by A. G. Riddle
Though her body ached, she felt more at home than she had in quite some time. Since her last deployment, she realized. That was the truth: this tent in the third world, not her condo in Atlanta, was home for her. She felt most at peace here—and filled with purpose. Despite the stress and long hours, she was somehow more at ease.
Tracking outbreaks was her life’s work, but it was also her way of life. Viruses were predictable: they could be tracked and understood. People were different. They were irrational and hurtful and never around when they should be. People were a blind spot for her. And a sore spot. Men in particular.
Peyton knew she was on the verge of making the biggest decision of her life: whether to settle down and have a family, or dedicate herself to her work. She still wasn’t sure what she wanted, but she knew being here, in Africa, in the middle of this outbreak, felt right to her. At the same time, however, she felt an emptiness inside of her. Being here didn’t fill it, but it did make her forget about it for a while.
Jonas threw the tent flap open and ducked to enter. He stopped and squinted as he inhaled the vapors from the rub. “Whoa, that stuff is strong.”
“Sorry. I can do this outside.”
“No. Stay. I want some myself. My back is killing me.”
Without asking her, Jonas took the tube from her hand. “Here, let me.” He squeezed some of the gel out. “What have you covered?”
“Legs and arms,” Peyton said.
“Let’s do your back.” With his dry hand, he guided her to sit on the floor, positioning her back to him. Peyton sat cross-legged, her back arched, shoulders pushed back. Jonas’s legs stretched out flat on the floor of the tent, the skin on his calves resting against her knees.
When his hand with the gel touched her back, Peyton inhaled sharply and arched her spine.
“Sorry,” Jonas said.
“It’s okay. Little warning next time.”
Slowly, Jonas massaged the soothing gel into Peyton’s lower back, working his fingers first into the soft tissue above her bottom. She could feel him pulling her shorts down, then tugging the drenched white tank top up as he moved higher.
“You’ll never get the smell out of your clothes.”
Without a word she slipped the shorts down her legs and tossed them aside. She pulled the tank top up over her head and laid it on the cot. It wasn’t the first time Jonas had seen her in her underwear, but she still felt a tingle of nervousness.
His hands moved from her back to her stomach, massaging the gel into her abs. His hands pressed into her in large, rhythmic circles, lightly touching the underside of her breasts.
Peyton felt butterflies rise in her stomach.
“That was very smart work, finding the village,” Jonas said quietly. “We might be close to solving this thing.”
“It was just a guess.” Peyton tried to keep her voice even, despite breathing faster.
“You guess right a lot, in my experience.”
He massaged the analgesic into her sides, coating her ribs all the way up to just under her armpits. “You know, as long as we’ve worked together, you’ve never really talked about yourself. I know almost nothing about you—personally.”
“Not much to tell.”
“I don’t believe that. Tell me something I don’t know about you. What do you do for fun?”
“Not a lot. I work all the time.”
“And when you’re not?”
“I read. I run.”
Peyton heard Jonas squeeze more of the gel from the tube, felt his hands moving up her back, applying pressure, slipping under her bra strap, pulling it tight against her chest.
“Can I ask you a personal question?”
“Sure,” she whispered.
“I think you’re an amazing person. Smart. Funny. You’ve got a wonderful heart. Why haven’t you settled down?”
Peyton felt his hands stop at her shoulders, him waiting for her to answer. For a moment, she thought about her brother. Then her father. And finally, about the man who had left all those years ago. “I’ve never met a man who was there when I really needed him.”
“I’ve always been there when you needed me,” Jonas said.
“That’s true.”
Jonas pulled his legs back and moved around in front of her. They sat in silence in the tent for a long moment. He searched her eyes, asking a question Peyton was completely unprepared for. When his lips moved toward hers, she felt a completely new type of fear.
In the next tent, Hannah Watson was busy applying an anti-inflammatory to her own skin. She had stripped down to her bra and panties for the task; her sweat-drenched clothes hung from a string she’d tied across the tent frame. She expected them to be dry soon. The rest of her items were unpacked, aligned neatly on her side of the tent. Her roommate’s side was a sharp contrast: Millen’s personal effects were strewn about like the aftermath of a raid by a family of bears.
She stood in the middle of the tent, bent over, her legs spread, using both hands to rub the white paste down her thighs and calves.
Behind her, she heard the tent flap open, and she peeked between her legs to find Millen, his face a mix of shock and fixation.
“Oh. Sorry,” he said, his voice strained. He was turning to leave when Hannah straightened up.
“It’s okay. Just… turn around for a sec.”
She finished applying the last bit of gel and slid under the covers on her cot. “Okay.”
He turned, and she held the tube out to him. “Want some? It helps.”
“No. Thanks, though. I’m too tired.” Millen opened a bottle of ibuprofen and took four.
“Me too,” Hannah said. “I’m too tired to even read.”
“Same here. But I feel like I can’t go to sleep.”
Hannah nodded. “Yeah.”
“I’m too keyed up.”
