Elliott tried to see some pattern in it, but couldn’t. Had the genome sequencing revealed something? Were these people potential carriers of antibodies that might fight the virus? He wanted to be hopeful about what was happening, but he was far too rational to believe it.

Sam and Adam were still in the basement. They had been rounded up along with Ryan after Elliott and Rose had been taken. Only Sam and Adam had come back. Adam had developed a fever yesterday. He was infected, and Elliott feared that soon Sam would be too. They were all doing their best to maintain a quarantine in the home, but he doubted it would be enough to protect her.

The virus ebbed and flowed. For a few hours, Elliott would feel fine, or at least well enough to function, then it would hit him, overwhelming him and forcing him to lie down and rest until the fever and coughing passed. At the moment he felt pretty good—except for his nervousness.

He checked his cell phone. He had completed every one of the daily surveys on the Rook Quantum Sciences operating system. He’d had to: the phone beeped and buzzed incessantly until he filled them out. But there had been no survey today. What did it mean? And where were they taking everyone?

At the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya, Elim Kibet sat in his office, listening to an official from the Ministry of Health. The man was sick. Elim thought he would probably die within five days. He coughed violently, and Elim stood, came around the desk, and offered him a bottle of ORS.

The man waved him off. “It’s wasted on me.” He stared with bloodshot eyes tinted yellow from the jaundice. “Will you do it, Elim?”

Elim leaned against the desk. “I will try. But it’s their choice.”

“That’s all we ask.”

“Will you stay?”

The sick man shook his head. “I must travel on.”

“And die by the road?”

“If I must. I am dead either way. I will not lie here and wait for it.”

Elim didn’t blame him. He had felt the same way; it was why he had gotten up from his hospital bed in Mandera.

He showed the man out, watched him climb into his four-wheel drive and turn back onto Habaswein-Dadaab Road.

Elim made his way into the Ifo II camp, which held all the surviving refugees. Three fires burned, the flames smaller than they had been. This morning, the camp-wide count had revealed 14,289 survivors. When the outbreak began, 287,423 people had lived in the camps; he had found the earlier counts in the camps’ records. The loss of life was staggering. And he was about to ask these people to see a lot more of it.