Kalahari

by Jessica Khoury

  “How far will he go?” I asked softly, though I feared I already knew the answer. I was still holding out hope that somehow this was all a big misunderstanding, and that my dad would be found safe. “To ‘clean up,’ as you say—what will he do?”

  “Whatever it takes,” he said. “If word got out about Metalcium and it was traced back to Corpus, it would destroy the company. They’ve covered up a lot of secrets, but a parasitic life-form spread by touch, for which we have no cure?” He shook his head. “Even Corpus couldn’t weather that.” He laughed hollowly. “I wonder if they’ll name it after me. Monaghan’s monster. The world will turn silver and men will curse my name as they die.”

  “Sarah!” Avani said urgently. “We need to get out of here!”

  “I know!” I replied, but I couldn’t help turning back to Dr. Monaghan in exasperation. “You can’t just give up! There’s still time to think of a cure!”

  “You sound like her,” he said. “You look like her too.”

  “Who?” I said sharply. “What are you talking about?”

  He coughed and bent over, his head in his hands. “Oh, it hurts! Dear God, it burns!”

  “Sarah!” Avani said again. “Let’s go!”

  “Just one more minute, please! Dr. Monaghan, I need to find my dad! Tell me how I can reach Abramo. Maybe I can make a deal with him—please!”

  “You can’t deal with Abramo.”

  He lifted his face and held out his hands; they were splotchy with silvery patches and sloughed skin. “Help me. . . .”

  “I—I don’t know how.”

  His eyes roamed feverishly and his teeth began to chatter.

  “So cold,” he whispered. “Where is Lindy? I have to get back to work. . . . Deadlines, deadlines . . .”

  I stared at him helplessly, torn between pity and anger. Pity, because he was obviously in pain and dying. Anger, because I was certain he could help stop the virus if he really wanted to. Even if he failed, he had to at least keep trying.

  “Sarah,” Sam said softly, “let’s go. He’s insane. We can’t help him if we can’t even help ourselves. We’ll send someone for him once we’re in Ghansi.”

  “Yes,” rasped Dr. Monaghan. “Go. For God’s sake, get out of here. Don’t you see? Someone needs to warn the world. Someone needs to know the true story. I’m out of time, damn it, but you can still make it.” He blinked, his eyes focusing for a moment on me. “If you don’t warn them, millions will die.”

  I tried to swallow, my eyes held by his fevered, desperate gaze, but my mouth was as dry as Kalahari sand.

  “Go!” Dr. Monaghan roared. He threw open the door, letting the room flood with sunlight—and the sound of a chopping engine. My blood turned to ice.

  A helicopter.

  Abramo.

  We were too late.

  “He’s back!” Dr. Monaghan cried. “Go! Go now!”

  THIRTEEN

  We darted out of the trailer, bending low, and ran to the building where we’d found the kitchen. Somewhat hidden in its shade, we pressed ourselves against the outer wall and watched as a black, unmarked helicopter set down fifty yards away in the grass, whipping up a maelstrom of sand and sending the vegetation into a frenzy. A small fox sprinted out of the way and blurred past us. A group of men filed out of the chopper, all of them armed. One of them started shouting, giving orders to his companions to begin cleaning out the buildings and piling everything—even the animals in the cages—into one big heap.

  “Go back,” I said, turning away from the door. “Into the bush.”

  “But the food and water we found—” Avani started.

  “No time! They’re coming this way! We have to disappear before they see us.”

  I led them back toward the trailer, keeping the building between us and the men. Beyond the trailer was another building, and then the safety of the tall grass. I felt like a springbok trying to elude a pride of hungry lions, my senses on highest alert.

  But my caution slowed us down, allowing the men time to spread out. Ahead of me, an armed man stepped out from behind the next building and froze, his long face reminding me of an astonished hartebeest. I winced and let out a strained breath, still crouched low but caught directly in the man’s line of sight. I held up a finger to my lips in a desperate attempt to get him to stay quiet, but it was useless.

  “Hey!” he cried out. “It’s the kids! Hey, boss—the kids are here!”

