When the guard took another step toward the center of the compound, the two men eased out from behind the hut and slipped quietly out the back gate into the city.
A muted echo. Metal. Like an empty drum.
Sanjay swung his gaze toward the sound. It had not come from the compound, but rather from an opening behind the buildings across the street from where they were. Though they weren’t high enough to see all the way down the opening, they could see much of it, and there was no missing the dark form of a person climbing over a pile of trash.
“Is it one of the soldiers?” Kusum asked.
“I do not think so,” Sanjay said.
He had no doubt the soldiers would perform a thorough search once they realized even more of their prisoners had escaped, but he didn’t think there’d been enough time for them to be sneaking around like this yet.
“One of the people who escaped?” she asked.
“Perhaps.”
“They are going to get themselves caught. We have to help them.”
She was right. Whoever was down there was moving toward the building right outside the survival station’s main gate. It would be only a matter of time before the person was discovered.
“I will go,” he said. Before she could argue, he added, “You need to get the others up and move them to where we had the camp. If that is a soldier and they are searching buildings, they will search this one, too. We cannot wait until tomorrow night to leave.”
Kusum looked like she was going to argue, but instead said, “Be very careful. And if they are sick, do not get too close.”
“Don’t worry about me. I will be fine. Now go.”
Sanjay wasted no time sneaking across the street into one of the buildings on the other side. Instead of looking for an entrance to the back passageway, he headed up to the very top and ran from one roof to the next until he reached the end.
There, he leaned over the passageway to see if the person was still there. Not surprisingly, the area was now empty, but an open window was two floors below him. As far as he could tell, it was the only thing open along the entire passage. It had to be where the person had gone.
He located the entrance to the internal stairway and made his way down. When he reached the room with the open window, he quietly crept inside. The only light was what trickled in through the windows, and for a moment he thought he was alone, but then something moved. A person stood by the front window, peeking out at the street below.
As he took another step forward, the floor groaned under his feet.
Jabala twisted around, her heart thudding in her chest. On the other side of the room was a man.
A soldier, she thought. They’ve come to get me.
She glanced to her right, hoping there was some way she could get out, but the only exit was the one behind the man.
“It’s okay,” the soldier said. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
In her panic, she did not recognize his voice at first. But as he spoke the last few syllables, it clicked.
“Sanjay?” she said.
Sanjay froze.
The person at the window, a woman, knew his name.
“Sanjay, is that you?”
His eyes widened in surprise. “Jabala?”
He wasn’t sure if she let out a laugh or a sigh of relief, but the next thing he knew she was rushing toward him, throwing her arms around him.
“Sanjay! You nearly scared me to death.”
It took him a couple of attempts, but he was finally able to remove her arms from around his neck, and push her back enough so he could see her face. “Jabala, what are you doing here?”
“I was looking for you.”
“Yes, of course. But why?”
Before she could answer, the roar of another troop truck sped past the front of the building.
Grabbing her hand, he said, “Come on. We need to get out of here. We can talk later.”
Sanjay lost count of how many times they’d had to stop and wait as groups of soldiers passed near them. Sometimes the vehicles had been driving fast toward other parts of the city, sometimes they had gone by at a slow crawl, the soldiers scanning both sides of the street.
Not a minute went by that he didn’t worry Kusum and the others would be spotted. It was hard enough for only him and Jabala to stay hidden.
“This way,” he said, leading her across the now vacant street into a dark alleyway.
Several moments later, Jabala’s foot kicked something, and Sanjay heard her start to stumble. He twisted around and caught her before she could fall.
“You have to be careful,” he told her.
“It is too dark,” she said. “I cannot see where I am walking.”
“Okay, okay. We will go slower,” he said. “Keep your eyes open.”
Fourteen steps into their reduced pace, something buzzed.
“What was that?” Sanjay asked, looking back.
Jabala was already pulling something from her bag. In the dark, it looked like a black lump. She touched it and held it to her head.
“Hello?” she said.
She had a phone? A working phone?
She listened for several seconds. “No,” she finally said. “We cannot talk now. Later.” She listened again, then, “Hold on.” She put a hand over the phone and said to Sanjay, “How long until we will be able to stop?”
“Who are you talking to?” he asked.
“A friend.”
“A friend?”
“Sanjay, how long?”
Reluctantly, he said, “We still have a few kilometers to go. Could be thirty minutes. Could be two hours.”
Jabala was silent for a moment before removing her hand from the phone. “Leon, please try again in one hour…okay, okay. Good-bye.”
As she put the phone away, Sanjay said, “Who is Leon?”
“He is in America,” she said. “He answered Naresh’s radio signal.”
“That’s the satellite phone from the school?”
“Yes.”
“Why would you bring that here? It might get broken or lost.”
“I thought it important you talk to Leon yourself. He warned me about the survival stations, that the UN personnel were not who they said they are. Exactly like you have been telling us.”
“He said these things?” Sanjay asked.
“Yes.”
“What else did he say?”
She told him about the conversation she’d had.
When she finished, he was quiet for a moment. “All right. Let’s go. We have already stayed in one place too long.”
“But you do want to talk to him, yes?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, silently adding, Very much.
16
I had hoped to be on the road for at least a couple of hours by now, but it took me longer than I expected to get ready.
My first obstacle was finding a bag. It’s not like I can haul my wheeled suitcase behind me. I needed a backpack, and not a book bag type. If that were the case, I would have found what I needed right away. There are plenty of those lying around. But a backpack I can carry food and clothes and that kind of stuff in is not exactly something most of the other students left behind during the holidays.
For the first time since all this started, I actually left my floor. I have to say, even though I knew logically that if anyone infected had been in the building they were days dead now, and, hopefully, no longer a danger, I was scared to death. I think if a draft had caused a door to swing just a few inches, I would have turned on the spot and kept running until I got back here. The tingling I felt under my skin was near constant, and though I was wearing a heavy jacket and a scarf around my face, I was shivering the whole time.