All Fall Down

‘Yes, well, when there are only three passengers on

a plane, and two of them suddenly vanish, I think it’s a fairly safe bet as to what they’re up to,’ Kate said, digging her fingernails into his back. ‘We’d better get back to our seats …’

Paul groaned. ‘Not yet.’ He slid out of her. ‘Turn round.’ She did what he asked, bending over the sink, biting her lip as he pushed deep inside her. She could see his face in the mirror, his eyes screwed up tight, and she thought how beautiful he was, and how beautiful his cock felt, and then she closed her own eyes and threw back her head, spiralling with him into an ecstasy made all the more intense by the uncertainty of what lay ahead.

By the time the plane landed, Kate was exhausted. But despite the doubts and the fears, her curiosity was burning, adrenaline still fizzing from the amazing sex. Fortunately Harley seemed to have remained asleep throughout. Kate squeezed Paul’s hand. We’ve still got it, she thought. That chemistry.

As they walked down the plane steps, Kate saw that they had landed in a small airfield, half a dozen hangars dotted around a single runway. Beyond the airfield there was little to see – no signs of civilisation, just an arid ochre landscape populated with spiky trees and tumbleweed. In the near distance, rocky hills blocked the horizon. The sky was sheer blue, the sun a white ball of fire that hurt her eyes, even at six thirty in the evening. The heat swept over her and she had a moment of dizziness. Paul grabbed her arm

as she swayed on the steps.

‘Steady,’ he said tenderly. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes, just about.’ She turned to Harley as her feet touched solid ground. ‘What is this place?’

Harley had taken off his jacket and sweat had already begun to darken his shirt beneath his armpits. ‘Lone Pine Airport,’ he replied. ‘We’re in north-east California, about a hundred miles from the state border.’

‘The border with Nevada?’ Paul asked.

‘Yes. We’re between Death Valley to the east, and the Sequoia National Park to the west. That’s where the research lab is based.’

‘In a national park? But I thought we were heading to LA.’ Kate noticed a pair of black BMWs parked outside the closest hangar, three men standing beside them, one black, two white. They were wearing dark suits and inscrutable expressions.

Harley spotted them at the same moment and raised a hand in greeting. The men opened the doors of the two cars, got in and started to drive slowly towards them through the heat haze.

‘FBI?’ Paul asked.

Harley nodded, then cleared his throat. ‘There have been some developments.’

‘What do you mean?’ Paul exchanged a worried look with Kate.

Harley didn’t reply.

The two cars drew up beside them and the black agent got out, walked round the car and opened the back door. He had broad shoulders and a shaved head, and was carrying a little too much weight around the middle.

‘Dr Maddox? Your carriage.’ He gestured for Kate to get into the car. She ducked inside, glad to get out of the heat.

Paul made a move to follow her but the agent stepped into his path. ‘Uh-uh. Not you. You’re not coming. Just Dr Maddox.’

‘What the hell?’

Harley said, ‘Sorry, Paul – like I told you, there have been developments.’

Paul tried to push past the agent, who blocked his way, placing his hands on Paul’s chest. At the same time, Kate got back out of the car. ‘Hey, what’s going on?’

‘Get back in the car please, Dr Maddox,’ the agent said. The other FBI agents had emerged from their car and were standing watching.

‘Harley, can you please tell us what’s going on?’

‘OK, OK … Listen, there’s no need for all this aggression. What’s your name?’

The agent who had blocked Paul’s way looked at Harley like he’d just broken wind. But he replied, ‘McCarthy.’

‘Good. Agent McCarthy. We’re all on the same side, right? Let me talk to Dr Maddox and Mr Wilson for a couple of minutes, explain the situation, and then we can be on our way. OK?’

McCarthy folded his arms and made them wait for his reply. ‘OK. You got five minutes.’

‘I need ten. Come on, Kate, Paul, let’s get back into the plane.’

‘So what the fuck is going on?’ Paul asked.

Harley had the demeanour of a middle manager who has been told to make half his team redundant. He rubbed his eyes, then reached under his seat and produced a newspaper. He handed it to Kate, who gasped at the

headline then scanned the text. ‘Fifty-nine dead already? The containment at the reservation failed?’

