by Louise Voss
‘Hold on,’ she said, not knowing if he could hear her or not. ‘I need you to fight it, Paul. I’m going to make you better.’
It had always been a personal battle. Kate Maddox versus Watoto. The virus had taken her family, consumed most of her adult life, almost killed her twice. Everything that had happened in her life so far had been leading to this moment.
This was the final round.
63
The birdsong in the Sequoia forest sounded the same and the great trees stood as firm as they had for centuries but, to Kate, everything felt different this time. Even the lab was different. When she turned towards the place where Simone had tackled Junko to the ground and cracked her head open, an innocent shadow appeared as a pool of blood. She kept replaying Cindy’s scream as the liquid nitrogen had ruined her face. And there, in the isolator behind a thick shield of glass, was where Officer Buckley had died, writhing in agony induced by the toxin from the mamba rose, his body already ravaged by Watoto.
Now Paul lay in his place. And if Kate and her new team didn’t work as fast and hard as any team had ever worked, he would suffer the same fate.
Harley’s superiors, working with the CDC, had mobilised everyone available, flying in a team of virologists and technicians from around the country in private jets: Philip Davies from Seattle, Elaine Manning from Chicago, and Dee Delaney and Victoria Danes from the CDC’s HQ in Atlanta. They had all been frantically yet fruitlessly working on a vaccine since the outbreak began. Along with the virologists were two botanists and a toxicologist.
Upstairs, Angelica was being held under armed guard in one of the rooms where she and her ‘Sisters’ had slaughtered the sleeping occupants: Tosca McCarthy, Kolosine and the others. Even the housekeeper, Adoncia, had been murdered.
While she had been waiting for the new team to arrive, Kate had been in with Paul, who was barely conscious, whispering soothing words, urging him to be strong, to fight it, even though she knew that wouldn’t do any good. You can’t appeal directly to antibodies. But having her near, holding his hand, seemed to help.
The other huge worry on her mind was Jack. She had called Vernon’s landline. It went straight to voicemail. She tried his mobile. Exactly the same. It had been like this for hours. This was all wrong – Vernon was one of those people who had to be surgically removed from his cellphone.
A spasm of panic almost made her double over.
‘What’s the matter?’ said Harley.
‘Can you keep trying to call Vernon for me? I need to know Jack’s safe. Something’s not right.’
Harley passed a weary hand across his brow. ‘O.K.’ He looked as though he was about to add ‘I’ll add it to the list’, but thought better of it.
‘I have to get into the lab now,’ she had said. ‘But please, tell me as soon as you hear something.’
As soon as the new team were in and suited up, she kissed Paul and made her way into the lab. Four pairs of eyes looked at her expectantly. She already had everything set up.
‘OK,’ she said, standing before them. ‘My name is Dr Kate Maddox.’
They introduced themselves in turn.
She nodded briskly. ‘I hope none of you are expecting to get any sleep tonight …’
By the time she left the lab, the sun was coming up. Harley staggered to his feet as she entered the room. He had dark shadows under his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept either and had been waiting for her all night. Apart from a cat-nap in the helicopter on the journey up here, she hadn’t slept in over thirty-six hours. She felt light, on the brink of delirium, but she was buzzing with adrenaline and excitement.
‘Well?’ Harley asked.
She sat down. ‘Can you get me a coffee? I feel like I’m about to pass out.’
‘Sure.’ He hurried out and headed to the kitchen, returning a few minutes later with a steaming mug.
Kate sipped the coffee. The sky outside the window was lightening, the birds starting to sing again. She looked up at Harley and said, ‘It seems to work.’
Lost for words, he stepped towards her as if he was going to embrace her, then thought better of it at the last moment, stopping awkwardly a few inches from her.
‘Have you managed to get hold of Vernon?’ she asked.
He shook his head. ‘Still no answer.’
‘What’s going on? He always answers his mobile. Something must have happened – it’s been two days. Has the flu got to Dallas? You have to find out, Jason – do something!’
Tiredness and panic were injecting aggression into her voice, and Harley held up his hands.
