by Alex Ryan
Nick craned his neck around to find Hon Bai, the Han Chinese man who served as their NGO sponsor. “He can’t breathe,” Nick said.
Bai nodded nervously. “Yes, but what if he makes you sick? Or the others?”
Nick frantically tried to remember illnesses he had learned about during his year of training as a SEAL medic—an “Eighteen Delta,” as they were known in the community. A whirlwind of symptoms and reactions raced through his mind. He remembered how Batur had looked when they first start digging and compared the memory to the grotesque, misshapen face before him. The transformation had happened so quickly. It couldn’t possibly be an illness. It had to be a reaction, he thought. An allergic reaction to something—anaphylaxis, his training told him. Severe nut allergy? Bee sting? Or maybe this was a reaction to a toxin. Maybe Batur was bitten by a snake or a scorpion? Yes, that made the most sense.
“I can’t just watch him suffocate,” Nick said at last, looking up at Bai and trying to sound more confident than he felt. He couldn’t stand by and watch the man suffocate under his own swollen face. He had chosen to become a combat medic in the SEALs because of the overpowering desire to help people in need. The war fighter in him had always served as a means to an end—stopping the misery, pain, and suffering inflicted by tyrants and terrorists on those unable to defend themselves. Today, the war fighter was gone, but not the medic. Not the steward. He refused to let Batur die on his watch without a fight.
“Until we know what is wrong, I would not touch him, Nick,” Bai said, shaking his head nervously.
Nick noticed a pair of work gloves tucked inside the waistband of Bai’s jeans. “Toss me your gloves, Bai.”
Bai nodded and handed them over.
Nick donned the worn, leather gloves and tilted Batur’s chin up and head back; a high-pitched whistle pierced the silence as the dying man sucked air through his swollen face. “He needs a doctor,” Nick barked, his adrenaline ramping up. “We need to get him to Kashi.”
Bai nodded. “The hospital in Kizilsu is closer. We can take him there.”
“I’ll pull a truck around,” Ian said.
Nick heard the Australian dash off toward the pickup trucks parked beside the broken backhoe.
Ian swung a truck around in a spray of gravel and dirt. A crowd of horrified NGO volunteers and paid workers encircled them as Nick, Yvette, and Bai heaved Batur’s oozing body into the bed of the pickup.
“I’ll drive,” said Bai, opening the driver’s-side door and waiving for Ian to get out. “Ian, you’re in charge here until I return.”
Nick leapt up into the bed of the truck while Yvette scrambled in on the other side of Batur.
He shot her his best What the hell do you think you’re doing? look.
“I’m coming with you,” she said, her pale-blue eyes wide with misplaced worry. He realized then that she was coming for his sake—not Batur’s—but there was no time to argue.
“All right,” Nick said, fighting to keep Batur’s airway open as the pickup truck wobbled and bounced along the dirt road. “Help me keep him steady.”
“How far?” Yvette shouted over the wind and the engine noise.
“Forty kilometers.”
“Do you think he’ll make it?”
“If we can keep him breathing, yeah, I think so,” Nick lied.
He didn’t have the heart to tell her their friend would probably be dead in minutes.
Chapter 2
Artux People’s Hospital
Kizilsu
1015 hours local
To Nick’s astonishment, Batur survived the dusty, agonizing drive to Kizilsu.
Whatever was killing Batur was horrible—the stuff of nightmares. If it was infectious, Nick was screwed. They were all screwed. He’d had plenty of time during the drive, bouncing in the back of the filthy truck, trying to keep Batur’s airway open, to think about that. Batur’s symptoms—abdominal pain, fever, and bleeding from the eyes, nose, and mouth—made Nick think of Ebola. But from everything he’d heard about the deadly African filovirus, the timing was wrong. Ebola could kill quickly, but the illness progressed over the course of days, not hours. Batur had practically transformed right before their eyes. Nick’s mind kept coming back to anaphylactic shock or acute toxicity as the culprit, but what the hell did he know? He was trained in battlefield trauma, not epidemiology. Sure, he knew how to stabilize gunshot wounds and manage broken bones, but that was a hell of a long way from medical school, residency, and a fellowship in infectious diseases. Expert or not, one thing was certain: he had been an idiot. He had gambled his life—and the lives of Bai and Yvette, for that matter—by treating Batur like an injured SEAL on the battlefield.
