Chapter 4: Rio

Hank knew he was near Rio long before he got there. There are many landmarks, most significantly tall mountains that come right down to the edge of town, then there is the impressive statue of Christ at Corcovado overlooking the entire city. The statue has its hands wide open blessing the city.

Rio de Janeiro's best anchorage for small boats was Guanabara Bay where he pulled in and anchored. He sounded the boats horn. He didn't see anyone so he pulled the bungees off his kayak and tied it off at the stern. He grabbed two 1 liter bottles of water and headed for shore.

He found a car almost immediately. It was a VW beetle. They still

manufactured them down here, or at least they had just a few years earlier when he had been here. He had to push it and jump start it as the battery was weak.

He headed off to the left as you had to go through the centro area to get to the tourist area and beaches. He would have a better chance of finding newspapers in English there. Every few blocks he continued to sound the little cars horn.

He turned right and wiggled his way down the main drag at the beach. On his right were big beach hotels, on his left a sidewalk and a wide beach. There were no pretty girls on the beach today. No young boys selling beer. No guys practicing their soccer moves. There were no world famous dental floss bikini's at all. It was very sad. The sensuous clothing worn here was something he remembered fondly. It was all gone now.

The second hotel he checked had a New York Times. He sat down to read it. Turns out it was a world wide disease as he had suspected. It had started in the U.S. and spread all over the world. It had a 22 day incubation period. By the time the first people had died and brought attention to it's existence, it had spread literally everywhere. At first they didn't know what it was or where it came from.

The disease was caused by a protein used in gene cutting that got loose from a biologics laboratory in Connecticut called Genlexar. The protein would be injected from a tiny needle wherever you wanted to cut a gene. Then you could suck up the cut gene and add the gene and a base protein that glued the new gene, series. It could also cut open a cell they found out later. The mutant bacteria was very tiny and as virulent as they come.

The President said he had told everyone that messing around with all those genes was bad. Congress spent all it's time investigating and finger pointing right up to the last. The Republicans blamed the Democrats and the Democrats said it all began when congress and the White House had been controlled by the Republicans.

They found bad door seals manufactured by a Canadian company to be the cause of the bacteria getting loose. The Canadian company claimed the door seals were fine if maintained properly. Genlexar claimed the doors were maintained properly. It didn't matter any more, the damage was done and like most arguments, nobody was the winner.

The bacteria had been changed enough it was able to attack any mammalian. It could be spread by touch, saliva, or even breathing air from someone or some animal that had the disease. It could last for hours outside of a host. Touching a handrail or water fountain was all it took. It could enter through your skin. You could get it from sitting on a toilet at school or work. You could get it picking up dog shit They had no cure. It had spread like wildfire before a wind storm.

It was ghastly, symptoms started with breathing problems first, then organs began to turn to jelly. Death was by asphyxiation as your lungs filled with fluid very similar to pneumonia as it leaked into the lungs from the neighboring organs.

The bones at death would be so soft that you couldn't even move a body without the bones breaking. The mess was horrid as the skin no longer would contain the flesh.

His earlier thinking had been correct. Everywhere there was an airport, death had been introduced. He figured if anyone survived, they had been so far up a mountain or on a tiny island that they rarely if ever came into contact with people or animals.

Once the diseased host died, the disease died after a few days. He was evidently safe now. Well, He was taking no chances as the government had made lots of promises that had not been kept.

It suddenly occurred to him that he was not smelling anything here. He tried clearing his nose. No, that wasn't it. Evidently the bodies had already decomposed. Must have been because of the jelly thing.