by Simon Toyne
‘Are we going to be taken into the mountain to die, like Mummy?’ she asked, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
He felt something break inside him. ‘No. You’ll be safe here – I promise.’
She stared at him for a moment with the clear and searching expression only a child can manage, then slowly turned and rejoined the others.
The quarantine had been swift and had been put in place the moment the first infection occurred outside the Old City walls – a local teacher who had already infected the rest of the teachers in her school and many of the parents by the time her symptoms manifested. Arkadian’s blood had run cold when he first heard this news. Madalina, his wife, worked at a school, not the one that had been infected, but it was still a chilling reminder of how vulnerable everyone was in the face of this thing. Madalina was now in semi-quarantine in St Mark’s church near their house. All public workers who’d had extended contact with other people had been moved to large civic buildings for observation and she had been one of them. But these internal precautions were only part of the overall plan.
The last thing the national and international community wanted was a new killer disease to escape into the wider world. Ruin’s natural isolation, surrounded by the high, unpopulated foothills of the Taurus mountains, made it uniquely suited to be placed in its own self-contained quarantine. The rapid evacuation of the Old Town after the first outbreak had been effective enough to hold back the spread of the disease for the first month and so the policy was now extended to the city as a whole. There was only one road leading into Ruin and it was now blocked with no access in or out save for the daily food and medical supplies delivered by truck to the outer barrier, and only collected and transported into the city once the trucks had driven away again.
Inside the city there were further divisions. Ruin was naturally split into quarters by four great, straight boulevards that radiated out from the Citadel at the centre. Each quarter was now a self-contained borough, with the boulevards between them acting as a no-man’s-land no one was allowed to cross. There had been near riots as people tried to flee one part of the city and relocate in another following a rumour in the first few days of the quarantine that all new cases of the blight were in the Lost Quarter and that the neighbouring three boroughs were disease free. The unsteady peace that had eventually been re-established was now maintained by constant armed patrols. The only movement of any kind had been the transportation of the infected down the empty boulevards towards the Old Town and the Citadel, and the evacuation of children in the other direction.
Arkadian stepped into the hostel and was hit by the sound of activity and children’s voices. There were about a hundred kids here, some of them orphans of the disease, but many of them not. Most parents, once news spread that the young were immune from the disease, had elected to send their children out of the city, preferring that they were away from the newly formed ghettoes where fear and violence bubbled beneath the quiet surface of a city held together by little more than tension and hope that the work of the doctors inside the Citadel would soon bear fruit.
He saw the girl with the wavy brown hair over by a table. She was clasping a locket round her neck tightly in her hand but now held a bottle in the other with a straw sticking out of it. Behind her a movement caught his attention and he looked up into the grim face of Bulut Gül staring out from behind the visor of his contamination suit, his face set in the grim way he had seen before when he had bad news to impart.
‘Did you get the message?’ Bulut said, his voice muffled and sounding like it was coming from a long way away.
‘What message?’
‘You need to get over to St Mark’s quickly. It’s your wife. It’s Madalina.’
66
Cherokee hadn’t changed much in the near twenty years since Shepherd had last driven through it: rows of tacky souvenir shops still sold rugs, stone axes, arrowheads, feather and bead head-dresses that owed more to Hollywood than to history. The one big change was the number of motels and fast-food joints that had sprung up along the only road through the middle of town. They spoke of prosperity but of a particular and transient form. The casino had not been open long the last time he was here but its influence had clearly spread wide in the intervening years. The whole town had a soulless quality, of the kind only gambling money could buy. It also seemed deserted, every hotel and motel had vacancy signs outside and the huge parking lot surrounding the glass tower of the main Harrah Casino contained lots of virgin snow and hardly any cars. The homing instinct that was taking hold of the world was clearly not being kind to Cherokee. Clearly there were not many that called this place ‘home’.
Shepherd parked up outside the Tribal Grounds Coffee Shop, drawn by a sign in the window inviting him to ‘Come in and enjoy our world famous Elk latte and free wi-fi’. He kept the engine running and the heater on, opened up the laptop and hooked on to the internet. A new window opened, asking for his security clearance codes. He punched them in and the saved search reappeared on the desk top. The processor crunched. The windscreen wipers swiped back and forth and a ping rang out as the new search results loaded.
There were seven of them now.
He opened the first and scrolled straight to the PDF file attached to the bottom of the document. He clicked on it, holding his breath as he waited for it to open. A depressing parade of images appeared on the screen, similar to the ones he’d seen before, charting a blighted life then an early death. But it wasn’t her.
He closed the file and moved on, keeping the momentum going before his nerve failed him. The next result opened, a solid block of text cascading down the screen. He found the attached file at the bottom and clicked it open, bracing himself for the photographs.
They were different to the first photos but none the less tragic. A well-scrubbed, bright-eyed woman smiling from a picture that had been taken at a dressy function, the flashbulb capturing a moment of pure happiness and hope. The picture below showed the same face, the eyes now closed and bruised, her clear skin lacerated by the windshield she had passed through after her car had left the road and hit a streetlamp. A brief note beneath the photo read:
Melisa Erroll – Junior attorney at law
Fatal RTA. 02.34 Feb 16th.
