The little girl stared at her, aghast. “Can’t you see what he has done to you, Kim?” she demanded. “He’s lying to you. We need to leave now before the Booklords show up.” She turned to Aiden for support.
“I’m tired of running, Rachel,” the boy said, looking down at his feet. “We need to stop running.”
“Listen to your friends, Rachel,” Ezra persuaded his dead friend’s daughter, stepping forward, and the little girl ran to the door.
“No!” she cried, shaking the door’s handle. “Stop talking!” Tears welled up from within her. She wanted to obey her father so badly, because she knew he had told her the truth. He would never lie to her. Of course, she could leave alone with the book if she wanted to, but she would then have to start looking for new friends again. She would then face the prospect of being lonely and afraid again. “I thought you were my friends,” she cried, sobbing softly.
“Friends don’t lie to one another,” Aiden said. “We can’t trust you anymore, Rachel.”
People started shouting outside the office.
“What’s happening?” Kimberley asked no one in particular.
Doctor Isaacs stepped forward and Rachel drew away from him. He unlocked his door and immediately the confusion grew louder. The medical doctor looked outside his office. “Can’t see anything around here,” he said. “It must be in the phone room.”
“The book is growing colder, Kim,” Rachel announced in a trembling voice, drawing everybody’s attention, especially her uncle’s, back to herself.
“No, not here,” the short man said, becoming panicky all of a sudden as he closed the door. “You must leave now!”
“What?” Kimberley couldn’t believe her ears. “I thought you said we should return the book to the Gray Ones?”
“Yes, but–but not here,” Rachel’s uncle said, going over to the single window in his office to close it. “They told me they’ll kill me if I couldn’t convince the Bookbearer to give up the book.”
“Then convince her,” Aiden said. “She’s right here.”
“Unless you don’t trust them,” Kimberley told the Jew, keenly watching his dramatic behavior. She’d been fooled again. “Rachel, let’s go.”
The little girl brought out the book, but before she could open it, someone banged loudly on the door.
“What is it?” Ezra called out.
“We need to see your guests, sir!” the person replied. “It’s a matter of utmost importance to the state!”
Before the Israeli doctor could respond, a vicious kick broke the door’s lock, pushing the wooden structure back on its hinges and smashing it into the paneled wall of the small room. Five soldiers and two of the health center’s personnel stood outside the small office. They all wore personal protective equipment and the soldiers had their firearms trained at the people in the office. Kimberley, Aiden and Rachel looked at one another in surprise.
“Step out of the office, please,” a soldier ordered them, and they all obeyed him.
“What is the meaning of this?” Dr. Isaacs demanded from a fellow doctor, who he noticed among the health workers with the soldiers.
“An emergency, Dr. Isaacs,” the man replied. “A driver with the Kerry Town facility says the suspected case he picked up from the road and brought here this afternoon described coming in contact with your guests, and now this suspected case has tested positive to a deadly form of the virus.”
Kimberley sighed.
David.
Chapter 8: A Deadly Alliance
“BUT–But that can’t be true,” Dr. Isaacs said, stepping forward to stand beside Kimberley. “This is Dr. Katie Halverson of Médecins Sans Frontières, and I know she is an Ebola research specialist with expertise and experience in dealing with Ebola victims.”
Kimberley rolled her eyes. Was she really all that?
“Well, sir,” the doctor in the seven-man quarantine party began, “the driver of the ambulance that just came in says Dr. Halverson and the two kids with her had contact with the Ebola case he brought in, prior to an accident this same Ebola victim confirms they were all involved in.”
“And due to this, Dr. Isaacs, they are to be quarantined immediately,” a soldier directed, his AK-47 unwavering.
“That’s okay,” Kimberley said for want of something to say.
“I think that is the right thing to do,” Dr. Isaacs agreed. “There’s no need for us to get all worked up about it.”
“And you too, doctor,” his colleague told him. “You’ll be quarantined with them.”
