Pandemic (The Extinction Files Book 1)

by A. G. Riddle

  At the sight of Peyton, he yelled to one of the tall soldiers, who barked orders to his men.

  Hands released Peyton as if she were a live electric wire. She fell forward, but Elim caught her and raised her up.

  Over the dying roar of the rotors, he said, “Welcome to Dadaab, Dr. Shaw.”

  On Elim’s orders, two medical technicians brought a rolling stretcher from the building and ushered Hannah inside to an operating room. The facility wasn’t high-tech, but it was clean and well supplied. For nearly an hour, Peyton and Elim stood over Hannah, operating. They removed dead tissue, disinfected the wound, and closed the gaping hole in Hannah’s shoulder. When they were done, Peyton stood there for a long moment, staring at Hannah, hooked to the IV antibiotics and pain medication.

  The woman was infected with the Mandera virus, but Peyton thought she had a fighting chance now. And she was in good hands—hands that were being washed just a few feet away.

  Seconds later Elim slipped out of the OR, leaving Peyton alone with Hannah.

  The redheaded woman was all Peyton had left of the EIS team she’d taken to the village. She imagined those young agents lying there in their tan service khakis, dead, left alone in the arid, barren land for the animals to pick over. She imagined them being found, hands running over glassy, staring eyes, bodies being zipped up in bags. It was a nightmare for her—to see someone she had deployed come home like that. She thought about them as if they were her own family, her own kids.

  Hannah was her only chance to save one of them.

  Peyton had done everything she could for her. That made her feel a bit better, a little more hopeful, for the first time since Conner McClain’s men had raided the village.

  The camps in Dadaab were sprawling settlements. There were several camps for refugees and a smaller camp for aid agencies. Peyton and Elim had performed the surgery in the aid agency camp.

  During that time, there was not much for Desmond to do. With Avery at his side, he ventured out from the long, single-story building that housed the aid agencies, through a gate in a chain-link fence, and into the refugee camps.

  It was good to stretch his legs. The more than two hours in the vibrating helicopter hadn’t done his bruised body any favors. Neither had the welcoming committee who had dragged him to the ground. Several of those men stood guard by the fence, and other armed men were scattered throughout the camp. They stood next to some of the larger buildings, which had been converted to hospitals. “Hospital” isn’t the right word, Desmond thought. They were more like convalescent camps—places where those who were expected to survive were held. The patients who were not faring as well were kept in open camps, lying on blankets and wood platforms.

  Screams and moans of agony sounded from every direction. Up ahead a fire burned, consuming the bodies piled upon it. Trucks crisscrossed the camp, collecting bodies and distributing food, water, and medicine. Desmond could see that the refugees were fighting as hard as they could against the virus; he could also see that they were losing. This place was a biological meat grinder, almost too hideous for Desmond to watch.

  I did this, he thought. In some way, he was responsible for what was happening here—what would soon be happening around the world.

  In Berlin, he had been driven to discover who he was and what had happened to him. Now he had only one desire: to stop this. To save every life he could.

  The look on Avery’s face told him she knew exactly what he was thinking.

  “It’s not over yet, Des. We’ve got time to turn this around.”

  Behind them, a man carrying an AK-47 approached.

  “The doctors are out of surgery. They’ve asked for you.”

  Peyton was eating dinner with Elim, Desmond, and Avery in the building’s cafeteria when an African woman approached them and sat beside Elim. Peyton instantly recognized her: she was one of the survivors from the village. Was it a coincidence that she was here? The village was hundreds of miles away; how did she get to Dadaab?

  Elim looked exhausted, but his voice was strong. “She’s a very lucky young lady.”

  “Yes,” Peyton said, taking a bite of the stew. She was glad there had been no label on the vat. “A few more hours in the air and she might not have made it.”

  “Perhaps. But she is lucky because she has you watching out for her.”

  Peyton had never been able to take a compliment; they seemed to wrap around her like a rope, constricting her, paralyzing her. She turned red.

  “Just doing my job,” she said quietly, taking another bite of mystery stew. “What happened here?”

  “Biology,” Elim said. “The virus got loose in the camps.”

  “How many are dead?”

  Elim paused. “We’ll be counting the survivors when it’s over, Dr. Shaw.”

  “Any estimate would be helpful. I think this is perhaps the first large population center the virus struck. And please, call me Peyton.”

  He nodded. “There were about three hundred thousand people here when this began. I expect about ten thousand to survive.”

  Peyton sat in shock. “A three percent survival rate?”

  “With better care, rehydration salts, the number might double—five or six percent.”

  The words hung there like a bell tolling. No one spoke for a long moment. Ebola Zaire killed ninety percent of those it infected. Mandera was even more deadly than that—and in its early days it was as contagious as the common cold. It was the perfect killer.

  But why? How was the pandemic connected to the Looking Glass? What was the Looking Glass? What could possibly be worth killing 95% of the world’s population? Or was there another plan?

  Conner McClain had all but confessed to having a cure to the virus; finding that cure was the world’s only chance. They needed to start putting the pieces together.

