“I’m going to Mandera,” Millen said. “You three are welcome to come with me.”

She hesitated.

“I’m sure the Kenyan government will be setting up survivor camps soon. There will be food, water. Probably work to do. Be a lot better than staying here.”

The teenager conversed with her two companions. Finally, she turned to Millen. “Yes, we’ll come with you.”

During a deployment, standard operating procedure was to notify ops when changing a fixed position. But since the ops group had evacuated Nairobi, Millen called the EOC in Atlanta.

“You didn’t evacuate?” the operator asked.

“No. I’m still here—”

“Hold the line.”

Millen could hear shouting in the background. It sounded like a hundred voices talking at once, like the floor of the New York Stock Exchange had been transplanted to the CDC. He caught snippets:

“Fifty thousand cases in Kansas.”

“Navy has confirmed cases on three aircraft carriers.”

The operator came back on the line. “Stay where you are, Dr. Thomas. We’ve got a situation here. Someone will contact you.”

“I can’t stay here,” Millen said, but the line was dead.

The call left Millen wondering what was going on in Atlanta—and the rest of America. Fifty thousand cases in Kansas? Had the virus they’d found in Kenya reached the US?

He desperately wanted to know what was happening—and to let someone know where he was going.

There was really only one more number he could call.

Chapter 46

Chapter 46

Elliott didn’t remember falling asleep in the chair, but he awoke in the middle of the night with a blanket drawn over him, the remote in his lap, the TV on.

He coughed several times, brought his hand to his neck, and felt his lymph nodes. They were swollen. Sweat covered his forehead. The fever was low-grade, but there was no mistake: he was infected.

On the TV, a reporter on a financial news network was speaking against a chart with a red trendline dropping sharply as it moved right.

“Asian stock markets shed more than forty percent of their value today following news that Singapore would close its borders and declare martial law, and claims that China would soon begin closing its ports to prevent further spread of the X1 virus. The WHO has stopped releasing infection estimates, sparking fears that infection rates may be far higher than has been reported. That fear seems to be spilling over into the markets. In America, the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq will close at one p.m. in observance of Black Friday, and losses are expected to be steep. Futures are trading off twenty percent…”

Elliott’s phone rang, and he stared at the number, still groggy. He didn’t recognize it.

“Shapiro.”

“Sir, it’s Millen Thomas. I called you day before yesterday. I was working with Dr. Shaw’s team.”

Elliott sat up. “I remember, Millen. What can I do for you?”