by A. G. Riddle
Murmurs went through the auditorium.
“The French and Greek governments have provided us with samples of the cure. Military jets flew those samples here two hours ago. As we speak, researchers are studying it in this building.”
Millen wondered if they were comparing it with the antibodies from Halima and the other villager, as well as the samples he’d brought back from Elim and Dhamiria.
“As you know, we’ve been preparing for the prospect of an armed conflict. Right now, survivors and likely survivors are staging here in Atlanta and other cordons. Here in this room, each of you needs to decide which side you’re on. If you’re going to help us secure this city, or if you want to join the Citium and attempt to overthrow the government.”
For the first time, Millen noticed the Marines at the front and rear exits.
“Think hard. Your decision may cost you your life.”
Chapter 95
On board the Red Cross plane, Desmond, William, Peyton, and Avery were debating where to land. At Aralsk-7, they’d had no choice: the airstrip was the only access to the island, and it was far enough away from the town and labs to be reasonably safe. But the single dirt runway in Australia was directly adjacent to the camp.
Their other options weren’t much more appealing, in Peyton’s opinion. Desmond wanted to land in a field, but was concerned that the struts supporting the landing gear might buckle, stranding them. Avery advocated landing on a road. They had consulted the map and identified several candidate sites, but William was wary: what if there were power lines, abandoned cars, mailboxes, and other items not on the satellite imagery?
Still, it seemed like the best option. They consulted the plane’s manual, discovered the width of the wheel track, and did the math: the wheels would fit on the roadway—just barely. They picked a location, did a flyover, and were satisfied the path was clear of obstacles.
Peyton buckled herself in and braced for the worst as her father lined up the plane and began descending. The wheels screeched on the pavement, and the entire plane vibrated as it slowed on the straight stretch of blacktop, the morning sun blazing through the windows. The back wheels veered into the dirt shoulder, but William quickly brought the plane back and slowed to a stop.
Avery and Desmond left to scout the camp and report back. From the plane’s doorway, Peyton watched them hike across the brown terrain, their body armor on, semi-automatic rifles slung across their shoulders. She didn’t like leaving Desmond alone with Avery—she still didn’t trust the woman.
As if sensing Peyton watching him, Desmond stopped and turned. A small smile crossed his lips when he saw her in the doorway.
“Mic check,” he said.
“Copy,” she replied. “Be careful.”
“Roger that.”
Peyton reminded them again to keep their distance from anyone who might not be infected.
When Desmond and Avery disappeared over the next hill, Peyton turned to her father. She had bandaged his leg as best she could and had inspected the other bruises and scrapes on his body, but he needed an X-ray—and a pain medication stronger than the ibuprofen she had given him. Those things would have to wait.
“I don’t trust her,” she said.
He was studying the folder from Aralsk-7, shuffling through the pages like he was counting a deck of playing cards.
“Neither do I.”
Two hundred yards from the camp, Desmond and Avery lay flat on their stomachs, taking turns using the binoculars.
What Desmond saw didn’t make sense. Healthy individuals, moving about. Kids going to school. Breakfast cooking on an open pit grill just outside a building with a concrete floor, metal poles at each corner, and a corrugated metal roof. People sat at rows of tables, eating. About half of them were aboriginals.
There was not a single sick person here. No personnel in PPE.
Was this the Citium’s test site? Were these people the lucky ones—the test group who had gotten the viable cure?
Desmond focused the binoculars on the largest building, which was also metal but was enclosed on all sides and had a small loading dock on the back. A sign above a roll-up door read: SARA. Below it were two lines of text: South Australia Relief Alliance and A Hand Up, Not a Handout.
The door was halfway up, and as Desmond watched, a woman with gray-streaked brown hair ducked under it and walked out onto the concrete loading dock. Spring was turning to summer here, and she was wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt that rippled in the early December wind.
Desmond focused the binoculars. His eyes went wide when he saw her face. She had aged some, but there was no mistaking who she was. He wracked his brain, trying to reason why and how she could be here—why the folder at the Citium lab would have led here.
He let the binoculars fall to the ground.
Avery sensed his unease. “What?” She took the binoculars, scanned the camp, searching for what had alarmed him. “What did you see, Des?”
He stood up.
She shifted to her side and stared up at him, aghast. “Get down.”
“Come on. We’re going to the camp.”
“Are you crazy? You’re just going to walk in there?”
“Yeah. This place isn’t what we think it is.”
Chapter 96
Desmond hiked across the field with Avery close behind him, making a beeline for the building to the right of the white tents.
Avery grabbed his arm. “Will you tell me what’s going on?”
“Not sure myself.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means there’s something going on here that I don’t understand. A piece is missing.”
He stared straight at the loading dock where the woman stood. She had seen them, had raised a hand to shade her eyes. She was calling to someone inside.
