Blood Colony

by Tananarive Due

  Johnny shoved the books from his Death, Dying & Medicine class into his bookbag, slung the bag over his shoulder, and melted into the pack of undergrads walking outside, matching their pace until he peeled off past the crowded bicycle rack to round the corner toward King Union. Papier-mâché figures of President Goodard and Vice President Salazar bobbed above a crowd that was just dispersing from a protest, the lingerers stubbornly shouting, “No more war! No more war!” like generations of yearning hearts before them.

  Johnny used to go to the protests, but he’d learned last year that the protests didn’t do any good. The war wasn’t going to stop; it was more ancient than most people wanted to admit. He could kiss his financial aid good-bye as soon as the Selective Service office figured out he’d checked the box marked No Thanks, but Johnny could live with that. He just couldn’t live with being sent to some desert to shoot another kid with a gun, busting his soul wide open for life.

  Fuck that. If Uncle Sam didn’t like it, he’d move to Toronto.

  Johnny trotted behind two tittering girls wearing red wristbands from the protest, fashionably dressed in low-slung jeans that formed a tantalizing V right below their tailbones. Crack pants, people called them, since only skinny girls without asses could get away with it.

  Johnny checked his pager again. No new message. Damn.

  He typed fast, his elbow bent so he could reach the keyboard as he passed the protesters:

  WHERE R U? CALL ME.

  Johnny jogged toward Bancroft. Four blocks west, a BART train could speed him anywhere Caitlin wanted to go. He wasn’t going to take any chances of leading someone to her.

  Johnny’s arm vibrated again, and this time it was the telephone.

  “Where are you?” Caitlin said on the speaker, her version of a greeting.

  “Shattuck. On my way to the train.”

  “Perfect,” she said. She sounded pleased with him for once. “Stand at the southeast corner of Shattuck and Bancroft. Don’t be tailed. And never put me on speaker again.”

  “You’re here?” he said, elated. His voice sounded whiny at the end, like a child’s.

  Luckily, Caitlin had already hung up.

  After ten minutes on the corner scouting every face, cyclist and passing car, Johnny wondered if he had failed Caitlin’s test. The temperature was dropping rapidly as the afternoon sun fell, and Johnny wished he had his jacket. His textbooks and ultra-thin Blade notebook computer seemed heavier now than they had when he’d left King Union.

  Johnny looked at his watch. Four. Shit. He was late for Death & Dying.

  Suddenly, Caitlin’s voice was behind him. “Don’t turn around. Let’s walk. Fast.” She was pressed against his back. She had been running. He smelled her sweat and skin, and he felt a surprising surge of desire. But he walked.

  Johnny dared a glance, and there was jet-black hair beside him.

  “I saw you at the union,” he said.

  “Did anyone else?” Caitlin sounded scared shitless. Maritza’s death had wrecked her.

  “I doubt it.”

  “Don’t talk. Just keep walking.”

  Johnny didn’t ask where they were going. He didn’t ask any of his fifty questions, because he was trying to decide what to do about Caitlin’s nervous breakdown. If he said the wrong thing, she might go ghost on him. It was better to ride out Caitlin’s storm.

  “Your hair’s different,” he said.

  “Please don’t talk.” Caitlin’s voice softened, a plea instead of an order. “Not yet.”

  In front of Starbucks, Caitlin tugged on Johnny’s sleeve. “Here,” she said.

  Great! Caitlin wasn’t usually the Starbucks type, but Johnny hoped a cup of Ethiopian coffee would give him the chance to talk her down from whatever emotional ledge she was teetering from. But Caitlin walked past the barista without a glance. Toward the back door.

  Cars crammed the alley. A row of hybrids claimed the reserved spaces, while the gassers were squeezed at the end. Caitlin kept walking. She headed toward a battered, older-model PT Cruiser parked against a wall. The car’s grill and front bumper were splattered with mud.

  “I thought you hated gassers,” Johnny said.

  “Get in. Hurry.” The door’s locks clicked upward as they approached, even though Caitlin wasn’t holding a key. By now, she was running toward the driver’s door.

