There was a chair beside him. Sara held his hand as she sat down. The child was shivering, though his skin was hot. His face showed the telltale rash that would eventually cover his entire body. The lesions were starting to coalesce. With every cough, his cheeks turned a brighter red.
“I’m Dr. Earnshaw,” Sara told the child. “I’m going to try to help you, okay?”
His eyelids would barely open. His cough echoed inside of his chest. Normally, Sara would explain everything she did and why, but this boy was too sick to follow along. All she could do was give him the peace of a quick examination so that he could return to his broken sleep.
She found a chart by his bed. Eight years old, BP 85/60, temp 100°. The prodrome started with fever, malaise, anorexia and the three Cs: cough, coryza and conjunctivitis. The cough was on full display. The child could not stop. His nose was running so badly that the mucus had chapped his upper lip. His eyes looked as if someone had poured bleach into them. According to the record, his temperature had not dropped below 100° since three this morning.
Measles was a virus, not a bacterial infection that could be treated with antibiotics. All they could do was give him Tylenol, IV fluids and tepid sponge baths to keep him comfortable. Then they would need to pray he didn’t go blind or deaf, develop encephalitis or, in seven to ten years, show signs of acute SSPE, a degenerative disease that led to coma and death.
Gwen said, “Benjamin is our most recent case. The spots showed up two days ago.”
That tracked with the rash. He had probably been exposed fourteen days ago, which meant that the quarantine could potentially stop the outbreak in its tracks. Slim consolation for the parents who had already lost their children or might have them returned with irreparable damage.
Gwen said, “His cough worsened overnight.”
Sara bit her tongue so she would not lash out at Gwen again. She had a hard time believing a woman who had gone to nursing school would risk her children’s lives over repeatedly disproven pseudoscience and the word of a former Playboy model. If anyone wanted a real-life documentation of the vital necessity of vaccines, they should look to the life of Helen Keller.
Sara slipped her hands into a pair of gloves. “Benjamin, I’m going to examine you now. I’ll be as fast as I can. Will you open your mouth for me?”
He struggled to keep his mouth open as he coughed.
Sara used the light from the otoscope to see inside. The Koplik’s spots were on the soft palate and oropharynx. The light reflected off the pearly centers. She told Gwen, “We need to get his fever down.”
“I can have them bring in ice.”
“Get as much as you can,” Sara told her. “Acute encephalitis has a fatality rate of fifteen percent. Lasting neurologic damage occurs in twenty-five percent of cases.”
Gwen nodded, but she was a nurse. She knew this already. “Our two angels were taken by seizures.”
Sara did not know whether to rage or cry.
“Gwen?” one of the women called. She was standing over another cot, another deathly ill child.
Sara brought the chair so she could sit by the girl’s bed. Three, maybe four years old, blonde hair fanned out on a thin pillow. Skin as pale as the moon. The sheet was soaked through with sweat. Her breathing was labored, punctuated by an unproductive cough. The child’s rash had taken on a coppery hue, so she was well into a week of the disease. Sara changed into a fresh pair of gloves. She pressed open the girl’s eyelids. Gwen passed her the ophthalmoscope. Sara’s chest filled with dread. The conjunctiva was red and swollen. The edge of the cornea had become infected. She listened to the girl’s lungs. Both had an achingly familiar crackle.
If the double pneumonia didn’t kill her, then she would probably be blind for the rest of her life.
Gwen said, “This is my Adriel.”
Sara struggled against an overwhelming helplessness. “We need lab tests to see if the pneumonia is bacterial or viral.”
“We have Zithromax.”
Sara took off one of her gloves. She pressed her hand to Adriel’s head. She was roasting with fever. The antibiotic could wreck the girl’s intestinal tract, but they had to take the chance. “Give it to her.”
Gwen started to speak, then stopped. She changed her mind again. “If you give me a list, I can try to get whatever you think would help.”
What would help was an air ambulance to take these children to civilization.
