they managed to flee, there was no escape. Wherever they went, they would bring the disease, and they would give it to the people they cared most about—children, spouses, teachers, friends, coworkers. A kiss, a cough, a casual handshake, could kill. Some would survive the ordeal. Others, for reasons scientists still could not fathom, would be immune, untouched. But most of those who were infected would have another destiny.
“It is a conspiracy to murder Islam!” The young man’s voice echoed into the hills. “And those who keep us here are the servants of our enemies. They are killing our brothers and sisters! I say to them, hell awaits you!”
Even at this distance, the men watching on the hilltop could hear a rumbling, like the approach of a great storm, as the pilgrims gathered their nerve and gave voice to their resolve.
“We must stop them,” Majid said to the colonel. “Tell the commanders: no one gets through. Fire quickly to stop the surge. Kill the leaders first.”
The colonel rushed into the communications tent.
Henry wondered what the soldiers below, with their weapons ready, were thinking. Would they see the throng as fellow Muslims, besieged, defenseless, unjustly held, so many of them friends or family members longing for the safety of home? Or would they see death in their faces, the death that might await so many more if the afflicted managed to escape into the world?
“Arise, oh Muslims!” the young man cried.
A huge cheer went up, and a moment later tens of thousands of pilgrims gathered at the perimeter, chanting, “God is great!” Soon there were hundreds of thousands. The chant turned into a roar as the vast mob lurched toward the fences. The faster ones reached first and began to climb, but then automatic weapons rang out, and bodies fell. Like a single organism the crowd slowed, but it didn’t stop. Pressure from the rear pushed the entire mass forward, over the bodies of the dead leaders, as the guns continued to fire, but fewer of them now. The force of the crowd crushed those in front into the barriers, and then the fences themselves toppled, and the liberated pilgrims raced into the desert, past the soldiers, who no longer fired.
18
The Birds
Jill heard the news as she was getting ready for bed. An international quarantine was imposed on Saudi Arabia. The airlines ceased service and borders were closed. Oil tankers turned around and abandoned the Saudi ports. Millions of pilgrims were stuck in the country.
Henry was stranded.
“It’s a necessary precaution,” he told her when he finally called.
“But Henry, you’re needed here! Not just us, the country needs you! I’m getting calls from Catherine and Marco asking me to do something to get you home. So it’s not just some desperate wife saying this. Your colleagues need you! I need you! Your children need you!”
“Jill, I want to come home, I really do! I’ve already spoken to someone in our embassy here. I thought they must have diplomatic flights or at least military ones.”
“And?”
“They don’t. It’s a total shutdown. It’s that whole thing about the Muslim flu. It’s just an excuse to keep them out of the country, but it also may help slow the progress of the disease.”
“Henry, you don’t actually approve of this, do you?”
“Let’s say they’re doing the right thing for the wrong reason. We don’t have many tools to fight this thing. Every time we try to bottle it up in a quarantine, the disease finds a way out. But we have bought some time, and maybe we can buy some more. But, of course, that doesn’t get me home.”
All Jill could think about was that Henry was imprisoned in a country with the most devastating disease of their lifetimes.
* * *
—
MARCO’S FACE APPEARED on the screen. At first, Henry thought he might be ill. The fluorescent light underscored the exhaustion that was written in Marco’s bleary eyes and on his haggard features. “Are you okay?” Henry asked, trying to mask his concern.
“I’m fabulous,” Marco said, breaking into a grin. The old Marco. “By the way, I dug up that study you mentioned,” he said. “I don’t know how you keep all these things in your head.”
The paper, from the Annals of Internal Medicine in 2006, was a meta-analysis of a novel treatment for the 1918 influenza. The authors examined eight studies conducted during the pandemic when no effective treatment had been found—just as now. In desperation, some doctors at the time resorted to the idea of transfusion,