BAC negligible. No suspects sought.
The time of her death, the minimal Blood Alcohol Concentration and lack of suspects told the whole story. She was probably just working late, fired by youthful ambition and a desire to one day make partner, and fell asleep at the wheel on her way home, never to wake again.
He closed the window and continued to work his way down the strange roll call of the dead, experiencing the see-sawing of emotion between tragedy and relief. He reached the last result and clicked it open. And there she was.
He felt like someone had punched him in the gut. He couldn’t breathe, his vision swam as eight years of hope evaporated in an instant and tears welled in his eyes. She looked exactly the same as he remembered, more beautiful even, her huge dark eyes staring out from a passport photograph. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and took a shuddering breath. ‘Oh Jesus.’
The blood drained from his face, and his breathing started to race. He forced himself to calm down, breathe more deeply, more slowly. His eyes darted over the file, trying to take in all the details at once. It was too much. Words and figures tumbled through his mind, disjointed fragments, missing pieces of someone he hadn’t seen in eight years. His brain re-engaged and his focus returned. The top document was a visa application. She had applied for an extension to her F-1 student visa around the time she had disappeared. It had been denied. Had this been the reason she had gone, something as mundane as this? It can’t have been, they were going to get married; she wouldn’t have needed a visa if she was married to a US citizen. It had to be something else.
His eyes shifted over the facsimile of her application form. There were details here he had never known. Her date of birth – she was two ye
ars older than he had guessed; her middle name – Ana; her place of birth – Ruin, in southern Turkey.
Ruin again.
His eyes flicked back to the photograph, her sharp-cheeked, almond-eyed face framed by long dark silky hair with a kink in it like ripples over dark water. He could see by the side of the file that there was another photograph further down, just a scroll and mouse click away.
He thought of all the other final images he’d seen, all tragic in their own way but nothing compared to what this would be. There would be an autopsy report too most likely, depending on how she had died. He wasn’t sure he could face either. But he had to. He had to know.
He clicked on the scroll button to bring up the final photograph.
Shepherd had been so prepared and braced for something else that it took him a few moments to register what he was looking at. It was a picture of Melisa smiling, her personality fully evident here in a way it had not been within the stiff pose of the passport photograph. It was attached to a scanned copy of a medical registration document showing that Melisa Ana Erroll had qualified as a midwife and was licensed to practice for an international aid organization called Ortus. The document was simply to register the fact in the United States and qualify her for the company insurance.
He clicked on the scroll bar again but there were no more pictures. He switched back to the file and flicked through to the last page where the autopsy report or death certificate would have been. Nothing – just the insurance paperwork that corresponded with the photograph.
He laughed and cried at the same time, a sob of pure relief as he realized what had happened. The MPD search must have finished trawling through the death registers and moved on to the live files linked to the database. And then it had found her.
His Melisa.
Alive.
67
Gabriel woke slowly as though rising up through thick, warm liquid.
He became aware of the sounds of the room, the blip of the monitors, the chink of glass on glass, the shuffle of booted feet across the stone floor. He lay still for a while, feeling he was gradually materializing in the room, atom by atom. He opened his eyes and saw a bluish green light washing over the arched ceiling of the cave. He turned his head and saw the peacock window, the low evening sun lighting it up from behind.
‘Ah, welcome back.’ Athanasius moved across his field of vision, blocking the light from the window. Gabriel tried to sit up but found that he could not. ‘I’m afraid the doctor thought it best to restrain you again, for your own protection. That’s the bad news. The good news is –’ He carefully held up the smartphone Gabriel had left him. There were two wires sticking out of the bottom, stripped from the end of a USB cable that wound down to the laptop which was resting on a table by Gabriel’s bed. Athanasius touched the screen of the phone and it lit up.
Gabriel smiled. ‘You did that?’
‘I did.’ Another man stepped into view from the end of the bed. He was clean-shaven beneath his surgical mask, and wore the dark surplice of a priest.
‘This is Father Thomas,’ Athanasius explained, ‘chief architect of all the modern improvements within the mountain and someone who knows more about electronics than I could ever hope to.’
‘It was quite simple really,’ Thomas said, taking the phone from Athanasius. ‘Just a question of reverse engineering the phone and working out which of the contacts in the docking slot connected to the battery. It’s been on charge for almost an hour now.’
‘How long have I been out?’
‘About three hours,’ Athanasius replied. ‘Dr Kaplan said it was a natural reaction after what your body’s been through. They got enough blood though, so they’ve been running tests all the while you’ve been asleep.’
‘Great. Do you want to loosen my bindings so I can send a message?’
Athanasius and Father Thomas exchanged a look. ‘I’m afraid Dr Kaplan advised that you remain restrained, just for the time being. You are obviously still at risk from fits, which might be a danger both to you and others. If you tell me, or rather Father Thomas what to do then we can send the message for you.’
