Authors: Louise Voss
Regaining her strength, drawing on that kernel of determination at her core, she carried on, shining the torch on the ground, using it to pick out a safe path over gnarled tree roots. She thought about Jack, pictured his happy face. He was such a good boy, even if he had inherited his father’s habit of whining if things didn’t go his way. Over the last year, she’d developed a sense that he was growing up fast, that he wasn’t her baby any more. If I don’t get through this, she thought, I will never see him again. He will grow up without a mum.
If Watoto doesn’t get him first
, a voice whispered in her ear.
She shook away the thought. But she had no idea what had been going on in the outside world since she’d left the lab. How far and fast had the virus spread? How long did she have to find a cure?
Just concentrate on getting out, Kate.
She put her head down and carried on, accustomed to the chill now, her heartbeat slowing to a steady pace. Her senses were heightened, like those of an animal. Every sound around her, every brush of a leaf or branch on her face made her flinch.
After a while, she became aware that her back was aching from being so tense and that the sky was getting lighter. She could now make out shapes without the torch. Dawn was breaking. Right on cue, the woodland birds began to wake up, and the sound of their chirruping and cawing warmed her, gave her hope.
Until she realised how much easier it would be for the Sisters to find her in daylight. She still hadn’t heard any sign of them pursuing her. Perhaps they were still in their beds. The shout she’d heard must have been a false alarm. Perhaps Simone had come to and, deciding on a change of plan, shot them all in their beds – just as Angelica had told her they’d done to the people at the lab.
More likely, though, they were waiting for first light to look for her, assuming she wouldn’t have got far in the dark. And now the woods were springing to life before her eyes, emerging from beneath the cloak of darkness like a Polaroid picture developing before her eyes.
She felt very scared again.
Ahead of her was a clearing, about six metres in diameter; Kate entered it and paused. How far into the woods had she come? It was impossible to tell, neither could she judge how far it was to the road Simone had told her about, or what direction it was. She was reasonably confident she’d been heading in a straight line, but it was equally possible she’d been walking in a circle. Maybe she could climb a tree, try to get a better look, although it would take ages and …
She heard a voice.
A female voice, somewhere behind her. Perhaps two voices, one of them issuing orders.
Oh … fuck.
Trying not to panic, she started to jog, heading out of the clearing into the thicker trees, away from the voices. It was much lighter now, and she dropped the torch, needing her hands to push aside thick undergrowth as she forged her way deeper into the woods. A few minutes later she cursed herself for dropping the torch: if the women found it, it would tell them where she’d been.
I’m going to die, she thought, and was almost overwhelmed by an urge to lie down and give in. But she forced herself to take more deep breaths, squeezed her eyes shut and counted to five, found that inner strength and kept going.
She heard a woman’s voice again, swearing, like she had caught herself on something sharp. Kate hoped it was something really sharp. She jogged faster, sensing that the trees were thinning ahead of her. Hope flared violently inside her. Please let it be the road, she prayed.
But it was only another clearing, with a thin stream running through it, filled with muddy water. A steep bank angled down towards the stream, with a matching bank on the other side. She was going to have to descend the bank and jump across, or follow the stream left or right, hoping she could cross it at an easier point. She heard movement not far behind her. Oh God … She couldn’t risk being this exposed. She had to cross.
Tentatively, she began to descend, placing her feet sideways, using her arms for balance. One step, two steps, three. Then, without warning, the mud beneath her feet crumbled and she lurched forward, windmilling her arms before landing flat on her face in the water. She immediately pulled herself out – no real harm done – but she was soaking wet now. There was water in her shoes, her trousers, her underwear, dripping off the ends of her hair. She spat muddy water and began to climb up the other bank.
Until she heard a voice.
‘Where is that bitch? Those footsteps sounded close.’
Kate froze. She couldn’t see her but she identified the voice, mainly through a process of elimination as she knew the other women’s voices better. It was Brandi. Kate hopped back over the stream in an ungainly crouching position and flattened herself against the bank she had just descended.
She won’t be able to see me from where she’s standing, Kate thought. But if she starts to come down the slope, I’m dead.
Unless …
She reached into her pocket for Simone’s pistol. It wasn’t there.
