“They need to hurry,” the pilot said. “I’m getting stall warnings. We’ve got a minute, maybe two at the most.”
On the opposite end of town, something exploded. The heavy boom threw all of them to the ground; black smoke belched up along with a rain of debris. A gas station, maybe? Too big to be a car.
Fraser was the first to scramble back to his feet. He picked up the woman’s limp body and draped her over his shoulders, continued toward the helicopter with heavy steps, the other two close behind him. When he reached the door, Harbin and Martha helped get the woman inside, pulled her to the center as Fraser and the others climbed in and collapsed on the floor. “Go!” Fraser called out over the comm, before launching into a coughing fit.
Martha pulled the two remaining oxygen masks down off the wall, handed one to Fraser and the other to the soldiers beside him.
Fraser gave her a grateful nod and pressed the mask to his face.
“Hold on,” the pilot said.
Martha tightened the straps on her harness and wrapped her fingers around the thick nylon, gripped them as tight as she could.
The moan of the engine grew deep as the blades above increased speed. Another alarm sounded, this one filling the cabin with red and white flashing lights. The helicopter began to rise, lurched, and dropped back down to the ground.
“Smoke’s too thick.” The pilot groaned. “The engine’s not getting enough air!”
Outside the door, the street was aglow in orange and reds, the sun lost behind black smoke and floating soot. The fire was less than fifty feet away, the flames crawling toward them, inching up the walls of a pharmacy and the side of Wendy’s, engulfing the bookstore across the street.
Up front, the pilot frantically flicked several switches, adjusted something to his left, then tugged at what must have been the throttle. The engine noise went deep again, they rocked and lifted slowly off the pavement. When the motor sputtered, they dropped several feet. He increased speed. The engine screamed in protest, but they continued to rise. They were at least a hundred feet in the air when the engine sputtered again, and they dropped at least ten or more. Martha felt her stomach slam against her heart.
“Hot air pockets!” the pilot shouted. “Hold on!”
They continued to climb, nearly straight up, dropping as they ran into more hot air. They were nearly a thousand feet up before finally leveling off.
The moment it was safe to do so, Martha unsnapped her harness and crouched down over the woman on the floor. “She’s not breathing!”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Martha
“Should she be in restraints?” Joy Reiber asked, looking down at the woman on the cot.
Martha reached to the table beside her, picked up one of the laser thermometers, and pointed it at the woman’s forehead. She showed Reiber the screen. “She’s 98.4, normal. Nothing to indicate she’s been affected. I see no reason to restrain her.”
After CPR, Martha managed to stabilize the woman in the helicopter, and while she remained unconscious, her breathing and heart patterns had leveled off. When they arrived back at Zigzag, Fraser had her transported to Martha’s tent. Medical was still off-limits, and Martha didn’t think it was a good idea to put her in with the girls.
The soldiers said they found her on the steps of a recording studio located in the basement of a house two blocks off the main street. Like most of Barton, the house was engulfed in flames. She’d been semiconscious, unresponsive, most likely in shock and suffering from deep smoke inhalation. There was a nasty bump on the back of her head, probably from a fall. Martha had placed her on oxygen, an IV to get her fluids up, and a steady drip of trazodone—a serotonin reuptake inhibitor—in case she had a concussion. She was maybe in her early to mid-twenties. Her shoulder-length blond hair was tipped in pink, her left ear had six piercings, while her right had only one. She was wearing tight black leather pants and a thin white tank top.
“I think we should restrain her,” Reiber pushed. “At least until she’s awake and we know what we’re dealing with. What if she’s traumatized? Or hysterical? She could hurt herself.”
Martha didn’t see the point in arguing. She shuffled through the medical supplies they’d brought her, found four padded Velcro straps, and secured them around the woman’s wrists and ankles. “Better?”
Reiber nodded. “There…there were no others?”
“Survivors?”
“Yeah.”
