Page 119 of Viral Justice

He looked different than the photos she’d seen. Then, he’d been an average-looking man in his late thirties, someone she wouldn’t look twice at if she’d met him on the street. Now, he sported a puckered scar along the left side of his face that went from his ear up into his hairline. He wore a hat, but she couldn’t see any evidence of hair on his head at all.

He stared at her like a reptile does when sizing up its prey.

A shiver went through her and she held herself very, very still.

“Sergeant Stone, daughter of General Stone,” he said to her in barely accented English. “When I heard they sent a woman to protect Colonel Maximillian I was skeptical, yet here you are.” He looked around the village. “And gathering the, as yet, uninfected.”

He asked no question, so she remained silent.

“My men tell me you’re responsible for the deaths of some of our fighters.” He didn’t sound or look angry.

Fear rolled over her in an icy wave that made the world spin and threatened to suck her under.

She forced herself to breathe through a throat constricted until it felt no larger than a straw.

Despite his accusation that she’d killed his men, he didn’t seem to care. His face remained impassive, cold and unmoved by any emotion. He didn’t give two shits that she’d killed people,hispeople.

From the shuffling of feet and hands tightening on their rifles, it seemed like his men cared. She couldn’t predict what Akbar would do next. Kill her? Disarm her and give her to his men? Use her as a hostage to get Max under his control?

Wait, Max was the important person in Akbar’s eyes. Perhaps the only person he saw as a potential threat to his plan to wipe out the world with a lethal plague. Her value as a hostage might be the only thing that kept her alive.

Movement and cries of fear from behind her grabbed Ali’s attention.

Armed men shoved forward Fatima and most of the people the two of them had sent to the old hospital.

Fatima stumbled and fell, and when Ali would have offered her hand to help the other woman up, a gunman pointed his weapon at her and shouted at her to stop and get back in Arabic.

Fatima got to her feet and spat at Akbar, calling him a murderer of children. She was too far away to hit him with it, but that didn’t seem to matter.

Akbar finally did something other than stand there and stare.

He strode over to Fatima and punched her in the face, knocking her to the ground. Then he did it again, and again, and again.

Numb disbelief held Ali immobile for two entire seconds before the heat of anger and a desire to protect got her moving. She didn’t get far. Two goons with guns got in the way and ordered her to stay back. The people she and Fatima had gathered cried out in shock and horror as Akbar continued to beat the woman until she stopped making sounds and her body flopped unresponsive on the ground.

When Akbar stepped back he was covered in blood spatter, his right fist and arm coated in gleaming red.

One look at Fatima told Ali that she was dead, her skull cracked and eyes open and sightless.

The other people held at gunpoint cried, or made sounds of horror and fear. When Akbar looked at them, all sound stopped.

Because he had no expression on his face. None. No disgust or victory or satisfaction. It was as if he’d stepped on an ant and was continuing on.

“Put these people in front,” Akbar said, gesturing at the local survivors. He looked at Ali and smiled. “She will walk with me.”

She didn’t resist when one man pushed her to a spot next to Akbar as they started walking toward the old hospital.

When they were about twenty feet from the front entrance to the hospital, one of the other men with Akbar yelled out for Max to come and negotiate or he would kill all the hostages.

All was silent until Max shouted at them from inside the building. “What do you want?”

“Your surrender,” Akbar yelled, bringing Ali along with one hand wrapped vicelike around her right biceps, until they stood where Max could see her. Akbar hid mostly behind her, denying a clear shot to anyone inside the building who might have a sniper rifle handy.

For a moment, Max said nothing, then he shouted, “Are you behind this flu outbreak?”

“I’m the wrath of God. I made it lethal. I made it a weapon to kill my enemies in large numbers. That’s how I sign my work, through the number of bodies it leaves behind.”

“Killing people isn’t an art project, it’s murder,” Max shouted back. “The scale you seem to be seeking is called extermination.”

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