Page 85 of Viral Justice

She hit pay dirt in the third house. A teenage boy answered her knock and said that his parents were both dead, but he and his baby sister had both gotten better after being sick. Max probably wouldn’t take blood from a two-year-old, but the young man looked old enough.

She brought them both back to the hospital, then went and got Ferhat. He took the teen and his sister in and got them settled in the room with him and his sons.

“I can’t leave the tests right now,” Max told her. “Can you track down Nolan and ask if his other medic can give me a hand?”

“Sure.” She looked at the tired kids and the even more tired father. “Watch your back. Never forget, we’re in a foreign country.”

She left and after ten minutes of careful searching, found Nolan and a couple of his guys talking with an older man in one of the tents.

Nolan saw her, excused himself and walked with her a few feet away. “Problems?”

“Max needs your other medic to help collect blood donations. He has an idea. Wants to try treating the sick with the blood of people who’ve survived the flu.”

Nolan grunted. “I’ll send him as soon as I’m finished talking with the elder.”

“Thanks.”

“The militants have been conspicuously out of sight for the past thirty minutes,” Nolan said “I don’t like it. Don’t relax your vigilance, not even for a second.”

“Akbar left Max a note on a body. He’s here and he doesn’t think like most people.”

“Shit,” Nolan said under his breath.

“Do you need anything? Any news for Max?”

“There were a few Western aid workers still trying to help these people, but militants went through the tents like locusts and took them all. No one knows where they were taken, or at least no one is willing to admit they know where. Now you’re telling me Akbar is behind all this. We’ve walked into a very large, lethal trap.” Ali sighed. “Yeah, one specifically designed to isolate Max. Which means we’ve got problems here and at home.” She needed to talk to her father and let him know the extent of their difficulties, but in a way that wouldn’t alert any unfriendly ears.

No biggie.

Nolan nodded at her with a half smile that told her he was just as pissed as she was, and went back into the tent.

She continued her search for flu survivors and found three more, all in the same family, who were happy to get out of their tent and into a solid structure

The next two tents she went into, everyone was dead. In the second tent, their fire was warm and still smoking, so someone had been alive until not too long ago.

The speed at which people were dying was...scary fast.

She put it out of her head and continued looking for more survivors. It took her twenty minutes to find another survivor, this time an old woman who was weeping over the bodies of her children and grandchildren.

Ali asked if she’d help to save the lives of other children, other grandchildren, but she pushed Ali away and continued to wail.

Ali left her to her grief.

She found a young mother who was staring down at the dead faces of her husband and son.

“Why?” she asked Ali. “Why did I survive when they did not? I would have rather died with them.”

“Perhaps so you can help other people.”

“I cannot even help myself,” the woman whispered.

“You can. You did survive and the secret to helping others is in your blood.”

The woman looked at Ali for the first time. “My blood?”

“Would you give a little of your blood to help?”

The woman didn’t respond for a long time, stood and stared at the bodies she’d wrapped in blankets. Finally she said, “I will help.”

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