Back at the plane, William winced as Peyton taped the ankle again.
“Sorry,” she whispered.
“It’s okay. Just hurts a bit.”
He held up a page and studied the handwriting in the margin. He was sure of it now.
He picked up the handheld radio.
“Bravo, Tango, report.”
He released the button. But no response came.
As Desmond and Avery approached, the woman stepped down from the loading dock and walked across the gravel drive. She stopped where the field began, squinting, trying to see who they were. Desmond wondered if she would recognize him.
A man walked out of the building, came to her side, asked her something. She shook her head.
Avery unslung her rifle.
“Don’t do that,” Desmond said.
“This is creeping me out, Des. Tell me what’s going on.”
“I told you, I don’t know.”
The people eating at the tables under the open-air building had noticed them. Some stood, trying to get a glimpse of the two armor-clad figures approaching.
When they were thirty yards away, the man waded into the field. Desmond guessed he was in his late thirties. His long brown locks blowing in the wind reminded Desmond of a surfer.
When he spoke, his accent was Australian, his tone suspicious.
“Can I help you?”
Avery cut her eyes to Desmond.
“No, I don’t think so. But I think she can.”
He kept marching forward past the man, who hurried back to the woman. She stood still, showing no hint of nervousness or fear, only curiosity.
When he was ten yards from her, Desmond stopped and studied her face.
“Hello, Charlotte.”
William tried the radio again, and again there was no response. Peyton could tell he was getting more nervous by the second.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I’m not sure.”
He began assembling his body armor, getting ready.
“Are you going out there?”
“Yes—”
They both heard it at the same time: a truck engine, barreling over the hills.
Peyton stood, was about to move to the door, but her father caught her arm. “This is important, Peyton. If you recognize anyone at the camp, don’t say anything. Tell me first.”
She nodded. “Okay.”
She walked to the back of the plane to cough. The fever and chills were getting worse. She pulled her shirt up. The rash had advanced. On the top of her hand, where she had coughed, were tiny specks of blood. She wiped them on the underside of her shirt. She didn’t want her father, or Desmond, to know how sick she was.
A few minutes later, Desmond appeared at the plane’s door.
“It’s safe.”
“What did you find?” William asked.
“It’s… not what we thought. Come see for yourself.”
Chapter 97
They rode in an old Land Rover, Avery behind the wheel, Desmond beside her, facing the back seat, explaining what they’d found to Peyton and her father.
“It’s a relief camp. They take in anyone displaced by natural disasters: hurricanes, floods, drought, earthquakes. They take some folks who’ve just fallen on hard times, too. Their focus is getting people back on their feet.”
“Do you think they tested the cure here?” Peyton asked.
“I doubt it. You’ll see.”
“Do you know anyone there?” William asked.
Desmond cocked his head, surprised by the question. “I do. The woman running it. Charlotte. In 1983, my family passed away during the Ash Wednesday bushfires. Charlotte was one of the relief workers who helped in the aftermath. She… took care of me, helped find my uncle and get me to America.”
“Have you spoken with her since then?” William asked.
Desmond thought for a moment. “Not that I know of. But it’s possible.”
“Did she recognize you?”
“Yeah. She did.”
William stared out the window, the wheels turning in his head. “Interesting.”
The camp wasn’t high-tech. It was optimized to stretch every dollar to feed as many mouths and shelter as many lives as possible. The only advanced piece of medical equipment was an old X-ray machine, donated by the Royal Adelaide Hospital. Peyton insisted on using it on her father’s leg. He protested as he limped to the corrugated iron building, wincing every time his foot hit the ground.
“This really isn’t necessary, Peyton.”
“It really is, Dad.”
Desmond and Avery found Charlotte in her office, tapping at her cell phone. They kept their distance and made no physical contact. Peyton had expressed serious reservations about entering the camp at all—she still didn’t know how the virus was transmitted from person to person—but Desmond and William had argued that their need for information was more important than quarantine. They had to take some risks. Ultimately Peyton conceded, on the condition that the four of them remain in the building and avoid interacting with any camp residents other than Charlotte and her second-in-command.
Charlotte motioned them in, and Desmond and Avery sat across from her in a pair of ’70s-style wood and cloth chairs that had probably been salvaged from an old government building.
“Any luck?” he asked.
“No. Internet still routes to the AussieCordon website. I check twice a day to be sure.” She set the device aside. “Did you find your friends?”
Desmond nodded, told her about the X-ray.
“I’m glad we could help. It’s about all we have around here. Broken bones are by far the most common injury we see.” She paused. “And some burns.”
Desmond nodded. Seeing her, and hearing her words, brought back a flurry of memories. He could vividly remember lying in that elementary school, in the makeshift cubicle, her reading to him by lantern light. She had been a lighthouse in the darkness. He wondered what she was now, how she was involved.