‘Kate, I will. I’m trying to help.’
She gave a tight-lipped smile. ‘I’m really sorry. It’s just that I’m exhausted – and so worried …’
‘I know. I’ll find out, leave it with me. I’ll keep trying the phones, and I’ll see if I can get someone to go round. But tell me about the antivirus.’
Kate tried to ignore the pain in her chest, the deep, gnawing anxiety that wouldn’t fade until she knew that Jack was all right.
She gulped her coffee. ‘We took the samples from the plants and extracted the toxin and the antidote. That part was pretty straightforward. The tricky part was testing it on the rats, because when we injected the toxin first they would die before we got the chance to give them the antidote.’ Kate grimaced. She disliked testing on animals, found it the hardest part of her job. ‘The answer was to give them both at the same time. The antidote from the upper part of the plant cancelled out the toxin from the sap.’
Harley nodded.
‘So then we started trying to isolate which part of the sap was acting as an antiviral agent against Watoto. Or rather, finding out if it worked in the first place. We …’
‘Are you all right?’ Harley reached out a steadying hand, alarm on his face.
‘Yes, yes … I can’t stop thinking about Jack.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Jason, it was so tense in there. This was our only chance. If Martens, that anthropologist, had been wrong, or if he’d exaggerated about what he’d seen in Tanzania …’
‘Was he?’
‘No.’ She was still surprised by what they had found. ‘We were able to isolate an agent …’
She saw Harley’s face immediately switch into his ‘uh-oh, science’ mode. She smiled faintly. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to bore you with the details. Long story short: the sap contains an agent that works on the Watoto virus. Fights it. Stops it. Again, we tested it on the rats. I had already given them the virus, and they were sick. But the mamba rose appears to stop the virus in its tracks.’
‘“Appears to”?’
She twisted her hands together. ‘Normally, we would want to continue monitoring the rats over a long period to check that it had worked and to see if there were any side effects. But so far, the antivirus works. On rats at least.’
‘That’s amazing, Kate.’
‘But we still need to test it properly. We need trials … We have no idea if this will really work on a person.’
Harley opened his mouth, then closed it.
‘What were you going to say?’ Kate asked, already knowing the answer because exactly the same thought had been running through her mind.
‘Well – what about Paul? Surely he doesn’t have that long before …’ He stopped. ‘You don’t have time to carry out rigorous trials, do you?’
‘I know, I know. This goes against everything I’ve ever learned, ever practised.’
‘Do you think it will work?’
‘I don’t know. If we get the dosage wrong … If we get anything wrong, it could kill him. Maybe we should wait, carry out more tests, get some monkeys …’
Harley’s phone chimed in his pocket. He silenced it and stepped towards Kate. This time, he took hold of her upper arms and looked her in the eye.
‘If it was me in there, I’d want you to do it. To take the chance.’
Kate nodded. He was right. If it was her, if she only had this chance of surviving
, she would grab it. Risk it.
She extricated herself from Harley’s grip and, ignoring the wave of fatigue that almost toppled her, strode from the room.
‘Paul, Paul …’
She gently shook him awake. His eyes were glazed, his breathing shallow and wet.
‘I need your permission to try something,’ she said.
Paul opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out. He nodded towards a glass of water on the side, and she lifted it to his lips.
‘We think we’ve found an antivirus. We’ve tested it on rats and it seems to work, but it’s risky. Normally, we would—’
‘Give it to me,’ he whispered.
She looked up at him.
‘But, Paul, I think I should—’
He cut her off. His voice was so weak she had to lean closer to hear him. ‘I trust you, Kate. If you think it’s
going to work, I’ll risk it.’ He coughed. ‘What have I got to lose?’
‘It could kill you. I don’t want to use you as a guinea pig.’
‘If you don’t, Watoto will kill me.’
‘It’s only a seventy per cent chance …’
‘Only.’
She nodded. ‘I’m frightened to try it, Paul. If I inject you and it doesn’t work, it will be as if I killed you.’
