The Meeting (Emerge)

by Sunseri, Heather

  “Someone in my family or on Mother’s staff has the Samael Strain.”

  ~~~~~

  My sister Willow stared at me from the isolation room, her eyes red from crying.

  The medics said her fever was holding steady at 101.4, and that the virus hadn’t taken over her body yet. Which, I figured, was why she was still standing.

  The Samael Strain, nicknamed Bad Sam, was named after the doctor in Africa who had first discovered the deadly virus. At least, according to the scientists inside New Caelum. The more popular claim was that the viral death sentence was named for Samael, the archangel of death in some religions. Given my memories and my own studies of the disease, I always thought the latter seemed more fitting.

  On the other side of the glass, a nurse messed with Willow’s bedding while another organized supplies in a cabinet against the wall. Both were dressed in pale blue personal protective suits—a less alarming color than the red hazmat suits of the medics who’d escorted my family to the isolation suite. This wasn’t a standard medical enclosure; it had been specially set up within the government quarters in order to keep this outbreak confidential for as long as possible.

  Willow, who now wore a hospital gown, slipped into the hospital bed with the help of a nurse. Her face was flushed. Her hands shook, causing the IV in her arm to vibrate.

  Dr. Pooley, the doctor in charge of studying the Samael Strain for the past six years—and Willow’s and my biology teacher—spoke to Mother in a room just behind me. He wore white, the color of a successful doctor within our city, but I knew that underneath his protective gear he had donned a combination of doctor-white and black, identifying him as a member of council. Mother stood at the same height as Dr. Pooley, her black business suit and sophisticated high heels screaming power, and the two of them discussed not only the fate of her daughter, but what Willow’s illness meant for tomorrow’s election.

  “She’ll have two nurses assigned to her at all times, Ms. President. She’ll be kept comfortable.” Dr. Pooley spoke through a small microphone in his protective mask.

  The fact that neither Mother nor I wore a hazmat suit made it pretty clear that these would be our quarantine rooms until they could prove that we hadn’t contracted the virus. Fortunately, my mother’s room and mine were side by side and connected with a speaker that allowed us audio contact, so I could listen in on her conversation with the doctor.

  “How close are we to a treatment? What can you do for her?” Mother crossed her arms and stuck a hip out while tapping her foot.

  “As we reported to you last week, ma’am, a treatment is still being tested.”

  “Yes, but you also said that your recent efforts were primarily geared toward developing a vaccine.”

  “With your daughter sick, we’ve altered that plan. But you know what we’ll need if we’re to develop either a cure or a vaccine.” Dr. Pooley leaned closer to Mother. “I know you know where she is, Ginger.” His voice was gruff, demanding. “If you’d just tell the council, we’ll—”

  “No.” My mother’s eyes darted to me for a brief moment, the tone in her answer sending a chill along my spine, before she looked back at the doctor. “I want this medication administered to my daughter. I’ll accept full responsibility if it fails.”

  “You know we can’t do that, ma’am. If we give it to her too soon, she’ll die. A team of doctors will study her labs as her illness develops, and we’ll do our best to see her through this.”

  I moved closer to the window separating me from Mother and the doctor. “How many have the disease?” I asked. And who was the council looking for?

  “I’m sorry?” Dr. Pooley acted like I’d spoken a different language. I think he was surprised that I could hear him through the glass partition.

  “You can’t stand there and tell me that my sixteen-year-old sister is the first to contract the virus in six years. And out of thin air? How many have it?”

  Dr. Pooley turned his back on me and spoke to Mother. “Ms. President, we don’t know yet that this is the Samael Strain. I will monitor your daughter’s progress. I am sorry. You and West will have to remain inside this suite until we can be sure exactly what your daughter has and that neither you nor your son has it.”

  Mother’s voice dropped to just above a whisper, and I had to strain my ears to hear. “What does this mean for the election?”

  “The council has postponed their decision for one week to give you time to be near your daughter.” The doctor placed a gentle hand on Mother’s arm, and something about it made me want to jump between them. “But I wouldn’t worry,” he continued. “The people of New Caelum love you.” Then he turned and exited the isolation suite.

  I backed away from the glass, watching Dr. Pooley go. His words, though encouraging to Mother, bothered me. It didn’t matter if the people of New Caelum loved Mother. The council didn’t answer to the people. They could easily decide that it was time for a change, and therefore a new president.

  A glass door slid open, allowing Dr. Pooley to enter one of two small compartments separating the isolation room from the rest of the city. Once inside the compartment, a sanitizing liquid spewed from multiple nozzles, killing any trace of the virus that may have been on his protective suit. Just seeing the sudsy substance made my nose tingle with the smell of bleach. Then he stepped into a second compartment, which first dried his outer layers before bombarding him with an ultraviolet light. It started at the top of the chamber and slowly moved down his entire body, shining from all sides.

  When he was gone, Mom turned and faced the one window she had to the outside world. I stared past her toward the thick forest that lined the eastern side of our city.