Harley avoided her eye.

She opened the paper. The headline across the inside spread read: KILLER FLU SWEEPS THROUGH LOS ANGELES. The first four pages were dominated by the story, accompanied by snapshots of a few of the victims:

a young mother in her twenties, an elderly black man, a muscular guy in an Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt and, worst of all, a seven-year-old boy.

Kate gazed with horror at the picture of the boy. It was the kind of school photograph kids across the world pose for once a year, the school sending home glossy prints to the parents. Kate had almost identical portraits of Jack in her suitcase. The caption read: Tommy Walker, 7 – the youngest victim of Indian Flu.

Paul read aloud over her shoulder: ‘A doctor at Los Angeles County Hospital, who did not want to be named, told us that none of the antiviral drugs that are normally effective have worked in combating what he believes is a new, deadly strain of flu. “This is far worse than swine flu or any of the other epidemics that have broken out in recent years. We are at a loss how to treat it and are desperately seeking advice from the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control.”’

Paul read on. ‘The number of people suffering from the disease is currently unknown, as few people report to hospital with flu, especially in poorer communities where people have no health insurance …’ Paul skimmed to the final paragraph. ‘If you develop flu symptoms, the advice is to stay at home, drink plenty of fluid, do not travel. Family members you have come into contact with should call the number below but should also stay at home, away from other people, even if they currently feel well, blah blah blah … Oh shit.’

Kate couldn’t tear her eyes away from the picture

of seven-year-old Tommy Walker. It hit her like the wave of heat that had almost floored her on the steps of the plane. She tried to imagine how Tommy’s mother must feel, if she was still alive. Suddenly, even more so than when she had learned of the bombing and Isaac’s death, this whole thing, the outbreak of this new strain of Watoto, all felt very real.

‘As I told you in London,’ Harley said, ‘the authorities here decided not to go public about the outbreak. They didn’t want a repeat of the fallout that followed the swine flu pandemic, when the WHO were accused of exaggerating the dangers so the sale of vaccines would soar, boosting profits for the drug companies. The allegations were rubbish, but it’s made some of the decision-makers cautious, if not paranoid. So they decided to keep it under wraps until they knew exactly what they were dealing with. They put together this team in secret, hoping some progress would be made before the situation escalated.’

‘But you can’t keep things like this quiet these days!’ said Paul. ‘Let me guess – it leaked online.’

‘That’s right. First of all, Twitter. A lot of people in LA tweeting about how sick they felt. Then a couple of days later, those people stop tweeting, and the friends and families start to leave messages mourning the deaths of their loved ones, apparently from the flu. And then a doctor at a hospital in LA ripped the whole thing open with a blog post about how this super-flu had started filling up the hospital, how he’d never seen anything like it – not realising it’s actually Watoto because no doctor in LA would ever have encountered Watoto. Of course that blog got picked up by people on Twitter and Facebook and it hit the national press. I only found out about it at the airport when you were saying goodbye to Jack. Fortunately, the message we received after the terrorist attack on the hotel has not been leaked.’

‘Isn’t the CDC supposed to be in charge in these situations?’ Kate looked up from the paper. Her entire body felt cold.

Harley nodded. ‘In the normal course of events, yes. But in this instance … well, I haven’t been entirely … forthcoming with you about how this is all set up.’

‘Why doesn’t that shock me?’ Paul said.

‘All right, all right.’ Harley glanced nervously out of the plane window. The three FBI agents were standing motionlessly by their cars. ‘Look, I shouldn’t really be telling you this, but we’re in a need-to-know situation here. Under normal circumstances, the Centers for Disease Control would take the lead in the event of an epidemic or pandemic within the United States, while the WHO would have global responsibility. But in cases where terrorism is—’

‘Terrorism? So you suspected terrorist involvement before the bombing?’ said Paul.

Irritated by Paul’s continued antagonism towards Harley, Kate flapped a hand at him to be quiet so they could hear what the MI6 man had to say.