Outbreak (12 page)

“Eli!” Harper calls.

“Yeah.”

“What’s wrong?”

I’m gritting my teeth so hard that my jaw hurts. “Nothing,” I choke. “I’m coming.”

My hands are slow and shaky as I continue to climb. The ladder feels a thousand feet long, and I keep having to stop to steady my shaky limbs.

Every second I delay is a second we don’t have, but after dodging death time and time again, my body is finally turning on me.

When I clear the edge of the roof, the sharp gust of desert air clears my head, and I feel more like myself.

The roof isn’t as high as I would like, but it offers a much better vantage point than we could have gotten on the ground. To my right, I can see most of the sleepy town stretching off into the distance. To my left, there’s nothing but desert and sky.

I have a good view of the rock formation where Jay and the others are shooting from. It’s very far away, but if the wind dies down, I might have a shot at taking out the drifters before they kill one of us.

I kneel down on the roof and prop my rifle up on the low brick wall running around the edge of the building. Then I zoom in on my interface and scour the rocks for the drifters.

“Can you see them?” Harper asks. She’s kneeling behind the adjacent wall with her body oriented toward the desert. She’s looking for our people — not the snipers — but I don’t have the heart to tell her that searching for the source of the gunshots would be more productive.

“Not yet,” I murmur, still scanning the burnt-orange rocks.

Just then, a tiny flicker of movement catches my eye — a white T-shirt or a face. 

I can’t tell if it’s Jay or not, but someone is definitely concealed behind a jagged piece of sandstone. 

A mirage is blurring my view of the rocks, so I focus my scope on a building about 200 yards away and place it back on my target.

When you’re shooting through a mirage, you can’t rely on your eyes; they’ll lie to you every time. You have to shoot where you
know
your target’s going to be — not where your eyes are telling you to.

I adjust for the wind and focus on my breathing, waiting patiently for Jay to show himself again. 

Several long seconds pass, and the wind kicks up. I swear loudly, debating whether I should readjust or just wait for the wind to subside. Jay could show himself at any moment.

I watch a tattered flag flap in the breeze and then settle into a gentle unfurling rhythm.

Come on. Come on. Come on.

That’s when Jay reappears. I adjust my aim and focus on my breathing.
In and out. In and out.

 I can see his mousey brown head and the barrel of his rifle. He’s getting ready to shoot again, but he’s struggling. His target must be on the run. Mine’s not.

Without thinking, I let out my breath and pull the trigger. 

Jay’s body shudders, and then he slips out of view.

Then there’s just silence.

My slow sigh of relief is cut short by another gunshot. This one didn’t come from Jay.

One of the other drifters is shooting, and I have no idea where he could be hiding.

A surge of adrenaline shoots through my body as I search frantically for the source of the gunshot. There are a million places the second sniper could be concealing himself, and I never heard where Tony and Mouse were supposed to be stationed. 

My eyes quickly scan the buildings near the edge of town, but I don’t see anyone. That can only mean that the shots are coming from one of the other rock formations.

I look through my interface at the cluster of sandstone rocks to identify the shooter. Then I spot Mouse’s black bandana as he ducks down for cover.

“Shit!”

I line up my shot, waiting for him to reappear. I don’t think he hit his mark, so he has to show himself eventually if he wants to finish the job. I focus on my breathing to keep my hands steady and wait.

It happens so fast I almost miss it.

Mouse’s head appears above the large sandstone rock, and he fires as I pull the trigger.

His head drops out of my line of sight, and I swear. 

It’s impossible to tell if I hit him or not. But then Big Boy jumps out from another little alcove and starts hoofing it back toward town.
What an idiot.

I zoom in with my interface and see his beet-red cheeks and flabby arms pumping in the air. 

I must have hit my mark. Now that his buddies are dead, he’s abandoning his post and making a break for it.

I readjust my aim and get Big Boy in my crosshairs. My finger is hovering over the trigger, ready to eliminate the threat, when a choked sob makes my heart stop.

