Page 35 of Smoky Lake

“We’ll do it,” she said, speaking for both of them.

One of the other CDC doctors, a young curly-haired man who’d been waiting patiently next to Sergeant Thomson, stepped forward with a blood test kit.

“We can take it from here,” Dr. Christianson told the colonel. “No need for an audience for this part.”

With a nod, he rose to his feet and cleared the room with little more than a glance. Everyone seemed to relax after that, even the young doctor taking their blood. In fact, he relaxed so much that he must have forgotten she was a doctor who knew all about blood samples.

Instead of watching the sterile tip of the needle ease into her vein, she scanned the rest of the kit and his clipboard for any information she could spot. And there it was. A few other labels were pasted onto a collection log. She scanned the names from her upside down angle and committed them to memory. Marshall. Cross. Jacobson. Tuft.

One name was missing. Canseco.

Why were they having so much trouble tracking him down? Was Victor running away from the CDC? Or was he…she sucked in a breath, thinking again of the pilot. Was Victor Canseco dead too?

16

After their blood was taken, Dr. Christianson gave them a hotel voucher and told them they’d get a call as soon as the results were available. “Our temporary lab is at the base in Fairbanks,” she explained. “But we should have the results for you by tonight.”

Gil didn’t know why he distrusted her, but he did. Maybe it was because he didn’t like being airlifted out of the wilderness with no explanation.

Still, he accepted the voucher for the Wagon Wheel Inn, which was only a few blocks away. After checking in with Ani, he declined the offer of a ride. If he was going to be locked in a damn hotel room, he wanted to stretch his legs first.

They had no choice in whether or not a guard followed them to the Wagon Wheel Inn.

“Someone will be posted outside your room as well. Until we have the perpetrators who fired that missile in custody, you could both be in danger,” she explained.

“You must have done a rundown on me. You know I’ve worked all over the world doing diplomatic security. I can handle a little town in Alaska.”

“But you don’t have your service weapon with you, do you?”

Good point. He didn’t have any weapon with him except his training, his common sense, and his experience.

If it was just him, that would be enough. But he wasn’t going to take a chance with Ani’s safety.

“One more question,” he asked the doctor as he was rolling down his sleeve. “How contagious is this virus? I assume it’s not airborne since none of you are wearing masks.”

“We’re still learning about it, but we’ve ruled out airborne transmission.”

He was no scientist, but why were they so worried about a virus that wasn’t airborne? He reminded himself to ask Ani about that detail.

After all their intense experiences, from the forest to the airport, the town of Blackbear looked reassuringly ordinary. Suddenly they were surrounded by civilization in the form of wide paved roads, cars and semi-trucks, discount mattress stores and McDonald’s. Blackbear mostly served as a stopover point for truckers coming from Canada, although it was also home to a hospital—the biggest in this region.

He wondered if they’d seen any zombie virus cases so far. Correction, omegavirus. No need to add on an extra layer of fear to this whole situation.

Blinking in the morning daylight, he pointed to a squat building with a sign in the shape of a wagon wheel. “There’s the inn. Are you still okay walking that far?” he asked Ani.

“It’s only about a half mile. And I bet they have coffee. That’s all the motivation I need.” She ran her hands through her thick hair, finding snags and snarls. “A shower would be nice too. Do you think they have room service?”

“If they want us to stay in our room until they give us test results, they’d better have room service. That one can of creamed corn last night didn’t do much.”

“At least it didn’t give us botulism. I call that a win.”

As they walked down the road toward the Wagon Wheel, he glanced down at her. An explosion, an escape, a sleepless night, a surprise airlift, an interrogation…and yet she still held her head high, undaunted. “You’re tougher than you look, aren’t you?”

“Don’t I look tough?”

“You look…radiant.” Ugh, what a stupid word to use. It had nothing to do with her toughness, and yet it had slipped out. “Especially considering everything we’ve been through.”

He must have caught her by surprise, because she stumbled on a crack in the pavement, and he caught her arm. “We should call an Uber.”

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