by Julie Rowe
“Can you stop it?”
“That is a matter of debate. Some physicians think you can prevent it if you know it’s coming, but most of the time you get no advance warning. You get no warning at all. Once it’s started, it’s almost impossible to reverse. The body has to survive the storm and hang on until the storm has played itself out. Most people don’t survive that long.”
“Is it like the SARS outbreak a few years ago?”
“Yes. Very much like that. It can kill anyone, no matter how healthy they are before they get sick. In fact, the healthier you are, the stronger the immune response is. So the strongest often die faster than someone whose immune system isn’t as healthy.”
Holy shit, this stuff was worse than she’d imagined. “So, there’s no way to help these people? No treatment?”
“If we had a vaccine for the specific flu strain, that would help prevent people from getting sick, but until we determine the exact variant, it’s unlikely that any vaccine we try would work. It would be like shooting at a target in the dark.”
“What’s our next move?”
“We start the other test. In the meantime, Bull, you contact the base and arrange to have food and medical supplies dropped.”
“Dropped?” Alicia asked. “Why not trucked in? We could evacuate some of the sick to hospitals.”
“Until I know which flu we have here, I don’t want a bunch more new people coming or leaving the community. If this is something new, which is likely because the flu mutates so rapidly it’s almost always different than the last time you’ve seen it, I may be recommending a quarantine of the area.”
“I’m on it,” Bull said, stepping out of the room and pulling out his satellite-connected radio.
No escape route meant keeping Max safe just got a lot harder.
Max began pulling out items from one duffel bag, quickly putting them together into a narrow work table. On it, he set other items that looked like some of the stuff she’d seen through the glass when he showed her his level-four lab.
“Tom,” Max said. “Were you finished putting IVs in?”
“No, I’ve got two people left.”
“Go ahead and get those started, then check on the first ones to see if their condition has improved any.”
“Okay. Can I have a few more pairs of gloves? These are my last ones.”
“In the duffel closest to the door.”
Tom stripped off his current pair, put a new pair on and took several more for his pockets.
“Son,” Max said in Arabic, looking right at Alicia, “could you bring some water from the well?” He glanced at the Sandwich and she knew what he wanted to do.
Test the water from the well. If it was contaminated this was going to turn into one giant clusterfuck. She could understand why he asked her to do it—she looked less threatening than Bull or Tom—but could she leave Max and be reasonably sure he’d stay safe?
The house was solid. Tom was playing nurse and none of these sick people had the ability to attack anyone.
She said, “Okay, but under protest,” in a suitably quiet tone, and walked to the kitchen. She found a bucket tucked into a nook in the wall.
She picked it up and left.
There were a number of people walking around, old men and women, at least a dozen children, and some men, but no healthy young adults.
With all these new people arriving suddenly and throwing up tents, were they hiding in their homes?
She hoped so, because it wasn’t just the living that were making an appearance on the streets. There were bodies, wrapped in cloth, lying outside some of the houses.
Ali hurried past them, careful to keep her scarf up over her mask so no one realized she had medical supplies no one else in this place seemed to own.
The well wasn’t far from the house where Max and her team worked, about a three minute walk. It was busy. Two women waited in a short line behind a third who was already using the well. Alicia got in line behind them.
They glanced at her, noted her rifle sticking out from under her poncho and stepped back. The woman using the well waved Alicia forward and instead of taking the water she’d scooped and hauled up, she put it in Alicia’s bucket.
These women were used to putting men first, even young men. Was it the rifle that made them think she was a guy?
After a nod of thanks, she began her walk back to the house. There were only a few people out, a few kids, two women and an old man. Not very many for midday. Had the news spread about the sickness? Were people staying home, hoping to avoid the sick?
She was two thirds of the way back to their quasi hospital when gunfire erupted behind her.
It had come from the area around the well. She hesitated. This wasn’t her fight, and she had a commitment to Max and her team. She’d taken a couple more steps when a man began yelling in Arabic, demanding to know where the Americans were.
Okay, maybe this was her fight.
A woman screamed, while another yelled back that they’d seen no Americans.
More shots echoed.
Extremists on the hunt for Americans were so not what they needed.
Alicia set her bucket on the ground against the outer wall of a house and walked stealthily back to the well.
She crouched down behind a crumbling stone wall that might have been a small pen for chickens at one time, to take a good look at what was going on.
Was it a small, disorganized group or a larger, disciplined one?
A half-dozen men in traditional garb stood over the bodies of two women prone on the ground and one woman who was kneeling.
One of the men yelled at the kneeling woman, again demanding she tell him where the Americans were, specifically the American doctor.
Max. The bounty.
