Elevator doors open, and a man steps out. He speaks to the nurse; the guard outside my door walks down the hall toward the other man. I’m tempted to bolt out the door while he’s distracted, but there are two of them here now, and even though I might have fixed my concussion, I wouldn’t bank on being able to outrun anybody just now. The last time I healed myself, I could barely walk straight afterward.
I listen.
“I don’t know why you’re guarding that girl,” the nurse says. “She’s had such a knock to her head—severe concussion. She’ll not be going anywhere.”
“Orders.” The one who was outside my door yawns. He nods at the newcomer. “Happy to leave you to it now.”
He gets in the elevator and is gone.
The new one borrows a chair from the nurse, settles it outside my door. She goes back to her station.
I reach out to him gently, not wanting him to be aware I’m there. His mind is full of what he meant to be doing tonight instead, involving his girlfriend, and it’s enough to make me blush and want to retreat.
Instead I send thoughts of sleep, of being tired, so tired. He yawns.
The nurse walks past. She laughs softly. “I won’t tell anyone if you want a few zzz’s. I’ll wake you if anything happens.”
A bell rings and she walks quickly down the hall to another patient’s room.
Yes: sleep, sleep, sleep…I’m doing such a good job I almost send myself to la-la land.
The nurse walks past again. She chuckles to herself but says nothing. He’s not asleep properly, just in the drifting place before sleep, but I get out of bed cautiously, wanting to try my feet. I hold on to the bed for a moment, then walk across the room and look through the window in the door.
Now he’s actually snoring.
I can just see the back of the nurse’s head down the hall. If I can get out the door, I could go down the hall the other way to avoid her.
I prop pillows under my blankets, hoping that to a casual glance through the door it’ll look like I’m still in bed asleep. I ease the door open, but Sleeping Beauty is half leaning on it, and I have to prop him up a little against the door and then the wall, afraid he’ll wake up. He keeps snoring.
The nurse is on her phone now, her low voice echoing around the hall.
I tiptoe down the hall the other way, past one room, another, and another.
A bell rings.
I duck into a room, hoping it isn’t this one that has called the nurse, but there is a sleeping shape on a bed, breathing noisily.
Footsteps go down the hall, past the room I’m in now: either the nurse didn’t look through my door or she was fooled by the pillows.
I’m cold in this hospital gown. There’s a cupboard in this room. I open it, keeping an eye on the occupant of the bed. Inside hangs a purple cardigan and purple stretchy trousers.
I sigh. Any port in a storm?
I take the gown off, slip on the trousers—too wide around the middle and way too short—then pull the cardigan on and start buttoning it up.
“Not sure purple is your color, dear.”
I jump violently. Sitting up in the bed is an old woman, probably in her eighties.
“Sorry. I—um—”
“Are you escaping?”
“Sort of.”
She claps her hands. “How exciting! I wish I could too. Have a good time, dear.” She lies back down in bed and is asleep again almost instantly.
The nurse walks back down the hall to her station. I wait a few moments, then peek out into the hall.
The guard is still asleep.
I tiptoe, feet bare, and realize I didn’t think to look for shoes. But I’m not going back.
There’s a stairwell at the end, and down I go.
Hospitals are one of those places where people wander around at all hours of the day and night, in all manner of attire, and no one takes any notice. Or so I tell myself. I head through the emergency room. It’s full of people with fun things like broken arms and knife wounds and appendicitis—not that fun to them, maybe, but so much better than what the sick people I’ve been around lately have had. There are so many patients and too few harried staff; it seems like the best place to not be noticed.
There is a TV up in the corner of the waiting room, and the news is on. I walk faster, scared my picture will flood the screen. But instead it is an update on quarantine zones.
The patients and the medical staff all seem to pause in whatever they are doing, to look up at the screen, to see if it is coming their way.
I can’t stop myself from pausing and looking too.
No way—it’s all the way to Aviemore? The river we crossed after we left Killin is nowhere near the edge of the quarantine zone now. That zone, that is: there are zones spreading out from Aberdeen and Edinburgh too; in England and beyond.
And there are small numbers of cases scattered around Europe, North and South America, Asia, and Africa. Australia and New Zealand alone are still completely free of it.
Only when people around me start talking about the zones in hushed voices do I come back to myself and remember what I’m supposed to be doing.
I slip out the door and into the night.
CHAPTER 10
CALLIE
KAI PACES IN HIS CELL.
The muscles are standing out on his jaw, his arms; his fists are clenched. And there is nothing I can do to help him.
Everything is so messed up. I didn’t know whether to go with Shay or go with Kai, and I couldn’t ask them because Shay was knocked out and Kai can’t hear me.
There are footsteps in the hall, and Kai goes to the door again. “Please, somebody tell me if Shay is all right!” he shouts.
No one answers.
He punches the wall and then stands there, holding his hand. He shakes his head and sits down.
“Callie, are you there?” he whispers.
I’m here, Kai.
