Hot Zone (Major Crimes Unit Book 2) Read online

  Cotta snickered. “Try not to look so unwell, agent Hopkins. It would be embarrassing if you were to faint.”

  ***

  As soon as Dr Hart signed Howard into the entry register and led him inside the giant white tent, he was grabbed by a gang of chaperones and bundled into one of the spacesuits. They taped up his wrists, sprayed him with a fine mist of something he imagined to be bleach, and went through the safety protocols with him.

  “Do not touch the patients. Do not touch any bodily fluids of the patient. If you do come into contact with bodily fluids, remain where you are and alert your nearest colleague. Do not remove your safety equipment. If your safety equipment develops a tear or rip, remain where you are and alert your nearest colleague. Dispose of all needles and sharps in puncture-proof sealed containers. When you wish to exit the quarantine area, you must do so through the decontamination area and wait for clearance.”

  “It’s not as scary as it sounds,” came Dr Hart’s voice inside Howard’s helmet. The slight crackling nature of it let him know that there was a cheap radio system installed into the suits.

  “Really?” he said back. “Because this is about as nervous as I’ve ever been — and I’ve been shot by a serial killer before.”

  “Ebola is harder to catch than you think. Most people who have caught it in the past, mostly in the 3rd World, have been friends, relatives, and health care workers in regular, prolonged contact with the infected. You are quite safe inside your suit.”

  “How is this thing spreading if it’s not easy to catch?”

  “That’s what I thought you were here to find out, Agent Hopkins. It shouldn’t be so easy to catch, which is why your concerns about terrorism hold water. If somebody is responsible for what you are about to see, then I hope you catch them and throw them in a very dark cell.”

  Dr Hart led Howard through a plastic flap and into the first section of the vast tent. Each bed was partitioned from the next by a curtain and there were even portable toilets with pull-around privacy drapes. The people here looked more terrified than ill. They had puffy eyes, sweaty foreheads, and didn’t seem entirely comfortable in their beds, but most of them seemed okay for the most part. One woman was even reading a trashy magazine and chuckling to herself periodically. The front cover held the headline: Tom Cruise Worships Aliens, followed by the smaller by-line of: Meet the Zombie Boy Who Likes Turtles.

  “The early stages resemble influenza,” Dr Hart explained through the radio. Fever, headaches, joint and muscle pain. Patients are bedridden and weak, but they are able to cope. Some extremely rare cases get better after this stage. They are the lucky ones.”

  Howard glanced at the woman with the magazine and wondered if she was one of the ‘lucky ones.’ Then he decided that no one with Ebola was ‘lucky,’ even if they got well. Dr Hart led him over to the next flap of plastic, which sectioned off the next area.

  “Are you ready?” she asked him. “We are about to see patient’s in the later stages of the disease. It will be distressing.”

  Howard took a few deep breaths, embarrassed when he realised that they would be echoing though the radio in Dr Hart’s suit. “Okay,” he said. “I’m ready.”

  They passed beneath the flap into the next room. This area took up the majority of the tent and was approximately the size of a narrow football field. Rows upon rows of beds were filled with the sickest people Howard had ever seen. A teenaged girl to his left lay beneath bloodstained sheets, a trickle of blood leaking from her ear and staining the pillow. Her entire face had gone an angry shade of purple and there was no expression on it other than pain and delirium. Another woman, a decade older, lay trembling and muttering as fever took her senses. From elsewhere in the room, a person wretched and vomited in the most painful-sounding fashion. Tears filled Howard’s eyes. It was like standing in the pits of hell, agony and fear intoxicating the very air itself. A dozen spacesuits milled about casually, unable to do anything but provide comfort and care. They were more caretakers of the dead than curers of the sick.

  The teenaged girl spotted Howard standing at the foot of her bed and reached out a frail arm to him. She tried to speak, but all that came from her lips was a gargled choke followed by spitting blood. She slumped back on her pillows, eyes staring at the ceiling. An alarm sounded. Two spacesuits came rushing over, while a third pulled over a crash cart and started uncoiling a defibrillator.

