Authors: Louise Voss
Paul stamped on an involuntary image of Rosie naked. Since meeting Kate, he’d never entertained even a fleeting fantasy about any other woman. It’s fine, he reassured himself. A natural chemical reaction. One that you are not going to act on.
‘That’s OK,’ he said. ‘I was busy making friends with your neighbour. Friendly guy.’
Rosie motioned for him to follow her into the kitchen at the back of the house. A jug of lemonade sweated on the worktop and she poured him a glass. She was wearing a red-and-black-check flannel shirt and shorts and her feet were bare. She had, Paul noticed, a small tattoo of a flower on her ankle.
‘Lived here long?’ he enquired, looking around at the scruffy but homely kitchen.
‘This house, ten years. This neighbourhood, my whole life. I like it here. It’s safe. A good place to raise a daughter. Not too much crime, and the local kids are polite and pretty well-behaved.’
Right on cue, Paul heard Lucy exclaim ‘Holy fucking shit!’ from the living room.
‘Most of ’em, anyway.’ Rosie grinned. ‘Guess we’d better see what she’s cussing about, huh?’
Paul set down his glass and followed her into the living room. He had wanted to ask her about Lucy’s dad, but reminded himself that it wasn’t his place. He was only here because Rosie had promised to help him find out what had happened to Mangold.
Lucy was in a big, tatty armchair, wearing a pink T-shirt and a pair of denim shorts, her long bare legs curled beneath her, gesticulating at the TV.
‘This is so messed up,’ she said, thumbing her phone and exchanging messages with her friends as she simultaneously hopped between news channels: Fox, CNN, CBS. ‘Afternoon, Mr Craig.’
Paul smiled. ‘Hi, Lucy.’
‘What’s messed up?’ asked Rosie.
Lucy shot her mother a look, as if it were the dumbest question she’d ever heard. ‘This,’ she replied. ‘This freaking virus. It’s getting, like, really really scary.’
On CBS News, a map of Los Angeles County filled the screen. The map was coloured according to the number of Indian flu cases reported in each area; the darker the hue, the higher the number. Los Angeles was spattered with patches the colour of blood. The outskirts of the city, along with a number of surrounding communities, were coloured orange, indicating that the virus was taking a vicious hold: Santa Monica, Pasadena, Huntingdon Beach …
The shot on screen returned to a pair of presenters seated at a desk. One of them was saying that there had also been isolated cases reported in Portland, Seattle and Las Vegas, all of them people who had visited LA in the last week.
‘The Department of Health have acted swiftly and those people have been quarantined, along with their families,’ said the presenter.
‘That won’t stop it for long,’ Paul muttered. He turned to Lucy. ‘Have they said how many people are dead?’
Lucy stopped texting and looked up at him solemnly. ‘Five thousand.’
‘That can’t be right,’ said Rosie.
‘It is. I swear. And they said they think that, like, up to a hundred thousand people have already got it.’
‘Sweet Jesus,’ Rosie breathed, clutching the back of the armchair her daughter was in.
Paul went cold. The numbers had exploded since yesterday – but this was what happened when epidemics of highly virulent diseases broke out. And tomorrow it would be ten thousand. It would multiply fast from now on. ‘What’s the fatality rate? Have they said?’
Lucy looked up at him with damp eyes. ‘Ninety-nine per cent.’
She tilted her face towards Rosie, who was staring with horror at the TV screen, now showing a helicopter view of Los Angeles.
Across the bottom of the screen ran a ticker-tape with the words: BREAKING NEWS: LOS ANGELES COUNTY QUARANTINED. CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL ACT TO PREVENT DEATH TOLL RISING.
The camera zoomed in on soldiers constructing a roadblock on the outskirts of the city. In an agitated voice the news anchor informed viewers that the National Guard had been called in to ‘police’ Los Angeles, that the city’s hospitals had ceased accepting new patients, that following the closure of the airports earlier in the week, all roads in and out of the city were closed. People were only being let out of the county after being screened at the border for the Indian flu, and already the queue of cars and trucks was a mile long as panicked drivers waited to be given the all-clear. The broadcast cut to footage of a burning building, a reporter’s voice informing viewers that a clinic had been set on fire in South LA as desperate victims of the virus had learned that stocks of antiviral medicines were stored there. A mini-riot had broken out. There were reports that a doctor had been shot.
