Still, how could they do nothing?
“Give me five minutes,” he said.
“Sanjay, they are sick already. We can’t take them with us.”
“I understand, and we won’t. But I’m not going to leave them locked in there.”
Knowing she would continue trying to dissuade him, he pulled from her grasp and hurried around the debris pile. When he reached the second holding area, he immediately set to work cutting an opening in the outer fence. This time, instead of creating a flap, he cut out the entire section and laid it on the ground.
He then did the same for the inner fence. He contemplated entering the barracks and telling them about the way out, but he feared he would pick up traces of the flu and carry them back to the others, so those who were inside would have to find the holes on their own.
He had hoped Kusum had gone under the fence to join the others, but she was still waiting at the wall when he returned.
“Go, go,” he whispered, motioning her toward the hole.
She didn’t move.
“What are you waiting for? Go,” he said.
“What did you do?”
“I cut a hole in their fence, that’s all.”
She closed her eyes and shook her head in disapproval, but she couldn’t help from grinning. When she looked at him again, she placed a hand on his cheek. “You are a good man.”
She kissed the corner of his mouth, dropped down, and crawled through the hole.
__________
OMAR WOKE IN a fit of coughing.
“No,” he silently pleaded, after the spasms stopped.
He’d seen the symptoms in others countless times in the last week, and though he’d somehow been able to avoid the flu for over a week, he knew his luck had run out.
He’d woken up with a headache the previous morning. That’s what finally spurred him into going to the survival station. Until that point, he’d been too afraid to journey across the city and risk exposing himself to the disease. He wasn’t quite sure how vaccines worked, but they were still effective even if you were already ill, weren’t they?
When he arrived, he tried to mask how he felt, but somehow the soldiers had figured it out, because not only had he not gotten a shot, but they had put him into what was basically a prison, with others who seemed also ill. Oddly, only a dozen or so meters away from their enclosure was another where those who still seemed healthy were placed.
He was angry he’d been locked up, but he could at least understand it. Why the UN would lock up those uninfected made no sense to him. Whatever the reason, it didn’t matter anymore. The detention pen he was in was where he’d die.
As he coughed again, someone shouted a weak “shut up.”
Thinking maybe a little fresh air would help, he shuffled through the barracks and out the door. He had no idea what time it was. He only knew it was still night.
His need to cough was replaced by an urge to pee. Having no desire to return to the barracks to use the facilities there, he walked around the back of the building and zipped down his pants. He watched the stream of water turn the dirt to mud for a moment, and then his gaze began to wander, his mind all but blank.
Several seconds passed before he realized what he was looking at. Not the chain links of the fence, but a square hole cut into the barrier. He bent down and looked through the hole. There was another missing section on the outside fence.
A way out.
This cage didn’t have to be the place where he died.
He could go home and lie down on the bed next to his dead wife.
He almost stepped through the opening then and there, but he remembered the old man, Mr. Kapur, who also talked of a wife he’d left behind. Omar was not so sick that he couldn’t take the time to let the man know about the opportunity. What Mr. Kapur decided to do then would be his business.
Decision made, Omar headed back into the barracks, content in the thought that very soon he’d be on his way home.
__________
SENIOR MANAGER DETTLING woke to the sound of someone pounding on his door.
“Mr. Dettling? Are you awake?” van Assen, his assistant asked.
Dettling threw back his covers and sat up. “What is it?”
“Sir, the detainees have escaped.”
Dettling, already rising to his feet, froze for half a second. “They what?”
“Someone let them out. There are holes in the fences.”
Dettling walked quickly to the door and pulled it open. “Which pen?”
“Both, sir. We caught some from the infected group trying to get out. Four of them are still missing.”
“And the others?”
Van Assen looked uncomfortable. “The uninfected detention area is empty. They’re gone, sir.”
“They can’t be gone.”
“I have people searching the compound, but so far they haven’t found any of them.”
If the uninfected warned others to stay away, the Mumbai recovery operation could turn into a failure. “Have you sent out search parties?”
“Not yet.”
“What are you waiting for? Do it! Now!”
__________
JABALA DISCOVERED THE Mumbai survival station purely by accident. She knew she must’ve been getting close, but when she reached the next corner, she had not expected to see its gates right there in front of her.
She jumped back out of sight, hoping she hadn’t been seen, and pressed herself against the side of the building. When she was finally able to get her panic under control, she realized the street was still quiet. They had not seen her.
Slowly, she retreated to the previous block, and turned down the road that paralleled the one the survival station was on. Three businesses down was a restaurant where most of the dining had been done at tables spread under a tattered awning along the sidewalk. She sat at a table in the back corner, where she could watch the street and be able to hide quickly if anyone showed up.
Okay, now what? she wondered.