“What?” Ezra couldn’t hide his surprise. “If that’s the case, then every staff in that communications room should be quarantined as well, including the soldiers at the gate,” he said. “This is ridiculous.”
Kimberley noted the cold weather and glanced at Rachel, who stood beside her. The little girl could not open the book and attempt escape without being noticed, though leaving at that moment was their best option if they didn’t want to wait around for the Gray Ones. Who knew what would happen to any of them in a fight with those things this time around?
“Well then, Dr. Isaacs, I think you have no choice in this matter since you have been with these contacts longer than any staff who walked past them in the phone room. You know how this works,” the doctor speaking for the quarantine task force concluded.
Doctor Isaacs felt he could convince the man. “But,” he began.
“Please, sir,” the doctor spokesman interrupted, “all your comforts will be taken care of during your quarantine, so there’s no need to delay this any longer.”
Again, Kimberley glanced at her two fellow time-travelers. Aiden held the book for Rachel while watching the ongoing scenario in order not to attract attention. The Jewish girl slowly opened the leather-bound volume, reaching out to Kimberley with her right hand.
“Watch them with that book!” someone in the seven-man party muttered and Kimberley started.
He was there.
She kicked the soldier standing next to her in the groin and grabbed the man’s weapon as he doubled over. Covering Dr. Isaacs with the gun, Kimberley glared around menacingly. “Nobody moves or he dies!” she warned the startled Africans and personnel looking on. The man she had kicked lay on the floor groaning in pain. “Harvey, get your sister behind me,” she told Aiden.
“I hope you know what you’re doing!” Ezra told her, raising his hands in mock submission as Aiden pulled Rachel behind Kimberley.
“Now, we’re going to go and if anybody does anything funny, the doctor dies,” Kimberley announced, beginning to step backward with the kids behind her and her human shield in front.
“You must drop the weapon, doctor,” the commanding officer leading the quarantine task force told Kimberley. His hands were trembling despite the deadly weapon they held. “You don’t want the trouble you are bringing upon yourself and your family.”
“I’ll kill him if you test me,” Kimberley returned. “And I mean it.”
“No, she doesn’t mean it,” Carl Bain said in the same voice he’d been faking throughout that day, turning to the officer-in-charge.“Shoot her before she escapes with her children and spreads the virus.”
“That man killed a motorcyclist today, captain,” Kimberley told the Sierra Leonean commanding officer while maintaining her backward pace with the other three with her. “You might as well tell him to remove his PPE right now, because he’s the man your army and police have been looking for, and he must have murdered the driver of that ambulance in order to get here.”
Carl Bain raised his hands frustratingly and this deceit convinced the soldiers and health workers with him.
“He’s a driver for the Kerry Town Ebola Treatment Center,” the soldier leading the party said, looking at the suited Carl Bain with confidence. “You’re wrong, doctor.”
“Did you verify his ID, doctor?” Kimberley directed at the physician who earlier spoke for the group. “I bet he’s been wearing that full suit ever since he c
ame in here.”
The soldiers now hesitated for a moment. Two of them faced the purported treatment center driver while the rest maintained their initial stance. The doctor with the group scratched his head. Of course, they had all assumed that the driver was genuine.
“Can we see your identification, please?” one of the officers pointing a gun at Carl Bain asked him.
“She’s lying, dammit,” Carl Bain snapped in his fake deep voice. He couldn’t bear to see his three targets slip through his fingers again. “Shoot them, dammit!”
Still, the African soldiers hesitated. The female doctor could be telling the truth now that they’d paid more attention to the so-called driver’s voice. However, this man standing in their midst and speaking in a weird manner seemed to be more interested in the trio holding the Israeli doctor hostage. He made no attempt to get his ID like he’d been told to do by one of the officers surrounding him, rather, he watched detachedly as the female doctor and her two companions approached the corner with their precious human deterrent.
