The Last Twilight (4 page)

Amiri refused to take a weapon. Max did not push. He slipped the gun into the back of his pants, under his T-shirt. Amiri folded Rikki Kinn’s photograph, and placed it in his pocket. He caught Eddie watching him, but the young man gave him a faint smile, and that made Amiri feel less a fool.

Their return to the airport was quick. Duna took a different road around the terminal, heading directly to the airfield. They were stopped at the entrance by a UN guard, but their names were on a list. Duna drove through and parked three hundred feet from a cargo plane being loaded with supplies stamped with the Red Cross logo.

“One more thing,” Max said to Duna, as they left the van. “Why
did
Larry call in outside help? Why not rely on the UN to protect her? They managed it yesterday.” When Duna hesitated, Max’s expression darkened and he said, “Never mind. Wait for me, okay? I’ll be back in a minute.”

The three men from Dirk & Steele walked to the airplane. Eddie watched his feet. Amiri gazed up at the sky, patient.

“You two would be good in a monastery,” Max muttered. “Vows of silence, and all that.”

Eddie smiled. “And?”

“And it’s a fucking mess. Duna doesn’t know shit. Nothing we can use. Coleman left him hanging dry for our arrival. Regardless of the guns.”

“The timing is peculiar,” Amiri mused.

“Yeah. It also bothers me that he’s been so secretive. People go missing, you tell someone. You don’t bury it.”

Eddie jammed his hands into his pockets. “Coleman held out on Roland.”

“Roland is not easily deceived,” Amiri said.

Max grunted. “As soon as I get out of here, I’m calling him. Maybe he can pry something useful out of his old
buddy.”
He clapped Eddie on the shoulder. “Stay out of trouble, kid. Don’t burn down the rain forest.”

Eddie said nothing, just nodded, giving Max a look so solemn that Amiri wondered if there was more amiss than he realized. The young man backed off and walked away. Max sighed.

Amiri said, “Something else is wrong.”

“It’s nothing. Really.”

“Max.”

“Amiri.”

The two men stared at each other. Max’s scent shifted into something hard, bitter. He did not blink. Amiri moved in close, feeling the cheetah rumble beneath his skin—finding himself, too, in the odd position of standing on the other side of trust. He did not know what to do.

“There’s nothing
to
do.” Max dropped his chin, his gaze hidden beneath his hair. ‘“We all burn, Amiri.”

“Then we burn together.” Amiri held out his hand. “Or what is the use of having friends?”

Max said nothing, but after one long moment slapped his hand against Amiri’s and squeezed hard. Leaned close, whispering, “Like you should talk.”

Perhaps,
Amiri thought, raising an eyebrow. “But I am certainly no worse than you.”

Max blew out his breath. “Focus on the woman. Tell her anything you want, but make sure she lets you stay close. Things are going to get ugly. I can feel it.”

“And you?”

“I’ll be in touch, one way or another.” He backed away. “Take care of each other.”

Take care of yourself,
Amiri thought at him. Max nodded, turning quickly on his heel and marching back to Duna and the van. No looking back. Amiri gave him the same courtesy.

Eddie waited by the loading area. A tall young man wearing army fatigues and a blue beret stood with him. Red hair—what little Amiri could see of it—stuck to a pale sweaty face covered in freckles. Blue eyes studied his approach, with an expression entirely too trusting for the responsibility of playing soldier.

“You must be the other American specialist,” the boy in the beret said, before Amiri could introduce himself. His accent was Swedish; crisp, curling, cold. “My name is Patrick. We will be leaving soon.”

“He was just telling me what we should expect.” Eddie glanced over Amiri’s shoulder at the departing van.

“Ah, but you’re also from Africa right?” Patrick nodded, smiling. “Eddie mentioned that. You probably already know everything I could tell you.”

Amiri made a noncommittal sound, but before he could point out the obvious—that not every place on the continent was the same, and therefore he was just as lost as anyone else—Patrick pulled an envelope from the pouch at his side and handed it over.

“Funny. Someone brought this around to one of our guards not ten minutes ago. Said it was for the black security man coming from America. That’s you, I suppose.”

Amiri frowned, and took the envelope. It was flat and brown. His name had been written in neat script on the outside, along with delivery instructions. He felt odd holding it.

