White (49 page)

“They have drowned,” Qurong said.

“They are not dead!”

“Does my daughter look like a Scab to you?” Qurong shouted. “If this is not a dead Scab, I don't know what is. She's been drowned and paid her price! You will not lay a hand on her.”

Chelise wanted to run up and throw her arms around him. “Father, it's real. The water is red! This is now a red pool.”

His eyes jerked to the water behind her. She followed his gaze. The lake looked black, but there was a tinge of red to it.

Ciphus was staring and had now seen it too. “Seal off the lake!” he shouted, spinning to the guard. “No one enters.”

“No!” Chelise. “The people must be allowed to drown! Father, tell him.”

Qurong looked back out at the water. He scanned the surface. “And Woref?”

“Woref didn't believe,” Thomas said.

Her father eyed him. “And how did this water become red?”

“I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing that Mikil and Johan found the red pool you had covered.”

Qurong frowned. “Seal the lake,” he said.

“Form a perimeter at the top of the shore,” Ciphus said. “Not a soul steps on the beach until we have repaired this damage.”

Chelise took a step toward Qurong. “Father, you can't allow this!”

He lifted a hand. “Stop there.”

“Drown!” she cried. “You have to drown, you and Mother! All of you!”

Her father drew his horse around so that he faced her. “They are free to go,” he said. “They and their friends will be given free passage from our forest. No albino is to be hurt before we know the truth of what has happened here.”

“Father . . . please, I beg you . . . you know the truth.”

“You're my daughter, and because of that I will let you live in peace,” he said. “But I have my limits. Leave now, before I change my mind.”

He turned his horse and walked up the shore.

Chelise stared after him, torn between the urge to drag him into the lake and the realization that she was no different only a day ago. But there was hope, wasn't there? He was going to consider the matter.

“I'm sorry,” Thomas said, putting his hand on her shoulder.

She faced him and her sorrow faded. His skin, just this morning an interesting enigma, was now deliciously brown and smooth. His green eyes shone like the stars. He was truly beautiful.

“Are my eyes . . .”

“Green,” he finished. He brushed her cheek with his thumb. “And your skin is dark, the most beautiful I've ever seen.”

“I am his bride now?” she asked.

“You are. And mine?”

“I am.”

She felt as if she might burst.

He winked and then took her hand. “We should take your father at his word and get out while we can. The Circle will be waiting.”

The Circle. She glanced back. Ciphus was glaring at them. Two dozen guards had formed a line by the platform, barring them from following Qurong, who was just now guiding his horse past a hastily formed perimeter guard.

The Circle was waiting. She grinned, suddenly eager to be gone from here and among her new family. To be with her husband.

Thomas of Hunter.

“Then we shouldn't keep them,” she said and stepped toward the waiting forest.

44

M
arseilles, France.

Carlos had waited three days now, and not a single vehicle had crawled out of the underground facility. But they were there; he would stake his life on it.

Birds chirped on the hillside, oblivious to how close they had come to moving up the food chain three days ago. Here in the country outside of the port, the morning was peaceful and cool. Down in the city there was a scramble to acquire one of the coveted syringes that were now flowing out of Paris. The news was of nothing but the virus. More accurately, the antivirus. The Thomas Strain, they were calling it. The man had report-edly given his life. Carlos wasn't ready to believe that just yet.

There were enough vaccinations to go around, they said, but that didn't stop the panic. The distribution plan was essentially the reverse of their blood-collection efforts. Syringes filled with the Thomas Strain had already flooded the gateway cities. Every refrigerated vehicle in France was now carrying the antivirus to distribution points across the country, where hundreds of thousands waited their turn in long lines.

Meanwhile, Carlos lay in wait with his weapon.

He glanced at his forearm. The red spots had disappeared. He still couldn't make sense of it, but there was only one cause that made any sense. He'd been in contact with Hunter's blood.

The man's funeral was to be held in twenty-four hours. Carlos would use every power at his means to be present. He had to see for himself. And if Hunter was finally dead . . .

The thought knotted his gut and he let it trail off.

If Fortier didn't emerge soon, he would go to the authorities—the French military would like nothing better than to drop a few bunker busters on this site and rid the world of the men who had sullied their reputation. The French president, who'd followed Fortier's demands all too quickly, would probably do it himself to bolster his standing with the people. The world was too distracted by the virus at the moment, but one day Carlos might set them all straight.

The problem with going to the authorities now was that it meant leaving his post long enough for them to make an escape. Unlikely, but he wouldn't put anything beyond Fortier.

So Carlos waited in his hole on the hill.

He'd decided halfway to Paris that the bunker there made no sense. Fortier and Svensson would hole up in Marseilles, where no matter what the outcome of the next few days, they would be safe. With this new plan of theirs to betray so many who'd surrendered their weapons, Paris was full of too many enemies.

Carlos had confirmed that two vehicles had recently driven over the soft ground that led to the hidden bunker below. It could be no one but Fortier and Svensson—no one else knew of its existence. The only reason he knew was because he always knew more than they meant for him to know.

It all made sense in the most apocalyptic way. They had unleashed their weapon and would hunker down until it had done its work before emerging to a new world.

But they hadn't factored in Thomas. Or his dreams.

Carlos reached into his pocket and pulled out another pill. He'd slept once since setting up his post, but it had been early, before the news of the Thomas Strain had broken. He popped the pill in his mouth and swallowed.

