Authors: Louise Voss
‘Help you?’ The first man squinted at her. ‘Why should we help you? Maybe you can help
us
, though …’ He turned and made a lewd gesture to the others, and they all laughed – the sort of futile laughter that was closest to tears.
‘See, the thing is,’ he said, coming closer, ‘we got nobody we have to be good for, not anymore. Wives, girlfriends – they’re gone. Our kids too. Most of the other guys in the neighbourhood. Even my fucking boss is dead.’
Lucy backed away. ‘Have you got the flu?’
‘Not yet we don’t. But we will. We all will. So we thought we’d have ourselves one final party, didn’t we, boys?’
The ‘boys’ cheered weakly.
‘And what do we need at a party, besides booze – which we already got?’ He appealed once more to his friends.
‘GIRLS!’ they roared, pressing in closer to Rosie and Lucy, close enough that they could smell the alcohol on their breath and the bitterness in their hearts.
‘Hey, boys,’ said Rosie, putting on her brightest smile although her head was pounding and her throat felt as though she had gargled razorblades. ‘We’ll party with you, won’t we, honey?’ She raised her eyebrows at Lucy, widening her eyes to implore her daughter to go along with it. ‘But first we need you to cut this tape off our wrists. And if any of you has any Advil, I’d sure appreciate it. We can’t party with our hands tied, and we got mugged back there. I got a headache. So, do us a favour, eh, and maybe we’ll see our way to getting into the party spirit for you?’
The men, swaying, looked at one another. Rosie swallowed hard. She had just invited a group of eight drunk, desperate men to produce a knife and approach them with it. Men with a death wish, who wanted sex. But what choice did she have? They were unlikely to run into anyone better. Besides, thought Rosie grimly, if she really did have the flu, then meeting her end at the sharp point of a drunken banker’s knife was probably a less painful way to die.
‘Cool,’ said the man with vomit on his jacket. He walked up to Lucy and stroked her face, then the breast that Heather had threatened to cut off. ‘You’re pretty,’ he said. He was bald on top, and the jacket seemed too big for him.
‘She’s sixteen years old.’ Rosie had to grit her teeth to stop herself spitting at him. She wished with all her heart that she had never set eyes on Paul. If she hadn’t, then she and Lucy would be holed up in their house, doors and windows locked, eating canned tuna and waiting for it all to go away. Not out here by the side of a freeway, about to be raped. Lucy’s eyes were like saucers and she was shaking all over. Rosie almost wished they were still with Heather. At least there was only one of her.
Rosie sneezed, once, twice, three times and then, to her horror, vomited a stream of pale bile at the man’s feet. He recoiled in disgust, despite the fact that he’d already thrown up over himself.
‘Oh my God,’ said one of the others. ‘Look at her. She got the flu!’
‘Fuck! She got the flu!’ they chorused, backing away immediately.
‘Wait,’ called Rosie, a dribble of vomit running down her chin. She wiped it on her shoulder. ‘Please, wait!’
But they had all run away, their silence more chilling than their shouting had been.
‘We’re going to die,’ said Lucy. ‘We’re actually going to die.’
Rosie mustered up her last reserves of strength to reply firmly: ‘No, we are not. We are going to find somewhere we can rest. We’ve been walking for hours and I need to sleep a while. I don’t have the flu, I’m just tired and my head hurts from when that insane woman hit me.’
They turned and walked at a right angle to the freeway until they came to a residential street, low shabby houses with junk-strewn front yards and beaten-up cars on blocks outside. ‘Over there,’ Rosie said, gesturing to a For Sale sign. ‘God, who would buy that dump? But it looks empty. Come on.’
There was not a soul in sight as Rosie and Lucy went round to the rear of the boarded-up house. ‘Can you kick this door in, Luce? I don’t have the energy.’
Lucy narrowed her eyes at the flimsy back door. Her first kick bounced off it, and she growled in frustration.
‘Imagine it’s Sister Heather,’ Rosie said, managing a faint smile. Lucy tried again, three times harder, and the door splintered and swung open.
‘Good girl.’ Rosie kissed her daughter’s cheek, and they stepped into a dingy, damp-smelling kitchen. Rosie closed the back door by reaching behind her with her tied hands. She opened the kitchen drawers the same way, but they were all empty, as was the whole house. ‘Damn. I thought there might be a knife or some scissors. Looks like we’re stuck with this tape. Let’s go lie down a while, OK, honey? We’ll have a sleep and then decide what to do.’