Suddenly, every thought of the drifters is wiped from my mind. I’m no longer on the Fringe. Time becomes something physical that my body can inhabit as the second stretches out and I turn around in horror.

Harper is standing on the edge of the building, hovering like a statue with her hands gripping the low wall.

“Oh my god,” she breathes.

She turns, and I half expect to see blood blossoming from a gaping wound in her chest. There’s no reason for me to think the sniper shot Harper, but my first instinct is to protect her always.

When I see that she wasn’t hit, my first feeling is pure relief. I drink it in greedily, but the look on her face shatters my elation.

Her silvery eyes are wide like two pools of fresh water, but they’re quivering with unshed tears. 

That expression tears my heart in two, and cold dread spills into my chest. She must have located our people.

“What is it?” I ask in a hollow voice.

I don’t want her to tell me, but I have to know.

Harper opens and closes her mouth several times, breathing hard. She clicks out of her interface and presses a shaky hand over her mouth to stifle a wave of sobs. When she speaks, her voice is muffled, but I still hear her loud and clear.

“It’s Lenny and Miles.”

ten

Sawyer

I have no idea what time it is when my interface wakes me up from my nap. It takes several seconds for me to reenter the land of the living. The frantic beeping means someone is paging me, but the sound is so ubiquitous in the medical ward that sometimes I imagine it.

I finally locate my interface and sit up on my bunk. The page is short:
Emergency Fringe Retrieval
.

Those three words make my blood go cold, and I lean forward and place my head between my knees to ward off the panic.

When Harper’s been deployed,
any
Fringe retrieval is enough to set me on edge, but the fact that they added “emergency” to the phrase means I have genuine cause for concern.

Get it together,
I breathe. If Harper can go out there after she’s been blown up and shot at, the least I can do is hold it together long enough to do my job.

Before my mind can jump to the worst conclusion, I roll out of my bunk and nearly twist my ankle on a stray shoe.

“Shit!”

Another interface starts beeping.

The flashing blue light illuminates Caleb snuggled under the blankets in the bottom bunk, still blissfully unaware that we have a job to do.

I have the urge to pick up the shoe and whip it across his freckly face, but the beeping wakes him before I have the chance.

“Emergency Fringe retrieval?” I ask, turning my back to him and replacing my sweat-stained T-shirt with fresh scrubs. 

“Yeah,” he yawns, pulling on his shoes.

I’m not sure why I bother turning around — it’s nothing he hasn’t seen before. As two of the four interns with level-A security clearance, we practically live together in the temporary bunk room. 

 Between our regular twelve-hour shifts and all the extra research hours we’ve been logging to impress the Progressive Research Unit, we’ve been running ourselves ragged. Most of our conversations consist of yawns and impatient snapping in the tunnels.

Part of me thinks Health and Rehab makes the internship program a pressure cooker on purpose. Forcing interns competing for top positions to live in close quarters with very little sleep must be good training for the demands of being a full-fledged doctor.

Back in higher ed, the competition would have thrilled me, but right now I just find it tiring and a little gross. I could really use a shower — or at least a little deodorant — but there’s no time. I just run my fingers through my hair and yank it up into a messy ponytail.

Without waiting for Caleb, I fly out into the brightly lit tunnel and try not to look as though I just rolled out of bed.

“Lyang!” barks a voice from behind me. “There you are! What the hell took so long?”

It’s Dr. Watson, the most impatient asshole in the medical ward. Of course he would be on call tonight.

“Sorry, sir. What’s going on?”

“Emergency Fringe retrieval,” he snaps.

No shit.

“Did they say if they’ve been injured?”

“No. They’re still too far out to know for sure, but Eagle Eye says they’ll be chambered in just a few minutes. You and MacAvoy should head down there to get them. Page me immediately if you need assistance.”

“Yes, sir.”

I know I’m supposed to wait for Caleb, but I’m just too anxious. I grab the first gurney I can find and summon an automatic wheelchair to follow me onto the freight lift. You never know which one you’re going to need.

