When The World Turned Purple

Anna Chapter 2

I was sitting on the floor, my arms folded around my legs. The whispering had now ceased and had been coming from an old fashioned dusty tape recorder. That seemed much too ancient to be in working condition. Calum was holding it, his face morphed into itself as he studied it.

Big Bobby was talking to someone on his phone in Greek and father's body was still lying in the middle of us all. I couldn't look at it and so was staring at my phones screen. It was buzzing on the ground beside me, flashing a picture of Isaac from before his accident. Curly haired and sweet, shyly smiling at the camera reminding me why I was in love with him.

He had a marker in his hand and a white board full of calculations behind him.

I had taken that picture after he'd concluded our thesis presentation. It was a good day. Father had had a long conversation about his work with him later at lunch, Isaac answered all his questions successfully. By dinner father was already talking animatedly about him to Mehmet who wasn't too thrilled about where the conversation was headed.

“Maybe you should turn that off love.”

I looked up at Big Bobby, he was sitting eye level with me on the corner of father's room.“I was just talking to the embassy. They're sending the police and were very apologetic that we had to see all this.”

I scoffed, all my fear having dissipated, in the current light of events I no longer cared if I lived or died, I turned off my phone and shoved in my sweater pocket,“Which embassy where you talking to? Last time I checked no one at the American embassy talks in Greek.”

He laughed, spitting in my face in the process, I narrowed my eyes at him silently and cleaned myself with my sleeve.

"You're a smart one aren't you? What do you think Calum isn't she a smart girl?”

Calum didn't grace him with an answer. Big Bobby didn't seem to notice or care.

“I've been doing some research on you and your daddy. You've worked with Scotland Yard as a forensic scientist for a bit haven't you?”

I looked at him, having no idea what this interrogation was about.“I was asked to sweep a terrorist attack in central London by my government, it was our way of lending help.”

“A patriot, right." He stood up and walked up to father's body, the amusement never leaving his eyes, the sun had fallen into the mountains, and I realized I would never be able to enjoy the Kothi's view again, “Tell me then, how long has he been dead.”

I eyed him wearily for a moment, what did he want? And what was the nature of his relationship with Calum. My eyes scanned Calum’s impassive face, it was giving me no answers.

“Are you coming or would you like me to make you?”

I stood up and walked up feebly to him, and was assaulted with the same fear. My knees became weak and it required all my will power to fight off the paralysis. The only time I had felt like this was when my pet duckling had died as a child. I couldn’t look at the little things mangled body, it was impossible for me to come to terms with the fact that something that was alive one second could be unmoving and dead the other.

Big Bobby gave me a huge grin and extracted a pair of yellow latex gloves from his brown jacket, “Let's start up the examination shall we?”

“You've come prepared." I said, and turned my gaze to Calum who was still holding the tape recorder in his hand and was watching me.

“You can say that." Big Bobby answered, "Now let's get on with it.”

Reluctantly, and with much resistance from my knees I settled down next to him, he was an extremely large man, my father looked tiny and so much more dead and pale with him so close. I turned my attention to my task and tried forgetting everything else.

I moved my fingers over father's face, his muscles were tight indicating that rigor mortis had set in and his body was cold as well, having lost most of its warmth.

“It seems like he's been here a day or two. But that's merely an estimate, I can't say anything definite without equipment. There's also the fact that his body hasn't started to smell yet, so I can't completely be sure.”

He smiled,“And how did he die?”

I swallowed the lump in my throat and looked down at the body. Wondering if giving an accurate analysis was a good idea. Then I realized that the authorities would make their own soon enough and he'd get the information through them.

God knew that there was nothing in this country that money couldn't buy.

There were five neat cuts on father's arm, and the blood pooled around him was enough to kill a child and it could probably send an old man like himself in shock. I moved my hand to his arm and studied them, they were deep and clean, evenly spaced and precise.

But the puddles were neat, and there wasn't any blood around him to indicate that he'd stumbled back down on to his position and died from blood loss. In-fact, it looked like someone had cleaned up the extra blood that had pooled out his wrist.