Lucy shuddered. ‘Mom, Jamie and Martina are in LA at the moment. I’m really scared.’
Rosie’s voice was quiet. ‘Maybe they managed to get out in time.’
‘They’re not answering their phones.’
‘Who are Jamie and Martina?’ Paul asked gently.
Lucy was too upset to speak, so Rosie answered for her: ‘School friends of Lucy’s. They had summer jobs in Jamie’s aunt’s restaurant in Santa Monica.’
They all looked at the TV again. A public health official was talking about how people in the city should stay home, keep doors and windows shut; how there was an emergency health line in operation plus another number for concerned friends and relatives. The official looked grey. He said that the President would give a live TV address later, that health professionals were doing everything they could to keep the situation under control and were working around the clock to find a vaccine.
‘What advice would you give to anyone watching this in the city of Los Angeles now?’ asked the presenter.
The grey health official stared at the desk in front of him and said, ‘Pray.’
Rosie walked over to the TV and switched it off.
‘Have there been any cases reported in Sagebrush?’ she asked her daughter.
‘I don’t know. They didn’t say.’
Rosie knelt beside her daughter and they hugged. Paul turned away, allowing them a moment of privacy. He felt sick. And he desperately wanted to talk to Kate.
‘Let’s go,’ Rosie said. She turned to Lucy. ‘I’ll see you at the diner later. Wear your face mask, OK?’
‘OK, Mom.’
Paul followed Rosie outside into the sunshine that bathed this peaceful neighbourhood, arcs of water from next door’s sprinkler glinting in the light. Kate was out there. Safe for now, he was sure, in her secluded lab. But for how long?
How long did they have?
They set off in Rosie’s car, a Nissan that had seen better days, driving in silence for the first few minutes. Paul watched the quiet suburban streets roll by. ‘Who are we going to see?’ he asked eventually.
Rosie kept her eyes on the road. ‘His name’s Jon Watton. He worked at Medi-Lab with my father. He was one of the sales managers there. We’ve kind of kept in touch over
the years. He watched out for me. He’s a good guy.’
She paused, then added: ‘I never thought it would be possible for a virus to be ninety-nine per cent fatal.’
‘Oh, it’s possible. Rabies was one hundred per cent before a vaccine was developed. Ebola is around ninety – and there’s no vaccine for that one. Luckily, it’s not airborne so it’s reasonably easy to contain.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘My girlfriend is a virologist.’
‘Your girlfriend?’
‘Yes. Well, partner. Maybe I’m too old to say girlfriend. Didn’t I mention her last night?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Oh. I’m sorry …’
She didn’t look at him, but her grip on the wheel appeared to tighten. ‘Hey, Paul, look – why would it bother me if you have a girlfriend? Just seems odd you didn’t mention her, that’s all.’
‘I’m sure I did.’ But the truth was, he knew he hadn’t. He remembered a point in the conversation where it could have come up, but he had deliberately swerved around the subject. Guilt stabbed at him again. He forced himself to keep his tone even. ‘She’s in California at the moment, working on finding a vaccine for Indian flu.’
Rosie braked harshly at a red light, making him jerk forward in his seat. ‘Let’s hope she finds one, huh?’
After looking at William’s depressing statistics Kate returned to the lab, where the scene was equally grim. She and Chip waited, exchanging nervous looks, while Kolosine paced back and forth. The waves of tension coming off the head scientist could have been used to power a small town. Kate tried to focus on studying more samples of Watoto-X2, but the stress was contagious and it was impossible to concentrate.
Eventually, after thirty minutes of alternately pacing and staring into his machine, hoping to see the luminescence that never came, Kolosine stormed out of the lab.
‘Looks like it didn’t work,’ Chip said evenly as the door slammed shut.
Kate sighed. So it wasn’t going to be that easy. She had tried to warn Kolosine that her blood hadn’t yielded an antivirus in all the years she and Isaac had been working on the project. Just because he had new technology, there was no reason to expect a different result. She only hoped Kolosine had some other ideas up his sleeve.