When she’d left the boarding school, she’d been sure that finding Kusum and Sanjay would not be a problem, but now that she was here, surrounded by the reality of the city, the task seemed impossible. While Sanjay had said the plan was to find someplace where they could watch the survival station, there were far too many buildings in the area. He and Kusum could be in any of them.
What do I do now? What do I…
The world was so quiet, so very quiet. And dark. And warm. And—
Her head jerked up, her eyelids shooting open. For a second she had no idea where she was.
Restaurant. Mumbai.
Right.
She blinked several times. She’d fallen asleep in the chair.
How stupid can you be?
She scanned the street to make sure she was still alone, then paused.
Is that someone shouting?
She sat up and cocked her head.
Definitely. Several people, in fact.
She eyed the street again. Still empty.
Relax, she told herself. The yelling wasn’t on her street. It was coming from a few blocks away. She narrowed her eyes, her slowly waking mind sensing that the location should be important.
A few blocks away…a few blocks…
Her brow shot up. The survival station.
As if on cue, she heard the roar of multiple engines coming from the same direction. Wanting to see what was happening, but knowing she had to be smart about it, she went over to the door leading to the inside part of the restaurant. Thankfully, it was not locked. Beyond was a single room with a small kitchen on one side and a couple of tables along the other. There was also a door in the back, exactly what she’d been hoping for.
She undid the locks holding the back door in place, and carefully opened it. The area behind the restaurant couldn’t quite be called an alley. Though open to the sky, it was barely wide enough for two people to walk down shoulder-to-shoulder—if they could get over the boxes and trash that fil
led much of the space. Jabala decided to give it a try, and was pleased to find that after the first stack of rubbish, the area beyond was relatively clear.
The passageway did not go all the way to the end of the street, ending instead at the back of a building Jabala thought faced the street leading to the survival station. If she could get inside, she should be able to see what was going on.
There were three windows on the old and weathered back wall, one on each floor. The ground-floor window was closed, but the one right above it was partially open. The wall had plenty of notches, so climbing up to the window was not much of a challenge. It did take some extra effort, however, to push it open wide enough for her to climb through.
Inside, she found herself in a storage room packed with stacks of dresses and suits and boxes. A window was on the opposite side, overlooking the street, but it was blocked by several bundles of cloth.
Jabala carefully moved the bundle at the end just enough so she could see outside. The survival station’s gate was wide open, and she counted eleven soldiers wearing blue helmets with the letters UN large and white on the sides. They stood armed and ready right outside the gate, their attention focused on the city.
Suddenly, several of the men looked back toward their base. When one of them shouted something, the soldiers split into two groups and moved to the sides. A few seconds later, a truck with a dozen more soldiers rumbled out of the gate and onto the road. As soon as it was gone, the men on the ground moved back into place.
Something was definitely going on.
Jabala leaned closer to the window to try to see more of the survival station. That’s when she heard the floor creak behind her.
__________
SANJAY’S FIRST INSTINCT was to get everyone out of the city right away, but several of the people they’d rescued were elderly and needed more rest before attempting to hike out of Mumbai. So they took them all to the building where Prabal was waiting.
“Everyone stay inside,” Sanjay instructed them. “And, please, remain quiet at all times. We will wait until the sun goes down again before we leave.”
Most were still in a state of semi-shock, from both their sudden imprisonment and subsequent rescue. A few wanted to know exactly what was going on. Sanjay promised to tell them everything after they were safely out of the city.
He and Kusum were getting ready to lie down themselves when all hell broke loose over at the compound.
“What’s going on?” Darshana asked, bolting up from where she’d been trying to sleep.
“I will check,” Sanjay said. “Make sure everyone stays quiet.”
Sanjay headed up the stairs to the roof, Kusum right behind him like he knew she would be. As they peered out at the survival station, Sanjay noted several soldiers moving around as if they were searching for something. Then, from behind one of the buildings, a man in civilian clothes stepped out and began running toward the front gate.
There were several shouts as a handful of soldiers moved in and encircled him a few car lengths from the gate. Though Sanjay couldn’t hear anything, he could tell a conversation was going on. The man tried to run again, but two of the soldiers grabbed him. The man kicked and yelled as the soldiers turned him around and started marching him back to the holding area.
Seeing the man’s chest heave with a cough, Sanjay realized what was going on.
“It’s the ones from the other holding area,” he whispered. “They must have found the hole in the fence.”
One of the guards shoved the prisoner hard. The man stumbled forward several steps before falling to the ground. As they jerked him back up, there was blood on his face.
“Oh, God,” Kusum said under her breath.
“I should not have cut the hole,” Sanjay said. “I should not have done it.”
For a moment, neither of them said anything, then Kusum pointed toward the back gate.
“No,” she said. “Look.”
