“Do not worry,” Darshana said, shooting a look at Prabal. “We are all coming with you.”
“I was not saying I would not come,” Prabal said. “It was merely a suggestion.”
“Maybe you should keep your suggestion in your head,” Darshana said.
“If anyone else has something to suggest, say it now,” Kusum told them. “Once we go, you need to be quiet.”
When no one spoke up, she led them out of the factory onto the street. From there, she kept to the same route she’d used on her trip to the camp.
She could tell the silent city was having its effect on the others. The looks on their faces were often wide eyed and shocked, as if this couldn’t really be Mumbai but perhaps a replica or a movie set they had somehow wandered onto.
Their path took them through a dense residential section that had once been teaming with life, each place they passed no longer a home but a tomb.
“Please tell me we don’t have to walk through something like that again,” Prabal said, after they came out the other side.
Darshana twisted around and shushed him.
“No more like that,” Kusum whispered. “But we are getting close now, so we need to be extra careful.”
She led them down the street, keeping them tight to the buildings.
The roar of the motor seemed to come out of nowhere — one moment silence, the next a car engine revving to life only two blocks away. Kusum jammed to a stop, and pressed up against the shop they were passing. The others followed suit. Down the street, headlights popped on, pointing in their direction.
She glanced back the way they’d come. The businesses lining the street were smashed together, in a continuous wall with no breaks between them for at least a hundred meters. No way she and the others could make it down and around the end without being seen. Most of the entrances to the stores were flush with the wall, providing no place to hide.
Swinging her gaze back around, she focused on the cars parked at the curb only a few feet away.
“Down,” she said, pointing at the ground near the vehicles.
As they ducked behind the cars, she was sure it was too late. The car with the headlights was already heading in their direction. She could almost feel the light touch her skin.
“Listen,” she said quickly, and gave them an address. “That is the building we are supposed to meet Sanjay in. Third-floor apartment, number sixteen. Say it back to me.” They each did. “If we have to split up, go there.”
From the increasing growl of the vehicle’s engine, she knew it was almost abreast of them. For a second, she thought maybe their luck would hold and the car would drive by, but a squeal of brakes and a drop in RPMs told her the problem was not going away so easily.
A clomp, clomp, clomp of feet hitting the road, but no sound of doors opening. Strange.
“Please come out,” a male voice said. “We know you’re there. We are here to help you, not hurt you.”
Kusum looked back at her three friends and mouthed, “When I say run, run.”
They stared back at her, all three looking as scared as anyone Kusum had ever seen.
“It will be okay,” she whispered.
“Come out now, please. If you are ill, we can treat you. If you are not ill, we can vaccinate you so that you will stay that way. We’re here to help.”
Kusum could see a question forming in Prabal’s eyes, that perhaps whoever was out there was not as evil as Kusum and Sanjay thought they were.
“Stay down,” she whispered, emphasizing her words by patting her hand against the air.
When she felt confident they would do as she said, she stood up.
“I’m here,” she said.
Three armed soldiers stood in front of a roofless Jeep, the barrels of their rifles pointed at the ground.
“There were others with you,” the nearest soldier said. From the sound of his voice, she knew he was the same one who’d called out a moment before.
“No. Only me.”
“I saw others.” He started walking toward her.
Kusum moved around the car and onto the street. “I’m the only one here.”
She could see hesitation in his eyes, and knew he wasn’t sure if he’d really seen anyone else.
“It would be a mistake to lie,” he said. “We’re only here to help.”
Trying to sound both desperate and relieved, she said, “You are the first people — I mean, living people — I have seen in three days. Tell me, do you really have a vaccine for the flu?”
“Yes. It’s back at the survival station.”
“I did not think it was possible.”
“If you’ll come with us, we’ll take you there,” he said.
The last thing she wanted to do was get into the Jeep with them, but she didn’t see how she had a choice. She was sure if she said no, they would force her to come anyway, and they’d probably search around the car to make sure she hadn’t been lying. The only way to save Darshana, Arjun, and Prabal was to sacrifice herself.
She donned a relieved smile, and parted her lips to say, “Yes, thank you,” but the words never left her mouth.
Prabal knew he was probably about to die. The men standing in the street were surely armed, and if what Kusum said was true, then the men would consider it no big deal to kill four more people after they’d already murdered millions, maybe even billions.
“Stay down,” Kusum whispered.
Stay down? Of course, he was going to stay down. Standing up would be suicide, would be—
— exactly what Kusum was doing.
No! For a second he wasn’t sure if he’d only thought it or said it out loud. He knew Kusum whispered something more, but he didn’t hear what it was. In fact, he was having a hard time hearing anything other than the blood rushing past his ears.
Kusum, not content to make herself merely a stationary target, moved around the front of the parked car and out into the street where the men were. Again Prabal wanted to shout, “No!” as the voices of Kusum and the man who’d called out to them mixed together into an incoherent drone in Prabal’s head.
You have to get out of here. You have to get out of here.
He tried to concentrate, to hear what was going on, but the warning booming through his mind was too loud.
You have to get out of here!
A hand clamped down on his shoulder. He jerked, thinking one of the men had sneaked up behind him, but it was Darshana. She was holding a finger to her lips, her face tense.
What did she mean? He wasn’t making any noise. He’d be the last to make any noise.
You have to get out of here!
The voice was right. No matter how quiet he kept, the soldiers — they had to be soldiers, right? — were going to find him.
You have to get out of here! You have to get away!
Yes, away.
Now!
He ripped Darshana’s hand from his shoulder, jumped to his feet, and began to run.
“Hey! You! Stop!”
Prabal didn’t hear that, either, but it wasn’t the blood in his ears that was masking the shouted words. It was the sound of his own scream.
The yell surprised Kusum as much as the soldiers. Instinctively, she glanced over her shoulder.
Prabal was racing down the sidewalk away from them. Why he hadn’t stayed hidden, she didn’t know, but at the moment the answer was unimportant.
“Run!” she shouted. “Run!”
As soon as she saw Arjun and Darshana jump to their feet and take off, Kusum whipped around and started to run in the opposite direction.