The Extinct by Victor Methos Page B

skidded to a halt in front of him and two officers jumped out with their guns drawn.
    “Down on the ground motherfucker!”
    Eric put his hands up and lay down on his belly, the wet pavement cold against his chest. He felt the pull of hands grabbing his wrists, and the steel handcuffs against his flesh.

 
     
    CHAPTER
    16
     
     
    Dr. Namdi Said had lived in Andhra Pradesh briefly as a child though he was originally from Somalia. He remembered only the droves of merchants lined up on the streets of Kavali, yelling and haggling with any tourist that wandered by. A sight that, still in existence, had died down with modern conveniences like the internet. He had not seen the plains—named by the locals “Gold Mines of India” because of the color of the landscape given by the tall yellow grass—until he was in his late twenties and out of medical school.
    The jeep he drove in was well past its prime, rust adorning the underside and a constant clicking sound accompanying every rotation of the front wheels. The road to Saint Anthony’s Medical Outpost was bumpy and littered with old bones from animals that had happened in front of moving vehicles. It was rough terrain. More than one tourist died every month in the plains. From animal attacks, from getting lost, from disease . . . there were thousands of deaths awaiting them here.
    The medical outpost had been established by a United Nations relief effort to help the outlying villages attain medical care. It was little more than a couple of operating rooms and a limited pharmacy, but it was better than nothing. In years past the various bureaucrats sapped the villages of whatever value they possessed. Sometimes it was just taking livestock and precious metals. It was rumored by the locals that other times it was pushing the villagers into forced labor. If the government here couldn’t use them they would be rented to other nations. These were people in the lowest caste of society and even their own government saw them as little more than animals. Though the thought of the Indian government selling slaves to other nations was too much even for Namdi to believe.
    But Namdi had seen such brutality in the diamond mines of the Congo in his work with Doctors Without Borders. An entire village in the Congo was ransacked. The girls and women were forced into prostitution, chained up on a military base. The boys and men were taken to the jungles, a mine called N’su havu .
    He remembered the stink of the mines more than anything else. Since work was never allowed to stop the laborers would have to urinate and defecate on themselves. They slept in a nearby cave and were given the barest minimum sustenance to survive. Usually some type of gruel made from animal entrails and whatever else happened to be in the vicinity of the mines. They were given a few cups of water. In the soaring heat and humidity three cups led to severe dehydration. Most of the laborers died because of the lack of water. They would fall in the mines and their bodies would remain there the rest of the day.
    When the day ended the other workers would haul the bodies to the surface and throw them in a ditch or leave them out in the jungle. It was rumored that the Congolese government recycled the corpses as meat, claiming it to be beef, and mixed it with real beef to sell in foreign markets. Namdi hadn’t personally seen it, but he had no doubt it could be true. Once dehumanization occurred, anyone was capable of anything against their fellow men.
    The medical outpost was off the side of the road about a hundred yards and made of gray cement with a black roof. There was a policeman’s car out front and a tall Indian in a green uniform sat on the hood smoking a cigarette. He put the cigarette out and hopped off the hood when he saw Namdi’s jeep pull in and park.
“Dr. Said?” the policeman said in broken English.
“Yes.”
“I am Inspector Singh, we spoke on the phone.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“The bodies