She hefted her pack higher on the shoulder. “I’m coming.”
Despite her steady voice, she let Ang Gelu go first.
He crossed around behind the Buddha statue to an arched doorway near the back. He pushed through a drape of gold-embroidered brocade. A small hallway led deeper into the structure. Shuttered windows allowed a few slivers of light into the dusty gloom. They illuminated a whitewashed wall. The splash of crimson and smear along one wall did not require closer inspection.
Blood.
A pair of slack naked legs stuck out of a doorway halfway down the hall…resting in a black pool. Ang Gelu motioned her back into the temple. She shook her head and moved past him. She didn’t expect to save whoever lay there. It was plain he must already be dead. But instinct drew her forward. In five strides, she was at the body.
In a heartbeat, she took in the scene and fell back.
Legs. That’s all there was left of the man. Only a pair of chopped limbs, cleaved midthigh. She stared deeper into the room—into the slaughterhouse. Arms and legs lay stacked like cords of firewood in the center of the room.
And then there were the severed heads, neatly aligned along one wall, staring inward, eyes wide with the horror of it all.
Ang Gelu was at her side. He stiffened at the sight and mumbled something that sounded like half prayer, half curse.
As if hearing him, something stirred in the room. It rose from the far side of the pile of limbs. A naked figure, shaven-headed, drenched in blood like a newborn. It was one of the temple’s monks.
A guttural hiss rose from the figure. Madness shone damply. Eyes caught the meager light and reflected back, like a wolf at night.
It lumbered toward them, dragging a three-foot-long sickle across the planks. Lisa fled several steps down the hall. Ang Gelu spoke softly, palms raised in supplication, plainly trying to placate the ravening creature.
“Relu Na,” he said. “Relu Na.”
Lisa realized Ang Gelu recognized the madman, someone he knew from an earlier visit to the monastery. The simple act of giving the man a name both humanized him and made the awfulness all that more horrific.
With a grating cry, the monk leaped at his fellow brother. Ang Gelu easily ducked the sickle. The figure’s coordination had deteriorated along with his mind. Ang Gelu bear-hugged the other, grappling him, pinning him to one side of the doorframe.
Lisa acted quickly. She dropped her pack, tugged down a zipper, and removed a metal case. She popped it open with her thumb.
Inside lay a row of plastic syringes, secured and preloaded with various emergency drugs: morphine for pain, epinephrine for anaphylaxis, Lasix for pulmonary edema. Though each syringe was labeled, she had their positions memorized. In an emergency, every second counted. She plucked out the last syringe.
Midazolam. Injectable sedative. Mania and hallucinations were not uncommon at severe altitudes, requiring chemical restraint at times.
Using her teeth, she uncapped the needle and hurried forward.
Ang Gelu had the man still trapped, but the monk thrashed and bucked in his grip. Ang Gelu’s lip was split. He had gouges along one side of his neck.
“Hold him still!” Lisa yelled.
Ang Gelu tried his best—but at that moment, perhaps sensing the doctor’s intent, the madman lashed forward and bit deep into Ang Gelu’s cheek.
The monk screamed as his flesh was torn to bone.
But he still held tight.
Lisa rushed to his aid and jammed the needle into the madman’s neck. She slammed the plunger home. “Let him go!”
Ang Gelu shoved the man hard against the frame, cracking the monk’s skull against the wood. They backed away.
“The sedative will hit him in less than a minute.” She would have preferred an intravenous stick, but there was no way to manage that with the man’s wild thrashings. The deep intramuscular injection would have to suffice. Once quieted, she would be able to finesse her care, perhaps glean some answers.
The naked monk groaned, pawing at his neck. The sedative stung. He lurched again in their direction, reaching down again for his abandoned sickle. He straightened.
Lisa tugged Ang Gelu back. “Just wait—”
—crack—
The rifle blast deafened in the narrow hall. The monk’s head exploded in a shower of blood and bone. His body fell back with the impact, crumpling under him.
Lisa and Ang Gelu stared aghast at the shooter.
