Not just any man. It was Prabal, one of the people Kusum had gone to fetch.
He was limping, his right leg swinging carefully forward with each step. And running down the side of his face, a wash of blood.
__________
WHILE IT HAD been disturbing enough moving through the seemingly empty city with Sanjay, Kusum found it downright terrifying doing so on her own as she made her way back to the camp.
The quiet was the worst part. Here she was in Mumbai, one of the largest and busiest cities in the world, yet there wasn’t the sound of a motor, the cry of a child, the laugh of an adult. There was no music, either, something that been such an integrated part of the background noise that she noticed the lack of it now more than she’d ever noticed its presence.
Sticking to smaller streets and pathways, she was easily able to avoid the soldiers, seeing only a single group of three near the site of an old market. She hoped the same would be true when she and the others headed back to Sanjay.
The camp was set up in the courtyard of a small factory that had made and repaired furniture. Semi-organized piles of chair legs and tabletops and bed frames took up much of the courtyard space, but there was still plenty of room for Kusum’s and Sanjay’s friends to spread out. The best feature of the place was that it allowed them to hide from view if anyone passed by on one of the surrounding streets, while still having open air above them. If they needed shelter, there was plenty of that inside.
Kusum entered through a back door that led into a basement, where she took the stairs up into the main workshop. Along the interior wall was a large door that could be opened onto the courtyard, but whoever had left the business last had shut it and locked it in place—a hopeful act that he or she would return. She exited through the smaller door on the right and stepped into the outdoor space.
“Stop.” The voice was low, the tone commanding.
“It is only me,” Kusum said.
“Kusum?”
“Yes.”
Darshana stepped from the shadows behind a stack of wooden planks, in her hand an iron rod. After she could see it was indeed Kusum, she lowered her weapon.
“Sorry, I did not realize it was you,” she said.
“Never be sorry for this,” Kusum said. “I could have been anyone. I would have been surprised if you had not greeted me like this.”
Darshana tried to maintain a neutral expression, but Kusum thought she saw a flash of pride cross her friend’s face. Though they were about the same age, Darshana and the rest of their survival group considered Kusum and Sanjay to be their leaders, and looked up to them more than Kusum thought they should.
“The others?” Kusum asked.
“Sleeping.”
“We must get them up. I need you all to come with me.”
“This way.”
Darshana led Kusum around the piles of wood and metal to the open area where Prabal and Arjun were stretched out on thin blankets.
“Wake up,” Darshana said, shaking first Arjun’s shoulder then Prabal’s. “Come on. Wake up. We need to go.”
Prabal rolled onto his back with a groan. “What?” he asked, his eyes struggling to open.
“Kusum is here. She needs us to go with her.”
Arjun raised himself on an elbow. “Kusum?” He looked around as if he didn’t quite understand, and then his gaze fell on Kusum. “Oh. Oh, Kusum.” He sat all the way up. “I am sorry. I am…um…still…”
“It’s okay,” Kusum said. “Please get up and gather your things.”
Arjun immediately began rolling up his blanket.
“What’s going on?” Prabal asked, slowly sitting up.
“I need you all to come with me,” Kusum said. “We found something and we might need your help.”
“What did you find?”
Darshana shoved Prabal in the back. “You don’t need to ask what. If Kusum needs us to go with her, we go.”
“Of course, we go,” Prabal said. “I was just wondering what we were going to. It was only a question.”
“It is a stupid question,” Darshana said. “We will find out when we get there.”
As Prabal rose to his feet, he said, “It is not a stupid question. It is simply a question. Who are you to—”
“Please,” Kusum said. “There is no need for this. Nothing is a secret here. We are going to a place close to the so-called UN survival station.”
Prabal shot a see-it-wasn’t-stupid look at Darshana.
“So-called?” Arjun said. “So it is not what they are saying?”
Kusum shook her head. “It does not look like it. Many of the people there are the same ones who were in charge of distributing the disease throughout the city.”
“Are you serious?”
“It is even worse than that,” she said.
“How worse?” Prabal asked.
“Survivors are coming in and being locked in holding areas.”
“You have seen this?” Arjun asked.
“Yes. Not too long before I left, a group of four women arrived. Thirty minutes later they were led to one of the holding areas.”
“What is going to happen to them?” Prabal asked.
“No way to know for sure, but I cannot imagine it is good.” She let this sink in for a moment, then said, “We need to go. There may be nothing we can do, but if there is, we need to be in a position where we can help them.”
Darshana, clearly not needing to hear more, started repacking her bag. Within seconds, Arjun and Prabal were doing the same.
As they headed through the building, Kusum said, “Keep conversations to a minimum. There are soldiers patrolling the city. They will be dressed in UN uniforms, but I do not think they are really from the UN. We need to consider them dangerous.”
“Perhaps we should leave all of this alone and go back to the school,” Prabal suggested.
“If you want to return to the school, you can,” Kusum said. She looked at the others. “Any of you can. But Sanjay and I will not leave these people in danger if there is a chance we can stop it.”
