“What?” Emma asked.
“Pardon him. Call off his execution, and watch.”
Emma shrugged. “I hereby pardon you of your offense, whatever it was.”
The man looked at her out of the corner of his eyes, but seemed hesitant. Slowly, and by degrees, he turned to face her and Samantha and straightened up. His arms uncrossed. “Re-really?” Emma nodded. “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” Gone was the stuttering, the quivering, the cowering, the tics. He faced them both fully. “If you weren’t infected, I’d kiss your feet. And I swear by all that’s holy, I’ll never touch a child again as long as I live! I swear it!”
“See?” Samantha said.
“It’s remarkable,” Emma had to admit on seeing the man’s transformation.
“The psychiatrist lady said that every Uninfected is suffering from,” she found the term in her notebook, “anticipatory trauma—which is a small fraction of what this man was suffering from—just at the possibility of being executed someday.”
“Can I go?” the man asked. Emma nodded. The man glanced once at the armed guard, then walked toward the door at the end of the hall, looking over his shoulder, hastening his pace, and finally running full speed through the door, which burst open.
The guard closed the closet door and departed in the opposite direction.
“So what do you propose that we do?” Emma asked.
“Stop executing Uninfecteds for minor offenses,” Samantha said in a tone suggesting it was a trial balloon.
“I suppose that was the psychiatrist’s suggestion.”
“Yes. The lady doctor said,” Samantha found her note, “punishment should be com-men-su-rate with—meaning proportional to—the crime.”
“I know what commensurate means. Let me think about it.”
Samantha eyed Emma, but said nothing. She was thinking. Emma couldn’t imagine what she was thinking, but her agitation spiked again and she left the girl immediately.
Chapter 25
ELLINGTON FIELD, HOUSTON, TEXAS
Infection Date 86, 2300 GMT (6:00 p.m. Local)
“I don’t wanta go for a walk,” Chloe said. She lay on the thin, hard cushions of the dining table’s banquette, where she slept. “I did a lifetime’s worth of walking down that miserable highway.” She looked around at the flowery plastic curtains, fake wood veneer paneling, and cheapest imaginable gray carpeting. “I’m good right here.”
Aunt Isabel was staring at Chloe’s mother, who turned back to Chloe. “It’ll do you good to get some air. Improve your mood. Come on. Let’s go.”
Her father added, “We need to stay in shape. We don’t know what’s gonna happen.”
Chloe rolled her eyes, huffed, and joined her parents and brother in the fading sunlight on the muddy street outside. She looked up and down the unending rows of white mobile homes. “Nobody else is outside.”
“I’ve seen people,” Jake replied, getting her next eye roll.
The mobile home’s door closed behind Chloe and the latch clicked from the inside. “Aren’t Aunt Chloe and Rick coming?”
“No,” was all her mother said before she and Dad took off down the street.
“Wait,” Chloe said on catching up with her parents. “Are they…? Is that why we’re going for a walk?”
“They need alone time,” her mom replied before leaving her children behind.
“Sure,” Chloe mumbled. “How soon we forget.”
“What?” Jake said. “I don’t get it.”
“I guess everybody’s over Margus, now.” Chloe looked back at their mobile home. Jake just looked confused. “They’re doing it, dorkus.”
“Doing what?”
“Jesus. It. Sex.”
“Aunt Chloe? And Capt. Townsend?” Jesus Christ. “But it’s, like, still daylight.”
Chloe caught up with and fell in alongside her parents. People stared at them from behind sealed windows. “So, how come you guys never send us out for walks?”
“Chloe. None of your business!”
“It is my business. I mean, you did before. All the time. Now…nothing? Ever?”
“Chloe,” her dad said in a strained tone, “drop it. Please.”
“Are you gonna get divorced?”
“Divorced?” Jake replied in alarm.
“No one’s getting divorced,” Chloe’s mother snapped. “They’re a new couple. Things are different.” But her father stared at her mother. “Seriously?” her mom said to him.
Chloe cringed and fell back in with Jake, who asked, “What was that about?”
“Don’t ask. It’s too gross.”