  “I want to leave,” said Howard.

  Dr Hart didn’t argue. “Okay.”

  The three spacesuits started giving the young girl electric shocks, trying to jumpstart her heart. Her body leapt from the bed each time.

  “Get me the hell out of here now,” shouted Howard. “I need to leave. I need… I need… I can’t breathe.”

  Dr Hart grabbed Howard by the helmet and pulled his visor up against her own. Through the plastic windows they made eye contact. “You’re panicking,” she said. “That’s okay. Everybody panics. Just concentrate on your breathing and remind yourself that you are healthy. You are okay. You are not infected. These people are dying, though, and they need our help. We are going to help them. We are going to walk out of this tent and find a way to stop this. Okay?”

  Howard couldn’t nod because she still held his helmet, so he said, “Okay. I’m okay. I’m okay.”

  “Good. Follow me.”

  Dr Hart took him to the decontamination area where they showered in their suits before once again getting sprayed with the fine mist of bleach. Then they passed through into another area where they removed the suits and washed their hands, face, and necks thoroughly beneath scolding showers. They were then signed out and back in the fresh air a minute later. Howard took the longest breaths of his life.

  Dr Hart patted him on the back. “Are you okay, Agent Hopkins?”

  Howard managed to straighten up. “You just saw me almost wet myself. I think you can start calling me Howard.”

  “Then you can call me Stevie.”

  “Stevie?”

  “Stephanie,” she explained. “But my friends call me Stevie.”

  “Okay, Stevie. Thank you for keeping me calm back there. Please don’t tell Mr Cotta. I think he knew this would happen.”

  “I won’t mention it, and it’s nothing to be embarrassed about. There’s something instinctively terrifying about diseases. They send our inner caveman into a tizzy.”

  Howard frowned. “A tizzy?”

  “That’s about the best way to explain it. We’re biologically conditioned to fear disease in the same way we would fear swimming with a crocodile. Our fear responses kick in and make us panic. It takes a while to overcome that. No reason to be embarrassed, I assure you.”

  “You’re kind,” Howard told her. “And brave.”

  “Ha! A member of the MCU calling me brave. I couldn’t do what you people do. The way you stopped that terrorist last year. Were you involved in that, by the way?”

  Howard thought about the events Stevie was referring to and nodded his head slowly. “I was involved, yes, but the real hero was a woman who was working with me. She was only with the MCU temporarily but was as brave as you are.”

  “Perhaps you should invite her back then.”

  “Yeah,” said Howard, thinking: If only anyone knew where she was.

  3

  Sarah got out of bed and switched on the television, switching to the news as she always did this time in the morning. The old flat screen flickered persistently and the colours were odd at the corners, but it got her through the endless days. At first she’d hoped to see news of her imminent rescue, but other than some early reports of her initial disappearance, there had been nothing. The world did not seem to care very much that Sarah Stone was gone from the world. Her scarred, mangled face would not be missed, nor perhaps even remembered.

  For a while, she had almost been able to conjure up the face of the man who had abducted her. The glaring eyes and straight teeth were a fuzzy image at the back of her mind, but it wasn’t cl
ear enough to make an ID. The blow to her head had cleaned her clock and wiped any memories she had of the events away.

  Now she sat on her bed, staring at a familiar face onscreen.

  MCU Director Palu seemed to have aged in the last year. The hair on either side of his head had gone a frosty white and he’d grown a moustache of the same colour. His medium-brown skin seemed a little paler too. Yet, when the man spoke he demanded authority, each word as confident as the last.

