Bouthain woke up with a start when his ears popped, but he knew exactly where he was. No need to rub his eyes or groggily reorient himself: he saw that they’d managed to leave the city and were now climbing up into the mountains, ascending slowly and, yard by yard, making painstaking progress through the western pass, halfway to Semitia. Sometimes they skidded this way or that, but Mañalac regained control quickly each time the ambulance lost traction.
“Good morning, boss,” said Mañalac.
Bouthain smiled for the first time. “Was I out for long?”
“Only a few hours. You kept talking in your sleep. Not like those two in back. They haven’t made a sound.”
The windows of the ambulance were coated in layers of dust, but when he craned his neck to look back, Bouthain could see the orange mass of the dust storm had completely enveloped Green City behind them. He breathed out in relief. Nobody could come after them now: Reuben Faro would be stuck there until the next day. With a clear road and open skies ahead of them, they could be in Semitia by evening.
“What did I say?” asked Bouthain curiously.
“Don’t know, boss. Strange things. About the war, a man with no leg. Your patient?”
“I saw many men without legs, Mañalac,” said Bouthain. “And arms. War’s got a strange way of making you lose your limbs for no reason.”
Mañalac knew better than to say anything. He drove on in silence while Bouthain continued to observe the road closely. He’d often come here for picnics with his family as a child. His parents brought food and drink, and they perched themselves on the edge of the cliff, legs dangling, watching the mountain hawks circling higher and higher through thin, dry air, the sky separated into bands of blue, bluer, bluest strips in the fine, crisp light, the sun shining through the peaks, stinging his eyes.
He’d loved these mountain passes and higher elevations, savored cooler weather in the hot summer months. The barren rocks dotted with scrub brush and the occasional sturdy date tree had drawn him in with their wild stubborn beauty, as had the endless pulsing skies and the deep gorges into which you could throw a shout and a hundred echoes would come back to you. Even as a young boy he’d recognized the mountains as a place where a man knew who he was, without having to be told by anyone whom to obey or what to believe.
It was strange to no longer hear that howling wind, or strain to see what was in front of them. The road was open, the ambulance engine humming powerfully. Soon, Bouthain thought it might even be safe enough to stop the vehicle so he could check on Sabine and Julien. He had no real way of calculating exactly when they might wake—the drug worked differently on everyone—but he wanted to take their vitals and at least make sure they were not in any respiratory distress.
Mañalac slowed the ambulance down, then brought it to a halt. Bouthain cocked his head quizzically; had the man read his mind? But he could see that something was wrong, very wrong. Mañalac wasn’t looking at him, but at the display on the dashboard, where the rear camera showed two black cars stopped behind them, and a group of men standing in the road, holding guns.
Bouthain waited for shouting, pounding on the doors, or a volley of gunfire. If they were dragged out, a single gunshot would put an end to any misery for himself and Mañalac. But what would happen to Julien and Sabine?
“I’m sorry, Mañalac,” he breathed, as his door was wrenched open with a clatter.
“Come on out, Rami.”
Bouthain recognized the voice before he saw Reuben Faro: a low baritone, rumbling with a mix of authority and displeasure. The other men, Reuben’s guards, stood at a distance; only Faro waited nearby as they slowly emerged from the ambulance. Bouthain’s knees almost gave way but he refused to stumble in front of Faro, or to hold on to the door to steady himself. His leg muscles spasmed and ached as they came back to life after the long hours of cramping in his seat.
“Reuben Faro.”
Faro said, “It’s been a long time, Rami.” He was bigger and more menacing than Bouthain remembered him. He’d put on weight and muscle; he was in exceptionally good shape for a man his age. He’d grown a beard, and there was white in it and in his hair, but he was still a man in his prime, stronger and faster and younger than Bouthain.
“Indeed,” said Bouthain. “Is all of this really necessary?” He nodded at the guards, the vehicles, the guns. “You could just let us go.”
“You know I can’t do that. Come on, open up. I want to see who you’re hiding in there.”
