounded efforts for delivering medical services to those in need. Others would claim that they simply saw no need for modern medicine, being content with their folk remedies or generally discounting the practical need for advanced medicine. when they subsisted quite well on their own. At face value, it would seem easy to dismiss their suspicions as the product of provincial ignorance and right off the villagers as superstitious and irrational,

content with their backwards ways and resistant to change. But when prodded further, the people of the twin villages will, in a secret and conspiratorial manner, voice another fear that simply overpowers all reason. They may attempt to have mentioned in passing with a thinly veiled attempt at disinterest or dismissal. But one cannot ignore that distinct look in their eyes when they say,

Basilisco. Basilisco translates to Basilisk in English, a creature of ancient legend, with similar origins to tales of dragons and other mystical animals. It is said to be a snake with the head of a rooster, though historical tales tend to differ widely on the exact description. One trait commonly ascribed in all tales is that it is claimed that a basilisk is so incredibly venomous that it leaves a trailing cloud of poison in its wake, and its venom is so powerful, staring it in the eyes will kill a man on the spot. Such is how historical legends describe it, though obviously it's only a mythical creature, but it begs the question,

what could they be describing using a reference to a somewhat obscure mythical creature? What exists in nature that would resemble such an unusual descriptive comparison? However much the villagers were willing to disclose before, they'll have nothing to say about what they mean by the term Basilisco. Whatever they mean when they say it, it's clear that they firmly believe in the threat that it possesses. And they fear it enough that they were willing to turn away potentially life-saving medical care rather than take their chances with it.

What is known is that the legioners, The legend of this Basilisco is inextricably tied to the events of 1991 in the case of what became of Sandra LaRoche. For many years afterward, the precise circumstances of what transpired were largely unknown. The entire event was largely clouded by obscurity due to its unclear circumstances and mostly indeterminate consequences. Reports exist of an unspecified ecological event that occurred in the region at this region. time coinciding with the point where any official documentation on the event ends and where the story of the villages begins in may of 1991 Sandra lozhe and Emily Brady two Canadian doctors on an aid mission applied for and were granted visas to enter the country which they

did on the 29th of May September 8th Emily Brady would make a sudden and unannounced return to Canada alone without her friend and partner Sandra Oroche. Under circumstances she was most unwilling to explain. She would resign her position with Oxfam within the week, eventually fading into general obscurity. When Sandra was officially classified as a missing person, Canadian authorities initiated their own investigation, with Emily Brady being labelled as a person of interest, was thought to have the best overall idea of what became of her former partner. Presumably the the authorities interviewed Brady, though to no apparent effect, as little will be uncovered over the years following Sandra's disappearance.

With no actionable information gathered from Emily Brady, the case effectively went cold, and to this day, Sandra Elena La Roche is still classified as a missing person and presumed dead. The case of La Roche attracted moderate media attention at the time, but public attention quickly faded as the investigation stalled and no substantive leads would be uncovered. It ultimately faded into the realm of urban legend,

becoming yet another unsolved mystery surrounding the extensive speculation, though every new theory only seemed to add more questions. Popular suspicion largely focuses on Emily Brady and the circumstances of her abrupt departure from Panama, without her friend and partner, suspicion seemingly justified by her attempts to avoid official attention upon her return to Canada.

Accusations of various kinds of foul play on her part would follow Brady throughout much of her life, compelling her to take various measures to avoid public scrutiny and persistent harassment. In the 28 years since the event, she has settled in various places in her native Canada, and with public attention fading, she might finally be able to find a peaceful obscurity in which to live out her life. In spite of her nearly three decades of self-imposed silence, Brady does indeed, know the truth of what happened during her time in Panama, a truth that defies virtually every theory previously put forth by amateur investigators the world over. Her account of the events, however unbelievable they may seem, are corroborated by the accounts offered by the villages

of Paidipas and Pleiassau. With so many individual accounts concurring in so many specific ways, one can only conclude that it was indeed the truth of the matter. However much we may desire that such hideous things did not happen in this world. It would seem that, with this testimony, the case of La Roche has been solved. So like every explanation before it, it only raises a series of even more disturbing questions. One might even ask what good could possibly come of knowing these terrible things at all. Do we truly believe that asking the right questions will bring us closer to the truth? Those who serve the truth do so for its own sake.

They do so even knowing that they will not like the answers they'll find. They do so even if it means not knowing the truth of Sardro La Roche, but knowing the truth of Basilisco. Hey Ontario, come on down to BetMGM Casino and check out our newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. Don't miss out. Play exciting casino games based on the iconic game show. Only at BetMGM.

Access to the Price's Right Fortune Pick is only available at BetMG. GM Casino. Bet MGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager, Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. Bedmgium operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Part 2. Dr. Emily Brady, MD. It's hard to describe my first impression of Panama when I first laid eyes on it from the window

seat of her flight into Panama City. I slept through most of the second leg of our journey after transferring in Dallas when Sandra roused me from my nap to feast our eyes on the country that will be our home for the next six months. Looking out of the window, I could see what at first looked like any other stretch of land, but as I squinted I could see a vast inland lake connected to the ocean by a narrow channel that looked too perfect to be a natural river. It was then that I realized that I was seeing the Panama Canal, one of the seven wonders

of the modern world. And if I looked hard enough, I could see all the way to the Pacific side of the country. Between the sprawling jungle, the ocean and the clear sky, the whole country seemed to shine with such rich blues and greens that I'd never seen before or since. As you get lower during the approach into Panama City, you can see whole convoys of ships crossing Gatoun Lake, giant freighters that seem minuscule compared to the lake itself. Landing in Panama City, we feasted our eyes.

on the impressive skyline that rivaled anything we'd seen before back in Canada or the States. Actually getting off the plane, out of the airport and standing on the streets of Panama City itself was a rather different experience. I suppose Sandra and I had expected something akin to a lush, relaxed, tropical paradise, much like what we'd seen in brochures and from the airplane, but as it turns out, the hustle and bustle of the big city is more or less the same wherever you go. granted Panama City did have a distinctly more relaxed vibe than most others I've seen but the fleet of angry cabbies all jockeying for fares right outside the airport entrance instantly reminded me of downtown Toronto a place I'd been hoping to get a break from

thankfully the further out we got the more relaxed it became we arrived in the country a few days early in the hopes of getting some free time to do all the touristy things in the city before our main assignment seeing the Panama Canal up close this time, visiting the Teatro Nacional and generally hitting all the main tourist spots. Those were some of the best days of my life, days full of promise, when we still thought we could only come out of this as strong and more complete people. Well, my enthusiasm dropped off a fair bit when the holiday phase of our trip came to an end and we were due to ship off to the remote fishing village we'd been assigned to help. It's not that I was unwilling to help. I was excited,

excited to meet new people, experience another side of life and do some real good for humanity, especially since Panama had only recently become welcome to foreign aid workers. But at heart, I was still just the same suburban Canadian girl used to the plethora of modern conveniences that I'd grown up with, and I was still not quite sure how well I could do without them. Sandra, on the other hand, was one of those people who can seemingly adapt to anything and get comfortable anywhere, something I'd always envied about her, especially if she was. at times when I was petrified of the idea of having to take a crap anywhere but a flush toilet.

But of course I didn't plan to give up over something like that. With somebody like Sandra, I felt like even a comparative ninnie like me could take on the world with better than even chances of succeeding. And in a way, I suppose I did. Things got uncomfortable for me as we set out for the village we were assigned to health. It started with a rather long, bumpy and crowded bus ride from the city to the Caribbean coast. where we then take a boat down the coast to the villages. I have to say that the transition from the city to the actual Panamanian countryside

was a quite jarring experience. It's almost like we'd entered an entirely different country, one so far removed from the cosmopolitan delights of the city and I could practically feel my heart dropping and resting on my stomach. Sandra, of course, was unfazed. The boat ride, which lasted for nearly an entire day, wasn't much more comfortable. Well, at first I was glad to be away from the crowded interior of the bus, until the combination of diesel fumes, sea air and ocean waves aboard the boat began to make me sick, which continued until the trip ended.

And there we were, at last, the villages of Bahaya, De Paz and Pliasola, which we'd call home for the next several months. The coast in this section of the country was spectacular, just about the spitting image of what I'd originally expected to see here, except the city. that instead of a pleasant seaside bungalow, there was a sleepy fishing village populated by an assortment of shacks. I was pleasantly surprised that these shacks and houses were more modern-looking than the miserable Mad Max-style hovels that I had expected, but still it was something of a come-down for me. We were greeted as soon as we stepped onto the dock by the leader of the village, his wife and his four children. The village leader, a man named Florentio, seemed genuinely excited to meet us,

though his family, while reasonably friendly, were somewhat more subdued. If his family was rather seduced, then the rest of the villagers were, to all appearances quite wary of us. As we followed Florentia out of the hill to his house, we could see that many villages

had turned out to observe us as surreptitiously as they could. Some continued about their business, while others watched from afar, but noticeably refrained from engaging with us. I'd make eye contact with an old woman or a child watching us and offer a smile or a friendly wave. But the locals never reciprocated and would only continue staring at us with curiosity or even suspicion. Obviously this wasn't the sort of reception I was expecting after hearing stories from other aid workers

have been treated almost like royalty by the people they were helping. This rather cold, welcome diminished my spirits even further. That night we had dinner at Florentio's home with his family, as well as his cousin and great-uncle, who's the leader of the neighboring village, Playa Sol. His cousin, Dario, like Florentio, was quite enthused by our presence, but his great uncle Sebastiano was about as cold and skeptical as all the others in the village have been. Their wives had prepared a tremendous meal of several courses that took up most of the evening, and all the while Floreencio and Dario bombarded us with questions about life in America,

which prompted us to explain that we were actually Canadian. Florenceo and Ariel both spoke pretty good English, well, better than my Spanish at least, and Sandra, who actually spoke quite good Spanish, managed to exchange some words with Sebastiano, who spoke no English at all. They had grand plans for all the services we could provide, and we hoped to one day build a permanent hospital to serve both villages, and about how he wanted us to start with inoculations and health exams as soon as possible. Well, lofty as his ambitions were, I still couldn't.

help but admire his dedication and willingness to do his best for his family and neighbours. We told him we'd do our level best to make these ambitions a reality, but of course we had to start off small and go from there. Dario translated our assurances to Sebastiano, who of course didn't seem terribly impressed and replied with a grunt of what I assume was scepticism. That night I went to sleep in Florentio's guest room, exhausted after a day of travel and feeling sluggish after reading what must have been

two pounds of fried fish at dinner. I'm not quite sure how I managed to fall asleep while fighting off a mild panic attack. I know I shouldn't really have felt that way. Florentio had been so kind and gracious, opening his home to us and trusting our good intentions. But even so, I still felt like I was outside my comfort zone, living in a poor and undeveloped village in a foreign land so far away from home, especially when I felt I wasn't particularly welcome among all the other villages. especially when I felt that I wasn't particularly welcome, among all the others in the village.

My only comfort was knowing that I had a strong person like Sandra at my side to help me through this transition. The next morning I was glad to see Sandra was still in good spirits, and her steady confidence helped bring me at ease. That day was spent with Lorencio and Dario, giving us a guided tour of the two villages, an event that managed to bring out a few more people than when we'd first arrived. As before, they kept their disson. distance, with some even bringing out their children to see the visitors who the village leaders

had claimed were there to help them. I took that as a somewhat good omen that perhaps the villages would eventually open up to her. Baye-de-Paz was a pretty typical fishing village where most of the local goings on occurred around the docks and what passed for a waterfront in a place like this. Like all the rest, the fishermen spared only a few curious glances of us as they went about their labours. We strolled along the edge of the water. with Florentio pointing out a sizable rectangular building at the edge of the village, a sort of common space used by the village for certain events, which he claimed we were to use as our clinic during our time here.

Obviously we would have preferred someplace with running water, and that really wasn't an option here, so it would have to do. We travelled out of the village down a jungle path for a ways, until we suddenly emerged into a clearing that contained another village we didn't even know was there, from only a few metres back in the jungle. This was Playa Sola, where great-uncle Sebastiano was in charge, though the atmosphere was much the same as Bahia de Paz. At the edge of the village, nearer to the jungle, was a small field where,

what I assume was sugarcane being cultivated. While on the road wandered a few chickens, Playa Sola was more given to a traditional culture than Bahia de Paz, though stacks of wooden canoes arranged near the beach attested to there being a some fishing going on as well. The villagers weren't much more friendly than before, which I expected, but when a young girl tentatively approached us, she was ushered back by a sharp command from who I assume was her mother. This honestly felt more like a hostile suspicion than the disinterest or idle curiosity we'd seen previously.

I could tell that Florentio and Dario were starting to get rather displeased with the unfriendliness of the villagers, which they must have taken as a personal affront. When they brought this up in passing, Sandra tried to reassure them that we weren't offended and that we would be patient and earn their trust. But Florentia was terribly annoyed. With my mediocre Spanish, I couldn't quite follow his brief rant, but I got the gist that he felt that people were ungrateful

and should have been happy to have us. He switched to English and explained that the recent mood in the villages had turned sour, that they had only just recovered from what I gather were some quite difficult times. according to dario the people here were generally warier strangers and visitors especially after periods of hardship and loss which i could quite understand though i still wasn't comfortable with it yet when we asked about these hard times neither florencio nor dario will clearly explain just what had happened only hinting that it could have involved sickness or hunger resorting from crop failures or poor fishing these people when things are bad they get scared they don't trust others it is hard to find help when it's like this said florencio morosely i think we understand that but i think if we really help the people will come around sandra replied "'Talves, maybe. It is mostly from peasant legends, superstitions, you know. Something strange is a bad luck. Or they are afraid of, I don't know, basilisco or something,' he said without much enthusiasm.

"'Hm. Basilisco? I'd never heard about something like that, and neither is Sandra, apparently.' When she asked them what they meant, they quickly dismissed it as nothing important, just peasant superstitions. not something that educated people like us should even worry about. At his suggestion, I just put it out of my mind, and we continued our tour of the village. At some point in the early afternoon, we went back to Florentio's home, where we had lunch and spent the rest of the day planning out our program of service for the villages. I was finally starting to get used to the idea of living in this place for the next few months, and I was glad that Florentio and Dario had validated my concerns

about the rather frigid reception we'd received when we got here. Sandra, on the other hand, now seemed less comfortable. The first time on this trip I'd seen her spirits lower at all. As we had a look around the building, we'd use as our clinic. She seemed rather distracting. I still wasn't feeling great about this whole adventure, but I thought confiding in her might put both of us at ease. To my surprise when I asked her about what was on her mind,

she told me that all she could think about was this Azilisco, that Ferensio had mentioned in passing during the tour. At this point, I'd almost forgotten about what he'd said, so the fact that Sandra was still concerned now had me on edge. Basilisco, that's Spanish for Basilisk. What does that even mean? She said with thoughtful curiosity. Basilisk, isn't it something about snakes or lizards?

Something, I offered. Something like that. It's some mythical creature, by some kind of snake. Supposedly it kills people by looking them in the eyes, she said. So, they're scared of a mythical snake wandering around the jungle. That sounds like a superstition to me, I said, scoffing. Who knows? I don't even know why they brought it up.

But Florentio doesn't seem too worried about it, so maybe I shouldn't either, she said dismissively. And with that, the subject was dropped. Sandra's reasoning was sound to me. Florentio and Dario weren't too worried. Perhaps I shouldn't be either. She and I went back to work, setting up our future workspace, a place I wouldn't have chosen for something like this, since it didn't have hot running water, only a gravity-fed water tank that supplied a few spouts.

The building itself was mostly made of what I think were cinder blocks that had been aggressively painted over or her coloured tiles grouted on, and overall it wasn't very well lit, but this could have been managed. So I wasn't overall excited about having to practice general medicine in a facility like this, but this was all we could manage. But this is why we're here, I thought to myself. It's about helping the less fortunate. If they had more, they wouldn't need our house.