  “The current outbreak has indeed been attributed to Ebola Virus,” said Palu to a microphone, “as the press has indeed been speculating for days. The majority of cases have been contained to a temporary treatment site at Reading’s Whiteknight Hospital. Everything that can be done for the patients and their families is being done. Everything that can be done to contain the current outbreak is being done. Everything that can be done to find a vaccine is being done. We, as yet, do not know what allowed this disease to enter our shores, but we have no reason at all to believe it will expand beyond our control. The National Health Service is doing all that it can to educate people on preventative measures and are confident that they can deal with the additional strain on resources this outbreak has caused. Thank you.” He took no questions.

  The news report switched back to the studio where the grim face of news anchor Jack Millis filled the screen. Sarah recognised the man, knew he’d made his name by reporting on the Dartmouth bombing she herself had been involved with. Now, Jack Millis spoke in the foreboding tones of a man who loved to make a crisis worse. The more people were afraid, the more they would look to him for guidance. How, Sarah would like to give the simpering fool a good hard kick in the nuts.

  “A message of hope,” he said. “Yet one has to ask themselves why the director of the MCU is involved in this crisis at all. Isn’t the domain of the MCU terrorism and serious crime? Is their involvement a “sign” that this outbreak may not be the work of unfortunate happenstance, but instead the maniacal plotting of a deranged criminal? If terrorism is indeed behind this outbreak of one of the most deadly of diseases, then should we be preparing ourselves for further attacks, further outbreaks? Sobering thoughts, Britain. Sobering indeed. Thank you for joining me this morning. I’m Jack Millis and you’ve been watching Morning with JM.”

  Sarah grunted, switched off the television, and remained sitting on the bed. The MCU had been on the brink of closure when she’d helped them catch a terrorist named Hesbani. Now the organisation seemed to be going from strength to strength, and even expanding beyond the scope of terrorism. Last week she had seen on the news that the MCU had helped to apprehend an escaped serial killer, Richard Heinz. It appeared they were going from success to success, and she was glad. She looked back on her time with the MCU fondly, despite not doing so at the time. She’d been a broken mess when MCU agent, Howard Hopkins, had come to ask for her help. By the end of her association with MCU she’d actually started to look towards the future. Things didn’t seem quite so bleak. Aside from the ones on the left side of her face, her scars had finally begun to heal.

  Then someone had abducted her and any thoughts of the future became muddy and dark. She didn’t even know if her captors intended to let her live, yet four months they had held her hostage without so much as questioning her. She’d been treated well and never tortured, yet any attempt she made to leave was met with immediate force. She hadn’t been able to walk for a week the last time she’d attempted to attack one of her guards, so she had relented and resigned herself to her fate, watching the news each day to try and see if she could gain any clue into who was keeping her and if anybody was looking for her.

  Her initial suspicion was that Hesbani’s men were taking revenge on her for her interference in the terrorist plot last year, but they were savages who would want her blood. They would have tortured and beaten her, before executing her to provide a message to those who interfered with their agendas. Hesbani’s supporters, however, had not even appeared in the news once. The man’s operations had died with him; and his former boss, Al Al-Sharir, had not been heard from in almost a decade. The Shab Bakhair cell was finished.

  So who the hell was keeping her and what did they want?

  The door to her en suite room — for it was no cell by anyone’s standards — opened and in stepped one of her regular guards. The short, stubby man was named Rat by his colleagues and he had likely got the name from his two sharp front teeth. He was friendly enough, yet there was no mistaking the violent nature of the man bubbling away beneath the surface. Sarah recognised it because she was the same. Yet, in her current predicament, her violent impulses were shackled and impotent. She had no outlet for her anger other than by trying once again to escape, but her body had not yet recovered from the last time.

  Trying to figure a way out consumed most of Sarah’s day, as it should have. A prisoner had a duty to think about attaining freedom and she was no different. While she suspected she might die soon, she also knew that she would do all she could to try and avoid that happening. Her next escape attempt would be her seventh and she hoped against hope that it would be the last.

  “Brought you breakfast, sweetheart” said Rat, wrinkling his nose at her like the creature he was named after.

  Sarah glanced at the watch they had let her keep and frowned. “It’s almost afternoon.”

