Authors: Louise Voss
Paul came out of the Gents opposite the store, spotted her and came over. She took his hands in hers. He was still fragile, but getting stronger every day. And some of the colour had returned to his face. Looking up at him now, she thought how gorgeous he was and how glad she was that he was hers.
‘I was thinking,’ she said. ‘I could really do without any excitement for a while.’
‘What about our wedding?’
‘Hmm. Well, that’s the kind of excitement I can handle. But promise me something?’
‘Anything.’
‘If you ever see Harley again, run in the opposite direction.’
Harley was back in San Francisco, helping to organise the clean-up operation. After they’d got back to Sequoia, and found that Paul was making a good recovery, Harley had started to show symptoms himself, so had been given a dose of the antivirus.
Kate kissed Paul lightly and he snaked his arms round her. She wanted to take him to bed. She whispered in his ear, ‘Can’t wait to get you home, Mr Wilson.’
‘And I can’t wait to get home, Dr Maddox.’
He reached out an arm and pulled Jack, who was busy scrutinising the box of his new game, into a family huddle.
‘Your mum’s a heroine, did you know that, Jack?’
‘Yeah, she’s pretty awesome.’ Jack extricated himself and rooted in his backpack for his DS.
‘For a mum,’ Kate smiled. ‘But I’m not a heroine. I was only doing what I had to do.’
‘You saved a lot of lives, Kate. Including mine.’
She was about to protest, to tell him that she could have identified the poison and its antidote straight away, if she’d spotted the satellite virus sooner. But then she thought, no. I’m not going to protest. I did it. I beat Watoto – for now. And I saved us. I saved Jack – and he saved me, too.
The treatment was being produced and distributed at a rate that the CDC called ‘unprecedented’. Only a microscopic amount of the sap, and the antidote that counteracted the poison, was required for a dose, and almost every mamba rose in the world was being processed. They were calling it ‘green gold’, and Tanzania, where the plant grew most abundantly, had grown rich overnight, with the United States and other Western countries paying huge sums for the plant because they needed it now, couldn’t wait to grow it. Although there was still no vaccine to protect people from contracting the virus in the first place, anyone who tested positive was being given a dose, stopping the illness in its tracks and radically cutting the death rate.
But Watoto (the media had finally stopped referring to it as Indian flu) was still killing people, and it was still out there. Finding a vaccine, eradicating the disease once and for all – consigning it to history like smallpox – would be the next step. Kate vowed to continue her work. She would never give up, not until Watoto was wiped from the face of the planet.
TV stations worldwide had been desperate to talk to her – the woman who saved civilisation. There was talk of a Nobel Prize. But she didn’t want the attention. And she didn’t feel like celebrating.
They walked over to a row of seats and sat down, Jack flipping open his video game.
‘What are you thinking?’ Kate asked Paul. He kept slipping into an introspective gloom, which he then always denied.
‘Nothing, honest.’
She grabbed his wrist to stop him turning away and he admitted, ‘I feel guilty, that’s all.’
‘About Rosie?’
‘Yes.’
They had already had the conversation about how it wasn’t his fault, about how she must already have caught the virus by the time he met her. Of course, she wouldn’t have spent the last days of her life being terrorised by Heather, miles from home – but Kate was worried that Paul’s guilt was combined with something stronger. That he was secretly grieving for Rosie, that he had been a little bit in love with her. It was a difficult one, and she didn’t know exactly how to deal with it, even though she had made Paul deal with far worse – her grief for his dead twin, and her uncertainty as to whether she’d been attracted to Paul merely because he resembled Stephen, that it was a way of keeping Stephen in her life.
Why did it all have to be so complicated?
‘It’s not your fault,’ she said, reassuring him, avoiding that other conversation for now. She looked away.
Five minutes later, it was Paul’s turn to ask her what was wrong.
‘Nothing.’
‘Come on – you’ve got that look on your face. Is it about Rosie?’
‘Actually, no.’ It was true. ‘I was thinking about what Mangold said when I met him – about how he knew my parents and how my dad was a virologist. My dad wasn’t a virologist – he was an aid worker. It doesn’t make sense.’
‘The old bastard was probably lying.’