It's strange how youthful naivety can make one forget basic things like that. Whatever our circumstances, Sandra and I were still determined to make the best of things and do as much as humanly possible to make the lives of the less fortunate just a bit better. Even if we didn't have a perfectly sterile environment, We still had our basic medical tools and a small amount of supplies, and you'd be surprised to see how much can be done with only these resources. The next day, our opening day, so to speak, we were officially open for business. Earlier in the day, a boat arrived carrying packages of our promised medical supplies,

gauze, sutures, sterilising agents, spare tools, vials of basic antibiotics, and, most valuable, a shipment of vaccines adequate to inoculate dozens of people. It wasn't quite enough vaccines to cover the population of the two whole villages, but we'd decided to prioritize children and young people, which would stretch the available supply for quite some time. Our plan was to begin with an unoculating children, infants for the basic stuff like MMR, Duptheria, Tadness and Wopingkopf. For that day our first day of service, we had a grand total of six people receiving vaccinations.

sit the entire day. Well, as far as we knew, Florentio and Dario did their part to spread the word about our services, encouraging people to take their children in for vaccination, but all we had all day was just six patients. A few families have brought their children in, but it seemed that the rest of the villagers had no real interest in our services. Sandra and I had expected most everybody to show up, with lines running out the door. The usual case from what I'd heard from a other aid workers I knew, but we instead spent much of the day trying to stay busy by constantly doing infantry in between the infrequent visits. Needless to say, this was a very discouraging turnout, and it really hit home that these people still didn't trust us. Granted, we'd only been there for

three days, but I would have hoped that receiving a good word from Florentio or Dario might have swayed them to take us more seriously. Florentio and his teenage son Rodrigo came in at about four o'clock, to see how we were doing, and he was almost livid to hear that so few people had showed up. We tried to tell him that we didn't take it too personally, that we'd be patient and wait for them to come around, but he was still greatly displeased by what he considered to be an utter lack of respect for not only us, but for him as well. Within minutes, he brought in his two younger children, along with Dario's young daughter and infant son to receive their vaccines. I was glad to see that he at least was taking this serious.

he and Darya were just about the only advocates we had in the villages. He promised that both men would go out again to do some further prodding, hoping that we would get a better turnout the next day. Well, the next day came, and it proved to be little improvement over the first. They'd managed to persuade a few more families to come in to receive vaccines. Unfortunately, these recipients were in the exact age range we wanted to inoculate, infants and toddlers. overall those two days were quite a disappointment for both of us sandra was something of an optimist a cautious optimist but still an optimist and seemed confident that things would improve pointing out that we shouldn't judge our results after only two days that every person we helped was a step forward we still had the firm support of florencio and dario and for all we know it was only a matter of time before we had patience flocking to us well that was a pretty good good good good support of florencio and dario and for all we knew it was only a matter of time before we had patience flocking to us well that was a pretty good good good consolation for me, but the thought that nobody would trust us, still stuck in my head no matter

how much I tried to be positive. Over the next several weeks, Sandra and I settled into a decent routine, taking patients at our clinic from 9 o'clock in the morning to 7 o'clock at night, and taking the occasional call during the night, too. The number of patients we had increased only very gradually, seeming at times that our progress was stagnating while at others we might get more takers than usual. Either Florentio Daria or Florentio San Rodrigo would come around every day to see how we were doing. Bring us our meals, ask how many patients we'd seen, and occasionally vow to encourage others to take their medical complaints to us.

Occasionally it worked. We'd see a few patients for all sorts of maladies, maybe vaccinate a few children, and passing our time with inventory work. At least we didn't run short of basic supplies, since we always had time to request more shipments. We treated a lot of injured fishermen, one man who slice his hand open with a fishing hook, another getting a nasty chemical burn after spilling gasoline on his hands, working on a motor,

those sorts of things. Eventually we got a few elderly patients, which Sandra took as a good sign, seeing as the old folks in town were the most suspicious and obstinate. Every night we went back to Florentio's home, have dinner, spend a relatively relaxing evening, and wake up to do it all over again the next day. As discouraging as those early days were, I like to think that they did make me grow as a person. Within a week or so of living there, I'd managed to get over most of my first-world hang-ups and adapt to this new lifestyle.

I got used to the idea of mostly living on seafood. I could stomach the water, and I quickly found out that taking a crap in a ramshackle outhouse isn't quite as terrifying as I thought. On slower days, when we found ourselves largely unoccupied, we could steal off to the beach for a swim. It turns out bathing in the ocean is a decent alternative to showering when you don't have hot running water. When the house got too stifling to sleep comfortably, I could always go out and sleep on the hammock in the patio, drifting off to the sound of gentle waves from the bay.

It turns out that sometimes it's better to make the transition the hard way, because half of what makes it hard in the first place is ultimately just meaningless stuff that you quickly find out isn't worth worrying about. I think at the time I was still. starting to understand a bit about why people here didn't always take us seriously. After all, only a few weeks before, I was still a middle-class college girl who could barely fathom that life was possible without hot showers and toilet paper as much of modern medicine, but here I was doing both.

So you can imagine that if people who've lived this way all their lives might naturally think that doctors like us were a luxury, not a need. I started to understand why they might be content with things like mid-werexed. wives and home reddities and the occasional prayer. Not that I was doubting our mission or anything, but I did get it into my head that maybe I shouldn't just write these people off for being ignorant peasants. The cultures and attitudes don't just change overnight. But still, as much as I had adjusted, even this relative comfort wouldn't laugh.

Part 2. In the middle of the night, sometime in mid-July, Sandra and I were roused from her sleep by Dario and a villager from Pliasota. The villager, a roughly middle-aged man named Esteban, was in near hysterics trying to explain his situation while Dario struggled to keep up while translating for us. From what we understood, Esteban's elderly father, Eusebio, was in a grave condition, having suffered from extreme pain in his lower abdomen for nearly two days. Yet both Eusebio and his wife were extremely reluctant to seek our help.

Had Esteban and Dario's urging, we immediately grabbed our case. and followed them down to Playa Sola. When we reached his house, we were accosted by, who I assume, was Esteban's mother, who immediately engaged in an argument with her son, and made as if to prevent us from entering and chewing us away. I'd somewhat expected this kind of reception, but when it came to a patient with a potentially life-threatening condition, I would have none of it.

Sandra and I simply pushed past her into the house with Esteban, and we were immediately greeted with a strained groan from one of the back, rooms. We rushed into the room to see what was happening, and from the first look, we already knew the prognosis was grim. On the bed was an elderly man with his nightshirt hiked up to show his lower abdomen, and even from a few feet away, we could tell what the trouble was. He had a sizable inguinal hernia just over his groin that had bulged nearly the size of an apple, which he clutched at while moaning weakly in what must have been considerable pain. Even worse, he was noticeably pale and practically drenched in sweat, rocking his head from side to side.

Sandra set to inspecting his hernia while I took his vitals. Needless to say, his vitals were not good. He was running a very high fever with a quite rapid and weak pulse, though in his fevered delirium he did summon some strength to try and push me away while weakly muttering what I assume were prayers. His inguinal hernia had become strangling. where part of his intestines had slid out of place, cutting off blood flow to the bowel, resulting in ischemia and gangren. This had probably been the case for a day or two, and now he was in the late stages of septic shock after his gangrenous bowel had been perforated.

In this advanced stage, there was little we could do besides trying to ward off the septic shock using what antibiotics we had, but the hernia and perforated bowel would have required surgical intervention to have a chance of saving him. Neither of us were trained surgeons, and unless we could get him from here to a major hospital only a few hours, we were effectively out of options. We did what we could with some antibiotics and antiparetics to make him relatively comfortable. After about three hours, and shortly before dawn, he passed away. Esteban and his mother were nearly inconsolable.

Sondra and I, while trying to maintain our facade of clinical professionalism, were gravely. disappointed, even heartbroken at our failure to help him. True, this man had ignored a quite serious condition and delayed treatment to a point where it was far too late. And true, we were still having a hard time getting through to the older folks in the village. Perhaps there really wasn't much to be done in his case, but no doctor doesn't have regrets after losing a patient. Under these circumstances especially, it felt as if we'd lost much of the trust we gained over the last few weeks by failing to help this one man. Uzabio's wife angrily us away only a few minutes after we'd pronounced him deceased,

not at all interested in our questions or condolences. Esteban was much more kind to us. After leaving the house, he thanked us profusely for doing our best to aid his father in his dying hours and apologising for his mother's suspicious and hostile attitude. By this point a small group of other villagers who gathered outside their houses to witness the commotion, eyeing us in that same cold curiosity. Esteban thanked us again, and we set our farewells as Dario escorted us back to Bahia departs.

A very somber mood hung over us the next day, as we opened our clinic. Between the lack of sleep and painful loss of the previous night, spirits were about as low as they'd been so far since we'd arrived. We only saw two patients that morning. I suppose I could understand if the people were now skeptical of us after what had happened last night, perhaps surprised that these two doctors from a rich, advanced country were not in fact capable of delivering miracles.

Shortly before lunch, Florentio and Dario came in looking terribly annoyed, I assumed to speak about the events of last night. However, they came to us with another problem entirely. Apparently a man they called El Corrandero had arrived in Pliasola. I recognised the term from an earlier conversation with Florentio, Corandero meant a traditional healer, like something of a witch doctor. According to him, Corandero from another village who arrived to ply his trade in the village by offering folk remedies to the inhabitants.

Dario claimed this man was a familiar figure in Pliasola, who arrived every few months or so with an inventory of talismans, elixias, and other traditional medicines. The two of them were hoping that Sandra and I would accompany them to Pliasola in order to confront the locals about trusting traditional medicine over the efforts of us to train physicians. But on this point, Florentio and Dario were noticeably at odds. Florentio openly advocated confronting the El Corrandero with the intent of driving him off for good.

But Dario was far more hesitant about this plan, hoping instead to wait for him to leave before trying to educate the villagers about trusting modern medicine over folk remedies. Neither Sardra nor myself were particularly interested in their, plan. While we certainly did hope for the locals to begin trusting us more, this felt more like a matter of village politics, and we were concerned that openly disrespecting their beliefs would alienate us further. Nonetheless, we agreed to go with them to see this curandero, hoping that perhaps we might at least get a look at what traditional folk remedies he was peddling. When we strode into

Pliasota, we saw a decent-sized crowd beginning to form in the village common area. It seemed that the visitor had drawn out nearly the entire village, who had crowded around him and his cart. As the four of us moved through the crowd, we strained to get a better look at this travelling medicine man, but as we got close we could see that there was no getting a good look at him. El Corandero turned out to be a moderately tall man, who seemed to have covered nearly his entire body, from head to toe, showing no skin or even his face. He were a faded poncho over a simple brown clothed tunic and trousers that looked like an outfit from another century. On his feet were not shoes, but rough sandals worn over

leg wrappings that went up to his shins, and on his hands were rough gloves that looked like they were made of bool-up. But his head and face were the strangest. His face was not visible, obscured by even more wrappings, with only a narrow slit for his eyes, which were likewise covered with some kind of darkened glasses, partly wrapped under everything else. His head was covered by a drooping, white-brimmed hat that slouched over his face and neck, making it even more difficult to make out his features. With him was a small cart covered with talismans and small tribal fetishes that have been fashioned from sticks, feathers, small stones, and even some animal bones. In the lower basket was an assortment of clay pots and vials of dark

coloured glass, along with a smaller basket of smooth stones of many colours, with strange roons scratched into them. I have to admit, he was sort of fascinating, has never seen something like this outside of a documentary or a museum exhibit. After gawking at his merchandise for a minute or two, I looked up to see that the curandero had fixed his gaze upon Sandra and I, boring into us with those empty but still utterly piercing eyes of his. The crowd around him were quieted considerably, shifting their eyes to the ground, not even wanting to look at us. He just steered his empty glare across our small group, not saying a word, not even appearing to breathe.

The palpable silence of the entire crowd before this strange and intimidating figure put all of us on edge. Even Dario, though Florentio met the man's gaze with some defiance. Florentio greeted him with an almost mock enthusiasm, clearly confident of himself with us in his presence, though Dario was throwing nervous sideways glances at his cousin. "'It's a fine day for you to be here, though it is a pity you did not come sooner,' Florentio said, with thinly veiled contempt. Sandra and I flinched at that, still wondering just what he planned to say.

"'You may be happy to hear that we have real doctors here. Allow me to introduce Miss—I mean, Dr. La Roche and Dr. Brady, who have been with us for some time. Now he was just gloating. We nervously exchanged glances, suddenly uncomfortable with having any attention drawn to us. Perhaps you'll be glad for the competition, hey, he said with a brief chuckle. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Dario shifting uncomfortably on his feet, edging away slightly from his bold cousin. El Coranderer said nothing, just staring right through us.

And many people here are quite happy with them too. many have already taken their troubles to them. They realize we don't need Brouheria to get well. Brouheria? Witchcraft. Now it was the crowd's turn to nervously edge away. Still no response from the Curandero. And even without expression, his glare seemed to become even more piercing at the mention of witchcraft.

How about do as you like, Corandero? Some people here still trust you. Floreencio said, this time not even trying to hide it. a small sneer. And with that, Florentio made a brisk about face and walked out through the crowd, which parted like the Red Sea as he went. Zandra, Dario and I all followed him, sparing only one nervous look back to see the medicine man's empty eyes still following us as we walked away. We left Pliasola and made our way back to Bahia de Paz when Dario got into a sudden argument with his cousin. I couldn't quite follow what they were saying, but

Dario was clearly agitated while Florentio just scoffed with defiant skepticism. Whoever El Corandero was, Dario clearly shared the other villagers' fear of him and disapproved of the way Florentio had confronted him. They argued most of the way back until they left us back at the clinic. Sandra and I were both totally perplexed about what we'd just witnessed as we got back into our daily routine. This meeting with El Corandero had been a bizarre and steeply unsettling experience, And the more I thought about the icy, wordless glare coming from the faceless figure, the more I understood why Dario and the others were afraid of him.

Out loud, I half-jokingly quipped that we should watch our backs after Florentio's ill-conceived confrontation with the medicine man. Sandra just seemed lost in thought. She pointed out to me that something about El Grandero didn't seem quite right. Yeah, I noticed. I snorted sarcastically. No, I mean, this is a lot of you. man wasn't like any curandero I've ever heard of. They're like a shaman or medicine man or something

like that, but I didn't think people were afraid of them. From what I've heard, they're usually well liked and trusted. And usually the curandero lives with the villages, like they're supposed to be almost equal to the village chief, but neither village has one. Instead, they have a traveling one, and these people were almost scared of him. I didn't know quite how to respond to that. All I could think was that things were. were just different here. Not everything would be like what it said in the books, but I knew that if Sandra was concerned about something,

then I should certainly be worried. Well, if he only comes once every few months, maybe we won't see him again, I said with a feeble attempt at reassurance. Hmm, maybe. Well, who knows? We should go back there later, see what he's been peddling. At best the stuff could be useless,

but at worst it could actually do more harm. arm, she said. I wasn't thrilled to have to show my face in Pliasola again, but she made a good point. Around three in the afternoon, we decided to take the day off early and go for a stroll along the beach. It was a good way to work off a bit of stress, especially after the rather bad couple of days we'd just gone through. I still thought about Esteban's poor father. That was the first time I'd ever lost a patient, and even though I knew it wasn't our fault, really, it's still hurt to think about the horrendous pain the old man must have been in during his final hours. Well, still, it made me doubtful about our own efforts. Even if we got to him earlier,

his condition would likely have needed surgery to treat, something we couldn't provide, especially not out here. How much could we really do with just gauze and sutures or aspirin and antibiotics? Surely ascules were better than nothing, that realistically there would be a few things it would be beyond our training, but I was no longer eager to experience the helplessness I'd felt as we watched that old man die. After dinner that evening, we both collapsed into our beds. Having our sleep interrupted the night before, it left us in pretty bad spirits. But finally getting a chance to lie down almost made me forget about the stressful and bizarre day we'd just had. Unfortunately, this night we were again torn from sleep to face yet another

crisis, but the sense of urgency this time was through the roof. Within minutes we were out the door with our doctor's bags and following another young man from here in Bahia de Paz. My Spanish had improved a bit by this point, and I understood through his panicked exhortations that his infant son was desperately sick. Now that I knew a child's life was at stake, I was extremely on edge and determined that we would not repeat the events of the previous night. We arrived at his house on the edge of the village with his parents standing outside. Inside we could hear a baby. be not just crying, but shrieking, the desperate wail of an infant in extreme distress. The man's parents followed us in and quickly ushered his other children outside, and we saw that the baby's mother was sitting on the couch cradling the infant, trying almost hysterically

to calm him down. She was so desperate and afraid that we practically had to pry the infant out of her hands to get a good look. With just one look, we saw something that neither of us was prepared to witness. The infant kept shrieking as Sandra laid him down on the living room table, gently palpitating the back of his skull. I could plainly see that the top and back portions of the skull were noticeably swollen while his neck remained persistently arched. I recognized those signs immediately. Meninjitis. The child was in an extremely dire condition, and my heart sank when I realized that we couldn't guarantee he would survive this. We immediately administered antibiotics and wanted to prep for a lumbar puncture, but at this advanced stage,

we knew it would be likely he would suffer from some amount of brain damage, even if he survived. As we unwrapped him from the blankets, we were shocked to see that he was showing numerous angry red spots on his skin that extended all over his arms and torso. It's not uncommon for infants with bacterial meningitis to have an extensive rash, but such a rash would be in large, interconnected patches like bruises. These instead were small spots that, on closer examination, were actually due to small bleeds under the skin, like a hematoma, and still bright red like arterial blood. Now I was wondering just what I was looking at. Everything else seemed to indicate that this was indeed meningitis, but the pattern of the rash,

if it really was a rash, threw me off completely. While Sandra tended to the baby, I took the mother aside and asked her about how the condition had started. She said they'd arrived home late the previous afternoon from visiting relatives in Pliasola and had taken the infant with her. On arriving home she noticed that her baby was irritable and feeding poorly, a situation that continued through much of the evening. That night she nodded off on the couch while holding her son and was awoken by his crying.