He imagined that Fortier and Svensson were down in that hole arguing furiously at this very moment about what had gone wrong. They . . .

The earth on the hill below suddenly moved. Carlos froze. So soon?

Slowly, like a giant whale opening its mouth, the hill opened up. He snatched the antitank missile and sat upright. So they had decided to leave France while the world was still distracted by the crisis. There had been a few massive manhunts before, but none like the one that would surely follow this debacle.

Carlos armed the missile, hefted it onto his shoulder, and aimed it at the entrance. His hands were shaking from the combination of exhaustion and shattered nerves.

The garage door stopped. Open. Then nothing.

He willed the car to emerge. It would be the white Mercedes with armored plating. They would split up later, but they wouldn't risk two cars at this point if only one was armored, which Carlos knew to be the case.

Come on, come on. Come out.

He could practically taste the cordite on his tongue from the anticipated explosion. The missile would tear the car to a thousand pieces.

The nose of the white Mercedes suddenly poked out of the garage.

Steady . . .

Then the body.

Carlos waited until the garage door began to close. One car. Windows tinted so he couldn't tell if they were both inside.

He suddenly couldn't wait another moment. He triggered the missile. A loud
whoosh.
Pressure on his shoulder. Then a streak of exhaust and a waft of hot air on his face.

He willed the missile all the way into the Mercedes. It struck the right front passenger window. For a split second, Carlos saw the legs in the passenger's seat.

That made two occupants.

The detonation shattered the morning air. A ball of fire split the car at its seams. Blew the roof off. Smoke boiled out.

Then it was just roaring fire.

Carlos grabbed his binoculars, adjusted the focus, and studied the flames. He'd seen enough in his time to conclude now that he had just killed two men.

One of them was Armand Fortier. The other was Valborg Svensson.

He lowered the glasses. Unlike Thomas, these two would not be coming back to life.

Kara watched the casket sink below the green turf at Arlington National Cemetery. They were giving Thomas a full military burial with all the honors, and hundreds of people she'd never met were being moved to tears by the event, but to her the whole funeral felt oddly insignificant.

Her brother was alive.

Not here, nor in a way any of these people could possibly understand the way she did. But he was more alive than any of these who wept.

The president stood on her right. Monique on her left. Five days had passed since Thomas's death. They'd wanted to march his casket down Constitution Boulevard while the world watched, but Kara had convinced the president that if Thomas had a say in the matter, he would protest. They'd settled on this more subdued but still nationally broadcast affair.

The seven guns had gone off and three fighters had roared overhead, and Kara had watched it all with mild interest. Her mind was still on Thomas's blood. The blood that Monique still had in storage.

She couldn't get it out of her mind.

Beyond the skin of this world waited another world, as real, perhaps more real. There Thomas was alive and by now surely married to Chelise. He'd died while in the lake, and somehow it had given him life. There was no doubt in her mind that Justin had orchestrated everything.

Justin had allowed Thomas to fall in love with Chelise so that the Circle would know how he felt about them. Kara was sure that if she could see Justin now, he would be racing circles around his bride on a white stallion, thrilled by the beauty of his creation. By the love, however mixed it was, that they had for him.

This was his bride!

And in his eyes her dress was spotless. White.

Someone handed her a shovel. She snapped out of her thoughts. They wanted her to do the honors? She stepped forward, scooped up some dirt, and tossed it into the grave.

Then it was over. She turned her back on the burial. The gathered crowd began to step away.

“I want you to know that I've commissioned a statue for the White House lawn,” the president said. “You may think Thomas would object, but this isn't about Thomas anymore. It's about the people. They need a way to express their gratitude. This isn't going to end.”

She nodded. The Thomas Strain had smothered the virus in a way that none could have hoped for. There were deaths, but remarkably few. Under two hundred thousand at last count, and most of those the result of people trying to bypass the system. Some riots, a refrigeration truck ambushed, and the like. The Thomas Strain was just now reaching remote destinations around the world—mostly in the Third World, part of South America, China, Africa, where the Raison Strain had been the slowest to infect. The world would never be the same, but it had survived.

If Thomas had been delayed on the aircraft carrier by only three hours, the death toll would have been significantly higher.

The president put his arm on her shoulder. “You okay?”

“Yes.” She smiled. “Thank you, sir.”

“If there's anything I can do, you let me know.”

“I will.”

He turned away, and Monique stepped in to replace him.

“So,” she said, sighing, “now what?”

“Now I don't know.”

“Do you think his blood still works?”

“I don't know. Six billion people now have some of his blood in them, don't they? They're not dreaming.”

“They have no reason to dream,” Monique said. “Without belief, you don't dream.”

Kara walked with Monique. “Or maybe the dreams don't work because he's dead,” she said. “'Course, I dreamed once when he was dead.”

“Maybe we should find out.”

Kara looked into her eyes. “Tempting, isn't it?”

“I've thought about it more than once.”

“I don't know. Something tells me that it's changed. I think we should leave it alone for now. It's safe, right?”

“Believe me, no one's touching it.”

“There is something else that worries me,” Kara said.

“The Book,” Monique said without hesitation.

Kara stopped. “That's right. The blank Book of History. Or should I say Books. Thomas seemed to think that they all crossed over. At this very moment there exists at least one Book, last seen in France, which has more power than any of the nuclear weapons Thomas sank.”