Once they reached the end of the passageway, Carl Bain lost it.
He elbowed one of the corporals and started struggling with the man for his Kalashnikov. Before anyone could grasp what was happening, the American picked off the other soldiers with the gun while the Sierra Leonean private still held the weapon. Now he wrested away the rifle from its owner and turned it on the soldier as well as the whimperer who got kicked in the groin.
The Ebola suspects had since disappeared round the corner at the end of the passage. Carl Bain shot the doctor acting as spokesman for the task force before going after them and his precious package.
A corridor linked a large room to the corner Kimberley and her group had fled across. Bursting into the busy room filled with health workers, Kimberley turned and opened fire on the American hustler once he showed up after his killing spree.
Carl Bain had to dock back into the passageway he came from and fall on his knees in order to avoid bullets flying through the wooden wall panels. He released his own hell with a free hand bent round the corner.
And bodies dropped like bags of sand around the fleeing contact suspects and Dr. Isaacs, who ran ahead of Rachel and Aiden.
“When are you gonna use the book, Rachel?!” Aiden yelled as he ran.
“Once we stop running!” Rachel returned in flight.
“That must be very soon!” Ezra stressed. “The Booklords are definitely on their way!”
The group stopped behind a fallen metal cabinet, struggling to catch their breaths as Carl Bain’s rifle rained death on the room’s confused occupants. Rachel brought out the white book and turned to Kimberley in alarm. “I don’t have any pen!” she cried.
“But you don’t need any,” her uncle reminded her. “You’re going back in time, Rachel.”
“No, I must finish what Father started,” his friend’s daughter said.
“Ezra, you’re a doctor,” Kimberley interrupted. “Give her your pen.”
Aiden frowned, though he said nothing.
Kimberley had made up her mind to move forward after concluding that the Gray Ones were not to be trusted from what Ezra had told them. Should they trust Rachel after finding out that the little girl had lied to them? Ironically, time would tell, though the Portwood sergeant felt she could find more truth in a young girl than in an adult like Ezra. She noticed the Bookmaker hand Rachel a pen before she peered out from the side of the metal cabinet.
Pandemonium ruled the place, with people running around in confusion. Kimberley couldn’t return fire for fear of hitting innocents, but her opponent cared less.
His right finger keeping his weapon’s trigger depressed, Carl Bain emerged from the corner and walked towards the large room, pumping bullets into people’s bodies. “Dammit!” he cried suddenly, his shoulder jerking backward from the direct hit. Falling to the ground, he felt his blood soak his Ebola suit at the left shoulder. More bullet holes appeared on the soft panels walling the corridor and he studied the situation from his position on the floor. The remaining center’s guards must have opened fire in his direction from the compound outside the room and its connecting corridor.
Kimberley saw her opponent crash to the ground and gladly witnessed the gunfire directed at his position from outside. “What’s keeping you, Rachel?” she asked the little girl beside her, turning to see what her young acquaintance was doing with the book. “Anytime now?”
“She can’t write on it!” Aiden whispered fearfully.
“What do you mean she can’t write on it?” Kimberley snapped.
“Its pages are frozen solid!” Ezra told her. “A massive attack is coming! May God help us all!”
“We–We can’t go until they...they finish with us!” Rachel stammered.
Kimberley stooped beside the little girl to see what they were saying. The book’s open two pages were like sheets of solid ice.“This time, we’ll hold the book together,” she told Aiden and Rachel.
“We could go backward, you know?” Aiden pointed out and Rachel glared at him.
“We can’t trust what Ezra told us,” Kimberley said. “He’s in league with the Gray Ones. No, we have to press forward.”
Ezra said nothing.
Crawling back to the corner before the long passageway, Carl Bain started shooting sporadically at the paneled walls of the structure’s short corridor without seeing his targets stationed outside the building. The American heard satisfying yelps and screams from outside, though the present episode was a distraction. He needed to quickly enter the room his main targets were hunkered down in.