At that time he'd developed a fever and couldn't be calmed and the situation escalated until they sent for us. Well, that certainly sounded like the course of meningitis, but it seemed like it progressed with unusual speed. Likewise, the spots on his skin didn't quite match the ordinary symptoms. Sandra yelled out from the other room for me to go back to our stash of supplies and get some extra antipuretics, and when I moved to escort the mother with me, she suddenly looked nauseous.

I figured that was just due to nervous tension. But then she suddenly vomited at the threshold of the front door and seemed suddenly uneasy on her feet. I helped her take a seat on the ground just outside and was turning to sprint up the hill to our clinic when I heard some incoherent shouts coming from down the road at Pliasola. In the dark I saw the silhouette of a small figure that appeared to be staggering and stumbling along like a drunk person. As it drew closer, I could finally see that the figure was a young boy, perhaps nine or ten years

old, with a vacant look in his eyes just staring at the moonlit sky. The shouting behind him grew closer still. Off to the side I heard another villager gasp audibly while others kept inching back away from the road. Forgetting my task, I went forward to see what was happening with the boy when several villagers began shouting for me to stay back. I couldn't understand why at the time, but when I looked back, I got a clearer view of the boy's face. Like the baby inside, his face and arms were just littered with those angry red spots. But some of these were noticeably oozing fluid that trickled down his body, and a large streak of blood ran from his nose down to his chin and onto his neck.

From this distance I could hear him breathing in short, ragged gasps, that came with much effort. His empty eyes just rolled around without heed to anything standing in front of him, and he continued his lurching walk forward. By now the shouts from behind him were revealed, to be coming from a small group of men sprinting towards us while shouting at the top of their lungs. Their cries were finally comprehensible, and I focused my attention on what they were shouting. Basilisco, no lo tokes!

Basilisco, don't touch him. That's what they were saying. I reflexively took a few steps back, not at all sure what was happening, but my instincts were starting to kick in, and I was prepared to move forward and inspect the boy. He was obviously severely ill and badly in need of medical attention. I couldn't just stand by earthly, whatever the villagers seemed to think. As I moved forward, a middle-aged woman stepped in front of me and blocked my path, repeating the warnings of the young men and trying to push me back.

While I tried to shudder aside, I noticed that one of the men had raised a thin object he'd been carrying, and I recognized a metallic blade of a machete glinting in the dim moonlight. the blade raised high above his head with his right hand. With his left, he clutched a cloth handkerchief tightly over his face. And with horror, I realised what he was planning to do as he closed in on the boy. In panic, I roughly shoved the woman aside, hoping to stop what was about to happen. But I was too far away and the machete-wielding man had closed the distance rapidly. In my shock state, the scene seemed to play out in slow motion.

The man cocking his machete back, the boy seeming to be. briefly come out of his disease stupor to turn slightly around to see what was happening. With a broad, powerful sweep, the man brought the machete down and buried it into the back of the boy's exposed net. The boy toppled limply to the ground, his partially severed head noticeably slouching forward and colliding roughly with the dirt. To this day, I can still picture that hideous sight with almost perfect clarity. These days the memory of that image feels excruciatingly real, but at the time it seemed so unreal. I was just riveted on the spot, still not quite believing what I was seeing, when I was broken out of my trance by the shrill

scream of the infant's mother behind me. She recognized who the boy was, wailing his name at the top of her lungs as she ran forward towards his lifeless body. The same middle-aged woman stopped her in her tracks, as I turned around and I saw one of the men throwing what looked like a cloth tarp over the body, while the other poured out the contents of a jerry can on top of it. The man with the machete lit a book of matches and tossed it on top, igniting the pile with a sharp, whom, and producing an orange cloud of flame that illuminated the entire scene. While the young mother wailed at my side, I noticed to all the other spectators were almost silent, regarding the burning pile with fear and revulsion rather than shot.

The man with the machete Waved his back away from the flames His voice trembling slightly He wore a pair of long cloth gloves That went almost to the elbows And noticing a small spatter of blood on one of them He stripped it off carefully And likewise tossed it into the flames

I turned to see that Sondra had come out To witness the commotion The look on her face showed that she didn't quite understand What we'd just witnessed The accurate smell of burning gasoline and was now tinged with the awful stench of burning flesh as the fire raged and abated. The baby didn't make it, she murmured somberly into my ear. My throat tightened up like it had just been clinched in a vice.

The infant's mother was still on her knees a few feet away, still sobbing over the death of the boy. It must have been a close relative of hers. He was already so distraught over one loss that I was mortified at the idea of telling her that she'd lost her infant son as well. What happened? I croaked. Right after he left, he had a grand malceasure. Stop breathing, couldn't resuscitate. Called it only a minute ago.

She sat quietly, glancing nervously at the mother. Oh, good grief, I thought to myself. I was starting to come back to reality as the shock wore off and my hands began trembling heavily. I saw the man with the machete wiping the blade with a rag that he tossed. into the fire before holding the machete blade itself against the flames. Floreencio finally arrived to see what the ruckus was about when he saw the men standing around the fire. He strode sharply up to the man with the machete and shouted a question in Spanish.

The machete wielding man just shook his head, muttering only a single word. Basilisco. That got Florentio's attention and his expression of confused rage rapidly morphed into one of shock and and anxiety. The man pointing down the road to Pliasola without a word. Fluencio showed a quick look at us and signalled for us to follow him as he began a brisk trot down the road to the other village.

Sandra hesitated briefly before following suit, giving the three men a wide berth while they just silently stared at the burning corpse. I was utterly taken aback by the response that everyone seemed to be showing. At the time

I thought I'd witnessed a boy being murdered, it in plain view of nearly an entire village of people, and everyone just seemed to quietly accept it, even Sandra. Was this something that happened in places like this? Well, the boy looked gravely ill. Why would they have done something like that to somebody clearly sick? But even more worrying, the men had been crying Basilisco, as they came up behind him, telling us to stay away from the boy.

At the time I still didn't know what Basilisco even referred to, but I had apparently witnessed it for myself. and I was still at a total loss. After a few seconds, I ran to catch up with Sandra and Florescio, who was still jogging down the road to Pliasola. As I caught up and got further from the flames, I could see that another point in the distance was brightly lit up, with a thick grey column of smoke rising from the centre of another fire, this time in the next village.

I was wondering just what in the hell was going on when he arrived in Pliasola to meet another large crowd of people ringing the centre of this fire. Florentio pushed his way through the crowd to see that his cousin Dario was there at the front, watching with the crowd as a house went up in flames. The entire house was ablaze, with gusts of flame bellowing from the windows and the opening where the door used to be, and the entire roof seemed to have disappeared behind a wall of smoke and fire. Floreencio whispered something into Dario's ear, who responded in kind.

Nobody in the village interfeigned in the blaze. Sandra and I could only stand there staring slack-jawed with everybody else as we watched the house burn for another ten minutes or so. By then, Florentio and Dario had turned around and sharply ordered the spectating villagers to disperse and return to their homes, not to fetch water to fight the flames or to consider rescuing anybody inside, but to just go home. They did so impassively, throwing glances back at the flames

with the looks of fear and grief, but complying nonetheless. With one final look, Florentio and Dario turned around and strolled despondently back to the main path in the village. We followed the two of them closely, intent on demanding answers to what exactly had just happened during the night. The two cousins were standing at the edge of the path, talking quietly among themselves when Sandra confidently strode up behind them. All right, we've been here for over a month now and you guys haven't given us a straight answer about what's going on around here. so do us a courtesy. Could you explain what the fuck just happened tonight? Sandra was practically glaring daggers at the two.

Florentio and Dario traded glances for a moment, clearly unsure how they could explain it. Well, Dario said cautiously, the people here they say it was Basilisco. What does that even mean? I've heard Basilisco a dozen times now, and I still don't know what the hell people are talking about. Sondra retorted tersely.

Florentio stared off to the side as if searching for the right words. Basilisco, that's what happened to the boy, and a baby too, I suppose, he said thoughtfully. Oh, that's what it means, a sick boy getting his fucking head chopped off in the middle of the road. Makes perfect goddamn sense, I snapped. I'd held my silence long enough, and all the emotions I felt after seeing that boy die began to bubble over. "'No, that is not what it means,' he eventually replied. "'You said the boy was sick. That is Basilisco. That is what happened to him, we think.' "'Those men, they did what needed to be done. If they didn't, everyone in Bahia de Paz would be sick now, too,' Dario interjected.

"'I could barely believe what I was hearing, and I was ready to snap at him when he spoke again. "'The boy was suffering. You could not help him. If they didn't. didn't kill him, Basilisco would happen to others too. That's why they burned him. Florentio pointed out solemnly. That is why they burned the house too. What do you mean? What happened with the house?

Sandra asked Tersely. The boy's family, they were sick too. There was Basilisco in that house, so it had to be burned, Dario said. Lillianna, the baby's mother. That was a brother's house. I mean, the boy was her nephew, Timoteo. "'Melyana and the baby visited here today.' "'That is how they got sick, I think,' Florentio said quietly.

"'And what happened to the baby?' "'She's gone,' Sandra said. "'I remember the look on her face when she said it, "'that palpable sense of grief. "'Wait, there were people in that house. "'You burned down that house with them still inside,' "'I said, nearly hysterical with the thought of people being trapped in that blaze. They were sick, Dario said firmly.

If they didn't burn it and the bodies, there would still be Basilisco in that house. He paused for a second, regaining his composure. Look, he said in a consolatory tone. We know what Basilisco does. We have seen it before. You have not. I know it's not nice to see, but we do what we must to stop it. Believe me, letting Basilisco happen would look much worse.

As angry as I'd been, the look in Dario's eyes said it all. I could see that he genuinely meant what he said, and he didn't like this situation any better than I did. In fact, he probably felt worse than me. After all, the people who died on his horrible evening were his friends and neighbours, people he'd known his entire life, while to me they were strangers. Sandra and I were still quite agitated by the events of the past few hours, but we couldn't muster much of a reply after Dario laid it out like that.

without a word we followed Florentio back to Bahia departs all the while wondering just what the hell we'd volunteered for you know I don't know how I fell asleep that night what I almost wish I hadn't my head was filled with murky unpleasant nightmares full of images of fire and burning buildings the kind of nightmares that make you feel like you're still awake and when you actually wake up you feel like you haven't slept at all I'd nodded off on the hammock on the back porch and when I awoke I saw that Sandra was just sitting quietly in a chair watching the sunrise over the bay after a while I asked her about what she was feeling that night she shrugged and let out a long sigh not great she said tiredly mystery diseases people killing each other

burning houses and families she trialled off what do you think we got ourselves into I asked hoping she might put me at ease. She just shrugged again and shook her head slightly. Oh, beats the shit out of me, M. I'm not too sure I want to find out. She replied sardonically. Well, at least we were thinking the same thing. But if we did find something new,

some new kind of disease we haven't heard of. Shouldn't we try and do something about it? I told her I wasn't so sure about finding out either. In fact, I was half a bit of it. by wanting to just get the hell out of this place. But I knew Sandra wasn't the quitting type, especially where our professional obligations were concerned. She was serious about getting to the bottom of this basilisco business,

so I guess that meant I was too. But if we wanted to look into whatever plague it had affected these people, we'd need blood samples and tissue samples and that kind of thing, and all the infected bodies were already burned. All I could think of for now was getting witness reports of Basilisco. ask how it spread and the symptoms the general course of the disease florencio and dario in particular asserted they'd seen it before and knew how it progressed sandra agreed with my idea we decided to spend the day asking the villages about basilisco and the events of the previous night part four we slept in a bit that day before setting out on this mission we'd had planned out it was shortly before noon a time when the residents of bahia de pas should have been out out and about with their daily labours, but instead the entire village was silent as a tomb.

The main drag through the village was virtually empty of people as we made our way down to the young woman's house, catching only passing glimpses of the villagers trying to surreptitiously observe the two of us from their windows or back gates. Arriving at the house, we could see the young woman's husband and his parents standing outside. The husband clearly distraught while mother attempted to console him. As we approached, the older woman got up and interested. accepted us on the short path leading to the front door. Before we could say anything, the old woman was telling us to stay away and not enter the house.

She pointed at the front door, saying that there was a basiliskly in the house and that everybody should be kept away, especially us. Though she wasn't particularly hostile to us, and couldn't help but be somewhat offended by her clear lack of trust in us. Sandra reasoned with her, explaining that we only wanted to ask questions and that our intention was to help, regardless of anything being said about us. The old woman was quiet for a moment, when the older man, her husband, stepped forward saying that he was willing to cooperate with us. The old woman was about to interrupt

when he shot her a baleful look as he walked off with her. The situation was as bad as we feared. The young woman from last night was now sick, as was one of her other children. And from what the old man described, they were certain she would not last the rest of the day. We were just flabbergasted by that news. It was only a relatively short time ago that we'd seen her.

I recalled she'd vomited when I'd escorted her from the house. I'd originally just chalked that up to nervous shock, but now it seemed that she was in a far worse shape than I'd assumed. I asked why they hadn't come to us earlier when she deteriorated, but the old man just nodded mournfully, saying there was nothing we could do to help. According to him, there was nothing to be done once Basilisco had progressed. It was invariably fatal, and she was practically doomed after handling her sick baby for so long.

Within eight hours since the event, she and one of her other children were now at death's door with no hope of recovery. He explained that her symptoms manifested very quickly, starting with fever and delirium, and rapidly descending into her profoundly weakened state, covered in those bright red spots, bleeding from her nose and gums, and occasionally vomiting her clear, blood-tinged liquid with a dead. deathly stench. Her other child had deteriorated even more quickly, having only become sick early that morning. They'd been left alone in that house for a few hours now, and believing there was no chance of recovery, the rest of the family had left them inside for fear of being exposed as well. All they could do now, the old man explained, was just wait until the sweet mercy of death

freed his daughter-in-law and grandchild from their suffering. What remained of the family seemed entirely convinced that there was nothing more that anyone could do at this point. Even the younger man, entirely despondent and thought of losing his wife and two of his children in less than a day, seemed resigned to what was happening. Sandra and I, on the other hand, were not quite so pessimistic. Surely we realised that we had limited means with which to treat her, and if her condition was this terrible, then she likely would not make it to receive care in a proper hospital. But even though, doctors like her surrealists, we're definitely not fatalists. Sandra pressed him a bit more, saying that even if we couldn't save her,

we could still do some good by examining the woman and her child in the hopes we might find out what was happening. At this point the younger man broke out of his despair and told us we had his permission to go inside and examine his wife. His only condition was that we promised to find something, anything, that might help us save anybody else affected by Basilisco. We assured him that anything we would find would be helpful, no matter how small and with his blessing we prepared to enter the house. For my part, I wasn't so sure about doing this. I mean, here we were thousands of miles from home,

risking being infected with some unknown disease that could kill us in less than a day. All we really had for protective gear were gloves and a face mask, better than nothing, but not quite enough for me to comfortably bet my life on. But there was nothing to be done for it. We were committed to our mission, we considered out of professional obligations to be inviolable. So with a deep breath of fresh outside air, we opened the door and crossed the threshold into the house.

The whole place was utterly rank. The house had no electricity, and all the window shades had been pulled closed, leaving the place mostly in darkness. Despite the darkness, the rooms were quite warm and humid, as if there was a repulsive and sweaty miasma that pervaded the entire building. The temperature only got warmer as we made our way to the back rooms,

where our patients were spending what was probably the last few hours on Earth. As we opened the door to the main bedroom, we were immediately overcome with a powerful and deathly stench, even stronger than the one that hung over the rest of the house. This room was absolutely stifling, and I could swear that I saw a cloud of vapour hanging over the bed, which contained the young woman from before. In the course of eight hours

She'd become virtually unrecognizable to us She looked completely drained Her skin deathly pale and hanging loosely from her arms and face Covered in those same red spots Her face in particular was noticeably gaunt With large rings under her eyes And the skin sagging substantially I remember that she was a fairly petite woman

But now she looked almost emaciated Like every bit of soft tissue in her body had been drained out Getting a closer look, I could see that her eyes were bloodshot and the inside of her nose was stained with fresh blood. She opened her mouth slightly to murmur something unintelligible, letting out a breath of especially foul air that was clearly part of the stench that covered the whole room. Sandra removed the damp blanket to take her vitals and revealed that the woman's child was next to her in bed under the covers.

