by Louise Voss
Riley bounded down the stairs on legs that felt like rubber. His heart was pounding so hard that it felt like it had been replaced with an enormous beach ball that had no room to move in his chest. He saw his dad’s feet sticking out from behind the kitchen island, and it reminded him of the other dead man, the one whose feet he’d run over. Without looking again at his father’s face – one glance had been enough to confirm that he had clearly been dead for some time – he grabbed his ankles and dragged him with great effort across the room, negotiating around two runny piles of dog shit, into the utility room off the kitchen, where he left him next to the washer-drier. He closed the door behind him, retched, and threw up again in the kitchen sink. After he’d cleaned up the dog mess, rinsed his mouth and the sink, and scrubbed his hands more thoroughly than he’d done for years, an investigation of the refrigerator revealed a carton of serviceable-looking OJ, and a half-full bottle of Chardonnay. Riley unstoppered the wine and downed its contents in four huge gulps, Martha sticking so close to his ankles that he risked tripping over her at every step. He filled two glasses of OJ for the boys, a bowl of dry food for Martha, which she fell on ravenously, and returned upstairs.
‘OK, kids?’ he said, holding out the juice.
Jack took the glass, but didn’t drink any. Bradley was unable even to reach out for his. His small body was trembling uncontrollably, almost convulsing. Riley looked at him more closely and saw that his eyes were red and his nose streaming – he had attributed it to tears, but now, laying a hand on his forehead, realised that his brother’s temperature was sky-high, and he was almost catatonic.
‘Fuck!’ Riley said, in a panicked whimper, putting the OJ down on a shelf. ‘Oh Jesus, no, no, no. Oh fuck, Brad, man, I’m so sorry, this is all my fault …’
He turned and thumped the wall hard with his fist, leaning into it, his shoulders shaking. Jack just stared at him, and then at his friend, and then at the garish swirling colours of the cartoon.
Riley took a deep, sobbing breath and turned back. He picked Bradley’s limp body up in his arms. ‘Jack, pal, I’m sorry but I think Bradley’s got the flu. I’m gonna have to put him in another bedroom so you don’t catch it too.’ If you haven’t already, he thought but didn’t say. If we haven’t all caught it.
Jack didn’t speak.
‘OK, buddy? He’ll be down the hallway – but listen, you have to stay here. You can’t hang out with him any more, not till he’s … better. I can’t look after two sick kids.’
Jack nodded briefly.
‘Will he die?’ he said, so quietly that Riley barely heard him.
‘Nah, man, of course not,’ he said, negotiating Bradley through the doorway. ‘It’s only a spot of flu, don’t you worry.’
Jack stared down at the glass in his hand as though he’d never seen orange juice before.
Riley laid his brother on the bed in the spare room, wet a washcloth and placed it on his burning forehead. Bradley barely stirred. He looked so tiny on the huge king-sized bed, and Riley remembered when he was first born, the shock of his helplessness, and Riley’s own resentment that there was a rival for his parents’ affections.
‘You’re a royal pain in the ass, you know,’ he whispered, dabbing beads of sweat away from Bradley’s cheeks and neck. ‘Please don’t die. Please, Brad. Mom will kill me if you die. And, well, I guess I’d miss you …’
But Bradley couldn’t hear him. He had slipped quietly under a thick comforter of unconsciousness.
65
Kate sat next to the isolator, watching Paul’s chest rise and fall. He was deathly pale, but seemed to be sleeping peacefully. She leaned her forehead against the cool glass and felt her own eyes begin to drift closed. She felt so tired it was as though each individual blood cell inside her was aching. How long would it be before she knew whether it had worked? Whether she had saved Paul’s life … or killed him?
Her thoughts shifted to Angelica. She could hardly believe that the agent who had been guarding Angelica had let her escape. Apparently, she had begged him to let her use the toilet. Surely it was the oldest trick in the book? His excuse was that, as they were so short-handed and there were no female agents to help, he had allowed her to close the door of the toilet. Of course, she had immediately squeezed through the window and shinned down the side of the building. She was long gone – into the woods, they assumed – before the agent even noticed.