The truck swerved around a slower-moving car, knocking Nick against the bed rail and snapping him out of his moment of self-flagellation. He recognized the Artux mosque as Bai piloted the little pickup through the central square at a lunatic pace. He glanced over at Yvette, who was holding on with white knuckles. She should have ridden in the cab, he thought, looking at her now. She was terrified and beat to hell from the drive.
The truck skidded to a stop in front of a gray, industrial-looking hospital that was bigger than Nick had expected. China had very advanced medicine, rivaling or even exceeding the West in some fields, but this building was nothing like the sleek, modern hospitals he had trained in with the Navy. Still, any hospital was better than him trying to keep Batur alive at the side of an irrigation ditch waiting on Kizilsu EMTs that might never come.
He glanced down at Batur’s barely human face.
Across from him, Yvette was already climbing out of the bed of the truck, taking care to avert her eyes from the grotesque, hemorrhaging thing that had once been Batur. She had stopped trying to help Nick only five minutes into the drive. He’d watched her vomit over the side, and after that, it was all she could do to keep her gaze focused in the middle distance. At first, he’d worried she was becoming sick—sick like Batur, that is—but her color was good and she showed no signs of fever.
“I’ll get some help,” she said, opening the tailgate and then setting off on unsteady legs.
She didn’t make it far.
Help found them instead.
Twenty meters away, Nick saw three figures—clad in hospital scrubs, gloves, and surgical masks—running toward them with a metal gurney. The gurney was painted bright yellow and loaded with crash equipment.
When they got within five meters, the driver’s-side door swung open, and Bai jumped out of the cab. He immediately stepped away from the truck and took a position several paces away.
“Are you okay, Nick Foley?” he asked, his jaw tight with worry.
“Yeah,” Nick said, forcing a grin. “I’m good.”
Bai nodded robotically. “Is the Uyghur dead?”
Nick gritted he teeth. He liked Bai, and he understood the cultural rift between the Uyghurs and the Han Chinese, but Batur was more than just “the Uyghur.”
“No,” he said with a hard glance at the NGO coordinator. “Not yet, anyway.”
The welcome party arrived a few seconds later, and Nick realized from their expressions that Batur was not the first. This team had been prepped and waiting.
Not the first, he thought.
Shit.
A stern woman at the head of the stretcher barked something at him in Chinese. He shook his head and locked eyes with her. She barked at him again, louder and with more vitriol, and this time, he understood without translation: Get the hell outta our way.
He twisted his body and swung his right leg, and then his left, over the side of the bed of the pickup. When his feet hit the ground, he wobbled and almost collapsed—both of his legs were numb from the long ride crouched beside Batur. He shuffled his feet in place, working the circulation back into his muscles as pins and needles flared everywhere from his hips down. He watched as two male hospital workers loaded Batur onto the gurney and connected monitor cables to his chest. In concert, the woman retrieved a
bag mask and used it to force oxygen into the Uyghur’s swollen face—each squeeze reverberating like wet, rhythmic flatulence.
Just as feeling was returning to his legs, the doctor barked at Nick again.
This time, he shrugged incomprehension.
Still keeping his distance, Bai intervened, rattling off several sentences in Mandarin so quickly Nick couldn’t make out a single word.
“You come,” she replied, exasperated and wagging a finger at Nick, Yvette, and Bai. “All come.”
Yvette squeezed Nick’s arm. “We are not responsible for what happened to him,” she said, her voice both defensive and worried. “They know that, right?”
“Yes,” he said, trying not to sound condescending. “Believe me, they know.”