Bouthain nodded at Mañalac, who was trembling beside him, his eyes glued to the raised guns held by Reuben’s guards. Mañalac walked slowly to the back of the ambulance, fumbling with the doors. Faro didn’t prod him, or shout at him to hurry, as Bouthain might have expected. He stood easily; there was no use running, or trying to fight him. No point, either, in pretending that neither of them knew what cargo was contained within the ambulance.
Finally Mañalac unlocked and opened the doors, and they slid open easily on their tracks, showing the two bodies entombed within.
Bouthain spoke calmly: “She died early in the morning.”
“Why is she in full quarantine?”
“She was Virus positive. We found out when we did her blood tests. She was entering the acute phase, which triggered the organ failure. It happens like that: they go down fast. Even the young ones. And the strong ones. It’s an ugly way to go. We have to mop up the floors afterwards, there’s that much blood.” Bouthain spun out his tale for the man, adding unnecessary details. Ordinary men were terrified of the Virus, but Reuben hardly blinked.
“And who’s in the second pod? Another one? Get them both open. You, Bouthain, not him.”
Bouthain climbed up into the ambulance, opened the first pod, then the second. He beckoned Faro to follow him inside. When Faro crouched beside him, Bouthain gently moved aside the wrapping over Sabine’s face, not knowing what he would see, terrified that it would divulge all.
To his profound relief, she was still and pale, frozen still, not a hair moving, not even an eyelash. Bouthain could hear Faro exhaling harshly in the semidarkness. Without waiting for a response, he uncovered Julien’s face more quickly. “It’s Dr. Asfour.”
“Dr. Asfour? Julien Asfour?” Bouthain could hear Faro’s heavy, ragged breathing. “What happened to him?”
“He committed suicide. We found his body inside his office.” Bouthain’s voice was dry as tonic water.
Reuben looked puzzled. “Why did he do it?”
Bouthain thought fast; he had to make the explanation as plausible as possible. “Shifana doesn’t really like it when staff members kill themselves. Orders are to dispose of their bodies as quickly as possible. Between you and me, I think he got too close to the girl. He wanted to help her. Love-struck. The poor fool.” He thinned his lips disapprovingly, hoping his words and demeanor were convincing Faro. “Then he realized he’d made the wrong choice, and the consequences for his career... well, he was a driven man. He couldn’t handle the idea that he’d engineered his own failure, I suppose.”
“Pity,” said Faro. “I liked him. Oh well. Sometimes they crack under pressure. It wouldn’t be the first time. So how did he do it?”
“Poison,” was Bouthain’s laconic reply.
“Messy. Does his family know?”
“They’ll be told it was an accident. Something happened in the lab, something that necessitated quarantine for him too. We don’t want to underscore his weakness, do we?” Bouthain was gambling now that Faro wouldn’t ask too many questions about the medical side of things. He knew that Faro had reached a breaking point, that he could no longer keep up the elaborate ruse of his secret alliance with the Panah. He’d want to move things along quickly. But when men broke, the results were ugly; they would destroy anything around them as they came undone.
“Wait, wait, Reuben, what are you doing?”
I
t wasn’t easy for the larger man to maneuver around inside the tight confines of the ambulance, but Bouthain had no space himself to reach forward and prevent him from thrusting his face near Sabine to peer closely at her body.
“Faro, be careful...” said Bouthain. “The Virus is not a joke. You wouldn’t want to become a carrier.”
“I’ll take my chances,” said Reuben Faro.
If Sabine were awake, she’d tremble violently at the nearness of the man. Bouthain had noticed her doing it whenever they touched her at Shifana—trauma, no doubt, from her bad experiences with the men she’d encountered. He watched Reuben pondering her body, fearing that something would give her away, a twitch of her lips, the involuntary creasing of her forehead, a moan. He’d have to distract him somehow. “Faro. This isn’t protocol. It’s not safe. Leave it alone, now. Even if you don’t care about your own health, I’m responsible for it. I’ll have to answer for it if you end up infected.”
