They called off twenty-seven names. I was not among them, but I was surprised to see that several of the people who had only arrived yesterday were. Also, they took every single person sixty or over. The logical explanation is that the elderly are always more susceptible so it would be in their best interest to be inoculated first.
Still, though I couldn’t explain it, it didn’t sit well with me.
There was someone else it bothered, too, but for an entirely different reason. A middle-aged guy, one of the people who’d tried to volunteer. He was definitely not pleased to be left off the initial list and made sure everyone knew it. The doctor tried to calm him down and tell him his turn was coming, but the guy wouldn’t give up. Finally, after a quick consultation between the three men who seemed to be calling the shots, the main guy said, “I think we can make room for one more.”
Smiling like he’d just won the lottery, the complainer quickly stepped over with the others whose names had been called. A few others in our group shouted that they wanted to go, too, but none put up enough of a fight to be included.
After they all left, those of us who remained hurried back inside to get warm. I heard whispered conversations all over the place but talked to no one. I didn’t trust my own thoughts on the matter yet.
The second shock of the morning came after the sun was finally up. I was going stir crazy lying there in my bed, so despite the cold, I headed outside. I don’t know how long it took me before I noticed—two or three circuits of the fence, at least. Usually I’ll spot a few people wandering around the other holding area, but this morning there was no one. Of course, up to now, everyone over there did appear to be sick, so it shouldn’t have been too surprising there’d come a time when no one would be out, except for the fact that the door to their dorm building was wide open, letting all the cold air in. I watched for several moments, thinking someone must be right inside and about to close it, but I saw no movement at all. I looked around for a nearby guard so someone could go in and close it. That’s when I saw something even more disturbing.
The gate to the other detention area was also wide open. That’s why the building door wasn’t closed. There was no one there anymore.
Where had they taken the sick? Surely they hadn’t died en masse last night.
I’m back in my bed now. I know it only gives me a false sense of security, but at the moment, that’s better than none at all.
I don’t know what’s going on, but if I had to guess, I’d say the people whose names were on the list this morning are not being vaccinated. As for the people from the other area, I don’t even want to speculate.
The only thing I hope is that when the men in the parkas return, they don’t call my name.
Fourteen
BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA
9:59 AM CST
“BOGOTÁ CONTROL TO TR117.”
“TR117. Go ahead, Bogotá.”
“Status?”
“Just completed flyby of Campeche. Twenty-nine bodies sighted. Spotted a few breathers, but they were clearly infected. So that’s a confirm endgame in progress.”
“Copy, TR117. Campeche endgame in progress.”
“Are we cleared to proceed to our next destination?”
“Affirmative, TR117. Proceed to Isabella Island.”
“Copy, Bogotá. Setting course for Isabella Island. ETA approximately fifty-five minutes.
ISABELLA ISLAND
10:03 AM CST
IT TOOK MORE than a little coaxing to get everyone out of the restaurant and down to the dock. After all but the sick were present, Robert went up to the Albino Mer’s pilothouse to let Pax know.
“Ready when you are,” he said.
Pax, the sat phone in his hand, didn’t move.
Robert walked over and touched him on the shoulder. “You all right?”
He could feel Pax tense before the man looked back at him.
“Sorry,” Pax said. “Lost in thought.”
“They’re here.”
“Okay, then.” Pax set the sat phone on the counter. “Let’s do it.”
They went out onto the upper deck of the ferry and moved in front of the pilothouse so everyone could see them. As soon as the crowd realized Pax was there, several people began shouting.
“This is your fault!”
“You’re a liar!”
“You knew the vaccine didn’t work, didn’t you?”
Robert raised his arms, palms out. “Quiet down! Everyone, please!”
While most heeded his words, a few increased their volume.
“You! You! And you!” Robert said, pointing at the offenders. “Shut up now or you will be physically removed.”
“What the hell, Robert? Afraid of a few complaints?” one shouted back.
“You can complain all you want once we’re underway, but right now I need you all to listen.”
“I’m not going anywhere with that killer!” the man—Sebastian something from the UK—said.
Robert opened his mouth to respond, but Pax put a hand on his arm and then stepped to the front railing, the whole time looking directly at Sebastian. “Staying is a choice you have. None of you,” Pax said, now scanning the rest of the crowd, “have to go anywhere. But whether you believe me or not, if you stay, you will die.”
“Bullshit!” someone else yelled. “Your ‘vaccine’ is what’s going to kill us. It’s already started.”
Some murmurs of support could be heard, but not nearly as many as there had been a few minutes before.
“I don’t know how familiar you are with vaccinations,” Pax said, “but there’s always a small percentage of people who have a reaction.”
“You’re just making excuses so we don’t—”
“Raise your hand if you feel sick,” Pax said.
Robert surveyed the crowd. Everyone was looking at each other but no hands went up.
“If there was really an outbreak here, more of you would have fallen ill by now. The even better news is that we’ve experienced a handful of post-inoculation illnesses in the past, and every single one of those people recovered.”
