Virus Antiserum

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It was raining in the jungle, the kind of cloudless, light rain that can sometimes turn into furious downpours in a few hours and give you a lot of trouble. The agent was not in a great position to be worried about rain, though. The climate and the terrain suited his purposes perfectly; it made cover and concealment easy, and out here in the jungle, the spy was practically invisible.

The rain didn't bother him. He loved rain.

After the war had made him into the person he was now, there were four things he had always remembered. The first was the rain, one of the few parts of the war that he'd actually enjoyed. The second was the gunfire. He'd grown up in Iowa, so that's what he'd knew. The third was the electricity in the middle of a city, when it actually did something useful. And the fourth was the smell of bacon cooking in the oven.

The rainy weather had always made him nostalgic. Those memories made him concentrate all the harder. He had a mission to complete.

He lacked cover as he moved forward and had to get off his feet at least once during his approach to the front gate. He huddled in a small alcove formed by a tree covered in swollen pods, making himself as small as possible, and waited for some people to pass on the road in front of him.

After a few minutes, he was rewarded by the sound of a car coming from the other direction. Soon, a dark green truck came rolling towards him, the sound of its engine rumbling steadily and the plump figure of the driver sitting confidently behind the wheel. The driver was a large man, with a stringy beard, and his face was coated in mud. The agent couldn't make out the brand of the vehicle, but he could make out little bits of trashy paper hanging from the truck's roof and see that the sides of the truck were splattered with red paint and patches of mud.

The man in the truck was humming a jaunty tune, not trying to hide it. He also appeared to be alone.

Despite the bright red paint, the man in the truck seemed to have no idea how unwise it was to be so loud and exposed out here in the jungle. He had probably been isolated in the truck, driving it alone and unafraid, all day, and the sound of the engine was probably the only thing the agent had heard since he left his camp earlier in the morning. The camp was a few kilometers behind him, and he'd been walking towards the rebel base for a while now.

He watched as the truck approached, then rolled to a stop in front of him. The man in the truck stared casually out of the window at the agent and waved cheerily. The agent did his best to wave back, and the man in the truck smiled and reached behind himself before pulling out a long, wide-mouthed, brown bottle. He waved it back and forth as if it were a friendly hello, so the agent got up and moved closer to the truck to get a better look. The man stopped waving, but still smiled, as if he were proud of the bottle. That was fine with the agent. He was proud of it too. It was a forty-year-old bottle of Kentucky distilleries finest, and even without knowing the year, the agent could tell it was special.

There was something very special about the man in the truck. He spoke in a language the agent didn't know, but his words didn't matter anyway. He could hear the jolly tones in the man's voice, and as the man talked, he brought the bottle in for a closer look and then lifted it to his lips, tipped it back, and swallowed.

The bottle was half-full, yet he'd not put it down once since he'd retrieved it from behind his seat.

The agent smiled and continued to wave back and forth, to keep the man distracted. In a few moments, he started to see little puffs of breath coming from the truck's open window. The driver smiled and shook his head, like he was trying to persuade himself of something. And then he went ahead and puffed on the window. That was it.

The agent's heart pounded. He'd seen the man drink from the bottle, and he was bound by his covenant to do the same. To follow his path.

He couldn't do it, though. He couldn't just drink it and give someone else the job. There was still one more thing he needed to do before he drank it.

He stepped out from behind cover and headed for the truck, keeping his pace even and his head down. There was still a muddy, sloppy path from the road to the source of the smell and he had to check his step a few times to make sure he didn't slip. The agent was too much of a realist to believe in superstitions, but his heart was beating in his chest and he could feel little shivers of fear running up and down his back. Some part of him wondered what would happen when he really did meet that little girl, after thousands of years. If it really was her.