by Louise Voss
She tuned out Kolosine’s grumbling reply. After what seemed like whole minutes of silence, Paul’s automatic answerphone message clicked in without the phone having rung first. ‘It’s switched off,’ she called to Harley, who was hovering outside. Kolosine, to her relief, had now disappeared off somewhere. It felt wonderful just to
hear Paul’s voice, but her pleasure was tinged with anxiety – Paul never turned off his phone.
The beep signalled for her to leave a message. ‘Hey, darling, it’s me. Been dying to speak to you all week – there’s no signal here, internet’s down, but I’ve finally got to use a landline – and you’re not picking up! Please call me straight back on this number, Paul, please, I’m really worried about you.’ She squinted at the number handwritten on the telephone’s label and read it out. ‘I’ll be waiting for your call for the next half hour, then I’ve got to get back into the lab. If it’s busy, try again – I need to hear your voice, OK?’
When she hung up, she realised that she had tears in her eyes, and Harley had moved away discreetly. She sat down in Kolosine’s chair and rang again and again, in case Paul had been on the phone, causing it to go to voicemail, but the same thing happened every time.
She dialled Vernon’s number instead – might as well make use of unfettered access to a phone – and had a perfunctory conversation with him about Jack and then insisted that Vernon fetch Jack from next door, where he was playing with Bradley. When she heard Jack’s voice, she thought he sounded a little shifty, as though he was about to do something naughty. He asked for the address of the lab so he could send her a postcard.
‘On top of a mountain, darling,’ she said. ‘But don’t worry about the postcard. Write me an email instead. And Jack – you will be a good boy for Dad, won’t you?’
When they eventually said their goodbyes, it took Kate some time to compose herself, during which she continued to try Paul’s number, automatically redialling over and over. She looked around Kolosine’s office – anything to take her mind off Jack. It was very obviously a temporary base, with no personal effects whatsoever, just a packet of Lucky Strikes, a pen, a calculator and a Wildlife of Sequoia calendar from 2007 on the desktop.
She was doodling on the corner of the calendar with the pen, when suddenly, on about the thirtieth redial, she heard the soft burr of an international ringtone instead of the click straight to voicemail. She jumped, and held her breath, twirling her finger through the old-fashioned telephone cord. The ringtone ceased, and a woman’s voice, American and husky, said ‘Hello? Paul’s phone.’
Kate was too shocked to speak. She held the receiver away from her ear as the voice repeated, ‘Who’s there? Hello? Hello?’
25
After promising Watton he would return later, Paul joined Rosie in her car to find her looking sombre.
‘You’ve just missed a phone call,’ she said, handing him the plugged-in iPhone. ‘This second. I said hello and they hung up on me.’
He checked his call log – an unfamiliar number, dialled from within the US. He hesitated. Could it be Harley?
‘Did they hang up as soon as they heard your voice?’
‘Uh-huh.’
If it was Harley, trying to trace him, he would surely have tried to keep Rosie on the phone, probably asked some questions about where she was. So who would hang up upon hearing a female voice on the end of his phone?
Shit.
He pressed the number on the screen to return the call. It rang a few times, then the voice he knew better than any other said, ‘Hello?’
‘Kate?’
There was a long pause, during which he wondered if he had misrecognised her. Then she said, ‘Who was that woman?’
He ignored the question. ‘Oh, Kate, it’s so good to hear your voice. I’ve been trying to get hold of you.’
There were waves of annoyance coming through the phone. ‘Who was that who answered your phone?’
He glanced up at Rosie, who was looking in the other direction, making a show of not listening.
‘Someone who’s trying to help me,’ he said.
‘Help you with what, exactly? And where are you? Harley says you’ve done a runner. Nobody knows where you are or who you’re with. What the hell are you playing at?’
‘I’m trying to find Charles Mangold.’
‘What?’
‘It’s my only chance to hunt him down, I’ve got to … Hang on, is Harley there now?’
‘Yes, he’s waiting outside.’
