H10N1 Read Online Free Page A

it up her throat. She swallowed hard. “This is W2TMS calling K6MAI…”
    “Taeya, is that you?” a voice crackled through the radio.
    “Mai! Thank God!” The sound of a friendly voice brought some of the feeling back to her fingertips. She exhaled a lungful of tension. “I’ve been trying to reach you for days. Are you all right?”
    “I couldn’t be better.” Mai squawked out a laugh
    Her friend’s cheeriness annoyed Taeya. “Are things going that well out there?”
    The radio sputtered and popped. Whatever Mai replied was floating somewhere in the sky between New York and Arizona. Taeya lowered the volume until the static died down.
    At least her friend was still alive. And it sounded like she was doing well. How did Mai always manage to pull some crazy stunt and make it work? She’d met some guy over the shortwave radio and just took off for Arizona like a mail-order bride.
    Taeya drained her glass. Mai had done the same thing with Jason. How long had she known him? Six days? She’d met him one drunken night at a club in Jakarta and by the next weekend, they were married. If he hadn’t been re-stationed in Teheran and gotten blown to bits, they might still be together.
    The radio buzzed on, so Taeya poured another glass of wine. Who was she to judge Mai? A month after Taeya joined Randall’s team, she was bouncing over dirt roads with him, on the way to Puttalam, Sri Lanka for a quick marriage ceremony. People didn’t love each other so much as they needed each other, to keep sane.
    She flicked off the radio and turned it back on. The static continued. Annoyed, she turned it off. Maybe she would try again later, although she wasn’t sure what the point was in telling Mai she’d been dismissed, unless it was a little self-castigation. She decided it might be better if Mai’s last memory of Taeya was not about her ultimate failure.
    Taeya propped her head on her hand, tipped the bottle and dribbled out the last of the wine. Her hopeless situation pushed its way to the front of her mind. Every VIP in the Northeast was heading for the Medical Center with the intentions of bribing Sherman for a room. She scanned her tiny quarters, wondering if some city council member or basketball star would soon occupy it. Until this afternoon, she might have had a chance at one of the remaining nursing positions, but she’d made sure that wouldn’t happen.
    She sucked the last of the wine out of the cup, and banged the plastic down hard. So, that was it, out on the streets with nowhere to go. She snorted at the idea of Sherman doling out Nexinol as their severance package.
    When she stood, the wine went to her head. Gripping the chair back, she steadied herself. Her legs wobbled, but her mind was rolling. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of dismissing her. The words echoed in her head before she even knew they were forming. I’m out of here .
    The thought startled her. Where would she go? Out to Arizona? She squeezed her eyes against bombarding thoughts: vehicles in the parking garage, food supplies in the kitchen, long stretches of deserted highway. Impossible. It would never work. There were too many contingencies. The odds were against her even getting out of the building undetected.
    But there didn’t seem to be an alternative. She doubted Sherman would even let her stay to cook or clean toilets. Not that she could handle that kind of daily humiliation. Fear churned in her stomach once again. Maybe she should just pop a Nexinol and give it up. Absolutely not!
    Taeya checked her watch. 12:45. One thing was certain. If this was going to work, she had to sober up. She headed for the shower.
     
    Her wet hair dripped down her back. Using the sleeve of her terry cloth robe, Taeya squeezed out more water. She dragged a pair of blue jeans off a hanger and stuffed them into a duffle bag, then surveyed her empty closet. That was everything. Most of her adult life, she’d been traveling light, jumping from