“A few days?” Renee said, frowning.
He looked over at her, an eyebrow raised. After a moment, he started to smile, and then he began to laugh.
It was only a few more seconds before she was laughing, too.
“We’ll be seeing you soon, Isabella Island. Take care, and stay safe. UN 132, out.”
“You, too. Isabella Island, out.”
The man operating the radio on the aircraft that was neither associated with the now nonexistent United Nations nor on a mission to help save survivors clicked the tab on his computer screen that ended the recording of the conversation. He attached the voice file to an e-mail, typed in the exact coordinates of the island, and sent the message.
Those on Isabella Island represented the largest single, unexposed group his team had come across so far. It would be interesting to learn what the higher-ups back at Project Eden headquarters decided to do — send actual vaccine or dose them with Sage Flu. But chances were the man and his colleagues would be busy elsewhere by then, having forgotten all about the island.
He activated the plane’s internal comm system. “Back to our previous course,” he told the pilot.
“Yes, sir.”
The plane banked to the west, and within no time Isabella Island was behind them.
3
While some of the streetlights in Mumbai had stopped coming on at night, many still worked, providing Sanjay more than enough illumination to see Kusum peering down at him from the rooftop above.
She put a finger to her lip, reminding him to stay quiet. It was completely unnecessary. He knew the importance of silence as much as she did. She then extended her hands over the edge, showing five fingers on one and four on the other.
Nine men. That was a lot. Probably best if they made a wide arc around the building instead of passing so close to it. He started to mime the suggestion to her, but she quickly waved him off, and motioned for him to come up and join her.
He didn’t want to waste the time it would take, but she had ducked out of sight before he could tell her no. With a sigh, he ducked inside and headed quietly up the stairs.
When the UN message had played over the radio, in the old headmaster’s house at the boarding school that Sanjay, Kusum, and the others had turned into their temporary home, the initial shock everyone felt soon turned into excitement that there might still be order in the world. They had waited three days before the broadcast began including the location for the nearest survival station to them.
The delay hadn’t worried them. Unlike pretty much everyone else who was still clinging to life, their particular band of survivors had already been inoculated against the Sage Flu, thanks to the vaccine Sanjay had stolen.
When the survival station’s address was finally revealed, the fact that it was located in Mumbai made sense. What didn’t — to Sanjay, anyway — was that the address was the very same one belonging to the facility he’d stolen the vaccine from, the facility run by his former employers, Pishon Chem. They were the ones who had hired hundreds of local boys and men to spray Mumbai with what they had claimed was a malaria eradication solution but was really Sage Flu virus.
When Sanjay explained to the others the connection, the elation they’d all been feeling quickly dissolved.
“But does this mean the UN is spreading the disease?” Kusum’s father had asked. “I cannot believe that.”
None of them could.
“Maybe they are not the UN at all,” Sanjay suggested. “Maybe they are just using the name to gain people’s trust.”
“If that is the case, then…” Kusum’s mother didn’t need to finish her thought.
If these were the same people who’d released the virus, then they could be luring in those who had escaped infection so they could finish the job they had started.
Some at the school thought they should keep their heads low and everything would blow over, while others — Sanjay and Kusum among them — thought if it were true, they needed to do what they could to warn the living.
The first step was finding out for sure.
Because Sanjay knew the Pishon Chem facility from when he had worked there, it was his job to find out what was going on. Kusum was not about to let him go alone, however. She and three others had accompanied him into the city, where they had set up camp in a small furniture factory a few kilometers from the survival station. Leaving the other three there, he and Kusum headed in for a closer look.
When Sanjay reached the top of the stairs, he carefully opened the roof door and slipped outside. Kusum was lying at the western edge. As he neared her, he lowered himself to his hands and knees and crawled forward, finally dropping to his chest and snaking his way up beside her.
“What is it?” he whispered.
“Look,” she said. “But be careful.”
He eased forward until he could see beyond the lip of the roof. Below and to the left, in the middle of the road that ran past their building, two police cars were parked front bumper to front bumper, perpendicular to what would have been the normal flow of traffic. There was just enough of a gap between the two front ends for one person to pass through.
He knew this couldn’t have been what caught Kusum attention. They had seen the vehicles from the road. That was the reason Kusum had come up for a look in the first place.
He scanned the area around the cars. Standing nearby were three people wearing surgical masks — the same three they had seen when they’d spotted the vehicles — each with rifles slung over their shoulders.
“Behind the police cars,” Kusum whispered impatiently.
Sanjay looked farther down the road. Parked almost a block away were three white vans. Painted in black on their sides were the letters UN. If there was no deception going on, the vans were probably used to transport new arrivals from the checkpoint to the survival station.
He pulled back until he was hidden from view again. “I do not understand what it is you want me to see.”
“The men by the vans,” Kusum said as if it should be obvious.
“What men?”
She scowled, and took a look herself. When she scooted away from the edge again, she looked more confused than upset. “They were there a moment ago.”
“Who was there?”
“A whole group of soldiers. I counted at least forty.”
“Forty? Why would they need so many soldiers?” he asked.
“Why would they need any?” she countered.
He thought for a moment. “I guess they could be worried that someone might try to steal the vaccine.”
The scowl again, only a bit more playful this time. “You mean like you did?”
He shrugged. “Perhaps.”
“But the vaccine is not out here,” she argued. “It is at the survival station. Would it not be better if that was where the soldiers were?”
“Maybe they have more there, too,” he said, playing devil’s advocate.
“Then I ask you the same question you asked me. Why do they need so many?”
They fell into silence, both thinking the same thing — this wasn’t what the radio broadcast was saying it was.
“We are wasting time here,” Sanjay finally said. “Come on.”
They worked their way out of the building and back onto the street. They knew they had to be extra careful now. The soldiers Kusum had seen could be anywhere.