Her stomach lurched and she looked down. There it was – lying in the stream, an inch below the rippling water, gleaming like a black stone. It was only a few feet away, but if she stepped across to get it she would expose herself to the woman above.
She went down on her knees, wishing she could bury herself in the dirt. She couldn’t hear Brandi. Had she gone? She didn’t dare breathe. Instead, she counted: one, two, three, four, deciding that if she reached twenty she would risk it, she would creep across to the stream and retrieve the gun. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen. She braced herself. Fifteen, sixteen …
‘Well,’ Brandi said. ‘Look who it is.’
Harley shook Paul awake, his hand on his shoulder.
‘Uh. Kate …?’ Paul’s eyes were glued shut with sleep and his back and neck ached from where he’d slept sitting up in the passenger seat, his chin on his chest. Outside the car, the moon was full and bright and a chorus of cicadas throbbed in the background.
‘Sorry, Paul. I’m your less attractive partner.’ He handed Paul a polystyrene cup of steaming, flavourless coffee that Johnston, the prison guard, had fetched for him while they waited. ‘But I’ve got good news – clearance for Diaz to be released has just come through. Johnston’s bringing him out now.’
‘Finally! Thought we’d have to hang around here for ever.’ Paul sipped the coffee. He needed to pee, badly. ‘Have you heard anything about Kate? Have they found her?’
‘No – not yet.’
They had agreed that their first priority should be to get Diaz working on the vaccine, rather than joining in the search for Kate and Junko. Not that Paul felt up to doing much of anything right now. It was as if something nasty had crawled into his mouth while he slept and made a nest in his throat. He swallowed and it hurt, and his nose felt bunged up. His head throbbed.
‘You OK?’ Harley asked, eyebrows scrunched with concern.
‘Yeah.’ Just tiredness. Please let it just be tiredness. ‘Feeling like crap after a night in this luxury accommodation.’
Harley smiled then looked over his shoulder. ‘Here comes our man.’
Half an hour later, the three of them were sitting in a diner. They were the only customers. They had driven past half a dozen closed diners and restaurants and a deserted McDonald’s Drive-Thru before finding this place. The sole member of staff, who Paul guessed must be the proprietor, appeared to be trying to carry on as if everything was normal.
‘None of my staff turned up this morning,’ he said before taking their orders. ‘None of my regulars neither. But life goes on, huh? What can I get you folks?’
Diaz, who was close to drooling as he perused the menu, ordered the biggest breakfast available. Harley opted for granola and yoghurt. The only thing Paul wanted was a decent cup of coffee. He was feeling increasingly rough as the morning went on. But he tried to ignore it, to focus.
‘Tell us about Mangold,’ Harley said as they waited for their food. That had been Diaz’s second demand: that they take him to see Mangold. Paul had almost punched the air – this old man knew where Charles Mangold was. He had been following the right trail.
‘Down to business. I like that.’ Diaz laughed and clapped his hands as the proprietor put their drinks on the table. ‘You already know, I assume, that Mangold and I worked together at Medi-Lab? We were partners. But when the company got closed down, Mangold put all the blame on me. He said I had been solely responsible for conducting the research. That I was the one who had breached bio-security protocols and let the virus escape from the lab. All bullshit. But Mangold was the man with the money, the reputation, the connections. Not some Mexican lab-monkey like me. So when they needed a scapegoat, naturally they targeted me.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Paul said.
Diaz leaned forward. ‘There were things in that lab … valuable research. Knowledge. Things that the US Government wanted to get hold of.’ He tapped the side of his nose.
Paul looked at Harley, expecting him to scoff at this, to refute the conspiracy theories, but instead he nodded.
His voice shaky, Paul said, ‘Including Watoto and its cure?’
Diaz grinned. ‘No, no – that was our secret. Project Hadza. There were other viruses, a whole cocktail bar of designer diseases. We were breaking new ground all the time. We were the best.’
Paul felt himself go cold inside. This would have been around the time that Gaunt was running the labs at the Cold Research Unit, using it as a cover for his secret experiments with deadly viruses – research that had been financed by Mangold. The CRU and Medi-Lab were almost like twin labs, one on each side of the Atlantic. And now Diaz was saying that the US Government had been involved in a cover-up.
