Red (38 page)

“You don't have the memory of it yet. We've met in the other reality. The one with the Books of Histories. There your name is Johan, and you are the brother of my wife. You're also a great general who has caused me and my Forest Guard more than our share of grief.”

Carlos apparently found neither humor nor persuasion in the claim. “The only reason you're alive is because of your witchcraft,” he said. “If you cross me again, I will kill you. I see that you're not healing so well these days.” He glanced at the bruises and cuts the handcuffs had worn into Thomas's wrists. “I think you will die easily enough. Give me a reason and I will test the theory now.”

“My gift is from witchcraft? Or because I'm a servant of El—of God? I'll admit, I haven't followed him in this reality, but I really haven't had a chance, and that's changing. Listen to yourself. You're marked for death
because
of your belief in the one you call God! You serve two demons who kill for their own gain. You think they will let you live?”

He blinked.

“What if I could prove it to you? Brother.”

“Don't be absurd.”

“But you do believe that I know things I shouldn't,” Thomas said. “That's why you waited for me in Indonesia. You knew I would show up. I say that you too believe in a reality where there's more than meets the eye.”

Thomas could see the light in his eyes. As a Muslim, such a belief would be natural to him.

CARLOS WAS tempted to shoot the man then. If Svensson and Fortier weren't so taken by Hunter's strange gift, he would defy them and kill the man here.

“Your name is Johan and we are destined to be brothers,” Thomas said.

His mind ached with this nonsensical revelation. Who'd ever heard of such nonsense?

His mother had. She was a practicing Sufi mystic.

The Prophet, Mohammed, had.

Hunter might be misinterpreting his visions, but he might very well have seen others in his dreams. Maybe even him. Carlos. The man's claims enraged him.

On the other hand, Thomas was smart enough to try something exactly like this to distract him. Handcuffed, the man hardly had a prayer of reaching him, much less escaping from him. But Carlos wouldn't underestimate him.

“I'll consider what you've said. Now if you will please—”

“Then I'll prove it,” Thomas said. “I'll cut Johan on the neck without touching you.”

The words triggered an alarm in Carlos. Heat spread down his neck.

“Do you believe I can do that? Do you believe that if I'm healed in the other reality, I will be healed in this one? Or that if I die there, I will die here? Do you remember shooting me, Carlos? Still, I'm alive. You live in the other reality with me too, and I've just had a confrontation with you at the Gathering. I cut your neck with my sword.”

“Don't be ridiculous! Stop this at once!” But Carlos's mind reared with fear. He had heard the mystics speak like this. The Christians. He'd heard some claim belief that if a man would only open his eyes he could see another world. And a small part of him did believe. Always had.

“Do you believe, Carlos? Of course you do. You always have.”

At first, Carlos mistook the sensation in his neck for the rage that filled his veins. But his neck was burning. His flesh was stinging as if it had been cut. It couldn't possibly be true, yet he knew that it was.

He lifted his left hand to his neck.

THOMAS WATCHED with surprise as the skin on Carlos's neck suddenly began to bleed, precisely as it would if he'd just taken a blade to it.

He hadn't just cut Carlos. But enough of Carlos believed his story about Johan to cause the rift in the realities. One of these two worlds might be a dream, but at the moment it didn't matter. At the moment Carlos was bleeding because Johan was still bleeding!

The man lifted his hand to his neck, felt the small wound, pulled his fingers away bloody. His eyes stared in confounded fascination.

Thomas moved then. Two steps and he left the ground. His foot struck Carlos before the man could tear his eyes free from his hand.

The man hadn't even braced for the impact. He crumbled like a chain that had been cut from the ceiling.

Thomas landed on both feet and spun around. Monique was staring, stunned by the developments. Then she was running for him.

“Quick! He has the keys in his right pocket!” Her words piled on top of each other. “I saw them; he has them in his pocket!”

Thomas squatted by the man and felt behind him for the pocket, dug the keys out, and stood. “Back up to me. Hurry!”

They freed themselves in a matter of seconds. Monique's wrists were bleeding because of the cuffs as well. She ignored the cuts. “Now what?”

“You're okay?”

“I'm free; that's better than I've been for two weeks.”

“Okay, stay close,” Thomas said.

She was staring at Carlos, who lay unconscious, bleeding from a slight wound on his neck. “What just happened?”

“Later. Hurry.”

The hallway was empty. They ran to the staircase at the end and were about to climb when Thomas changed his mind. Sunlight poured through a three-foot window directly ahead and above. The latch was unlocked.