He looked into her eyes. ‘I’d rather die trying.’ He started to cough again, his eyes screwed shut, wincing with pain. He gripped her hand and attempted a smile. ‘And if it doesn’t work, I guess I’ll get to see Stephen again.’
Kate squeezed his hand back.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. Do it.’
She left the room and returned a minute later. She took his bare arm, surprised again at how hot his skin was. The strength in his muscles, in those arms that she loved to feel wrapped round her, was absent; his strong hands were curled like dead spiders. She was amazed her own hand wasn’t shaking. But as she prepared the injection, she wasn’t a lover, or a nurse. She was a scientist. Beneath the fear, she had faith in what she was doing. It took a moment to find a vein, then slipped the needle in.
Now all she could do was wait.
Harley was shouting at one of the junior officers when she emerged from the room.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘Kate, I’m sor—’
‘What is it?’ She had a feeling of sick dread that he was going to tell something had happened to Jack.
But it wasn’t as bad as that. Terrible, but not as bad.
‘It’s Angelica. She’s escaped.’
64
Nothing could have prepared the three boys for what they saw when they finally entered the city of Los Angeles early on Tuesday morning. They were silent as Riley drove at ten miles an hour through deserted streets. Almost every shop window was shattered, and their tyres crunched over a million pellets of broken glass. Rubbish piled up on the sidewalks, but you didn’t have to look too closely to see that some of it wasn’t trash at all, but dead bodies. Smoke rose and mingled with the smog from a hundred unattended fires, from braziers on street corners to whole apartment blocks, shooting flames high into the air.
The smell was terrible – death and rotten food, blood, smoke and dirt. Riley closed all the windows and air vents, and popped down the locks. It immediately became unbearably hot in the car, but neither Jack nor Bradley complained. They sat holding one another’s hands, without even noticing, staring open-mouthed with horror out of the windows. There was a bewildering and discordant backdrop of noise that filled every last cranny of their heads: a cacophony of never-ending alarms – car alarms, security alarms, smoke alarms – swirling and shrieking, seeming to press in on them.
A man lay dead in the middle of the street, blood from several bullet holes in his chest congealing in a dark puddle around him.
‘Don’t look, kids,’ said Riley in a strangled voice, but of course they did. Jack retched, but managed not to vomit. He pulled his knees up to his chest and put his hands over his ears, burying his face.
‘Shit,’ Riley said. ‘I don’t have room to drive around him.’
‘Can we turn around?’ whispered Bradley, who had also turned green. ‘I don’t feel good. My head hurts.’
Riley shook his head. ‘No space. Can’t back up with the Airstream neither.’
The man was spread-eagled right across the centre of the narrow one-way street, although his blood had oozed from one sidewalk to the other.
‘I don’t want to walk from here,’ Bradley added. ‘My legs are aching.’
‘We ain’t walking nowhere,’ Riley said. ‘Close your eyes, both of you.’
Jack and Bradley did as they were told. Riley turned the steering wheel to the right, mounted the kerb, and drove as close to the looted storefronts as he dared – but they still felt the bump and crunch as he drove over the dead man’s feet and ankles.
Bradley was crying. ‘I want Mommy,’ he said. ‘It’s awful here.’
Jack had his hands over his ears, and his eyes tightly shut.
‘Come on, squirt, we got this far – look, we’re almost in West Hollywood, and that’s where Dad lives! We’re real close now. Look out for signs for Wilshire Country Club, OK, ’cos his house is right by there. South Mansfield Avenue. First to spot it gets … shit, I don’t know. I ain’t got nothing left to give you. Gets a popsicle at Dad’s, I guess. We’ll be OK when we get there.’
He seemed to be trying to reassure himself as much as them.
They drove on, past a field hospital that had been erected in a park, dark green army tents and lines of sobbing masked people outside being herded in, or pushed in wheelchairs, by soldiers in full protective suits, armed with machine guns. Even from the moving car, Riley could see the terror in the eyes of the sick people, like they knew that if they went into one of those tents, they wouldn’t be coming out alive. Riley shuddered and drove faster. It was only when they had got a few blocks past it that Jack spoke. ‘Those ladies wanted to go to a hospital.’