Martha shook her head. “Just her. It was like the village—nearly everyone was missing, and those left behind were dead.” She dropped into a chair, closed her eyes, and rolled her head on her neck. She ached all over and had several bruises from the helicopter ride back. “Where is everyone?”
“Fravel is in his tent working on Holt’s laptop. Still no progress there. Tomes and Hauff are analyzing samples from Barton—soil, water, that sort of thing.”
Martha had already run preliminary tests on tissue samples collected from some of the bodies in Barton and found nothing unusual. She didn’t expect organic samples to turn up anything, either.
“Martha!”
Martha and Reiber looked up—Harbin came through the open doorway of her tent, his face red and dripping with sweat. “It’s the girls—Fraser played a copy of the recording!”
Before she could respond, he was gone again, racing back the way he’d come.
“Stay with her!” Martha shouted to Reiber as she pushed out of the chair and chased after him.
The two soldiers outside the girls’ tent stepped aside as she ran up, uneasy looks on their faces.
She found Harbin inside, Fraser and three other soldiers, too. Tennant was sitting on the floor, her back against the wall and her knees pulled tight against her chest. She was rocking back and forth, her eyes pinched shut and her hands over her ears as she cried.
Sophie stood against the back wall, cornered by Fraser and the other three. As Martha came in, her head jerked up and she glared at her like a caged animal. By the looks of it, she’d broken her bindings, torn them right off. The straps were on the ground near her upturned cot. The bandages Martha had wrapped around her wrists and ankles were red with fresh blood. Spit dripped from her mouth, down her chin. There was crusted snot around her nose. Her eyes had gone from the jaundiced yellow of earlier to red, lined with burst vessels, filled with a mix of burning hatred and fear.
One of the soldiers took a step closer and reached for her shoulder, but before he could get a grip on her, she lurched to the side and swiped at his arm. Her sharp nails dug into his skin and left four glistening tracks behind. The soldier jumped back, cursing.
Fraser’s head swiveled toward Martha. “Sedate her!”
Sophie’s eyes went wide, and she backed deeper into the corner. “Let meeee gooo!” she hissed. The voice sounded nothing like the little girl before them. It was too deep, too coarse, this gravelly thing resigned to crawl out only in the deepest dark, some creature of nightmares clawing up from the underside of a mattress, the thing that huddles in the back of the closet and waits for the witching hour to feed.
“Goddamnit, Doctor, sedate her!” Fraser said again.
Calmly, Martha said, “Dr. Harbin? In the supply case back at my tent, you’ll find propofol. Please fill a syringe with one hundred milligrams and bring it back here.”
Harbin disappeared out the tent.
Martha took a step closer to Sophie.
Sophie huffed, her eyes filled with suspicion.
“The rest of you, back up,” Martha said.
“No,” Fraser countered. “Reynolds, flank her from the left. Lopez on the right. Tighten up a circle around her and—”
With lightning speed, Sophie reached out and grabbed the soldier closest to her—Lopez, Martha thought, but she wasn’t sure—Sophie yanked the man toward her, twisted his arm at the wrist, and wrenched up and sideways. With a sickening crack, his forearm snapped, the bone splintered and tore through the material of his uniform. He let
out a shriek and crumbled to the floor at her feet.
The rest of them stared at her in utter shock. She couldn’t weigh more than forty-five or fifty pounds. How could she—
Sophie’s hand shot out again, managed to snatch Fraser’s sleeve, but he pulled back and to the side, ripped away from her.
Martha took a step closer, held both her palms out. “Sophie, it’s okay. We’re not going to hurt you. We just want to help.”
Sophie shuffled backward until her shoulders pressed against the wall of the tent. Sweat dripped down from her hair, over the sides of her face. Her clothing was soaked in it, and she stunk of ammonia. Martha knew that smell—it meant her kidneys weren’t able to process the urea in her body fast enough, and she was excreting nitrogen in her sweat. It meant her body was losing the fight against the fever and her organs were beginning to fail. Even from several feet away, Martha could feel the heat emanating from the girl. She’d torn her IV out, and without the medications, whatever was happening to her had come back with a vengeance.
