Read Chapter 13: The First Fever

The scream tore through the building at 3 a.m. It wasn't the usual nightmare-shriek of a child startled awake—this was thin, ragged, and wet, the sound of a small body fighting for air.

Camille was already moving before her eyes fully opened, her feet finding her shoes in the dark. She'd been sleeping in her clothes for a week. The stairwell echoed with Mireille's voice, the young mother on the third floor, her words dissolving into sobs.

"Camille! Camille, please—"

She took the stairs two at a time, her medical bag slung over her shoulder. Julien was behind her, barefoot, his flashlight cutting through the gloom. Whatever had changed between them in the pharmacy supply room—that fragile, terrified intimacy—it had turned into something practical now. He moved when she moved. He didn't ask questions.

The door to 3B hung open. Mireille stood over a mattress in the corner, her hands pressed to her mouth. On the mattress lay her son, Theo, five years old. His face was the color of candle wax, his lips cracked, his small chest heaving with each strained breath. Camille knelt and pressed her palm to his forehead.

Heat radiated off him like a stove. She pulled her hand back, already reaching for her bag.

"How long?"

"I don't know," Mireille said. "He was warm when I put him to bed. I thought it was the night air. I gave him water. But then he started shaking—"

Camille unzipped the bag. Antibiotics: gone. Antipyretics: gone. She'd given the last of the paracetamol to Madame Osei's grandson on Tuesday, and the amoxicillin had run out four days ago. She sorted through the remaining gauze, the antiseptic, the bandages—everything useless, everything meant for wounds, not fevers.

"Do you have a thermometer?"

Mireille shook her head.

Camille pressed the back of her hand to Theo's neck, then his chest. The heat was worse there, radiating out from his lungs. She could hear the rattle when he breathed, the click and wheeze of fluid.

"His lungs are congested," she said, more to herself than to anyone. "Pneumonia, maybe. Or bronchitis. He needs antibiotics."

"Then give them to him," Mireille said. "Give him something."

"I don't have anything left." The words came out flat and clinical, and she hated herself for it. She watched Mireille's face fall apart and forced herself to keep talking. "I can try a herbal poultice for the fever, but it won't treat the infection. I need real medicine."

"Where?" Julien said. He was crouched by the door, keeping watch on the hallway, his voice low.

"The pharmacy on Rue de Charonne, maybe ten minutes from here. There might be stock left—people looted the big chains, but that one is small, tucked away. If we're fast—"

"Then we go now." He was already standing. "Léa." He called down the stairwell, and in moments Léa appeared, looking as pale and sleepless as the rest of them.

"Theo's sick," Julien said. "Camille needs to get to a pharmacy. You're in charge until we get back."

Léa's eyes flicked to the child, then to Camille, and she nodded without argument. "How long?"

"An hour, max," Julien said. "If we're not back by daylight—"

"Take the building." Léa finished the sentence for him. "I know."

Julien grabbed his jacket from the top of the stairs, checked the magazine in his pistol, and looked at Camille. There was no question in his face, no hesitation. Just the flat readiness of a man who had made his peace with risk. "You armed?"

"Yes," she said. The small Glock was cold against her hip.

"Then move."

The streets were darker than she remembered, the blackout having settled into something thicker than the absence of light. Camille knew Paris in the dark—the deep, velvet darkness of a summer night, the silver glow of the moon on the Seine. This wasn't that. This was a darkness that pressed in, that swallowed sound, that made every doorway look like a mouth.

Julien moved ahead of her, his flashlight held low and off, using only ambient moonlight to guide them. She counted street corners by the feel of the cobblestones, by the tilt of the gutters, by the ghost-shapes of familiar storefronts.

"There," she whispered, pointing. The pharmacy was a narrow shop wedged between a closed bakery and a shuttered café. Its metal grille was intact, its door still locked. A small miracle.

Julien reached the door first. He ran his fingers along the lock, then pulled a slim pick from his pocket. "Fire code. Standard." He worked the lock for less than ten seconds, and the door clicked open.

The smell hit her first: the clean, sharp scent of antiseptic, of medicine, of the world she'd spent her adult life inhabiting. She moved down the aisles by feel, her hands finding shelf edges, counting.

Antibiotics. Where would the antibiotics be? Behind the counter, in the cold cabinet, in a locked drawer—the regulations shifted depending on the year. She vaulted the counter, landed in the dark space behind, and felt along the wall until her fingers brushed glass.

Cold cabinet. Still cold. The backup generator must have run out, but the insulation had held. She pulled the door open and reached inside.

The shelf was nearly empty. Boxes of inhalers, a few vials of tetanus toxoid, syringes in sterile packaging. No amoxicillin. No azithromycin. No ciprofloxacin.

"Anything?" Julien called.

She was about to say no when her hand brushed a small box at the very back, half-hidden behind a fallen tray. She lifted it to the moonlight. The label was worn, but she knew the name by heart.

Clarithromycin. A course of it. Fourteen tablets. Enough.

"Got it," she said, her throat tight. "Let's give it to Theo and—"

Gunfire. Close. Three rapid shots, the sound cracking off the building fronts like a whip.

Julien was already at the door, his pistol drawn. "Status?"

"Not our problem," she said, gripping the box. "We go back the way we came. Quiet."

They slipped out of the pharmacy and pressed themselves against the wall. The shots had come from the north, from the direction of their building. Julien's jaw tightened.

"That was near the square," he said. "Our square."

She didn't answer. She was already running.

They reached the block in four minutes, lungs burning. The building stood dark and still, no fires, no bodies in the street. Léa was at the door, her borrowed rifle held across her chest, her face hard.

"Two looters tested the barricade," she said. "I fired a warning shot. They'll think twice."

Theo was still breathing when Camille reached his bedside. Still hot, still rattling, but alive. She crushed a tablet between two spoons and mixed it with water, coaxing the slurry past his lips.

"Keep him upright," she told Mireille. "Keep him drinking. If the fever drops by morning, he'll make it. If it doesn't—"

She didn't finish the sentence. The weight of the "if" hung in the air between them, heavy as the darkness outside.

She found Julien on the roof. He was sitting on the low wall overlooking the square, his legs dangling over the edge. In the distance, more columns of smoke rose against the pre-dawn sky. There were more fires now than there had been yesterday.

"Theo's stable for now," she said, sitting beside him. "The medicine should work."

Julien nodded, but he wasn't looking at her. He pointed to the northeast, where a thin red light cut through the gloom, pulsing in a steady rhythm. A flare.

"That's the direction of Saint-Vincent," he said. "The hospital where Marc's insulin is."

She watched the flare pulse. One, two, three, pause. One, two, three, pause.

"That's not a distress signal," she said slowly. "That's a code. Medical emergency. Someone out there is calling for help."

"Or setting a trap."

"Or both."

Julien turned to look at her. His face was unreadable in the dark, but his voice was steady. "We weren't going to make it to Saint-Vincent before dawn anyway. Not with the route through Sector 4."

She understood what he was saying before he finished the sentence.

"But whoever lit that flare might have. And if they went to Saint-Vincent and came back, or if they're still there—"

"Then they know what's left in that hospital," he finished. "And maybe they know what happened to Marc."

The red light pulsed on, patient, insistent.

Camille looked at Julien. "We have two hours before we have to be gone."

He nodded slowly. "Then let's use them."