He redirected her toward it, pulled himself up, opened the window, and swung into the window well outside. He glanced over the top, saw no guard, and turned back for Monique.

“Jump. I'll pull you up,” he whispered.

She caught his hand and he plucked her easily from the floor, wincing with the thought of the pain she must feel in her torn wrists. She struggled a bit to get her knees up on the ledge, but soon they crouched in the window well, window firmly closed behind them. Less than three minutes had passed since Carlos hit the floor.

Monique poked her head up for a look. “We're in the country,” she whispered. “A farm.”

Thomas saw several large barns and a driveway that disappeared into the forest. This building was covered by old stonework. The sun was already dipping toward the western horizon.

Carlos would wake up soon. They had to put some distance between them and this farm.

“Okay. We go straight for the forest.” Thomas studied the closest trees. “Once we run, we don't stop. Can you do that?”

“I can run.”

He glanced around one last time. Clear.

Thomas leaped from the window well, pulled Monique up, and ran for the forest, making sure she stayed close. The crunch of twigs and dried leaves welcomed them into the protective trees.

Thomas glanced back. No alarm. Not yet.

MIKE OREAR guided Theresa Sumner by the arm toward the CDC parking lot. She'd ignored his phone calls for the last twenty-four hours, presumably because she was out of town. But by the looks of the bags under her eyes, he wouldn't be surprised to learn that she'd been holed up here, working on the virus.

He'd driven out to her house last night. No luck. It was eight the next morning before he'd finally driven here.

“Mike, you've made your point. And the answer is no. You can't go public. Not yet.” She pulled her arm away.

“Twenty-four hours, Theresa. This isn't about you and me anymore. I made a promise, but I wasn't thinking clearly. You tell whoever needs to know that they have twenty-four hours to come clean, or I'm putting the story on the air.”

She reached her white SUV and pulled up, face brave but dog tired. “Then you might as well join the terrorists, because you'll hurt as many people as they will.”

“Don't be naive. Are you telling me that if I don't run the story, more people will live?”

She didn't answer. Of course not, the answer was no, because if the virus was real, they were all dead anyway. And this virus
was
as real as she'd said. Real as milk or bread or gasoline. He'd gone from incredulity to a state of constant horror over this impending sickness that was growing in his body at this very moment.

“Which means that you're not making any progress,” he said. He turned away. “Great. All the more reason to break this open.”

“Are you glad that you know?” she asked. “Has the quality of your life improved because I dragged you into this?”

The last five days had been a living hell. He looked away.

“Exactly,” she said. “You want to draw the rest of the world into the same kind of miserable knowledge? You think it'll help us deal with the problem? You think it'll bring us one minute closer to an antivirus or a vaccine? Not a chance. If anything, it slows us down. We'll be dealing with a whole new set of problems.”

“You can't just
not
tell people that they're going to die. I don't care how much you want to protect them; it's their lives we're talking about. The president is still holding firm on all this?”

She crossed her arms and sighed. “His advisers are split. But I promise you, the moment the people know, this country shuts down. What am I supposed to do if I can't get a line out to the labs in Europe? Thought about that? Why would the employees at AT&T go to work if they knew they only had thirteen days to live?”

“Because there's a chance we'll all live if they keep the lines open, that's why.”

“That would be a lie. You'd just be replacing one lie for another,” she said.

“What? Now there's
no
chance we can survive this?”

“Not that I see. We have thirteen
days
, Mike. The closer we look at this thing, the more we realize what a monster it really is.”

“I can't accept that. Someone has to be making progress somewhere. This is the twenty-first century, not the Middle Ages.”

“Well, it just so happens that DNA is no respecter of centuries. We're all just groping around in the dark.”

“You know the word will get out soon anyway. I'm surprised the rest of the press hasn't pieced this together already.”

She took a deep breath. “It's only been a week. Patterns take time to recognize unless you know what you're looking for. The military knows what to look for, but they've been told what to expect under various cover stories.”

“But for how long? This is insane!”

“Of course it's insane! The whole thing is insane!”

He put his hand on the hood of her Durango. Cold. She'd been here for a while. Maybe all night. Or longer.

“Our story about the quarantined island south of Java is starting to fall apart,” she said. “A number of people made it off the island before they shut it down. The press over there is wondering how far it's spread. So are half the labs working with us.”

“My point exactly. There's no way they can hold this in. We should have every lab in the world working around the clock on this—”

“We do have practically every lab in the world working around the clock on this!”

“We should have the whole military out, looking for these terrorists—”

“They've got every intelligence agency with anything to offer on it already. But please, these guys have the antivirus—we can't just send a tomahawk cruise missile after them.”