“We don’t know if that’s true,” Sebastian argued.
“You’re right, but it doesn’t matter. The people here who’ve gotten sick will survive,” Pax said. “The question is, will you? This boat is leaving in fifteen minutes. Anyone not on board at that time will be left behind. We will not be coming back. This is your last chance to get away.”
With a nod to Robert, he walked back into the pilothouse.
“You heard him,” Robert said. “I need a few volunteers to help bring the sick down. The rest of you who are coming with us can grab your things and board now.”
TEN MINUTES WERE still left on the deadline when the sat phone started to ring again. On the display was the number for the airplane crew waiting onshore for the ferry’s passengers.
Pax punched ACCEPT. “We’ll be underway here in a few minutes. The crossing’ll take a couple hours. Probably have to make a few trips with the bus once we—”
“Pax, you might want to think about leaving right now,” Donna Jones, the plane’s pilot, said. “The watch station in Panama just picked up a plane Caribbean side, heading west-northwest on a line that will take them right over the island.”
“We’re sure it’s not one of ours?”
“It is not.”
“All right. We’ll see you as soon as we can.”
Pax disconnected the call, tossed the phone back on the counter, reached up, and pushed the horn button, holding it down for a full ten seconds. The blast reverberated throughout the resort and bounced back at the bay. After letting the sound die for a few seconds, he pressed the button again. Before he let go this time, he heard someone running up the stairs behind him.
“What’s with the horn?” Robert said as he entered the room.
Pax hit the ignition button and the already warm motor quickly roared to life. “We have to leave now.”
“The deadline’s
not even half over. We can’t go.”
“There’s a plane heading in this direction no more than thirty minutes out. We can’t be anywhere near the island when it flies by.”
“It’s them? They’re coming back?”
“So it appears. How many people are missing?”
“Twenty-five, maybe thirty.”
“Round ’em up. I’ll give you five minutes, but can’t go beyond that. When I sound the horn again, you’ll have sixty seconds.”
ROBERT RACED DOWN the stairs and headed for the dock.
“What’s wrong?” Estella asked as he passed her.
He grabbed her arm. “Come with me.” He explained to her what was going on as they hopped off the boat and ran to the shore.
“Oh, my God,” she said.
“We only have a couple of minutes so I need you to help me get everyone down to the boat. But as soon as you hear the horn again, stop and get back as quickly as you can. Understand?”
She nodded.
They sprinted up the staircase to the bar deck.
“You take this level. I’ll go upstairs.”
Without waiting for her to respond, he ran over to the staircase and headed all the way to the top. His first stop was the restaurant dining room they’d all been living in. He had hoped the majority of the stragglers were there, but the room was empty.
“If you’re up here,” he yelled, “we’ve gotta go now!”
He raced around the rest of the upper level but found no one.
One level below was the uppermost guest level. He moved quickly down the hall, knocking on every door without stopping.
“Come on, come on, come on! We have to go! There’s another one of those planes heading here right now! The boat’s leaving in a minute!”
A door near the other end of the hall opened and a woman stuck her head out. “I thought we had at least five more minutes,” she said.
“Not anymore.”
“But my things.”
“Leave them!”
She looked back in her room as if she wasn’t sure she could do that.
He ran over to her and yanked her into the hall. “Go! Now!”
Whatever she saw on his face must have convinced her that her life was more important than her suntan lotion and bikini, because she turned and ran toward the stairs.
Robert followed her as far as the end of the hall and then yelled back toward the rooms, “If you think it’s better to stay, you’re wrong! But don’t wait until it’s too late to change your mind. We’re not coming back!”
He allowed himself a pause, in case any more of the doors opened, but none did. He only hoped that meant no one was left on this floor.
He repeated the run-and-knock technique on the next floor down, rousting three guests. As he started to leave the hall, he heard raised voices coming from behind a closed door near the middle of the corridor. He retraced his steps until he was standing outside it.
One voice was male, the other female, arguing in French. Robert was unable to understand what they were saying.
He pounded on the door. “Open up! The boat’s leaving!”
The voices fell silent for a moment, and then the man shouted back, “We are staying!”
The woman started yelling in French again, and the man yelled right back.
Robert recognized the man’s voice as belonging to a guest named Bertrand Tailler, which meant the woman was his girlfriend, Aubrey Deniel. The few times Robert had spoken with them, Bertrand had done all the talking, giving Robert the impression the woman was shy, didn’t speak English, or was not confident of her skills.
“If you stay, you will likely die,” Robert said. “At least this way, you have a chance to get out of here.”
“I think it is likely we die if we go!” Bertrand replied.
Robert heard movement, like someone running toward the door, then the woman screamed and Bertrand started yelling at her again.
“Please,” the woman yelled. “Please. I…I go!”
Bertrand shouted over her, probably trying to drown her out, but Robert had heard enough. Turning away from the room, he mule-kicked the door a few inches from the knob.