  Inside, Johnny saw a tangle of wires beneath the steering wheel. Had someone broken into her car? Caitlin hunched over, playing with the wires. Johnny had already closed his door before he realized she was hot-wiring the car. Impossibly fast, the engine roared. Caitlin shifted into reverse. Her foot jammed on the accelerator, and the car leaped backward.

  “Caitlin, what the hell?” Johnny said. “This car is stolen?”

  “Just look in the backseat,” Caitlin said.

  Bracing himself with the handrail while the car beeped chides for not wearing his seat belt, Johnny glanced at the tarp covering the backseat. There was something underneath, bulky enough to be a human being.

  “What’s going on, Caitlin?” Johnny said, genuinely afraid to look.

  Caitlin didn’t answer, her eyes intent on the road as she roared out of the alley, racing a bus. “She can’t be around too many people. It’s hurting her head. She’s gotten worse.”

  Psychotic episode. Johnny had studied it all in psych last year. The first chance he got, he was going to sneak a call to Caitlin’s mother.

  “You can’t call anyone, Johnny,” a tiny voice whispered from the backseat. The tarp shifted, rising. Johnny stared as the tarp fell, and he saw long dreadlocks underneath, twice as full as his. A brown face and unblemished skin. He knew her voice from her email messages, of course, even if he couldn’t quite believe she was here.

  Fana?

  “Everything you think you know is a lie,” Caitlin said. The tires squealed as she turned toward the 510. She was heading out of town.

  “What?” Johnny said.

  Between Caitlin’s dizzying driving and Fana huddled in the backseat, he felt fuck-eyed. Had Caitlin kidnaped Fana? Was he going to have to fight for the wheel?

  Caitlin turned to look over her shoulder, staring back at Fana. “What’s he doing now?”

  While her eyes were off the road, Caitlin was bearing down too fast on a minivan. Johnny saw every smear of grime on the rear window ahead. “Watch it!” he said, yanking on his seat belt.

  Caitlin braked, and Fana was jolted forward. She must have been wearing her seat belt beneath the tarp, or she would have been flung into the front seat. Fana closed her eyes, her face wrenched, as if she were in great pain. Concerned, Johnny reached back to touch her wrist, and he was so jarred he almost pulled away. Fana’s skin felt electric; warm static shock. Fana gritted her teeth, eyes still closed.

  “There’s a GPS,” Fana said, her voice weak. “On the phone. He’s…checking.”

  “Shit.” Caitlin looked at Johnny wildly. “Throw your phone out of the window. Now.”

  “Wh-what?” Johnny said.

  His phone was still on his arm, and Caitlin snatched it. Her window was down in a zip, and she tossed the phone onto the freeway. Johnny looked back in time to see a silver wink before his phone was crushed beneath the tires of the semi truck behind them.

  That snapped Johnny from his stupor. “What the hell? That phone cost—”

  “They’re tracking you,” Caitlin said. “Wake up, Johnny, or get the fuck out of this car.”

  Traffic had stalled, so Caitlin held his eyes this time. He wasn’t used to seeing her without her layers of black mascara; she looked younger and more fragile, only scared instead of judgmental. Who IS she?

  “There are people looking for us who will kill us if they catch us,” Caitlin said.

  As much as Caitlin sounded like she was having a psychotic breakdown, Johnny felt a rising terror that maybe she wasn’t. But he was more worried about Fana, for now.

  Fana didn’t look good. Her face was shining with perspiration.
Her eyes were closed, her cheeks and brow wrinkled, almost converging. She was hurting. Johnny pressed his palm to Fana’s forehead, and the strange static sensation jittered across his skin again. Her skin might be a little warm. Maybe. He was glad she didn’t have a raging fever.

  “What’s going on, Lil’ Cuz?” he said gently. “Are you OK?”

  “Too much noise,” Fana said, her voice far away.

  “Stay focused, girl,” Caitlin said. “What’s up with Berhanu?”

  “I don’t know…,” Fana said. “He’s gone. Maybe he’s too far now.”

  “We’ve only gone ten yards,” Caitlin said.

  Fana just shook her head. “Maybe he’s masking. He’s gone. There’s too much noise.”

  “Who’s Ber…hah…noo?” Johnny said, buried under yet another layer of confusion.

