Authors: Louise Voss
Paul hesitated, unsure what to do. Would they arrest him? Shoot at him? As the soldiers came closer, he saw they were wearing protective masks. Panicking, he threw the car into reverse and swung the car in a 180-degree arc, the soldiers shouting and breaking into a run behind him. In his confusion, he fumbled the gearstick into Drive and put his foot down – and almost drove straight into another car.
He stamped on the brake, jolting forward in his seat. The car – a large black Mercedes – had pulled up sideways across the road. Paul sounded the horn but the car didn’t move. In the rear-view mirror he could see the soldiers getting closer.
The door of the Mercedes opened and someone got out. They walked towards him. There wasn’t enough light to make out a face – not until they reached him and bent down, beckoning for him to open the window.
‘Hello, Paul.’
Heather turned up the radio with a gloved hand as she
left Sagebrush’s city limits and pointed the SUV towards the highway. The guy on KHTB, panic obvious in his voice, was informing listeners:
‘… cases have now been reported all around the surrounding area. We’re getting reports of deaths in San Diego, Fresno, Bakersfield, Las Vegas …’
Heather smacked the steering wheel and yelped with glee. ‘You hear that? It’s spreading.
And the benighted and the sinful shall be powerless to prevent the tide of change
. You said it, baby. Hell, yeah!’
Her words were lost on Rosie. She was still reeling from the shock of hearing places so near to Sagebrush listed among the towns affected. Beside her, Lucy was still in a catatonic state, staring blankly at nothing. She longed to reach out to her, but her hands were still tied.
The man on the radio was urging people to stay calm, stay indoors. Anyone who had come in contact with people who might be sick should stay at home. The government was refusing to confirm the death toll.
‘They don’t want people to be scared,’ Heather said. ‘But they oughta be terrified. You know what’s gonna happen, huh? It’s gotten out of LA. Pandora’s box has opened. The Goddess has breathed her holy, cleansing breath all over this … devil’s playground and …’ She trailed off. She’s quoting someone, Rosie realised, and she’s forgotten the script. ‘Whatever. It’s gonna spread quickly now. This is when it really takes hold. In a few days, everyone round here will be sick. Then it’ll be the whole state. Then the whole country. And then the whole world!’
It sounded as if she was building up to an evil cackle, but instead Heather swore loudly as something ran out on to the road.
‘Freaking coyote.’ She stamped on the brake and, to Rosie’s amazement, wound down the window, pointing the gun into the woods beside the road. She fired off a couple of shots into the trees, then calmly wound up the window and drove on.
‘Harley.’
‘So nice to see you again,’ the agent said. ‘Mind stepping out of the car?’
The two soldiers arrived at that moment. ‘Don’t even try it, or I’ll order these fine American soldiers to shoot.’ He had produced his agency card, which he displayed for the guards.
Paul sighed, pushed open the door and stepped out into the warm night air.
‘How did you find me?’
‘We’ve been tracking your phone.’
Paul nodded. ‘How’s Kate? You were with her earlier?’
‘Yes. She’s all right. Working hard to find a cure. She could do without the distraction of worrying about you. What exactly are you trying to achieve, anyway?’
Paul hesitated and looked over at the roadblock. Maybe Harley turning up now wasn’t such a bad thing, as long as he played this right.
‘I’ve been trying to find Charles Mangold.’
‘Mangold? Why?’
‘You were there, Harley. You saw what happened to Stephen. Mangold was part of that.’
‘So you’ve been on a wild-goose chase looking for some old man …’ Harley lowered his voice. ‘Why don’t you just let it go, Paul?’
‘Because Stephen deserves justice, that’s why. As long as the people responsible for what happened to him are walking around free, I won’t let go. Besides, it isn’t a wild-goose chase.’
‘Don’t tell me you’ve tracked him down!’
Paul knew he had to tread carefully if he was going to enlist Harley’s help in entering LA.
‘Have Kate and her team made any progress yet?’ he asked.
Harley looked pained. ‘Give them a chance, they’ve barely been at it two days.’
‘Yeah, well, it’s not as if time is on their side, is it? Anyway, the reason I ask is that while I was looking for Mangold I came across someone who I think can help.’
Harley raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘Who?’