Gwen found a notepad and pencil beside one of the beds. “We can get bulk from the pharmacy. Tell me what you need. We can dose it ourselves.”
Sara looked at the sharp pencil end resting on the first line of the page. She tried to gather her thoughts. “Ten tubes of Tobrex ointment, ten of the drops. Ten of Vigamox. We don’t know if these eye infections and earaches are going to spread.” Sara changed her gloves. She watched Gwen’s pencil move down the page, the quantity, a dash, then the name of the medication. “Five Digoxin, five Seroquel, twenty or more tubes of hydrocortisone cream for the rashes. Ten erythromycin, five Lamisil cream for the fungal infections … are you getting this?”
Gwen nodded. “Ten erythromycin, five Lamisil.”
Sara kept dictating until the page was filled. They weren’t going to the local pharmacy for these supplies, which meant that they needed someone on the outside to bring them in. “I’m assuming you don’t want my license or DEA number?”
“No.” Gwen checked the list, tapping each word with her pencil. “I don’t—I’m not sure. This is a lot.”
“There are a lot of sick children,” Sara said. “Whoever’s going to the pharmacy, tell them it’s listed in order of importance. Anything is better than nothing.”
Gwen tore the page from the pad. She passed the list to one of the women, who silently left the bunkhouse.
Sara hooked the stethoscope into her ears. She turned to the girl in the next cot, whose name was Martha. The rash in the corners of her mouth was cracked with candida. The child beside her, Jenny, had pneumonia. Sara moved to the next patient, then the next. Their ages ranged from four to twelve. All but Benjamin were girls. Six had pneumonia. Adriel’s conjunctivitis had spread to another child. Two were showing ear infections that could be cultured and diagnosed in any pediatrician’s office. Sara could only advise warm compresses in the slim hope that they would keep their hearing.
There was no telling how much time had passed when she finished with the last little girl, a dark-haired, blue-eyed four-year-old named Sally who’d coughed so hard that she’d developed a bleed in her right eye. Sara made a second round with the sickest children. All she could do was hold their hands, stroke their hair, give them the impression that as a doctor, she could magically restore their health. They would be playing soon, drawing with their crayons, running around in the fields, spinning like tops until they were so dizzy that they fell down.
The weight of her lies felt like a rock pressing the breath out of Sara’s chest.
She peeled off her gloves as she walked down the steps to the bunkhouse. The heat sweltered around her. She washed her hands at the sink. The water was so hot she could feel the skin burning. Sara was numb to the pain. There was a tremble she could not get out of her body. One, maybe two more of those children were going to die. They needed to be in a hospital right now. They needed nurses and doctors and lab results and machinery and modern life to pull them back into the living.
Gwen walked down the steps, her hands wringing in her apron again. “Dash sent the list to our supplier. We should have it this afternoon around—”
Sara walked away. She didn’t know where she was going, only that she could not go far. The armed men tightened the periphery as she walked across the clearing. Two jumped down from their deer stands. Two more appeared out of the trees. They had knives on their belts, guns in their holsters, rifles gripped between their meaty hands. Without exception, they were young, some of them no more than teenagers. All of them were white.
Sara ignored them. She pretende
d that they were nothing in her life because at this moment, they did not matter. She listened for the burbling sound of water that told her the stream was nearby. She followed one of the meandering paths. The burbling turned into a rush. The stream was actually a river. Sara fell to her knees at the water’s edge. Rocks had created a waterfall. She put her hands into the rush of ice-cold water. She dunked her head underneath. She needed something to shock herself out of this nightmare.
There was no shock that was strong enough. She sat on her knees, hands in her lap, hair hanging down in thick, wet strands. Sara felt useless. There was nothing she was going to be able to do for these children. Had Michelle felt the same way? She had been here for a month. She had watched two children die, tracked the infection spreading around the Camp. She had known what was coming and been unable to stop it.
Sara couldn’t stop it, either.
