Chapter Nineteen
A li let her gaze rest on Max for another second before she glanced at Nolan and nodded. The soldier nodded in return and headed out, leaving behind Jessup and Hunt again.
“I apologize, Sergeant,” Max said formally.
Even as tired as she was, she couldn’t keep one eyebrow from climbing her forehead. “For?”
“Disturbing your rest.”
Disturbing my... For Christ’s sake, he sounded like a bloody Brit. She was going to have to haul him off to some dark corner and have her way with him. Again.
He didn’t seem aware of her reaction, continuing with, “Sergeant Nolan didn’t bring any good news.”
“Nolan doesn’t like good news,” she said, restraining herself from rolling her eyes. “He says it’s boring.”
“I think the situation is plenty exciting enough even for him,” Max said with a double handful of sarcasm. “How much did you overhear?”
“The part where he has to impress me with his shoot-and-run plan.”
“Then you missed the really depressing news about a third of the people here being dead and another third sick. And we’re surrounded by double our force and the only thing keeping them away is the I’m sick lie.”
“See, this is what Nolan means. This is not boring.”
He stared at her like she had gone nuts. “You really need to get a few more hours of sleep.”
She knew herself, knew her capabilities. “I’m good for a few hours now.”
His expression flattened out. “I might need you in a few hours. Right now I don’t .”
He did not just say that.
He did not just question my judgment.
In front of an audience.
She stared at him as the cold truth spread icy fingers through her chest. If he could decide to ignore her decisions now, when else would he ignore them?
She waited. Waited for him to realize what he’d said and how he’d said it. Bald. Cold. An order and nothing else.
Someone whistled, and out of the corner of her eye she saw Jessup take a step back.
Max glanced at Jessup and Hunt, both of whom were frowning at him, then back at her. She saw the moment he comprehended what he’d said bloom on his face. His eyes widened and he sucked in a breath.
Too late.
She saluted. “Sir,” she said, her voice as cold as his had been. Then she turned on her heel and returned to her patch of wall where she’d been napping earlier.
“How badly did I just screw up?” Max’s voice was clearly audible out in the hallway. Was this his way of sucking up?
“Sir,” Jessup replied. “We all complain about how hard she puts us down during training. How she pushes and pushes us to put the extra effort in, because that little extra bit might be the difference between living and dying. She does that because she gives a shit. You just told her you don’t.”
“That wasn’t my intention. I was worried about her not having enough sleep when the fighting starts.”
“If you think she hadn’t already thought of that, you’re the one who needs more sleep. With your permission, sir, I’m going to relieve Tom at the watch so he can sack out.”
“Sir,” Hunt said. “Do you need me here, or can I set up a watch near the front entrance?”
“That’s fine.”
Footsteps moved away.
Max came into the lab only after one of his machines beeped.
Ali cracked open her eyes and watched him tear off a piece of paper the machine had spit out.
When he didn’t move, didn’t speak, just stared at the paper, she knew the result was not a good one.
“How bad is it?” she asked.
“It’s the bird flu, Influenza A H5N1 .”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s highly contagious among birds, domestic and wild. It’s everywhere. In humans it has a high mortality rate. It was relatively hard for humans to catch the virus. The usual victims are people who work closely with chickens, but...” His voice trailed off for a moment before he finished speaking. “The medical community around the world has been watching this virus closely. It’s predicted to be the most likely cause of the next big pandemic, if it mutated to a strain that prefers the tissues of the upper respiratory tract of humans, rather than birds.”
“What do you mean by pandemic? Like the Ebola thing that keeps popping up in Africa and Asia?”
“No,” he said with a sad chuckle. “Ebola is nothing compared to what this virus could do. Some estimates say five million dead, others fifty million dead. I tend to be on the alarmist side myself. I think it could be far worse.”
“Worse than fifty million people dead?” She couldn’t imagine that many people gone all over the world.