  I moved instinctively, focused on the safety of the bush with single-minded determination, in full survival mode. I ran straight at him. His rifle was slung across his back, so I took it he hadn’t expected to find us that easily. He reached over his shoulder for it, but Sam streaked past me and reached him first, catching him in a flying tackle. They both crashed into the sand, the man’s gun sliding off into the grass. I started to reach for it but dropped when I heard bullets zinging around my ears.

  The other men had arrived. They were shouting and spreading out, intending to surround us. I yelled for my group to drop and crawl, and they reacted instantly.

  “Get to the grass!” I hissed. “Hurry!”

  We scrambled the rest of the way into the bush. The tall grass hid us temporarily, but it would be only seconds before the men reached us.

  “They’re shooting at us!” Miranda screamed. She was breathing so rapidly that I feared she’d start to hyperventilate. “They’re actually shooting at us!”

  “Where’s Joey?” Avani called out.

  I looked around, taking count—and coming up one short.

  “Do we surrender?” Kase asked, his eyes wild. “They wouldn’t just kill us. That’s . . . that’s illegal!”

  Oh, Kase.

  “Split up,” I said. “Go deeper into the bush. Meet up a mile west of here.”

  “Which way is west?” asked Kase.

  I pointed.

  Sam winced as a bullet clipped the grass over his head. “What about Joey?”

  “I’ll find him. Just get away from here and wait. If I’m not there in an hour, keep going west. You’ll hit a dirt road—well, more of a track, really. Follow it north to Ghansi. Got it?”

  “But—”

  “Go,” I said, and I rose to a crouch and ran bent over through the grass. The gunfire followed me, thudding into the branches and sand. I kept my arms over my head as if they could somehow ward off the bullets and made a wide swath around the compound.

  When the gunfire stopped, I realized the shooters must have lost sight of me. I chanced a look back, popping up from the grass like a meerkat from its hole, and saw no sign of Sam and the others. The Corpus men had spread out and were searching the bush. From what I could tell, they’d left the compound unoccupied for now.

  I spotted Joey behind a generator, crouched in a pocket of shadow, where he must have been forced to hide but was now trapped by the men that were moving toward the bush. Keeping low, using the helicopter as partial cover, I tried to figure out a way to divert their attention, giving Joey room to run. But before I could do anything, Joey began to creep out from behind the generator, intending, it seemed, to go the other direction while the men’s backs were turned. But what he couldn’t see was that Abramo was standing just around the corner of the next building, talking on the phone. I immediately recognized him from our camp and wondered when he’d met up with the helicopter. If Joey darted out into the open, Abramo would see him for sure.

  “Joey!” I whispered, waving to get his attention, but he didn’t see me. There were at least twenty yards between us, and I didn’t dare call out. I could only watch with dread as he dashed into the open—and right into Abramo’s line of sight.

  “Stop!” Abramo ordered, whipping out a sleek handgun from the pocket of his dusty khaki fatigues and directing it at Joey.

  Joey froze in midstep and slowly lifted his hands. “Aw, c’mon! Don
’t I at least get a five-second head start?” Despite his joking tone, he watched Abramo’s gun with frightened eyes.

  Keeping his gaze trained on Joey, Abramo muttered something into his phone and then hung up, slipping the device into his pocket. He called to the other men, and they regrouped around Joey, surrounding him like a pride of lions separating a lone wildebeest from his herd.

  “Whoa,” said Joey. “I mean, it’s like you guys stepped straight out of a Bruce Willis film. Seriously. Have you thought about doing any movie work? You know, my mom works for a studio. I could totally introduce you—Hey! Easy!” He cursed as one of the men shoved him in the back, forcing him to his knees.

  “We lost the others,” said a tall African wearing a pair of cowboy boots. “Want us to spread out, flush them into the open?”

  Abramo’s gaze flickered from him to Joey, and then he grunted. “Yes. Get rid of this one first, though.”

  I couldn’t just leave Joey there. I was responsible for him, for all of them. And on top of that, I was tired. Tired of running, tired of thirst and hunger, tired of watching the people I cared about get hurt. Stubborn anger washed over me, and I stepped into the open.