‘You mustn’t tell him what I’ve just said.’
‘What do you mean? You’ve hardly told me anything.’
‘I don’t want him to know I’m looking for Mangold. He’ll only try to stop me.’
‘Or maybe he’ll want to help.’
‘No, Kate, I don’t trust him. He’ll haul me back to San Francisco and lock me in a hotel room until the virus reaches my door.’ He took a few steps away from Rosie. ‘Listen, I’m starting to make progress – I’ve met a guy who used to work for Mangold, name of Jon Watton … But I don’t want to say any more until you promise me you won’t tell Harley anything.’
He heard her sigh. ‘OK, OK … I promise.’
‘Thank you. Listen. I’m in a place called Sagebrush in Ventura County, west of LA. Mangold used to run a company here called Medi-Lab. It got shut down in the early nineties after a big health scandal – a couple of people died in an outbreak of some unnamed virus they were working on. A virus that sounds very like Watoto.’
Kate was quiet for a moment. ‘That doesn’t mean he’s behind this outbreak too.’
‘I know. But think about it – we know he was paying Gaunt and his cronies to create deadly superviruses. And now it seems he was working on Watoto back in 1991. That’s some coincidence. Even if he’s not behind this outbreak, the fact he was funding Gaunt makes him responsible for what happened to Stephen. I have to find him, Kate. It kills me to think that anyone who had a hand in my brother’s death is still walking free. I would have thought you’d feel the same.’
‘Of course I do. You know I do. But you need to be careful. I’d rather you were home in England. I’ve already arranged to send Jack back. I don’t like the thought of anyone I love being in America while this virus is spreading.’
‘I’m not leaving without you, Kate. And not until I’ve found Mangold. How is the research going?’
‘Not brilliantly.’
They were both quiet for a second until Paul said, ‘And how are you?’
‘I’m worried, Paul. Worried to death. This strain of Watoto – it’s so much worse than the one I had.’
‘But if anyone can find a vaccine, you can.’
‘Maybe. But what if no one can?’
‘That doesn’t sound like you, Kate … Kate?’
‘Sorry … I thought I could hear a strange noise – like there was someone else on the line.’
Paul said, ‘Hello? Hello?’ There was a distinctive click.
‘Someone was listening to us. But I didn’t think there was another phone here.’
Paul snorted. ‘You’re in a government facility surrounded by FBI agents. It’s hardly a shock. Probably Harley himself. Shit.’
‘No,’ she said in a whisper. ‘Harley is right outside the door. I can hear him talking to one of the other agents. Hang on – he’s coming in – I have to go, OK? I love you. Please take care. I’ll call you again as soon as I can.’
‘OK, but what—’
She had hung up.
Fucking Harley. Paul thumped the top of Rosie’s car.
‘Hey, steady,’ she said.
‘Sorry.’
‘Everything OK?’
He shook his head and pulled open the car door. Not brilliantly, Kate had said. He knew that meant they were getting nowhere. He watched a young family pass by on the other side of the street: a healthy young couple with three kids and a dog. The boys were playing with the dog, laughing uproariously as it bounded along; the dad stroked
his daughter’s hair and held his wife’s hand. They had probably seen the news, knew about the virus that was cutting a swathe through the population of Los Angeles. Did they have any idea how far and fast viruses like this could spread? That if a hidden team of scientists didn’t start to make progress, fast, the life of this family, and millions like them, would be devastated. Wiped out.
Paul clenched his fists. ‘Hey,’ he called out. The dad turned around, polite caution on his face. ‘You should keep your kids indoors,’ Paul said brusquely, crossing the street to talk to them. The little girl looked up at him, startled. ‘The virus is only fifty miles away. It won’t take long to get here.’
The husband and wife exchanged glances, then the man shrugged. ‘It’ll be a storm in a teacup, I’ll bet,’ he said. ‘Like swine flu and avian flu – all over-hyped to sell newspapers and give anchormen something to talk about.’