Gabriel closed his eyes and felt tears of frustration pricking the backs of them. He hated feeling like this, so powerless and weak.
‘Find the menu,’ he said, ‘then scroll through the call log until you find one from an Inspector Arkadian.’
‘Got it,’ Thomas said.
‘OK, create a new message and then put –’ he paused as he considered what to say. So much time had passed since he’d last seen Arkadian at the base of the Citadel, so much had happened it was hard to know where to start.
‘Just put “Surprise! I’m not dead. I need the photos I sent you of the Starmap. Hope to see you very soon. Gabriel.”’ Thomas typed it then read it back. ‘You have a signal?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then press “Send” and let’s hope to God he’s got his phone with him.’
68
The phone buzzed in Arkadian’s pocket but he barely noticed it. He was walking fast, the effort of it making him hot inside his contamination suit. St Mark’s was up ahead, the quarantine signs fixed on the outside of the windows, the suited armed guards outside. The churches were being used as general clearing-houses for the infected in all four quarters. Any new cases were brought here to be transported into the Old Town and ultimately the Citadel but they were mainly being used as isolation areas for the observation of high-risk individuals, people whose jobs had brought them into contact with others – which is why Madalina had been brought here.
He pointed to his badge as he reached the main door and the guard stepped aside. He had prayed on the way over that his sudden summons would prove to be nothing, just a scare or a misunderstanding. But now he was here he knew it was as bad as he had feared. He could hear the noise already coming from inside the building: the sound of suffering, the howl of the Lamentation.
He pulled on the heavy door and the noise spilled out onto the street like a physical thing. It was inhuman, terrifying, and all the more so because he knew his wife was in here somewhere. He looked for her in the crowd of frightened faces that turned his way as he entered but she was not among them. There was a separate area to one side of the altar, a private chapel with a lock on its door. This was where the noise was coming from. He moved through the parting crowd and through the door – and there she was.
She looked like she was sleeping but he knew she would have been sedated. Her skin shone with fever and her eyes moved behind lids that were already showing the first blisters. And she was tied fast to the bed. He could see her hands moving rhythmically, despite her drugged state, her fingernails scratching at the one piece of flesh they could reach.
A doctor turned to him, his eyes dropping to the ID badge fixed to the front of his suit. He stepped back from the bed, realizing who he was, and Arkadian took his place by his wife’s bed. He laid his hand on hers but the mechanical scratching carried on.
‘We’re just preparing them for transfer to the Citadel,’ the doctor said.
‘I can look after her,’ he said, ‘I can take her home.’ He had spoken to her only a few hours ago. This couldn’t be happening.
‘All new cases have to move to the Citadel,’ the doctor said, ‘you know that.’
Arkadian had had so many of these conversations with husbands, wives, sons and daughters that it was odd being on the other end of one. It all felt wrong. He had always felt great sympathy for the people he’d had to comfort but now he had become one of them he realized he hadn’t understood how they’d felt at all. All words about how they would be better cared for in the mountain meant nothing when you were saying goodbye. And that’s what this was. No one had come out of the mountain yet – people only ever went in. And now his wife was about to become one of them.
The next half an hour unfolded in a nightmarish blur. First they moved her to one of the ambulances parked outside the church and he sat by her side, holding her hand a
nd talking softly to her as they bumped along the cobbled, serpentine streets of the Old Town and up to the embankment where the ascension platform waited. Usually the relatives had to say their goodbyes at the Old Town wall but a combination of his rank and his calm demeanour convinced the orderlies to let him travel with her right to the foot of the Citadel where he helped them move her stretchered bed out onto the platform and fix it in place next to the others ready to be hoisted into the mountain. But then his nerve gave out. In the end it took three men to pull him off the platform and they held him fast until the platform had risen up too far for him to reach it.
He sat on the floor and wept as he watched it rise higher, carrying his love away from him while in his pocket the phone continued to buzz. It occurred to him that all the messages he had ignored all morning because of the difficulty of extracting the phone from the suit might contain one from her. He slid his finger under the sealed flap in the seam of the suit and unzipped the side opening. His phone was warm from its long confinement and he felt like someone had ripped his heart out when he read the first message.
Come back. I can smell oranges. I’m scared. Mx
His wife had slipped into a fever alone while he’d been on the other side of the city. He blinked the tears away to stop his vision swimming and looked at the other messages. There were no more from her. The infection must have taken hold quickly, as it did with some people. The rest of the messages were from colleagues who had heard the news before he had and were trying to get hold of him. Then he saw the last one, a message from a ghost.
When he had said goodbye to Gabriel he had firmly believed he would see him again. But as the days and then weeks passed by, and the disease continued to spread into the wider city, and the steady flow of the infected continued into the mountain with no sign of anyone coming out, he had finally let go of that hope. He re-checked the message. Whoever had sent it was asking for the picture Gabriel had sent from the desert. Who else would know about that? It had to be him.