Dunlap gave a single nod and turned his back to the others, then walked to an outcropping of rock and took up a defensive position.
Sophie raised a gloved hand in a tentative wave. Martin waved back and then turned to join Dunlap. He kept his back turned, watching the darkness he thought he had left behind, and listened to their receding footsteps.
He would have liked to see the sun again. To see the farm. To hug his parents.
He hoped they would be proud of him.
TWENTY-FIVE
Walker did his best to hide the swiftness with which the plague had taken root in him. During his fight with Dunlap in the Pandora Room, his mask had come askew. It had only been seconds, but in such proximity to the jar—or perhaps simply in the atmosphere of that room—seconds had been enough. He assumed Dunlap had also been infected, so Carson tearing off his filtration mask would only hasten things.
As for Walker, he figured carrying the fucking contagion box probably wasn’t helping.
He had a sidearm still, but he planned to hand it over to Kim the moment he felt he might lose control. A slurry had built up in his chest and throat, and his breath came only thinly, but he managed to keep his coughing to a minimum, and by walking behind the rest of them, he had covered up just how weary he had grown. The noise of the river helped, its weird echo filling the tunnel.
There were only six of them now—himself and Kim, Beyza and Ruiz, Dr. Tang, and Sophie Durand. He figured they must all be sick, though he guessed Dr. Tang must be the worst of all. Like him, she had been fighting to hide just how ill she was, but Dr. Tang was doing a poor job of it. During the violence that had left Carson and Taejon dead, Walker had seen the rash on her face and several lesions. Ruiz had gone silent, either in sickness or in shock, and his gait had become a shuffling. He coughed frequently, and he never lifted his gaze from the ledge in front of him.
Walker’s own neck itched, and he knew there were painful lesions on his chest and arms, but he had no flashlight and all their headlamps were aimed forward. He huffed, shifted the contagion box where it hung over his shoulder, and kept marching along the ledge.
At the front of their little dying parade, Sophie coughed wetly. She swore, coughed again, and then picked up her pace. Beyza took up the cough as if it were a song stuck in her head, and she kept it going.
Kim seemed the least sick among them. Walker figured if he had to hand over his burden, he would give it to her. She might be furious with him, might feel he had betrayed her, but they had moved beyond the tug-of-war over the jar now. If Walker could not make it out of Derveyî, then Kim would have to do it, and whatever happened with the jar then would be up to her.
And yet …
Sergeant Dunlap had chosen to stay behind, to sacrifice himself to help them escape with the jar. He had extracted a promise from Walker not to put it in the hands of someone who would put the death it contained to use. Which meant that if Walker intended to keep that promise, he had to live long enough to do so.
I should have blown it up, he thought. The passage ahead grew ever smaller. The tunnel remained dark, except for the glow of flashlights, which meant that if the river ever led to the surface, they were nowhere near that exit.
But destroying the jar was no longer an option, and neither was dying, as sick as he was. Walker trudged ahead, careful not to trip. When he heard whispers from the shadows—whispers he knew were not the voice of the rushing river—he refused to do more than glance toward them. He had heard enough about the living bits of cruelty they had taken to calling ghosts. By now, he had even seen some of the wispy silhouettes that seemed to grow more solid as time passed.
His eyes felt heavy. There must have been a hundred times when he had been driving home late at night, fighting the lull of the engine, head bobbing as he tried not to fall asleep. This feeling echoed that one.
The six of them had fallen silent now, each alone with their thoughts and the plague that had taken root in them.
Dr. Tang tripped and fell, tearing open the right leg of her hazmat suit. Beyza offered her hand, helping Dr. Tang to her feet, but none of them addressed the exposure Dr. Tang would experience now that her suit had been breached. They all knew she had been sick already.
Several minutes later, Walker realized there were only four people in front of him. Ruiz had vanished, either into the river, running ahead, or dropping back. Walker could not have sworn that he had not passed right by the young soldier without noticing the man. None of the others seemed to have noticed his absence, all withdrawn into their illness, haunted by the ghosts around them, focused on survival.