When more bullet holes appeared very close to his new position, Carl Bain moved further back into the passageway while maintaining his rapid fire with one hand. Noting that more soldiers could come at him through the passageway, he picked up the rifle of a dead soldier with his left hand and pointed it into the long passageway, perpendicular to his present direction of engagement. The bullets zinging around him were still too close for comfort.
“It’s no use this time,” Aiden said when Rachel tried to write on the white book again. The thin film of ice on the mysterious book’s pages were very slippery. “What if we go back?” he suggested again.
“No,” Rachel cried, angrily turning to him.
“It could buy us some time,” Kimberley said after some thought. “Why is that happening?” she asked Rachel.
“What?”
“The names on the book’s pages,” Kimberley pointed out. “Why are they glowing blue?”
“I don’t know,” Rachel replied. “They do that all the time.”
“The book must be trying to tell us how we could get out of this perilous situation,” Ezra suggested.
“By touching any of the glowing names?” Aiden deduced.
“Of course,” Kimberley said, turning to the stubborn girl beside her. “We could still press forward after this if we want to, Rachel,” she said. “It really doesn’t matter where we go, as long as we get out of here.”
“We must move forward,” Rachel insisted.
“We’ll still do that afterwards,” Aiden tried to make her see.
“Just put your finger on your name, already,” Kimberley told Rachel.
“I won’t!” Rachel said, closing the book. Kimberley took it from her and she became livid, reaching out for the book with both hands. “Give it back to me!”
“And why should I?” the sergeant snapped, taking the book beyond the strange girl’s reach with her left hand. “Your father should never have trusted you with it in the first place, you know?”
“Only a Bookbearer can control the book’s defense against the Booklords, sergeant,” Ezra warned the police officer.
“This one doesn’t deserve to,” Kimberley returned. “She’s a stubborn little...”
Icy pickles shot out from the book in-between her fingers and drove into a visible dome that emerged from nowhere, enveloping the four behind the metal cabinet. Several screeching demons
appeared on this phenomenon’s exterior like large black strokes of paint and remained plastered to it as if they could not enter or leave it. As if gravitational pull kept them there.
“Oh God!” Ezra whispered.
“They’re here!” Aiden cried.
Kimberley’s body froze as the icy extensions from the book she held in her left hand grew in size. She couldn’t move at all, because cold unlike any she had ever witnessed in her life had crept into her being and soul. “Help me!” she whispered, fearing the worst. “Help me!”
Rachel responded by pushing her left hand in-between the long spiky strands sprouting from the white book in order to touch the volume.
Immediate warmth swept through Kimberley when the little girl touched the book. She realized she could move her right hand a little, cursing herself for not heeding Ezra’s warning. The spikes from the book started giving off a bluish light that illuminated the dome’s interior and supplemented the sharp rays of sunlight filtering in-between the opaque, ghost-like shapes now surrounding the book’s defense.
Outside the room, Carl Bain saw the swirling storm around him. Some of the gray shapes swishing past him collided with him where he lay sprawled on the floor and his screaming knew no bounds as they tore through his body.
The Gray Ones converged around the book’s unearthly dome in numbers never before witnessed. Droves of gray shimmered from the bottomless hell they called home, piling up around their colleagues surrounding the icy figment of the book’s imagination. The weak ones quickly froze away as others took their place from hell. The ones strong enough to penetrate the dome without getting fried did so, reaching as far as its occupants and the book before freezing off. More reinforcements replaced their fellow demons around the book’s defense and those it protected.
“Rachel, we need to get out of here!” Kimberley whispered with all her strength.
“I can’t open the book,” Rachel complained. “It’s clasped shut!”
“Here, lemme help!” Aiden cried, going underneath Kimberley’s left arm before reaching out for the book. He tried to force it open to no avail. “It won’t budge!”
The White Book Page 10