Huddled behind a couple of the vehicles were two men. Even from this distance, Sanjay could tell one was considerably older than the other. Only two guards were on the gate, as most of the other soldiers had moved toward the shouting at the center of the compound.
The younger man peeked around the vehicle, said something to his companion, and the two of them moved across a small open space to the backside of the guard hut. Kusum sucked in a worried breath, but the men timed their move well and the guards did not see them.
The old man picked something off the ground and handed it to the younger one. A few words passed between them, then the younger one cocked his arm and threw the item toward the main part of the compound. Though Sanjay and Kusum couldn’t hear the object land, it was clear the guards could. They both turned as one toward the noise, the guard nearest the hut taking a couple steps away from the fence.
The younger man threw something else in the same direction as before. This time the guards came together, talked, and one started cautiously walking in the direction of the sound. His partner followed him for about ten paces before stopping, his back to the gate.
“They are never going to make it,” Kusum said as the younger man peered around the side of the hut, clearly intending to try sneaking out the opening.
When the guard took another step toward the center of the compound, the two men eased out from behind the hut and slipped quietly out the back gate into the city.
A muted echo. Metal. Like an empty drum.
Sanjay swung his gaze toward the sound. It had not come from the compound, but rather from an opening behind the buildings across the street from where they were. Though they weren’t high enough to see all the way down the opening, they could see much of it, and there was no missing the dark form of a person climbing over a pile of trash.
“Is it one of the soldiers?” Kusum asked.
“I do not think so,” Sanjay said.
He had no doubt the soldiers would perform a thorough search once they realized even more of their prisoners had escaped, but he didn’t think there’d been enough time for them to be sneaking around like this yet.
“One of the people who escaped?” she asked.
“Perhaps.”
“They are going to get themselves caught. We have to help them.”
She was right. Whoever was down there was moving toward the building right outside the survival station’s main gate. It would be only a matter of time before the person was discovered.
“I will go,” he said. Before she could argue, he added, “You need to get the others up and move them to where we had the camp. If that is a soldier and they are searching buildings, they will search this one, too. We cannot wait until tomorrow night to leave.”
Kusum looked like she was going to argue, but instead said, “Be very careful. And if they are sick, do not get too close.”
“Don’t worry about me. I will be fine. Now go.”
__________
SANJAY WASTED NO time sneaking across the street into one of the buildings on the other side. Instead of looking for an entrance to the back passageway, he headed up to the very top and ran from one roof to the next until he reached the end.
There, he leaned over the passageway to see if the person was still there. Not surprisingly, the area was now empty, but an open window was two floors below him. As far as he could tell, it was the only thing open along the entire passage. It had to be where the person had gone.
He located the entrance to the internal stairway and made his way down. When he reached the room with the open window, he quietly crept inside. The only light was what trickled in through the windows, and for a moment he thought he was alone, but then something moved. A person stood by the front window, peeking out at the street below.
As he took another step forward, the floor groaned under his feet.
__________
JABALA TWISTED AROUND, her heart thudding in her chest. On the other side of the room was a man.
A soldier, she thought. They’ve come to get me.
She glanced to her right, hoping there was some way she could get out, but the only exit was the one behind the man.
“It’s okay,” the soldier said. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
In her panic, she did not recognize his voice at first. But as he spoke the last few syllables, it clicked.
“Sanjay?” she said.
__________
SANJAY FROZE.
The person at the window, a woman, knew his name.
“Sanjay, is that you?”
His eyes widened in surprise. “Jabala?”
He wasn’t sure if she let out a laugh or a sigh of relief, but the next thing he knew she was rushing toward him, throwing her arms around him.
“Sanjay! You nearly scared me to death.”
It took him a couple of attempts, but he was finally able to remove her arms from around his neck, and push her back enough so he could see her face. “Jabala, what are you doing here?”
“I was looking for you.”
“Yes, of course. But why?”
Before she could answer, the roar of another troop truck sped past the front of the building.
Grabbing her hand, he said, “Come on. We need to get out of here. We can talk later.”
__________
SANJAY LOST COUNT of how many times they’d had to stop and wait as groups of soldiers passed near them. Sometimes the vehicles had been driving fast toward other parts of the city, sometimes they had gone by at a slow crawl, the soldiers scanning both sides of the street.
Not a minute went by that he didn’t worry Kusum and the others would be spotted. It was hard enough for only him and Jabala to stay hidden.
“This way,” he said, leading her across the now vacant street into a dark alleyway.
Several moments later, Jabala’s foot kicked something, and Sanjay heard her start to stumble. He twisted around and caught her before she could fall.
“You have to be careful,” he told her.
“It is too dark,” she said. “I cannot see where I am walking.”
“Okay, okay. We will go slower,” he said. “Keep your eyes open.”
Fourteen steps into their reduced pace, something buzzed.
Eden Rising Page 15