‘Mangold’s former head of research, Camilo Diaz, is in Glencarson Prison. I think he could help, and I need to go and talk to him.’
Harley mulled this over. Paul got the impression that he was desperate enough to try anything, so he pushed it: ‘We don’t have time to stand around thinking about this. Any chance at all that we can find a cure – we have to take it.’ He didn’t feel guilty about leading Harley on. All he cared about was getting to Diaz.
‘Have you tried calling the prison?’
‘Yes. The line just rings out. A bit like the lab in Sequoia.’
‘Really?’
‘Come on, we need to get to the prison. You can get me into the city, can’t you, with your ID?’
Harley hesitated.
‘Come
on
.’
Finally, Harley nodded. He gestured for Paul to get into his car and they drove down the road towards the roadblock, where dozens of armed guards with dogs were patrolling the road, the military helicopter endlessly circling overhead. On the other side of the roadblock, a queue of cars stretched back as far as the horizon, people, many of them in family groups, standing by their cars, the tense threat of a violent eruption rippling through the night air. A mobile field testing unit had been set up on the other side of the checkpoint and medical personnel in full biohazard suits were calling people in one by one to test them for Indian flu. If any member of a family was found to be positive, the whole group was told to return home immediately. Nobody seemed to be getting through – the barrier hadn’t lifted once in the whole time Paul had been standing there.
In one of the cars at the front of the line he could see a red-haired woman holding a toddler with identical colouring. The little boy squirmed on her lap then jerked as he sneezed: one, two, three times. Paul didn’t rate their chances of getting out. The woman looked haunted, clinging to the last thread of hope, even though she knew that she and her son – her whole family – weren’t going to make it out. Weren’t going to make it full stop.
Paul swallowed. Thank God Jack was a long way from all this.
Harley stopped the car beside a soldier and rolled the window down.
The soldier was wearing a surgical mask and carrying a machine gun. He stooped to look into the car. ‘Border’s closed,’ he said. ‘You’ll need to turn back.’
Another guard came over, pulling down his mask to spit on the ground. ‘Why in hell do you want to get
into
the city? Every other fucker’s trying to get out.’
Harley produced his badge and showed it to the guards. ‘We’re heading to Glencarson Federal Institute of Correction.’
The first patrolman scrutinised the badge. ‘BIT? Never heard of ya.’
‘You should have received a memo when the outbreak started,’ said Harley.
The guard turned to his colleague. ‘Did you see any memo?’
‘Nuh-uh.’
Harley added, as patiently as he could, ‘We’re a federal team set up to prevent biological outbreaks.’
The border guards loved that. After they’d finished laughing, the first one said, ‘Well, you ain’t done a very good job, have you, buddy?’
‘Just let us through.’
‘You won’t be able to get back out. We got strict instructions. No one gets out. But if you really want to go into the D-zone, then it’s your funeral. Literally.’
‘The D-zone?’ Paul asked, leaning across.
‘Yeah. The dead zone.’
The guard gestured to the men further ahead and the barrier was lifted. Harley drove through. As he accelerated along the empty right-hand side of the highway, Paul saw the incredulous look on the faces of those trying desperately to get out.
But no matter how great the danger, if it got him one step closer to Mangold, he would take the risk.
Rosie stared out at the lights strung along Route 101. She felt sick and feverish and, as she watched the lights blur and dance in and out of focus, an icy sensation spread up her body from her feet. Could this be the Indian flu? She leaned over and kissed Lucy’s head, praying that it wasn’t, that her feverishness and Lucy’s catatonia had been brought on by the trauma they were enduring. She’d had a sore throat for a couple of days now, but the virus hadn’t reached Sagebrush – had it?
She cast the thought from her mind and tried to focus on the immediate problem of what this madwoman was planning to do when they got to LA. One thing was certain: if they pulled up at a roadblock, Rosie was determined to make her throat even more sore by screaming her head off.
But shortly after passing a sign warning them to TURN BACK, Heather stopped the car and sat in silence for a moment. Then she jumped out and wrenched open the rear door. Rosie’s throat clenched with fear and she shrank back in her seat as Heather reached towards her. But, to Rosie’s astonishment, Heather merely grabbed her seat belt and clicked it across her body. Then she ran around the other side and repeated the action with the unresponsive Lucy. What was she doing?
