Julia's sneakers and the bottoms of her pant legs were ablaze. She kicked and rolled and finally sat on them to extinguish the flames. She quickly stood, feeling the pain of scorched flesh, and looked around.
"Allen!"
He was thirty feet farther into the mine. His hair was smoking, his shirt was on fire, and he wasn't moving. She threw herself on top of him and ran her hands through his hair.
"Is this your idea of romance?" he whispered.
She gripped his head between her hands, leaned close. "I can't believe you did that."
"I didn't know the door was going to just slam open like that. It batted me like a pinball flipper."
"If it hadn't, you'd have ended up like . . . what's-his-name."
"Gregor. Is he . . . ?"
"Oh yeah." She paused. "Thank you." A tear dropped from her eye and landed on his cheek. It left a white streak on his sooty skin.
"None of that, now," he said. "You'll ruin my image of you."
"Which is what, exactly?"
"Oh, someone who could take my lunch money anytime she wanted to."
"I can."
They laughed, more relieved than humored. It didn't last long. There were too many hurts on too many levels.
She lifted him, and he pretended to help. They made their way to the mouth of the mine leaning against each other, finally in perfect sync. The opening was bright and covered with green leaves. They stumbled to it and did not pause when they reached its lip.
Together, they fell into the cool arms of the jungle.
epilogue
His eyes fluttered against the stark sunlight breaching the blinds in his hospital room. As he came awake and his vision adjusted, he saw the blinds were wide Venetians, dated and dusty. The walls were drab brown and unadorned, except for wall-mounted medical instruments. Somewhere, an EKG machine beeped.
Allen took a deep breath. For the first time in as long as he could remember, nothing inside hurt.
He turned his head to examine the room, which looked different outside the veil of pain- and medication-induced grogginess that had enveloped him for . . . for . . . a long time. Perhaps the room seemed changed only because he wasn't only seeing it now but was finally lucid enough to pass judgment on it. He didn't like it much: an empty metal tray on wheels, stained acoustic ceiling tiles, the ugly walls.
He brought his vision around to the other side of the bed and lit on a startlingly beautiful sight among the stale blandness: Julia Matheson's beaming face.
"I thought I'd dreamed you," he said.
"You should be so lucky." She rose from a chair, gripped his hand. "How are you?"
He nodded. "No pain. Or maybe I'm just getting used to it."
"The doctor thinks you'll make a complete recovery. The Ebola was just starting to set in. Everything was reversible and repairable, thanks to Litt's antidote."
"Just thinking about Litt makes me queasy."
"One of the vials in the case we recovered contained his plasma. They think they can make an Ebola vaccine from it."
"How long have I been here?"
"Just over two weeks." She walked to the window and raised the blinds. "A military hospital of some kind. I think we're in Virginia."
He pushed himself up, wincing at sharp pains in his side and back. "You think?"
"I guess we're quarantined, but it's more like they don't know what to do with us. They let me call my mom. She had a . . . an episode, but the home health nurse got there pretty quickly. She's in their facility now."
She drew closer, and her voice grew soft. "Do you remember anything? Tate meeting us in the jungle? The U.S. soldiers intercepting his truck outside Pedro Juan Caballero? Getting evacced here?"
He tried to remember. "Vaguely . . . I guess."
She bit her lip. "Do you remember what happened to Stephen?"
He closed his eyes. He didn't move for a long time. Then a tear broke free and rolled down his cheek. Without looking at her, he said, "He saved my life."
"Both our lives. Many lives. I've had time here to imagine what would have happened if Litt escaped. He would have set up shop somewhere else and terrorized the world with his designer virus. That's what they're calling it, a designer virus, like it was something cool."
"A lot of people died to stop him. Your partner too."
"I wish I could see Goody's wife, the boys. They need to know he died heroically."
"They haven't said when we can leave?"
The door pushed open, letting in a sigh of antisepticized air. With it came an old man, leaning heavily on a cane, with the lax shoulders of a weary traveler. He paused, holding the door, then let it close. Allen felt he'd seen the man before but could not place him.
Julia had one hand resting on Allen's head. He felt it stiffen.
"I should throw you out this window," she said.
"I have no doubt you could, Ms. Matheson." His smile faltered. "I'm sorry for your losses. Both of you."
Allen caught her eye. "I don't understand."
"This is Kendrick Reynolds," she said, keeping a level gaze on the old man. "He promised to help, then he tried to incinerate us with the rest of his problem."
Reynolds shuffled to the end of the bed and rested his long, wrinkled hands over the tubular footboard. He said, "I did what I had to do. There was no time to extricate you and Dr. Parker and his brother."
"So he bombed the base," she continued, talking to Allen, glaring at Reynolds. "With us in it."
"We prevented a holocaust, Ms. Matheson."
"You didn't prevent anything. Without us, the antidote would have been destroyed too—the antidote that has saved, what, ten thousand people?"
"Most of them, yes. But if we hadn't eliminated Litt and his virus, we would be living in a very different world right now, one too terrible to think about."
"It was your mess to start with, your Frankenstein monster that got out of hand."
"I accept that indictment," he said with a slight bow of his head. "I can't begin to tell you the kind of second-guessing I've put myself through lately."
"How terrible for you."
Allen felt the coiled tension in Julia's hand. Afraid she might make good on her threat to toss the old guy through the window, he asked, "Why are you here?"
"I stopped by earlier, Dr. Parker, but you were not up to receiving visitors, and Ms. Matheson was busy giving some army officials a hard time."
Allen glanced at her.
"They've been trying to 'debrief me since we arrived," she explained.
"And she's been trying to debrief them,'" Kendrick said.
"So now they send in the big guns, is that it?"
He sighed. "I need to know only one thing," he told her. "Can you end it here?"
She thought for a moment. "Did you wipe out the virus?"
"We believe so. The compound was completely incinerated—the underground base, the surface, the surrounding areas. We bombed well into the night. Our on-site teams have found no trace of virus or any other biochemical agents. Are you all right?"
Allen was squeezing his eyes shut again, this time tightly. Julia answered for him.
"We had to leave Stephen's body there."
"I know. You told Commander Bransford in Paraguay. I am sorry." He looked at his hands, then again at Julia and Allen. "This country owes you its gratitude. Unfortunately, it cannot publicly recognize that debt. We are prepared, however, to pretend none of this ever happened." His eyes locked on hers. "You understand that you must never speak of Karl Litt or Ebola Kugel or the United States' alleged involvement in biological weapons? Where is your laptop, please?"
"It was destroyed on Litt's compound."
Kendrick Reynolds simply stared.