  New Caelum was designed as a fortress, a collection of buildings connected by airtight tunnels and surrounded on all sides by a tall fence designed to keep the uninvited out. Its main purpose, I’d come to learn, was to shelter and protect the elite people of this country—people who had the best chance of rebuilding our civilization after the great Samael Strain had shattered our lives and our country forever. The people who were allowed inside were the most brilliant scientists, doctors, teachers, architects, engineers, military leaders, and policemen—to name a few. The richest and most powerful people were also given the opportunity to purchase a spot on the inside—an “investment” in their future; in humanity’s future. As for the rest—the sickly, the weak, the unskilled; those who were too devastated by the virus to recover emotionally; those who lacked the means with which to buy their way in—these people were kept out. They had nothing to offer, nothing to bargain with, and would have drained the city’s resources. So they were forced to the outlying areas, mostly to the west.

  And of course there were also those people who simply chose not to be a part of New Caelum. As I stared at the mountains just beyond our walls, I wondered what had become of those people. Would it be possible to reconnect with them and the outside world again?

  “I’d like to listen to some music.” My mother spoke over her shoulder. “Will you turn it on, please, West?”

  “Music, Mother?” I studied the back of her head, her brown hair styled in a perfect short bob. She stood tall, her arms clasped behind her back. She hated music. Said it distracted her from her thoughts.

  “Yes, music. It will relax me. Something happy, upbeat. Pop rock, maybe. And don’t be stingy with the volume.”

  My mom was losing it. She hated rock music most of all. But I pulled my PulsePoint device from my pocket and began searching for the wireless connection to the room’s speakers. I scrolled through the library of music on my device and chose something “happy” and “upbeat.”

  When the music started playing, Mother pulled her own device out of her pocket and began keying something into it. Probably something related to the election—it was all that Mother had thought about the last several weeks.

  “Mother, what does this mean for the election?”

  She raised her head as the glass windows on t
he other side of the room darkened, giving us some privacy from the nurses and doctors observing us from outside the isolation suite. She was still able to control some of our privacy from her PulsePoint despite the fact that we were officially quarantined. She walked over to me and spoke through the glass. “Listen to me, West.” She urged me to look straight at her. “This is a setup. I don’t know who would use Willow to hurt me, but it’s someone who wants me to lose this election, and they didn’t care who they had to sacrifice in order to do it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It is no accident that someone close to me has this virus.”

  “Why would someone do that? They’re risking the entire population of New Caelum. And even themselves.”

  “I assure you, no one else inside New Caelum has the virus. And this isolation suite’s air ventilation is cut off completely from the rest of the city.” Mother threw her head back and laughed—but not out of humor, I didn’t think. “Hell, this city was designed with the best air filtration and purification system ever devised. Even if the virus were to make it briefly outside this room, it would be near impossible for it to spread any further without direct person-to-person contact. No—this is an attempt to get me out of the way.”

  “Out of the way for what?”

  “People are getting restless inside the city. There are a growing number of people who are ready to venture back into the outside world.”

  “But you think it’s still too dangerous.”

  “I don’t think we’re ready yet.”

  I glanced toward Willow. Someone was willing to sacrifice my sister—for what? Political gain?

  “Eventually, I think we should send scouts out to see what it’s like out there,” Mother said. “We know that there are survivors, and that they are flourishing in their own communities, but we don’t know what kind of crime is occurring or if they’re surviving all of the other illnesses that we’ve managed to overcome inside this city.”

  She continued, not letting me get a word in. “We organized this city because so many of the lower classes of our society were draining our resources during the outbreak. They were depleting us of supplies and medicines, but were unable to pay for them. And we were dying. Bad Sam had a one-hundred-percent fatality rate. We organized the city in order to save humankind—so that we could become a strong country again with hopes of rejoining the rest of the world some day.”

  “And you think someone wants to remove you from office in order to rejoin the outside sooner rather than later? Who?”

  “Let me worry about who.”

  “So Willow is going to die because someone didn’t want you to be president again?” There had to be more to it.

  A tear leaked from Mother’s eye. She quickly shoved it away. “I am not going to let that happen. But I need your help.”

  “Anything.”

  “Someone has successfully gotten me out of the way so that they can send out scouts tonight.”

  My back stiffened. “How do you know this?”

  Mother cocked her head. “Please. I did not become president of this city based on popularity alone. I have spies and people who wouldn’t dare cross me. I have arranged for Ryder to leave as one of those scouts. He’s one of the newest and brightest coming up through the leadership ranks.” She smiled at me. “He will serve you well in the future. He is very loyal, and has agreed to volunteer to be on one of the trucks leaving the city later tonight.”

  Ryder had said nothing to me about that. “What do you want from me?”

  “I need you to be in the truck with Ryder. Your truck will go east, instead of west like the others. You will go in search of Christina.”

  “Christina?” I stared at the woman who had raised my sister and me inside this city. Protected us year after year. Given us everything we could possibly want. And I wondered if my own mother have lied about the single most devastating event of my life? “Christina, Mother? I don’t understand.”