The child looked much the same as the mother, but after checking her vitals, she was the child, It was clear that the child was already dead. The woman's vitals were not much better. Her respiration rate was slow, with a weak and rapid pulse that was typical of a significant loss of blood pressure. I took a temperature and started to see that the thermometer registered a temperature of 112 degrees Fahrenheit. I thought that must have been a mistake, but after measuring again a few more times, that was an accurate reading.

That was an astronomically high temperature for a temperature. fever. I could hardly believe that she was even still alive. Well, a high fever would explain the low blood pressure. It crossed my mind that it might also be a product of severe internal bleeding brought on by extreme hypothermia. The disease was, from all the signs, burning her alive from the inside out. We took a few blood samples, some from the vein, some from the red spots on her skin, and took some skin scrapings as well. Sandra administered a mild antiprected to see if it managed the fever at all, and I gathered up the samples and went outside. I confirmed to his family that this situation was as bad as they feared. The old woman crossed

herself silently, thumbing a small relic that I assumed was a rosary, but a second look showed it was a smooth, pale blue stone. It was exactly the sort of coloured stone I'd seen in El Grandero's cart just the other day when he'd visited Pliasol. I kept that observation to myself, thinking that the old woman was wishing she'd trusted us first instead of a medicine man, but the picture of that stone remained in my mind. Sandra came out of the house and we carefully disposed of our gloves and masks in a small fire the old man had built just outside. So, now we had samples of whatever disease had killed all those people, but I was wondering just what exactly we'd do with what we found. Perhaps we could isolate some bacteria or viral particles, and maybe if we

We were lucky we could formulate something like a vaccine for it, but even if we managed that, I couldn't imagine us earning enough trust to convince the others to take it. Sandra and I discussed these ideas for a while, but we couldn't form any solid plans just yet. I spotted Dario entering the village from the path to Pliasola, a look of consternation bordering on terror on his face. Before we could ask him anything, he loudly urged us to follow him back to Pliasola immediately. He was quite frantic and didn't explain himself coherently, but Sandra and I had a sick feeling that we knew what it was.

We entered Pliasola to see that a large and noisy crowd was now gathering in the village square, and the second we entered the village the entire crowd turned to regard us. The previously irate and aggressive crowd fell silent, and fixed their angry and suspicious looks on the three of us. After a few ten seconds, the crowd dispersed without a word and quickly returned back to their homes, eyeing us nervously. Dario moved to stop one man close to us, who aggressively shook him off and went on his way without a look back. Sandra and I were totally confused by this situation. I asked Dario what was going on, but he responded wordlessly with a quick gesture to follow

him. As we moved across the village square, I noticed a disturbing and all too familiar sight just off towards the opposite end of the village. El Corander, a medicine man, still still swathed head to toe in his curious outfit, dragging his cart behind him, giving us a short but piercing look that transfixed us even at this distance. Dario led us to a group of houses near the house that had been burned down the night before. The house was little more than a smouldering ruin, with only a small corner of the building remaining upright, with a small whisper of smoke still rising from the bed of embers where it once stood. Dario pointed to a group of four houses a short distance away. Houses that I could see had been altered since our last visit. The doors were

notably boarded up with planks, while the windows looked like they had large canvas tarps either tied or taped over the windows. Above the door frames of each house were placed strange objects that up close I could see were idols or totems at the same kind El Currandero had been hawking a few days before. Upon closer inspection, I could see that the totems were made from a combination of sticks and where I think were animal skins that had been tied together to form something shaped like a man, with a small string of those multicolored stones hanging from the feet of the figure. I moved to try and pull it down to get a closer look, but Dario aggressively pushed me back and told me not to touch it. This sudden outburst caught me by surprise, and I immediately

backed away. Dario looked absolutely terrified and told us that we should all leave this place and not disturb any more icons we saw. Sandra and I poured him aside to ask what these totems meant and why he was so afraid of them. He explained that earlier today the families of these houses fell sick with Basilisco, and the totems of the entrance of each house were placed there by El Grandero, who had promised that they would protect the rest of the village and keep the sickness confined to these places,

at least until they could be burned. I could hardly believe what I was hearing. Four more families have been affected, This had all happened since late last night, and now four more families were dead from this strange disease. Sandra and I exchanged looks that showed both of us were at a complete loss about what to do in this situation. Clearly the disease was spreading, and it was spreading fast. This was verging on a full-scale epidemic that could, by our estimates, wipe out the populations of both villages within a week if it couldn't be contained. Did that have something to do with what it was called Basilisco?

called Basilisco? Was it some reference to how it spread or who contracted it? After all, the legendary Basilisk was said to be extremely poisonous, enough that even breathing its noxious weight could fatally poison somebody. I wondered if that was an allusion to how the disease was spreading, as if each infected person had become like a basilisk themselves, but if you got close enough to look them in the eyes, you'd already been exposed. That was my theory anyway. But if was true, then Sandra and I were in serious danger staying in this place. However much we might want to get to the bottom of this, I didn't want to end up the victim of an exotic disease, especially this far from home. We went back to the village square in Pliosola to find that a small group

of people had formed to meet us. They glared at us balefully as we approached, and before Dario had a chance to greet them, we were immediately subjected to a scolding by an old woman that seemed to lead the group. I couldn't quite follow what she was. saying but Sandra translated for me. She said that we were not to be trusted, that by ignoring the advice of El Corandero, we had brought this upon their people. The people who had died of Basilisco were those who had not accepted what we had to offer, and that all those who had trusted the doctors were doomed to die. The old woman continued ranting in this vein for several moments, while Sandra and I could only listen in shock disbelief to see the suspicion being thrown

and so wildly. I thought to myself that this couldn't possibly be happening. I mean, how on earth could we be to blame for this? It might seem silly to be offended at the spurious accusations of a group of distressed and afraid villagers, but the way they had confronted us so openly and directly firmly cemented the growing atmosphere of hostility and suspicion that was hanging over us like a dark cloud.

After a few moments of the old woman's ranting, Dario finally stepped forward and interjected quite forcefully. I'd seen him distressed and annoyed before, but I hadn't until then seen him truly angry. He snapped at the woman and had the other people gather behind her, beginning a furious tirade in Spanish that even Sandra had a hard time keeping up with. However, I did notice a phrase he uttered several times. Palurados ignorantes, which from what I understood meant ignorant rubs or something similar. The crowd kept their silence as Dario chewed them out, saying nothing. but returning their frigid, hostile glares.

After a few minutes of berating the crowd, Dario finally ran out of steam. By this time the crowd had noticeably grown larger, with curious bystanders having assembled to witness the shouting match going on in the middle of town. After taking a moment to collect himself, Dario turned about to face the others who gathered around us. For a moment he silently exchanged looks of exasperation with the crowd, but then he spoke up once more.

this time more common. This is how it is. You trust El Corrandero, but not real doctors. Do any of you even know who this man is? You think he still protects you, but all this has happened before. He comes, and you think you are safe from Basilisco. And you are for a little while. Then Basilisco comes again every few years,

no matter how many times El Corrandero comes to us. Some of you say he knows when Basilisco. Basiliskou is coming. That is why it comes to us, to help us before it happens. But how does he know when Basilisco is coming? Do you ever think about this? A sharp intake of breath came from the entire crowd, who shifted uncomfortably on their feet. I noticed that they tended to become extremely nervous when Daria or anybody else spoke ill of the medicine man, as if they expected some kind of instant retaliation to fall on their heads. These women, he continued, pointing to us, come here to help us, and you blame them for Basilisco,

it has happened long before they came to us. My cousin and I invited them here because we need real help. I know you don't trust them. You think El Crandero will be angry that he will stop coming if we turn to doctors instead of him. But think about it, if you can't trust Dr. La Roche or Dr. Brady, then how can you trust El The entire crowd was deathly silent as Dario finished his speech. Even the old woman who'd started the debate had nothing to offer in response. Instead, she and her fellow elders stalked away quietly, sending one last parting glance

back at Dario, a look not of rage or offence, but of what looked like pity. With her departure, the rest of the gathered crowd began to disperse in complete silence, clearly not sure what to make of their village leaders tirade. Meanwhile, Sandra and I only stood by awkwardly without saying a word. Dario certainly meant well, and without his advocacy, we wouldn't have gotten this far with the villages at all. But I was extremely uncomfortable still with the attention that he and Florentia were drawn to us. As much as I still wanted to help these people,

I was starting to feel that Sandra and I were getting too wrapped up in local politics for our taste. Even after living with these people for several weeks, we hadn't formed any kind of rapport with them, so when it came to cross-contral relations, we were quite out of our depth. As frustrated as I was by their lack of trust, I had no intentions of stepping on any toes during our time here. When the crowd had finally vanished, we followed Dario to a point just outside of Pliasona. We assumed that we'd be heading straight back to Bahia de Paz, but as soon as we were out of sight of the village he ushered us off the road a short way into the forest with a hushed conspiratorial tone

he pressed us together and began to talk quietly in english these people still don't understand i don't trust el corin or anything else these people tried to stop basilisco i haven't trusted him for many years but the people still do they're too scared to try anything else why are they still scared of him Sandra asked, I thought people in this region like medicine men that they trusted them. Oh, most people do. Most Coranderos help their people. But ours is not like that. I don't even know where he comes from.

But he's been coming here for many years since I was very young, at least. Dario explained. He glanced nervously back towards the path, clearly wary of any eavesdroppers. The people are scared that if they anger him, you'll not help. And then when Basilisco comes again, they will be helpless. He comes every few months, and they always ask him if Basilisco is coming. They say he knows when it will happen, and he is always right. But in the village, you said it was suspicious how he always knows when it will happen, I pointed out.

You think he has something to do with it at all? I don't know for sure, he said with a sigh. I don't trust him, but it's hard to accuse him. I took a big risk saying that. He crossed his arms and let out a deep sigh, and I could see how the stress was taking its toll on him. These people are angry with me, my people, I mean. They think it offends El Corandero, that you are here, so they don't trust doctors who come, even if they can help. I have ideas how to convince him to think differently, but...

He trailed off. Do you have an idea? Something that might work, Sandra prodded. Because I don't trust that man. I think he's real suspicious that Basilisco came right after he visited. I definitely don't trust any of the trinkets of medicines he sells. Dario started at this suggestion, a flicker of that old fear in his eyes. I have an idea, he said very quietly, coming in even closer and bringing our heads together.

I thought, when he comes, he always sells things. He puts the icons on the homes to protect from Basilisco. I was thinking one night when everybody sleeps, we go into the village and we take the icons away. Then when they are gone, we see if Basilisco still comes. If nothing is different when they are gone, the people, they may see that El Grandero doesn't help. At the very least, we could check out one of the icons. Sandra responded, I have a bad feeling about those. We need to examine one, see what it does.

Okay, you will help then. I will do it, he said, nodding his head in agreement. Only a few moments before, he'd been aggressively exhorting us not to disturb any of the icons placed on the infected houses. But now he was planning with us to embark on a mission to take them down. His sudden change of heart perplexed me. I wondered if maybe he just didn't want me to take down the icon where everyone could see, or if he'd really changed his mind when accosted by the angry woman in the village square.

Whatever it was, I wasn't sure I wanted to embark on the mission he and Sandra were planning. Really, I was leaning towards getting the hell out of this place entirely. But Sandra was determined, and I knew it was unlikely I could persuade her otherwise. And so I found myself agreeing with some hesitation to seeing this thing through. Of course, I was plainly aware of the potentially dire consequences of our little request. If we were caught, there would possibly be hell to play with the villagers. If we took down the icon successfully and Pazilisco then wiped the place out, we'd find ourselves in similar trouble.

And assuming the icons were a hoax, we'd still have to stick around long enough to observe the effects and prove it, and suspicion would almost certainly fall on our heads. With these rather unpleasant options, I decided it was necessary to form an exit plan. Dario told us to meet him back there later at night for our new task. However, before then I persuaded Sandra to contact the boatman who brought us here over the radio and arrange a pickup within the next few days. As much as I dislike the idea of running out on these people, we were treading on some very dangerous ground. To my relief, Sandra felt much the same way, and she agreed that a hasty departure might be in order.

We said nothing about our leaving to Dario, who followed us back to Bahia Dupaz to discuss our plan with his cousin. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Florentio was strongly in favour of our plan, almost to a reckless degree. and he was hoping for a more direct confrontation with El Carrandero, similar to the first one we'd witnessed, and our plan to him seemed almost small-time in comparison. We insisted that everything should be done quietly so as not to alert the villagers, because we were certain they would react badly. For as much respect as Florentio and Dario commanded from their respective villages, I doubted that even men of their stature could force them to stand down if we were caught.

A short time before midnight, Sandra and I left for Pliasola, wearing the darkest clothes we could find in our limited wardrobe. We met Dario in a spot in the forest, a short ways off from the main trail leading into the village. I was definitely nervous about our plan before. I became incredibly anxious when we gathered together to get a good look at the village. Laying eyes on the huts and houses suddenly made our ill-advised capers seem much more real. We knew that if we were caught, things were always. almost certainly end badly for us. It crossed my mind that we were now risking our lives carrying out this errand, however important

it might be for any epidemiological research. Fortunately, we chose our time wisely. The village, true to Dario's word, was practically quiet as a tomb at this time, with only a few flickers of light visible in a few house windows. After a short reconnaissance, we were satisfied at the proper moment to come, and we emerged from the tree line into a small farmer's plot at the end of the village. He sneaks slowly through the field and made a bee-line for the group of infected houses about 300 meters ahead. Our route across the field had been chosen as it avoided passing through the main part of the village

and was a fair distance from any currently occupied houses from which we might have been observed. We got to the infected houses without much trouble, though as we regarded the totem hanging over the door of one house, I saw that Dario had regained his previous hesitancy. Sandra urged him forward, and with a reluctant sigh he slowly stepped towards the door of the house, his eyes fixed on the totem hanging over his head. He boosted Sandra up, who quickly and quietly snatched off its hook and brought it down, with Dario giving her a wide berth as she held and regarded it closely. It was, like the others, a tightly wrapped bundle of sticks and animal peltz arranged in a roughly humanoid shape with a sort of lanyard of smooth,

colorful stones strung from the bottom. Now that I myself had gotten a closer look at one of these totems, I understood why Sandra said they gave her a bad feeling. Up close, I could see that the animal peltz and sticks were quite weathered and old, rather than a newly-made trinket, I assumed them to be, and the bundle at the top seemed like it was covered with a thin layer of some kind of hardened wax. Observing this, I wondered if Sandra should be handling this thing without gloves, when she suddenly handed it off to me and turned towards the door.

To my surprise she began inspecting and tugging at the planks nailed in place over the door. I was about to ask her what she was doing when Dario worriedly snapped forward to stop her. Evidently Sandra not only wanted to inspect the totem, but she also wanted to go inside the house. I wanted to stop her too, as we were taking a big enough risk as it was, stealing the totems. Before I could get a word out, she'd pulled a small iron bar out of her pack and began prying the boards off. Dario was now practically pleading with her to leave it alone and continue with our task. But Sondra paid him no mind as she rapidly pried the boards off as quietly as she could manage,

or Dario and I flinched with every creak and snap of the boards. Within 30 seconds, she'd freed up the front door and was testing the lash to see if it was locked. With a light creak, the door swung open slightly, and Dario and I were petrified to see this house reeking with death and now lay open and exposed. Sandra snapped back at Dario, telling him that she would be going inside to inspect it, and that he could stay out here if he wanted. He relented with a mournful groan, Sandra pushed the door open all the way, and took a step across the threshold.

Even though I'd objected to this course of action, I knew it couldn't be undone and that Sandra would not be dissuaded. Without a word, I slowly followed after her, into the house. As I expected the house absolutely reeked with the stench of death and decay, but I wasn't quite prepared for an odour this strong. The air itself was thick with the same god-awful myasma as the last infected house we visited only the day before. It was so noxious and rank than it felt like it was tingling and burning in my throat,

causing me to throw a handkerchief over my mouth, his nose to keep it out. In the light of the torch Sandra brought with her, I could see the body of an elderly man. man reposed on the couch in the living room. His skin waxy and yellow and covered in those distinctive red spots, which had darkened in the time he'd been lying there. A large streak of dark, dried blood ran down from his nose, across his mouth and chin and onto his neck. To my horror, I saw that his eyes were open, revealing a pair of clouded eyeballs and what looked like a pale, fluid seeping from under his eyelids. Sandra turned down the hall to the next backrooms, where an even stronger stench hung in the air.

