by Ted Dekker
“Before? How could you have?”
“Roland.”
“Roland? But Roland was from the Horde.”
“Roland was Thomas, commander of the Forest Guard, who’d lost his way and contracted the disease. Naturally I was forced to lie to you.”
“You were Roland? I had the life of Thomas of Hunter in my hands? I should have slit your throat!”
“Then you would have foregone the pleasure of riding with me today.”
“Honestly, I was quite taken with Roland. I remember that.”
“If you had to do it over again, would you still slit my throat?” he asked.
She looked at the rolling shoulders of the horse beneath her. “Knowing what I know today, knowing that I would be in a position to blackmail my father, no.”
“Even knowing that I would go on to kill many of your warriors in the wars after that day?”
He made a good point. “Then yes, I’m sorry to say that I would have slit your throat.”
“Good. I love an honest woman.” They shared a smile.
He was so obvious. Thomas of Hunter, this famous warrior who rode beside her, meant to win her love.
By the time they reached the desert, she wasn’t sure that she didn’t have some feelings for him. He rode ahead to find Suzan once, and she felt surprisingly left out. Lonely. No, more than lonely, yearning for his company. And when he reappeared five minutes later wearing a silly grin, she felt relief.
“Did you miss me?” he asked.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Were you gone?” She immediately wanted to withdraw the tease. This time she did. “I was alone.”
When had all of this happened? In the library?
Suzan galloped toward them, waving her arm. Thomas pulled back on his horse. “She’s found something.”
“The Horde?”
“I don’t think so. Come on!” They rode out to meet her.
Suzan reined back, bright-eyed. “Johan is waiting with Mikil and Jamous. They must have sent William ahead with the others.”
“Where?”
“They have a camp in a canyon.” She pointed. “Two miles.”
Thomas looked at Chelise. “Excellent! It’s Martyn.”
“He’s here?”
“In the flesh.” Thomas spurred his horse. “Ride!”
Chelise was terrified by this sudden development—Thomas and Suzan were one thing, but the prospect of meeting more of the Circle didn’t sit well. And Martyn! Next to Thomas, there was no other name she’d grown to hate more.
She rode.
29
While Thomas slept in the White House at President Blair’s insistence, Kara was following an insistence of her own. She had no desire to sleep, no cause to dream. She’d only wanted one thing, and that was to understand the rash that had appeared under her arm.
Genetrix Laboratories had become Monique’s home. She slept on a cot in her office, and she ate what was left of the food in the cafeteria, although they hadn’t received a shipment in three days—the catering company had suspended operations. Didn’t matter. They had enough nonperishable foods to feed the five hundred technicians and scientists for at least two days. By then they would know if it was time to go home and start saying their good-byes or to hunker down for a last-ditch effort.
Monique examined Kara’s arm in silence. Kara watched her eyes—it was too bad that Thomas was so taken with this other woman in Mikil’s world. Chelise. The more time Kara spent with Monique, the more she decided the stiff-spined Frenchwoman was softer than she’d initially assumed. She and Thomas might make a good couple. Assuming both survived.
Monique’s eyes were no longer on the cut that had attracted her curiosity. She was scanning the rest of her arm.
“What is it?” Kara asked.
“Have you noticed rashes anywhere else? Your stomach or back, maybe?”
Kara stepped away. “It’s happening already?”
“On some, yes. No other rashes?”
“No. Not that I’ve noticed.”
On the other hand, now that she thought about it, her skin seemed to itch in a number of places.
“How long have you known?”
“A few hours,” Monique said.
Kara turned to her. “You?”
“No.”
“I thought we had another week! Who else?”
“There’ve been a number of reported cases in Bangkok. Theresa Sumner. The entire team who came to meet with Thomas a few weeks ago. Some in the Far East have reported having the rash as long as ten days. Our guess is that this would only occur among those whose systems are actively fighting the virus. The rash is evidence of the body’s resistance, though that doesn’t mean much.”
The revelation wasn’t as shocking as she’d thought it might be. In fact, it was a bit of a relief after so much mystery. Like finally knowing that the cancer you had was terminal after all. You were going to die in exactly thirty days. Live and prepare to die.
“How many?”
Monique shrugged. “Several thousand. Our initial estimations of the virus’s latency period were only that, estimates. We always knew it could come sooner. Now it appears to have done just that.”
They exchanged a long look. What more was there to say? “So unless we go through with this exchange with France and get the antivirus, we’re dead,” Kara said.
“So it appears.”
“The president knows?”
“Not yet. We’re running tests. He’ll know within the hour.”
Kara sighed, dug in her packet, and pulled out a glass vial with a very small sample of blood. Thomas’s blood. Her brother had insisted before leaving Johns Hopkins. His reasoning was simple: he was quite sure that he would be going back to France, but he refused to explain why. In the event something happened to him, he wanted Kara and Monique to have some options.
Kara set the vial on the desk.
“Thomas’s?” Monique said.
“His idea. You know what would happen if you and I dreamed with this blood?”
Monique stared at her. “Rachelle is dead. You would wake as Mikil. I don’t who I would wake as.”