  Peyton swallowed. “I really hate to ask. We came here for Hannah, but we were also hoping to find a couple of things.”

  Elim raised his eyebrows.

  “We need a satphone.”

  He nodded.

  “And a plane.”

  He broke into a smile Peyton couldn’t read. She was reflecting on how outrageous the request was when he said, “I think I can help you.”

  When they finished their meal, Elim led them through the building’s main corridor. The facility was in complete disarray. Every room had been ransacked. To Peyton, it looked like a middle school with no teachers, trashed by students running wild. Half-empty boxes littered the hall; desks were overturned, drawers pulled out; supply closets stood open.

  Elim opened a locked utility closet. The tiny room was overflowing with electronics—cell phones, tablets, and laptops—like a vault of plastic and silicon treasures.

  “When containment broke and everyone started getting sick, the order of this place fell quickly. There were no refugees or aid workers any more. Only survivors and the dying. The aid workers stored their electronics here, hoping they would be of use to someone eventually.”

  “You can’t use them?” Desmond asked, surprised.

  “You’ll see,” Elim said, a hint of dread in his voice.

  An African woman approached them and said, “Dr. Kibet, she’s awake.”

  Hannah, Peyton thought.

  Avery didn’t wait another second. She grabbed a laptop and a solar charger, stacked a tablet on top, then began piling cell phones up like a Jenga tower, which wobbled after a few seconds.

  Desmond eyed her curiously.

  “Not sure where we’re headed,” the blonde said. “Satellites might go out. We’ll need phones from European, American, and Asian carriers on different networks.”

  The woman always seemed to be a step ahead.

  Desmond collected a few phones as well.

  Elim pointed to a shelf where a stack of smartphones lay. Attached were the CDC-issued satsleeves. The sight made Peyton’s mouth run dry, like discovering a pile of dog tags from fallen comrades. She stared at the plastic and glass t
ombstones. How had they gotten here?

  She took two of them. One for her, one for Hannah.

  Desmond watched Peyton follow Elim back to the OR. He found her compassion for Hannah incredibly endearing. Peyton cared with all her heart. She had poured everything she had into caring for her young colleague—had risked her own life to save her, to bring her this far. He knew one thing: any person on Earth would be lucky to have Peyton Shaw looking out for them.

  He felt Avery’s eyes on him, watching him stare as Peyton left. In a way, Desmond found her to be Peyton’s mirror image. They were both headstrong and determined. They cared about their mission, and they didn’t let anything get in their way. Maybe that was why they clashed so much—they were too much alike. But Avery took lives; Peyton saved them.

  Desmond felt irresistibly drawn to both women, like a force of nature; him a hunk of metal, them magnets exerting strong pulls in opposite directions. He found each intriguing in different ways. Each woman was a mystery he wanted to solve.

  When Peyton slipped out of view, Avery retreated to a conference room and closed the door. The move surprised Desmond. She wanted to be alone. Why?

  Ever since she’d shared her story on the helicopter—and even before that—he had questioned whether he could trust her. She could be a plant, assigned to find out where he had hidden the Rendition device.

  Or she could be telling the truth.

  He pushed the door open. She had spread the phones out on the long table and was activating them.

  “I need to check in with my handler,” she said. She turned to him. “You need help?”

  He paused, debating whether to stay and see who she called.

  “No,” he said, still torn on what to do.

  “You’re downloading the CityForge app, right?” A small smile curled at her lips. He wondered if she knew he had lied on the helicopter.

  He nodded, withdrew from the room, and closed the door behind him. But he stood just outside the door, waiting, hoping to hear her call. It never came. She must have been texting.

  He activated a cell phone and downloaded the Labyrinth Reality app. He entered the code for the private Labyrinth he had created. He was once again asked whether he was the hero or the Minotaur.

  He clicked hero. The dialog read:

  Searching for an entrance to the Labyrinth…

  In Berlin, the application had said there were no entrances near him. He waited. Finally, a message appeared:

  1 Entrance Located.

  He clicked the link. A map appeared with GPS coordinates and a glowing green dot.

  The location was an island north of Scotland, which surprised him: it was much closer to Berlin than Dadaab. Why did the location not appear when he tried the app in Berlin? He decided the entrance must have been set to reveal on a timer, or perhaps only after some event had occurred. Or, perhaps, when a partner activated it. That possibility intrigued Desmond the most.

  He zoomed in on the map dot. It was in the Shetland Islands. From the satellite photography, the place looked barely inhabited. There were some farms, a few roads, a seaport, and an airport.

  The glowing dot itself lay in the middle of a forest. There was no building, no home, not even a road leading to it. But he knew something was there—waiting for him.

  He hoped it held the key to finding a cure.

  Chapter 71

  Hannah’s eyes were open when Peyton entered the office that had been converted to a patient room. The young woman tried to sit up in bed, but Peyton told her to lie back down.

  Her voice came out hoarse, faint. “What happened?”

  Peyton considered what to tell her. She decided that Hannah had been through enough. Details could wait for another day.

