rationalize this as being the reason they’d been drawn here. But at the core of her finely tuned instincts she knew it could not be as simple as that.
She thought about the circle with a cross through the centre – the symbol of disease and destruction. It was positioned between the upward arrow of the mountain and the downward one of here. When she had first studied it she had assumed and hoped it referred to the Citadel. But now she felt the meaning was ambiguous. Its position suggested that whatever disease the symbol represented might either link the two places or separate them in some way.
She leaned against the fence post, grateful for its sturdy support, and felt the weight of everything closing down on her. The blinding light and heat were making her faint and light-headed and she felt a lurch in her stomach like she’d eaten something bad. She shivered, genuinely cold despite the enveloping heat and the sweat still running off her. Her heart thrummed in her chest making her vision throb. Maybe she needed to get out of the sun for a bit, have one of Kyle’s re-hydration cocktails, and lie down and rest for a while.
She started to walk back towards the compound, focusing on the nearest building. If she could just get out of the sun she would be fine. She concentrated on her breathing, in through the nose and out through the mouth, placing one foot in front of the other to close the distance to the nearest door. She had made it about half way when the earth started to shift beneath her feet. She fixed her eyes on the dark rectangle of the door but it seemed to be getting further away.
She was stumbling now, the ground moving in waves beneath her feet, something close to panic rising inside her. Everything was mixing together, the heat, her exhaustion, the half-glimpsed truths and fragments of ancient warnings that led her to the edge of knowing what was to come without ever revealing what it was. And then there was Gabriel, always Gabriel – gone with hardly a word save for the note she carried with her like a spell.
… Nothing is easy, but leaving you is the
hardest thing I have ever done …
… keep yourself safe – until I find you again …
But when would he return so she could finally rest? Clinging to the memory of him like this, was a form of grief.
At last her hand touched the metal skin of the door and the burning heat of it shocked her back to her senses. She caught a whiff of something acrid, citrus, while her head thumped, the blood continued to drain and her mind pulsed through the percussive beat of repeated thoughts:
Gabriel
The Citadel
The symbol for Contagion
The arrival of the doctors
The door gave and she almost fell to the floor as it opened. A wave of warm air billowed out, the air-conditioning not yet turned on because everyone was working outside and fuel was too valuable to waste. It carried the same smell of lemons with it, thick and sweet, making her feel nauseous again. She leaned against the wall, sliding forward and along it, using it for support as the ground beneath her continued to shift and roll. She just needed to find a bed and lie down for a while until the world stopped spinning.
Another door opened at the end of the corridor and Eric appeared, leading the doctors on a tour through the building. They looked up at her and she saw concern cloud their faces. Then her knees gave way and she crumpled to the ground. She was unconscious before she hit the floor.
85
Shepherd finally got away from the crime scene shortly after midnight. He headed north along the same road the killers had escaped on and then east towards Charlotte. When he started the drive he was convinced that he was heading to the nearest field office to report in and await new orders, but at the back of his mind he knew there was something else in Charlotte that would offer him a different choice.
Exhaustion hit him hard after a couple of hours. Conditions had been pretty bad most of the way, snow and ice and dark unfamiliar roads. Once he’d dropped down from the higher ground the weather improved, or at least became good enough that he wasn’t scared of getting snowed in, he pulled into a rest stop and closed his