The Nepalese soldier held his weapon on his shoulder. He slowly lowered it. Ang Gelu began berating him in his native tongue, all but taking the weapon from the soldier.
Lisa crossed to the body and checked for a pulse. None. She stared at his body, trying to determine some answer. It would take a morgue with modern forensic facilities to ascertain the cause for the madness. From the messenger’s story, whatever had occurred here hadn’t affected just the one man. Others must have been afflicted to varying degrees.
But by what? Had they been exposed to some heavy metal in the water, a subterranean leak of poisonous gas, or some toxic mold in old grain? Could it be something viral, like Ebola? Or even a new form of mad cow disease? She tried to remember if yaks were susceptible. She pictured the bloated carcass in the courtyard. She didn’t know.
Ang Gelu returned to her side. His cheek was a bloody ruin, but he seemed oblivious to his injury. All his pain was focused on the body beside her.
“His name was Relu Na Havarshi.”
“You knew him.”
A nod. “He was my sister’s husband’s cousin. From a small rural village in Raise. He had fallen under the sway of the Maoist rebels, but their escalating savagery was not in his nature. He fled. For the rebels, it was a death sentence to do so. To hide him, I secured him a position at the monastery…where his former comrades would never find him. Here, he found a serene place to heal…or so I had prayed. Now he will have to find his own path to that peace.”
“I’m sorry.”
Lisa stood. She pictured the pile of limbs in the neighboring room. Had the madness triggered some post-traumatic shock, causing him to act out what horrified him the most?
Overhead another popping creak sounded.
All eyes turned upward.
She had forgotten what had drawn them all back here. Ang Gelu pointed to a steep narrow stair beside the draped doorway to the temple. She had missed it. It was more a ladder than a stair.
“I will go,” he said.
“We all stick together,” she argued. She crossed to her bag and preloaded another syringe of sedative. She kept it in her hand. “Just make sure Quick Draw McGraw over there keeps his finger off the trigger.”
The soldier went up the ladder first. He scouted the immediate vicinity and waved them up. Lisa climbed and discovered an empty room. Stacks of thin pillows were piled in one corner. The room smelled of resin and the waft of incense from the temple room below.
The soldier had his weapon trained on a wooden door on the far side. Flickering light leaked under the jam. Before anyone could move closer, a shadow passed across the bar of light.
Someone was in there.
Ang Gelu stepped forward and knocked.
The creaking halted.
He called through the door. Lisa didn’t understand his words, but someone else did. A scrape of wood sounded. A latch was lifted. The door teetered slightly open—but no farther.
Ang Gelu put his palm on the door.
“Be careful,” Lisa whispered, tightening her grip on her syringe, her only weapon.
Beside her, the soldier did the same with his rifle.
Ang Gelu pushed the door the rest of the way open. The room beyond was no larger than a walk-in closet. A soiled bed stood in the corner. A small side table supported an oil lamp. The air was ripe with the fetid tang of urine and feces from an open chamber pot at the foot of the bed. Whoever had holed up here had not ventured out in days.
In a corner, an old man stood with his back to them. He wore th
e same red robe as Ang Gelu, but his clothes were ragged and stained. The owner had tied the lower folds around his upper thighs, exposing his bare legs. He worked on a project, writing on the wall. Fingerpainting, in fact.
With his own blood.
More madness.
He carried a short dagger in his other hand. His bared legs were striped with deep cuts, the source of his ink. He continued to work, even as Ang Gelu entered.
“Lama Khemsar,” Ang Gelu said, concern and wariness in his voice.
Lisa entered behind him, syringe ready in her fingers. She nodded to Ang Gelu when he looked back at her. She also waved the soldier back. She didn’t want a repeat of what had happened below.
Lama Khemsar turned. His face was slack, and his eyes appeared glassy and slightly milky, but the candlelight reflected brightly, too brightly, fever-bright.
“Ang Gelu,” the old monk muttered, staring in a daze at the hundreds of lines of script painted across all four walls. A bloody finger raised, ready to continue the work.