She pushed open another door to reveal what was apparently a children's bedroom, and on the one bed she shone the light to reveal three small bodies all tucked in next to each other. These children of the household look much the same as the old man in the front room, being covered in dark red spots and showing large trouts of blood emanating from their noses and ears. This wasn't the worst of it. Sandra turned around to face a door on the opposite side of the hall, which I took to be the parents' main room, from which was radiating an odour so powerful it actually stung my eyes and made them water. Sandra pushed open the door and swung her light

on whatever was inside. It was definitely the parents' room. Who I took to be the father was lying face down on the bed, while in a rocking chair in the corner sat upright the corpse of the mother. But her corpse didn't look anything like what had become of the others. What was left of her skin was that waxy yellow color with the red spots, but a fuller examination showed that most of her skin had sloughed off. There she was, a practically skin body missing what looked like nearly half the skin on her entire body, revealing the lower dermal layers and even the muscle underneath. The left half of her face sagged substantially, practically hanging off her skull, and small splits in the skin were present at points where it was obviously about to separate and fall off.

But the absolute strangest thing was that the tissue exposed by her lost skin weren't the shades of pink you'd normally see with exposed viscera, but were instead a sickly pale grey, even green, what looked like small spider webs of some dark coloured plaque were forming in the folds and creases of the flesh. I was totally flabbergasted by the sight of her badly degraded body. From what I understood, the people in this house had fallen ill and died less than 36 hours ago, yet the body of this body of this body. woman looked as if it had been decomposing for several weeks. In fact, the condition of her body didn't even resemble traditional decomposition. The way the skin was coming off in large strips and patches, while other portions looked relatively intact, seemed to indicate something closer to burns rather than straightforward decomposition. The paleness of the exposed flesh underneath likewise indicated a high-temperature environment. It certainly was quite stuffy

and warm in the house, which can speed up certain decomposition processes. but not to this degree, and not in this short of a time. Around this time I remembered that the other woman who died only two days ago had been running an astronomically high fever that actually produced notable effects on the surface of her skin. When I inspected the body's face more closely, I could clearly see that the skin around her mouth was actually starting to peel and a fever blister was present in the corner of her mouth.

This was when I got the idea that this woman hadn't just died of various complications from the illness, Her fever had been so powerful that she had been literally cooked alive from the inside out. Even from a few inches away, I could actually feel the heat radiating from her body. Sandra carefully placed the back of her hand against the dead woman's forehead and quickly withdrew it, surprised to feel that the body was not only still warm, but actually hot, as if the fever was still burning in her lifeless body. Of all the abnormal things going on this house, that had to be the most odd.

How could the body have remained so warm from a fever of this long after her death? Well, it did explain the advanced deterioration of the woman's body. Every answer we found only raised further questions. At this point I had quite enough of being in this awful place, and I gestured for Sandra to leave. From a pack she quickly withdrew a small life

and scraped off some of the woman's skin into a small petri dish, and took a blood sample using a pipette. When she finished, we made her way back out of her. outside. At first I was relieved to get a deep breath of fresh air after the foul, stifling atmosphere that pervaded the house. But when I regained my senses, I was confused to see that Dario wasn't waiting for us outside like we asked. In fact, we couldn't find him anywhere around the grounds of the house. My annoyance at his disappearance quickly became anxiety, as I wondered what

would happen to us if he'd lost his nerve and abandoned us. If Sandra and I were caught doing this and we didn't have Dario to back us up, we could find ourselves in even worse trouble than we'd faced already. With Dario having wandered off, I was prepared to ditch this mission entirely and settle for what we'd already accomplished, but Sandra remained undeterred. At her urging, I agreed to go with her to visit the other houses

and complete our task all the way. We approached the next house, which, like the first, had a totem hanging over the front door, and all the windows and door secured with planks, and taps. At this point the village was still fairly quiet and undisturbed. But as my nervousness grew, I jumped at every sound I feared would raise the alarm among the slumbering villages. Sandra quickly pried the boards off the front door and slowly cracked it open. Oh, if the stench in the previous house was awful, then this one was absolutely horrendous. When the door slipped open,

I could feel a brief gust of warm, foul air coming from within. This house wasn't just stifling, it was sweltering, like walking into an oven. As soon as we entered the main room, Sandra's light illuminated a group of three figures sitting upright against the far wall, clearly the remains of the inhabitants. It quickly became clear why the house was broiling inside. All three of these bodies were in a similar state to the dead woman in the last house, with large portions of skin having come loose and slid off their bodies. One of the bodies, a male from the looks of it,

actually had part of his face around his mouth and chin hanging off. The sight of these poor souls confirmed what we'd observed in the last house was not strictly an outlier. This badly heat-damaged state was a distinct feature of the disease itself. When we could no longer stand the awful heat and odor, we quickly left the house to get some fresh air. As I panted and regained my breath, Sandra hissed a sharp warning for me to be quiet. To my horror, I looked towards the village square and saw that there was now considerable activity going on.

We've had it, I thought to myself, we're going to get caught and God knows what will happen to us. While I was swaying on my feet trying to fight the urge to collapse with fear, Sandra kept her eyes fixed on the group of people moving in the village square. To my shock, she began gesturing for me to follow her in closer to the gathering crowd, evidently wanting to get a closer look at what was going on. As much as I admired Sandra and would have followed her anywhere, I was prepared to bolt in the opposite direction and get the hell out of this place before we were noticed. But then I realised that fleeing this place by myself and facing the consequences alone would be an even more frightening prospect. I swallowed my fear and followed her in closer to eavesdrop on the gathering. From this distance I could hear voices chattering among the gathering crowd,

but I couldn't quite make out what was being said. Part 5 We quietly made our way forward, weaving between and around the houses to find a spot where we could observe the crowd without notice. Moving through the village, we could see that more houses were starting to stir, as if the whole place had been alerted to something again. going on. Sandra and I found a spot in a narrow gap between two houses, partly obscure by a stack of fishing equipment. From this spot we were fairly concealed and we could make out the most of

what was going on, but I was unsure if it would allow us a clear exit if things went out. Sandra directed my attention to the crowd, now fully illuminated by lanterns hung up on posts and carried by the villagers. When I played closer attention to the sound of the voices, I realized I was hearing only one voice, a familiar voice, practically bellowing at the top of his lungs. I recognised that voice just as the crowd shifted, and I finally identified whose voice it was. I was shocked to see that it was Florentio, who had decided to accompany us on our mission after all, shouting at the villagers while his cousin Dario knelt by his side, cradling what appeared to be a bleeding head wound. In a flash, I realized what had happened.

Apparently Dario had been found out by the locals, and now his cousin Florentio was standing over him, clearly trying to protect him from an increasingly furious crowd. Dario was conscious and not too badly wounded from what I could see, but I could practically feel the crowd becoming more agitated and threatening the two of them. Even Florentio's loud abuse and recriminations weren't driving them off. It was clear that the two cousins were in serious peril that not even their high standing among the villages would save them from. i wondered if perhaps sandra was thinking of intervening to save him which is where i would have drawn a line we were in serious enough danger as it was just being this close instead she only continued watching the crowd intently positioned to make a quick escape if things went south florencio's shouting subsided abruptly as the crowd suddenly turned their attention to the road leading into the village from the opposite direction we instinctively followed their gaze and from our position we could see a tall figure whose head rose just above the crows

It was an all too familiar figure, with a slouching white-brimmed hat, a ragged coat with a high collar, and a face completely wrapped in scarves and cloth. El Corandero. The crowd naturally parted for him as he silently strode forward to face the two cousins who shrank from his looming form. Floreencio shifted forward to put himself between Dario and the approaching figure, his former bravado now wavering. el curandero took a position at the front of the crowd only a metre or two away from the cousins he silently regarded the two men through those piercing hollow eyes and then wordlessly took an object from beneath his coat and held it high in the air where both the cousins and the crowd could clearly see it

we saw that it was the totem we'd taken down and left with dario moments before and he was presenting it as evidence for the crowd of their malfeasance he then tossed it forward onto the ground between himself from Florentio, turned back to the crowd and swiftly strobe back through the gap they'd made for him. As El Corrandero turned his back, Florentio found the courage to resume his tirade, hurling insults at the medicine man, saying the villagers were ignorant fools and that El Corandero was taking advantage of them. The medicine man stopped in his tracks and briefly turned his head back to Florentio, who scarcely paused his rant. El Grandero turned his back again and ignored him and continued on his way. The villagers now began inching forward towards the two cousins, fanning out in a wide arc to surround them on three sides.

Floreencio directed his attention back towards the approaching villagers who kept up their cautious approach. One older man who I recognised as another village elder made his way to the front of the crowd, quietly urging Floreencio to stand down and give up his defiant position. Florentio instead turned his insults toward him, and to the shock of the crowd he drew a revolver tucked behind him under his shirt, swinging the barrel across the crowd. The crowd drew back a short way to the sight of his gun, but then resumed their approach, more cautious this time, weaving side to side to avoid Florentio's pistol. Florentio grew even angrier and more desperate, shouting ever more loudly for the villagers to stay back, gripping the revolver so tightly that his knuckles went white. The older man who'd been trying to talk Florentio down

took several steps forward, this time more forcefully demanding that he stand down. Lorencio just locked eyes with him in silence for several seconds. Then the man moved forward and an ear-splitting pop ran through the village square. And the man clutched his chest and collapsed forward as Florentio swung his smoking gun back across the crowd. Just as he opened his mouth again to the crowd, scream at the villagers surrounding him, another gunshot rang out, this time from within the crowd, and Florentio jerked sideways and clutched his right side and brought his gun to bear on the

ground. The second gunshot went off, and he clutched again high up on his chest near his throat, falling over and rolling onto his back with a loud, strained breath. Dario screamed in shock at the side of his cousin being shot dead and sprang forward to reach for him. A bullet struck the ground just in front of him, and he turned in our direction to run for his life. Then one shot rang out and struck him in the back of his right leg, and as he tumbled another shot went off and his head violently pitched forward. As he slumped, I could see a string of blood pour from his mouth before his face violently crashed into the ground. I imagine the whole scene itself probably played out over the course of a few seconds, but I remember each excruciating detail so clearly that it

like it was going in slow motion. Without thinking, I let out a sharp scream that everyone in the entire village must have heard. Can you blame me? I just witnessed two men being murdered, men who were our friends and protectors during our time in the village. Men Sandra and I had come to like and trust when nobody else around here would give us the time of day. I maintained enough presence of mind to clap my hands over my mouth to stifle the scream, but it was a little too late. The crowd snapped their heads to our position and met out.

eyes for a few ten seconds before I found the strength in my legs to run. Sandra and I just about fell over each other, scrambling away through the narrow alley. But as quickly as we attempted to make our escape, the crowd had moved to cut us off. As soon as we emerged from the other end of the alley, a group of four people descended upon us from both sides, viciously tackling us to the ground. Having been in only one physical altercation in my life before this, I'd forgotten just how rough and painful it could be, especially when two grown men throw you to the ground and violently restrained you. All I could do was scream and thrash violently, as the men squeezed my arms and legs and hauled the two o us away in the dark. We were dragged back towards the crowd in the

village square. Both were screaming and lashing out against our captors, who only gripped tight in response to our struggles. Feeling like a cornered animal, I began lashing out more violently than I ever had in my entire life, twisting and thrashing my arms with the strength I never knew I had, snapping with my teeth at any exposed flesh I could reach. As we rounded a corner past another house, my twisting had managed to slip the grip of one of my captors just enough that I could reach his hand with my mouth, and I chumped down as hard as I could on what I think was an index finger. My captor recoiled reflexively to extricate his finger, and his grip loosened just more enough that I slipped my right arm from his hand, and grabbed at a long object hanging from the side of the house we were passing,

getting a firm grip and stopping them dead in their tracks. The men holding me began tugging harder to make me let go, but I maintained my grip and even managed to pull myself towards the house a bit. And I saw that what I grabbed was the pole of a large harpoon hung up on a rack. As I kept pulling, I felt the grip of my captors begin to fail, and with one strong heave I broke their hold. We tumbled to the ground together, and as I fell back, back the harpoon came free from the rack and swung sideways, with the hooked end striking one

of the men on his face and giving him a good-sized gash. He backed off immediately to clutch his face and howled in pain, and the other man began to scramble to his feet to retaliate, but I was just a bit quicker. I let to my feet, swung the harpoon around, and whipped it like a club at the other man, bashing him on the side of his head and sending him tumbling to the ground like a wet noodle. The men carrying Sandra turned back to regard the situation only to see me swing in this harpoon like a madwoman, and their attention flagged just enough that Sandra struggled out of their grip. As she slipped through their arms, I charged forward, flinging and thrusting the harpoon at them, and with one swipe I brought the sharp end of the weapon slicing across his chest and sending him

backwards with a scream. Sandra, hardly missing a beat, grabbed my shoulder as she ran past and got me to turn and follow her. My fury became exhilaration as I broke into a sprint shortly behind Sandra and made a bee-line back for the trees at the end of the village. Now, I was never terribly athletic, but with the adrenaline surging I felt like I could run a marathon without skipping a beat. However, before we got halfway across the field, the villages had recovered from their shock and were hot on our heels. We sprinted past the tree-line and into the jungle, leaping over rocks and logs and tearing through foliage like it wasn't even there. I held out hope that running into the jungle would get them off our trail, but our pursuers were

determined. Just as I noticed the sound of them tearing into the jungle after us, I heard scattered gunshots frightfully behind us. They shout whizz of bullets flying past me, showed they could see roughly where I was and thus were dangerously close behind. At the sound of the gunshots, Sandra shouted to me to split up and try to regroup somewhere farther down the road. I stayed on a fairly straight course, roughly parallel to the road, while I could see that Sandra was veering right further into the jungle. I didn't really have

time to think about her plan to split up before she'd run off in the other direction, but I was so wound up that I didn't stop to question her and kept charging in the same direction. More gunshots rang out in the direction that Sandra went, so it seemed that her plan to split their fire was working, but scattered gunfire occasionally found its way. close to me. My heart was pounding in my ears like a drumbeat, but even so my pace still steadily increased until the shouts of our pursuers became more distant. When the voices trowed off completely, I finally felt comfortable slowing my pace and decided to turn towards the direction of the road. As the adrenaline wore off, my arms and legs began trembling uncontrollably,

to the point I thought I'd collapse, but with my last reserves of energy I kept up a trot towards the road and finally emerged through the trees onto the path between the twin villages. Sandra and I had now separated completely. I could no longer hear any sound of gunshots or shouting in the direction she had gone. I looked back into the jungle and wondered if I'd either wait for her here or venture back in to look for her. But the longer I stared into that deep, dark jungle, the more my nerve began to fade. For all I knew, these people were still out there prowling the forest looking for us, and I had no intention of taking further chances.

After all, we split up in the hopes that at least one of us would get away, and I had. With that adrenaline wearing off, gained a greater awareness of my surroundings and decided to continue on my way back towards Bahia de Paz. I didn't follow the main path directly, instead tramping through the brush on one side of the road in the hopes nobody else might see me. To my surprise, our race through the jungle had brought me closer to Bahia, DePaz, than I'd expected. As I was slowing down, I could see a figure standing by the side of the road.

And as I got closer, I could see that it was Rodrigo, Florentia's oldest son. Until now I hadn't thought much about the shy, skinny teenager. But seeing him now was quite a relief at first. I got closer and called for his attention as quietly as I could. And in my passable Spanish, I asked him if anybody had come back from Playa Solo. Nobody had come back yet, he said. But some people in the village thought they heard shouting and gunshots coming from our direction. When I approached him, I got a good look at his face,

noticing for the first time how much he resembled his father, and I was suddenly struck by a sharp pang of guilt. This kid had no idea that his father and one of his cousins were now lying dead on the ground back in Plyosola, murdered by the very people they were entrusted to protect. I resolved to tell him in time, but for now I just needed a place to lie low in case any of any of the same. else was searching for me. At his suggestion, I followed him back up the hill to his family's home, taking care not to be noticed by any other villages, and there I shacked up in my room,

blocking the door and closing all the windows and curtains. Now that I was out of immediate danger, the real gravity of everything I'd just been through finally fell on me, and I collapsed into a pile of soaring nerves. All I could really do was slip under my blankets and curl up into a ball, trembling and hyperventilating while the horrific events of the evening played endlessly in my head. It was a strange experience, going from the powerful adrenaline high that made me feel unstoppable to then collapsing into a feeling of total weakness and helplessness. I had no idea if Sandra was okay, or if those people were still looking for me, or if the boat out of here would arrive soon enough or at all.

At the back of my mind, I also knew that I had directly exposed myself to all those sick people, and it was possible that by this time the next day I could be running a fever so intense that my skin melted and slid off my body on that point I wasn't quite sure sandra and I had been exposed to basilico on multiple occasions some more than two days ago from what we saw the sickness acted fast enough that the both of us would already be dead if we had contracted it but further scientific inquiry wasn't really on my mind in those dark moments

all I really knew for sure was that I was still alive for now. Somewhere in that black pit of despair I managed to drift off into a dreamless sleep. I gave myself a rather rude awakening when I jerked awake some time early in the morning, feeling like I was suddenly in danger before realizing that I'd been asleep. All was quiet, fortunately. I peaked out the windows to see if there were any unusual activities going on in the village. Thankfully nothing seemed to be terribly amazing. miss. But now it was just the same somber mood that had settled over the people ever since the

Delisco scare had begun. With some trepidation, I left the relative security of my room, went out to see the rest of the family, who were gathered in the living area with worried and anxious looks on their faces. The guilt came back to me as I realized that they were still waiting for Florentio, the father of the family, to arrive back from his sojourn in the next village. He wouldn't be arriving back. I knew. so the painful task of telling them their father was dead would fall to me. The mother sent away all but her two oldest children, including Rodrigo, and I sat them down in the living room to tell them what had happened.