Sophia, Beyza, and Kim had paused only a moment to make sure she was all right, but then they had hurried on. Nobody wanted to waste the sacrifice that Dunlap and Martin were making.
Without the headlamp from her suit, Dr. Tang pulled a thin flashlight from her pocket and clicked it on, shining it at the floor. In its yellow glow, she took a good look at Walker’s face. They gazed at each other for a moment. Walker realized only then how sick she really was, and he saw the moment in Dr. Tang’s eyes when she had the same epiphany about him.
“We’ll get out of here,” she said, falling into step beside him.
Walker coughed. His bones ached.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “I have faith.”
He lied to her.
* * *
Dunlap exhaled slowly, soundlessly, as he watched a small squad of jihadis come around a corner in the tunnel. Beside him, Martin managed to stifle a cough. The lanky young guy looked almost absurd with an assault rifle in his hands. One look at him and you had to know he was an academic. His identity as a graduate student practically radiated out of him; with that scruffy almost-beard and spectacles, destiny would demand people call him Professor someday. But nobody would be calling Martin anything ever again. Nor would Dunlap himself be rising above the rank of sergeant. Their road ended here.
The river churned, fast and deep as it swept by, and the plink and shush of its voice masked the sounds of Dunlap and Martin shifting behind the stone ridge in the darkness, the wall on their left and the river on their right. The jihadis looked better organized than Dunlap would have expected. They swept their gun barrels left and right, most of them equipped with flashlights strapped to the barrels, but Dunlap got a good look before he had to duck out of sight. Most of them wore black or tan fatigues, some with body armor and some without. They were coated with dirt and dust from the rugged terrain and the firefight, and they had thick, unruly beards, but they moved with determination and silent menace. This was not some ragtag group of desert warriors.
A quiet shuffling came from behind him. Dunlap assumed it would be a ghost as he turned, but he saw Ruiz approaching on his hands and knees, weapon hanging beneath him like an infant in a sling.
Dunlap would have asked him what he thought he was doing, why he had backtracked to join them, but then he saw the look in Ruiz’s eyes and he understood. None of them were getting out of here, and Ruiz preferred to die in combat.
Ruiz gave Martin a nod. Martin returned it. Nothing more needed to be said.
One of the jihadis started coughing, staggered into the wall, and went to his knees. Another shushed him, grabbed him by the shoulder, and shook him. Dunlap waited until a flashlight beam swept by and peered above the ridge. Several of the jihadis looked unwell, one with lesions already blossoming on his face. Whatever they had been exposed to when they had come underground, it had sickened them much faster. Perhaps it had been the ghosts Martin had described as swarming in the atrium, but regardless, they were infected.
Dunlap bared his teeth in something like a smile. At least he and Martin and Ruiz weren’t dying alone.
Martin muttered something about ghosts. Dunlap tapped his arm to hush him, freezing there behind the ridge to make sure they hadn’t drawn the jihadis’ attention. He lay on his belly on ragged stone and studied Martin in the dim illumination of the roving flashlights. Pale and sweating, gaze flitti
ng around with fear and paranoia, he nodded as if having listened to some great revelation. Martin glanced around with a peculiar attention, flinching and shivering at nothing.
Yet it wasn’t nothing. Dunlap could see the ghosts now, or at least the hint of some coalescing darkness, some blue-gleaming mist that seemed to drift along the surface of the river and to creep over the rocks and ledge as if full of its own sinister purpose.
And now that he could see them, he could see that they were everywhere.
* * *
Sophie felt the most sadness for her mother. If she died before her father—something she never could have imagined—at least he would never have to know, but her mother would learn soon enough, and she would have to live with her mind’s horrible imaginings. Sophie feared dying, grieved so much that she would leave behind so many loving words unsaid and questions unresolved, but she would not have to endure the pain that would come after, and her mother would live through all of that. Alone. Even if her father had a lucid hour, Sophie felt sure her mother would never tell him what had become of their daughter.
