Chapter Eighteen
The Gunn and Banks party set out for the
Campbell holding just after dawn. It was a misty, foggy morning,
much like the one Veronica had encountered the day she’d traveled
back through time. The visibility was low so it took much longer to
arrive at their destination than expected. By the time they got
there, she felt weak in the knees. She had grown up riding horses,
but not for hours at a time. Riding a horse for leisure and riding
one as transportation were two different animals altogether.
Euan Campbell begrudgingly shooed their
party in. After they dismounted, the old, surly laird asked Lachlan
why everyone in their group had covered their mouths and noses with
the Gunn plaid. Lachlan had shrugged in response. “We dinna wish to
catch the ague. If indeed ‘tis what your people have.”
“A plaid o’er the mouth and nose prevents
this?” Euan asked incredulously.
“If it dinna, we wouldna be wearing
them.”
The old man sputtered, but said nothing to
that. Apparently he didn’t like being bested by Lachlan in any
department, including knowledge on how to keep the virus from
spreading. Hopefully he’d at least take the lesson to heart and
instruct his clan to follow the same rules around their sick.
The first dried mud and thatch hut they were
taken to belonged to an esteemed elder. James, Euan’s son,
explained that he’d been the first to get “the ague” and because of
his advanced years was in the worst shape. “May I enter?” Veronica
asked James.
“You have experience in these matters,
lady?”
“I do.”
He inclined his head. “Then by all means.”
He knocked on the hut’s door and waited until an elderly woman
opened it. “Lady Gunn is here to have a look at Fraser,” he
explained at her curious expression. “Mayhap she can aid him.”
“Aye, milord,” the soft-spoken woman
demurred. “All help is welcome.”
Veronica was the first to enter, but her
party filed in behind her. Even James and Euan came in, swelling
their presence to seven outsiders in the one-room hut. She walked
to where the old man lay sick, perhaps dying, in his bed. She bent
over him and gave the elder her name. “I’m here to have a look at
you.”
“Where are you from, lass? You’ve an
accent.”
“From a clan at the border,” she said,
thinking quickly. “My mother was French,” she truthfully added,
hoping that accounted for her accent in his mind.
“Ah. Your mother heralds from Francia.”
“Yes.”
“I traveled to Francia once as a lad with my
sire. ‘Twas a wondrous land I daresay.”
She smiled. “I agree. It’s beautiful.”
When Fraser offered no further questions or
observations, she hovered over him and placed a hand to his
forehead. She sighed, her breath a mixture of relief and worry. He
was burning up all right, but with a normal fever. Still, at his
age, an illness like that could kill him. She removed a pouch from
the braided belt she wore and emptied several aspirin into her
hand. Thankfully Victor had traveled back to this time fully
stockpiled. She wondered how he’d managed to touch the many bags he
still had in his possession. She’d had enough of a time taking back
a dog and her satchel. Of course, unlike Hero, his bags couldn’t
wiggle around.
Veronica handed the pills to the sick man’s
fretting wife. “Have him swallow two of these with water or mead
every four hours until his fever breaks. Use no more than necessary
because I only have a limited number.”
“Aye, milady. You have my thanks.”
She smiled, not that the old woman could see
her expression through the plaid. Hopefully she could see the
caring in her eyes. “You’re welcome.”
The next hour was spent doing much of the
same. There were quite a few Campbells in bed with fevers that
ranged from mild to severe. She left precious, rare pills of
aspirin only with the most severe cases. “On a good note,” Veronica
whispered to Victor as their party approached the final hut, “none
of the Campbells appear to be stricken with DR-71. So far all of
the fevers are normal.”
It was the middle-aged woman in the final
hut that caused Veronica to still. She turned on her heel, her eyes
wide, and said to everyone in the hut, “Get out. Now. We will
discuss this outside.” She turned back to the afflicted woman and
continued inspecting her body. As she’d feared from the icy
coldness of her forehead, there were bruises covering her torso. It
was DR-71. She knew it when she saw it.
Veronica would have spoken with the sick
woman, tried to reassure her that she’d be okay even if it was a
lie, but the disease had already ravished her body and likely her
mind. She would turn—and it would be soon. Overwrought with guilt,
Veronica stood upright and held her own stomach. She had done this.
She hadn’t had time to clean herself of the evolved eater refuse
before injecting the serum and now that terrifying chicken had come
home to roost. She had traveled through time in the hopes of
escaping one frightening world only to unwittingly bring the living
dead with her into the next.
The moment she left the hut and closed its
door behind her, she looked at Victor, her green eyes still wide.
