Revelations

by Mark Kelly

  “Son-of-a-bitch, that’s Dylan,” Abrams exclaimed.

  He might know something about Saanvi, Lucia thought.

  She moved without thinking. She ran to the front door and was half-way down the steps when Dylan climbed out of the G-wagon with the knapsack in his hand.

  “Stop!”

  Startled, his head jerked in her direction.

  “I just want to talk to you,” she yelled.

  He didn’t wait. Gripping the knapsack tightly in his hand, Dylan sprinted towards the cedar hedge and threw himself at it. The thick branches held for a fraction of a second and then gave with a crack as he disappeared into the dark green foliage.

  Lucia grit her teeth and charged towards a small gate separating the house’s front and back yards. The gate clanged against the aluminum siding when she pushed it open. Dylan must have heard the noise, he shot a quick glance over his shoulder, his eyes widening with terror when he saw her. He pumped his arms furiously and ran faster.

  “Stop!” she yelled again, putting on a burst of speed.

  Lucia chased him from one backyard to the next. If not for the weight of the knapsack swinging in his hand and the time he had taken to look over his shoulder, he would have escaped. She was almost on him when he zig-zagged around a brick fire pit, dodging her outstretched hands. She threw her arms up into the air and hurdled over the fire pit crashing into him. They tumbled to the ground as one, arms and legs intertwined. Dylan started to wiggle free when a voice boomed out from behind them.

  “Don’t even think about it!” Baker shouted. He held his rifle in his hands with its stubby barrel pointed at Dylan.

  The stench of sweat and rancid body odor filled Lucia’s nose. It was coming from Dylan. She hurriedly untangled herself from him and climbed to her feet as Abrams lumbered to a stop beside them.

  Wheezing as his chest heaved in and out, Abrams bent over to catch his breath. Then he scowled at Dylan.

  “Asshole, why did you run?”

  “She scared me. Besides, I didn’t see you.”

  “I was inside the house, you dimwit.”

  Abrams held out his hand to help the smaller man to his feet. He wrinkled his nose when he caught a whiff of the body odor. “Jesus, I told you to wash the last time I saw you.”

  “I can’t. There’s no running water,” Dylan said in a woeful voice.

  “For fuck’s sake, you live next to a river, use it, okay?”

  Dylan gave Abrams a weak nod. He eyed the knapsack lying on the ground and took a step towards it.

  “Why’d you try and steal it?” Abrams asked.

  “I didn’t think you’d give it to me, not after I blocked the road.”

  “Goddamn right that I shouldn’t give it to you. Especially after all the trouble you caused. I should take it back to the base and give it back to the old man.”

  Dylan’s face turned down. He looked like he was going to cry. Abrams snatched the bag off the ground and tossed it to him. “Here, you need it more than the old man does—just don’t be such an asshole next time.”

  “Can I go now?” Dylan asked.

  “No,” Lucia said. “Have you seen a girl with long black hair and dark brown skin—an Indian?”

  When Dylan looked at her as if she were crazy, she added, “I mean the kind of Indian from India.”

  Dylan shook his head.

  “How about this guy?” Baker pulled a jagged photograph out of his pocket. It was a picture of James O’Neal cut from a larger group photo that Langdon had found hanging on the wall in the lab’s HR department.

  Dylan studied the photo for a second. “Yeah, I might have seen him at the marina on Pier road.”

  “When?”

  “This morning when I was down there fishing.”

  “Was there a girl with him?”

  “No idea, I took off as soon as they tied him up.”

  Baker frowned. “Who tied him up?”

  “Roamers.”

  Lucia’s stomach churned at the thought of Saanvi in the hands of a Roamer gang. “Are you certain there wasn’t a girl with him?”

  “Are you deaf?” Dylan snapped back at her. “I told you, I don’t know if there was anyone with him. Maybe there was, maybe there wasn’t. Shit, for all I know, they took the two of them.”

  “Took them where?” Lucia asked, taking a step closer.

  Dylan fluffed her off and made a move to walk away. “Are we done here?” he asked Abrams.

