Chapter 62
That night they sat around the campfire
on the beach eating their dry rations and discussing their options as the waves
lapped along the sandy shoreline.
“From what I can tell, this island is
about four miles long and maybe the same distance wide. It’ll meet our needs for
a while,” said Shane.
Carlie kept thrusting a burning stick
into the orange bed of coals, lifting it out on occasion to watch the smoke on
the tip waft into the starry sky.
“You’ve been awfully quiet since we
arrived, Professor,” said Carlie, looking over at Pavel. “What are your
thoughts on what we should do if we get out of here?”
Pavel was sitting with his legs huddled
close to his chest and his arms wrapped around his knees. His eyes were
transfixed on the roaring flames and Carlie wondered if any of the conversation
had reached through to him.
“If I can get to the facility in Alaska
that my colleague told me about, then I may be able to get a foothold on the
virus and begin some attempt to formulate an antidote.”
“Alaska—as in six thousand freaking
miles from here Alaska?” said Jared. “Well, shit, let me call up an air-taxi
and get you on your way.”
“Why Alaska? The only thing there I’m
familiar with is the army’s cold-weather testing labs in Fairbanks,” said
Carlie.
“Before he died, Viktor, my old comrade
from the Soviet days, mentioned that there was a CIA bio-lab in Alaska that
still possessed some of the original KAD97 strain. That is how this all began.
Though the current virus seems to have mutated, if I can isolate the genetic
strain of that original then I can have a better look at how to combat this.”
“So, you guys were working as Agency
contractors?” said Matias.
Pavel shook his head. “No, no, not me,
just Viktor.”
“That laptop we found on the freighter
in New Orleans,” said Shane. “It was an encrypted CIA device.”
“That I do not know about,” said Pavel,
clearing his throat. “Viktor must have sent it with one of the smugglers from
the island.”
“Question is—who was he sending it to on
the mainland?” said Shane.
Carlie could hear the sound of the waves
crashing behind her and looked beyond the fire at the ocean, whose whitecaps
were glistening in the moonlight. “Tomorrow, I’ll give the radio another try
and see if we can pick up any chatter or get a message out,” she said. “Let’s
do two-hour rotations on guard duty tonight and keep the fire burning in case lady
luck is out there cruising around on a boat or plane.”
“I’ll tell you this much,” Jared said. “We
get out of here and get the professor to his magic lab in the tundra to brew up
a cure, they’re gonna pin a medal on you, Carlie. Heck, they’ll probably have
you running the Secret Service or whatever’s left of it.”
Carlie frowned and drove her stick deep
into the hot coals then stood up. “No, thank. I’ve got some of my own plans for
when we get back,” she said, looking into the jungle. “Right now, though, I
wish I could just string up a hammock between two trees and forget about the world
as we know it. That’d be OK with me.”
Chapter 63
A few hours after sunrise, Carlie and
the others were scattered around the fisherman’s shack on the beach, enmeshed
in their respective camp chores that she had assigned the night before.
She had just returned from collecting
another armload of firewood and tossed it down on the pile beside the blaze.
Carlie dragged her shirt sleeve across her sweaty forehead then took a deep
breath of the fresh ocean breeze gliding over her. She was feeling more relaxed
than she had in a long time and loosened two buttons on the top of her shirt. She
walked to the crude shack and kneeled down beside the radio. Holding the
speaker in her right hand, she began adjusting the dial, searching for a
frequency that might reveal chatter from a nearby ship or plane.
As she fidgeted with the dial, she sat
on the sand and looked out at the others moving around her. Matias was busy
erecting a shade canopy with palm leaves while Amy was walking along the
treeline collecting coconuts. Pavel was purifying another batch of seawater
with the desalinator, his hands busy working the manual pump as he stared at
the ground.
She looked down the beach and saw Shane
sitting in the shade. He had removed his shirt and was field-stripping his
pistol. Carlie gazed over his lean figure and then up at his face, whose eyes
were intent as always on the job at hand.
As Carlie clasped the radio receiver in
her hand, preparing to send out a message, she noticed Jared standing in the
surf beyond the fire. His pants were rolled up to his knees and he stood barefoot
in the lagoon with a bamboo fishing pole extended out before him and a look of
contentment on his face. The sun was shining on his raven-colored hair as he
yanked on the fishing line while hauling in a large mackerel.
Carlie clenched the receiver in her hand
and slowly depressed the button to speak while shooting her gaze at the distant
horizon as a calm breeze ran through her hair.
Thank you for continuing on this
journey. Stay tuned for Volume Three in the
Carlie Simmons Series.
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