“Leave us alone!” Bertrand yelled. “We are staying! Leave us alone!”
Robert kicked again and heard the doorframe crack. As he cocked his foot back for another shot, the ferry’s horn filled the air.
His kick moved the door an inch. Two more hits and the door flew open.
“The boat leaves in one minute!” he yelled as he rushed inside.
Bertrand was near the windows at the other end of the room, his arms wrapped around Aubrey. She looked at Robert, her eyes pleading as she struggled to get out of her boyfriend’s grip.
“Let her go,” Robert said. “You can stay if that’s what you want, but if she wants to go, she goes.”
“It is better for her here! Now go! We are staying.”
The horn blasted again.
Even if he left at that second, Robert knew making it in time would be a close call, but he couldn’t leave the woman like this. In a sudden surge of frustration and anger that had been building for the last couple of days, he rushed forward and sent a punch flying over Aubrey’s shoulder directly into Bertrand’s face.
Stunned, with blood beginning to pour out of his nose, the man released his grip and staggered back.
As Aubrey pulled away, Robert turned and put a hand on her back, urging her toward the door. “Run!”
A few feet before she reached the hallway, she glanced back. The fear on her face became mixed with worry and her step faltered.
“Go! Go!” Robert told her.
She looked unsure.
“Now!”
She raced out the door.
Robert, a few steps behind her, stopped just inside the room, intending to give Bertrand one last chance. But as he turned, Bertrand was leaping through the air right at him. There was no question of Robert getting out of the way.
Bertrand smashed into him, sending him falling backward into the hallway with the Frenchman on top of him.
“You bastard!” Bertrand said, swinging his fist. “Everyone will die because of you!”
The blows landed solidly against the sides of Robert’s head, until he was able to twist to the side and shove Bertrand away. Like a punch-drunk boxer, Robert climbed awkwardly to his feet and shuffled down the hall toward the stairs.
Bertrand ran at Robert again. His pounding feet gave Robert enough warning and he was able to jerk to the side right before Bertrand would have hit him.
As the man flew past, he flung out an arm and grabbed a handful of Robert’s shirt. The yank was hard enough to twist Robert around and knock him off balance. Backward he fell again, his head smacking into the corner where tile met wall.
His whole world went black.
ESTELLA HAD FOUND more than a dozen people gathered in a meeting room just off the bar. It didn’t take much to convince them to get on the boat. By the time she finished running through her assigned floor, she had located five others and sent them running for the dock.
She contemplated heading upstairs to help Robert, but worried they might miss each other. She waited for him instead on the sand at the bottom of the stairs to the bar.
When the horn sounded, her already racing heart beat even faster.
“Hurry up,” she whispered, her gaze glued to the upper portion of the hotel.
With each passing second, she became more and more worried. Where was he? He should have been back by now.
The horn blared again.
“Robert!” she yelled.
She glanced back at the boat, and then at the resort, then ran up to the bar deck and over to the stairwell. But as she opened the door intending to head up, she heard someone racing down toward her.
Robert, she thought. Thank God.
She stayed where she was, holding the door open. But the runner wasn’t Robert.
It was a woman Estella had seen around but n
ever talked to.
As the woman rushed through the open door, Estella grabbed her. “Where’s Robert?”
Tears were running down the woman’s cheeks and she had terror in her eyes. She said something in French that Estella didn’t understand.
“Robert,” Estella said. “You see?” She pointed at the woman and then at her eyes.
“Oui. Robert. Coming.”
Estella’s relief at hearing this was tempered by the woman’s sobs.
“Get to the boat,” Estella said, motioning toward the dock. “The boat.”
The woman seemed to have stopped listening. She wrapped her arms around herself and squeezed her eyes shut as the tears continued to flow.
Estella realized the only way the woman would be able to get to the ferry on time was if Estella took her there. She looked toward the stairwell.
Robert was coming. The woman had said that much.
It would be all right.
Putting an arm around the woman’s back, Estella said, “Vamos.”
She quickly led the woman off the deck and across the beach to the dock.
Renee was standing on the gangway to the boat. “Where’s Robert?” she called.
“He is coming,” Estella said. “He should be here any moment.”
She escorted the woman on board, then asked one of the other passengers to help the woman find a seat. Estella returned to the gangway and started to exit the boat, but Renee grabbed her.
“Where are you going?” Renee asked.
“To find Robert.”
“I thought you said he was right behind you.”
“The woman said he was coming down. I’ll go see where he is.”
“You do, and you’re staying here,” Pax called from above.
They looked up. He was leaning over the upper-deck railing.
“I’m sorry, but we have to go now,” he said. “Release the lines.”
“No!” Estella shouted. “We cannot leave Robert!”
“Believe me, I don’t want to leave him, either, but he knew we only had a limited amount of time. And it’s already three minutes beyond the deadline I gave him.”
The Project Eden Thrillers Box Set 2 Page 65
