Duat rolled out of bed and vomited into the bucket on the floor. He hadn’t been able to keep anything down, but then neither had anyone else in the encampment. His eyes were hot and dry, and his joints ached as if they’d been pinned together with rusty screws. Sleep brought terrors he had never thought possible, full of his own blood and dismemberment and decay.
‘Duat, we have been poisoned.’
Duat looked up from the bucket. Hendra leaned against the door, the skin on his face a pale green colour, his eyes red coals deep within black sockets.
‘Come,’ he said, breathing hard, his reserves of energy severely taxed by the thirty-metre walk from his own hut.
Duat climbed to his feet, swaying, fighting the feeling that he would black out at any moment. He followed Hendra to his quarters, stopping once to vomit a mixture of bile and blood onto the well-worn dirt path. Duat again steadied himself on a post that supported a wide veranda the carpenters had built for Hendra under which to house the group’s extensive communications suite, and plan the development and flight of the Sword of Allah. Cooling fans hummed incessantly within a wide array of high-powered PCs, printers and decoders. Daily meteorological forecasts hung limp in the moist tropical air charting the progress of weather systems across the Indian Ocean, and Timor and Arafura seas. Several television monitors permanently tuned to various news services, their volume controls set to mute, featured presenters mouthing silently on screen. ‘Look,’ said Hendra, pointing to a computer screen. Duat found it difficult to focus on the small writing, translating the English in his head into more intelligible Bahasa, the language of Indonesia. He realised after digesting several lines that his own condition was being described. He scrolled the page to the top of the screen and read aloud, ‘Symptoms of VX poisoning. How?’
‘I don’t know how it has happened. We must search Rahim’s house,’ Hendra said. ‘There is an antidote.’
Duat and Hendra supported each other on the walk to Rahim’s abode. It had been set furthest away for safety reasons. The distance was only a hundred metres but Duat wondered whether he would have the strength to make it.
Rahim and his assistant had been amongst the first to die, at a time when there were still enough people to see to their cremation. Hendra staggered to Rahim’s workbench. The implements of addiction lay here and there and, for a brief moment, Duat envied him his painless death. Hendra pulled the drawers out one by one, looking for something. He then went to the fridge. Its motor thrummed softly – it still worked – but a padlock secured the door closed.
Hendra went back to the benchtop and took the pistol lying there. He checked that it was loaded and off safety and, turning his head away, fired at the lock. The deafening sound of it discharging in the confined space had a physical quality that nearly made Duat pass out. Hendra swung the door open and found what he was looking for, a clear plastic bag containing two hypodermic syringes. Clearly written in red lettering on each was the word ‘Atropine’.
Hendra had no idea where the hypodermic should be administered. The Internet sites he’d trawled had not provided that level of detail. He passed one of the hypodermics to Duat and then drove the needle through the fabric of his pants, deep into his thigh muscle, then pressed down on the plunger. Duat followed his example. Both men collapsed on the floor, exhausted by their exertions.