What do I do now? What do I…
The world was so quiet, so very quiet. And dark. And warm. And—
Her head jerked up, her eyelids shooting open. For a second she had no idea where she was.
Restaurant. Mumbai.
Right.
She blinked several times. She’d fallen asleep in the chair.
How stupid can you be?
She scanned the street to make sure she was still alone, then paused.
Is that someone shouting?
She sat up and cocked her head.
Definitely. Several people, in fact.
She eyed the street again. Still empty.
Relax, she told herself. The yelling wasn’t on her street. It was coming from a few blocks away. She narrowed her eyes, her slowly waking mind sensing that the location should be important.
A few blocks away…a few blocks…
Her brow shot up. The survival station.
As if on cue, she heard the roar of multiple engines coming from the same direction. Wanting to see what was happening, but knowing she had to be smart about it, she went over to the door leading to the inside part of the restaurant. Thankfully, it was not locked. Beyond was a single room with a small kitchen on one side and a couple of tables along the other. There was also a door in the back, exactly what she’d been hoping for.
She undid the locks holding the back door in place, and carefully opened it. The area behind the restaurant couldn’t quite be called an alley. Though open to the sky, it was barely wide enough for two people to walk down shoulder-to-shoulder—if they could get over the boxes and trash that filled much of the space. Jabala decided to give it a try, and was pleased to find that after the first stack of rubbish, the area beyond was relatively clear.
The passageway did not go all the way to the end of the street, ending instead at the back of a building Jabala thought faced the street leading to the survival station. If she could get inside, she should be able to see what was going on.
There were three windows on the old and weathered back wall, one on each floor. The ground-floor window was closed, but the one right above it was partially open. The wall had plenty of notches, so climbing up to the window was not much of a challenge. It did take some extra effort, however, to push it open wide enough for her to climb through.
Inside, she found herself in a storage room packed with stacks of dresses and suits and boxes. A window was on the opposite side, overlooking the street, but it was blocked by several bundles of cloth.
Jabala carefully moved the bundle at the end just enough so she could see outside. The survival station’s gate was wide open, and she counted eleven soldiers wearing blue helmets with the letters UN large and white on the sides. They stood armed and ready right outside the gate, their attention focused on the city.
Suddenly, several of the men looked back toward their base. When one of them shouted something, the soldiers split into two groups and moved to the sides. A few seconds later, a truck with a dozen more soldiers rumbled out of the gate and onto the road. As soon as it was gone, the men on the ground moved back into place.
Something was definitely going on.
Jabala leaned closer to the window to try to see more of the survival station. That’s when she heard the floor creak behind her.
SANJAY’S FIRST INSTINCT was to get everyone out of the city right away, but several of the people they’d rescued were elderly and needed more rest before attempting to hike out of Mumbai. So they took them all to the building where Prabal was waiting.
“Everyone stay inside,” Sanjay instructed them. “And, please, remain quiet at all times. We will wait until the sun goes down again before we leave.”
Most were still in a state of semi-shock, from both their sudden imprisonment and subsequent rescue. A few wanted to know exactly what was going on. Sanjay promised to tell them everything after they were safely out of the city.
He and Kusum were getting ready to lie down themselves when all hell broke loose over at the compound.
“What’s going on?” Darshana asked, bolting up from where she’d been trying to sleep.
“I will check,” Sanjay said. “Make sure everyone stays quiet.”
Sanjay headed up the stairs to the roof, Kusum right behind him like he knew she would be. As they peered out at the survival station, Sanjay noted several soldiers moving around as if they were searching for something. Then, from behind one of the buildings, a man in civilian clothes stepped out and began running toward the front gate.
There were several shouts as a handful of soldiers moved in and encircled him a few car lengths from the gate. Though Sanjay couldn’t hear anything, he could tell a conversation was going on. The man tried to run again, but two of the soldiers grabbed him. The man kicked and yelled as the soldiers turned him around and started marching him back to the holding area.
Seeing the man’s chest heave with a cough, Sanjay realized what was going on.
“It’s the ones from the other holding area,” he whispered. “They must have found the hole in the fence.”
One of the guards shoved the prisoner hard. The man stumbled forward several steps before falling to the ground. As they jerked him back up, there was blood on his face.
“Oh, God,” Kusum said under her breath.
“I should not have cut the hole,” Sanjay said. “I should not have done it.”
For a moment, neither of them said anything, then Kusum pointed toward the back gate.
“No,” she said. “Look.”
Huddled behind a couple of the vehicles were two men. Even from this distance, Sanjay could tell one was considerably older than the other. Only two guards were on the gate, as most of the other soldiers had moved toward the shouting at the center of the compound.
The younger man peeked around the vehicle, said something to his companion, and the two of them moved across a small open space to the backside of the guard hut. Kusum sucked in a worried breath, but the men timed their move well and the guards did not see them.