Faro chuckled, a soft, low sound: Bouthain and his protocols were of no importance to him. He reached inside the pod and pulled apart the rest of the polymer covering, then unfolded the cotton cloth around Sabine, exposing her entire body to his examination.
Reuben held his hand over Sabine’s mouth and nose. “She’s not breathing.”
“Have you forgotten the rules of science? They may no longer apply to you, but they still apply to other people,” Bouthain said with surprising harshness. “The dead don’t breathe. No, Faro, don’t touch her.”
But Faro’s fingers were already touching her face, strong and firm, finding coldness where he was expecting warmth. Then he lowered his fingers to her neck, pressing her throat in search of her pulse. Bouthain knew it would be too thready for anyone but an experienced physician to detect.
“Sabine? Are you awake?” said Faro.He turned back to Bouthain.
Bouthain glanced at his watch. “It’s been six hours. Rigor mortis has come and gone. In another hour, she’ll start to decompose. We have to get her to crematorium before that happens You, on the other hand, must go straight to quarantine; you’ll infect other people if you don’t.”
But Faro ignored him, murmuring to her in a voice that was soft yet urgent. “Wake up, Sabine. Wake up!” His fingers were still lying lightly on Sabine’s neck. Would he reach around with both hands until they encircled her throat, and squeeze tight? Bouthain felt himself go numb.
At last Faro removed his fingers from Sabine’s throat. He took out his device, turned on the camera, and aimed it at Sabine’s face. The device let out a small beep, and then he was backing away, straightening himself with caution, as if moving too fast caused him pain. Finally at some distance, Faro rested his hands on his hips, arms bent sharply at his elbows, shoulders squared. His eyes, dark and watchful, looked wet and he was blinking hard. Bouthain pitied him. Faro was no monster; he was a man trapped in a life that promised him absolute power but in return had stripped him of everything good and honorable. The Agency had taken a man who might have been a kind husband, a loving father, and turned everyone who might have loved him into his enemy. Maybe this was just the moment to appeal to his better sense. Or his mercy, if he had any left. “So if everything’s in order, we’ll be on our way,” said Bouthain. “All right, Faro? Mañalac, let’s go.”
Faro pursed his lips and shook his head. “Not so fast.”
“What’s the problem?”
Faro’s eyes had hardened; his glance was a sharp knife. “Tell me, Rami. Why have you come all the way here with two corpses and a nurse, in a quarantine ambulance? Don’t you have more important things to do at the hospital right now?”
“Well, I...” Bouthain spoke carefully, slowly, as if testing each word for its viability before releasing it. He dared not look at Mañalac now. “Well, to tell you the truth, this is a very personal journey for me.”
“How so?”
“Dr. Asfour... Julien. I was very fond of him. And wanted to see him off myself.”
“So he was your friend?” Faro’s voice was gentle with understanding. Then it grew brutal. “Or was it something more between the two of you?” The insinuation that there was something illicit between Bouthain and Julien hung in the air like the dust motes surrounding them, the remnants of the storm’s passage from the mountains down to Green City, miles away. The rules of Green City were equally far from them; distance made its diktats appear weak and watered-down.
“I’m too old for that sort of thing, Reuben. That might be hard for you to imagine. But he was my star pupil. He had so much promise. And now he’s dead. So can you give him some dignity here?”
“I wish I could do that,” said Faro. “But I can’t. My superiors already know a woman has broken cover, emerged from underground. She’s dead now, so there’s nothing to be done about that. But someone has to answer for everything that happened at the hospital. Frankly, about Dr. Asfour’s suicide, well, your explanation sounds flimsy. I’m sure there’s a better one you can give me instead. I wish you’d called me, Rami, I really do. I could have helped. We could at least have saved Dr. Asfour, you and I. Anyway, this is the end for you. You won’t go any farther.”
“But what about their bodies?” said Bouthain. “We can’t just leave them here.” His voice cracked. He had finally run out of ideas.