Just as the doors start to close, I spot Caleb running frantically around the ward and roll my eyes.

It’s not that he’s a bad guy. In a less competitive section, we might even be friends. But since there’s only one spot available in Progressive Research, that makes him just another kiss-ass who needs to be eliminated.

On the ride down to the ground level, it’s all I can do not to think about a wounded Harper draped over Eli’s shoulder. She got lucky the time he was shot, but I’m not sure how long her luck can possibly hold out with such frequent deployments.

As soon as the lift doors open, I rush down the tunnel toward the postexposure chamber. There’s already a hazmat suit and a mask waiting for me. I unzip the thing in one motion and pull it off the hook to slither inside.

It’s much more difficult to get it zipped back up once I’m wearing it. My fingers feel clumsy in the attached rubber gloves, and I can’t see what they’re doing outside the suit when my face is encased in plastic.

Finally I secure the hood and rush into the secondary chamber to meet them. Through the small window in the door, I can see several shadowy figures crowded in the radiation chamber. It’s too dark to distinguish their faces, but it looks as though there are more than two people in there.

When I press my face closer to the glass, I hear frantic shouts and a high-pitched whimper.

Harper.

I wait with bated breath for the compound doors to shut. As soon as the green light flashes on my side of the chamber, I frantically stab the door release to let them inside.

Three people rush toward me, and I press myself against the wall to make room. All the movement and body heat is a little disorienting, but I try to focus on the awkward shape to my right.

“We need to get her to the medical ward!” somebody yells.

The voice is male — low and terrified — but it isn’t Eli. The man is stooped to avoid bumping his head on the low ceiling, and he’s hunched over as if he’s carrying a heavy bundle.

Then he steps into the light, and I see that the voice belongs to Eli’s tall, hulking fighter friend — Miles, I think.

He doesn’t look so tough right now, though; he has the same helpless look I’ve seen on the faces of people in the medical ward who are about to lose their loved ones.

Cradled in his arms is a small redheaded girl with milky white skin. She’s trembling and breathing hard, and sweaty curls are clinging to her forehead.

I scan her body for signs of injury, and my eyes land on a dark bloodstain spreading near her abdomen.

“Gunshot wound?”

“Yeah,” says Miles, looking at me as though I hold all the answers to the universe.

Somebody brushes past me, and in the harsh blue light, I can just make out Harper’s ashen, tear-stained face. I give her a quick once-over and feel a tiny surge of relief that she seems unharmed.

“It’s my friend Lenny,” she says, choking back a sob. “You have to help her. She’s lost a lot of blood.”

My heart feels as though it might beat right out of my chest, and my breathing speeds up.

They warned us about this — getting sucked into the panic. They train us to stay calm and respond to an emergency with a clear head, but nothing could have prepared me for the paralyzing fear and pressure.

From the look on Harper’s face, it feels as if I’m single-handedly responsible for the life of the girl in Miles’s arms, and the prognosis doesn’t look good.

Suddenly, my mind flashes to one of the first operations I assisted with after the explosion in Systems. A man who’d been buried in the rubble was bleeding out on the table. I was having a panic attack in the operating room, and my overseeing physician had said, “When we don’t have peace, we rely on process.”

A calm feeling washes over me as I picture Dr. Fey’s kind, capable face, and I know what I have to do.

“We need to decontaminate you first,” I hear myself say to Harper.

“Are you
serious
?”

“The gunshot wound is
her
most pressing problem — not yours.”

Harper looks as though she wants to put up a fight, so I push the button for the shower and shove her under the spray. She cringes as icy water pounds down on her, soaking her to the bone.

“Give her to me,” I instruct Miles.

He gives me a skeptical look but transfers Lenny to my arms. I nearly buckle under her weight, but it’s manageable. She’s smaller than me, and the rush of adrenalin helps. 

As my arms close over her small frame, her breathing starts to come a little faster — as though she fears I might drop her. But I stab the door release with my foot and stagger out to place her on the gurney just outside the chamber.