  Annoyed at being ignored, Lucia drew her gun from its holster and pointed it at Dylan. “I will ask you one more time. Where did the roamers take him?” She pressed the end of the barrel against Dylan’s head and said, “Last chance.”

  Dylan’s face turned pale with fear. “Abrams, call her off.”

  Lucia counted backward in Spanish. “Diez…nueve…ocho…siete—”

  “At the hospital. They’re at the fucking hospital. That’s where they hang out.”

  “Take me there.”

  Dylan trembled as he spoke. “I’m not going anywhere near there.”

  Lucia jammed her gun back in its holster. She grabbed the collar of Dylan’s tee-shirt.

  “Let’s go.”

  “What the fuck!” Dylan cried out. He shrugged off her grip and pleaded with Abrams. “Come on, man, tell her no. We’re all going to get infected if we go inside.”

  Lucia placed her hand on the small of Dylan’s back and pushed. He stumbled forward, and she pushed again.

  “Take me there. You won’t have to go inside.”

  He took a halting step and then glanced over his shoulder at her.

  “Promise?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, but it’s your funeral.”

  “Someone will die, but it won’t be me,” Lucia replied grimly. She was certain of it.

  24

  The Forest

  After a few more threats from Lucia—and a warning from Abrams that she wasn’t kidding, the general’s son, Dylan, directed them to the outskirts of town where the hospital sat nestled in the forest at the intersection of two roads. About a mile from their destination, Baker told Abrams to pull over and park.

  “Unless they’re idiots, they’ll have guards posted on the road up ahead. We’ll leave the G-wagons here and hike in through the forest.”

  They disembarked from their vehicles and formed two squads. Lucia followed Baker as he led one of the squads into the forest. The towering pine trees stood in neat rows that were too orderly to have grown naturally. Beneath the pines, a dense mat of brittle orange pine needles covered the ground. Aside from a few leafy, knee-high plants, it seemed like little else grew in the sandy acidic soil.

  The soldiers in front of her ran from tree to tree, staying low to the ground as they took turns leapfrogging each other. Other than the rustle of their footsteps and the buzz of the cicadas, the forest was still. She stepped over a fallen log, flinching as her foot pressed down on something hard.

  Crack…

  The branch that snapped beneath her boot sounded like a gunshot in the quiet forest. Baker turned, a pinched expression on his face that softened when he realized she was the guilty party.

  Dines wasn’t so forgiving. She scowled and shushed Lucia as if she were a child. Annoyed at herself, Lucia clenched her fists and fought the temptation to argue back. The puta was right. She must learn to be more careful.

  A few hundred feet and five minutes later, Baker clenched his fist in the air, signaling the team to freeze. He pointed to a man in a camouflage hunting jacket who sat slouched in a lawn chair half-hidden in the scrub-brush lining the side of the road. The man was no more than fifty feet away. Lucia could see the two ends of the double-barrel shotgun that sat on his lap and the small walkie-talkie hanging from a strap draped over his shoulder.

  Suddenly, the man lurched to his feet and lay the shotgun across the chair’s plastic armrests. He took a dozen hurried steps to his left, struggling with his belt buckle as he ran. When he could no longer ho
ld back the urge to defecate, he squatted with his pants crumpled around his ankles and grunted loudly as he relieved himself.

  Baker didn’t wait. Lucia watched him pull his pistol out of his holster and quickly attach a silencer. Using the trunk of a nearby pine tree to brace his arm, he aimed at the squatting man and pulled the trigger.

  Crack…Crack…Crack.

  The sounds of the gunshots, muffled by the silencer on Baker’s weapon, were no louder than the stick she had stepped on. Two rounds struck the man in his chest, and the third entered his head above his right ear. He fell backward to the ground, spasmed once and lay unmoving.

  “Keep a watch,” Baker whispered. “There may be more. I’ll get his radio.”

  When Baker returned from retrieving the walkie-talkie, he swiveled his head to the left and right and frowned.

  “Where did Dylan go?”