‘It’s not,’ said Paul, urgently. ‘Trust me. It’s not.’
The parents stared at him as though he was a raving lunatic. ‘Well, thank you for your concern. Come along, kids, let’s go get ice cream.’ They rounded up their small charges and hurried away as fast as they could, as if Paul had threatened them with a pitchfork.
Paul slumped back against the window of a sports equipment store, watching them go, and wondering if they’d still be alive in three weeks’ time. Whether he would be. He liked this world. He didn’t want it to end.
26
Angelica awoke from her siesta and sat up in bed, feeling the welcome whisper of the cool silk sheet as it brushed over her perspiring body. She had been suffering a nightmare in which she was in a cheap diner surrounded by grimy, brick-dusty construction workers with crewcuts and crude tattoos who all ignored her. In the dream she had felt a growing sense of outrage at this. How dare they ignore her? There were dozens of them, all of them shovelling in All Day Breakfasts or scraping their chairs across the dirty tiled floor, and generally being the type of trash that the Goddess couldn’t wait to see wiped off the face of the planet. She got out of bed and went straight to her shower.
‘End Times,’ she said to herself. ‘It’s all starting.’ No wonder her nerves were on edge. She towelled herself dry with the vast soft bath sheets that the other Sisters replaced twice a day, regardless of whether Angelica had used them or not, and thought about her dream. Now that she was wide awake, it took on a different hue; the idea of all those nasty brutish men dying in agony; workers, captors, bankers, soldiers, scientists – it gave her a thrill that was sexual in its depth and intensity. Most of all, she thought about the teacher who had assaulted her as a child; the man who had made her hate all other men. Imagining his death throes made her shudder with pleasure. This was no dream, either – it was really happening, and she had made it happen. She prostrated herself on the carpet, her arms spread wide and an ecstatic smile on her face.
‘Thank you Sekhmet, thank you for choosing me, thank you for making me the instrument of transformation in this world. Thank you for your power, and your love, and your vengeance on my behalf …’
The Goddess had come to her years ago, when she’d been a broken, hurt child, picked her up in Her beautiful arms, and saved her – not just saved her, but chose her as the instrument of the world’s transformation. Then, in turn, she had led Angelica to her Sisters: Heather, angel of vengeance; devoted Preeti; beautiful Cindy; Simone the warrior, and practical Brandi. Bitter, resentful, hopeless lives, all transformed by the Goddess.
‘Thank you, Sekhmet,’ she repeated. ‘Make us worthy of your trust.’
Angelica dressed, crept out of the mansion and got into the fastest of her cars, the white Maserati, and drove slowly out of the compound, keeping the engine noise down to a soft purr so as not to alert the other Sisters to her absence. It was only once she was out in the desert that she retracted the roof, put her foot on the gas, and roared off down the open road, the dusty early evening air whipping her long hair around her face. She laughed with exhilaration, feeling the breath of Sekhmet in the heat of the desert wind. It already felt as though she, her Sisters and the High Priest were the only ones left on the planet. That she was driving over the diseased dead bodies of the unworthy, the oppressors, the unenlightened.
It would be a brutal period of cleansing, no doubt about it, and she’d found it hard at first to believe what the High Priest had told her: that the entire population of the world would have to be purged for the rebirth to take place. But Sekhmet, Goddess of Pestilence, Lady of Flame, had waited five thousand years for this. There had been a few dry runs in the meantime: indigenous Indians wiped out by viruses brought to the Americas by white men. The Incas, too. But what was coming would be on a far greater scale. Destruction and death were balm to Sekhmet’s proud and vengeful heart as she watched the cycle of time go round and round …
Few people understood that time was repeated in five-thousand-year cycles. The Mayans had known it, and some minor Indian cults, but that was before the rise of modern science. This blind faith in carbon dating was laughable – could they not see how unreliable a tool it really was? Yes, dinosaurs had existed, but not millions of years ago; they had emerged, far more briefly than commonly perceived, at the very end of each Cycle, to roam a world lying in ruins, with only the Sisters left unscathed to usher in the Golden Age.