“No. But you would wake. And what would happen if you ate the rhambutan fruit when you were there?”
“No dreams.”
“What if you ate the rhambutan fruit every day for the rest of your life?”
“Would it matter? If I die here, I die there. Isn’t that how it works?”
“Not if dreaming a one-night dream here lasts forty years there. We could live a full life in another reality while waiting for death to take us here.”
A small grin crossed Monique’s face. Then an incredulous laugh. “Thomas suggested we should do this?”
“No. He said we would know what to do with it. You have a better idea?”
“No. But that doesn’t make your idea sane.”
“So you won’t do it? He mentioned you, no one else.”
“Of course I’ll do it,” Monique said, taking the small vial. “Why not?”
The smile on her face softened. She stared at the blood sample. “Does Thomas have a rash?”
Kara recalled what he’d said about the rash he’d picked up in Indonesia. “Now that you mention it, I think so, yes. Which means he may be among the first.”
No reply.
Mike Orear scanned the swelling crowd, too many to count now—estimates put it at nearly a million. It wouldn’t take much to redirect their self-reflection into outrage. The frustration in their eyes was undeniable. The words he was about to speak on the air would do nothing less than open the floodgates of rage, directed at the world’s best-known symbol of power: the White House.
He’d called Theresa earlier and fished for more on the possibility of an antivirus, but ever since he’d taken this stance as a voice for the people, she’d gone cold. It was a miracle he’d even gotten through to her. When he had confronted her with the accusation that the administration was misleading the people by holding o
ut hope where none existed, she simply sighed and told him she wasn’t working twenty-four–hour shifts to please the administration.
Then she’d hung up on him.
This so-called hope of hers had to be paperthin. Their only real hope lay with the only man who possessed an antivirus that would do anyone any good: Svensson. If the president didn’t play ball with France, there was no hope.
Orear scratched his underarm. The rash that had appeared over a week earlier had subsided, but now it was making a comeback. Odd how so few had the rash. Assuming it was connected to the virus, he’d have thought the rash would be widespread. His mother had it. Maybe it was a genetic thing. Maybe a few of them showed symptoms earlier than what the medical community was predicting.
He shoved the thoughts aside and walked to the tent where the CNN cameras awaited his hourly live update. The tent was set on a stage roughly five feet off the ground, enough to give him a clear view of the crowd. Marcy Rawlins was in a heated discussion with one of the cameramen about the mess they were making with the equipment, and he was pointing out that cleanliness was no longer next to godliness.
A tall bald man with a handlebar mustache paced along the wooden barricade, glaring at Mike. He wore a beige robe with arms that flared at the cuffs. Take him, for instance. This man looked capable of eating the barricade with only a little encouragement. The armed soldiers would be forced to fire their tear gas. They were nearly half a mile from the White House, which rose stately behind them, but the only way the guards could stop a marching army of angry protesters was to kill a few.
Those deaths would be on Mike’s head. He knew that as well as he knew Marcy needed a Valium. But the death of a few might bring hope and possibly life for millions. Not to mention the 543 souls in Finley, North Dakota, where his mother waited for him to do whatever was humanly possible to stop this mess.
“Two minutes, Mike,” Nancy Rodriguez said, taking her seat next to him.
“Gotcha.”
He’d dispensed with the tie long ago—he was of the people, for the people. And tonight he would push the people.
Sally applied a quick brush of base to soften the glaze on his cheeks, picked at his hair, then moved away without a word. There wasn’t that much for a makeup artist to say these days.
His coanchor leaned toward him. “You might as well know,” Nancy said. “I just talked to Marcy. This is my last broadcast.”
“What?”
“I’ve got family in Montana, Mike.”
“And I have family in North Dakota. What about what we’re doing here for those families?”
“I’m not sure what we’re doing here. Other than dying with the rest of them.”
Mike understood. He felt the same way at times. But he had no choice in the matter. The people had become his family, and his obligations were now to them as well.
“Stick around for a few minutes, and I promise you’ll see what we’re doing here.”
“Let’s go, people,” Marcy barked. “You ready, Mike?”
He started the report by running though an update on reports from around the world, mostly riots and the like. Nothing about the anti-virus, as he normally did. Just the problems.
The crowd was over a million, he told them. The traffic into Washington, D.C., had been forced to a halt, and the police were turning people away.
They’d set up loudspeakers every fifty yards for as far as he could see and around the corner all along Constitution Boulevard. His voice rang out to the people. Mike Orear, their savior on the air. At this moment his worldwide audience was nearly a billion people, they estimated. They’d sold the updates sponsorship to Microsoft for a hundred million a pop. If they came through this alive, Microsoft would shine. If not, they would die with the rest. Smart thinking.
Mike took a deep breath. “That’s the news, my friends. That’s what they want you to know. That’s what the whole world now knows. But I’ve learned something else, and I want you to listen to every word I’m about to speak, because your life may very well hinge on what I say next.”
He glanced at Marcy. She was past being surprised by anything he might say. Her eyes watched him expectantly—she was more audience than producer now.