‘I have to pee,’ said Lucy miserably. ‘Will you help me?’
With difficulty, they both used the bathroom, and then curled up on the dusty carpet of one of the empty bedrooms, falling into a restless sleep almost immediately.
Riley had been really, really angry, and Jack and Bradley had both cried till snot ran out of their noses. When Riley had finally stopped yelling at them, Bradley had explained about Jack’s mom being a doctor working in a lab in California, and that she had a cure for the flu so, even if their dad had caught it, she could give him a shot and make him better. But it didn’t make Riley any less mad.
‘For fuck’s sake, you little twats,’ Riley said, lighting a cigarette and blowing smoke in their faces. ‘Don’t you have any idea how big California is? Plus, no one has found a cure for Indian flu, so if Dad
has
got it, he’s basically screwed. You two have totally messed up this trip, you realise? If I take you home, I’ve wasted two days gas money and travel time. But getting you to this lab could add two days on the other side! Jeez. Whereabouts is it, anyways? I guess I’ll have to take you there, and then your mom can look after you – if she doesn’t have me arrested for child abduction or some shit like that.’
Jack and Bradley, heads hung low, were still snivelling. ‘California,’ said Bradley.
‘Duh – I got that. Whereabouts?’
‘I don’t know, ’zactly,’ Jack confessed. ‘On top of a mountain, she said.’
Riley laughed mirthlessly. ‘Why does that not surprise me?’
‘California didn’t look that big on the map,’ Bradley protested, hiccupping.
‘Well, it is, shit-for-brains. It’s huge. What’s the name of the lab? I could Google it.’
The boys looked at one another.
‘Um,’ Jack said. ‘My dad said it’s a secret lab.’
Riley rolled his eyes and took a savage drag of his cigarette. ‘Right. Great. Fan-fucking-tastic. So how did you think you’d find it?’
‘I was going to ring Mummy to tell her we’re coming. I know her number.’ Jack had rallied slightly, and adopted an
I’m not completely stupid, you know
expression. But Riley seemed to think otherwise.
‘And speaking of your dad, what in hell have you told him about where you are?’
Jack puffed out his chest. ‘I left him a note telling him that I’d gone to visit Mummy, with you and Bradley.’
‘Ri-ight. Sheesh. This gets better and better. Your dad will tear my balls off and feed them to the dogs if he ever sees me again.’
‘He doesn’t have any dogs,’ Bradley pointed out helpfully, as Riley took out his cellphone and rang his mother. He told her that he was coming back with the boys, and they both started to cry again.
‘Don’t take us back, Riley,’ Bradley begged, once Riley had terminated the call.
Riley narrowed his eyes at his little brother. ‘I haven’t decided what to do with you yet,’ he said darkly. ‘Just gettin’ the old girl off our backs for now. Chill the fuck out.’
‘I need to go next door and get Jack,’ Vernon said, once he had put the weak and traumatised Shirley straight to bed. They had spent an uncomfortable two days in the hospital, Shirley hooked up to an IV drip. Sedated and miserable, she gave no reply but simply turned her head to the wall and fell asleep.
Vernon stopped in the driveway and picked up his mail, with Jack’s note on top of the pile. He read it incredulously, the blood draining from his face as he saw the words ‘going to California’. He gave a great bellow of anxiety and charged up to Gina’s front door, pounding hard on it.
‘Gina! GINA! Why didn’t you tell me! Where are they? Have you called the police? Gina!’
Gina answered the door and Vernon pushed past her into the hall. She looked tiny and shrunken, like a raisin, even more red-eyed and vague than usual. He wanted to slap her. While she’d sat here getting stoned, her kids – and his – had hared off across the country into the heart of a killer epidemic. He grabbed her by the shoulders and shouted into her face.
‘HAVE YOU CALLED THE POLICE?’
‘Hey, Vernon, it’s OK,’ she said, startled out of her torpor. ‘Relax, they’re fine. Really. I just talked to Riley, he’s on his way back.’
Vernon sank down on to the bottom stair, his head in his hands.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
Gina sat down next to him, her wide hips touching his, which immediately made him leap up again like a scalded cat. He remembered, too late, how she had always had a problem with over-familiarity.