The extremist screamed at the woman again and she fell on her face, crying. The son of a bitch was going to murder her too. Ali could see it in the way he’d shifted his body weight forward, as if he were about to attack her with his bare hands.
Alicia set the butt of her rifle into the hollow of her shoulder and settled into a kneeling shooting posture she could maintain for hours if she had to. She brought her head down and rested her chin on her knee.
The few people who had been between her and the well, blocking her shot, had disappeared. No one wanted to attract the attention of these men.
The woman wailed that she hadn’t seen any Americans, but that there were so many new people in the village, in the tents, that there could be foreigners anywhere.
The man punched the woman with a closed fist and she went down hard.
Alicia sighted down her rifle, a clear shot to the man’s head.
Scuffing noises in the dirt behind her and a breath of warm air fanning over the back of her neck told her she wasn’t alone. She turned just far enough to see two little boys, the oldest no more than six years old, hiding behind her watching the scene by the well with wide, frightened eyes.
Holy shit. She’d trained in every type of shooting condition but this one.
Could she kill a man with two little kids watching?
What was her escape plan?
Could she make it with two kids in tow?
Chapter Twelve
Movement in the street behind Alicia had her tucking the rifle out of sight between her and the wall of the house. She kept her head down as four or five men walked swiftly toward the six surrounding the well.
The two little boys shuffled closer to her, shaking and breathing hard. She wanted to look at them, find out if it was shock freezing them in place or if one of them was hurt, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the action unfolding in front of her.
“Are you okay?” she asked them softly in Arabic.
They didn’t answer. Fear he
ld all their attention. Fear and the murdered women on the ground next to the well.
The newcomers to the party halted about twenty feet away from the gunmen, yelling questions and demands to leave.
“What are you doing here?”
“Why did you kill these women?”
“You don’t belong here, go away.”
“There is already enough death here, take your guns and go.”
The leader of the gunmen shouted back, “We are looking for the Americans. The doctor. Give them to us and we’ll leave.”
“There are no Americans here. The French doctor is dead. She died last night. Killed by the same sickness that killed my son,” one man replied. “Can’t you see? This is a place of death now.”
“The Americans came a few hours ago,” the leader snarled. “We saw the helicopter. Where are they?”
“You are fools,” the same local man replied. “None of the helicopters stop here. No one has come here to help us. We’re all dying.”
The leader of the gunmen lifted his rifle and shot the local spokesman.
A woman screamed and everyone started shooting at everyone else.
Alicia kept her gaze on the leader of the gunmen as he ducked behind the well for cover. He was the worst kind of coward, the kind that attacked the weak so he could feel powerful.
That one needed to die.
As shots and return fire turned the area into a scene that could have come straight out of a spaghetti Western, Alicia narrowed her focus on her target. The sounds, shouts and movement around her disappeared as she mentally placed herself into a pocket of calm resolve.
She assumed her crouched shooting position, aimed and, when her target lifted his head to shoot, she squeezed the trigger.
His head snapped back and he crumpled to the ground.
Target down, she released her mind to take in the scene entirely again.
A bullet hit the stone wall a few inches above her head, raining debris down on her. She eased back from the corner of the house.
When she bumped into the boys, she urged them to back away as well. “We cannot stay here,” she said in Arabic. “Go, quick, quick.”
They just stared at her with wide and glassy eyes. Shock.
“Where is your mother?” she asked them.
The bigger one pointed at the well. “She’s lying on the ground over there.”
Shit, they’d probably witnessed their mother being murdered.
Several bullets hit the house, much too close to her and the kids.
Time to go.
“Come with me,” she said to them. “We’ll find somewhere safe.” She urged them to move away from the fight.
They blinked a couple of times, then scrabbled away, crouching as they ran. She followed, covering their backs with her own body. They made it past the next house, but shouting voices from scene of the fight told her that they may not have gotten away cleanly.
Alicia kept the boys moving with one hand while the other kept hold of her weapon. One of them tripped and fell, and she dropped her weapon to dangle by its strap so that she could grab him. She carried him a few feet before putting him down so he could run on his own again.
She glanced up as she moved to grab her rifle hanging underneath her poncho, and saw a man coming around the house in front of them, his rifle pointed right at her.
The boys froze and put their hands in the air. She followed their example. There was no way for her to get her rifle up before he could shoot her or one of the kids.
The man was one of the six from the well. One of the six looking for the Americans, and she didn’t think it was to ask for help.
“Who are you?” he asked in Arabic. “Answer me.” His shoulders were tense as was his grip on the rifle. He wouldn’t hesitate to shoot if he thought she was a threat.