Ang Gelu stepped toward him, plainly relieved. The man, master of the monastery, was not too far gone yet. Perhaps answers could be obtained. Ang Gelu spoke in their native tongue.
Lama Khemsar nodded, though he refused to be drawn from his opus in blood. Lisa studied the wall as Ang Gelu coaxed the old monk. Though she was not familiar with the script, she saw the work was merely the same grouping of symbols repeated over and over again.
Sensing there must be some meaning here, Lisa reached to her bag and freed her camera with one hand. She aimed it at the wall from her hip and snapped a picture. She forgot about the flash.
The room burst with brilliance.
The old man cried out. He swung around, dagger in hand. He swiped through the air. Ang Gelu, startled, fell back. But Ang Gelu had not been the target. Lama Khemsar cried out a smattering of words in abject fear and drew the blade’s edge across his own throat. A line of crimson became a pulsing downpour. The cut sliced deep into the trachea. Blood bubbled with the old monk’s last breaths.
Ang Gelu lunged and knocked aside the blade. He caught Lama Khemsar and lowered him to the floor, cradling him. Blood soaked the robe and across Ang Gelu’s arms and lap.
Lisa dropped her camera and bag and hurried forward. Ang Gelu tried to put pressure on the wound, but it was futile.
“Help me get him to the floor,” Lisa said. “I have to secure an airway…”
Ang Gelu shook his head. He knew it was hopeless. He simply rocked the old lama. The man’s breathing, marked by the bubbling from the slash, had already stopped. Age, blood loss, and dehydration had already debilitated Lama Khemsar.
“I’m sorry,” Lisa said. “I thought…” She waved an arm at the walls. “I thought it might be important.”
Ang Gelu shook his head. “It’s gibberish. A madman’s scribblings.”
Not knowing what else to do, Lisa freed her stethoscope and slipped it under the edge of the man’s robe. She sought to mask her guilt with busywork. She listened in vain. No heartbeat. But she discovered odd scabbing across the man’s ribs. Gently she peeled back the soaked front of his robe and bared the monk’s chest.
Ang Gelu stared down and exhaled sharply.
It seemed the walls were not the only medium upon which Lama Khemsar chose to work. A final symbol had been carved into the monk’s chest, sliced by the same dagger, by the same hand most likely. Unlike the strange symbols on the walls, the twisted cross could not be mistaken.
A swastika.
Before they could react, the first explosion rocked the building.
9:55 A.M.
He woke in a panic.
The rumble of thunder shook him out of a feverish darkness. Not thunder. An explosion. Plaster dusted down from the low ceiling. He sat up, disoriented, struggling to fix himself in time and place. The room spun a bit around him. He searched down, throwing back a soiled woolen blanket. He lay in a strange cot, wearing nothing but a linen breechclout. He lifted an arm. It trembled. His mouth tasted of warm paste, and though the room was shuttered against the light, his eyes ached. A paroxysmal bout of shivering shook through him.
He had no idea where or even when he was.
Shifting his legs off the cot, he attempted to stand. Bad idea. The world went black again. He slumped and would have slipped into oblivion, but a spat of gunfire centered him. Automatic fire. Close. The short burst died away.
He tried again, more determined. Memory returned as he lurched toward the only door, struck it, held himself up by his arms, and tried the knob.
Locked.
9:57 A.M.
“It was the helicopter,” Ang Gelu said. “It’s been destroyed.”
Lisa stood to one side of the high window. Moments before, as the explosive blast echoed away, they had freed the window latches and shoved the shutters wide. The soldier had thought he’d seen movement in the courtyard below and strafed wildly.
There was no return fire.
“Could it have been the pilot?” Lisa asked. “Maybe there was a problem with the engine and he evacuated in a panic.”
The soldier kept his post by the window, resting his stock on the sill, one eye to the scope, scanning and sweeping.
Ang Gelu pointed to the roil of oily smoke rising from the potato fields. Exactly where the helicopter had been parked. “I don’t believe that was a mechanical accident.”