  “Stop!” I yelled, whipping out the flare gun and aiming at the men. They paused uncertainly, still too far away to see that the weapon didn’t, in fact, shoot bullets. “Let him go! Or I’ll—”

  “You’ll what, Sarah?” Abramo asked, spreading his hands. If he was surprised to see me, he was good at hiding it. “Shoot us all at once?”

  “How do you know my name?” I demanded. “Where’s my dad?”

  Abramo wasn’t brawny or imposing. He looked like he ought to be sitting on some European sidewalk, quietly playing chess with the neighborhood grocer. His calm gray eyes, in wrinkled pockets of tanned skin, were blank as stone as they returned my gaze. Had this man killed my father? I searched his eyes for guilt or innocence and found only blank indifference.

  When he made no reply, I whispered, “You killed Theo. You destroyed my home. What about my dad?”

  “Enough!” Abramo sighed impatiently, cutting me off with a wave of his hand. “Shoot the boy, take the girl. She’ll lead us to the others.”

  “No!” I shouted. One of the men lunged toward me, and as I stumbled backward, my feet tangled together and I fell. My finger involuntarily squeezed the trigger of the gun, sending the flare streaking toward my attacker. It missed him by just a hair but startled him enough that I managed to get to my feet and sprint to Joey.

  “Don’t shoot!” I cried, standing back to back with him. “Please—”

  But they weren’t even looking at us; their eyes were fixed on something behind me, their faces shocked. Joey elbowed me from behind.

  “Um . . . Sarah?”

  I turned around and saw the door to Dr. Monaghan’s trailer was open. Dr. Monaghan stood in the doorway, looking on the verge of collapse, his face even more silver than it had been minutes ago. But he wasn’t the reason the men around us were now cursing and redirecting their rifles toward the trailer—it was the trio of metal-skinned scientists stumbling toward us, their agonized cries shivering through the air like nails scraping across a chalkboard.

  “Run!” Dr. Monaghan cried to Joey and me. “Get out of here!”

  We jolted into motion as the men opened fire on the three scientists. I covered my ears to dull the deafening shots. We ran for the bush opposite the trailer, desperate to get away while Dr. Monaghan’s horrific distraction lasted.

  “Sarah!” Joey cried out. “Look!”

  I lifted my head and gasped. The flare I’d shot had sailed into the tall grass, where it still burned too bright to look at—and hot enough to have caught the surrounding foliage.

  A bushfire.

  The blaze spread with almost liquid fluidity, sweeping from north to south with the wind and creating a fiery band ahead of us, trapping us inside the compound. Joey shouted and jumped from foot to foot as mice scurried over his shoes in an attempt to outrace the flames.

  “Go back,” I said. “We can’t get through it. Everyone else is on the other side of the compound—we can cut through the buildings to catch up to them!”

  There was no time to create a firebreak. If there was one thing I’d learned in my years in Africa, it was that you never underestimate the destructive power of a bushfire. All we could do was run.

  We turned and ran back toward the compound and the carnage taking place in the clearing between the buildings. The silver scientists were still on their feet, despite the shots the men had fired. As Joey and I skirted the chaotic scene, I couldn’t tear my eyes away. The first scientist reached one of the gunmen and raked her metallic nails across his face, before he shoved her with his rifle, knocking her to the ground. I felt sick as he shot her point-blank. It took several rounds before she lay still at last. Was the Metalcium bullet-resistant? I recalled the shot I’d fired at the lion and how he had seemed unharmed afterward. The other scientists attacked the rest of the men, who then turned on one another, gunning down their companions who had been touched by the infected. Horror-struck, I wondered how they could so quickly betray one another.

  “Sarah, come on!” Joey tugged at my sleeve, and I quickened my pace. We were almost to the safety of the bush.

  “Stop!” I heard Abramo shout. He alone was still focused on the two of us, leaving his men to deal with the scientists. I looked over my shoulder and saw him take aim at the backs of our heads.

  “Joey, down!” I yelled, and I tackled him from behind. We thudded roughly into the dirt as Abramo’s shot whistled overhead. Immediately I rolled sideways, pulling Joey with me, and put the trailer temporarily between us and Abramo.