“Do not worry,” Darshana said, shooting a look at Prabal. “We are all coming with you.”
“I was not saying I would not come,” Prabal said. “It was merely a suggestion.”
“Maybe you should keep your suggestion in your head,” Darshana said.
“If anyone else has something to suggest, say it now,” Kusum told them. “Once we go, you need to be quiet.”
When no one spoke up, she led them out of the factory onto the street. From there, she kept to the same route she’d used on her trip to the camp.
She could tell the silent city was having its effect on the others. The looks on their faces were often wide eyed and shocked, as if this couldn’t really be Mumbai but perhaps a replica or a movie set they had somehow wandered onto.
Their path took them through a dense residential section that had once been teaming with life, each place they passed no longer a home but a tomb.
“Please tell me we don’t have to walk through something like that again,” Prabal said, after they came out the other side.
Darshana twisted around and shushed him.
“No more like that,” Kusum whispered. “But we are getting close now, so we need to be extra careful.”
She led them down the street, keeping them tight to the buildings.
The roar of the motor seemed to come out of nowhere—one moment silence, the next a car engine revving to life only two blocks away. Kusum jammed to a stop, and pressed up against the shop they were passing. The others followed suit. Down the street, headlights popped on, pointing in their direction.
She glanced back the way they’d come. The businesses lining the street were smashed together, in a continuous wall with no breaks between them for at least a hundred meters. No way she and the others could make it down and around the end without being seen. Most of the entrances to the stores were flush with the wall, providing no place to hide.
Swinging her gaze back
around, she focused on the cars parked at the curb only a few feet away.
“Down,” she said, pointing at the ground near the vehicles.
As they ducked behind the cars, she was sure it was too late. The car with the headlights was already heading in their direction. She could almost feel the light touch her skin.
“Listen,” she said quickly, and gave them an address. “That is the building we are supposed to meet Sanjay in. Third-floor apartment, number sixteen. Say it back to me.” They each did. “If we have to split up, go there.”
From the increasing growl of the vehicle’s engine, she knew it was almost abreast of them. For a second, she thought maybe their luck would hold and the car would drive by, but a squeal of brakes and a drop in RPMs told her the problem was not going away so easily.
A clomp, clomp, clomp of feet hitting the road, but no sound of doors opening. Strange.
“Please come out,” a male voice said. “We know you’re there. We are here to help you, not hurt you.”
Kusum looked back at her three friends and mouthed, “When I say run, run.”
They stared back at her, all three looking as scared as anyone Kusum had ever seen.
“It will be okay,” she whispered.
“Come out now, please. If you are ill, we can treat you. If you are not ill, we can vaccinate you so that you will stay that way. We’re here to help.”
Kusum could see a question forming in Prabal’s eyes, that perhaps whoever was out there was not as evil as Kusum and Sanjay thought they were.
“Stay down,” she whispered, emphasizing her words by patting her hand against the air.
When she felt confident they would do as she said, she stood up.
“I’m here,” she said.
Three armed soldiers stood in front of a roofless Jeep, the barrels of their rifles pointed at the ground.
“There were others with you,” the nearest soldier said. From the sound of his voice, she knew he was the same one who’d called out a moment before.
“No. Only me.”
“I saw others.” He started walking toward her.
Kusum moved around the car and onto the street. “I’m the only one here.”
She could see hesitation in his eyes, and knew he wasn’t sure if he’d really seen anyone else.
“It would be a mistake to lie,” he said. “We’re only here to help.”
Trying to sound both desperate and relieved, she said, “You are the first people—I mean, living people—I have seen in three days. Tell me, do you really have a vaccine for the flu?”
“Yes. It’s back at the survival station.”
“I did not think it was possible.”
“If you’ll come with us, we’ll take you there,” he said.
The last thing she wanted to do was get into the Jeep with them, but she didn’t see how she had a choice. She was sure if she said no, they would force her to come anyway, and they’d probably search around the car to make sure she hadn’t been lying. The only way to save Darshana, Arjun, and Prabal was to sacrifice herself.
She donned a relieved smile, and parted her lips to say, “Yes, thank you,” but the words never left her mouth.
__________
PRABAL KNEW HE was probably about to die. The men standing in the street were surely armed, and if what Kusum said was true, then the men would consider it no big deal to kill four more people after they’d already murdered millions, maybe even billions.
“Stay down,” Kusum whispered.
Stay down? Of course, he was going to stay down. Standing up would be suicide, would be—
—exactly what Kusum was doing.
No! For a second he wasn’t sure if he’d only thought it or said it out loud. He knew Kusum whispered something more, but he didn’t hear what it was. In fact, he was having a hard time hearing anything other than the blood rushing past his ears.
Kusum, not content to make herself merely a stationary target, moved around the front of the parked car and out into the street where the men were. Again Prabal wanted to shout, “No!” as the voices of Kusum and the man who’d called out to them mixed together into an incoherent drone in Prabal’s head.
You have to get out of here. You have to get out of here.
He tried to concentrate, to hear what was going on, but the warning booming through his mind was too loud.
You have to get out of here!