“Please give us a moment,” he said to Patrick, and the young man ducked his head, backing away. Amiri turned, and despite the people surrounding him, brought the envelope up to his nose to smell. His tongue flicked the paper.

Eddie stepped close. “What is it?”

“I do not know.” Amiri tasted the scent. It was nothing he could place; too many people had been in contact with the paper. But there was something…bitter…that made a shiver run up his spine.

He opened the envelope. Inside were pictures. Amiri almost dropped them, but Eddie reached out fast, pressing his hand on top of the images. He exhaled hard, eyes wide. Amiri simply stared.

The photographs were of him. Not him as a man, but him as a cheetah. No mistake about it, either. He knew what he looked like, even as an animal. He knew his eyes.

But the last picture—at the very bottom—was no simple animal. It was him, caught in the act: standing on two legs like a man, but with all the fur and features of the cat. An alien creature changing, caught in limbo. Someone who should not exist.

“I know this,” Amiri whispered, looking beyond the still shot of his shifting body to the photograph’s background: dry grass, acacia trees, a blue horizon. Kenya. He remembered the day. These were the pictures that had ruined his life.

“There’s a note,” Eddie said, hoarse. He held out a folded slip of paper. Amiri hesitated, and took it. Swallowed hard. Looked down.

Welcome home,
he read. Two words. No signature. More than enough.

Max was right. Things were going to get very ugly, indeed.

Rikki waded, thigh deep. Biohazard suit on, surgical mask and goggles firmly in place, three layers of latex gloves secure over her hands. Hot as hell. Her head swam. Sweat poured from her hairline, down her back. She needed a drink. Soda, vodka, orange juice—anything wet that was not this river, not the fluids leaking from the eyes and ears and noses of the men, women, and children sprawled and floating on the shore and in this shallow inlet, which had offered some protection from the raging dragging current just beyond.

The flashlights were not enough. Rikki said, “Oh, Jesus. Oh, Mack.”

“Shut up,” muttered her colleague, hoisting a small body into his arms. “Shut up, please.”

Rikki kept walking. Earlier, men had screamed at her to get out. Men had yanked on her arms and tried to carry her. Crocodiles had already killed twenty people in the aftermath of recent floods; the bodies here would be an easy lure, despite the crude nets anchored around the affected area.

Bodies in the water. No way to stop the contamination.

Her worst nightmare. If Ebola—assuming that was the killer—could be transmitted in semen up to twelve weeks after clinical recovery, then water would be little different. Everyone—everyone who depended on this river—was royally screwed.

Teams had already gone downriver by pirogue to check the health of local fishermen and farmers, as well as look for any dead monkeys like the ones in the forest surrounding this place. A small military force had also been called in, as well as the Red Cross and any other international organization that could keep a secret. So far, no one had turned up a thing. No sign of another outbreak.

Not yet,
she thought. The virus could still be incubating. For many, the Congo River was a means of livelihood as well as the only water source for miles. No one would be able to stay away for long. Not without the wrong questions being asked.

She turned and watched Mack hand the dead child to another aid worker. There were less than a hundred volunteers in camp, not nearly enough to handle the deceased, but all they could gather in a short time—and the only people they could trust not to get themselves killed. It took a certain kind of person to work with Ebola victims. Control freaks were the best.

“You know,” Mack said, catching her eye. “I’ve been thinking about those notes the doctors left behind. The river makes sense.”

“Yeah?” Rikki shone her light across the water, illuminating her colleague as he moved close. Doctor Mackenzie Hardson was a big man, and underneath his gear all gray—gray hair, gray eyes, gray T-shirt. Only his skin had color, but not much. He was pastier than rising bread dough, and almost as soft.

His goggles were foggy with condensation. “Think about it, Rikki. The excessive fever, raging thirst— complaints from patients that they felt like they were on fire, that their blood was boiling. The medical clinic was overrun. People would have come here as a last resort to bring down their fevers. Problem is, they were too far gone to get out.”

It did, indeed, make sense. Rikki briefly closed her eyes. “You wanna know something else, Mack?”

“Not really.”

“This is worse than Ebola,” she said, feeling cut, sick. “You know it is, Mack. The amount of hemorrhaging alone proves that. Usually only a third of victims bleed out, but I haven’t seen a single body in this vicinity that isn’t soaked in blood. And those symptoms the doctor noted? No mention of vomiting or diarrhea. Not once.”