They entered the hospital via what Nick deduced was the emergency room entrance. Double glass doors swished open and a blast of cool, conditioned air washed over him as he trailed the EMS team inside. Yvette walked beside him, her expression grave, while Bai trailed reluctantly behind. Halfway down the long, gray hallway, the lead doctor pointed to an open door and barked a command in Chinese. This time, she looked only at Bai when she rattled off her instructions before spinning on a heel and charging off after her team down the corridor.
Bai folded his arms across his chest. “They wish for us to wait here,” he said, gesturing at the open door. “They will need some information.”
Nick nodded and stepped into a waiting room not much bigger than a closet. Rows of round-backed plastic chairs, all a horrible orange color, were bolted to two walls. Nick imagined the space was used as a consultation room where hurried doctors gave families shitty prognoses about their loved ones. He sighed in surrender and collapsed into one of the molded-plastic chairs. Bai took a seat across from him but kept his eyes downcast on the floor. Nick felt a headache coming on. He leaned his head back against the wall and groaned his displeasure at the world. Yvette dropped into the chair beside him. After a silent pause, she clutched his arm, leaned her head against his shoulder, and began to sob. He pulled his left arm free and wrapped it around her, then closed his eyes and tenderly stroked her shoulder while she wept. Her tears were not for Batur, he knew.
These were tears of dread.
The door clicked.
His eyes popped open, and he saw the waiting-room door had been pulled shut by someone from the outside. He wondered if it was courtesy for the grieving or a signal of isolation.
Both, if they’re clever.
And since coming to this country, he had found the Chinese to be nothing if not clever.
“I have never seen anything like that. Never,” said Yvette, her Belgian Dutch accent thicker than normal with emotion.
Nick nodded. “I know.”
“I hope we are not to get sick, Nick Foley,” Bai said in a tone that almost sounded accusatory.
Nick shifted his gaze to Bai, but the Chinese man was staring out the window, his brow furrowed with anxiety. Like his companions, Nick felt dread percolating inside. In his haste to help Batur, he had made a mistake—quite possibly a deadly mistake—by exposing them all to this unknown scourge. Bai talked often and fondly of his wife and two children. Nick didn’t know if he could bear the guilt if those kids lost their father because of him.
Suddenly, Bai jumped to his feet, eyes riveted out the window. He mumbled something in Chinese, his voice harried. Nick was about to ask what he saw when the door to the room burst open. In the doorway stood a man dressed in a blue suit with an integrated hood, yellow gloves that reached nearly to his elbows, and heavy rubber boots. He wore a gray mask, like a fighter pilot, only this one had purple straps that bunched the blue hood around his cheeks. He eyed each of them in turn from behind bug-eyed protective goggles and then barked a stern warning in Chinese. He repeated the command for effect. Nick noticed an unmistakable quiver in the man’s voice, one borne more of fear than anger. Without giving any of them a chance to ask questions, the suited figure slammed the door and locked it from the outside.
“What the hell was that?” Nick demanded, turning to Bai.
“He said we cannot leave this room.”
“For how long?”
Bai shrugged.
“Why is he in MOPP gear?”
Bai looked at him, confused. “I don’t know this word.”
“MOPP gear,” Nick repeated, his frustration mounting. “You know, military protection equipment—a hazmat suit with respirator, boots, gloves, and goggles.”
“I don’t know, Nick Foley,” Bai said.
“They weren’t dressed like that when we arrived and they came to get Batur with the rolling stretcher,” Yvette said and hugged her chest.
She’s right, Nick thought, wondering what had changed. He stood and walked over to the tall, narrow window. Peering out into the parking lot, he saw several military-style SUVs and a gray armored personnel carrier parked around Bai’s pickup truck. Beyond them, at least two-dozen men in gray shirts, dark pants, and black tactical vests were setting up a makeshift perimeter. From what he could tell, all of them were armed—some had pistols in drop holsters, and others wore automatic weapons slung combat style across their chests. Two men were already in the busy street, directing traffic and turning away cars.