“None of us know what they want. You'll do well to take it easy." I looked up at Calum and found him staring at Big Bobby,“it's better not to get the girl involved. We don't know the consequences.”

They.

I repeated the word in my mind, so there was a group involved. The two of them were dealing with something they didn't understand either.

Calum was staring Bobby down,“A few more minutes till the authorities arrive." He flashed his watch at him.

“A few minutes with the sinner's daughter then." Bobby turned to me, "Come-on, back to work. How did he die?”

“It doesn't look like he bled out." I answered, stung and saddened, I looked up at the bloody inscription on the wall 'Sinner'. I wondered who he'd managed to upset. But I hadn't ever seen a terrorist hit like this, it just wasn't their style. Large public figures were murdered in execution manner, with black flags and masks, and the province had already been operated, the army had cleared away all the terrorist setups. That was one of the reasons we'd agreed on letting him stay in this part of the country.

“The crime scene is too clean. There should be blood spattered around him, it was something else.”

What then? I thought. What was it?

I examined him for marks or other cuts. His body was arranged symmetrically, with his feet facing the door and staircase beyond it and his head was directly below the writing on the wall. There had to be something else, or maybe he hadn't died after draining the blood from his arms, maybe he'd stayed alive long enough to clean up the mess.

Highly unlikely, father was an old man, much too weak to stay standing after such a massive amount of blood loss. There was something else.

“Well?" Big Bobby was becoming impatient. He was tapping his fingers on the floor and the sound was resonating in the Kothi's floor.

Calum looked down at his watch and then at me. "Not long now.”

I lifted his head in an attempt to find something beneath him opening his mouth involuntarily. The horrible smell of death made its way in my nostrils and I dropped it trying not to vomit. It landed with a thud and moved to the side, opening the mouth wider.

“Holy hell." Big Bobby yelled standing up and tipping me to one side in the process, I barely managed to avoid the blood puddle,“I think I'm going to be sick.”

The inside of Father's mouth was black like charcoal, his teeth had decayed and his tongue was purple. What the hell was this? How could his body be alright from the outside and …

The realization came to me in the form of clarity.

Decayed teeth and a purple tongue. I had seen this all before. In-fact, I had seen it all one too many times.

I needed a confirmation. I looked down at his stomach frantically, observing a slight purple pigmentation in his skin, I had initially written it off as a by-product of the cold the body had been subjected too. But it could very well be because of a symptom.

If what I suspected was correct, his intestines would look similar as well; blackened on the outside filled with purple fluid.

In order to confirm my suspicions I walked up to Father's desk at the end of the room and took out his carving knife. The smell was everywhere now, my body shook as I fought to maintain control. Big Bobby was already vomiting at one corner of the room.

I sat down next to the body again and made a cut on his stomach. Black blood pooled out. I placed a finger inside and when I extracted it, it was covered in a purple sticky liquid.

“What is it then?" Calum asked me. He was still standing where he was, flustered but resolute.

“The purple plague.”

His looked at me with mild confusion, his eyes squinting in the process,“The children's disease?”

I nodded.

The purple plague. The same plague that had killed about a thousand children already, and the same thing our company was pooling resources to cure. The causative agent was elusive, we hadn't been able to identify it and no concrete theories, meaning it could very well be anything from a virus to a fungus. It had killed some children mercilessly despite our best efforts and others had recovered completely without any assistance from us.

Narrowing my eyes I stood up. A new set of questions exploded in my mind. The purple plague only infected children. There hadn't been any reported incidences of adults acquiring the disease from their children. In fact, I myself had spent time in a relief camp without getting sick from it.

Was father lacking immunity? Had he acquired something that had compromised his immune system, something like an STD? Was the disease opportunistic? Did it infect people with compromised immunities?

No no no. I was there for Father's monthly tests. Everything was in order. He was just old and his knees were weak. I’d gotten him calcium supplements.

“What the hell is that?" Big Bobby was yelling.

“The plague.”I removed the latex gloves he'd given me and opened the door to the room, feeling light headed, I wondered if the smell was a form of releasing spores, it was strong and could very well serve a purpose of the sort, I had seen a lighter form of this before, upon the death of children in the camp, but nobody had acquired anything as severe, maybe it was because the children had been buried before they reached such a stage,“We shouldn't be around the body long.”