If there's anything in this life I hope to never do again is having to break this kind of news to a worried family. The mother obviously didn't take it well. She collapsed into hysterics, not understanding how what she believed was a simple errand had ended with her never being able to see her husband ever again. Rodrigo and his sister, though distraught, stayed strong and did their best to comfort their grieving mother, though they were in disbelief as much as her.

Rodrigo and his mother decided that they would let the other children know in due time, but for now there were things to be settled. At this point the initial shock and grief was starting to morph into anger as the circumstances of their father's death became clear. Rodrigo, being a hot-headed teenager, spoke angrily of heading straight over. to Playa Sola and killing anybody there who had something to do with his father's death. His mother actually didn't seem opposed to that course of action. To my chagrin, I thought I'd inadvertently sown the seeds of a vendetta between Bahia

De Paz and Playa Sola, which only added to my guilt even more. But for now, this was the least of my worries. Sandra was still missing. The people of Playa Sola wanted me dead, and for all I knew, the people of Baja de Paz might react the same way if they knew what we'd been doing that night. until noon i stayed inside watching out the windows for any sign of trouble but from my side of the house i couldn't get a clear look at the path to the next village if i were to get any clear look at the situation i'd have to venture outside and see for myself to me it was a calculated risk if there was trouble i could just hide out here until the boat came but then again i didn't know for sure when or even if that boat would come in which case i'd need to seek out some other means of escape I reasoned that if I did go outside, I should go incognito and avoid being identified by anybody.

So with the help of Rodrigo's mother, I found some clothes that were reasonably concealing, and in this disguise I hoped that I could safely make my way around the village. I left the house and made my way down the hill using some obscure paths that mostly ran behind many of the houses and shacks, and found myself towards the main area of the village, where the main path in the piers roughly intersected. as I rounded a corner I was dismayed to see that the events of last night clearly aroused notice among the villages and a group of them were congregating on the path

and having loud, anxious conversations about what was happening. Many were pointing off in the direction of the next village. Some were crossing themselves and others still kept an anxious vigil on the road. The conversations I overheard mostly focused on the same thing. Basilisco. They were talking about an outbreak

that was happening right now in Pliasso. and not just the one that had killed those families the other day. Now it was apparently raging through the village and several more people were known to have died. My heart sank when I heard this. Apparently our efforts the previous night had not helped and, in fact, could likely have made things worse. Whatever we'd done with those totems had been worse than useless. It was entirely possible that now by the pass might be affected as well.

The rumbling of the crowd became a series of shouts and some people were pointing off down the road towards Pliasola, and from my heart lifted when I thought it could be Sandra. To my disappointment, it wasn't her. Instead, I saw something that I had feared ever since I came stumbling back to town last night. There was a small group of men coming down the road, man conspicuously armed with machetes and knives and were clearly up to no good. The men approached the villages evidently hoping to parley, but instead what commenced was a loud argument between them.

The people of Bahia de Pazz knew that Basilisca was running out of control in the next village, and they didn't want anyone else from Pliasol entering their village and spreading it here. The armed men on the other hand were pointing towards Bahia de Paz and demanding that they be allowed to pass, as they needed something that they claimed would help them fight the outbreak. By that I assumed they meant Sandra and I. Both parties became increasingly hostile and it seemed that they'd come to blows any minute now, but the armed men finally desisted and turned back towards their village. This little confrontation confirmed my fears that the people of Playa Sola were not giving up the pursuit of Sondra and I.

I know it was terrible to think this, but at the time I secretly hoped that Basilisco would kill off whoever was left in Playa Sola if it meant being left alone. But before that happened, I was sure that these men would be back, and I still had no certain escape planned. Even if I did work a way out of this place, could I really leave Sandra behind? But then again Sandra would have wanted at least one of us to make it out of this place. All I could do is pray that she might come back with us, or that she might find some other way back to civilization. At the time I had rather more pressing concerns. The confrontation between the armed men and the people of Bayer had departed.

had subsided, but a new argument had begun among the villagers themselves. Some were considering their offer and thought giving them what they wanted would be beneficial to everyone. Others were worried that the men would not be satisfied and that violent confrontation was inevitable. Everybody knew the men would be back in a few hours and nobody had any clear idea of what they really wanted. After a few hours the debate had subsided, but now new inklings of trouble were starting to manifest. Apparently two more people were now sick and their condition had rapidly deteriorated. Around this time people began to take notice of the fact that Sandra and I were nowhere to be found, that our clinic remained closed.

Some people were sent out to find us, but I had no intention of being found. If I was around when those men came back, they might decide to hand me over to them. As much as it pained me not to be able to help, I knew that I couldn't risk revealing myself now. Now, even if I did, it was probably nothing I could do for anybody sick with Baselisk. The disease was simply too potent and too aggressive to be treated with anything we had in our clinic. News of the sickness spread like wildfire among the village. Now people are up in arms, clearly blaming the men from earlier for bringing it into

their midst, and the mob had gathered on the road intending to drive them back if they returned. It honestly felt like a full-out warp was brewing between these two villages, and I couldn't help but feel that I was directly responsible. The only idea I had was to retreat back to the house and hold up until the worst of it had blown over. Sure enough, a group of armed men returned when they said they would late that afternoon. The people of Bayer de Paz were there to meet them, and unsurprisingly the situation turned ugly within moments. When it all started to kick off, I left the safety of my room to get a better view of what was happening. Not a very good idea, but I thought that if things got really bad and the men storm the village,

some warning was better than none, and I wouldn't be trapped inside if I needed to just run for it. A veritable riot had broken out on the road, with people from their respective villages trading blows from machetes, pipes and other such weapons on the path near the docks. This wasn't some half-hearted skirmish either. These people were really intent on murder. After all, they knew what was at stake,

and they were fighting for their life. The people of Bai and De Paz knew that if they allowed the men to storm the village, they'd all be exposed to Basilisco. I recognised many of the people who were down there fighting and dying. I saw a fisherman whose hand I'd once sewed up, mercilessly hacking away at one man with a machete. Another man who'd brought his children in for a vaccination was brained by a metal pipe wielded by another. In the last week, I'd witnessed so much death and mayhem, then I was hardly shocked by it anymore.

after some time I couldn't stomach the carnage anymore and retreated back to my room I thought that if things turned violent then it would be a brief scuffle that would die down when somebody got seriously hurt that instead this was a vicious battle that not only kept going but actually increased in intensity as the day wore long fighters from Pliasolo would retreat for a time but then returning greater numbers and renew the bloodshed they didn't seem to care how many of their men died I should I had to think how bad it must have gotten in Pliasolai if they believed that all those who died so far were acceptable losses compared to letting their sickness work its courts. The sounds of this brawl were soon punctuated by gunshots, which they probably hoped would break up the battle, but it raged unabated.

To my horror, the sounds of the bloodshed seemed to grow closer to the house with every hour, and I wondered if the people of Bayeer-Dipas were being pushed back. With that realization, I decided that this could be my last chance to run, and so with great reluctance, I stepped back outside looking for a good moment to make my escape. Escaping on foot was the last thing I really wanted to do, but I figured that if the boat never arrived, my best chance was to hoof it south towards the Colombian border. As far as I knew, there weren't any close-by pockets of civilisation down that direction, but I had a vague hope they would think better at following me across a national border. As I emerged from the house, I braced myself for the worst and hoped to God that nobody noticed me.

The fight had indeed gotten closer and closer to the house, but to my surprise, the battle itself was actually slowing down. Unfortunately, I could see why. Fewer people were left to fight it. It seemed like dozens of wounded people lined the main street through the village, or nursing some especially nasty wounds. Quite a few people were dead. Here and there I saw one arm person or another running about, apparently wondering what to do next as the battle died down.

In better days, Sandra and I would have had our work cut out for us, but now I was only intent on leaving this place. So if all these people had to make do without a doctor, then that was just tough shit for them. As I tried to surreptitiously make my way down the hill, I got a closer look at many of the wounded. I saw what must have been over a dozen people sitting or sprawled out on the side of the main road, cradling, wounded limbs and other injuries.

But I was especially disturbed to see that many of them were clearly becoming sick. Several were vomiting and coughing while their skin began to take on the same sickly yell or pallor as the others who died so far. As I made my way further down, I locked eyes with one older man, cradling his partially severed right hand. For a few moments we just stared at each other in silence. his expression showing total resignation to his faint. I could see that a small trail of vomit ran from his lips to his chin, and in the corner of one nostril, a faint spot of blood was starting to show.

After a moment he looked away, as he began to cough and dry heave again, expecting to just be left in his misery. The same scene played out multiple times along the main part, though as I reached the bottom my attention was instead drawn to the column of black smoke erupting from the outlying buildings of the village. I ducked out of sight of a group of men who I saw were still walking about the buildings, and one of the men drew a bottle from his hip and held a Molotov cocktail through one of the windows of our clinic. Well, within seconds a substantial blaze had erupted inside,

and another mineral two, flames began emerging from the windows and consuming the building. Even though Sandra and I had spent so much time and effort setting up our clinic, I was too emotionally burned out to feel anything, seeing it go up in flames. Maybe it was for the best anyway. I certainly had no intention of ever returning to this place, so what became of our feeble humanitarian efforts no longer mattered. I watched our health clinic and the two other houses burn for quite a while, and after some time the group of arsonists turned back to head down the road to ply a solar. As far as I knew, the coast was now clear for me to make a run for it, but I soon began to rethink my plan.

After all, the vicious battle that had raged all afternoon and into the evening was now effectively over, with both sides having abandoned their reasons for fighting. Would waiting one more day make any difference? I decided to cancel my plan to just hike out of the village and go south along the coast, thinking that I might as well wait to see if the boat was or wasn't coming. This way I could also take some time to make sure that Rodrigo and his family were safe before I left. I owed them that much at least. I was worried that Rodrigo might have decided to join the fight down in the village,

but as I returned to the house, I was relieved to see that he'd thought better of taking part in the violence. He was a good kid, and it made me proud of him to say that he'd stay to protect his family rather than running off to get killed. The family had gotten a clear view of the unfolding carnage that raised in the village, and they were quick to ask me if anybody they knew might have been hurt or killed in the battle. All I could really tell them was that at least 20 people were wounded or dead down in the village,

many of them were also showing signs of the sickness. When I mentioned how many people were sick, their concern for their friends and neighbors gave way to fear, even mild panic, and they quickly scrambled to block doors and cover their windows as tightly as possible. They insisted, and I agreed that I should stay at least the night, and wait until the outbreak had subsided before departing this place for good. That night we shared a simple. meal at their kitchen table, and Rodrigo and his mother said prayers for their dead father

and his cousin. I can only imagine the grief they went through, losing first their father and many of their other friends and relatives in both villages. Having lost their father, I worried about how they'd make ends meet, or if there were enough relatives left to support them in this dark time. Rodrigo certainly seemed ready to assume the role as man of the house, which was only a small comfort compared to the enormous task of rebuilding an entire community shattered by the day's events if it could be rebuilt at all i slept poorly that night as i had for several nights prior

rest only came in fits and starts and rarely seemed to last very long my mind drifted in and out of dark dreams that were a twisted jumble of horrible images with raging fires burning corpses and air that wreaked of death various times i worked to hear a low but steady correlation of moans and cries of pain coming from the village below. I wondered how many people were still alive down there. I hadn't seen anybody attempting to aid the wounded, likely in the fear that they too would contract the disease trying to do so. Instead, the wounded and sick would be left outside to die if they hadn't already.

It was a truly heartbreaking situation, but I understood what these people were afraid of. Of course, that didn't make it much easier on my conscience. In emotionally turbulent times like these, I tried to comfort myself with something my father had often said when I was younger. My father had thought in the Korean War as quite open about the emotional scars he carried for the remainder of his life. One thing he often told me in difficult times always stood out.

It hurts now for sure. Sometimes you wonder how you'll be able to think about anything else, but when you're in a real tough spot, you can't bog yourself down dwelling on it all. focus on getting through the here and now in one piece. If you come out of it alive, then you'll have plenty of time to think about it then. Believe me on that. I tried to keep that sage bit of wisdom in mind as I passed the rest of the night. Sometimes shortly after dawn, I was awoken by Rodrigo telling me that a call was coming in on the radio. I momentarily forgot the horrible situation unfolding around me, thinking that perhaps I had a chance to get out of here

after all. I ran upstairs into the makeshift radio room, Florentio kept in his house, and answered the call with nervous excitement. To my relief, that call was indeed from the boatman who'd arrived for the pickup we'd called for a few days earlier. Running over to the kitchen window, I could see that ancient smoke-belching fishing boats slowly sidling into the harbor. That paint-pealing tub could have been a luxury cruise liner for all I cared. Oh, with great excitement, I told Rodrigo and his mother, that I'd be leaving as soon as possible. But when they mentioned if Sandra would be going with me, I was struck with a pang of guilt. After more than a day, Sandra had yet to be found anywhere. For all I knew, she could even have been dead. But remembering my father's words,

I knew there was nothing for it. I wasn't in any position to stay and look for her, assuming that she could be found in the first place. So I swallowed my guilt and said my goodbyes to Rodrigo and his mother, expressing my condolences for their loss and wishing them well in the future. I grabbed my things and made a hasty exit, jogging slowly down the hill towards the docks. As I went, I tried to survey the remains of yesterday's carnage. The village itself was unearthly still and quiet, with many of the bodies still laying where they'd been the day before, mostly undisturbed. By this point the building set ablaze yesterday evening were nothing more than smouldering piles of charred embers, while our health clique had most of the interior burned out,

letting the roof collapse inside. I went as quickly and quietly as I could through the village, still wary of any hostile intent by any survivors from yesterday. As I neared the bottom of the path and turned towards the docks, I was horrified to see that a group of three men had emerged from around the corner of the furthest building. For a few seconds we locked eyes in astonishment, and as I braided. myself to sprint for the boat, I could see that the group of men was preparing to run after me. Not wanting to make the first move, I broke into a heaving sprint away from them and onto the docks,

while they raised their weapons and began to give chase, shouting incomprehensible things. As I ran towards the rickety docks, I heard a flat whoosh, as an object flew only feet away from my back and splashed into the water. The object bobbed up for a moment, and I could see that it was a small hatchet, which one of these men had thrown with terrifying accuracy towards me. Not missing astride, I finally made it to the boat, and all but dived onto the deck at the feet of the astonished boatman. It must have been confused as hell as to what he was seeing. I yelled for him to get going, but in the time it took to get the motor running and push

away from the dock, the three men had caught up to us. In horror, I thought it had finally been caught, as the men made to jump onto the boat. I was suddenly stunned by a gunshot coming from behind me. The boatman had pulled a weapon of his own, a rather large handgun, and his shot had connected with one of the men right in the middle of his chest. The other men backed off, their apparent ringleader reeled back from his gunshot wound.

The boatman shouted explicit threats at the other two, making it clear he would not hesitate to shoot any one of them if they tried to follow. He kept his gun pointed at them as the boat pulled away from the docks, and out into the harbour. The two remaining men only stared impassively after us as we sailed away, before finally turning to leave their dying comrade on the dogs. As we made our way out of the harbour,

I gave the village of Baha'i, to pass one last parting look, realizing how beautiful and peaceful it looked from this distance, greatly at odds with the dismal carnage being left behind by its human inhabitants. As we made our way northwest along the coast, I saw more columns of smoke rising from the direction that I knew was roughly where Playa Sola was located. I urged the hesitant boatman to take us a bit closer in, so I could see what was happening. Through a gap in the coastal brushline, I could see that more buildings than that village

were burning intensely, and numerous human figures were sprawled about the ground while others wandered aimlessly amid the blazing, pestilent remains of their homes. But looking closer still, I was a lot of the world. could see one distinct figure standing perfectly still and following the movement of the boat with a piercing hollow gaze that i recognized instantly it was the tall grim figure of a man-covered head to tow in loose ragged clothing the parting gaze of el there isn't much more to tell after this point the boatman seemed to know better than to ask questions or perhaps he already had some idea of what had just happened either way neither has said a word the whole journey back to the city up the coast. From there I caught the same bumpy bus ride back to Panama City, thinking that I probably look quite a fright to the other passengers in my rather filthy and ragged states. I found my way back to the hotel we'd stayed at before, booked a room,

and then took a good long shower to rid myself of the filth I'd accumulated over the last week. In the hotel, I made an international call to the head of Oxfam, where Sandra and I had volunteered and told them brusquely that our aid mission had been cut short by unforeseen circumstances that I was returning to Canada and would be resigning my volunteer position. They must have been stunned by my frank and unsentimental resignation, but at this point I could hardly care. The next day I called a plane back to Toronto where I was briefly harangued by customs when I told them my business in Panama City was charity work that had been cut short.