  “Yes. Listen to me, West. I don’t have time to explain everything. Christina is with Dr. Caine Quinton. At least I hope she’s still with him. They’re in a settlement east of here.”

  “Christina’s dead, Mother. You said she died.” But even as the words came out of my mouth, I knew that Mother had deceived me.

  Christina was the sole survivor.

  Chapter Three

  Cricket

  I hiked two miles up the mountainside to one of the few places where I could see clearly over New Caelum’s walls into the city. I found a tree stump to sit on. It was probably three or four o’clock in the morning, and people milled about outside the compound under bright lights like it was the middle of the day.

  The grand city spread over a hundred acres of land, deep in the Appalachian Mountains. More than fifty buildings of varying heights had been joined together by airtight tunnels to create a fully functioning city, housing and accommodating the needs of more than a hundred thousand people, a population that was growing every day. Except for a few guards who checked the perimeter periodically and the people who hauled waste each week to the incinerator (the only building located outside the cluster of connected structures), it was also a population that almost never left the safety of the city buildings. Especially at night.

  “Except for now,” I whispered. I’d been watching New Caelum off and on at different times of the day for the past few years, and I’d never seen this much activity in the predawn hours.

  I lifted binoculars to my eyes and was surprised to find that the people below wore red hazmat suits. They were rolling bins of garbage to large dumpsters, which were then lifted by forklifts and emptied into the incinerator. An orchestra of sounds disturbed what should have been early morning silence: the loud banging of metal dumpsters, the beeping of forklifts, and the industrial blowing of the incinerator, which bellowed white smoke hundreds of feet into the air.

  Eight years ago, when the virus had crossed over—from a disease that could be transmitted only through contact with contaminated bodily fluids, to a deadly airborne illness—the world as we knew it changed forever. Not only did anyone who contracted the Samael Strain receive a death sentence, but there was no longer any way to hide from the fatal disease.

  If the virus had been gone from New Caelum for six years now, why did those people feel the need to keep themselves covered up out in the open air? Did they think someone was going to walk inside the walls of their fortress and sneeze on them?

  Or had a new virus been born?

  “Why the incinerator, boys?” I directed my binoculars around New Caelum’s perimeter—the area outside the airtight city buildings but still inside the tall brick and stone walls. A couple of guards stood at the gate in my line of vision, which was also rare. It had been years since anyone on the outside had tried to penetrate the city walls, and New Caelum had relaxed their security because of it. Also, they weren’t wearing hazmat suits. “What’s going on inside your fortress?”

  Just as I was about to stow my binoculars, I caught movement next to a building on the eastern edge of the city. Two large rolling doors were rising upward.

  And then everything around me seemed to go silent. The incinerator had stopped. The people in hazmat suits disappeared one by one back inside. I stared at the two doorways. The space just inside the rolling doors was dark. Time ticked by. I stood, my eyes glued to the empty spaces through the binoculars.

  Suddenly, the roar of engines broke the silence, rumbling up the mountainside. The muscles along my spine and neck tensed. My knuckles turned white as my grip on the binoculars tightened.

  The doorways lit up as if giant spotlights had been turned on inside.

  Large army trucks came rolling slowly through the doors, two at a time. Four of them altogether, heading for the main gate.

  In the years since New Caelum was built, when the elite people of this world, people who thought they had all the answers, holed up in an airtight complex behind their walls, not once had I ever wi
tnessed people leaving the city.

  They were protected inside the city. They had everything medical technology had to offer inside their own private cocoon. They didn’t need or want the resources of the outside world. Or so they had said.

  Yet here they were.

  The trucks formed a single file. They approached the gate that would allow them to cross over from their elite world into my ordinary one. As the electronic gate in the stone wall vibrated to life, so did my heart, rapidly pumping blood to my head, making me dizzy.

  I watched with anticipation to see where the trucks would go once they got outside the gate. It didn’t matter that the roads outside the gates were overgrown with foliage and brush. The trucks would forge their own paths.

  The first truck made a right out of the compound. The second followed it. The third went left. And the last forged straight ahead. And as they sped up, so did my pulse. I tracked the motion of the headlights as the trucks eventually went in four different directions. They were on a mission, and I was helpless to know what that mission was.

  As if suddenly slapped awake, I jumped up. I quickly stuffed my binoculars into my backpack and threw the bag over my shoulder. I slid several times on the wet foliage as I made my way back down the path toward the spot where my friends slept.

  We, of course, always camped off the beaten path, but not because we wanted to be hidden from passersby. After all, no one ever passed by. And the only beaten paths were our own.

  Twenty minutes later, as I neared the spot where I had left my friends, I slowed, listening for anything out of the ordinary. The forest was silent except for the shifting of trees and the blowing of crunchy brown leaves that hadn’t yet fallen from the trees.

  The leftover smell of campfire reached my nose. Of course my friends had thought I was insane for extinguishing the fire before I left, but they were used to my craziness.

  Something stopped me from racing the rest of the way to the campsite. Something was… off. Allowing the trunks of the larger trees to shield me, I darted stealthily from tree to tree.