“What f*****g plague?" Bobby gave me a displeased glare, but flung open the door despite it and ran out. Calum followed a second later and I closed the door.“The same one that's killing the children?”

“The same one." I answered before catching myself and wondering why I was telling these people anything. The outside hallway was quiet and clean, it was like I had stepped into another world.

“They've been killing these old men with a virus? What the hell are we dealing with?”

“What old men?" I asked, frantically looking between the two of them, Bobby was pacing the hall,“How many more are there?”

Calum took a deep breath,“Shut up Bobby.”But Bobby wasn't listening, he started muttering to himself in Greek, his confident demeanor was gone and it sounded like he was praying. Who was he praying too?

Calum took another deep breath, “Shut up Bobby.” He said forcibly. But Bobby wasn’t listening anymore.

Calum sighed and extracted his gun, I heard him load it, “Shut up!” And then fired it up at the roof. I took shelter underneath a nearby coffee table. The Khoti’s old frame resonated with the impact. My heart threatened to jump out of my rib cage.

Bobby stopped pacing, but his expression remained largely the same, he approached Calum anxiously, “What does your family say about this? What about your brothers?”

“Nothing. They know nothing about this entire mess and no one is going to tell them.”He placed his hands on Bobby's shoulders,“You're going to keep quiet about this Bobby or I'll have Frankie clean you up, okay?”

Bobby gulped and met his gaze, a bit of ferociousness returned in his voice, his hand made its way inside his coat, "You aren't the only man with pull Calum. You understand that right?”

“Maybe not, but I'll be leaving behind a much more brutal legacy if I die. Nobody wants my blood on their hands.”

Bobby remained silent. Calum pushed him, he stumbled back further than I had expected him too. “Run downstairs and wait for the cops. They're running late but can't be far.”

I almost snorted, I could bet a finger on the fact that no one had even stirred at the village's police station. They were largely unprepared to handle anything like this. We'd be hearing from the army and secretariat soon.

“Come on out.” Calum was saying, he was standing above the coffee table looking impatient.“We haven't got all day and I have more questions.”

I crawled out, beet red with embarrassment, I was hiding under a coffee table, how pathetic was that.

I opened my mouth to say something in my defense but Calum beat me too it. He came and stood near me gripping my shoulders and pulling me close enough to whisper,

“Does the disease effect the mind?”

I looked up at him and scanned his face, he had a hard set jaw and his skin was scared in what looked like the aftermath of a bad case of teenage acne, "Not that I know off. None of the children showed any sign of neurodegeneration.”

“What about the adults?”

I was quite for a moment. We both stared at each other. "Come-on." He whispered, his voice betrayed a sense of urgency,“You still have the chance of walking out of this scratch free. Just answer my question.”

What the hell is going on? I thought, anxiety pooling into my chest, my drive with Khan felt like a century ago. I realized peripherally, that I had handled all of this very poorly and hadn't the spine to stand up to either of these men.

“There are trucks rolling in from the gate!”Big Bobby was yelling from somewhere, I realized he was downstairs probably looking out at the garden.

“Come-on.”Calum said again, his grip slackening on my shoulders,“I don't have long and you don't have long. And if the scene in that room hasn't convinced you that the world is ending I don’t think anything else well. But we don’t have to die, not all of us.”

I looked at him, epically confused.“No one is going to die. We're going to find a cure.”

“What are you going to do if people keep doing that to themselves?”

We stared at each other a minute longer. I had no idea what to do so I said,

“I don't know much. There haven't been any adults before, but the disease causing microbe seems to spend most of its life in the intestinal tract and enters through the nasal route. It seems unlikely.”

“So the plague can't make a man do that to himself?" He pointed at the door of father's room.

I shook my head, feeling tears well up in my eyes again, I looked away from him, “No. I don’t think so.”

The main door of the house opened,“Where is the body?" Someone said. The voice was authoritative and carried a distinguishable local accent.

The army was here.