“Why not?” said Reuben Faro. In his voice Bouthain heard a shrugging of shoulders, a spread of hands upturned to indicate his vast indifference to their fate. Of course he and Mañalac were already dead to Faro. If he’d seen through their ruse, leaving Sabine and Julien in the middle of this wilderness would be a fitting punishment for their crime. Either way, they’d die here soon enough, unable to move towards food or water, no one to care for them as they came out of their drug-induced stupor. Faro could pretend to find their bodies later and denounce them, posthumously, as traitors.
Mañalac darted forward suddenly, turning and running for cover behind the ambulance. A shot rang out from the distance and Mañalac dropped onto his hands and knees, blood trickling from his neck onto the ground. Before Bouthain could realize what had happened, the guards were swarming over Mañalac’s body, lifting it up and taking it back to their vehicles.
By instinct Bouthain began to walk, moving quickly, leading Faro away from the ambulance. There was no time to waste: nearly eight hours had passed since they’d left Shifana, and Sabine and Julien could wake at any moment. His own fate meant little now. Bouthain was a son of Green City; he knew what was going to happen to him as surely as he knew his own name. The Leaders had always made it clear how they dealt with disobedience: quickly, brutally, and without hesitation. So what if Faro was saving him for an underground cell in the Agency? Bouthain was not afraid; he had a pill in his pocket. He could swallow it at any time and put an end to all his struggles. As he walked away with Reuben Faro, there was nothing happening inside him, only a growing sense of calm, as if he were moving in a dream.
“Where do you think you’re going, Bouthain?” shouted Reuben Faro.
Sabine
My body is loose and amorphous. I have no sense of where I begin or end; I’m as pliant as seaweed floating in a gentle current. But something is touching me, stroking my neck. I’m tingling where the sensation moves, left and right, up and down. It’s ticklish. I want to giggle, yet I can’t make a sound.
“Sabine? Are you awake?”
The voice comes from far away, as if I’m underwater and someone’s calling me back to the surface. I can see ripples, spreading out in circles from where each syllable has dropped into the darkness. Then the words sink down to the bottom where I am, drifting, drifting...
“She’s blue...”
“It’s been... six hours...crematorium... quarantine...”
Someone’s fingers are digging into my throat. Someone is breathing into my face. It’s a man’s scent. Cigarettes and cologne.
The fingers lift from my throat. T
he words that come next are clearer, spoke in a soft whisper: “You were beautiful.”
I sense where I am a split second before my mind perceives it, just long enough to send a current of adrenaline into every inch of my skin, electrifying every nerve and cell. The covering over my face has been torn apart. The light against my eyelids is a warm red glow, after all these hours of being so tightly enclosed in the dark. My eyes won’t open.
There’s a sigh, and then a moment later, a little beep.
I can only tell he’s receded by the lessening of an invisible pressure near me, like clouds lifting after heavy rain. Space has opened up around me, but still I dare not peek into it, in case he’s still close and looking at me. Sensation returns to me, little by little, as I hear a shifting around and shuffling footsteps: the sound of someone, or two people, maneuvering themselves out.
I lie completely still, unsure if I’m still being watched. The voices that ensue are muffled but in a different way now: beyond a physical barrier, not a psychic one. Have they moved further away? They’re not fighting or arguing, but they sound tense and annoyed. Only now do I become aware that my back is drenched in sweat and that there’s an intense itching in my hands and feet.
The itching intensifies into a burning as I hear a popping sound, a metallic crack I’ve never heard before. There are frenzied footsteps falling, lots of them, and barked commands to move, move, move. Then a loud, hoarse shout:
“Where do you think you’re going, Bouthain?”
I start to tremble. I force myself to hold still until I can hear the sound of engines starting. I hang on until the vehicles have pulled away and everything has become quiet again, except for the soft whimpering that comes from somewhere deep and low inside me. My throat’s opened up enough to let sound out; does that mean Bouthain’s drug is wearing off now? Is it safe enough to get up from this position?
Black Diamond Fall Page 53