She stared up at the canvas tent. “I know. I’m completely drained, but I can’t quit thinking about what’s going to happen tomorrow.”
Millen held up his phone, showing Hannah the Audible app with a book pulled up. “I was going to listen to The Nightingale. Haven’t started yet.”
Hannah propped herself up on an elbow, her eyebrows scrunched in surprise.
“What, have you read it?”
“No. But it’s been on my TBR list for a while.”
“What’s a TBR list?”
“A to-be-read list.”
“Oh. I don’t have a list,” Millen said. “I just pick a book and read it.”
That didn’t surprise Hannah one bit, but his choice of books did, and she must have been showing it.
“What?”
“I didn’t, you know, think you would like that kind of book.”
Millen glanced at his phone, scrutinizing the cover. “Wait, what kind of book is it?”
“It’s a… literary-type book.”
He reared back, feigning insult. “I’ll have you know that I’m an extremely literary person. In fact, I’m uber-literarial.”
“All right, Mr. Uber-Literarian, how does this work?”
“Like this.” Millen plugged the white headset into the phone, put an earbud in his left ear, then crouched at the side of Hannah’s cot and placed the other earbud in her right ear. He sat on the floor of the tent and leaned back against the side of her cot, ensuring his head was close enough to hers to allow her to move a bit. He hit a button on his phone, and Hannah heard the words that marked the beginning of so many good reads: This is Audible.
She pulled the earbud from his ear and said, “Don’t be a hero. Come on.”
She slid over in the cot, making room for him. He pulled off his shoes and lay down beside her.
At some point, she wasn’t sure when, she turned away from him, onto her side, to make more room. Shortly after that, she felt his arm wrap around her stomach, pulling her close.
When Jonas’s lips were six inches from Peyton’s face, she turned her head.
“I’m sorry,” he said, looking away.
“No,” she said quickly. “It’s not that. I heard something.”
“What?”
Peyton paused. “Helicopters.”
She rose, pulled her clothes on, and dashed outside the tent. Two black helicopters were landing just beyond the village. Seconds later, soldiers armed with assault rifles were running toward her.
Chapter 29
As the helicopters landed, Colonel Magoro’s soldiers fell back to the tent complex, forming a protective ring around Peyton, Jonas, and the other health workers. Magoro raced out of his tent, barking orders into his radio as he ran.
When the dust cleared, Peyton could just make out the insignia of the Kenyan air force on both helicopters.
“What’s happened?” she asked Magoro.
“It’s spread. They’ve asked for both of you. It’s urgent.”
Peyton headed back to her tent to pack.
“Take some food and water,” Magoro said. “It may be a long trip.”
In the dark of night, the helicopter flew over the loosely populated region of eastern Kenya along the Somali border. Occasionally, thanks to the headlights from a truck or car, Peyton caught a glimpse of arid, rocky terrain and rolling hills below.
She was dead tired, but she wanted to discuss what had happened—or had almost happened—with Jonas in the tent. Yet she just couldn’t bring herself to do it. She didn’t know where to start. She told herself it was because she was so tired and because of the low hum in the helicopter and because she didn’t want to pull the headset on and allow the pilots in the front to hear them talking. But none of those were the actual reason.
Instead, she let her head fall back to rest on the back of the seat. The slight vibration in the helicopter slowly became soothing. Within minutes, she was asleep.
When Peyton awoke, her head lay on Jonas’s shoulder. A small pool of slobber spread out from her lips. She reached up and tried to wipe it away.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” His voice was barely audible over the helicopter’s rotors.
They were losing altitude, descending toward a large, sprawling city. Lights twinkled below. Dozens of fires burned, some quite large.
Peyton checked her watch. They had been in the air for hours. If the disease had spread this far—to a population center—everything had changed.
As the helicopter descended, Peyton saw that the streets of the city were laid out in a grid pattern. Very few cars moved about, only military trucks, but throngs of people had gathered in the streets, pushing at barriers and shouting.
The copilot turned to look back at them and pointed to his headset.
Peyton and Jonas pulled their headsets on. “Where are we?” Peyton asked.
“Dadaab. At the refugee camps,” the copilot answered.
Peyton remembered the Dadaab refugee camp from the State Department briefing. Located inside Kenya, just sixty miles from the Somali border, it was the largest refugee settlement in the world, home to more than three hundred thousand people, many barely surviving. Over eighty percent of the residents were women and children, and nearly all of them were Somali nationals who had fled the drought and wars in Somalia that had lasted for years. Recently, the Kenyan government had threatened to shut the camps down in response to al-Shabaab terror attacks in the area, which they believed might have been perpetrated by followers recruited from the camps. And in the last year, over one hundred thousand refugees had been sent back to Somalia.
“How many are infected?” Peyton asked.
A woman’s voice answered. Peyton instantly recognized her: Nia Okeke, the Kenyan Ministry of Health official she had met at Mandera. She was apparently in the other chopper. “Thousands. At least two thousand refugees are sick. A hundred have already died. There are cases in the Aid Agencies Camp as well, including workers from the Red Cross and UN.”