Her hands went to her face. Tears streamed from her eyes. She could not stop crying. Her body shook from grief. She was doubled over by it, unable to stop. Sara gave in to every emotion—not just her fears for these children, but for her own loss. Years ago, she had come to terms with her inability to have a child, but she found herself hating Gwen, hating every woman in this Camp who had left their child, their gift, so vulnerable.
A twig snapped behind her.
Sara jumped up, fists raised.
Dash said, “Thank you for your help, Doctor. I know it’s difficult.”
She wanted to spit in his face. “Who are you people? What are you doing up here?”
“We are families who’ve decided to live off the land.”
“Those children are sick. Some of them—”
“That’s why you’re here, Doctor. The Lord was kind enough to send us a pediatrician.”
“He should’ve sent you oxygen tents, IV antibiotics, respirators—”
“We’ll get you everything you put on the list,” Dash said. “Gwen has told me she is confident in your abilities.”
“I’m not!” Sara realized she was shouting. She didn’t care. “If you believe in miracles, then pray for one. Your daughter is gravely ill. All of those children are in critical danger. I understand having a religious objection to vaccines, but you don’t. You clearly don’t object to modern medicine. You took Michelle to the hospital. You could help your children, but instead you’re letting them suffer for—for what?”
Dash steepled together his hands, but not in prayer. He was giving her time to collect herself. As if it was possible to recover from the tragedy she had been dragged into.
Finally, he said, “You seem to have some questions for me.”
Sara didn’t believe she’d get an honest answer, but she asked, “What’s the point of this place?”
“Ah,” he said, as if she was speaking a different language that only he could decipher. “You want to know how we got here, yes?”
Sara shrugged, because he was going to say what he was going to say.
“We’ve been on the mountain for over a decade. Our way of life is simple. We take care of our own. The family units remain whole. We respect the land. We don’t take more than we need and we give back when we can. Our blood is in this soil.”
Dash paused, as if he expected Sara to key into the familiar white nationalist chant of blood and soil.
When Sara did not oblige, Dash said, “We were led here by Gwen’s father, a righteous believer in the Constitution and American sovereignty.”
Sara kept waiting.
“Our leader has been taken away from us, but we’ll continue the mission without him.” Dash explained, “That’s the beauty of the system. We don’t need a leader so much as believers in the world that we’re trying to return to. A world of law and order, where people know their place and understand where they belong in the system. Every wheel needs a cog if it’s going to turn properly. Our beliefs guide us in this crusade, not any particular leader. When one man falls, another man stands up to replace him.”
“And the leader always happens to be a man?”
He smiled. “That’s the natural order of things. Men lead. Women follow.”
Sara ignored the reductive bullshit. “Are you part of some religious group, or—”
“There are some true believers among us. I can’t count myself among those, much to my wife’s chagrin. Most of us are pragmatists. That’s our religion. We are all Americans. That unites us.”
“Michelle is an American, too.”
“Michelle is a lesbian who gave birth to a mixed-race mongrel child.”
Sara was momentarily stunned. It wasn’t so much what he’d said about Michelle’s daughter, it was the way the mask had slipped from his face. His expression was angry, ugly. This was the true Dash, the one who set off explosives and murdered indiscriminately.
Just as quickly, the mask slid back up.
Dash adjusted the sling around his neck. He smiled. He told Sara, “Dr. Earnshaw, you’re clearly a good woman. I respect that you chose to come here to help us with our children.” He gave her a wink, as if to let her know that he was in on the joke. “As I said yesterday, as soon as our little ones are tended to, you’ll be free to go.”
She held on to his vile words about Michelle’s daughter. That was who he really was, not the overly mannered caricature he showed the world. “You’re a terrorist. I watched you shoot a man in cold blood. I’m supposed to take you at your word?”
His composure held fast. “Vale was executed for war crimes. We are soldiers, not animals. We operate under the Geneva Convention.”
War.
The word kept coming up, first from Gwen and now from Dash. “Who are you fighting against?”