The old man picked something off the ground and handed it to the younger one. A few words passed between them, then the younger one cocked his arm and threw the item toward the main part of the compound. Though Sanjay and Kusum couldn’t hear the object land, it was clear the guards could. They both turned as one toward the noise, the guard nearest the hut taking a couple steps away from the fence.
The younger man threw something else in the same direction as before. This time the guards came together, talked, and one started cautiously walking in the direction of the sound. His partner followed him for about ten paces before stopping, his back to the gate.
“They are never going to make it,” Kusum said as the younger man peered around the side of the hut, clearly intending to try sneaking out the opening.
When the guard took another step toward the center of the compound, the two men eased out from behind the hut and slipped quietly out the back gate into the city.
A muted echo. Metal. Like an empty drum.
Sanjay swung his gaze toward the sound. It had not come from the compound, but rather from an opening behind the buildings across the street from where they were. Though they weren’t high enough to see all the way down the opening, they could see much of it, and there was no missing the dark form of a person climbing over a pile of trash.
“Is it one of the soldiers?” Kusum asked.
“I do not think so,” Sanjay said.
He had no doubt the soldiers would perform a thorough search once they realized even more of their prisoners had escaped, but he didn’t think there’d been enough time for them to be sneaking around like this yet.
“One of the people who escaped?” she asked.
“Perhaps.”
“They are going to get themselves caught. We have to help them.”
She was right. Whoever was down there was moving toward the building right outside the survival station’s main gate. It would be only a matter of time
before the person was discovered.
“I will go,” he said. Before she could argue, he added, “You need to get the others up and move them to where we had the camp. If that is a soldier and they are searching buildings, they will search this one, too. We cannot wait until tomorrow night to leave.”
Kusum looked like she was going to argue, but instead said, “Be very careful. And if they are sick, do not get too close.”
“Don’t worry about me. I will be fine. Now go.”
SANJAY WASTED NO time sneaking across the street into one of the buildings on the other side. Instead of looking for an entrance to the back passageway, he headed up to the very top and ran from one roof to the next until he reached the end.
There, he leaned over the passageway to see if the person was still there. Not surprisingly, the area was now empty, but an open window was two floors below him. As far as he could tell, it was the only thing open along the entire passage. It had to be where the person had gone.
He located the entrance to the internal stairway and made his way down. When he reached the room with the open window, he quietly crept inside. The only light was what trickled in through the windows, and for a moment he thought he was alone, but then something moved. A person stood by the front window, peeking out at the street below.
As he took another step forward, the floor groaned under his feet.
JABALA TWISTED AROUND, her heart thudding in her chest. On the other side of the room was a man.
A soldier, she thought. They’ve come to get me.
She glanced to her right, hoping there was some way she could get out, but the only exit was the one behind the man.
“It’s okay,” the soldier said. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
In her panic, she did not recognize his voice at first. But as he spoke the last few syllables, it clicked.
“Sanjay?” she said.
SANJAY FROZE.
The person at the window, a woman, knew his name.
“Sanjay, is that you?”
His eyes widened in surprise. “Jabala?”
He wasn’t sure if she let out a laugh or a sigh of relief, but the next thing he knew she was rushing toward him, throwing her arms around him.
“Sanjay! You nearly scared me to death.”
It took him a couple of attempts, but he was finally able to remove her arms from around his neck, and push her back enough so he could see her face. “Jabala, what are you doing here?”
“I was looking for you.”
“Yes, of course. But why?”
Before she could answer, the roar of another troop truck sped past the front of the building.
Grabbing her hand, he said, “Come on. We need to get out of here. We can talk later.”
SANJAY LOST COUNT of how many times they’d had to stop and wait as groups of soldiers passed near them. Sometimes the vehicles had been driving fast toward other parts of the city, sometimes they had gone by at a slow crawl, the soldiers scanning both sides of the street.
Not a minute went by that he didn’t worry Kusum and the others would be spotted. It was hard enough for only him and Jabala to stay hidden.
“This way,” he said, leading her across the now vacant street into a dark alleyway.
Several moments later, Jabala’s foot kicked something, and Sanjay heard her start to stumble. He twisted around and caught her before she could fall.
“You have to be careful,” he told her.
“It is too dark,” she said. “I cannot see where I am walking.”
“Okay, okay. We will go slower,” he said. “Keep your eyes open.”
Fourteen steps into their reduced pace, something buzzed.
“What was that?” Sanjay asked, looking back.
Jabala was already pulling something from her bag. In the dark, it looked like a black lump. She touched it and held it to her head.
“Hello?” she said.
She had a phone? A working phone?
She listened for several seconds. “No,” she finally said. “We cannot talk now. Later.” She listened again, then, “Hold on.” She put a hand over the phone and said to Sanjay, “How long until we will be able to stop?”
“Who are you talking to?” he asked.
“A friend.”
“A friend?”
“Sanjay, how long?”
Reluctantly, he said, “We still have a few kilometers to go. Could be thirty minutes. Could be two hours.”