Harley had been furious, but Kate had tried to calm him. ‘What can she do now?’ she said. ‘All of her disciples are dead. Diaz helped guide her, and he’s gone. She knows we are working on a cure. She’s been beaten. If I was her, I would run ten thousand miles in the opposite direction.’
A rapping noise startled her – one of the medical staff who had arrived yesterday along with the virologists. She jerked awake again.
‘Dr Maddox, Agent Harley needs to talk to you urgently.’
She left the lab, feeling her heart tug as if it were attached to Paul by an invisible thread, and found Harley outside, gesticulating excitedly.
‘Kate, come quick, I’ve got Vernon on the phone!’
Adrenaline coursed through her body, animating her exhausted limbs like a sugar rush. She grabbed the phone, tripping over her words in the rush to get them out.
‘Hello? Vernon? Finally! Where have you been, why haven’t you answered your phones? How’s Jack?’
Vernon spoke so quietly that Kate could barely hear his reply over the hiss and crackle of the phone line. ‘I’ve been at the hospital. Shirley’s been in and out of there all week. She’s got a perforated bowel.’
‘Sorry to hear it. Is Jack OK?’
‘He – ah – yes, he’s OK, last I heard … He and Bradley stowed away in Bradley’s brother’s Airstream. They went on a road trip, Kate. I was at the hospital with Shirley. I didn’t find out until the next day, and then Riley – Bradley’s brother – said he was bringing the boys home. But he didn’t.’
‘What! Where did they go? You’re telling me our eight-year-old son is out there, no one knows where, in a country with a deadly virus rampaging through it and thousands already dead?’
Her voice cracked and her throat tightened as the possibilities flew in a loop through her brain: dead from flu, kidnapped, hit by a car, lost, sick, alone …
There was a long pause, which in itself was unusual – Vernon’s most common response to any hint of a challenge was to rebut it and fight back even harder.
‘Vernon?’
She heard a deep sigh.
‘They were heading to, ah, California. To see Bradley’s dad … in LA. And to try and find you.’
‘LA?’ Kate’s stomach roiled and churned, and she thought she was going to be sick. ‘But Bradley’s mother had called the police, right?’
‘The thing is, Riley told his mom that he was bringing the boys home. That ought to have taken a day at most. Only … he didn’t show up, and his cellphone’s switched off.’
‘Shit. How old is this Riley?’
Vernon hesitated, and Kate knew he was going to lie to her.
‘Twenty-five.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Jeez, Kate, I don’t know exactly. He’s old enough to drive. He looks about twenty. Don’t panic, if something bad had happened, I’m sure we’d have heard about it.’ But the note of abject panic in his own voice belied his words.
‘Vernon, something very bad has happened. Is happening, right now. Do you have any idea of the chaos and anarchy going on out there? Did they reach Riley and Bradley’s Dad’s place? Why didn’t they call?’
‘Their mother has been calling and calling her ex, but it always goes straight to voicemail, and his cellphone is switched off. We need to keep trying – it would’ve taken them twenty-four hours to get there, assuming they made it through the roadblocks in the first place. But you know what? I bet Riley’s just headed off to Big Sur or down to Mexico with the boys to avoid the shitstorm he’ll be in when he shows his greasy face
back here …’
Vernon’s voice cracked and, to Kate’s amazement, she realised he was crying. She had never heard Vernon cry before, not when Jack was born, not even when his mother died. ‘I’m so sorry, Kate,’ he sobbed. ‘Our little Jackie, out there, with all this – this – sickness and death everywhere … I’m so scared. What if we never see him again? It’s too late! It’s too late, for all of us!’
Tears filled Kate’s eyes. ‘Don’t, Vern, please. I’m really trying to hold it all together here. Jack needs us to be strong. And listen, it’s not too late. I’ve found a cure.’
She thought of Paul lying in the isolator and prayed she wasn’t tempting fate, telling Vernon about the treatment. ‘We’ve got to pray that Jack is safe, and at Bradley’s dad’s place. He’ll call when he gets there, I’m sure he will …’
Vernon gave a shuddering, sigh, followed by a lengthy wet sniff. ‘So, Dr Kate Maddox saves the world, huh?’ But he didn’t say it as nastily as he might usually have done, and Kate realised that, despite the snideness of the comment, he was actually paying her a compliment.