‘Honey,’ she said, standing too and rubbing the side of his arm in a way that made him twitch with discomfort, ‘You were in the hospital with Shirley. You had enough on your plate. The kids will be fine with Riley, I swear.’
‘How old is he again? Twenty?’
‘Seventeen. But, like, a totally mature seventeen.’
‘I want to speak to him,’ he said belligerently.
‘Sure.’ Gina floated across to the telephone. ‘Go easy, though, Vernon – he didn’t know that the boys had come with him. He found them hiding in the Airstream when he took a comfort break.’ She dialled a number and handed the receiver to Vernon.
Vernon clamped the phone against his ear, fuming as the ringtone turned into a voice message. The fact that the receiver smelled of patchouli enraged him further.
‘Hey, losers, it’s Riley. Leave me a motherfuckin’ message and I might get back to you. Or maybe I got better things to do …’
‘Riley? This is Jack’s father, Vernon. I do not appreciate you taking my eight-year-old son on an insane road trip into the heart of an epidemic that is probably killing thousands of people a day.’ He tried to rein in his anger and frustration, but failed miserably. ‘Now you listen to me, and listen to me good: Jack had better be back here by tonight, or you will be in serious trouble, do you understand? So you turn that heap of metal crap right around and get back here NOW.’
He slammed down the phone and clenched his fists.
Gina shook her head slowly. ‘Not cool, Vernon. I told you: Riley didn’t know Jack had stowed away.’
Vernon put his face very close to hers. ‘Well, in that case, if anything happens to those kids, I am holding
you
personally responsible,’ he hissed through clenched teeth, before turning and barging his way out of the house.
A feeble voice called down the stairs to him the moment he set foot inside his own place:
‘Vern, angelpops, please could you bring me some camomile tea? With half a teaspoon of honey, not too hot … ? And I could do with a foot rub too, if you have a minute …’
Vernon marched into the kitchen, flicked on the kettle, and slowly and repeatedly banged his head against a cupboard door.
Riley listened to the message that Vernon had left on his cellphone.
‘Who does that asshole think he is?’ he said scornfully. ‘Right, kids, that’s decided. We’re going to California. Nobody tells me what to do.’
He switched off his cellphone, threw it into the footwell of the car with the Twinkies wrappers, and headed west on the open road.
When Kate was a child, her Aunt Lil had kept a canary in a cage. Bertie, that was its name. The poor thing used to sit there all day, on its perch, tweeting absent-mindedly. It was bad enough, the young Kate had thought, keeping a winged creature locked in a cage, unable to fly. But Aunt Lil also had two cats, a pair of neutered toms, and they would prowl around the bird’s cage, occasionally licking their lips, waiting for the day Aunt Lil accidentally left the cage door open. Kate felt very much like that canary now. Caged, frightened. Waiting for the cats to get her.
Earlier, after the women had carried Junko’s body from the room, with Angelica issuing orders to take her into the woods and bury her ‘with the others’, Kate had lain on her bed and wept. It had all come out: the grief and shock and fear, the days of intense anxiety, all the death she’d seen. She wanted Paul, she wanted Jack. She wanted to go home. But it seemed likely that she was going to die in this place. She would never see her son again, she wouldn’t find a cure for Watoto. Instead the insane women who were keeping her prisoner would triumph.
Evil would win.
But when it seemed she had cried all she could, when it felt like she had no more tears, she found something flexing inside her: the strength at her core, the kernel of hope and determination that had seen her through so much in her life. All of her experiences – from watching her parents die in Africa, through surviving the fire at the Cold Research Unit, to thwarting Gaunt’s attempt to unleash his deadly virus – had combined to create something tough at her centre, something tougher than she realised.
And the anger was there too, a fire that kept on burning low, only requiring her to think about Isaac, or Officer Buckley, or the photo of the seven-year-old boy from the newspaper – or Jack’s fate, if these women weren’t stopped – for it to roar up and fill her with the need to keep going, keep trying. To never give up.
Because even when all hope is gone, you can still win the game.
She thought of Isaac and Junko and the people at the research lab, the virologists who’d attended the conference in San Diego – none of their deaths should be in vain. They had devoted their lives to trying to eradicate disease. And now that she was the only one left, it was up to her.
To get out of here. To find the vaccine.
She thought back to what Junko had said in the lab, just before Angelica and the others had burst in. She had been talking about something Kate and Isaac had written in their research paper. What was it she’d said?