Jabala was silent for a moment before removing her hand from the phone. “Leon, please try again in one hour…okay, okay. Good-bye.”
As she put the phone away, Sanjay said, “Who is Leon?”
“He is in America,” she said. “He answered Naresh’s radio signal.”
“That’s the satellite phone from the school?”
“Yes.”
“Why would you bring that here? It might get broken or lost.”
“I thought it important you talk to Leon yourself. He warned me about the survival stations, that the UN personnel were not who they said they are. Exactly like you have been telling us.”
“He said these things?” Sanjay asked.
“Yes.”
“What else did he say?”
She told him about the conversation she’d had.
When she finished, he was quiet for a moment. “All right. Let’s go. We have already stayed in one place too long.”
“But you do want to talk to him, yes?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, silently adding, Very much.
Sixteen
MADISON, WISCONSIN
FROM THE JOURNAL OF BELINDA RAMSEY
ENTRY DATE—JANUARY 1, 11:51 AM CST
I HAD HOPED to be on the road for at least a couple of hours by now, but it took me longer than I expected to get ready.
My first obstacle was finding a bag. It’s not like I can haul my wheeled suitcase behind me. I needed a backpack, and not a book bag type. If that were the case, I would have found what I needed right away. There are plenty of those lying around. But a backpack I can carry food and clothes and that kind of stuff in is not exactly something most of the other students left behind during the holidays.
For the first time since all this started, I actually left my floor. I have to say, even though I knew logically that if anyone infected had been in the building they were days dead now, and, hopefully, no longer a danger, I was scared to death. I think if a draft had caused a door to swing just a few inches, I would have turned on the spot and kept running until I got back here. The tingling I felt under my skin was near constant, and though I was wearing a heavy jacket and a scarf around my face, I was shivering the whole time.
My search ended two floors below mine. The room was shared by a couple guys who apparently had never been taught how to keep their place clean. I cringed with every dirty shirt I had to move to see what was underneath. The backpack—an honest-to-God hiker-type backpack—was on the floor of the closet buried under several jackets and a duffel bag full of baseball gear. There was a tag on the strap identifying it as belonging to JEROME LARSON. I’ve probably seen him around, but I don’t know the name. I am, however, very thankful that he decided he didn’t need the pack over Christmas. I found a bonus, too. A compact sleeping bag that looks like it’s meant to work in some pretty harsh weather. Of course, maybe that’s a little wishful thinking.
Whatever the case, thanks, Jerome.
For clothing, I went through everything that had been left behind by the girls on my floor, and gathered the best of the lot that fit me—thermal underwear, T-shirts, pants, sweaters, gloves, caps. There was too much to carry, so I ended up having to pare down quite a bit.
Food was next. I decided to only carry enough for three days at a time. I figure it should be easy to find something to eat along the way. Any store or restaurant or house I pass will likely have plenty of canned stuff I can pick through as needed.
After the food there were several small things: toothbrush and
toothpaste, soap, deodorant (I went back and forth on that but decided I would wear it for myself if no one else), brush, flashlight, matches, and a pocketknife I found sitting on Norman Gleason’s dresser. I also took Kaylee’s Sorel boots. They’re much better than anything I have.
I can’t lie and say I didn’t wish I’d found a gun. I know, I know. Pre-Sage Flu, a gun on campus—in my very building—would have scared the crap out of me and pretty much everyone else. I probably would have been the first calling for the gun owner’s expulsion. Now I wish somebody had smuggled one in.
Before I finished packing, I made one final look around, in case I found something that might be useful. The only thing I ended up adding was a picture Patty had in her room of the two of us and Josh and Kaylee. I know Josh is dead. When I called his phone and the woman who answered—maybe his mother or sister, I’m not sure—said he wasn’t with us anymore, I hadn’t realized what she’d meant, but it wasn’t long before I pieced it together. I don’t know about Patty or Kaylee, though. I guess they’re probably dead, too, but I hope not.
So that’s pretty much where I am. My plan is to head south to the Beltline Highway, and take that east to I-90. From there I can take the interstate all the way to Chicago. If I find roads clear enough, I’ll see if I can find a car I can use. Who knows? Maybe I’ll run into someone who can give me a ride. I know I’m supposed to be careful about exposure to others, but exposure to the elements isn’t going to be all that great, either. Guess I’ll play that one by ear.
Not sure how far I’ll get today. The sun goes down pretty early, and there’s no way I’m going to be walking after dark.
I’ll write again when I stop.
Seventeen
WARD MOUNTAIN NORTH, NEVADA
12:21 PM PST
THE THREE MAIN communication workstations had been manned nonstop all morning. Several of the stations in the mobile comm trucks the Resistance had brought from Montana were also in use. Now that most of the so-called survival stations around the world had opened, the Resistance’s efforts to save what was left of humanity had gone into overdrive.
The Project Eden Thrillers Box Set 2: Books 4 - 6 (Ashes, Eden Rising, & Dream Sky) Page 40