Thunderhead

There was movement in the doorway, then Aragon was beside her. “Hold my light, please,” he said calmly, laying two canvas duffels on the floor, opening one of them, and removing a light. “Dr. Goddard, could you please bring the fluorescent lantern? And the rest of you, please step outside.”

Nora trained the light on Holroyd, his eyes glassy, pupils narrowed to pinpoints. “Peter, Enrique’s here to help you,” she murmured, taking his hand in hers. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

Aragon pressed his hands beneath Holroyd’s jaw, probed his chest and abdomen, then pulled a stethoscope and blood pressure cuff from the duffel and began to check his vital signs. As the doctor opened Holroyd’s shirt and pressed the stethoscope to his chest, Nora saw to her horror a scattering of dark lesions across the pale skin.

“What is it?” Nora said.

Aragon just shook his head and shouted for Black. “I want the rest of you to get a tarp, ropes, poles, anything we can use for a stretcher—and tell Bonarotti to get some water boiling.”

Aragon peered intently back into Holroyd’s face, then examined the man’s fingertips. “He’s cyanotic,” he murmured, fishing in one of the duffels and pulling out a slender oxygen tank and a pair of nasal ca

There was the sound of feet, then Sloane returned with the lantern. Suddenly, the room was bathed in chill greenish light. Aragon pulled the stethoscope from his ears and looked up.

“We’ve got to get him down into camp,” he said. “This man needs to go to a hospital immediately.”

Sloane shook her head. “The communications gear is completely trashed. The only thing still functioning is the weather receiver.”

“Can we cobble something together?” Nora asked.

“Only Peter could answer that question,” Sloane replied.

“What about the cell phone?” Aragon asked. “How far to the nearest area of coverage?”

“Up around Escalante,” said Sloane. “Or back at Wahweap Marina.”

“Then get Swire on a horse, give him the phone, and tell him to get going. Tell him to call for a helicopter.”

There was silence. “There’s no place to land a helicopter,” Nora said slowly. “The canyons are too narrow, the updrafts on the clifftops too precarious. I looked into that very thoroughly when I was pla

Aragon looked at Peter, then looked back at Nora. “Are you absolutely certain?”

“The closest settlement is three days’ ride from here. We can’t take him out on horseback?”

Aragon gazed at Peter again, then shook his head. “It would kill him.”

Smithback and Black appeared in the doorway, carrying between them a crude stretcher of tarps lashed to two wooden poles. Moving quickly, they set Holroyd’s rigid body on the stretcher, restraining him with ropes. Then, carefully, they hoisted him from the ground and carried him out into the central plaza.

Aragon followed them with his kit, despair on his face. As they came out from beneath the shadow of the overhanging rock and approached the rope ladder, Nora felt a cold drop on her arm, then another. It was begi

Suddenly Holroyd gave a strangled cough. His eyes bulged wider still, ringed red with panic, searching aimlessly. His lips trembled, as if he was trying to force speech from a paralyzed jaw. His limbs seemed to stretch, stiffening even further. The ropes restraining him creaked and sighed.

Instantly, Aragon ordered them to ease the stretcher to the ground. He knelt at Holroyd’s chest, fumbling in his duffels at the same time. Instruments went clattering to one side as he pulled out an endotrachial tube, attached to a black rubber bag.

Holroyd’s jaws worked. “I let you down, Nora,” came a strangled whisper.

Immediately, Nora took his hand once again. “Peter, that’s not true. If it weren’t for you, none of us would have found Quivira. You’re the whole reason we’re here.”

Peter began to struggle with more words, but Nora gently touched his lips. “Save your strength,” she whispered.

“I’m going to have to tube him,” Aragon said, gently laying Holroyd’s head back and snaking the clear plastic down into his lungs. He pressed the ambu bag into Nora’s hands. “Squeeze this every five seconds,” he said, dropping his ear to Holroyd’s chest. He listened, motionless, for a long moment. Another tremor passed through Holroyd’s body, and his eyes rolled up. Aragon straightened up and, with violent heaves, began emergency heart massage.

As if in a dream, Nora sat beside Holroyd, filling his lungs, willing him to breathe, as the rain picked up, trickling down her face and arms. There were no sounds except for the patter of the rain, the cracking thumps of Aragon’s fists, the sigh of the ambu bag.

Then, it was over. Aragon sat back, agonized face drenched with rain and sweat. He looked briefly up at the sky, unseeing, and let his face sink into his hands. Holroyd was dead.

39

AN HOUR LATER, THE ENTIRE EXPEDITION had gathered around the campfire in silence. Swire joined them, wet from the slot canyon. The rain had ended, but the afternoon sky was smeared with metal-colored clouds. The air carried the mingled scents of ozone and humidity.

Nora glanced at each haggard face in turn. Their expressions betrayed the same emotions she felt: numbness, shock, disbelief. Her own feelings were augmented by an overpowering sense of guilt. She’d approached Holroyd. She’d convinced him to come along. And, in some unconscious way, she realized she had manipulated his feelings for her to further her own goal of finding the city. Her eyes strayed toward the sealed tent that now held his body. Oh, Peter, she thought. Please forgive me.

Only Bonarotti continued with business as usual, thumping a hard salami down on his serving table and setting loaves of fresh bread beside it. Seeing that nobody was inclined to partake, the cook flung one leg over the other, leaned back, and lit a cigarette.

Nora licked her lips. “Enrique,” she began, careful to keep her voice even, “what can you tell us?”

Aragon looked up, his black eyes unreadable. “Not nearly as much as I would like. I didn’t expect to be performing any postmortems out here, and my diagnostic tools are limited. I’ve cultured him up—blood, sputum, urine—and I’ve stained and sectioned some tissue. I took some exudate from the skin lesions. But so far the results are inconclusive.”

“What could have killed him so fast?” Sloane asked.

Aragon turned his dark eyes to her. “That’s what makes diagnosis so difficult. In his last minutes, there were signs of cyanosis and acute dyspnea. That would indicate pneumonia, but pneumonia would not present that quickly. Then there was the acute paralysis . . .” He fell silent for a moment. “Without access to a laboratory, I can’t do a tap or a gastric wash, let alone an autopsy.”

“What I want to know,” Black said, “was whether this is infectious. Whether others might have been exposed.”

Aragon sighed and stared at the ground. “It’s hard to say. But so far, the evidence doesn’t point in that direction. Perhaps the crude bloodwork I’ve done, or the antibody tests, will tell us more. I’ve got test cultures growing in petri dishes on the off chance it is some infectious agent. I really hate to speculate . . .” His voice trailed off.

“Enrique, I think we need to hear your speculations,” Nora said quietly.

“Very well. If you asked me for my initial impression—it happened so fast, I would say it looked more like acute poisoning than disease.”

Nora looked at Aragon in sudden horror.

“Poisoning?” Black cried, visibly recoiling. “Who could have wanted to poison Peter?”