  “We were rescued.”

  Hannah closed her eyes, breathed heavily.

  “Are we going home?”

  “Eventually. I need to make a few phone calls. You’re in good hands here. I’ll be back.”

  Outside the room, Peyton activated the phone and dialed Elliott’s cell. The call connected without ringing.

  “You’ve reached Operation BioShield. If you’re calling from inside a cordon zone, press one. If you’re calling from outside a cordon zone, press two.”

  After a brief pause, the recording repeated.

  Why would Elliott’s phone route to a call center? Peyton had never heard of Operation BioShield. She wondered if it was related to the congressional act, Project BioShield, that had called for stockpiling critical vaccines in the aftermath of 9/11.

  Curious, she pressed one, indicating she was inside a cordon zone.

  “If you or someone in your home is sick, press one. If you have training in an essential job role, press two. Essential jobs include anyone with military training, doctors, nurses, police, fire, EMT, and prison employees. If you are calling from an operations center, dial three. All other callers, press zero. Note: pressing zero will greatly delay your wait time. The current wait time is six hours and eighteen minutes.”

  Peyton hung up and dialed several of her CDC colleagues. She knew only a few of their numbers by heart. But all of her calls were routed to the same Operation BioShield hotline.

  She dialed the CDC’s Emergency Operations Center. A different recorded message played:

  “You’ve reached the BioShield Command Center. If you are transporting supplies and need destination or route assistance, press one. If you work in an essential role and need an assignment, press two. If you have located unsorted individuals outside a cordon zone, press three.”

  The last option chilled Peyton. Unsorted individuals.

  The recording repeated; there was no option for an operator.

  Peyton pressed two. A man with a gruff voice said, “Name and social security number.”

  She gave him the information, and heard the man typing.

  “Sir, I have critical information—”

  He interrupted. “Location?”

  “Dadaab, Kenya.”

  A long pause.

  “Your ops facility is Phillips Arena. Report there immediately for assignment.”

  “What?”

  “Phillips Arena is located at—”

  “I know where Phillips Arena is. Listen to me, I led the CDC mission to Kenya, the one that first encountered the Mandera virus.”

  The line was silent. She had his attention.

  “I have information regarding its origin and possibly the key to finding a cure. I need to speak with the CDC.”

  She heard furious typing in the background.

  “Best number to reach you?”

  “Did you hear what I just said? I know how this pandemic started—and possibly how to find a cure.”

  “I heard you, Dr. Shaw. We’re getting about a hundred calls per hour now from scientists and physicians who are sure they have information regarding a cure. We have a queue that a research assistant is working through. They’ll have to call you back.”

  “You’re going to put my message in a queue and call me back?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Corporal Travers, ma’am.”

  “When this is over, Corporal, the newspapers and TV shows are going to figure out why so many people died. They’ll identify turning points, when people in critical roles made the wrong calls—moments when someone could have made a decision that would have changed the course of the outbreak and saved millions, possibly billions of lives. This is one of those moments. This is the moment when you can simply connect me to that research team or someone at the CDC. It will only take a few seconds. You can save a lot of people—right now.”

  “Sorry, ma’am, I don’t even have their number.”

  Peyton paused, thinking.

  “Ma’am?”

  “I’m still here.”

  “Your number was blocked; I’m going to need a good callback number.”
/>   Peyton opened the phone’s settings and read the number out. Travers thanked her, and Peyton said, “Corporal?”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “How many messages are in this… queue?”

  “Three hundred and sixteen, ma’am.”

  She shook her head. “One last thing, Corporal. I’m the CDC’s leading epidemiologist. I’m the one they sent to Kenya when we first found out about the outbreak. Maybe that’s in your files, or maybe you can see my employment history. I’m close to this investigation. Whoever is seeing these messages will know who I am. They’ll call me first. You need to move my message to the top of the list. Do you understand?”

  “Do you require further assistance, ma’am?”

  She leaned her head back and groaned.

  After she’d ended the call, she activated the phone’s web browser. If she could get in touch with the WHO, maybe they could connect her to the CDC. But she didn’t know the WHO’s number. The thought reminded her of Jonas, and seeing his number pop up on her phone a week ago in her condo. If they had split up in Kenya, would he still be alive? Had being near her put him in harm’s way? She tried to focus.

  The WHO web address redirected to a site called EuroShield. The page prompted her to enter her information so she could receive the address of a local “EuroCordon center.” The site asked questions nearly identical to those asked by the American operator. Europe apparently had a similar pandemic disaster protocol.

  She tried navigating to several more web sites, but the only sites that ever came up were BioShield in America, EuroShield in Europe, and similar sites in Asia and Russia.

  Clearly whatever had happened in America had also occurred around the world—almost simultaneously. Phones and internet had been routed, contained. Peyton wondered if it was the dawn of a new dark age, or perhaps something even worse.

  She found Desmond outside the cafeteria, staring at a smartphone, leaning against the wall.

  “Did you find it?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said, lost in thought.

  “Every web address redirects to emergency websites. Phone lines route to a call center.”