“Did you get my letters?” she asked.
He raised his eyebrows.
A remorseful smile crossed Charlotte’s face, one that said a fear she had long held had just been confirmed. “After you left, I sent them every week. For maybe a year. Less frequently after that. Every month.”
Desmond imagined Orville staggering out to the mailbox, half-drunk, tossing them in the trash and telling the mailman not to deliver anything with Desmond’s name on it. “Boy don’t need no bleeding-heart woman making him any softer than he already is,” he would have said.
To Charlotte, Desmond replied, “My uncle was a complicated man. He wasn’t much for keeping in touch with folks. Or allowing me to.”
“I suspected you never got them. I thought about you a lot after you left, wondered how things turned out. Even thought about coming to America to visit.”
“I wish you had.”
“Was it terrible?”
“No. Not at all,” Desmond lied.
Charlotte seemed to see through it. She grew quiet, stared down at her desk.
“What about you?” he asked.
“Not much to tell.”
“I doubt that.”
She shook her head. “The alliance is my life. This work. These people.”
“You’re good at it. You changed my life.”
That made her smile.
“Did you ever get married?”
“No,” she said quietly. “I came close once.”
“That guy who was at the school?”
Charlotte thought a moment. “Oh. Him. No. That was not a close call.”
Avery was getting impatient. “I think we should talk about the reason we’re here.”
Desmond exhaled. “Right. Charlotte, we found this place because of supplies shipped here. We want to ask you about that. But first, I think I should give you some background.”
Peyton studied the X-ray of her father’s ankle, which showed no fractures.
“It’s just a sprain,” she said to him.
“I’m telling you, I’m perfectly fine.”
“Just try to stay off of it and it’ll heal up in a few weeks.”
“The world doesn’t have a few weeks.” He made to stand up, but she blocked his path and put her hands on her hips. He exhaled and sank back down.
Despite his continued protests, she used some of the supplies in the medical closet to make a proper splint.
When she was done, they walked down the corridor toward Charlotte’s office. Desmond’s voice drifted out into the hall. He was describing what they’d found in Kazakhstan at Aralsk-7.
Peyton pushed the door open.
The woman sitting behind the desk looked to be in her early fifties, with a slightly lined face and trim physique.
Peyton did a double take. She turned quickly, trying to hide her shock. “Sorry, I forgot something. Be right back.”
She grabbed her father’s arm, guided him back down the hall to the medical exam room, and shut the door.
“Peyton, I really am fine—”
“I know her.”
“What?”
“That woman. I recognize her. I can’t believe it.”
Chapter 98
When Peyton and her father returned to Charlotte’s office, Desmond was laying the folder on her desk.
“These are the shipping manifests we found in Kazakhstan.”
Charlotte scanned the pages. “They look accurate.”
“There was no sender name, just the shipping company.”
Charlotte was still reading through the pages. “They were paid for by the Zeno Foundation.”
The name caught Peyton’s interest. According to Avery’s story, Zeno was the Greek philosopher who had founded the Citium over two thousand years ago.
“What do you know about the foundation?” Desmond asked.
“Not much. They’re very generous. They had a website where I could request supplies, food, water, even money.”
“Who was your contact there?”
“Tanner Goodwyn.”
The name meant nothing to Peyton.
“Did they ever ask you to do anything—to conduct trials o
n experimental vaccines or medicines?”
Charlotte looked disturbed by the idea. “No. And I would have refused, no matter how badly we needed the help.”
The four of them questioned Charlotte at length, exploring a number of possible ways she might be tied to the outbreak, but found no common thread. As best they could tell, the Citium seemed to genuinely want to support her work.
“It’s possible that I sent the supplies,” Desmond said. “Though I don’t know why I would have done it in secret.”
“A good point,” William said. “Charlotte, I wonder if you’d excuse us for a moment.”
“Of course. I’ll just wait outside.”
When she closed the door behind her, William said, “We’re getting nowhere here. And we’re running out of time.”
“There’s still the location near here,” Desmond said. “My childhood home. The second backup from the Labyrinth Reality app.”
“I think it’s our next move.” William nodded to Avery. “The two of you should check it out. We’ll continue questioning Charlotte.”
Ten minutes later, Peyton, William, and Charlotte stood on the loading dock watching the Land Rover drive down the dusty dirt road that led out of the camp.
“Charlotte, could we trouble you with a few more questions?” William asked.
“Of course.” She held her arm out, motioning them back into her office.
William closed the door after they entered. “Perhaps learning more about you might help us understand how you’re connected.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Oh. All right then.”
“Desmond told us you were a relief worker in the early eighties.”
“I was. Well, I was at university then, but I volunteered as much as I could.”