“Leave me. Find Shay; help her get away. And tell her to keep going; keep herself safe, do what must be done. I’ll be all right.”
We can’t leave you, Kai! Even if I could, Shay wouldn’t.
“No backtalk, just do it.”
I’m startled. Can he hear me? No. He’s just guessing what I’d say.
He’s pacing again later when there are more footsteps, but this time they stop at his door. A window opens in it.
It’s the policeman who brought him in, who called the ambulance for Shay.
“She’s got a pretty bad concussion but should be just fine. They said they’ll have to keep her in the hospital at least another day, perhaps longer, okay? So get some sleep. More than I can do.”
“Thanks for letting me know.”
“I understand how you feel, even if I question your taste in girls.”
Kai bristles.
“Well, she is a murderer, or so they say, and you’ve been aiding and abetting.”
“It’s not true. She’s innocent!”
“Now, I’ve never heard that one before,” he says, but he doesn’t walk away from the door. Why not?
Kai is wondering too. “What’s going on?”
“Damned if I know. Army said to keep you company, hence I’m pulling a double shift. They’re coming to get the two of you.”
“Isn’t this a police matter? Don’t let them take us.”
“It should be a police matter. I’ve been told to do as they say.” He’s not happy about it.
“Look. If you hand us over, they’ll kill Shay. They’ve tried to several times already; they’re the ones who shot that boy. He got in the way when they tried to shoot her.”
“And why would they be doing that?”
Kai hesitates. “It’s a mystery to us. But she is an Aberdeen flu survivor; it must have something to do with that.”
The policeman’s eyes widen. “I’ve heard rumors about survivors, but…” He shrugs.
“Like what?”
“Just idle gossip I’ll not repeat.”
; “Can I talk to a lawyer?”
“Sorry. We’re violating rights now too, apparently.”
His tone is disgusted. He closes the window in the door and starts to walk away. “Try to get some sleep, son,” he says again.
I hesitate. Find Shay, that’s what Kai said to do. I slip under the door and follow the policeman.
He goes to the end of the hall, unlocks a door, and steps into an office. He chucks his keys on top of the desk, then opens the bottom drawer and takes out a bottle of whiskey—stares at it in his hand, then unscrews the cap and has a swallow.
He makes a face and puts the bottle back in the bottom drawer.
The phone rings, and he jumps and glances at the clock. It’s almost midnight.
He answers.
“What? Now, hold on a minute here—
“But—
“I see.”
He hangs up, rubs his eyes. His hand reaches out, hovers over the phone, then pulls back. Finally he reaches out again, and this time he picks it up and dials.
He waits and waits, then finally hangs up and dials another number.
“Hello? Please put me through to the editor…Yes, I know what time it is; I also know he’s there, as I just tried him at home. Tell him it’s his nephew, Euan. And it’s urgent.”
He waits a few moments, drumming his fingers on the desk. They hover near the phone like he’s thinking of disconnecting.
When it picks up, the answer is barked so loudly that I hear it across the room.
“What the hell is going on? It’s late.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. Just listen, will you? Did you hear I arrested that Killin girl and her boyfriend today?…Don’t congratulate me; listen. I’ve been told to do whatever some idiot in the army tells me to do. The station has been cleared; I’m on my own. They say they’re taking the girl out of the hospital—she’s underage and has a severe concussion. And then there’s something her boyfriend told me: she’s an Aberdeen flu survivor. The whole thing, well. It’s just fishy. No social services involved, no phone calls allowed, no family contacted, and no lawyers…The guy’s name? Kirkland-Smith. I don’t know rank…Uh-huh. Yeah. Well, you do that, but don’t leave me waiting long. They said they’ll be here in an hour, and I’ve got a decision to make.”
He hangs up and reaches to open the drawer with the whiskey in it. He hesitates, then slams it shut.
The army and their guns will be here soon. Kai is locked up; the keys are on this desk.
There’s nothing I can do by myself.
I have to find Shay.
CHAPTER 11
SHAY
IT’S COLD AND STARTS TO RAIN. My bare feet seem to pick out every sharp pebble on the footpath, and I wince. My forehead itches, and I reach up to scratch—there’s a bandage there. I tease up a corner of it and yank it off.
It’s covered in blood, but when I reach up again to touch where it was, my forehead is whole, healed.
That is pretty cool. If only I could conjure up some shoes and an umbrella, and a change of clothes.
Now, where will Kai be?
My thoughts are vague and disjointed, and it’s hard to focus on how I ended up in the hospital. I hit my head on something—what was it?
We’d had lunch. I frown, concentrating. And there was that policeman. He recognized me, and we were running away from him, weren’t we? We ran up the bike path, and then—I don’t know what.
And I was taken to a hospital. Did Kai get away? If he didn’t, what happened to him? Was he arrested? Maybe he’s at a police station.
A man and woman walk past under an umbrella.
“Excuse me, where’s the police station?”
They ignore me and walk faster.
I’m shivering and shaky, and I lean against a tree off the road, feet on cool grass instead of stones. Forehead against the bark.