  Rat placed the tray of cereal and coffee on the bedside table and shrugged. “The lads were up late last night with business. We have other priorities than looking after you.”

  “I thought I heard something last night. What were you up to? Kidnapping children, or just molesting them?”

  Rat didn’t get angry. He was too used to Sarah’s attempts to rile him. Instead he just flashed his rodent smile at her. “Only molesting that’ll get done is on you if you don’t keep a lid on that smart mouth.”

  “You’d need to find a dick first. I get the impression you’re sadly lacking.”

  Rat chuckled. “When are you going to give up the attitude? I’ll never take anything you say personally, so stop trying to get a rise out of me. You’re my prisoner and have cause to hate me, so why would I be offended to find out that you do?”

  “A very coherent statement for a degenerate like you, Rat.”

  “You’d be surprised how smart degenerates can be. In fact this country is run by degenerates, and where would we be without them?”

  Sarah rolled her eyes. “Oh, here we go. Country of infidels and degenerates, huh? You’re going to destroy us for the glory of Allah?”

  “I don’t fight for Allah, luv. Don’t even like the fella.”

  “Then whom?”

  “Certainly not for no god.”

  “Then what are you keeping me for? What agenda do you have?”

  “I have no agenda. I take orders. Orders are simpler than agendas. They pay better, too.”

  Sarah was beginning to unravel the man without him knowing it. After months of getting nothing but silent treatment from Rat, she had got him to open up and start bantering insults with her. Now he had forgotten himself enough that he was dropping information without even realising it.”

  “You’re a mercenary,” she spat. “At least I can respect a fundamentalist. At least they’re fighting for something worthier than money. They have a cause.”

  Rat back snapped at her. “I have a cause.”

  “To get rich? How very honourable.”

  “No, not just to get rich. I’m going to change things, make things better. I’m going to liberate the people of this country from the oppression of an unfair system.”

  “Sure you’re not the first terrorist to think his cause is noble. You’re misguided, same as the rest of them.”

  Rat let his calm slip a little and snarled at her. “I’m not a terrorist. I’m fighting for this country not against it.”

  Sarah eyeballed the man closely. “You’re fighting for this country? How?”

  “Just shut your goddamn mouth or I’ll break your jaw again.”
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  Sarah still felt the pain of the last beating, so decided to keep quiet. Rat might think himself a freedom fighter or hero of some kind, but he was not averse to giving a woman — and a prisoner no less — a good kicking. He left her room and locked the door behind him, leaving Sarah alone once again. She got off the bed and went over to the television. Her captors had screwed the set down onto the cabinet, but they had paid no mind to the back of television, where she had removed six delicate screws from the rear panel using the steel clasp of her watch. She was now able to slide the back off the unit with ease, and inside was her ticket to freedom.

  The television’s various circuit boards were pressed from copper, extremely sharp at the edges. Sarah had spent enough time examining the different pieces of electronics to understand that the PCBs were the closest thing she would find to a weapon. There was one attached to the television’s inputs that was slim and about fifteen centimetres long, similar in size to the rulers children kept inside their pencil cases. She’d already unscrewed the PCB ahead of time, but had left it connected for the time being. Yanking it free would eliminate her use of the television for good, the only solace in her confinement, but it was the only thing she had managed to find in four months of confinement that was sharp enough to cut a man’s throat.

  She yanked the circuit board free and pulled out the wires, feeling its sharpness immediately. Its edges cut into her fingers as she clutched it tightly. She took it over to her bed and used a corner to slice a hole in her pillow case, and less than a minute later she had cut a strip of cotton and fashioned a makeshift grip around one end of the circuit board. Next she forced one of the sharp corners against the wall until it snapped, leaving behind a jagged, deadly edge. She did the same on the opposite corner and eventually managed to fashion a point. She had a knife. A flimsy, yet wickedly sharp copper knife.

  All she needed to do now was wait for Rat’s next visit.