I probably could have omitted that last part. but I was so desperate to be home that I wasn't careful about the things I said. Fortunately, they let me go after I made something up, and later that day I arrived back home on my parents' house in kitchen. Part 6. The rest is fairly well known, after all the nosy journalists and amateur sleuths caught wind of the story. Eventually Sandra's parents, worried about her lack of correspondence,

which she'd promised to do during our time, contacted the authorities to inquire about her whereabouts. Then the authorities questioned me, when they couldn't locate her and found out she and I had gone to Panama together. For over a year I put up with a seemingly endless stream of rude, accusatory questions from police, reporters and all other kinds, demanding to know the truth. I don't know what truth they thought I would provide,

but I never offered anything more than the basics. We went on an aid mission in Panama. The A-mission went poorly for a variety of reasons. Things in the villages got risky and even dangerous, and the two of us had to cut the mission short, her eyes separated from Sandra, and that I had no idea what had happened to her. I don't know if telling them all the other grim details

about Basilisco and El Corrandero, and how the plague had virtually wiped out two villages in the span of a few days, would have satisfied their curiosity. I think there's a pretty good chance they wouldn't have believed me if I'd told them. Everybody who asked seemed to have already made their own version of the truth, and they probably would have written me off as a liar if I didn't implicitly confirm their theories. The bad press I got ebbed and flowed over the next two decades, following me just about everywhere I went.

I suppose my attempts to avoid everything look suspicious after all, but I just didn't want anything more to do with the Basilisco affair, and every time interest in Sandra's case reignited had to move further away to escape it. I have relocated eight times in the last 27 years, though it seems that the eighth time was the charm. I'm living in Edmonton now, working at a small family practice in the suburbs and keeping a generally low profile. Interest in the case of Sandra La Roche has largely waned. I've finally gotten comfortable using my real name where I live,

and it's been a long time since anybody recognized it or thought to ask. For years I've held off revealing what exactly happened in Panama back in 1990, until a few days ago I finally decided to put everything I remembered to paper. I thought perhaps I was doing it in the belief that we really do live in a world where the truth matters, that maybe people are finally ready for it. But even that isn't totally accurate. As far as the world notes, Sandra LaRoche is missing and presumed dead for 28 years now. I believe this myself when I received a package in the mail last week.

Forwarded to my address by Sandra's mother, still alive as I write this. I was surprised to see it, knowing that her parents shared the same opinion as everyone else about me and wanting nothing to do with me. When I opened the package, I saw that it was a notebook with many of its pages filled with familiar handwriting. That's when I realized Sandra LaRoche is not dead. She's very much alive, and in the pages of her notebook, I found out what happened on that

terrible jungle night in Panama in 1991. A statement of Sandra La Roche. Oh, I have to say that it's good to know. You're still out there, Em. I've heard all about what happened to you after we lost touch with each other in the jungle all those years ago. In fact, I learned about it not long after the stories first broke.

Has it really been nearly 30 years? But you might be wondering why I never turned up after getting out of there alive. I know I could have spared you and my parents a lot of grief if I'd return to the world and let everybody know what really happened. And for that, I'm truly sorry. I hope that after I explain what happened and what I learned, you'll understand why that wasn't possible for me. I'm trusting that you'll know best what to do with everything I'm about to tell you, and come what may, I will respect

your decision. I imagine it can't have been easier for you to live with all the suspicion that's fallen on you, but all I ask is that for the sake of humanity and all that is decent and sane in this world, that I should be left where I am. What I've chosen for myself is a lonely existence, even a painful one at times, but what I'm feeling is decidedly irrelevant next to everything else. So I asked that you try to remember that night all those years ago, the night you and I would see each other for the last time. I'm sure you remember how we fled through the jungles with all those people on our trail. When I split up with you and ran the other way, I did it hoping that the people chasing us would have to split up as well, that we'd have better chances individually

instead of risking being caught together then neither of us would have made it out hearing that you were still alive I guess that was the right choice from what I heard some did follow you but most of the people kept on after me I was going deeper into the jungle and trying to find some place to hide

but these people were faster and smarter than I gave them credit for as the forest got thicker I got slower or the chasers were keeping up Just when I thought it was over and I was expecting to be caught, we ran into something really strange that neither I nor the other people had been expecting. When we were all running through the brush, I kept hearing strange sounds like sharp cracks

and high whistles. I thought maybe they were still shooting at me. I heard some of the voices behind me screaming, awful screams like they were being mauled by wild animals. Then I found out for myself, just what we and we and we were. run into. Traps, primitive traps but lethal man-sized traps laid out in the forest for whoever came along, which of course was us. I found this out when I jumped over a log and stumbled on what I thought was a branch but was actually a tripwire. And when I fell I missed by inches

being hit by what looked like a giant dart. When I got to my feet and ran a bit further, the ground went out from underneath me and I fell against the edge of a large pit, complete with wooden stakes, which if I'd step one foot shorter, would have impaled me. I almost ran into several of these pit traps, and at one point I was hit by a trap that consisted of rope looped around a tree that snapped out like a whip and gave me a rather nice cut on my left arm. The people chasing me seemed to be doing even worse with the traps than I was,

but those bastards must have had more balls than brains because they still kept after me. Since I was going quite a bit slower, one of them finally caught up with me, right as I found a place to hide in a tangled tree root. I didn't quite make it when the man chasing me leaped at my back and tackled me to the ground. But here I got unbelievably lucky, as when I fell, I hit a tripwire that gave out under us and had been a branch

with a crude wooden spikes swung out from behind the tree and smacked this guy right along his arm, shoulder and neck. That branch whip impaled him but didn't kill him. I left him there screaming and thrashing as he hung there, suspended by the spikes. Good God, I just about had a heart attack when I saw that. I wasn't too sorry to see that poor bastard getting spiked, but I knew just the same that it could have been me.

If I'd been tackled just a second later, I would have hit that tripwire and probably wouldn't be here writing this today. I just took advantage of that opportunity to get running again, more carefully this time, and finally the voices faded, and I was sure I'd gotten away. Of course, now I was probably a kilometer, into the forest and had no idea where I was, but I could have figured it all out if I'd had the chance. Unfortunately, I didn't get that chance.

I tried going back in the direction I thought was northeast, but those goddamn traps were everywhere. Going around them got me disoriented again, and when my attention failed for a moment, one of the traps got me. Imagine my surprise when a rope tightened across my left leg, and I was thrown over and hauled twelve feet into the air after bashing my forehead and face against the root of the tree. I'd seen snare traps like these in the movies, but good grief they don't do justice to how much it hurts.

So there I was, hanging like a piece of meat twelve feet up. Totally helpless and sure I had both a concussion and some nasty whiplash. If I'd had more strength, I suppose I could have reached up and tried to get at the rope, but I was still really woozy, probably mildly concussed from that blow to the head. so instead I mostly tried to keep from passing out, an effort that was ultimately in vain as I drifted in and out of consciousness. I don't know how long I was hanging there, but I had a rather painful reintroduction to reality

as I suddenly felt the rope give way and I went falling into the ground from 12 feet up. My landing was rather graceless as I tried to stop my fall, but instead mostly landed on my stomach and chest, knocking the wind out of me. As I lay on the ground trying to recover from this, I felt something tightened around both of my legs near my feet, which I saw was another rope. I was about to curse my rotten luck after falling from one snare trap into another,

and this new rope tightened and began dragging me along the ground off into the forest. I was totally confused by this new situation, but my attempts to flip around and reach the rope were useless, as the speed I was being dragged suddenly increased. The force pulling my legs was simply too strong for me to pull my body forward towards my feet. The only thing I could do was start screaming and trying to grab whatever was planted in the ground to try and stop this, but I was being dragged too fast to get a good grip on anything. When I did grab something firmly,

I was shocked to see that the force pulling me was so strong that it pulled whatever plant I grabbed right out of the ground without slowing. I should mention that for several seconds I had no idea who or what was dragging me through the jungle like this, but when I came to a relatively open clearing, I flipped over to see what was happening. I saw a hunched-over figure wrapped in some kind of dark clock and covered so completely that I wasn't sure at first that it was human. The figure walked strangely, almost loping like a bigfoot or something, taking very long strides that explained why we were going so fast. Well, after a few seconds, I thought I recognized who the figure was,

and I'm sure you probably guessed it too. It was El Corandero, the creepy medicine man, dragging me by a rope to God knows where in the middle of the pan. Anamanian jungle. I tried screaming at him, but he didn't even acknowledge that I was there, and just kept up his inexorable pace without regard to his burden. As he dragged me across the clearing, he started sinking into the ground until he finally disappeared into the jungle floor. I saw that he descended into a well-hidden hole in the ground and was pulling me in after him. When I was dragged over the edge of the hole, I tried to grab the underbrush that surrounded

it, but he was simply too strong. The plants I grabbed were simply torn loose from the soil, and I went tumbling down this halter wherever my captor was shaking me. I know that I was dragged for some ways through a series of low tunnels dug through the earth, but in the total absence of light I had little idea exactly how far. The air down in those tunnels was stale and musty, with a strong acrid odor that became progressively stronger the further we went. After a ways we finally stopped in an area of total darkness.

I was suddenly lifted up off my feet by a pair of terribly strong hands and thrown into a shallow depression in the ground flat on my back, knocking the wind out of me again. My hands were still free, but as I tried to heave myself up, a heavy foot came down on my chest, pinning me to the ground so tight I could hardly breathe. When I tried to grab at the leg holding me down, my arms were violently yanked up and rapidly tied together at the wrist. So now I was totally restrained and helpless. trapped in pitch black darkness with El Corandero and with no obvious means of escape.

His whole time he hadn't said a word or even made any kind of sound, though I could hear him shuffling around in the darkness, occasionally rustling through unseen piles of material. I tried to stay perfectly silent so I could hear where he was going in this cave of his, but he must have noticed that I'd gone quiet after several minutes gasping for air. And he finally made a sound. the first sound I had ever heard come out of his mouth, but it was an odd sound, like a low grunt mixed with a hiss. Then I heard him shuffle over to me, still in total darkness, until I could

practically feel him standing over me. He fumbled with something for a few seconds, when a sudden light from a lantern illuminated us both, and I could see his silhouette kneeling down next to me, looking directly into my face. He had removed his head wrappings and exposed to him. He had removed his headwrappings and exposed his face for me to see. My God, Em, I don't even know if there's a way to describe that face of his. It didn't even look human. It was so twisted and gnarled up. The skin was a lumpy patchwork of scars,

almost like burns or smallpox scars, pale and completely hairless. He had no cheeks either, and his entire mouth was exposed across the whole front of the head from ear to ear, showing all of his teeth. His nose was almost non-existent, just a flat lump of gnarled tissue with two small diagonal slits that flared open whenever he inhaled. And then there were the eyes. The eyes were the worst.

He had no eyelids, and instead his pale yellow eyeballs were perpetually wide open and practically bulging out of their sockets and leering at me. I remember they were light hazel eyes that darted rapidly in short spaces, though maybe that was an effect of his missing eyelids revealing every tiny motion. Everything from the wide, cheekless mouth, through the bulging eyes gave off a look that came across as a hideous, sinister smile, like the whole situation actually amused him. He croaked out what sounded like an awful chuckle, his breath hissing through his clenched teeth. Now I knew how he made that sound. There are no words I can think of to describe the horror of seeing that face up close without warning.

My brain just shut down and all I could do was squirm and scream and try to wriggle away from this horrific form. face, but with my hands and feet bound, there was no way of getting away from it. When he was finished with me, he walked away to another corner of his lair, and began lighting up more lanterns to cover the entire space with a dim, orange glow. I can now see that where he'd taken me was like a workshop of his, with an empty fire pit in the centre, a crude wooden bench set in the opposite wall, an assortment of jars, clay pots and small bowls filled with who knows what. On the bench was scattered a collection of box. holes, lengths of string, and a pile of colourful stones. Clearly this was the place he'd been

assembling the totems he was selling to the villages, and several complete ones were hanging on lanyards strung from some place on the ceiling. I looked to see that this man was rummaging through another pile in the corner, which at first I thought was a pile of sticks. However, when he turned around, carrying a bundle in his arms, I saw that they weren't sticks, but bones, human bones but not fresh ones these bones were grey and weathered almost ancient looking and looking at the pile where he'd retrieved them

I saw that he was gathering them from a stone basin that looked rather like a sarcophagus I thought there must have been the bones at least a dozen people in that pile all quite aged as if their owners have been dead for a very long time he placed the pile of bones on the side of the bench and began taking

individual sections and snapping small pieces off them Then he took the pieces and began to grind them up using a mortar and pestle, turning the bone into a fine powder. From there he began using the powder and mix it in with various other liquids and powders that I couldn't identify. These ancient bones he'd been collecting were actually part of whatever elixir he was concocting. For a long time I didn't know what to make of that. I couldn't see any medicinal or nutritional benefit in such a thing.

While he was making his concoctions, I noticed that the powerful acerous smell that permeated the cave was actually coming from all the substances he was mixing, especially the bone powder. That confused me. Should an ancient and half-desicated bones be entirely odourless? But they reeked anyhow, in spite of their apparent age. After a time, he'd finished mixing the bone powder and other liquids into a grey slurry with a new smell, one that I instantly recognised. The same smell we encountered every time we found a patient affected by Basilisco, that sour, deathly stench, that made out eyes water.

When he finished with his work, he strode over to me, holding a long, thin object than I saw, was a hollowed out reed, with a sharpened bevel tip like a syringe needle. I tried to struggle against him, but my struggles were useless. This guy was simply too strong,

almost inhumanly strong. He stuck the reed pipe into the vein in my arm, and he was pretty rough about it too. Well, he drained a frightening amount of blood from my arm into a clay bowl, And any time I struggled, he shifted and twisted the reed painfully in my arm, threatening to tear the vein wide open if I didn't stop. He filled the bowl about two-thirds of the way before he was satisfied,

and I had lost enough blood to get fairly dizzy. All I got to stop the bleed was a dirty cloth wrapped around my arm. And he took the bowl of blood away and began using it at the bench. So not only was he using human bones in his elixir, he also used a fair quantity of blood, my blood, in the mix. He spent several minutes furiously mixing everything together, and when he finished again I could see the grey slurry it becomes slightly pink. I was wondering what he had planned for this mixture when he took a mostly complete totem

off the wall of the cave and set it on his workbench, where he then proceeded to use a brush to paint the stuff on it. It strangely didn't leave any noticeable change in colour, but I could see that every inch he painted with the stuff took on a waxy and almost glossy finish, largely translucent, but with the distinctive veneer across everything it touched. Do you remember now, Em, how there was something strange about those totems that we couldn't quite place? They weren't just a bundle of sticks and rocks after all.

El Carrandero was applying this stuff to everything he made and sold to the villages, everything he claimed would protect the people. Things that ultimately didn't work, and for which I blamed myself until then. At the time I had no idea why he'd used my blood. Maybe he thought I was immune and that mixing the blood. into his concoctions would transfer some protective quality to them. Maybe it was just some symbolic thing in accordance with his beliefs, whatever his beliefs actually were. For all I knew, I could have been immune.

We exposed ourselves to infected people many times throughout our time there, yet you and I never got sick. What I saw at first left me completely confused and feeling rather guilty. Was he really helping these people after all? Had we unwittingly sabotaged the genuinely helpful efforts of this man? man, unleashing Basilisco in the process. I remember feeling incredibly guilty at that thought, that our well-meaning efforts had doomed the villagers to suffer such a devastating plague for which no cure existed. What I really wanted was a chance to examine his drinkets closer, to see if any of my tacit

theories made any sense. I just had to know him, to know if we were responsible for everything that had happened. When he finished painting and preparing this fresh batch of totems, I finally got my chance to find out why. He left the cave after a few hours, leaving me behind tied up in the small pit in the corner of his cave, apparently unconcerned that I might try anything. When I was sure he'd left, I went to work trying to cut my bindings. It was a rather difficult task. He'd made the knots remarkably secure, and the rope material he used was quite stiff and had little stretch in it.