“Rikki—”

“I’m telling you, Mack. The virus has evolved… or this is something entirely new.”

“Rikki—”

“No survivors,” she added, ignoring him. “Not one, not in over
one thousand
people. The camp doctors called you in at the first sign, and by the time you got here everyone was dead. That is unprecedented, Mack. Ebola is deadly, but someone always survives.
Always.”

And it did not kill so quickly. According to the notes Mack and his team had discovered upon his arrival— including messages to the living that Rikki found heartbreaking—death had occurred less than six hours after the first sign of symptoms. Usual containment methods had proven useless.

No one in the camp had stood a chance. A massacre at the end of a machine gun would have been kinder. Something Rikki knew all about.

Mack still stared at her. She said, “What?”

“What, nothing,” he replied darkly. “Except that I think you made me pee pee myself.” Rikki sighed. Mack shook his head. “It’s almost time for us to check our temperatures. You feeling anything weird? Hot? Tired?”

She gave him the finger. “You?”

“Shit. I could collapse at any moment.”

She would have laughed, but that would have involved vomiting up her spleen or sobbing out her guts. She had never worked an outbreak of this magnitude—never imagined, in her worst nightmares, that she would have to. And it was worse, so much worse, with no one left to save.

No one but themselves.

Without waiting to see if Mack followed, she began slogging through the water toward shore. Floodlights had been set up, the brush hacked back. Rumbling generators drowned voices, the nightly jungle chorus. Everyone wore biohazard suits, even the peacekeepers, some of whom had put away their weapons to help load bodies into bags. Rikki only hoped someone had told those men that touching a body dead from Ebola was as dangerous as handling a live grenade.

There but for the grace of God,
thought Rikki, struggling to contain her terror: a hard hot stab of liquid heat that traveled straight down to her knees and made her wobble. She had to stop for a minute—pretended to survey the water—and remembered that she was wearing a mask. A real mask, goggles and all. She did not have to be strong. She could be scared. She could show it on her face and no one would be the wiser.

The idea brought Rikki no relief whatsoever. She had no time for fear. Not now, not here. She had things to do. Maybe later, when this was over. Maybe, or not ever.

You can’t go on like this forever. Your heart can’t take it.

Yeah, whatever. And whiners burned in hell. According to her old coach, anyway. Besides, it didn’t matter what her heart felt. She’d gotten by for years on true grit alone; hard, stubborn strength of will. No other alternative, nothing left back home. And here at least, she could make a difference.

Even if she wondered, sometimes, what it would be like to have another life. Something softer. Not so lonely. Not so alone.

The water swirled black and restless around her legs. Rikki took a step, then another, ignoring the burn in her eyes. Swallowing it down past the knot in her throat, she forced herself to look up. Head held high.

Two men on shore caught her attention. Again, she stopped walking. They were staring. Measuring. The men were swathed in protective gear, backlit by floodlights, but she noticed them because they were not working, because they were staring. At her. Goggles and masks might hide faces, but she still felt the weight of their gazes. That old survival instinct.

Years ago she would have shrugged it off. Even two days ago, she might have. Told herself they were aid workers, doctors, scientists. Mack and his team might be handling logistics, but Rikki was the virus hunter, the CDC’s own little wild child, and for some reason that always made her a sideshow at these things.

But these men were different. They did not belong. It was their posture, their stillness. Like hunters, fighters. A more intense quality than the soldiers scattered throughout the camp. Rikki remembered the airfield, the gunfire. Bakker, taking a bullet to the chest. She slowed, wary, watching those men and their hands. One of them was taller than the other. Her skin prickled when she looked into his hidden face. Her heart hurt, too. Sharp, hard, like her ribs were made of knives. It was a lost, awful, feeling, made worse because Rikki could not look away, not even to blink. She felt as though she were seeing someone for the first time in ages; someone lost from memory, a dream. It made her breathless.

Rikki forced herself to move. Careful, wary. Sidling toward the peacekeepers. She had one foot on dry land, heart pounding, when the first scream cut the night. High, piercing, horrified. Every hair rose on her body like her skin was made of electricity. Water thrashed, something large pounding the surface like a torn drum.

Oh, damn.