‘I don’t know. I realise he wasn’t fully
compos mentis
, but he sounded so convincing, and he knew their names. And Angelica backed it up. She said I don’t know anything about my parents.’ She looked at Paul. ‘What was my dad really doing in Tanzania? And if the local people, the Hadza, knew the cure for Watoto, why didn’t they give it to us?’
Paul shook his head. Kate was about to speak again when a blur of movement caught her eye, followed by a man’s shout.
She grabbed Paul’s arm.
A woman was running through the airport, security guards close behind her. One of them accelerated and grabbed her. As the woman tried to wriggle out of the guard’s grasp, she sneezed, hard, and Kate realised why they’d been chasing her. All around, people jumped to their feet and scattered. The woman looked up from her position on the floor and caught Kate’s eye, crying with stress and fear. Kate wanted to say, It’s OK, even if it’s Watoto you’ve got. You’ll live. There’s enough antidote for everyone.
‘There’s our gate,’ Paul said, pointing to the departure board. ‘Come on.’
The three of them stood up and headed towards the gate, leaving the security guards to haul the woman away, all the people around giving her a wide berth.
Kate stepped on to the travellator that carried them down towards the departure gate. She couldn’t stop thinking about Mangold and her father. One day, she knew, she was going to have to search out the truth. But that would have to wait. Right now, as she glided along with Paul and Jack beside her, all she cared about was getting on that plane.
She had beaten Watoto, her personal nemesis. But there were still plenty of other viruses out there, all those potential pandemics, the mutations, and the people in this world who knew how to harness nature and turn it bad.
But she didn’t want to think about that right now.
Because she had her boys beside her, and they were going home.
Our first thank you goes to Dr Jennifer Rohn who acted as our chief scientific advisor, helped us create our deadly virus and pointed out exactly how many ways there are to kill someone in a lab. If you enjoy science-based fiction, you should visit Dr Rohn’s excellent site, Lablit.com. Also, thanks to Professor Julius Weinberg at Kingston University and to Bob Crewley for checking helicopter accuracy!
For reading the manuscript and checking our Americanisms, thanks to Amy Welch – mistakes, as with the aforementioned ‘science bits’ are our own – and thanks too to Julie Baugh for being our first (and constant) reader.
This book would be half the book it is – though probably twice as long – were it not for the editorial perspicacity of Kate Bradley. Huge thanks too to Anne O’Brien for the ruthless copy edit. We extend our thanks to the whole team at HarperCollins including Hannah Gamon and Louise Swannell.
Thanks to our agent Sam Copeland for great support and enthusiasm as ever.
The world of crime fiction and thrillers is a warm and friendly one, especially for a group of people who spend their days dreaming up grisly murders, and it is hard to single out individuals from that community. But special thanks go to the following: Peter James, Elizabeth Haynes, Alex Marwood, Emlyn Rees, Stav Sherez, Claire McGowan, Erin Kelly, Mel Sherratt, Mark Billingham, Rhian Davies, Rachel Abbott, J Carson Black, Keith B Walters, Nikki-Ann Trow, Mari Hannah, Jennifer Hillier and everyone involved in the Harrogate Crime Festival. Also, thanks to everyone at Waterstones Wolverhampton, Kingston, and Mary Kennedy at Teddington Waterstones.
Mark would like to thank an assortment of lovely people who would be first into the bunker should a deadly pandemic ever devastate the planet: the whole Baugh clan, Jo Johnston-Pope, Martin Johnston, Louise and Dominic Compagnone, Jonathan Pye, Mark Nunney, Susan Smith and Darren Biggs, Andrew and Vicky Wallace, Oliver Brann, Charlotte Staunton and the studentbeans.com crew. Last but most importantly, his family, especially his mum for starting all of this by letting him read that James Herbert book at a very young age; and huge amounts of love and gratitude to his lovely children Poppy, Archie and Ellie, and to Sara, who inspires him every day.
Thanks from Louise to her fantastic friends and family, for all the emotional and practical support during the writing of this one, particularly to Louise Green, Roxana Ziolkowski, Liz Lewis, Sarah Freestone, Pete Aves, Julie Lane, Kate Blumgart, Paul Cavin, Jacqui Lofthouse, Stephanie Zia, David Osbon, Alex Evans, Alex McPherson, Richard and Clare Jackson, and Nick Laughland.