Nia detailed the layout of the sprawling complex, which was composed of four camps: Ifo II, Dagahaley, Hagadera, and the Aid Agencies Camp.
In the distance, Peyton saw a transport plane landing on a single-strip runway.
“What are you bringing in?”
“Troops and supplies. We’re quarantining Dadaab.”
“How can we help?” Jonas asked.
“We’d like your advice. How would you handle the situation here? Please.”
Peyton and Jonas asked a few more questions, then talked privately, their voices raised to be heard over the helicopter’s rotors. Finally, they settled on a set of recommendations. They suggested that the Kenyans separate the camp into four separate sections: a quarantine area for suspected cases, an isolation zone for confirmed cases, and two support camps. The first support camp would house personnel who had come into contact with potentially infected individuals. The second support camp would be for workers with no contact with the pathogen. Workers from the safe camp would unload transports and conduct any interactions with people from outside the camps.
In their years fighting outbreaks, neither Peyton nor Jonas had dealt with a situation quite like the outbreak in Dadaab; they were largely making it up as they went. They advised the Kenyans to quarantine Garissa, the nearest town, and to close the A3 and Habaswein-Dadaab Road, the two major routes in and out of the camps.
After some discussion of the details, the helicopter turned and began flying back to the village where Jonas and Peyton were camped.
Jonas pulled his headset off and leaned close to Peyton. “This is bad. This could be the worst refugee crisis since Rwanda.”
“I agree.” Peyton looked out the window. “It doesn’t make sense. Dadaab is too far from Mandera and too far from the village. The American kids were never here—not according to their website or what they told Dr. Kibet.”
“What’re you thinking?”
“Something isn’t right here.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. I need some rest. Time to think.”
An idea was just out of reach, but in the vibrating helicopter, Peyton’s sleep-deprived mind couldn’t reach it. For some reason, she thought about her brother for the second time that night. He had died along the eastern border of Uganda, a few hundred miles from here, on another night in November, in 1991.
The sun was rising over the village when the Kenyan air force helicopters dropped Peyton and Jonas off. The white tent complex seemed to shimmer in the sun as the two walked toward it, their hair blowing in the wind the helicopters kicked up.
Peyton was exhausted, but she had to call Elliott—and the CDC’s EOC. The situation had changed. The outbreak had spread much farther than she had imagined.
Day 4
1,200,000 infected
500 dead
Chapter 30
When he awoke again, Desmond lay on his side, on hard-packed dirt, in a tiny open-air room. It had wooden walls on three sides and metal bars on the other. At first he thought he was in a shabby prison cell. Closer inspection revealed the truth: this was a stall in a barn.
His hands and feet were still tightly bound. His body was sore all over—even more than on that morning in Berlin. They had not been gentle when they moved him.
With some effort, he sat up and scooted forward. Through the bars, he could peer down the barn’s central aisle. It was dark outside. How long had he been unconscious?
Whoever had converted the barn stall to a holding cell had been thorough. Though the floor was dirt, the wooden walls had been reinforced with vertical rebar that ran all the way into the ground. Given enough time, he might dig out, but he was quite sure he didn’t have that kind of time.
The agony in his body and the feeling of being in a cell brought to life a memory. It replayed in his mind as if he were reliving it.
Desmond was five years old the morning it happened. He had awoken early, thrown on some dirty clothes, and bolted out of the homestead. His mother appeared on the porch as he reached the first gate.
“Be back for lunch, Des, or I’ll tan your hide!”
He jumped the gate, pretending he hadn’t heard her.
He ran through the brown field, his dog at his side. The kelpie’s nose was often red from tearing into the game he chased down; for that reason, Desmond had named him Rudolph.
Desmond was certain that Rudolph was the fastest dog in Australia and the best herder in the world. Though he had not made a thorough survey of the country’s other dogs, there was no doubt in his mind. Rudolph was also his father’s star station hand, but his father had left the dog at home for Desmond today. Des was glad of it. His father could manage, and Rudolph loved their adventures more.
At the top of a hill, Desmond paused to look back at the homestead, the barn, and the painted fences running around both.
Atop a ridge, he saw his father, mounted on his horse. The flock of sheep before him looked like a dirty cloud. He took off his hat and waved it in the air, motioning for Desmond to come.
Pretending not to hear his mother was one thing; ignoring his father’s summons was altogether different. Desmond’s mother was quite a bit more forgiving.
Desmond set out at once, and when he was standing before his father’s horse, his father said, “Don’t go too far, Des. Come back and help your mother with lunch.”
“Okay, Dad,” Desmond muttered, as if merely hearing the words had attached shackles to his feet.
“And bring back whatever Rudolph kills.” He pulled a sack from his saddlebag and tossed it down. “Well, go on. Have fun.”
Desmond took off, sack in hand, Rudolph at his heels. He looked back once, and his father and the flock were nearly out of sight. The state of South Australia was experiencing its worst drought in years. His father had to drive the sheep farther and farther each week to find grazing land and water. The blistering sun and clear skies were killing their property.