‘Kate, I’ll call you the second I hear anything, I promise. You available on this number from now on?’
‘Yes, while I’m at the lab. I’ll give you Harley’s cellphone, although there’s no reception here, only the landline.’
Kate dictated the numbers. ‘Can you give me the licence plate of the car he’s in, and the Airstream’s? Oh, and Bradley’s dad’s address too …’
‘I’ll go next door now and get the details from Gina.’
After she hung up, Kate sat rocking herself back and forth, arms wrapped around her head as if they were all that was holding her soul inside her body. She stayed there for several minutes, trying and failing to think rationally and calmly over the shrieking panic. A knock on the door broke her train of thought. It was Harley.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked immediately, seeing the expression on Kate’s face.
‘Jack’s run away. We think he’s in LA at his best friend’s dad’s place.’
‘Oh shit. I’m sorry, Kate. We’ll find him. Trust me.’
She nodded slowly. ‘I want to come. Can we go now? I don’t want to leave Paul, but I have to get to Jack. The team here know what they’re doing – and anyway, it’s a waiting game from here on in …’
He nodded. ‘I’ll pull rank and get a helicopter.’
As they left the building, after giving strict instructions that if Paul’s condition changed at all they should contact her, Kate made a vow to herself. If they all survived this, there would be no more guns, no more helicopters. The most exciting thing they would take would be the bus.
And if Paul and Jack didn’t survive, she would drag her ruined heart around the globe, do whatever it took, to find Angelica – and make her pay.
66
Jack froze, the TV remote in his hand, when he heard the persistent ringing of the doorbell. It must be the police, come to put me in prison for running away, he thought, his throat dry with fear. He clicked the off button on the remote, slid off the shiny leather sofa, and looked around the room for a place to hide. Shaking, he dropped to his hands and knees and crawled round to the back of the sofa. There was a small inverted triangular space behind it, just about wide enough for him to shuffle backwards into. He squeezed in there and crouched, shivering like a wet puppy. Why were so many bad things happening?
‘I want my mummy,’ he whispered under his breath. Why had he ever thought it was a good idea to come on this trip, with dead people everywhere? He wanted his mum. Mummymummymummy. He missed her with a passion that felt like the worst sort of hunger. Leaning forward, he rested his forehead on the floor, amongst all the dust balls, letting his tears leak silently into the carpet. When he was little, he’d had a robot called Billy, and he used to pretend that Billy could protect him, fire his lasers at the bad guys. He wished Billy was here now, instead of gathering dust under his bed back in England.
Behind the sofa and through the closed window, Jack could hear distant shouting voices, a woman and a man. He tried to listen over the insistent drilling of the bell. He thought – but surely he was wrong – that he heard his name being called. He listened harder. Yes, there it was: ‘Jack! Jack!’
Fresh tears filled his eyes. He shot out of his hiding place at top speed and ran down the stairs two at a time, his heart leaping with joy and gratitude.
‘Mummy!’ he screamed, hurling himself at the front door. ‘I knew you’d come!’
Lucy stared vacantly out of the Airstream window at the dark-haired woman in glasses who leapt up the steps to the front door, shouting for her son. When the door opened and one of the little boys who’d gone into the house that morning threw himself into her arms, Lucy turned away and looked at her own mother.
She thought of all the packed lunches her mom had made for her. All the rows they’d had, the tears they had shed, the hugs, the songs, the laundry and the miles walked up and down grocery-store aisles. Lucy knew the pattern of every freckle on her mom’s arms, the same as her mom knew the name of every boy Lucy had ever liked.
When Lucy was little she used to lie in her mother’s big bed with her, tracing a soft path between each freckle, while Rosie giggled and squirmed like a child at the touch of Lucy’s soft forefinger. Lucy remembered harsh words and apologies, laughter and linked arms, DVDs on the sofa and being told off for letting stray popcorn kernels slip down between the cushions.
