Instinct: A Chess Team Adventure - By Jeremy Robinson Page 0,30

it. A sixth sense? Women’s intuition?

King watched as Sara turned her head from side to side, her nostrils flaring, as she walked through the field in Bishop’s wake. She was smelling the air . . . like a dog. Exactly like a dog. Three quick sniffs. Turn. Three more sniffs. She winced, held her hand to her nose in a classic “I have a headache” gesture, shook it off and kept sniffing. When he passed through the area that caused her apparent pain, something fragrant tickled his nose, but just for a moment. The subtle odor was a hint of something. Maybe a flower. But she’d reacted to it strongly.

She continued on like this for a minute, then her breaths became deeper. But the only thing King could smell was the—Wait. There was something. Hidden behind the odor of dry grass. Barely perceptible, it hid from his mind, making it impossible to identify. If he hadn’t been paying attention to Sara’s sniffing he’d have never noticed it.

He breathed deep through his nose, seeking to capture the smell like a perfumer studying a new scent. Nothing.

Sara turned to King. “You smell it, too?”

“I only noticed it because I saw you smelling the air. But it’s faint. I can’t I.D. it.”

“But it’s so strong.” A shiver ran through Sara’s body and King noticed. She was freaked out. Spooked. Something she smelled had her on edge, which meant she recognized it.

“Bishop, you smell anything?” King asked.

Bishop shook his head no.

“Pawn,” King said. “What do you smell?”

It was the question that Sara dreaded from the moment she first picked up the odor, when the breeze shifted south and brought the new scent along for the ride. She’d experienced it several times before, always associated with being called to the scene of an outbreak. The smell of the dead and the dying drifted with the air and always assaulted her nostrils long before she saw the lines of bodies. She wept for the dead then, knowing that simple and cheap inoculations would have saved countless lives, but now . . . now she had to find a cure for a totally new disease before someone decided to commit worldwide genocide. They might not intend to, but every outbreak of the new Brugada strain could mean the end of the human race. There would be no weeping for the source of the smell on this trip. There was no time.

Sara answered the question with a whisper. “People, but they’re dead.”

Sara stumbled and looked down. A mound of dirt was hidden in the grass, six feet long, two wide.

King noticed it. “A grave.”

“There’s more up here,” Bishop said. “A lot more.”

King and Sara entered a clearing cut into the grass field. Twenty unmarked graves filled the space. Dry soil covered them, powdery and untouched by rain. Short grass surrounded each grave. The graveyard was new. Twenty people had been buried there in the last week.

A breeze bristled the tall grass surrounding the graveyard, flowing from the north, from the village, and brought a fresh wave of stench. The stench wasn’t from the graveyard. And the others smelled it now, too. King grimaced and lofted his M4. “Let’s go.”

With Bishop in the lead, they reentered the grass and headed for the odor’s source.

TWELVE

Anh Dung—Vietnam

SARA GAGGED AS she exited the tall grass and entered the village proper. The odor of decaying human flesh had been filtered by grass, but here in the open, the stench overpowered the senses—hypersensitive or not. Sara covered her nose with her arm, working hard not to retch.

Bishop scrunched his nose in revolt, but said nothing and kept his weapon at the ready. King held his breath, removed his backpack, and dug inside. He removed three surgical masks and passed them out. After putting on his own, he said, “They’re not perfect, but they’ll help.”

With the smell partly blocked, they turned their attention to the village. Fifteen huts standing upon two-foot stilts lined the small dirt path that wound down the middle of the small village. They were simple, yet effective. The stilts protected from the monsoon floods. The thatch roofs, made from tightly coiled reeds, kept the rains at bay. And the wooden plank walls held each structure firmly together while providing some protection from the elements. But they weren’t designed to survive an attack. Sara could picture what the village must have looked like, but now it was in shambles.

Walls had been torn apart. Roofs had crumbled or burned. The village looked like