Holdout by Jeffrey Kluger

Author:Jeffrey Kluger [Kluger, Jeffrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2021-08-03T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Mercado hospital had the look of a place that had been struck by a cyclone. Tents were collapsed and debris lay everywhere; furniture inside buildings had been tipped and tossed, with the contents of shelves and cabinets spilled out across the floors. And then, of course, there was the silence.

The SSA was fastidious about its record keeping, and every time a patient was brought in—or staggered in—an entry was made in the computer system and a name and case number were attached. If anyone left—a child claimed by parents, a husband found by a wife—that fact was recorded too. So were the deaths. As of yesterday, there were 1,243 active names and cases in the system, meaning 1,243 tribespeople in the camp. That plus the 203 SSA staffers made for a huge crowd on the small patch of land.

But the soldiers from the army that wasn’t really an army, wearing the flag that wasn’t really a flag, were fastidious too. From a rough head count the SSA doctors conducted, and then a much more careful search of the camp, it appeared that every single one of the patients and refugees who had been living there had been rounded up and then marched off or choppered out. The infirmary building was empty, the surviving tents were empty, the scrubby playground that had been filled with children earlier in the day was empty.

Sonia had collected herself only slowly after the giant soldier carried Oli away, unable to get him out of her mind. He was a boy composed of pieces just loosely held together, and the centrifugal spin of this latest terror could pull his loose bits apart. No magical belief in hummingbirds and glowworms could put him back together if that happened. Worse, it was Sonia’s own inability to hold him close—her failed grip as she fought the giant soldier—that was the cause of all that.

She returned to the doctors’ quarters and collapsed on her cot, consumed by a hot grief and a cold rage—a grief and rage that left her beyond even tears. She was spent. Worse, she felt defeated—wholly, helplessly defeated. Then—only then—did her own words come back to her: I’ll make them pay.

They had killed Annie. They had killed Oli’s family. They had ripped Oli from her very arms. And she was lying on a cot in her quarters, trying to cry. At that, Sonia’s sorrow and anger tipped into something else entirely—to an electric sense of furious purpose. She leapt from her cot, sprinted back to the center of the camp, and quickly joined one of the three groups of doctors conducting the search for hidden survivors. She then helped muster teams to repitch tents, pick up furniture, and collect the spilled contents of the cabinets and shelves. The work needed to be done quickly because the staffers knew they would not be alone here for long.

The 1,243 people who had been taken would soon be replaced by another thousand or two and then another and then another.

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