Burn Read Free

some time. Besides, this old 737 takes too much runway for the lift pad at ViraVax. There you need the Mongoose, a chopper or a parachute.”
    Most of the bottled water was loaded already, along with a dozen pallets covered with chill-coats. All that remained were these last two. The loadmaster tapped his Sidekick display that showed his shipping manifest.
    “Isn’t the Lord’s work the greatest job?” he asked, and flashed a genuine smile. “Look what I get to send out into the world: the purest water, medicines, vaccines. I like a job where I get to be the good guy.”
    “What did you do before you joined the Church?”
    The loadmaster ducked his head, scuffed a boot on the concrete.
    “Point man for the Latin Death Boys in Tacoma.”
    This was the kind of story that Isaac wanted: “Vicious Gangbanger Redeemed.” These real-life uplifting stories reaffirmed, for Isaac, a flagging faith. But the Godwire stringers got the human interest. Isaac and Mirian got the Master, and Isaac tried his best to accept the honor with grace. Mirian, however, grumbled the whole way that they were nothing more than cogs in a two-bit propaganda machine.
    The loadmaster signaled the forklift operator, who tilted the forks back with a jerk and tumbled one of the luggage-sized stainless containers from under the blanket to the concrete. Condensation beaded the outside of the box immediately, and several smaller, thermos-like containers rolled out of the sprung lid.
    Isaac saw that each bottle was marked with the characteristic “V/V” and a lot number. He also saw that Mirian was filming with the low-light unit.
    “What’s this?” he asked.
    The loadmaster checked his manifest.
    “Some kind of vaccine. Goes to World Health Organization in Mexico City for distribution. Those other pallets”—he indicated a row of cartons lining one wall—“those are the EdenSprings water shipments, for the Sabbath ritual up north and for the airlines.”
    “And those?” Isaac asked. He pointed to a palletload of larger cases covered with a chill-coat.
    “ ‘Vaccine components’ is all it says here,” the loadmaster said. “Those go back to the U.S. of A.”
    He turned his back on Isaac, then, and directed the loading of the smudge-winged cargo jet. Already Mirian was behind the stack of larger cases and under the chill-coat, out of sight of security and the flight crew.
    “What’re you doing in there?” Isaac whispered.
    “Snooping,” she said. “Isn’t that what real reporters do?”
    Before he could object, Isaac heard the click of a latch, then a gasp.
    “Omigod!” Mirian whispered. “Omigod!”
    She burrowed farther under the heavy, cold blanket and shifted her feet. Isaac almost allowed himself to think that Mirian had a cute little butt.
    She wriggled out from under the chill-coat wide-eyed, her palm-cam still recording, her face whiter than he’d ever seen it.
    “What is it?”
    Mirian pulled him by the sleeve and walked him to their cots. She plugged a small preview screen into the palmcam and took a deep breath.
    “This is weird,” she said. “This is way weird.”
    She pressed “play,” and the screen showed the lid of the metal case lift a little bit, displaying what appeared to be tidy packages of raw meat in some kind of solution.
    But we’re all vegetarians, he thought.
    Then the palm-cam grabbed a close focus, and he saw a dozen neatly packaged hearts, just the size of human hearts, each awash in a very cold, clear liquid. A label on the closest package read: “15 y.o. male.” The lid dropped shut and clicked into place. A stencil on the top read: “MH, 12 ea., 3/27/15.” As the palm-cam pulled back, Isaac glimpsed the markings on the adjacent case: “FL, 4 ea., 3/27/15.” Mirian’s hand opened the latch, and he saw four livers packaged in the same clear solution.
    Isaac took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and tried to drown out the voice in his brain that screamed, “Twelve male hearts, four