As if she’d heard Rosie’s unspoken words, Heather looked right at her. ‘I ain’t doing this for your benefit, bitch,’ she said. ‘I just don’t need you two crashing in on top of me when we get going.’
With that, she climbed back into the driver’s seat, put on her own seat belt and re-started the vehicle, taking a right turn. They must be so close to the city, thought Rosie, but in the dark she was unsure exactly where they were. Somewhere close to Mulholland and Topanga Canyon. Heather turned on to another, quieter, road. In the near distance, Rosie could hear helicopters. She thought she could smell burning too, very faintly.
Yes, Rosie realised, this was Topanga Canyon. From here, steep hills sloped down towards the city, the lights of which stretched out beneath them. They were driving along a curving ridge. Rosie expected them to turn the corner around the great rock-face.
But instead, Heather turned the wheel right again and Rosie let out a shriek. ‘Whoo-hah!’ whooped Heather as the SUV dipped over the edge of the road and began to plummet down the slope. The vehicle bounced and shook as Heather continued to yell. Rosie was certain this was the end, with the SUV rushing towards the bottom of the slope, levelling out for a moment, then shooting down another steep hill, picking up speed as the engine roared. Their seat belts held them, but at that moment Rosie wished Heather hadn’t bothered. They were going to die anyway, so wouldn’t it have been quicker to crash through the windshield?
Morning light penetrated the small, barred window. Kate lay on her bed rubbing her sore arm and noting the progress of the large purple bruise slowly blooming across the skin above her elbow, like mould growing in a Petri dish.
She had cleared up the soup, with a squeegee mop and a bucket of soapy water one of the women had left, but only because the smell of it was making her feel sick. Having something to do, however menial and short-lived, had helped her collect her thoughts, too, distracting her from the fear that squeezed her insides.
The fear was back again now. She wrapped her arms round herself to try and stop the trembling, and cast her eyes over the small room. The two single beds and stark white walls gave her a sense of
déjà vu
. Somewhere she’d stayed in her early twenties, and there had been a room-mate there too … Of course: the Cold Research Unit. The place where she had first met Paul’s twin, Stephen. The two rooms weren’t that dissimilar. The main difference was that, even though she had been in isolation back then too, there hadn’t been a lock on the door. And her last room-mate had ended up dead.
She looked across at Junko, praying that history wasn’t about to repeat itself.
‘Right, Junko,’ she said, rolling on to her side, propping herself up on her good arm. ‘Let’s figure this out, you and me. What did you read in my notes that could possibly be the inspiration for your discovery – and how come I missed it? I wrote the damn paper!’
Junko didn’t stir. Kate started to mentally review her entire thesis, chapter by chapter. She knew it so well, it had taken five years of her life to complete, and she had since, along with her co-author Isaac, lectured on it, lived, breathed, eaten and slept it. How could Junko have found something that Kate hadn’t already thought of?
‘Fair play to you, if you have,’ she commented, aware that her voice sounded strained. ‘I think you should wake up, so we can get cracking, don’t you? We would make the most fantastic team. Imagine, if you’re right about whatever it was you found – and I’m sure you were, because nobody’s ever looked as excited as you did when you were about to tell me – we could get a vaccine prototyped in days. Some of the FDA testing process would have to be bypassed because of the urgency – so we’d need to be pretty certain that it would be safe – but what alternative do we have, unless someone over at Harvard or the CDC has managed to crack it already? God, if we can’t, I hope they have …’
Junko slept on, and Kate felt her throat constrict with frustration and worry. She had to get them out of here! There was one small window in the room, too high to see out of, so Kate dragged her bed across to the wall and climbed on it. If she stood on tiptoe she could just about look out, but there was not much to see. The room was clearly at the rear of the property, because all that was visible was an enormous field of what looked like the same variety of wild flower – something with a tangle of low branches and star-shaped red and white flowers. It looked vaguely familiar to Kate but she couldn’t identify it, not being au fait with the flora and fauna of the American west coast. There were no roads or paths in sight, and the bare peaks and crops of mountains loomed on the horizon. From the position of the sun, Kate calculated that she was facing east. The thought that she was looking in Jack’s direction was a tiny bit comforting.