Plague

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It began with a cough.

Michael Pettrioli sat on a large stone near the Amazon River, sipping warm water out of a plastic bottle. The river churned its brownish contents into white foam and though he was only a few feet away from his adventure guide, who was convincing a local tribesman that they were not here to steal their women, he couldn’t hear anything but the river.

It’d been two days since he’d felt feverish and last night he’d been up at least half a dozen times either vomiting or with diarrhea. For several days before, he was unable to sleep from the blanket of insects that would attack him at night as he lay in a hammock a couple feet off the ground. Even with nets and repellent he seemed helpless to fight them. They ranged from harmless pests to life-threatening monsters. There was one type of biting fly that sought the fleshy part of the lip and injected her eggs there. One person in the group had already become a host and the guide had said they’d need to wait until the eggs are larger and cut them out with a hot scalpel.

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