‘So … what? They hired Mangold and put all the blame on you?’
‘Exactly,’ Diaz nodded, pointing a gnarled finger. ‘And they sent me away so I couldn’t talk about it. That’s why they gave me such a long sentence.’
‘Mangold was working for the Government?’ Harley said.
Paul turned to him. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t know that already.’
‘Of course I didn’t.’
Paul stared at him. He didn’t know who, or what, to believe.
‘Do you want to hear the rest of it, or are you going to keep sniping at each other all day?’ snapped Diaz. He paused to make sure he had their undivided attention, then continued: ‘I didn’t hear from or about Mangold for several years. Then, out of the blue, he called me. Asking for help.’
The diner’s proprietor came over with their food. The benefits of being the only customers: hyper-fast service.
‘Help?’ Harley asked. ‘With what?’
Diaz savoured a mouthful of egg, served sunny side up. ‘This is the best meal I’ve had in years. You’ve no idea—’
Impatient, Paul tapped the table with his fork. Kate was out there, in danger, maybe even dead already – please, God, don’t let that be true – and this old man was more interested in his breakfast.
‘OK, OK. Mangold was experimenting with a virus, something called Pyrovirus. And it had gone wrong – he had contracted it himself, and he had no vaccine. He was so desperate that he called me, begging for my assistance. Of course, I told him to fuck off.’
‘But he survived?’ Paul asked.
‘Yes. But the rest of his family – his wife, his daughter – caught it and died. All except his granddaughter.’
‘And what was her name?’ asked Paul.
Diaz took another mouthful of his breakfast. He didn’t answer straight away.
‘Watoto broke out on an Indian reservation, didn’t it? That’s where Mangold will have unleashed it, knowing that visitors to the casino would catch it and spread it far and wide. I checked on a map after I first heard about the outbreak: that reservation is very close to the town where Mangold’s daughter Tara lived, a place called Feverfew. It can’t be a coincidence. That must be where Mangold is living.’
They rose to leave, Harley paying the bill on the way out.
‘You didn’t tell us the granddaughter’s name, the one who survived,’ Paul said.
‘Oh – didn’t I? Pretty little thing, she was, when she was a kid. Her name was Angelica.’
Brandi stood at the top of the bank, looking down at Kate, a smile on her lips and a gun in her hand.
‘Nice try, Doctor. But Sekhmet is waiting for you.’ She gestured with the gun. ‘Come on.’
Kate glanced back at the stream. Could she grab the gun before Brandi shot her? And would it even be working now?
‘What the fuck are you waiting for? Get back up here now or I’ll sacrifice you right here myself.’
‘Angelica wouldn’t like that,’ Kate said. ‘Neither would the Goddess. She’d be displeased with you.’
Brandi’s face twisted with anger and she pointed the gun at Kate’s head.
‘How dare you speak about—’
She didn’t finish the sentence. Kate watched with shock as Brandi tumbled down the bank and landed beside her.
Sticking from her back was a hunting knife.
‘I didn’t enjoy that,’ Simone said, skipping down the bank as steadily as a mountain goat. She had a bruise on her forehead from where Kate had hit her with the gun. She noticed Kate looking at it. ‘You didn’t hit me very hard. I was out for ten minutes. When I got back to the house the old man had woken Angelica up but she couldn’t understand what in hell he was raving about. Then she saw me and I had to pretend to collapse, to buy you more time.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Ain’t no thing. I liked Brandi. She was cool, y’know?’ Simone gazed at the dead woman, lying face down in the stream, her hair snaking like weeds on the surface of the water. She crouched to pick the gun out of the water. ‘I think you’ve fucked this piece.’
‘Sorry,’ Kate said quietly, unable to take her eyes off Brandi’s corpse. So much death. And she was still in danger.
‘I need to get you the fuck outta here,’ Simone said. ‘Before Angelica and Preeti find us.’
Kate hesitated. ‘There are only two of them now. Why don’t we stand and fight?’
Simone looked at her like she was crazy. ‘You and me take on Angelica? Uh-uh. Sorry, honey, but you’re too much of a liability, and she’s ex-CIA, she can handle weapons like you wouldn’t believe. I need to get you outta here. Follow me. And try not to fall on your ass.’