Kate stood beneath the shower, closing her eyes as the hot jets of water cleansed her body of any nasty microbes that might have clung to her. Drying herself afterwards, she felt a rush of blood to the head and had to take a seat on the wooden bench. Since coming to the lab she hadn’t spoken to Paul once, and the pressure was beginning to get to her. She felt guilty that he wasn’t there with her, and furious that Harley had brought him out to the US and then not allowed them to stay together. If they’d known what was going to happen, Jack could have remained at home in Oxfordshire with Paul for the summer.
She went down to the communal area and found the rest of the team gathered around the TV watching news reports. There was no sign of Kolosine. A collective gasp went up when they heard that LA was now under quarantine. Kate listened intently for news of other locations where outbreaks had been reported. No mention of Dallas. But an air passenger could easily have carried it there already, which would mean Jack was in danger too. She needed to get Jack out of the country before they closed all the airports.
Later, she decided, she would demand to go into Kolosine’s office and use the telephone to speak to Paul, emergency or no emergency. A landline seemed to be the only option – even after borrowing Junko’s charger and powering up her BlackBerry, she still hadn’t got a signal.
On her way back to her room, she bumped into McCarthy and followed him outside into the open air. They wandered down towards the woods.
‘Want a smoke?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘No, that was a one-off. But ask me again later, when Kolosine has his next screaming fit. I don’t suppose you have a phone I can use?’
‘I got no signal either.’ He pointed at his phone screen. ‘It’s a fifteen-mile drive to the nearest place in range, so you’re not gonna get there on foot. The internet’s down – guess the folks at the internet service provider HQ are all sick, or worse …’
A Cat 4 lab with no means of communication with the outside world – it was unsettling beyond belief, especially knowing the people who had planted the bomb at the hotel were out there somewhere. ‘Yeah, I know. William is freaking out – he can’t collect any more data. And if we don’t have data, we’ve got to rely on the TV for our facts, which isn’t exactly scientific … But all that aside, I have to get to a phone.’
‘I ain’t got no car, before you ask,’ McCarthy said. ‘Not an emergency, is it?’
‘Pretty much.’ Kate’s tone was sombre. ‘I need to get my boy out of the country. Do you know when they’re going to shut the airports?’
McCarthy hesitated. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not exactly. Soon, though.’
‘I’ve got to get Jack out on a flight before they do.’ Kate clutched at McCarthy’s arm. ‘Tosca, can you arrange it? Send him back to stay with my sister in Oxfordshire? If Vernon will fly with him, all the better, but if not, Paul can take him home. Please, just get him out. Even if he has to fly on his own.’
The sun filtered through the branches and dappled the soft ground around them, and the only sound was birdsong from somewhere high above them. It was hard to imagine the pain and chaos taking hold not so far away from there.
McCarthy sat down in the crook of a low tree branch and stared reflectively at Kate. He took out a large white handkerchief from the pocket of his black jacket, and wiped the sweat off his forehead.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Give me the details. I got a call scheduled with my boss tomorrow – assuming Kolosine lets me use the landline, which he’d better. We’ll sort something out.’
Kate paused. ‘Not till tomorrow?’ she asked in a small voice.
McCarthy shrugged. ‘Sorry, Kate. There are chains of command. I can’t just call him up unless it’s a national emergency. Tomorrow will be fine, you wait and see.’
Kate reached down and hugged McCarthy round his neck. ‘Thank you,’ she said, sighing with relief. McCarthy laughed, embarrassed. ‘
De nada
, sweetpea,’ he said. ‘Anything for you.’
They sat for a while and watched an eagle wheel a lazy arc above their heads.
‘So what’s happening,’ Kate asked, ‘with attempts to find the terrorists who planted the bomb?’
‘We’ve got everybody looking for them.’
‘But no progress?’
He stared into the woods. His silence spoke volumes.
With a heavy heart, Kate returned to her room and lay down on the bed, sheer exhaustion sending her almost immediately into an unsettled doze. What seemed like mere minutes later there was a heavy knock at her door, and the sound of a man’s voice calling her name. Kate awoke, thinking for
a second it was Paul, before realising where she was.
‘Just a minute,’ she said, jumping out of bed and wrapping her bathrobe securely around her naked body. She glanced at her reflection in the dressing-table mirror and noted the huge crease down the right side of her face. ‘Who is it?’
‘Harley. Jason,’ said the voice, and Kate wondered why he’d given his names in that order.
‘Maddox. Kate,’ she retorted as she opened the door, but Harley wasn’t smiling.