“The hope for discovering an antivirus, despite what we’ve all been told by the White House these last couple of weeks, is now almost nonexistent.”
A blanket of silence settled over Washington as he spoke the words. Every television, every radio, every speaker carried his announcement. He envisioned the living rooms of America stilled except for the beating of hearts. This was the news they had been waiting for. Hoping against.
“In a matter of days, every living man, woman, and child on this planet will begin to display the symptoms of the Raison Strain. Within days, maybe hours, of that, the world as we know it will . . .”
A terrible sound drifted over the crowd, and at first Mike thought that one of the speakers was overloaded with feedback. But it wasn’t the loudspeakers. It was the people.
A terrible wail, probably from one of the end-of-the-world groups, now spread like fire.
“Quiet! Please, there’s more.”
They didn’t stop.
“Please!” he shouted, suddenly as furious at them as he was at the White House. “Just shut up! Please!”
The wail fell off. Marcy was staring at him.
“I’m sorry, but this isn’t a game we’re playing. You have to hear me out!”
“You tell them, Mikie!” someone shouted. A general barrage of approvals.
He lifted his hand. “Hear me out. The fact is, we’re all going to die.” He paused. Let the noise settle. “Unless . . .”
Now he let them hang on that one word. In moments like these he was most acutely aware of his power. Like the director of the CIA had said, like it or not, he was one of the most powerful people in the country at the moment. He didn’t relish the fact, but he couldn’t ignore it either.
“Unless we find a way to get the antivirus that already exists into our hands. That’s the killer here: an antivirus that already exists could end all of this in two days. Not a single one of us would have to die. But that’s not going to happen. It’s not going to happen because Robert Blair has refused a deal that would exchange our nuclear arsenal for the antivirus.”
Again he paused for effect. They already knew of the terrorists’ ultimatum, but it had never been put to them so bluntly, and never in hand with the world health community’s failure.
“My friends, I say, give them the weapons. Give us the antivirus. Give us a chance to live. Give our children another day, another week, another month, another year, and let them live to fight!” He shoved his fist into the air.
Immediately a roar broke from the crowd.
“The rules have changed!” he shouted, feeding on the crowd’s growing cries. “We are in a fight for our very lives! We can’t allow one man to sacrifice our survival over his own inflated notions of principle!”
Mike was breathing hard. Adrenaline coursed through his veins.
He shoved his finger back at the White House. “This travesty must not stand! In a few days you will all die unless they change their minds! I say, fight for your lives! I say, storm the White House! I say, if we’re going to die, we die fighting for our right to live!”
His hand was trembling. He had run out of words.
An ominous silence had smothered the crowd. It was one thing to shout protests. It was another to incite a riot. This talk of death was sinking in.
The scream started in the back somewhere, as far as ten blocks back for all he knew.
The crowd moved as if the straps that held them back had been cut. They swelled forward, screaming bloody murder. The bald man with the handlebar mustache was one among a thousand who breached the barricades first.
Then they were running.
The cameraman spun and took in the mob. He stepped back, nearly fell over a cord, but quickly adjusted and kept the feed live.
> Mike didn’t know what to do. As far as he could see, the crowd was moving. Forward. Toward him.
A machine gun rattled—tracers streaked over the crowd.
The army troops were already on their feet. Warnings squealed over their bullhorns, but they were lost in the crowd’s roar.
The first line rushed past the stage.
Marcy was screaming something, but Mike couldn’t understand her. They were going to run right through these defenses and overtake the White House. No one could stop this. He had no clue . . .
Whomp!
Screams of terror.
Whomp, whomp!
“Stand back or we will be forced to fire!”
Whomp!
A cloud billowed from a canister that landed twenty feet from the stage.
“Tear gas!” someone cried. As soon as he said it, the sting hit Mike’s eyes.
Whomp, whomp, whomp, whomp!
Chopper blades beat hard nearby, close enough to do whatever damage they were ordered to do.
The crowd surged through the clouds of gas. Another machine gun roared. A momentary silence followed.
When the screaming resumed, it sounded very different, and Mike knew that someone had been shot.
“Get up there!” he shouted, spinning.
But the cameraman was already running through the crowd.
The war had started. Gooseflesh ran up his arms.
Mike’s War.
“The answer is no,” President Blair snapped. “I stay here, end of story. Find Mike Orear and his crew and bring them in. I want to go on the air as soon as possible.”
Phil Grant frowned. “Sir, I strongly urge you to consider the implications—”
“The implications are that unless we tread very carefully over these next two days, none of us has a prayer. I’ve known that for over two weeks; now the people are understanding that as well. I’m surprised it took them this long to break down the barricades.”
By his hesitancy, the director of the CIA wasn’t sure about Blair’s evenhanded response to the riots. “I’m not sure they’re wrong on this, sir,” he finally said.
The possibility that Phil Grant might be working with Armand Fortier crossed Blair’s mind for the first time. Who better? His mind flashed over the last few years, searching for inconsistencies in the man’s performance. To the best of Blair’s recollection there had been none. He was seeing ghosts behind everyone who entered his office these days.