“Fifty million dead and another thirty-five million infected. That means eighty-five million people will be out of commission, a lot of them medical personnel. Guess what happens to a society when that many people are unable to do their jobs?”
“Anarchy,” she whispered, horror strangling her voice.
“Yes.”
“How...” She had to swallow to wet a suddenly dry throat. “How can anyone calculate accurate infection and mortality rates that high? Isn’t all this just academic?”
“The Spanish flu at the end of the First World War killed at least that many people. Some say as many as one hundred and fifty million people died. There aren’t any hard numbers because people were dying so fast, and in some places entire villages of people simply ceased to exist. Not enough records were kept.”
“Oh.”
“What makes things different today is how mobile the world population is. It’s almost a given that any quarantine that’s put in place will be too little too late.”
“So, we start right now,” she said, getting to her feet. “We get out of here with the samples and get the pharmaceutical companies to produce a vaccine.”
“Normal vaccine production takes three months.”
“Three months?”
“Indeed. Much too late to help us or anyone in this village.”
“We have to do something,” she whispered. “Anything.”
“We can get the information out to our command and make sure samples are picked up so the process of creating a vaccine can begin, but again, that won’t help us or any of the people in this village.”
“What would help these people...us?”
“Passive antibodies, maybe, from someone who’s had the flu, survived and is now healthy.” He glanced at his equipment. “I’ve got everything I need here to isolate the antibodies, except for the equipment needed to deal with units of blood...” His voice trailed off as he stared. “A unit of whole blood might help. There are a dozen unit collection kits in with the supplies..”
“I met survivors when I collected those samples,” she told him, hope speeding up her heart rate.
“Could I offer food or medical supplies in exchange for a donation of blood?”
“Yes.” He stared at her like he was afraid to hope. Afraid to imagine an end to this nightmare that didn’t result in all their deaths. “Yes, you could. I’d need...” His gaze became unfocused. “At least seven or eight donors to start.”
Having a plan relaxed muscles in her face she hadn’t known were clenched tight. “Do I have your permission to start rounding up volunteers and sleep later?”
He walked up to her until he was only inches away. “I’m sorry. I was an idiot and I won’t do it again.”
He wasn’t getting off the hook that easily. “Do what again?”
“Disrespect you, in front of other people or in private.”
Despite wanting to move closer to him, she took a step back. “As much as I would like to insist on your groveling, we don’t have time. Apology accepted. What goodies can I give away? Where do you want me to bring the donors?”
“One of the rooms closer to the front of the building. I’ll have to see if Hunt and Tom can assist with drawing the blood.”
He looked around then grabbed a couple of bags of face masks, some simple pain and fever medication, and a couple dozen packets of electrolyte powder to add to water.
She shook a packet. “What’s this?”
“For anyone who’s been sweating or vomiting it’s one of the best medicines there are.” He watched her put it all into her backpack. “Will it be enough?”
“Yeah, I think so. Some rice or flour would be good too, but I don’t know if we have any we can give away.” She glanced at him and he nodded.
“Okay. Don’t take any unnecessary risks. If you see trouble coming, get out of the way.”
Her backpack hardly weighed a thing. “Are you saying I’m reckless?”
“No. You have a protective streak a mile wide and when you see someone in trouble, especially a woman or a child, you automatically try to help.” He walked right up to her and said quietly, “You can kick my ass and anyone else’s ass in a fair fight. These guys don’t fight fair, so be careful .”
She came to attention and saluted him. “I will, sir. A lot of lives are depending on me.”
“Yes,” he said, his eyes full of emotion she wasn’t sure she wanted to explore too closely. “They are.” He saluted her, and she left.
Hunt had joined Jessup on guard duty near the front of the building. He’d picked out a great perch from which to watch the front door and windows. It was a waist-high counter that probably served as the hospital’s reception desk. He was lying on it in a prone shooting position watching for anyone approaching from the street.