I’m sorry, Mom, she thought.
She caught the toe of her boot, stumbled a bit, but managed to keep her feet beneath her. They were trudging now, barely acknowledging one another. If she glanced at Dr. Tang or Walker, or worst of all Beyza, she would see that they were all sick. Looking ahead, the headlamp of her hazmat suit illuminating their path along the river, all it showed her was the narrowing passage and the darkness and the ghosts that now seemed to take shape in every crevice, clawing and stabbing and fucking one another, smashing with clubs and laughing at pain and pissing on the dying and the poor.
Sophie kept her gaze forward, waiting for a glimpse of light, for a stronger breeze, for some hint of the outside world. The more she allowed herself to sink into contemplation, the more she understood that all she desired now was to see the sky. The hazmat suit had not saved her. She had been exposed before slipping into the suit, and it had only delayed the inevitable. Now the sickness came on quickly, and the ghosts had come to stay. Even if they found their exit, made their way into the open air, they would doubtless be in some valley, hidden by surrounding hills, with no time for a rescue.
Yet they had to keep going. They had to do whatever they could to keep the jar out of the hands of the New Caliphate. Her mind drifted to the thought of her mother enduring this plague, to little children being infected, to infants being clawed at by the ghosts of humanity’s most hideous impulses.
She would keep going.
Something touched her arm. Sophie whipped around, heart lurching, only to find Beyza had come up beside her. The stone ledge alongside the river barely allowed them to walk together here, but Sophie saw the lonely sorrow in her friend’s eyes, and they linked arms. Beyza’s left eye had begun to turn red. That side of her face had swollen with purple-black plague blossoms. Sophie wished that she could save Beyza, almost more than she wished she could save herself.
In silence, they walked along together, careful not to trip. The river swept along only inches away from Sophie now, a constant companion. Dr. Tang, Walker, and Kim were behind them, but they vanished almost completely from her mind. Only she and Beyza existed now. She and Beyza and the ghosts who were coming clearer, these phantoms of ancient cruelties, manifestations of the ugly roots of humankind.
Sophie did not want to die here among such horrors. She wanted a moment of beauty, at least. Beyza sagged against her, and Sophie wished she had not ever put on the hazmat suit. It had not saved her, and it created a barrier between herself and her friend. If she had not needed the headlamp to light their way, she would have torn it off in that moment.
“We’ll be all right,” she told Beyza, knowing neither of them were foolish enough to believe it.
Off to her left, above the water, one ghost caught her eye. It had manifested more clearly than any she had seen thus far, and though Sophie knew this meant the plague had rooted deeper inside her, she could not tear her gaze away. He seemed to kneel just above the churning current. With a blade held in both hands, he stabbed himself in the abdomen again and again.
In profile, he reminded her so much of Lamar that she forgot to breathe. Already coughing, already suffocating inside her suit and mask, she saw small black spots form in front of her eyes and took in a long breath, gasping, faltering. Knowing she would die here. This time it was Beyza who aided her, compelling her to keep moving, but Sophie glanced back at that ghost so full of self-hatred. She knew it was no lost soul, just as she knew it only reminded her of Lamar, that it wasn’t truly him, yet her heart ached.
I miss you, she thought.
And she whispered, “I forgive you.”
* * *
Kim wanted to take the lead. Sophie and Beyza were ahead of her, blocking the ledge, but they had both slowed down. Walker and Dr. Tang had dropped behind her, and they, too, seemed to be running out of steam. All this time she had been fighting her claustrophobia, but as they kept walking with no sign that the tunnel would ever end, she felt the stone closing around her, as if the space kept narrowing. The urge to scream built up inside her as she put one hand on Sophie’s back and the other on Beyza’s and quietly encouraged them to hurry.
“I’m doing the best I can,” Sophie said, voice as cold as a blade.