Riley had forgotten all about the hot girl and her mom in the Airstream. He hesitated. He couldn’t turn the vehicle round.
‘It’s not far,’ he said. ‘They can walk from Dad’s. I don’t reckon it’s safe for us to stop near so many people with the flu.’
‘There’s the turning to Dad’s street!’ Bradley said a few minutes later, pointing with a shaky hand. ‘It looks different,’ he added.
The formerly quiet, tree-lined road with its Spanish-style bungalows and neat front yards had turned into something resembling a war zone. Trash cans and cars had been overturned. A school bus blazed, watched by a small gang of young men with bandannas tied across their noses and mouths. Two of them were sitting on the sidewalk, cleaning their guns. They were big, muscle-bound guys with tattoos and shaved heads, but they looked sick and scared.
‘That’s Daddy’s house,’ Bradley informed Jack, as Riley pulled up a little way along from the gang near the school bus. ‘We’re here.’
Riley put the car into ‘park’ and they all gazed at the detached, modern sandstone house. It looked untouched by riots and fire, and its large pillars, flanking the front door, were reassuring. Riley turned to face the boys. His eyes were red-rimmed with stress and fatigue, and acne stood out angrily on his cheeks. ‘OK. This is what we’ll do. I’m gonna go ring the bell. You two stay right here in the car with the doors locked. I’m gonna bring you out something from Dad’s house that you can tie around your faces as a mask – a shirt or a tea-towel or whatever I can find. But you don’t get out till I give you the signal. Got it?’
The boys nodded fearfully. Riley pulled on his denim jacket and buried his nose and mouth in the crook of his elbow. He leapt out of the car and dashed up the marble steps to the front door.
Jack and Bradley watched from the back seat as Riley kept his finger on the buzzer. Over the background noise of all the alarms, they could hear the high-pitched frantic barking of a small dog.
‘Martha,’ said Brad
ley. ‘That’s good. It means Daddy’s home. Look, Riley’s getting the spare key.’
They watched as Riley, with his arm still over his face, delved into one of two large terracotta pots of pampas grasses on either side of the porch. He pulled out what looked to Jack like a large pebble, and turned it over. ‘It’s in that fake stone. Cool, isn’t it?’ Bradley said, with a ghost of a smile.
Riley extracted a key from a small compartment at the back of the stone, opened the front door and vanished inside, holding up his palm in a ‘wait’ gesture at them. Seconds later he appeared again at the top of the steps, and vomited copiously over the balustrade into one of the pampas grasses.
‘Oh no,’ Jack said. ‘I hope he hasn’t caught the flu. We’d better go help him.’
‘We don’t have masks on,’ Bradley said. ‘So hold your breath, OK?’
The boys ran up the steps to where Riley was still leaning over the edge of the porch. Jack tentatively rubbed his denim-clad back, but Riley straightened up and grabbed
his arm, tears and snot and puke all over his face. ‘I told you not to get out! Don’t go in there!’ he shouted, but it was too late to stop Bradley, who had rushed in calling ‘Dad! Da-ad? We’re here!’
Then he screamed.
Riley, when he had recovered enough from the sight of his father’s bloated corpse to be able to move without throwing up, marched the boys upstairs to the room that his dad called ‘the world’s smallest cinema’, Martha the dog yapping hysterically at his heels all the way. He grabbed the nearest Disney DVD that he could find, shoved it into the home entertainment system and turned up the volume. It was Fantasia, to which both Jack and Bradley would, under normal circumstances, have objected strongly. But they sat down on the leather sofa in front of the huge screen and stared with blank, horrified eyes as pink elephants cavorted and whirled. The smell of dogshit permeated the entire house, but at least it masked the other, worse, smell.
‘Stay there,’ Riley ordered, in a voice muffled slightly by the cloth he had tied over his mouth and nose. ‘Keep the door closed. Don’t move until I come back for you. If you have to use the bathroom, use that one –’ He pointed at the small en-suite off the room. ‘Do NOT leave this room. I’ll be right back, I’ll go get you a drink.’