A hand clamped down on his shoulder. He jerked, thinking one of the men had sneaked up behind him, but it was Darshana. She was holding a finger to her lips, her face tense.
What did she mean? He wasn’t making any noise. He’d be the last to make any noise.
You have to get out of here!
The voice was right. No matter how quiet he kept, the soldiers—they had to be soldiers, right?—were going to find him.
You have to get out of here! You have to get away!
Yes, away.
Now!
He ripped Darshana’s hand from his shoulder, jumped to his feet, and began to run.
“Hey! You! Stop!”
Prabal didn’t hear that, either, but it wasn’t the blood in his ears that was masking the shouted words. It was the sound of his own scream.
__________
THE YELL SURPRISED Kusum as much as the soldiers. Instinctively, she glanced over her shoulder.
Prabal was racing down the sidewalk away from them. Why he hadn’t stayed hidden, she didn’t know, but at the moment the answer was unimportant.
“Run!” she shouted. “Run!”
As soon as she saw Arjun and Darshana jump to their feet and take off, Kusum whipped around and started to run in the opposite direction.
“Stop them!” the main soldier yelled to his colleagues, pointing after Darshana, Arjun, and Prabal. Instead of going with them, though, he headed after Kusum.
Putting her head down, she sprinted to the next intersection and turned left, away from the survival station site.
“Where are you going?” the soldier yelled, still behind her. “We’re here to help!”
If they had really been there to help, Kusum was sure that instead of chasing her and her friends, they would have remained by their Jeep, dumbfounded that anyone would flee their assistance.
The soldier must have realized the same thing, because he gave up the argument after another try, and focused his efforts on cutting the distance between them. Though Kusum was young, in good shape, and a better-than-average runner, she knew if she couldn’t shake him quickly, his better stamina would win out.
The slums were the answer. All she had to do was race into the maze of cobbled-together homes and she could lose her pursuer. Unless her sense of direction was completely off, it would be to her left.
As she took the next corner, she heard the man’s voice again, but it wasn’t loud enough for her to make out his words.
Forget about him. Just run!
__________
PRABAL DIDN’T REALIZE he’d been screaming until he turned onto the empty block and heard his own voice. He cut off the sound so abruptly that he swallowed spit down the wrong tube, and fell into a coughing fit until he was finally able to breathe halfway normally again.
The spasm had slowed his pace and caused him to momentarily forget why he was running at all—a reality that came rushing back in a flash as Arjun suddenly sped past.
“Keep going!” Arjun said. “They are right behind us.”
Prabal took off after his friend.
“Darshana…Kusum…where are they?” he asked between breaths.
“Do not know,” Arjun said. “Thought Darshana was behind me.”
Prabal checked over his shoulder. No Darshana, but the two soldiers were a ways back, running after them.
“We have to hurry,” he said. “They are only—”
Prabal’s foot plunged into a basketball-sized pothole, his shin slamming into the side of the ripped asphalt, spilling him to the ground. While his chest and shoulder took the
brunt of the impact, his forehead knocked against the pavement, opening a cut above his right eye.
Hands grabbed him under his arms and tried to pull him up.
“We have to keep going,” Arjun said.
On his feet again, Prabal took a step and nearly fell back to the ground, the ankle that had gone into the hole howling in pain. Seeing his condition, Arjun tucked himself under Prabal’s arm and swung his own around his friend’s shoulder.
“As fast as you can,” he said.
With Arjun’s assistance, Prabal hobbled forward, but they both knew there was no way they would outdistance the soldiers now.
Arjun looked around, then said, “Over here.”
He helped Prabal into an alley just wide enough for a car to pass through. About twenty feet in was a pile of rubbish—bags and loose trash and who knew what else.
“Hide in there,” Arjun said, nodding at the waste.
“What?”
“Just hide. I will lead them away, then come back for you after I lose them.”
The idea of crawling into the trash disgusted Prabal, but he didn’t see how he had any other choice.
Arjun half carried him to the pile. “You can do it yourself, yes?”
“I think so.”
“Good. Stay quiet. I will be back.”
Before Prabal could say anything, Arjun took off down the alley.
Knowing he had very little time, Prabal dropped painfully to the ground and pulled several big pieces of trash on top of him. When he heard the soldiers’ footsteps right around the corner, he stopped moving, hoping he was covered enough.
A particularly strong wave of pain rushed up his leg as the soldiers entered the alley. He gritted his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut to fight off the sensation. As the throbbing subsided, he realized that while he could still hear the men’s running footsteps, they were already past the rubbish pile, fading away.
They hadn’t seen him.
He was safe.
He wouldn’t be taken away.
He wouldn’t be killed.
He wanted to fling the debris off then and there, but what if the soldiers came back this way? Best, he thought, to stay as he was until Arjun returned, no matter how unpleasant the smell.
Between bouts of stinging pain, he listened as best he could for any approaching noise. For the longest time there was nothing, and then somewhere down the alley he heard something scratch or, maybe, tap the ground. He’d almost convinced himself it was just the breeze when he realized it was getting close.
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