Who could she tell her problems to now? What would she do with all her mom’s things? How was she going to get home? How did you organise a funeral, when you were sixteen and had no other family?
All these questions felt far too big to answer. She supposed she should go and get help, tell someone. But if she told someone, they would take her mom away and she would never ever see her again.
Lucy lay down on her side next to her mother, reached out, and held her cold, dead hand.
Kate made sure that Bradley was as comfortable as he could be, and that Riley was calm enough to be left alone with him. ‘It’s just while Jason here walks us to the helicopter,’ she explained. ‘We have to get back to the lab. Look, Jason has keys to the house. He’ll be right back, I promise you. Another helicopter is coming for you guys, an air ambulance, so sit tight for a little while longer. Bradley will be OK, trust me.’
Riley had just stared at her with a blank expression. He would not let go of his little brother’s hand.
As Kate and Jack left the house, Kate wondered if Bradley really would be OK. She was about to ask Harley to call Vernon so he could tell the boys’ mother what had happened, when she heard Jack give a worried exclamation.
‘What’s the matter, sweetheart?’
He paused, staring at the Airstream. ‘I forgot about the ladies,’ he said. ‘Riley helped them. He gave them a ride ’cos they needed to get to a hospital. We did pass one, but Riley didn’t want to stop by then ’cos it was too scary. Do you think they’re still in there?’
‘Why did they need to go to a hospital, Jack? Did they have the flu?’ Kate’s heart sank.
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. The girl didn’t. Her mum looked poorly, but the girl said they’d been mugged and her mum had a bump on her head. The girl had blood on her T-shirt.’
‘You two stay here,’ Kate said. ‘And keep your masks on. I’ll go and check they’re OK.’
‘Don’t be long,’ said Harley, grasping Jack’s shoulders.
Kate cupped her hands round her eyes and tried to peer in the Airstream window, but the glass was tinted and she couldn’t make anything out. She turned the door handle but it was locked, so she knocked instead.
‘Hello in there? Do you need any help? I have the antivirus, if either of you needs it – please open up.’
Lucy heard the woman knocking and calling, and didn’t move. Her limbs felt heavy and lifeless, and she wondered if it was the start of the flu. She hoped so. If not, she was going to get those scissors tha
t she’d cut the tape off with, and slice open her veins.
‘I have the antivirus!’ the woman repeated. Lucy sighed. She didn’t care about getting the stupid antivirus, which probably wouldn’t even work – hadn’t they said on the news that there was no cure for Indian flu? But she supposed, much as she wanted to, she couldn’t stay in there for ever with her mom’s dead body, and at least this woman was offering to help. Lucy doubted that any of the other people roaming the streets of LA would be so willing.
Slowly she lifted herself off the bed and plodded to the Airstream door.
‘Hi,’ the woman said gently. ‘My name is Kate Maddox. Are you and your mum OK?’
She had an English accent, like the man who had caused all this trouble. If Paul hadn’t come into the diner, they wouldn’t be here now. Her mom would still be alive, Lucy was sure of it. She wouldn’t have caught the flu if that Heather woman hadn’t come looking for Paul.
Lucy stared at her. Why did her name sound familiar?
‘Is your mother all right, Lucy?’
‘She’s dead,’ Lucy said flatly.
Kate Maddox gazed sympathetically at her. She had nice eyes, Lucy thought, brown, sorrowful. She was about her mom’s age, maybe younger. Lucy swallowed hard at the effort of admitting Rosie was dead.
‘Oh, honey, I’m sorry,’ Kate Maddox said. ‘We need to get you out of here. You’re at risk too – we need to vaccinate you as a precaution. Come into the house and wait – an air ambulance is coming to take the boys to the nearest emergency room. There’s a field hospital round the corner, but it’s not accepting anyone else.’
‘Are you a doctor?’ Lucy asked.
‘No, I’m a scientist, I—’
Lucy started. She gripped the doorframe of the Airstream. Suddenly she knew where she had heard that name before: the crazy lady who had broken into their house and kidnapped them, the so-called Sister Heather – she had said the name Kate Maddox – Dr Kate Maddox. Kate Maddox was Paul’s girlfriend!