Free Outbreak by Chris Ryan

sitting around it, about twenty metres from where Ben and Halima were hiding, were eight or nine elderly men. They wore simple clothes - dark-coloured all-in-one tunics mostly - but round their necks they wore what looked like heavy ceramic jewellery. Two of them wore headdresses made from the fur of animals. Standing a little way apart from these men was the drummer, bent double over a large wooden djembe drum, intently beating out the increasingly wild rhythm.
Dum, dum, dum, da-da-da-da.
The eyes of all the men were trained on a figure Ben could not see clearly. It was positioned on the other side of the fire, so all he could make out was a silhouette of what appeared to be a man, fairly tall and, as far as Ben could make out, naked, at least from the waist up. He was dancing in time to the rhythm of the drum, not in a wild, frenetic way, but making short, jerky movements.
Ben found himself transfixed by the sinister sight. How long he watched before Halima interrupted his trance he could not have said. 'It is a dance for the ancestors,' she told him.
Ben blinked and turned to look at her. 'What?'
'A dance for the ancestors. The man you see dancing has great power.'
'I don't understand,' Ben whispered. 'Who are the ancestors?'
Halima gazed into the middle distance. 'The dead. Those that have gone before us. It is our duty to ensure that they should not be disturbed.'
'What do you mean, disturbed? How can you disturb dead people?'
Halima gave him a sidelong glance. 'You asked me before why everyone seemed so scared of this village.'
Ben nodded. 'I think I'm already beginning to understand,' he said. 'I know what the red crosses on the doors mean. I know that lots of people are dying here.'
'But do you know why?'
'Suliman told me it was malaria. We were warned about it before we left England.'
Halima smiled faintly. 'Malaria.' She nodded. 'Yes. That is what everyone in the village will tell you. But it is not what they believe.'
'But you told me yourself that your parents died from malaria.'
Ben was puzzled, and Halima clearly understood that from the look on his face. 'You have to understand,' she told him quietly, 'that things are not always what they seem to be in Africa. You are a stranger, so people will not always tell you what they really believe.' She was looking at him intently now. 'I have seen many people die, and I nursed my parents to their graves. What killed them was not malaria. Similar, maybe. But not malaria.'
'Then what was it?'
Halima gazed towards the fire once more. 'My father worked in the mine,' she told him. 'When the mine-owners came, people were worried. They wanted to dig near the burial grounds sacred to our ancestors. But there was nobody to stop them, and besides, they offered jobs and money. We are very poor here, and the village elders welcomed them. To start with there was no problem. But not long ago they extended their excavations, and that was when the mine-workers started to fall ill.'
'All of them?' Ben asked, his attention rapt.
Halima shook her head. 'No. Not all of them. My father and two others first. Then my mother.' Her voice was expressionless as she explained what had happened. 'He woke up one morning vomiting and unable to stand up. His head ached so badly that he could barely speak, he was hot all over and I could hear the breath rattling in his chest. He could eat nothing. My mother became ill the following day. They both died on the same night, eight days after my father fell ill.'
'I'm sorry,' Ben breathed, his expression of sympathy seeming desperately inadequate.
'At first I too believed it was malaria. Even after they died I was not sure I wanted to believe what is so obvious to me now. But it cannot be ignored. Two thirds of the men who have gone down the mine have succumbed to the same illness. Of those people, three quarters have died. In addition, certain members of the mine-workers' families have started to succumb. Everyone in the village knows somebody who has