  “A Searcher,” Caitlin said. “They knew we might come to you. You’re a friend of Fana’s. They’ve probably been reading her ShoutOut posts.”

  Each sentence Caitlin spoke was more bizarre than the last. He couldn’t talk to her.

  “What are you doing here, Lil’ Cuz?” Johnny said, matching Fana’s kitten-soft voice. He stroked the top of her head, running his hand down her soft ropes of hair.

  Fana opened her eyes then, as if she’d just realized he was there. She smiled at him, and her dimples were unchanged from the day he’d met her when she was ten. If not for the sweat and the fact that she was outside the state of Washington for the first time since he’d known her, Fana looked like everything was fine.

  “We were worried about you,” Fana said. Her eyes were dewy.

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  “She’s liberated, that’s what,” Caitlin said. “The revolution has begun.”

  Fana clasped Johnny’s hand. He didn’t feel the static this time, but her skin glowed inside of his. Hadn’t he felt some kind of glow the first time he’d touched her, too? She looked like a fragile little angel. He wanted to protect her in a way he had never wanted to protect anyone.

  “I ran away,” Fana said.

  Johnny sighed. “Look, I know you’re bored at home, but—”

  Fana’s eyes silenced him, burning with a flurry of emotions. Something terrible had happened. “You’re not safe because of me.”

  “What are you talking about?” The car was moving, but Johnny’s world fell still.

  Fana blinked. She spoke again, louder than before, but this time her lips didn’t move. His rational mind fought his eyes as he stared for six seconds, and the illusion didn’t go away: Fana’s mouth was still, but her voice filled up his head, louder than any of his own thoughts:

  PLEASE TELL CAITLIN TO DRIVE FASTER SO THE NOISE WILL STOP.

  Twelve

  Tallahassee, Florida

  8:37 p.m.

  When his phone rang, Garrick Wright was waiting.

  His wife always made it a point to be home when Johnny called, but tonight a cracked crown had sent Tahira to her dentist. She had left Garrick instructions to remind Johnny to explain his missing Selective Service card at the financial aid office. Garrick hoped the government fuss wouldn’t ruin their trip to Jordan to see Johnny’s grandmother this summer.

  Garrick had already finished half the conversation with Johnny in his head before he picked up the phone and heard Lucas Shepard’s voice instead.

  “Garrick?”

  Five years ago, Lucas had said he would call him next week, and this was his first call since then. Garrick sat at the edge of his backyard cedar picnic table, swatting a fly from the bridge of his nose. He saw swarms of insects in the light from his solar lamp, which silhouetted his yard’s live oaks, strung with tendrils of moss. Garrick hoped Lucas’s call had nothing to do with the newspaper and video files he kept on the laptop locked in a safe under his bed. Lucas Shepard wouldn’t call about something trivial.

  Garrick tried to think of the worst-case scenario but couldn’t. “What happened?”

  “It’s Johnny,” Lucas said. “He vanished from the Berkeley campus late this afternoon.”

  Garrick felt rocked by a series of unfamiliar emotions that made it hard to catch his breath. The strongest was anger, in the end. “Why haven’t I heard about it?”

  “His roommate doesn’t know yet. We only know Johnny vanished because…he was being watched. My people found his cell phone on the 510.” Lucas didn’t sound like a friend anymore, talking with such detached efficiency about a telephone Johnny had loved.

  When Lucas hadn’t called him back and the number had gone out of service, Garrick had guessed that the government had taken over Lucas’s work. He shouldn’t have been surprised that his son was under surveillance, yet he was. Shocked, even. But shock gave way to a creeping sickness. He couldn’t think of where his questions should begin.

  Lucas went on, more gently. “I’m sorry, Garrick. We have a security problem, and Johnny’s disappearance might be related to that. He was being tailed as a precaution. Someone might be tracking us. I’ll tell you what I know…”

  For the first time, he sounded like Lucas again.

  “Please.” The wind chimes Tahira’s mother had sent them from her village near the Dead Sea hung outside the window, robbed of music without a breeze. Trip approval from the State Department had just arrived that morning. Johnny didn’t even know yet.

  “Fana and Caitlin have run away,” Lucas said. “The girls were selling Glow.”

