OUTSIDE, JAKE SAW NO SIGN OF KITANO.
Maggie was in front of the cabin, trying to establish a connection to the outside world using Orchid’s computer. “It’s password-protected. I can’t get through.” She was scared and beat up, her right hand bruised and bloody, but she was also completely determined to save her son. They had gone through Orchid’s backpack: no cellphone, but it was loaded with dozens of vials filled with the glowing fungus that was the Uzumaki cure. Jake still couldn’t believe it-a cure. But any doubt was dispelled by the yellow sheet of paper they found in Orchid’s backpack. It was the decoded message Liam had left them, the one Orchid had killed Vlad to get.
He let himself believe they were going to make it. Maggie was alive. Dylan would be cured. Kitano and Orchid had planned to deliver the cure to the Japanese and Chinese after the outbreak had taken hold in America. But now he and Maggie had the cure.
They ran, Jake carrying Orchid’s pack, Maggie ahead of him. In just a few more minutes, they’d be over the suspension bridge, down the hill, and beyond the blast zone.
KITANO TIGHTENED HIS GRIP ON HIS SEPPUKU SWORD.
It took every ounce of will to hold on to his thoughts, to keep the madness from interfering with his mission. The soldiers had been with him since the morning, floating above him. They had watched silently at first. Thousands of ghosts, the spirits of the young Japanese Tokko who had given their lives to stop the Americans. Now they surrounded him, singing old songs, more real than the bridge on which he stood. More real than the steel weapon in his hand.
Kitano unsheathed the short sword, its silver blade blinding in the sun. He wrapped the sword’s upper part in cloth, then held the sword by the blade, keeping an eye on the woods. Kitano took three sharp breaths. The mind had to be clear, the body ready. Kitano would have no
JAKE AND MAGGIE EMERGED FROM A COPSE OF TREES INTO an open area. Twenty yards away was the suspension bridge.
Kitano stood in the middle of the bridge in white ceremonial robes, sword in hand. Spotting them, he carefully set the sword down and pulled a gun from a fold in his robes. Taking aim and firing, he drove them back into the woods.
“Is there another way down?” Maggie asked.
“I don’t know. There’s a fork in the trail about fifty yards back.”
Jake’s eyes met Maggie’s-both understood what Kitano was doing. “Christ, Jake. The geese. This is a major migration flyway.”
Jake thrust the backpack at her. “I’ll stop him. You get as far away as possible. Don’t wait for anything.”
“Jake-”
“Give Dylan a hug for me,” he said, taking a last look at her before turning back to face Kitano.
Behind him in the sky, Jake saw the approaching planes. They were minutes away. He had to keep Kitano occupied for those crucial minutes. Otherwise, the old Tokko would at last execute his mission, sixty-four years after his first attempt. The sociopathic monster was going to kill himself and set off the worst pandemic in history. Infect the geese with the deadly spores and blanket the Northeast with Uzumaki in twenty-four hours, the entire country within a week. In a month, it would cover the globe.
“It’s over,” Jake called, stepping into the clear, palms open before him. “Orchid is dead. She’s not going to deliver the cure to Japan. You set the Uzumaki loose, the cure won’t get anywhere near Japan, but the Uzumaki will.”
Kitano took aim at Jake. “This is my destiny.”
As Jake sprinted toward Kitano, the impact of the first bullet spun him around. The pain in his shoulder joint was ferocious, but he didn’t halt his charge.
Kitano’s next bullet missed, but the one that followed took Jake’s leg out from under him. He staggered to the edge of the bridge. Another shot, this one in his side.
He went down.
THE SOUND OF THE FIRST GUNSHOT BROUGHT MAGGIE TO A temporary stop.
More gunfire.
Maggie started running again, barely able to see through the tears. Tripping on a branch, she fell, scraping her arms and face and dropping the backpack. She stared for just a second at the streaks of her blood on the snow before retrieving the pack. She had to get the cure off the island. To save Dylan.
She heard another shot.
The cure-Dylan would die without it. And maybe thousands, millions more.
She pushed on, but the trail suddenly ended at a sharp dropoff. Her heart sank. No way down. She was trapped. She couldn’t go down.
She looked to the sky. The planes were so close. She wouldn’t get far enough away. She was dead, she knew it, but could she still get the cure off the island?
Recalling Liam’s poetic message, hands shaking, she opened the backpack and stared at the vials of glowing fungus. She dug out the yellow page that Liam had left for them, desperately scrutinizing her grandfather’s words. “Liam. Oh my God, Liam.”
JAKE FELT THE LIFE DRAINING FROM HIM.
His thoughts were disjointed, flashes of scenes. Jake was at the bedside of his mother on the day before she died, her lips on his cheek. He was in the trenches of the Iraq desert, watching bulldozers push mounds of dirt. He felt the rumble of the machine as it chugged through the earth, tearing it up, coming to bury him. He imagined hearing Maggie’s voice, saw her running toward Dylan with Liam’s cure, but then she was obscured by a wall of black.
Struggling to rise, Jake saw that Kitano was half off the bridge, his torso dangling over the water, a knife protruding at a right angle. The old man had eviscerated himself. A shock of bright red spread across his belly and the white silk robe.
Jake got to his feet and crossed the bridge. He reached for the blood-slick Kitano, but it was too late: the old man slid over the edge, splashing into the river. In an instant he was over the falls. Kitano had won.
Jake collapsed in pain. A white streak shot across the sky. With each labored breath, he felt his connection to the world slipping away. Closing his eyes, the pain flared, then dulled. His senses muted. The roar of the river receded to a background murmur.
53
MAGGIE TRIED TO GET HIM TO HIS FEET. “JAKE-PLEASE.”
Jake could barely speak. “Go. Maggie. You have to…”
She looked up at the airplanes almost directly overhead now. How long did she have? Twenty seconds?
She frantically opened the vials and dumped their glowing contents off the bridge. Crying now, she longed to tell a barely conscious Jake about what she had found on the yellow sheet of paper, Liam’s last message: “… the fluorescent fungus is a dispersal vector for the cure…” Liam had designed the cure to spread the same way the Uzumaki did. The geese would carry it.
The glowing strands drifted down into the water, blinking bits of red, yellow, and green. Within seconds it was all gone, swept over the falls. The last vial she put in her pocket, saving it for Dylan.
Grabbing Jake’s arm, she dragged him to the edge of the bridge. Was he breathing? Oh, God, she couldn’t tell. She lay down on top of him. His skin was so cold against hers, their faces inches apart. Rocking them back and forth, the next thing she knew she was underwater, still holding on to Jake. The brutally cold water dragged them toward the falls. Maggie held him as tightly as she could, harder than she had ever held anything in her life.
In seconds, they were at the falls’ crest, then over its edge, locked together when the sky exploded, a shock