An image of Batur’s grotesque visage, eyes weeping blood, flashed into Nick’s head. He tasted bile in the back of his throat and felt a surge of panic wash over him. The alien emotion took him by surprise. He was a combat veteran, a blooded Navy SEAL with years of training, so why was he rattled? He forced himself to perform several rounds of slow, four-count tactical breathing to calm himself. As he scrubbed his friend’s image from his mind’s eye, he realized that even with all his training and combat tours, he had never been this terrified before.
He began to pace, and a bead of cold sweat trickled down from his armpit over his ribs.
We’re dead, he thought, looking around the room at his friends.
We’re all the walking dead.
Chapter 3
Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
155 Changbai Road, Changping District
Beijing
1445 hours local
Chen Dazhong stared expectantly at the phone on her desk. Any second now, it would ring and the director would be on the other end of the line. She knew exactly how the conversation would go. He would ask her how she liked her new office in the CDC’s state-of-the-art main campus in the Changping District. She would reply, graciously, that the office was most satisfactory. Then there would be an awkward pause, after which he would ask her if she knew about the crisis brewing in Kizilsu forty kilometers outside of Kashgar. She would reply, “Yes, the initial reports are most troubling,” to which he would solemnly agree and then tell her that he was sending her to lead the CDC’s emergency response on the ground. She would accept the assignment, with all the professional enthusiasm she could muster, and thank him for yet another opportunity to serve her country and the CDC. She would not demand hazard pay, nor would she put stipulations on her acceptance. She would not remind him that today was technically her last day working for the Office of Disease Control and Emergency Response, and that it had been less than a week since she completed her twenty-one-day quarantine after Liberia, and that deploying to Kizilsu would likely strain her already troubled marriage to the breaking point. No, she would not say any of these things, because she was a good little soldier, and good little soldiers followed orders without condition or complaint.
She exhaled, trying to calm herself.
No, she told herself, it was not simply about following orders. It was not simply about duty. Going to Kizilsu was about pride and expectation, opportunity and advancement. Director Wong had selected her—a woman—to lead China’s highly publicized Ebola aid mission in Liberia. Her success launching China’s first Ebola relief hospital in Africa had reflected positively on the CDC and China in the eyes of the international community. Over the last five months, she had worked c
losely with the director, dialoguing with him on an almost daily basis. Her optimism, work ethic, and results-driven mentality had won his respect. Her new appointment at headquarters—project director for research, screening, and testing of emerging diseases—had been her reward. She was now officially on the fast track. On the day of the announcement, one of her colleagues had called her “a model for professional women in China everywhere” and then later whispered, “Careful, Dazhong. Don’t fuck it up.” Since that day, she’d felt the gaze of envy from her scores of male compeers—men who would not hesitate to derail her career at the slightest opportunity. She would not make it easy on them. No matter what pitfalls awaited her in Kizilsu, she had to say yes.
The phone rang.
Her stomach instantly went to knots. She glanced at the LCD window above the keypad and saw the director’s internal caller ID. She picked up the handset before the second ring and pressed it to her ear.
The conversation unfolded exactly as she had imagined, until the end.
“Dazhong, there is one last matter we need to discuss,” the director said, his voice suddenly taking on a strange undertone.
The shift made her nervous and set her lower left eyelid to twitching, a tick that surfaced whenever she was both stressed and exhausted.
“Yes?” she said, pressing the knuckle of her index finger against it to make it stop.
“This assignment is not the same as your last mission. There are complicating factors you need to stay cognizant of at all times. Xinjiang province is not Liberia. There are political implications for every decision you make—political implications not only for this office with the State Council but also for China in the eyes of the world. The stakes are high. Do you understand?”
She swallowed, unsure how to respond. To presume she understood his unspoken agenda could be disastrous later, yet to ask for clarification now would signal her ignorance and inexperience in such matters. She decided to err on the side of caution and said, “I presume you are referring to the Muslim extremists in Xinjiang?”