  Of course. Garrick had suspected that Glow had something to do with Lucas’s work. Once he waded past the anti-Glow propaganda exaggerating its dangers, the effects of Glow sounded too similar to claims sending bloggers into a frenzy in Ghana and China. And Nigeria.

  “The Underground Railroad,” Garrick said.

  “Yes. I’m not accusing Johnny of selling, but—”

  “He might have been if Caitlin was.” Garrick hoped his honesty would be contagious.

  Garrick and Tahira had talked about Caitlin many nights the first year they’d eaten alone at the dinner table after Johnny had gone to Berkeley. Johnny would have followed her anywhere.

  “Caitlin’s roommate was abducted and murdered last month,” Lucas said.

  Like Garrick used to tell his journalism students, Lucas had buried the lead.

  Garrick stood up and began pacing, and the weathered patio floorboards creaked under his weight. He couldn’t sit still with that information in his heart, not when Johnny’s voice wasn’t on the phone. His heart stalled, so his mind took over. “I’ve been following it as best I can,” Garrick said. “I read about a girl in Miami. Colón. That the one? And a guy in Michigan—a UM professor? I figured it might come together, since Glow was involved. Who’s doing the killing?”

  “We don’t know.” A pause, then Lucas added, “We think Johnny is with Caitlin and Fana. They left within twenty-four hours of each other. But we really don’t know where he is. That’s the truth. I’ll call you the minute I hear anything, good or bad. I promise you, Garrick.”

  Did Lucas think he was just going to hang up the phone? Garrick’s heart thrashed. He didn’t have to look at his caller ID to know that Lucas was calling from somewhere he couldn’t reach. “I’m flying out to Berkeley,” Garrick said.

  Lucas sighed. “I’d advise against it.”

  “I have to call the police, Lucas.”

  “They won’t want that yet.”

  “They” were the scientists, the Africans. The masters of Lucas’s new world.

  Lucas was telling him to sit and do nothing. To trust in the people who did not trust him.

  “I’m having trouble with this, Doc,” Garrick said.

  “Me too.” Lucas’s voice cracked. His day wasn’t going much better, from the sound of it.

  Garrick couldn’t imagine living the way Lucas had chosen, no matter what the cause. There were times over the years Garrick had wished that he’d accepted Lucas’s offer to live at the colony, where he might have chronicled it all from inside, capturing history fresh. N
ow he was sorry he had ever laid eyes on that compound in the woods.

  “I’m thinking back a few years, Doc…,” Garrick said. “I remember when your son was sick and you thought you had to go to Botswana to get a cure. A miracle drug. You did what you thought you needed to do, and nobody could tell you otherwise. Remember that?”

  Before Lucas had left Tallahassee, he’d come to Garrick’s house for a few beers and told stories about his son’s recovery. Said he’d seen spontaneous remission on a steady basis. Said he believed it was possible to eradicate AIDS within a decade. Hinted that the bigger truth was impossible to believe, that he was living proof of a medical miracle.

  Finally, he’d invited Garrick to a meeting. Garrick and Lucy Keating and Three Ravens Perez and the South African nurse Shandi Shabalala had traveled to the Pacific Northwest to hear about a new blood-based drug. The Living Blood, the woman Jessica had called it. But that had been the last meeting, the last he’d heard about blood. No explanation of its origins.

  Garrick wasn’t a doctor, but he wasn’t a fool, so he could guess at what he didn’t know. Either the blood was manufactured or it was organic, or some combination of both, but blood was at the heart of the health movements overseas. And now Glow was out there, too. For all the precautions the scientists at the colony had taken, their genie was out of the bottle.

  The silent phone line left Garrick’s history with Lucas Shepard unspoken, and Garrick realized Lucas couldn’t talk. Garrick wondered if his family’s phone had been bugged all this time. Garrick felt a physical tremor, the ground sinking beneath him.

  “I’m asking you to trust me,” Lucas said finally. “Stay under the radar. At least wait until somebody else reports him missing.”

  “That might not be until tomorrow.”

  “Might not. But I’m asking as your friend, Garrick. I know how hard this is.”

  Lucas Shepard hadn’t been his friend for a long time, but Garrick didn’t dwell on that. Lucas was busy changing the world, one way or another. For better or worse.