  Lucia spun on her heels, looking for their troublesome guide. He had been right behind her a second ago. A flash of movement caught her eye, and she watched as Dylan bounded away through the forest like a scared deer.

  Mierde…not again.

  “I will get him,” she muttered. She jammed her pistol into its shoulder holster and chased after Dylan.

  Hearing her footsteps behind him, Dylan snatched a panicked look over his shoulder and ran like a man who knew he’d get a beating if he were caught. This time, he was smart enough to drop the bag. They were evenly matched for the first hundred yards, but Lucia had the advantage of longer legs and better health. By the end of the next hundred yards, Dylan’s breathing was labored, and he stumbled as he ran. A minute later, he staggered to a stop and dropped to his knees with utter defeat written across his face.

  “Don’t take me back,” he pleaded. “He has it, they all have it.”

  “Have what?” Lucia growled as she fought the temptation to slap him on the side of the head for making her chase him.

  Dylan stared at her, his panicked eyes, black marbles against a pale white face.

  “He has the bug—you saw. He had the shits.”

  Lucia felt her mouth drop open in surprise. He was right. She had been so focused on finding Saanvi that she hadn’t given it any thought. The vision of Baker standing over the man and reaching down to take the radio shook her to the core. Unlike her, Baker wasn’t immune…not yet…and the only person who could save him if he became infected was missing.

  She turned and ran.

  “What about me?” Dylan wailed.

  She ignored him and ran faster.

  25

  Wash Your Hands

  “—ohn…fzzz…Over…fzzzzzzz…Do you…”

  “Come in…fzzz…sho—…report…fzzzzzzzz.”

  Fragments of conversation mixed with static filled his ear. Baker fiddled with the radio’s knobs and turned the volume up. Nothing he did made any difference. Whatever the roamers on the radio were saying was unintelligible. His pulse quickened as he wondered if the gunshots had been heard. Even with the silencer, the sound would have been recognizable to someone in the know.

  “Give it to me and I’ll try.”

  He handed the walkie-talkie he had taken from the dead man to Abrams. Abrams took off one of his gloves and played with the squelch knob, turning it in tiny increments as he listened. After a minute, he shrugged. “Cheap piece of crap. I can’t make out what they’re saying either.”

  “Let’s assume they know we’re here. Eyes open,” Baker said to the squad of soldiers huddled around him.

  Seconds later, the thud of footsteps and the snapping of branches filled the air. Instantly, everyone brought their weapons up only to lower them when Lucia crashed through the undergrowth making no attempt to be quiet. Baker’s frown disappeared when he saw the panic in her eyes.

  “Where’s Dylan?” he asked, afraid the general’s son had done something stupid.

  She ignored his question and ran her eyes up and down his body. Not seeing whatever it was she was searching for, she stepped closer and patted his pockets. Her voice shook as she spoke.

  “Where is the thing?”

  “What thing?”

  “The radio.”

  “I have it,” Abrams said.

  Lucia leapt towards him. She grabbed it from his hands and threw it to the ground.

  “What the fuck?” he exclaimed angrily.

  Baker made a move to pick it up.

  “Don’t,” she yelled, kicking it out of his reach. “It is contaminated. He was infected.” She pointed at the dead man lying on the ground a few dozen feet away with his pants around his ankles.

  Baker’s stomach heaved with nausea. He had become careless. The rules were simple. Actually, one simple rule; don’t touch anything that might be contaminated without decontaminating it first. It was a rule he had gone months without breaking—except for the time he had helped Mei with Taxon—and now he was going to pay for it; possibly with his life.

  He looked down at his gloved hand, the one he had held the walkie-talkie with, and tried to remember if he had touched his face. He had. And Abrams had brought the walkie-talkie close to his face as well. Baker raised his head and stared at the other man. Abrams must have known what the look in Baker’s eyes meant. He let out a low groan and began to pace back and forth.

  The soldiers in the search team eyed one another. They stepped away with the business end of their weapons pointed towards the ground near he and Abrams’s feet. Baker recognized the not-so-subtle warning. You’re one of us, but you’re also a threat. Don’t do anything stupid.