“What do we do now?” Lisa asked. Had another of the crazed monks blown up the chopper? If so, how many other maniacs were loose in the monastery? She pictured the sickle-wielding wild man, the self-mutilation of the monk…what the hell was happening here?
“We must leave,” Ang Gelu said.
“And go where?”
“There are tiny villages and occasional homesteads within a day’s walk. Whatever has transpired here will require more than three people to discern.”
“What of the others here? Some may not be as far gone as your brother-in-law’s cousin. Should we not try to help them?”
“My first concern must be for your safety, Dr. Cummings. Additionally word must reach someone in authority.”
“But what if whatever agent struck here is contagious? We could spread it by traveling.”
The monk fingered his wounded cheek. “With the helicopter destroyed, we have no means of communication. If we stay here, we die, too…and no word reaches the outside world.”
He made a good point.
“We can minimize our exposure to others until we know more,” he continued. “Call out for help, but maintain a safe distance.”
“No physical contact,” she mumbled.
He nodded. “The information we bear is worth the risk.”
Lisa slowly nodded. She stared at the column of black smoke against the blue sky. Possibly one of their party was already dead. There was no telling the true number of afflicted here. The explosion would surely have roused others. If they were to make their escape, it would have to be quickly.
“Let’s go,” she said.
Ang Gelu spoke sharply to the soldier. He straightened with a nod and retreated from his post at the window, his gun at the ready.
Lisa gave the room and the monk one last worried glance, considering the possibility of contagion. Were they already infected? She found herself internally judging her status as she followed the others out of the room and down the ladder. Her mouth was dry, her jaw muscles ached, and her pulse beat heavily in her throat. But that was just the fear, wasn’t it? A typical flight-or-fight response to the situation, normal autonomic responses. She touched her forehead. Damp, but not feverish. She took a deep breath to steady herself, to recognize the foolishness. Even if the agent was infectious, the incubation period would be longer than an hour.
They crossed through the main temple with its teak Buddha and attendant gods. Daylight glared exceptionally bright through the doorway.
Their armed escort checked the courtyard for a full minute, then waved an all clear. Lisa and Ang Gelu follow
ed.
As Lisa stepped into the courtyard, she searched the dark corners for sudden movement. All seemed quiet again.
But not for long…
With her back turned, a second detonation tore through the building across the courtyard. The force blew her to her hands and knees. She ducked, rolling on one shoulder to stare behind her.
Roof tiles sailed skyward amid flames. A pair of fireballs blasted out of shattered windows, while the door to the lodge exploded into a splintery ruin, belching out more smoke and fire. Heat washed over her like the exhalation from a blast furnace.
The soldier, a few steps ahead, had been knocked onto his backside by the blast. He’d kept his gun only by locking his fingers on its leather strap. He scrambled up as a rain of broken tiles fell from the sky.
Ang Gelu gained his own feet and offered a hand to Lisa.
It was his undoing.
A sharper blast punctuated the clatter of tiles and roar of flames. A gunshot. The upper half of the monk’s face blew away in a mist of blood.
But this time it was not the handiwork of her armed escort.
The soldier’s rifle still hung from its strap as the man fled the rain of stone tiles. He seemed deaf to the shot, but his eyes widened as Ang Gelu toppled over. Reacting on pure reflex, he dodged to the right, throwing himself into the shadow of the neighboring lodge. He yelled at Lisa, unintelligible in his panic.
Lisa crab-crawled back toward the temple doorway. Another shot sparked off the rocky courtyard. At her toes. She flung herself across the threshold and into the dark interior.
Ducking around a corner, she watched the soldier sidle along the wall, careful to keep clear of where he estimated the sniper might be perched.
Lisa forgot how to breathe, eyes fixed wide. She searched the rooflines, the windows. Who had shot Ang Gelu?
Then she saw him.
A shadow sprinted through the smoke billowing out of the far building. She caught a reflection of flames off gunmetal as the man ran. A weapon. The sniper had fled his original position and was tacking for a new vantage.