No Immunity

casino. He ran down the hall, flinging open doors.
    “Hombres! Carlos! Juan!” No answer. Of course no answer, idiot!
    They were in a tiny examination room, lying on the floor like rags. Neither looked up. Not normal. Somehow-—maybe they felt the air move—they’d always known when he’d come in, even if their eyes were closed. Christ, they should feel the alarm; half of Vegas could hear it.
    He grabbed Juan’s shoulders. The boy’s eyes opened and faded closed. He was burning up. “Damn!” What the hell was Louisa doing letting them burn up?
    The alarm seared his ears. Carlos rolled limply onto his back. Hummacher gasped. The boy’s face was masked in blood.
    He scooped the boy up and ran for the truck. Dammit, why didn’t he have a shell on the back? He couldn’t put the hombres in the open bed. The cab seat was too small, but it would have to do. He dropped Carlos in, and raced back into the clinic. The braying alarm rasped his skin. He almost missed the rise of the police siren.
    Juan’s skin looked as if it had been inflated, his wade face ballooned, his neck swollen out to his ears. Grady gasped. The boy was bleeding from the eyes. The alarm screamed. Grady picked Juan up and ran, tripping over the doorstep, grabbing the banister, landing hard on the asphalt.
    The siren died, then rose, loud as the alarm.
    Hummacher jammed the gearshift into reverse. “Hombres. Have to get them out... get them safe. To a real hospital.”
    They lay like rag dolls, half off the seat. He hit the brake, shifted to first, and floored the pedal. Their heads banged against the door panel.
    He made the first right, flinging their heads into his lap. He braced them with his arm and took a left. He’d lost track of where he was. Vegas wasn’t his city. Off the main streets he was useless. Didn’t matter. Only mattered to slow down, look innocent.
    He pulled the boys closer. They felt like hot coals against his jacket. They didn’t even groan. God, he would have felt better if they’d groaned. He should never have brought them here, exposed them, made them sick. The windows were shut tight and the air was thick. He was so tired. He grasped the steering wheel harder and squinted into the dark, looking for a hospital sign.
    They had been fine at the picnic just two days ago. Louisa had said they’d love the spot. An acre of lash green, a veritable rain forest, three hours north of Vegas. Who would think any amount of cash could create that? When the hombres saw it Monday, they’d rubbed their faces against the thick, meaty tropical leaves, they’d rolled in the soft ground> their eyes had the same sparkle of that first sight of neon.
    They’d been so happy. Why wouldn’t he expect things to work out for them here?
    His head throbbed, his thoughts were tumbling over each other. He had to concentrate. In a few minutes he’d have the boys at a hospital and everything would be all right.
    Hospital. He couldn’t go there, and he couldn’t leave them there to be turned in to the INS. If Juan and Carlos were contagious, the INS would round up everyone with a sniffle in the barrio and fling them over the border before they could pull out a hanky. For sick immigrants, particularly ones with questionable papers, a hospital was the last place to be.
    Then where? It was so hard to think. His apartment? No, definitely not there. He couldn’t swear he’d be safe there himself. And he had to get back to Yaviza to finish negotiations. “Fifty million dollars,” he said aloud, as if the vibrations made the words more real than the two searing, sweaty heads and the blood soaking into his jacket. His share would buy them every doctor in the state. He just needed a couple days more, then he could nurse them around the clock.
    He jerked to a stop at a red light. The street lamp shone down on their swollen, bloody faces. “Oh, God,” he muttered. For an instant the panic dissipated. His mind was clear and he knew he’d been feeding himself a line. What the boys had w as no flu. He had never seen anything like it. He had heard of plagues in South America that swept through villages leaving everyone there swollen, bloody, and dead. They would still be spreading if the villages weren’t isolated and the governments hadn’t closed the only roads to lead in or out.
    The boys, he had to focus on the boys! If he took them to his apartment, they’d die. But if this was some strange virus from the rain forest, the Las Vegas doctors