The unfairness of her tone stung, but only for a moment. Kim could not allow herself to care about small courtesies now. The gunfire had died off in the tunnel behind them, but instead of reassuring her, that silence only stoked her fear. The odds that Dunlap and the dying Carson had been able to ambush and kill the jihadis pursuing them seemed slim. Instead, Kim could practically feel the swift approach of the men who wanted the jar and who wanted the rest of them dead. The temptation to take the jar out of the contagion box and just leave it behind, to give to these monstrous men the ability to murder who knew how many people, grew strong. She glanced back at Walker, remembering that he’d been willing to blow up the Pandora Room and himself along with it, as long as the New Caliphate did not get this jar, and that she had fought him on it.
It might have been better if they had all been down in the room when the bomb had gone off, but she would never say those words out loud. Which meant that turning back now, surrendering the jar, was out of the question.
Kim turned to glare at Walker and Dr. Tang. “You must go faster. Move!”
Dr. Tang replied with a burst of coughing that sprayed the inside of her hazmat suit’s headpiece with black and yellow bile. She bent, dragging in a ragged breath and then another, until at last she stood upright again. Her features were obscured by the flecks of mucous liquid inside the plastic face screen, but she only nodded and kept walking.
Walker did not acknowledge any of it except to pause and put a hand on Dr. Tang’s arm. When she seemed ready to continue, he let her go ahead of him. Kim stood and waited as Dr. Tang passed her on the river’s edge.
She stared at Walker. “They’re coming. Don’t you feel it?”
“There are worse things,” Walker replied, his gaze shifting left and right, twitching over to peer into darkness like some barely competent Cold War spy.
The ghosts, Kim thought. It was obvious that the others had all seen them, but Kim had not. A few shimmerings and shadows, but nothing solid, nothing that overrode the rational part of her mind. Of the five of them, she had thus far been least affected by the plague, and now she realized she had also kept more of her wits about her.
Her heart pounded in her chest. She could feel it in her throat and her temples, thumping in her skull. The urgency swept her along with a current stronger than the river, but the others were so sick now that they were unable to feel that urgency, or if they felt it, they were too weary or brain-fogged to act on it.
“Oh, my God,” Dr. Tang said, and she turned her face away from something she had seen, so disgusted or frightened of the ghosts that she stumbled to her left, nearly falling into the river.
Kim turned to look b
ack the way they’d come. The glow from her headlamp illuminated the ledge and the edge of the river. The water seemed deep and black and unforgiving, but the tunnel swallowed her light. Farther back, it curved around a corner, and she imagined the jihadis were already there, nearly upon them.
Above the shush of the river, had she heard the bark of a voice? A rough, guttural language? Or had that been the first of the ghosts to visit her?
Time had run out.
Fear overcame her.
Kim swore and caught up with Walker, whom she’d allowed to pass her by. She took hold of his arm, and in his illness he did not resist.
“Give it to me,” she said.
Walker frowned. He stood straighter, blinked as if waking up, mustering as much of his training and courage as he could manage. “Keep going. I’m all right. We have to move.”
He tried to turn away. Kim snatched the strap of the contagion box, yanking him toward her. Walker rocked back, unsteady on his feet, and snapped around to glare at her.
“Don’t be a stubborn ass. You’re all moving too slowly. If we can’t stay ahead of them, we’re dead before we ever find a way out of here.”
Walker squinted and shook his head as if to clear it. She saw the change in him, as if he had woken from some enchantment. Kim had fallen for this man not merely for his strength and courage but for his clarity of purpose, the kindness at his core, and his way of putting others before himself. There were times she could not understand how he could cleave to such beliefs and continue in his job, but she had never doubted the man himself.
He slid off the strap and carefully put it over her head, resting it on her shoulder. Kim took the contagion box from him. The moment its weight fell fully upon her, she wished she could give it back.
They hurried to catch up to Sophie, Beyza, and Dr. Tang, cautious with their footing. The spray from the river wet the ledge, and here and there were places where the stone had become slick.
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