  “This way!” a voice hissed.

  I looked around, then spotted Dr. Monaghan standing in the doorway of the next building—the menagerie.

  “Hurry!” he said, waving us toward him.

  We ducked inside the menagerie just as Abramo rounded the side of the trailer; one of his bullets bit into the door as I pulled it shut. Dr. Monaghan toggled a switch and a row of bare bulbs along the ceiling flickered to life. Joey said something, but I couldn’t catch what it was above all the screeching and howling of the caged animals.

  “Out the back door!” Dr. Monaghan cried. “Go, go, go!”

  “What about you?” I asked.

  “It’s too late for me. Get out of here!”

  We sprinted down the aisle between the cages as the crazed, infected animals raged at us. I heard another shot, and then the door we’d entered swung open. I looked back and saw Abramo and three of his men run inside. Were they all that was left after the scientists attacked them?

  “Monaghan!” Abramo roared. “Stop them!”

  “Too late!” Dr. Monaghan cackled. He unlatched one of the cages, releasing a silver baboon. The animal streaked across the floor amid a flurry of gunshots and then leaped onto one of the gunmen’s faces, sinking its teeth into his neck. Abramo dropped the man and the monkey with two precise head shots.

  “Stop!” he shouted, but Dr. Monaghan moved to the next cage, unleashing an infected caracal. We reached the door, and Joey pulled it open.

  “Come on!” he said, but I hesitated, looking back. The last two men were desperately trying to bring down the caracal, which hissed and lunged at them, while Abramo stood behind them, using them as a shield from the animal.

  “Dr. Monaghan,” I said, “come with us!”

  He stood still a moment and met my gaze, looking more like a machine than a man, but the misery in his eyes was all too human.

  “She was your mother, wasn’t she?” he said.

  “What did you say?” I gasped out.

  “Jillian. Jillian Carmichael—you look just like her.”

  “You knew my—”

  “Sarah, let’s go!” Joey grabbed my arm and yanked me out of the bui
lding, and the last I saw of Dr. Monaghan was his sad face vanishing behind the door as Joey slammed it shut.

  FOURTEEN

  I whirled on him. “He was going to tell me about my mother!”

  “Yeah? Well, excuse me for saving your life!”

  I snapped my mouth shut and stormed past him, not really angry at him but at Dr. Monaghan—why couldn’t he have mentioned her sooner?

  How did he know my mom?

  What did she have to do with this place?

  I broke into a run, hardly noticing if Joey kept up or not. The wind carried the scent of smoke, but it didn’t worry me. It was blowing eastward, which would sweep the fire away from us. We were safe as long as we stayed west of it.

  There was no sign of the others. I hoped that meant they’d gone ahead. There wasn’t time to check for their tracks in the sand. We crashed through the bushes, tripping over roots and aardvark holes. I nearly stepped on a pangolin shuffling through the grass, and twisted to look back at it; a sighting of the reclusive creature was rare and something Dad and I always got excited about.

  This is not the time for zoology, I reminded myself.

  From the sky came a heavy chop chop chop, and I yelled at Joey to get down. We ducked beneath a thornbush as the black helicopter swooped overhead, barely visible in the cloud of smoke from the fire. Had the men made it out of the infected menagerie?

  Perhaps this would buy us time. Maybe Abramo would want to regroup and find some new thugs to replace the ones he’d lost at the compound, giving us maybe a day’s head start to disappear.

  After the helicopter faded from sight, heading southwest, we continued trekking. A mile from the compound, I slowed down and began calling for the others.

  “Sam! Avani!”

  “Think they went back?” Joey asked.

  I shrugged, then froze. “Wait. There they are!”

  I jumped and waved, and saw a hand to the north wave in response. Joey and I hurried toward it and found Sam, Avani, Kase, and Miranda in the shade of a shepherd’s tree. Avani threw her arms around me. When she pulled away, Sam was there. For a moment, I thought he was going to hug me too, but at the last moment he shifted awkwardly and grasped my arm instead. While the others talked over one another, asking what had happened, Sam whispered, “Are you hurt? We saw the smoke. I was about to head back when you showed up.”