  He raised his hands to calm them and growled, “Stand down. We can’t be sure the lookout was infected. You’re probably all safe. None of you went anywhere near him.”

  “But you and Abrams did, and you both touched the radio,” Dines said anxiously. “Stupid fucking mission. Risking ourselves to find some girl.”

  Not just some girl, Baker thought. The girl who might be their salvation—his salvation.

  “You know how this works,” he said, speaking in as calm a voice as he could manage. “It will be just like in training. Until we disinfect, you keep your distance.”

  “Sergeant, hand me the disinfecting solution,” he said to Abrams.

  Still stunned, Abrams remained frozen in place. He stared at Baker as if he didn’t understand what was being asked of him.

  Muttering in Spanish, Lucia marched past Baker and stopped in front of Abrams. She thrust out her hand.

  “Give me the solution.”

  When Abrams didn’t move, she brusquely unclipped the canteen from his belt and motioned at Baker.

  “Come here and hold out your hands. It will be easier if I help you.”

  He stepped towards her. When their eyes met, he could see the concern in her expression. She swiped a wisp of hair from her face and unscrewed the cap.

  “Hold out your hands.”

  He cupped his hands together, allowing her to pour a generous amount of disinfecting solution into them. The liquid reeked of bleach and clawed at his nose. It would burn a layer off his skin and kill any spores, but nothing could be done about the spores he might have ingested. If they were in his gut, he’d be infected in a couple of days.

  After he finished washing, she spilled more liquid onto his hands and he splashed the solution on his face, cringing as it burned his eyes and trickled into his mouth. He spat the foul tasting mixture out and caught her eye again.

  “Thank you.”

  She met his glance for a fraction of a second. Then she dipped her head in a barely perceptible nod.

  You next,” she said to Abrams.

  Abrams stared at her, unmoving, and she yelled, “Now!”

  “Am I going to die?” he asked in a pitiful voice.

  She scowled at him. “Do you want to?”

  He shook his head.

  “Then hold out your hands and wash your face.”

  She poured the rest of the solution onto his hands and watched him wash. Then she threw the empty canteen away an
d looked at Baker. “Now, we must go and find Saanvi or you will die.”

  Baker nodded. There was no point worrying about whether or not he had been infected. The girl was the mission.

  “What about her?” Dines said, glaring at Lucia. “I saw her touch the radio too and there’s no more disinfectant. This fucking civvie is going to infect us all.”

  “I do not need to disinfect,” Lucia snarled at Dines. “I am immune.”

  “You’re a goddamn liar, that’s what you are,” Dines replied.

  Lucia’s eyes narrowed. She pointed her finger at Dines. “What gives you the right to call me a liar? You know nothing about me. You are like a scared child hiding behind your gun. Why don’t you go back to your base and hide behind its walls?” She pushed Dines’s rifle aside and stomped off.

  “Where are you going?” Baker shouted as she disappeared into the forest.”

  “To get Saanvi.”

  Dines let out a sarcastic laugh.

  Baker turned to face Dines. The anger was bottled up so tight in his chest he could barely speak. “For Christ’s sake, what’s the matter with you? Did you not understand what General Leduc told you and Abrams at the roadblock?”

  Dines frowned and gave him a confused look. “Chief, I don’t know what you’re talking about. The general didn’t tell us shit, except the lab wasn’t radioactive—which was a fucking surprise, seeing as we’ve been telling people to stay away from it for months. Then he radioed and told us we had to go with you to look for a civvie girl, who some asshole from the lab kidnapped. And now we’re standing in the goddamn forest and you and Abrams are probably infected.” Dines threw up her arms in disgust. “Fine fucking mission this is.”

  “The girl we’re looking for is immune to the bug,” Baker said in a hard voice, “and so is the woman who just went after her. They could save us all.”

  “Bullshit—I don’t believe it,” Dines said, looking for support from Abrams who was still standing around with a vacant expression on his face.

  “Believe what you want,” Baker snapped at her, “but I’m not lying and we have a job to do. Are you coming?”