“Sophie, let me help you. I’m on your side.”
Maybe the only one who’s on your side.
The girl’s face jerked toward her, tilted to the left until her ear was nearly touching her shoulder. “Take care of meeee like lil Emiiily and Michael? That how you take care of meeee? You abandon them in some loveless hoouse, leave them to wilt and rot in the smog and filth of San Cisssco. Leave theem wit all the Anna Shimmm. Tooo manny Anna Shimmm. Bodies presssed close, until can’t nooo longer breathe. Stifled. Choking.”
Martha’s heart thumped. How did she know her children’s names?
Sophie’s tongue leaped out, licked at the salty sweat on her upper lip. “Emiiily and Michael will run with Anna Shimmm. You all will. We all will.” Sophie began to rock back and forth, her weight shifting from her left foot to her right and back again, slowly picking up speed.
Harbin came back into the tent, a needle in one hand, the glass vial of propofol in the other. He came up behind Martha and slipped the loaded syringe into her hand, his eyes locked on Sophie. “Will a hundred milligrams be enough?”
Martha had no idea.
“I’ve got something else,” Harbin said before backing out of the tent. A moment later, he returned with a yellow lab on a leash. He smiled at the little girl. “Someone wants to say hi to you, Sophie.”
Sophie’s dark eyes locked on the dog, a glint of recognition. Her head straightened back up. “Zeeeeeke.”
The dog whimpered.
Martha jumped forward and buried the syringe in the little girl’s neck.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Martha
One hundred milligrams of propofol wasn’t enough, not to knock her out, anyway, but the dose slowed her down long enough for Martha to inject her two more times, 350 milligrams in total. Enough to drop a grown man of four times this little girl’s weight.
“Help me get her back on the table,” Martha said.
Sophie’s pulse was strong. There was no way to know how long she’d be out.
Martha quickly went to the soldier with the broken arm, conducted a cursory exam, and injected him with a measured field hypodermic of morphine. The lines on his face slackened.
“Sit tight, give that a minute to work through your system,” she told him reassuringly. “Try not to move.”
Martha didn’t know where he got it, but when Fraser produced a straitjacket, she was grateful. Sophie had split her original bindings as if they were made of paper, and after what she did to that soldier’s arm, they couldn’t risk her getting free again. Martha quickly cleaned and redressed Sophie’s wounds. Then, with Harbin’s help, the three of them got her in the straitjacket, back up on the table, and tied her down with thick leather belts.
When finished, Martha turned on Fraser. “What the hell were you thinking playing that recording?”
His eyes narrowed. “I’m not your subordinate, Doctor. Check your tone.”
“Fuck you.”
Martha moved the IV pole next to Sophie’s head and expertly slipped a fresh cannula into the jugular vein at her neck. She then made several adjustments to the medication dispenser’s touchscreen. I’m increasing her antibiotics and anti-inflammatory meds, the propofol, too.”
“How long can you keep her out?”
“Indefinitely, I suppose. But considering her body’s rate of absorption, the speed at which she’s processing the meds, I’ll have to monitor her closely and continue to make adjustments. This…this illness is progressing, speeding up. She doesn’t have much…”
Martha cut herself off. She’d forgotten about the girl’s sister.
Tennant was still on the floor. She hadn’t moved. Her face was buried against her knees with her hands over the back of her neck.
“I’ll take care of your sister, Tennant. I promise.”
Tennant looked up at her but said nothing. She stretched a hand out toward the dog, and he shuffled over to her, buried his snout against her neck.
In the opposite corner of the tent, the soldier with the broken arm groaned softly. The medication had kicked in, but he still had to be in a tremendous amount of pain.