“No one,” she answered, trying for a tone that might fit a teenaged boy. She nudged the children behind her, but that way wasn’t safe either. They had to get back to the hospital house to warn her team.
She moved toward him slowly. “Will you help us?” she asked, keeping the children pressed against her legs as she made to edge around him.
His shoulders relaxed the tiniest fraction and for a moment she thought he might let them go, but a second later, it was gone and the man’s face lost all emotion.
Decision made, he raised his weapon.
For the first time in her life, Alicia fully released the protective warrior at her core. There could be no mercy for a man who’d murder children.
A shout to someone who wasn’t there past his shoulder distracted him. He automatically glanced behind to evaluate the threat.
She launched herself toward the ground, rolling, grabbing a handful of dirt and throwing it at his face as he realized no threat existed and turned back to shoot her.
The dirt spoiled his aim and the shot went wide.
She came up inside his reach, thrusting the heel of her hand against his chin. Her blow knocked him back a step. She grabbed the rifle with one hand while the other hammered down on his wrist, breaking it.
She turned, elbowed him in the face and landed a mule kick to his right knee. The crunch of his kneecap shattering sounded oddly loud.
Something hot and wet scored her side. She completed her turn to find he’d drawn a knife with his left hand. He must have landed a hit, but it didn’t feel significant, so she ignored it.
She blocked his next thrust, and the next, then landed a hard punch against his temple.
He went down like a sack of rocks.
She turned and grabbed up the smallest boy with one arm while tugging on the hand of the larger one, and hurried down the street and away from the fight.
Five seconds passed, and no one shouted at them. A couple of men raced by them toward the well.
Ten seconds passed. The sounds of the battle receded and people peered out of doorways and windows to see what was going on.
Fifteen seconds passed. The hospital house was in sight.
A man called out and rushed toward her. Both boys wiggled out of her hold. She let them go and they ran toward the man, calling him father.
“Go, hide,” she said to him. “There are men with guns near the well.” She hurried on two houses further and into the hospital house to follow her own advice.
Except this was no place to hide. Everyone in the entire village knew where to take their sick. It was only a matter of minutes before the men at the well obtained that information and showed up.
Tom was observing the street through a gap in the canvas and his rifle’s scope. “What the fuck?” he asked as soon as she was inside the tent entryway.
“Six armed men showed up at the well right after I got my water. They shot two women, then beat another while asking where the Americans are.”
“We’re blown?”
“Completely. Watch for bogeys. We’ll probably have some incoming sooner rather than later.”
“Fuck.”
She left Tom to his lookout position and found Max in the room he’d taken over for his lab.
“What’s going on?” Max asked her. “I heard gunfire.”
“There’s an armed group looking for Americans. You. They shot a couple of women and some of the locals took exception to that. I killed a couple of the assholes looking for us, but there’re more out there, so we’re in trouble.” She looked at the lab equipment he had set up. “We need to leave. Find somewhere defensible to hole up.”
“If we leave now, I’ll have to start all over.”
“If we don’t leave now, we’re all going to die.”
“Well, when you put it that way...” He sighed. “Damned inconvenient of these people to show up now.”
“Should I ask them to reschedule for thr
ee days from now?”
He snorted. “I’d love to see the reactions to that question. Did you get some water?”
Not exactly. “I had to leave it behind to save a couple of kids.”
“I’ll accept that answer. Can you help me with this stuff?”
She grabbed his backpack and checked the contents. It looked like he hadn’t taken anything out of it. Good. She put it along the wall a few feet from the door, where it could be grabbed on the run.
The Sandwich was still out, so she got it back into its padded bag and shoved it into one of the duffels. He was fussing with the rest of the equipment. She glanced around, certain there was something she should be doing.
What was she missing?
“Where’s Bull?” she asked.
“He went out to call the base and arrange for a food and supply drop.” Max’s head came up and he paused in his packing. “Wait. He should be back by now.”
“Be ready to run,” Alicia told him calmly.
She trotted toward the front entry and met Tom coming in.
“We’ve got company,” he said, voice low. “At least four, armed with Russian rifles. Older models, but they look like they shoot just fine.”
“Shit. We need to go now.” Alicia turned around and ran back to grab Max’s backpack. “Max,” she said sharply.
He looked at her. “What?”
“Catch.” She threw the backpack at him, but he let it hit his chest.
“What the hell—”
“Now, Max,” she growled at him.
Tom raced past them both and attacked one of the windows. He broke the latch on it and shoved it open.
He climbed out of the window, with Max right behind. Alicia slipped out just as gunfire erupted at the front of the house.
What were they doing? Shooting the sick? Assholes.