I ended up having to shatter a clay pot in the corner and use a shard to slowly soar through the restraints, which worked. In that situation, I suppose, I could have immediately made a run for it, but as much as I wanted to be out of there, I needed to know what was going on. I inspected all of his ingredients and materials, comprised of various types of powders and many liquids of different colours. Confirmed my suspicion that the bone powder was the source of the indistinct odour, but to my surprise, some of the intact bones I ate. examined actually had marrow inside them. Granted the marrow was decayed into a dark sludge, but it was definitely bone marrow that was extruding from the broken ends. Bones that old and weathered should have been mostly desiccated and the marrow reduced to powder, but this marrow looked like it had congealed only recently. Not only that, but the marrow itself was still warm. This was the case with

all the bones in the piles that I examined. I'm sure you remember those victims of Basilisco, we examined. Well, they were still burning hot even long after death. This was an opportunity to prove a theory I'd been working out in my head since that day. Oddly enough, among all of this man's arcane ingredients and primitive supplies, I saw that he'd actually had a microscope tucked away in a corner on his workbench. It was a rather old model of microscope that I think he must have found around 50 years ago, but still in a relatively good condition. It's a fortuitous find and a puzzling one. It seemed to suggest that El Corrandero had some kind of legitimate scientific curiosity, that he was more than just a witch doctor working based on ancient

traditions. I smeared a bit of the bone marrow on a slide and put it under the scope. What I saw on that slide was something that I vaguely suspected, though was it a loss to actually explain? Through the scope I saw an ordinary collection of marrow tissue, much of the cellular matter dead and beginning to liquefy, but I observed something far more profound than that. I could plainly see hundreds of microbes, still living and quite active, as it was suspended in the dying tissue. I assumed it was a virus, but not like any virus I'd heard of. This one was incredibly aggressive, still highly active, even though the infected tissue around it was effectively dead and could not have hosted it. This bizarre finding was the only explanation I could

fine for why such intense fever persisted for so long after death, that it was somehow stimulating the infected cells and tissues around it enough to provoke a continued immune response, even after the organism had perished. Again, this was only a theory, and to this day I haven't fully worked out just how it occurs. This unusual and disturbing find raised many more questions in my mind. Foremost among them was why this man collected my blood, and I wondered if there could be something unique about it that drew his attention. I managed to extract a bit of my blood and place it on a slide. When I look closer, I was horrified by what I saw.

That slide of blood made everything I believed or suspected suddenly make sense, and the truth of everything behind what happened over those last few days just fell into place. I looked in the scope expecting some feature that would explain immunity. But I wasn't immune in, just the opposite. I was infected. In my blood I recognised those same viral particles, not quite as prevalent as in the other sample, but still there and still active.

But no immune response was triggered. I could plainly see that many of the macrophages in my blood were infected as well, yet they weren't triggering any kind of inflammation or other response. So, if I was infected, then why wasn't I already sick or dead? It's simple. I'm not an ordinary victim. I'm a carrier, an asymptomatic carrier.

The disease was living in my body, but without becoming fully virulent and killing me. But I was still fully capable of spreading the disease myself. It makes a lot of sense when you think about it. I thought that I'd probably been infected by the very first patient. The baby we first thought had meningitis. After that, I was probably the one. who spread the disease to other places in the villages.

The second outbreak in Playa Sona. That wasn't long after we went there when Florentio wanted to confront El Carrandero. The night we came back to steal the totems, well, God knows how many people I could have infected there. All that time I was unwittingly spreading the disease among the people I was trying to help. That was why the man mixed my blood into the stuff he slathered on those totems.

He wasn't trying to help them after all. He was infecting people with a disease on purpose. That was his goal. That's how he allegedly knew when hour breaks were about to happen, because he was the one causing them. The bones he was using, with the marrow still contaminated, must have come from victims of Basilisco decades, even centuries ago. Baye de Pazas and Pliasola weren't villages that he meant to help.

No, they were like a biological weapons laboratory. a group of subjects he would infect at will for his own purposes. His methods may have been primitive, but he knew exactly what he was doing. Well, I can only guess what he was really up to, but if what the village has said was correct, then he must have been doing this for decades. Who knows how old he really is? Every outbreak of Basilisco in their history must have been his doing. To what end we can only speculate.

But if he was committed to virtually annihilating the people of these two villages every few years, then he must have had some greater goal in mind. Maybe he was perfecting the disease, and maybe he had bigger things in mind for it, bigger than just infecting two obscure fishing villages in a backwater region of Panama. I thought maybe the scars that covered his skin looked like burns, not unlike those we found on some of the victims who were burned out by the fever. Perhaps these two things are connected. This medicine man was Basilisco itself, the very personification of the disease and the legend,

a creature that spreads his poison wherever he goes, laying waste at whatever poor soul he looks upon. But at the end of the day, all we can do is make educated guesses, because the only thing I knew for sure was that he had a reason for keeping me alive, and I meant to make him pay for that mistake. I was examining his inventory of ingredients when I heard the echoes of shuffling feet coming back, down the tunnel. Among the items I'd pilfered from his stash was a large bottle of some kind of strong smelling oil, rather like kerosene, perhaps fuel for his lamps. When I heard the steps coming back down the tunnel, I decided to take my former position in the shallow pit,

stashing the oil bottle behind another pile of clay jars next to it. I'd yet to work out some plan to actually use it, but I knew that something like this could have be useful. I wrapped the severed remains of the rope back around my arms and legs to make it look like I was still bound, which didn't work very well, though, I hoped in the darkness he might not notice. Just as I got settled in position, he barreled through the entrance into the cave and yanked off his head wrappings, revealing that disgusting snake-like face of his. My illusions that I'd fooled him didn't last very long. He immediately became suspicious, glaring at me and slowly walking through the caves if to look for anything amiss.

I'm not sure what he saw, but it didn't take him long to realize I'd been up to no good. Maybe something was out of place in his workbench, or he noticed the fragments of a broken jar, or maybe he even just smelled something off. He turned his back to me for a moment to continue looking. I tried to move slowly and position myself a bit closer to the oil bottle. The second I loosened one of the ropes, he whirled around with a horrible screeching hiss and bounded towards where I lay on the ground. I tried to throw my hands up to protect myself, but he lunged quickly and delivered an absolutely vicious blow right into my face.

It was hard enough that I actually blacked out for a second, only to come out of it a few seconds later and see, well, hand-feel, that he'd hoisted me up by my neck and was strangling me while my legs dangled above the ground. He shook me around as he did so, throwing me into walls and against his coveted jars of ingredients. As he pinned me against a wall, I decided that grappling his hands wouldn't work, and I grasped around for a weapon. I found one, a heavy clay jug that I swung sideways and smashed against the side of his face. He let out a scream of pain and rage that I had no idea could come from an ostensibly human throat. And thankfully he let his grip falter enough for me to wriggle out of his chokehold. I collapsed, gasping to the ground and ignoring the pain in my throat,

crawled as fast as I could to the corner where I hid the oil bottle. I still didn't quite know how I'd use it, though any heavy, blunt object could have been useful at that moment. He recovered from that hit more quickly than I'd expected. As I crawled towards the corner, he began swiping at my back with a sharp object I couldn't see, but I could definitely feel. Oh, he got in a few good slashes that laid up in some fairly nasty gashes on my back, but my whole body was on fire with adrenaline,

and even that didn't quite stop me. I reached the corner just as he grabbed my legs with a shockingly tight and painful grip and yank me backwards, but not before I got the oil bottle in my hand. As he reeled me in to nearly face level, he brought up his weapon and prepared what I assumed was a death blow. However, I was just a bit quicker. I thrust the oil bottle forward and clocked him on the mouth, sending him reeling back and giving me a chance to get up on my feet.

I leaped up and began furiously swinging the bottle, smashing it open with the first hit and spilling the contents on him. I kept slashing at him with the shattered remains of the bottle, dishing some nasty gashes of my own, when he suddenly brought up a foot and kicked me in the stomach with incredible strength, pushing me back into the opposite wall, just underneath where one of his lanterns was hanging, still lit. He came at me with a vicious, blood-curdling war-cry,

and I yanked their lantern down, Right when he was within arm's length of me, I smashed the still burning lantern right over his head, and the oil spilled on his clothing, went up all at once. M, you should have heard the scream that came out of his mouth as he twisted and writhed on his feet, trying to extinguish the flames in vain. With him seemingly out of action, I took this opportunity to rush past my burning antagonist and down the tunnel that presumably led to the entrance. It was rough going through those low and narrow tunnels,

To my relief, I finally saw a shaft of daylight at the end of the path, and the screams of the burning man were comfortably far away. The shaft had been dug through some rather dense and sticky soil, which made for convenient handholds to climb up again. I just get plunging my hands and feet into the earth, scrambling upwards to relative freedom. However, I began to hear that screaming had ceased, and was now replaced by cries of unfathomable rage, and to my horror I saw him emerge into the light at the bottom.

of the shaft. I quickened my pace upwards, but he wasn't far behind, heaving himself upwards after me. Finally, I managed to pull myself over the crest of the hole and jump to my feet, prepared to sprint back in the direction I'd come, rather than get lost further in the jungle. I dashed away from the entrance of the shaft and briefly took cover behind a tree, trying to work out my next move, when I saw Basilisco all but jump out of the hole. It was early morning now, and I could see in the daylight that he was covered in fresh red burns that showed through his tattered rags. He looked absolutely maniacal, more than he had already, and was furiously searching for me.

I thought I had a pretty decent hiding place, until he suddenly turned in my redirection and locked eyes on me. This time I wouldn't freeze. I immediately bolted off into the jungle while he screeched and hissed viciously. It was rather more shocking when I looked back to see that he was managing to keep pace with me, no matter how hard I forced my legs or how many turns I made. Equally dismaying was the fact that I'd now re-entered trap country, which I learned when I struck a tripwire and narrowly avoided a whip trap that sailed only a few inches above my head and tore a rather large gash into an adjacent tree.

But I had no choice but to keep going forward. Taking my chances with the traps wasn't very appealing, but even less appealing was falling back into the hands of that monster. So I kept up my pace, trying to hop over any suspected traps rather than take the time to go around them. I was doing exactly this when I leaped over a log only to find that the ground on the other side

was at a surprisingly steep slope and I tumbled ass over T-KL down a hill. Thankfully I didn't break anything doing this, but I bang my shin just hard enough that I faltered for a few seconds getting to my feet. Then I heard exactly what I was. I was dreading in that moment, a vicious screech coming over the top of the hill. I ran as quickly as I could into the nearest stretch of forest I could see.

But my fall had closed the gap between us, and I was rather shocked to see him leap like a damn jungle cat over the log on the hill and land skidding on his feet. Now my legs were beginning to falter. Adrenaline can only push you so far. I now was grappling with the possibility that I might not be able to run any further. My option became to try and outpace him through rough terrain rather than outrun him on open ground. I turned and ran down a narrow gully, jumping over any logs or rocks along the way, but this new plan didn't work out as well as I'd hoped.

He was very much keeping up with me through this rougher terrain, and when the gully ended, I went back to flat ground. Ahead I saw a tree with a large and nard trunk that I hoped would have some sort of hiding place among the roots, assuming I could get there with enough time to avoid being seen, which didn't seem likely. It was also up a short rise in the land, which would mean I would lose even more speed, but my legs were preparing to give out anyways. I chose to go up the slope and around the tree, and in that time, Pazilisco finally closed the gap and was preparing to lunch.

I whipped around the corner to hear a horrible laugh, like he knew something I didn't. When I turned back to look behind me, I saw him come around the corner, prepared to pounce. With my last ounce of strength, I made a diving leap to the left and collapsed in a cluster of ferns, narrowly missing his tackle. He went sailing past me, and, to my surprise, the ground gave out beneath him. It was a pit-trap that he'd landed on,

and he gave a startled scream as he went completely in, which turned shortly into a bestial roar of pain. I looked in to see that he'd impaled, himself from the stakes planted in the sides of the pit. And he was down there thrashing and screaming like a wild beast. But no matter how hard he struggled, he couldn't free himself. He was impaled through at least five places that I could see, from his shoulder down through his torso and all the way to his leg.

Grievously wounded though he was, he was very much alive still, even though several stakes had pierced all the way through his torso in spots that must have skewed some vital organs. Whatever the case, I could hardly believe my luck. In that faithful second I was mentally preparing to be caught and butchered by this horrible monster. But in less than a second, my fortunes had changed so drastically I could hardly believe I was still alive. I watched him thrash and screamed for a few minutes.

While I caught my breath, I thanked my lucky start that this son of a bitch happened to forget where this particular trap lay. Still shaking, I walked away in the direction. was towards the coast. His screams becoming faint until I was too far away to hear them. Part 7. Finale When I saw some open sky, I was able to regain my bearings and head in the direction of the coast. At the time, I still wasn't sure what had happened to you, M. I didn't know if you'd made it back to the villages, or if you'd been caught, or if you were lost in the jungle as I was for a time. Well, I decided against going back to the villages.

And when I emerged from the jungle and onto the beach, I went in the complete opposite direction. I know that I'd call the boat to pick us up the day before, but I thought that those villages were still looking for us, so I decided not to risk it. Fortunately, there are villages dotting the coast here and there, and after a day's hike down the beach, I found a derelict shack where I rested for a time.

I didn't know if I wanted to risk coming into contact with anyone else given my contagious condition but the alternative was walking all the way back to Panama City the next day I proceeded down the coast relieved to see that nobody else was following me and before long I found another village this time populated as much as I hated the thought of potentially infecting these people I still make contact to ask for a ride now fortunately these people were very gracious and helpful and within a day or so I managed to hire a driver with an all-terrain van who would drive me back to civilization over some rough but passable trails to the city down the coast well the rest is relatively

uneventful i was able to procure private transport back to panama city and being wary of infecting anyone else i used alternate means to travel out of the country with a good-sized bribe i was able to stow away on a cargo freighter going north to san diego the thought of illegal immigration wasn't very appealing, so I paid off the captain of the boat to stay aboard to the next destination, which was Australia. That's where I went, and that's where I still am now. I don't know if I should say exactly where, but it's remote enough that I'm almost never bothered, which is good for anyone not looking to contract a deadly disease. Despite getting off the boat with very little, I've been able to make a decent life here. Far from any place my condition could threaten the lives of

others. Lonely though it is, it's the only way to keep everyone else safe. There are times, dark moments when I consider ending it all that offing myself might be the only way to keep everyone else truly safe. However, in the meantime, I've taken to doing some research on my condition, seeing if there's been any noticeable changes or symptoms. Thankfully, there haven't been, though, every blood sample I've taken from myself for nearly 30 years since has shown the infection is still alive and well. The only real complaints I deal with anymore losing my hair and flaky skin

isn't aging wonderful. At this rate, I might look like old basilisco by the time I get old. Anyway, that's my story. I'm sorry I never contacted you before, even though I've known you survived for over 20 years. I just couldn't risk the idea that somebody might find me that I might endanger the lives of those I love

if they ever came to me. It's been hard for both of us. That's much of the reason I'm writing to you now, Em. I just want to let you know that I'm alive and reasonably well, considering the circumstances. And I wanted to apologise, not only to you, but to my family as well, who've been wondering all these years what happened to their baby girl. The package you received was hopefully forwarded by my family,

who received their own note and explanation of my absence. Granted, I haven't talked quite as much of the truth to them as I have to have to. to you, but the truth of it all is so grotesque and unbelievable that I could make anybody understand. Only you, because you were there and you saw it all for yourself. But, M, there's one more reason I wanted to contact you. In my research of my condition, I've made some interesting but rather alarming discoveries. The disease itself can act quite quickly most of the time, killing his victim in less than a day. From my condition I know that there are definite outliers in this regard.

One discovery I've made is that Basilisco doesn't necessarily affect a person right away. Like me, an infected person can become a carrier. But another thing that can happen is the disease will be dormant for a time. I'm sure you've been wandering all these years, why you never got sick when you were exposed just as much as me. Sometimes Basilisco can remain dormant but still contagious for a long time. Sometimes it remains dormant long enough that people will be infected before anyone shows symptoms When the dormancy period ends many people will become sick all at once

I know it's an ugly thought and I was hoping to put your mind at ease when I decided to contact you but I wouldn't be doing my duty as a physician if I didn't at least alert you to the possibilities I'm not saying that this is necessarily the case for you for all I know you could be completely fine and if it has been this long perhaps there's nothing to worry about but i think the truth needs to be said especially now i've been hiding it for so long i don't want the cost of lies or ignorance to fall on anyone else oh that's all i wanted to say him i'm just glad that now both of us know that the other is alive and safe it feels good to lay out everything we went through back then and i imagine it might feel good for you too perhaps we can learn to be happy with the our lot, given what could have happened instead.

Perhaps we can both learn to live with knowing that there is such a thing on this earth as Basilisco. And so once again, we reach the end of tonight's podcast. My thanks as always to the authors of those wonderful stories and to you for taking the time to listen. Now, I'd ask one small favour of you. Wherever you get your podcast from, please write a few nice words and leave a five-star review as it really helps the podcast. That's it for this week, but I'll be back again same time,

same place, and I do so hope you'll join me once more. Until next time, sweet dreams and bye-bye.