“I’m going blood-donor shopping,” she told him. “Max needs blood from people who’ve had the flu and gotten better. So I’ll be back and forth. He’s also going to ask you to help bleed the donors, so let Jessup know you’ll be busy soon.”
“Shit, that kind of foot traffic is going to bring attention to us.”
She shrugged. “Can’t be helped.”
Hunt sighed, but didn’t otherwise comment.
Ali went to the door, waited to see if anyone was in the area, then slipped out the door and into the gray day. It wasn’t raining, but it looked like it could start anytime.
She went house to house asking for anyone who’d survived the sickness. In the first two houses, all she found was dead people. Not a promising start.
She hit pay dirt in the third house. A teenage boy answered her knock and said that his parents were both dead, but he and his baby sister had both gotten better after being sick. Max probably wouldn’t take blood from a two-year-old, but the young man looked old enough.
She brought them both back to the hospital, then went and got Ferhat. He took the teen and his sister in and got them settled in the room with him and his sons.
“I can’t leave the tests right now,” Max told her. “Can you track down Nolan and ask if his other medic can give me a hand?”
“Sure.” She looked at the tired kids and the even more tired father. “Watch your back. Never forget, we’re in a foreign country.”
She left and after ten minutes of careful searching, found Nolan and a couple of his guys talking with an older man in one of the tents.
Nolan saw her, excused himself and walked with her a few feet away. “Problems?”
“Max needs your other medic to help collect blood donations. He has an idea. Wants to try treating the sick with the blood of people who’ve survived the flu.”
Nolan grunted. “I’ll send him as soon as I’m finished talking with the elder.”
“Thanks.”
“The militants have been conspicuously out of sight for the past thirty minutes,” Nolan said “I don’t like it. Don’t relax your vigilance, not even for a second.”
“Akbar left Max a note on a body. He’s here and he doesn’t think like most people.”
“Shit,” Nolan said under his breath.
“Do you need anything? Any news for Max?”
“There were a few Western aid workers still trying to help these people, but militants went through the tents like locusts and took them all. No one knows where they were taken, or at least no one is willing to admit they know where. Now you’re telling me Akbar is behind all this. We’ve walked into a very large, lethal trap.” Ali sighed. “Yeah, one specifically designed to isolate Max. Which means we’ve got problems here and at home.” She needed to talk to her father and let him know the extent of their difficulties, but in a way that wouldn’t alert any unfriendly ears.
No biggie .
Nolan nodded at her with a half smile that told her he was just as pissed as she was, and went back into the tent.
She continued her search for flu survivors and found three more, all in the same family, who were happy to get out of their tent and into a solid structure
The next two tents she went into, everyone was dead. In the second tent, their fire was warm and still smoking, so someone had been alive until not too long ago.
The speed at which people were dying was...scary fast.
She put it out of her head and continued looking for more survivors. It took her twenty minutes to find another survivor, this time an old woman who was weeping over the bodies of her children and grandchildren.
Ali asked if she’d help to save the lives of other children, other grandchildren, but she pushed Ali away and continued to wail.
Ali left her to her grief.
She found a young mother who was staring down at the dead faces of her husband and son.
“Why?” she asked Ali. “Why did I survive when they did not? I would have rather died with them.”
“Perhaps so you can help other people.”
“I cannot even help myself,” the woman whispered.
“You can. You did survive and the secret to helping others is in your blood.”
The woman looked at Ali for the first time. “My blood?”
“Would you give a little of your blood to help?”
The woman didn’t respond for a long time, stood and stared at the bodies she’d wrapped in blankets. Finally she said, “I will help.”
Ali led her toward the old hospital. The tents and village felt even quieter than before. There were very few voices talking. Coughing was almost the only noise she could hear.
They left the last of the tents behind and passed the first house. It boasted a tall back wall of stone, with no windows until twelve feet up.
As she and the woman passed the wall, men with covered faces rushed them.