Rikki had no time to turn. The tall man, that hidden masked man, began running toward her.

He was fast. So fast she couldn’t even defend herself as he dropped, skidding, and grabbed her around the waist. Rikki cried out as he rolled them back into the shallow water—tumbled together like socks in the dryer—and she forgot how to use her voice as an immense set of jaws snapped at the air where she had been standing. Rikki saw teeth, a long, ridged snout, the shadow of a slit eye, primal and cold.

The crocodile lunged again and the man hauled back, sending them rolling. Something large and rough smacked against her leg, and this time when she went down it was face first in the river. Her surgical mask slid off. She swallowed water. Water that rolled down the inside of her suit and splashed into her eyes. A body bobbed nearby, leaking blood.

No.
she thought.
Oh, God.

Arms tightened—they were hard as rock, tense with terrible strength—and Rikki might have been a feather the way she found herself hauled out of the water; boneless, weightless. She turned her head just enough to see the man carrying her. His mask and goggles were gone. His face was dark, his cheekbones high and sharp, and his eyes…his eyes were
glowing.

The world slowed down to pinpricks of sensation and sound: the harsh breathing of the man beside her, the heat of him against her back; her heart, hammering, the taste of blood in her mouth as she bit down on her tongue. His eyes, his eyes, his glowing eyes.

Cries cut through her. And then, the crocodile—it was so close she felt the sharp exhalation of its breath as it made another pass at her leg. The man pulled her away, but she kicked at the creature anyway, fighting hard, her voice hoarse, breaking.

She was still shouting when the crocodile caught fire.

Her voice choked; her legs pinwheeled into stillness. She stared, lost in stupefied horror and disbelief as flames erupted inside the animal’s mouth, through its teeth, bursting across its head with such fury she wondered if there was accelerant on its skin. Heat roared through her biohazard suit, and her last glimpse of the creature as the man holding her turned them was of that massive scaled body writhing and submerging, again and again: drifting, twisting, almost dead. Rikki wished someone would shoot the animal in the head. End it quick.

Someone else had the same thought. A gun went off near her ear. One shot, then nothing. Silence rang dull in the fading echo; the air smelled like cooked meat. The water stopped splashing against Rikki’s thighs. Those arms around her body relaxed, just a fraction. She wanted to see, she wanted to know, but as she began to look over her shoulder those strong warm hands stopped her, sliding up her spine, into her hair. The familiarity of that contact made her breath catch—and then the hands were gone and the cold that surrounded her, the loss of that odd anchor, left her breathless.

She looked up. Stared into a pale gaze, golden and hot. Caught another flash of light in those eyes, though it lasted only seconds.

“Are you hurt?” murmured the man. Rikki shook her head, unable to speak—too rattled, too consumed. She heard her name shouted and tried again to turn. Her knees wobbled, making her stagger, but those long arms slid around her waist, holding her against a hard lean body. He was hot as hell; an invading heat, soaking through skin to bone. For one heartbeat she felt safe in that warmth, that embrace—utterly protected—and it was such a foreign startling feeling, she almost forgot what had happened. Or why feeling safe could never be possible.

Again, her name was called. She managed to turn, just enough to see Mack stumbling toward her, accompanied by members of his team. Another figure stood near, the second man on shore who had been watching her. He held a gun. She could not see his eyes behind the goggles, but he was staring at the crocodile, which was drifting, smoking, sparks and embers still clinging to its leathery hide.

Mack stopped just out of reach—teetering on his toes, hands clenched into fists. He tried to say her name but croaked, his voice breaking on every syllable.

“I’m fine,” Rikki said, but that was reflex talking and not the truth. She had just taken a bath in a soup made of death, swallowed it down into her body. Just like the man who had saved her life. His face was wet. His mask off.

Worse than Ebola. Not the same thing at all.

Rikki looked at Mack and saw it in his eyes. Horror.

“Isolation ward,” she whispered. “Two beds. Do it now, Mack. Hurry.”

But Mack said nothing,
did
nothing—staring instead like an idiot, all of his people blinking behind their goggles like owls. As though she were the crocodile, spinning and burning and dying. Rikki wanted to scream at them—she wanted to jump out of her skin and run until she died—and felt the beginnings of terrible nauseating panic swell hard from her heart to her groin.