“We are not fighting against, Dr. Earnshaw. We are fighting for.” His smile was smug, but then men like Dash were always smug in the knowledge that the rest of the world was wrong and they alone knew the truth. “I know you missed breakfast because you were with your patients. Lunch is being put on the tables. I hope you’ll join us.”
The thought of sitting with him, having a normal meal, was more revolting than the idea of putting food in her mouth, but she had to keep herself strong. Sara could not give into despair. She would not end up beaten down like Michelle.
“This way, please.” He indicated the path, waiting.
Sara walked through the woods toward the clearing. Her hands were still shaking. Her stomach was filled with bile. Her clothes were disgusting. Everything about her felt disgusting. She combed her fingers through her wet hair. Steam rose from her scalp. The sun was high above the ridgeline. She was momentarily blinded by a flash of light. The sun had hit a pane of glass. She stumbled on a rock.
She righted herself before Dash could.
Sara kept walking, her head pointed straight, her eyes looking to the side.
There was a greenhouse just beyond the trees.
She had missed the glass enclosure on her way to the stream. The roof was peaked in the center. Skylights vented heat. The building was narrow, roughly the size of a mobile home. The roof and walls were glass, but a tent had been erected inside the structure. The material was reflective, the color of aluminum foil.
Electrical cords ran outside to a wooden shed. She saw a towable generator with a muffler. More solar panels. Her ears picked up a soft hum of machinery behind the glass walls. Inside the tent. Metal scraping metal. Items being moved around. The occasional murmur of a voice.
Sara heard the industrious sound of people working long after she had lost sight of the building.
The Camp.
Women and sick children. Boys playing GI Joe. A compound hidden amongst the trees. A glass greenhouse with a reflective thermal tent that would prevent a helicopter or plane with a heat-seeking camera from peering inside.
When Sara had questioned Gwen about her husband, she had quoted Isiah—
I form the light and bring darkness. I make peace and bring evil.
Fifteen people had been murdered at Emory. One of their own team had been
killed during their escape. Dash had murdered a delivery man and one of his mercenaries right in front of Sara’s eyes.
What other evil was he planning to bring?
10
Monday, August 5, 6:10 a.m.
Will sat across from Amanda’s desk at the GBI’s Panthersville Road headquarters. The clock on the wall said it was ten after six in the morning. He watched her read through the overnight reports. Autopsies on the man Will had shot at the car accident and the two men found dead at the motel. Forensic results from the abandoned potato chip van, Sara’s BMW, the motel room.
Beau. Bar. Dash. Thinks. Hurley’s. Dead. Spivey. Me. OK. 4. Now.
Will gripped his hands together. The knuckles were swollen and bruised. His headache was tapping on the back of his eyeballs like a ball-peen hammer. His thoughts had turned into Velcro, sticking to inconvenient parts of his brain. The pain in his belly had spread into his kidneys. He was sitting on the edge of his seat because it hurt too much to lean back.
He told Amanda, “Sara wrote that she was okay for now. The voice text was sent at four fifty-four yesterday. That’s basically thirteen hours ago—sixteen hours since she was taken.”
Amanda glanced at him over her reading glasses.
He said, “Whatever you’re reading in those pages, it won’t change the fact that three men from the car accident are dead and a fourth is in custody. No one knows what I look like, or that I was even there. Put me undercover. The IPA is four men down. They need somebody with skills for whatever they’re planning next. I need to be in there so we can figure out how to stop them.”
Amanda was silent for a moment longer, giving him the impression that she might be considering his request. “The FBI’s confidential informant was your way into the IPA. Unfortunately, he’s currently in a refrigerator drawer.”
Adam Humphrey Carter couldn’t be the only way in. “I know you, Amanda. You wouldn’t send me in with someone else’s CI. You’ve got another guy on the inside who can vouch for me.”
The Last Widow: The latest new 2019 crime thriller from the No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling author Page 20