Watoto, the virus featured in
All Fall Down
, is of course made up. However, it does also happen to be the name of an amazing holistic care programme in Uganda set up in 1994 from the Watoto Church in Kampala in response to overwhelming numbers of orphaned children and vulnerable women in the war-torn and AIDS-stricken country. They provide medical treatment, education, housing, counselling and spiritual discipleship. To find out more, or to sponsor a child, please go to www.watoto.com.
Read on for a thrilling extract of
Forward Slash
, the terrifying new book
from Louise Voss and Mark Edwards.
Look out for it in summer 2013.
Finding women is easy these days. Looking at their photos, finding out all their dirty little secrets, tracking them down. Watching them. It’s remarkable how little awareness most people have, of how exposed they are when they go online. I’ve got this nifty little app on my phone called
Girls Near Me
. What does it do? Well, let me show you,
Piers. Can the camera see this?
All I need to do is tap here and the phone finds my current location. Yep, there we are, on the South Bank. It works just like Google Maps or the GPS in your car. Geo-location.
But this is the clever part: it shows me women who are also in the area. I can put in particular criteria if I want.
What kind of woman would you like?
You’re not fussy? Oh, I am. I’m very particular. She’s got to be just right. But let’s say we want a brunette, aged 21 to 24, relationship status: single. Wait a moment and … here we go – there are 37 women within half a mile who meet my needs. And it shows me where they are right now. Look, this one has checked into Royal Festival Hall. Amelia. Pretty name.
Now this is where it gets really clever. I can go and look at her Facebook status. If she hasn’t carefully protected her privacy – and so many people have no idea about security settings – I can look through her photos. Hmm, look, a few pictures of her on holiday on the beach, in a bikini. Great little body. Skinny, boobs not too big and, most importantly, not fake. I can’t bear breast implants. I messed up once and took home a girl with implants. I had to cut them out. Amelia’s got a tattoo of a butterfly on her shoulder. Her friend Jackie comments that she’s ‘well jel’.
(Laughter)
Looks like she’s on Twitter too – let’s have a look. See what she’s been tweeting about. Ah, she went to see Foo Fighters in concert yesterday and loved it. Dave Grohl is hot, apparently. So she likes hairy blokes – maybe not for me, then. I’m much better looking than Dave Grohl. I’m a clean-cut kind of guy. The kind you can take home to your mother.
Anyway, with this app I can find out everything Amelia likes. I can check out the names of her friends, where she works, what school she goes to, what her poison is. Armed with all this information about her, I can approach her in the bar, offer to buy her favourite drink, casually mention how I went to see Foo Fighters last night – ‘Oh, you did too? Wow! Weren’t they amazing. Grohl is my god!’
It’s so easy.
Or if I don’t want to do that, it’s often not too difficult to find out her address. I can follow her home. Better than that, I can be at her house before she is, waiting for her. Waiting to surprise her.
Easy fucking peasy.
Oh, sorry, I’m not supposed to swear. You can edit that out though, right?
I love technology.
The first woman I killed, though, I met the traditional way. I got chatting to her in a bar. It was late, and most of the really pretty girls had been snapped up already. But this girl, well, she wasn’t the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen – a seven to my ten – but she had something about her. The way she licked her lips before she spoke. How she giggled at my jokes. When I was talking to her I got this rush, that excited feeling that makes me want to take a girl home.
Her name was Jennifer. Jenny. Call me Jen, she said. I bought her a few drinks then asked her back to my place. That’s one of my rules: never go back to theirs. At my place, I can control everything. Plus there I have all my props. All my tools.
Call-me-Jen hesitated for a moment – just a moment – then accepted my invitation.
I was so excited all the way home. I’m getting excited thinking about it now. I hope the camera can’t see that! The thing is, I was rather over-excited. I wasn’t careful like I am these days. I used my best set of knives. Very expensive and very sharp. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Jen. I can picture her now, lying back on the bed, quite drunk. Irritatingly drunk. Her eyes were rolling and she had a sheen of sweat on her body. There were pink marks on her skin where her underwear was too tight. I knew the instant I saw her body that I’d made a mistake.