Callie, where are you?
I call again and again, but she doesn’t answer. Not here, that’s where she is.
What now? I have no answers. I’m cold, wet, hungry; my head is spinning. A wave of shivering shakes through me from inside out, and tears are pricking at the back of my eyes.
Something is coming down the road fast, very fast, and a man walking a dog runs out of the way, cursing and shaking a fist at whoever it is. They’re past me before my eyes process what they see: two army jeeps—rushing down the road toward the hospital.
CHAPTER 12
CALLIE
I STREAM UP INTO THE SKY to try to work out where we are. Lights are spread out below me in all directions; we’re in a city, by the look of things. How am I ever going to find Shay?
Hospital: she’s in a hospital.
I rush back down to street level and search up and down main roads until finally I spot what I’m looking for: an H on a sign. I follow the turning it points out and find another one. An ambulance rushes past me: I must be heading in the right direction. I speed up to follow it, and it takes me straight to where I want to go: a sign at the front says Raigmore Hospital.
And parked next to the sign?
Two army jeeps.
Shay, where are you? I cast out, but there is no answer.
I go into the hospital and zip around, looking for Shay, looking for the uniforms.
I find the latter. They’re at a nurses’ station; a scared-looking nurse and a policeman are facing them.
“I don’t care whose authority this is on; my sergeant called and said you’re not to take her, and that’s it until he tells me otherwise.” The policeman is standing upright and staring the leader of three army guys in the eye.
The nurse straightens her shoulders. “She has to be discharged by a doctor before she can go anywhere,” she says.
Shay, are you here? She doesn’t answer.
The soldier looks impatient. He finally snaps. He gestures at the other two with him, and they push past the nurse and policeman and start down the hallway, looking in each room.
The policeman sputters and objects. They ignore him.
They’ve reached a room with a chair next to the door.
“I really must insist—” The policeman pushes between them and the door, but they manhandle him out of the way and throw the door open.
One of the soldiers goes in but comes back out seconds later. “Empty,” he says to the other ones. “Pillows under the bedding.”
“What?” The policeman goes into the room. His jaw drops. “But she was right here—”
“She seems to have gotten away from you,” the soldier answers, with a scathing look. One of the others is on a phone, asking for help to search the hospital and area, but before he’s finished his sentence, I’m down the hall and out the front of the hospital.
I have to find her first.
I rush down one road from the hospital, then back again and down another, calling Shay, Shay, where are you? the whole time.
Is that a faint answer back? Shay?
Callie?
I home in on the direction of her voice. It takes me to a house about a mile from the hospital; no, behind a house. In a garden—some sort of wooden building in a garden.
She’s sitting on the floor, knees up and arms around herself, soaked and shivering. She lifts her head. Her face is covered with tears, but she smiles. “Am I ever glad to see you.”
CHAPTER 13
SHAY
“SO BASICALLY, what you’re saying is that I ran into a tree.”
Yes.
“I just hit my head on a tree and knocked myself out.”
That’s pretty much it.
I thunk my head on the steering wheel and try to put the car in reverse again. It makes a horrible grinding noise, and I struggle with the gear stick.
Bingo! I find reverse.
I peer over my shoulder through the rain and nudge the car backward onto the road, going up the sidewalk on one side as I do. Good thing it is the middle of the night.
I wrestle with the gear stick some more, and the car shudders up the
road.
Can you go any faster?
“I’m trying,” I say, teeth gritted.
I’m going back to check on the soldiers. Keep going straight; I’ll find you.
And she’s gone.
I ease up the road. Couldn’t Callie have found an empty house with an automatic parked out front for us to break into?
She’s soon back.
They have reinforcements. They’re on foot around the hospital and spreading out. They’ve got dogs.
“If they find the house we got this car from, they might work out that we took it. We’d better hurry.”
On to the police station.
“Seems a strange place to take a stolen car, but hey.”
Callie directs me on back streets, disappearing now and then to orient herself. Finally she tells me to pull into a quiet road and wait while she checks on Kai.
She’s gone longer than I expect.
Then she zooms back in a hurry.
There’s an army jeep outside the police station. They’re trying to break in, but I went in and they’re not there.
“What?”
Kai and the policeman: they’re not there!
“Where are they?”
How should I know?
“This doesn’t make sense. The police aren’t going to move a prisoner in the middle of the night. The army obviously doesn’t have him. What’s going on?”
Maybe the policeman took him somewhere else, sort of unofficially.
“Why would he do that?”
He called somebody and told them about Kai and you, and about you being a flu survivor, and that the army was demanding your release. He was angry about it.
“Who did he call?”
His uncle—he’s an editor. And his uncle was going to check something and get back to him.
“An editor—like a newspaper editor?”
I guess.
“Wow. Maybe the policeman took Kai there. Where are we? Is this Inverness? What newspapers do they have here?”
I don’t know!
“Let’s find a shop that sells papers, and find out.”
Wait; I’ll tell you which way to go so we don’t run into the army.
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