Martha went over to him and crouched at his side. She took a closer look at the wound. “This break is far worse than I thought.” She glared up at Fraser, who was standing over her shoulder. “I can’t fix this here. We need to get him into Medical.”
“Medical is off-limits.”
“Then your soldier will lose his arm.”
“I’ll bring you what you need.”
“We don’t have time for that.”
Harbin said, “I can assist. I’ve had field training.”
For a moment, Fraser looked like he might argue. Instead, he instructed one soldier to stay and keep an eye on the girls and told the other to help him carry the injured man. “Follow me,” he told Martha and Harbin.
The soldiers outside Medical gave them a wary glance as they carried the other man past them and into the tent.
Inside the antechamber, Martha and Harbin quickly changed into scrubs, latex gloves, and a mask before pushing through the curtains into the chilled air of the main theater. Fraser and the other had placed the injured man up on one of the open tables. There was no sign of Fitch inside, nobody else, either. The scent of bleach and ammonia filled the air. The various tables and instruments had all been scrubbed clean, the space shined as if it had never been used—if not for the body bags lining both walls. There were more now, many more. The highest visible number written on a bag was 257. As she stepped closer, she realized the ones on the right all bore higher numbers, marked with red stickers, than the left. She tried not to think about it. She had to treat the injured man.
“I need you and your people out of here. This will require surgery, and just by being here, you’re a potential infection risk.”
“I’ll change into scrubs,” Fraser said.
“I want you out. You’ll just get in the way.” To Harbin, she said, “Find the portable X-ray machine. Do you have any experience with anesthesia?”
Harbin nodded.
“We’ll need some O negative, too. I think he nicked the cephalic.” Martha turned back to Fraser and glared angrily. “Out!”
To her surprise, he nodded and left, motioning for the other man to follow.
When they were gone, Harbin said softly, “I hope you don’t really need me to administer anesthesia. I may be a doctor in title, but there’s not much call for that with NOAA.”
She shook her head. “The break looks bad, but it’s a fairly straightforward fracture.”
“I figured as much.”
She gave the soldier another injection of morphine along with a local in his arm, whispered to him, “Just lie back and relax.”
His eyes rolled back into his head as he fell into a semiconscious state.
“We have maybe five minutes before I can start on him,” Martha said, turning back to the two stacks of body bags. She frowned. “Is tha
t…?”
She already knew the answer.
Steam was rising from the body bags stacked on the right.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Martha
At first, Martha thought it was some trick of the lights, but as she neared, she realized a dull haze hung over the black bags on the right side of the tent, a thin shimmer. The thick plastic bags glistened with condensation, and the ground around them was damp.
The room was cold enough for her to see her breath, but as she neared those bags, the temperature climbed, became downright balmy. From the instruments near one of the exam tables, she retrieved an infrared thermometer, pointed it at one of the bags on the top, and squeezed the trigger. A little red dot appeared on the moist plastic.
The display read 105.
Martha frowned and pointed the thermometer at another bag, this one two rows down from the top, in the middle row of five. The temperature read 103. She tried several others, and the lowest temperature she found was 101.
“Try the ones on the left,” Harbin suggested.
She took several readings. The other body bags ranged in temperature anywhere from 61 to 79.
Pointing the thermometer at the ceiling, she got a reading of 57. The ground measured at 52. She checked several more body bags on the right; all read over 100. “Holt said there was no radiation.”
“Holt said a lot of things,” Harbin replied.
Martha returned the thermometer to the table, riffled through one of the black supply cases stacked beneath it, and found a short-range dosimeter among the other emergency medical equipment.
Martha switched on the device and watched the LCD screen come to life. She expected an alarm or warning beep, but none came. While some radiation was detected, it was well within normal parameters.
She took several steps toward the body bags on the right, her eyes fixed on the small screen. Nothing changed, though, even when right next to them.
“No radiation,” Harbin said.
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