Noam lingered after lessons every day, hoping Lehrer would give another hint (or another note, or another several notes), but Lehrer seemed to have said all he planned to on the matter. As if oblivious to how much mental energy Noam spent trying to decrypt his code, Lehrer even gave him just as much homework as usual—on top of everything his new regular teachers assigned.
A week later, there was another outbreak of the virus.
Magic hit a refugee camp near the coast, piling up so many bodies that the local authorities couldn’t burn them quickly enough. Without any safe way to transport patients to the major hospitals in Richmond or Raleigh, Sacha declared a state of emergency. That meant resources pouring east, and those resources included as many witching students and soldiers as Lehrer could spare.
After the plane landed, the cadets were ushered into army trucks that carried them over broken roads, every pothole jostling them against the fabric walls and adding salt to the nausea that swelled up in Noam’s stomach, bilious and thick. He was grateful when they finally came to a shuddering stop. Or, he was grateful until he took a breath and his lungs filled with the stench of blood and vomit and rotting flesh.
Next to him, a Charleston cadet retched, lurching forward over his knees. Luckily, nothing came out. Noam pressed a hand over his nose and mouth, breathing in shallow little gulps of his own humid air.
“What the hell is that?” someone said in a thin voice.
The driver drew back the curtain at the rear of the truck, and they found out.
The dirt streets of the camp were crowded with huge white tents constructed of some material thicker than canvas, each tent opening on to a little courtyard filled with tables and chairs and soldiers milling about. The source of the smell was obvious. At the rear of each pair of tents, piles of black body bags awaited incineration, buzzing with flies.
“God,” Bethany said from just over Noam’s shoulder as they jumped out of the truck. “Whatisthis? Where are the red wards?”
“Not enough room,” Dara said. Noam hadn’t even noticed him coming up, and now he stood just to Noam’s right, looking out at the street and its tents stretching as far as the eye could see. “Backwater places like this, they run out of space in the red wards fast, especially in a bad outbreak.”
“And especially when the patients are refugees,” Noam added, heart a stone in his chest. “Better save space for the people you actually want to survive.”
Dara and Bethany exchanged looks, but Noam didn’t care if they thought he was militant. They hadn’t read those emails. They hadn’t grown up in places like this.
He couldn’t imagine a worse place for an outbreak than a refugee camp. Close quarters and high population, poor access to health care or hygiene facilities. The tents probably made things even worse. Even though they made volunteers shower when they entered the wards and when they left—even when they sprayed them all with decontamination fluid—those seemed like half measures compared to what was possible in an actual hospital. Here, they couldn’t even filter the airflow.
The soldiers split the cadets up into platoons, assigning three platoons per tent. Noam’s group was under Colonel Swensson’s command, which was just Noam’s luck because Swensson hated him.
“Listen up!” Swensson said. He didn’t even have to raise his voice to get their attention. “You might be immune to the virus, but you still have to follow hygiene protocol. That means washing your hands before and after each patient. Use full decontamination procedure when entering and leaving the ward. Wear gloves and a face mask, always. You might not be able to get sick, but you can still get other people sick if you’re carrying virus particles around on your skin and hair and clothing. Understand?”
He waited for them all to shout, “Yes, sir!” before going on.
“Good. You’d better. Now, the staff tell you to do something, you do it. No questions asked. These people are risking their lives to help in this crisis, and they know more than you. Respect that.”
With that, he funneled them past the gate, through decontamination, then across the courtyard toward their assigned tents. Stepping through that door was like stepping onto another planet. Noam would never have thought they could cram so many beds into such a small area, except they did, just enough room left between the mattresses to stand. A couple soldiers milled about carrying linens or jugs of water. Amid them drifted doctors and nurses wearing what looked like space suits. The smell was stronger here, reeking of the latrine buckets and the sick, sweaty bodies of the patients on their cots, interspersed with the chlorine scent of bleach.
The ground underfoot sprouted with flowers: magical little buds of gold and silver that moved without breeze, glittering petals spiraling up into the air. They weren’t real—when he reached out to touch them, they dissolved in a shower of sparks. When Noam inhaled, their magic was spun sugar on his tongue.
He was assigned to Dr. Halsing, as were Bethany and Taye. It was impossible to tell what kind of woman Dr. Halsing was behind all that protective gear: her eyes were the only thing visible, glinting above her paper face mask and shielded by the lenses of her plastic goggles. She’d never been infected.
“You’ll be helping me with patient care today,” she said, voice muffled. “Have you been through training?”
The others nodded, but Noam shook his head. Halsing muttered something behind her mask, possibly a curse.
“I know we’re shorthanded, but...well, you’re what we’ve got, and it’s better than nothing. Come on. I’ll show you our patients.”
There were six. Noam repeated their names over and over in his mind so he wouldn’t forget:Martha, Shaqwan, Lola, Amy, William, Beatriz. Most were too sick for it to matter, drifting deep in comatose waters. He dabbed the crusted blood from the corners of their mouths and moved sharp objects out of the way when they had seizures, kept an eye out for rogue magic with a habit of setting bedsheets ablaze.
The little girl was the best off. Beatriz King. Bea. She still hovered on the knife-edge of consciousness, tipping over to one side or the other from time to time. When they first met her, she was sitting up in bed, hair damp with sweat and pulled back from her face, a bucket between her knees and a book resting against her thighs. She put the book down when the doctor needed to check her heart and lungs, though no one needed a stethoscope to hear the way air rattled in her chest.
“How are you feeling?” Bethany asked, sitting on the edge of the bed.
“All right,” Bea said. Even her voice was weak, like watered-down tea. “Who are you?”
“I’m Bethany. This is Noam and Taye. We’re helping Dr. Halsing today.”
“You don’t have those big space suits,” she said, pointing at Bethany. “You’re going to get sick.”
“We’ve already been sick,” Taye reassured her. He angled his body away from her all the same.