Those who somehow avoided the virus would die in the riots and violence. In Los Angeles the descent into anarchy was already underway. With the complete breakdown of society would come starvation, fights to the death over food and resources; all those diseases that medicine had kept in check would overrun the world like the plagues sent to ravage Egypt.
The world was full of people. Too full. The planet needed purging. It was a shame that the female as well as the male population had to die, but there was nothing Angelica could do to prevent that, if the Goddess so decreed it. And she would still have her Sisters – they were all immune. A good number had been lost to the virus, but that had been necessary to ensure the final selection would stay healthy when the time came. Seven Sisters, the Prophecy foretold, though Angelica was still awaiting clarification of this. There were only six at the moment: her, Heather, Cindy, Simone, Brandi and Preeti.
Where is the seventh? she wondered. There was a possible candidate, but Angelica had doubts about that one. She needed her for now, for the information she supplied – but that was a means to an end.
Angelica drove as fast as she could down the arrow-straight road, between dark rocky canyons and vast flat desert, a hundred, a hundred and thirty – forty – fifty – miles an hour, the energy of the Goddess coursing through her veins, feeling utterly unstoppable. And the Goddess sent her an immediate and crystal-clear message:
The name of the seventh Sister is Kate Maddox, not the other one you are considering. Maddox too understands the power of the Plague. And you and she are similar in many ways – ways that she will come to understand.
Yes, Angelica thought. Dr Maddox, you are perfect for us. Thank you, Sekhmet. So that’s why you saved Maddox from the blast. It makes sense now.
As she thought about Kate, Angelica’s cell phone rang.
‘I’m listening. Yes. Tell me.’ She bit down on her irritation. The person on the other end of the line was always in a hurry, always worried that someone was going to walk in and catch them.
She listened, becoming increasingly concerned as her contact talked.
‘Dadi Angelica, they’re closer than they think … Kolosine hasn’t a clue; from what I can tell, he’s exhausted his only idea … But Dr Maddox …’ She told Angelica the worrying news. ‘There’s something else …’
Angelica ended the call and immediately called Heather.
‘Sister Heather.’
Things had been stilted between them since the scene in the motel. Neither of them had mentioned it, but they had stayed away from each other, only communicating when it was essential. Perhaps this was the bright side of what Angelica had just learned: it gave Angelica
a good reason to put distance between them, even if it meant a change to the plan, a change that involved sending her most reliable Sister miles away.
‘Dadi.’
‘I have a mission for you.’
‘Yes?’
‘I need you to go to Sagebrush.’
27
Paul perched on the edge of the armchair, holding a glass of flat Coke that Watton had given him and trying to ignore the cat rubbing round his ankles. Outside, the night throbbed with the sound of crickets.
After Rosie had dropped him off, Paul had gone up to his room intending to lie down for a moment while he thought over the questions he wanted to ask Watton. The next thing he knew he was waking up with a furry mouth and it was dark outside. He’d raced downstairs and got the front desk to call him a cab.
The older man adjusted his glasses. ‘I didn’t want to tell you this while Rosie was around because she’s such a sweetheart … I don’t want to upset her.’
Paul leaned forward, eager to hear more but mindful that he needed to let Watton tell the tale in his own
time.
‘I understand.’
‘OK, so … A while before Medi-Lab got shut down, I volunteered for something …’ He started coughing and Paul gritted his teeth. But then the cat jumped on to Watton’s lap and he scratched it behind the ears. This seemed to calm him, and he continued:
‘A memo went round asking for volunteers who wanted to earn a little extra. They wanted healthy men and women who were willing to give up some of their spare time. I was always up for earning more, especially with sales being slow. So I put my name down.’
Paul waited for him to continue.
‘It seemed like easy money. Heck, it was easy money. And damn good money, too. All we had to do was go to the lab a few times, let them prod and poke us and take a blood sample. Then they gave us a cold.’