She nodded, telling him all he needed to know. Apparently Lachlan
had picked up on the unspoken message for he started cursing under
his breath.
“What is it?” Euan asked, for the first time
sounding more worried than surly. “What ails my sister-within-the
law?”
“Something wicked,” Veronica whispered. “We
need to speak in privacy.”
“Nay, wife,” Lachlan bit out from under the
plaid shielding his face, “we shall be telling no tales this
day.”
“We don’t have a choice,” she said
reasonably. “This affects us all.” She turned to Finn and held out
her hand. “Please give me your canteen.” Lachlan’s soldier did so
unquestioningly. She poured it over her hands to clean them. It was
just a safety precaution, but one that caused Victor to assume a
stricken expression. “I don’t have it,” she muttered. “You get it
the same way you get a regular fever. Coughs and sneezes.”
“I know,” Victor said gutturally, “but I
still don’t like it.”
Veronica ignored him and walked to where
Lachlan waited. She stood on tip-toe and whispered into his ear. “I
realize you don’t like or trust Euan Campbell, but we don’t have a
reasonable alternative to telling him the truth. It’s too far past
that point. Please trust me in this.”
Lachlan sighed long and loudly. She rested
her hand at his lower back.
“I’m sorry,” Veronica murmured. “Everything
is my fault.”
That admission snapped him back to his usual
in control self. “’Tis not the truth of it, wife.”
“Yes, it is.”
“If your coming to me costs a price then I
am willing to pay it.”
Her heart skipped a beat. It was no wonder
the giant warlord was getting to her. “It will spread,” she told
him. “Quickly if we don’t deal with it now.”
It took a lot of prodding on her part, but
eventually Lachlan relented. “So be it,” he said under his breath.
“I dinna have a care for it, but so be it.”
*****
By the time his wife and
brother-within-the-law finished their tale, complete with proof
presented by the AI scanner, the old mon Euan was pale as a sheet.
James fared no better. In truth, Lachlan understood exactly what
they were going through, having been through the initial shock of
it himself some months back.
“What do we do?” James breathed out. “How
can we fight against this wicked monstrosity?”
“I’m going to have to stay behind and remain
with your clan,” Victor responded. When Veronica opened her mouth
to deny him, he held up a palm. “I have to study the ones like
Fraser—people with normal fevers,” he told her. “I’ll take every
precaution.”
“What about Catriona and your wedding?”
Veronica demanded.
“If we’re all dead or dying, what will it
matter?” His tone was more commanding than Lachlan had ever heard
in his speech afore. “We have a chance to create an inoculation
here—a chance we never had in the future—but to cure it I must
first understand it.”
Veronica huffed and shook her head, but
dinna gainsay her brother. “What do I tell Catriona when the rest
of us return without you?”
“The truth.”
“You have the AI scanner! How am I supposed
to prove it?”
“Show her and Moira the laptop.”
“Now we’re telling Moira the truth too?”
“At this point, we might as well,” Lachlan
broke in, agreeing with Victor. “But we tell no one else. No more
Gunns and no more Campbells. Are we agreed?” He looked pointedly at
Euan. “You dinna think anyone would believe you, do you?” At Euan’s
frown he added, “People would think us all daft.”
“’Tis true,” Euan grumbled. He looked to
James. At his heir’s nod, he turned to Lachlan. “My son and I will
tell no Campbells. I give my word.”
“And Victor is welcome here as an honored
guest,” James stated with authority. “He can stay at the keep with
my sire and myself.”
“Then everything’s settled,” Veronica said,
her voice rather gruff. Clearly she was no happier aboot her
brother’s decision. “Victor will stay behind until you return him
to us. I will do what I can,” she pointedly told her brother, “to
comfort poor Catriona.”
“One final question must be answered, Lady
Gunn.” This from Euan. At his wife’s raised brow, he asked, “What
am I to do for my sister-within-the-law? I dinna want her to turn
into one of those…those…things.”
“Burn her,” she said coldly, in a manner
only a survivor of the wretched plague could have mustered. “Burn
her and burn down her hut.”
“Burn her?”
“She’s too far gone to know what’s going
on,” Veronica assured him. “She will turn in mere hours and try to
eat you alive if you don’t.”
“God, save us,” Ramsay muttered. He made the
sign of the cross.
“Call your clan together when the deed is
done,” his wife continued. “Tell them about the icy cold fever and
bruises. Tell them to alert you immediately if anyone else develops
those symptoms. They can’t be saved. Do you understand?”
Euan, his face stricken, nodded. “Aye. I ken