Curious eyes peered out through curtains that snapped closed. “I feel naked out here,” Jake said, “without my rifle.”
“Not nearly as naked as Aunt—”
“Chloe!” her mom shot back.
At one slightly wider intersection of rutted pathways, they saw two children—a boy and a girl—a couple of rows over. “Why don’t you go say hello?” Chloe’s mom suggested.
“They’re, like, kids,” replied Chloe. “Younger than Jake.”
“So? Just remember to keep your distance.”
Chloe and Jake slowly approached the children, with Jake’s cursory wave getting returned by both. At about fifteen yards, Chloe said. “Hi. What’re your names?”
“Campbell,” said the little girl. “And my brother’s name is Porter.” Chloe introduced Jake and herself and asked how old they were. Their answers—nine and eleven—caused Chloe to look back at her parents to deride their stupid idea. But they were arguing, with her mom clearly being the angrier of the two.
“Where you from?” the boy named Porter asked.
“D.C.? You?” Jake replied.
“North Dakota. At least, that’s where we lived last. Our daddy’s in the Air Force. He says they’re gonna let us out soon. He may go to work in that big building there.” They pointed past the barbed wire topped fence at a hangar. “He fixes planes. What does your daddy do?”
“He fixes lawsuits,” Chloe answered. “Does anything ever happen around here?”
The two kids laughed and the boy said, “A coupla nights ago, there was a big siren and all the lights came on and a bunch of soldiers came in and the speakers said to stay indoors.”
“There was shooting,” his sister said.
“I was getting to that,” Porter admonished, arching his eyes in an angry face.
“Infecteds?” Chloe asked.
“Pro’lly. It came from over there.” The boy pointed toward the gate.
“Kids!” shouted Chloe’s pissed-off mom. “We’re going!”
“Why do you always ruin my stories?” Porter complained to his sister.
The Millers resumed their walk. Chloe’s parents no longer seemed on speaking terms. When they reached the next intersection, they saw a white mobile home that was scorched and blackened above the windows and the door. Yellow police tape encircled it, and a red biohazard sticker barred entrance. The walls and windows were riddled with bullet holes.
“They were pointing this way, not at the gate,” Chloe said before relating what she had learned from the kids, embellishing details of the skirmish to make it more interesting.
Jake finally spoke up. “Like I was saying, I wish I had my rifle.”
Chloe’s parents pivoted and headed back. Had they been gone long enough? How long did it take? When her mother tried the door, it was unlocked. Everything seemed the same as when they’d left, except Aunt Isabel cuddled with Rick on the banquette where Chloe slept. Surely, they didn’t…! Not right there!
Chloe’s dad opened drawers in the kitchen. From one, he extracted a long wooden spoon handle. From another, a cheese grater. Both were courtesy of local charities, like the clothes they all wore. He settled in over the trash bag and began sharpening the wooden spo
on with the cheese grater.
Without asking any questions, Rick searched the mobile home, pried loose a long metal door pull on the utility closet, and strained to straighten one end from which protruded a sharp screw. Aunt Isabel sat on the steps leading to the front door and began whittling on the end of a broom handle, using the metal edge of a tread as her tool. Jake brought back inside the larger rocks from the gravel strewn about the mud. Chloe lay back down on the banquette before her mother shook her still sore shoulder roughly. “Ow!”
“Oh, please. Get to work.”
Chloe sighed dramatically as she rose, found some loose metal window trim, and began wrapping the less sharp end with tape someone had used to patch up a crack in the bathroom door.
* * * *
After dark, there was a loud rap on the door of the mobile home. They had seen the flashlights approaching and heard the rumble of a Humvee with its machine gunner on top.
Chloe hid her shiv under the cushion of the banquette.
Rick opened the door. A man in a gas mask and covered head to toe stood there with his pistol holstered but with several men holding rifles just behind.
“Bed check,” came his muffled comment. He tracked mud inside on his disposable booties. “Miller, Isabel?” Aunt Iz raised two fingers. “Captain Rick Townsend?” Rick said, “Present.” He went down the list on his iPad and got replies from each of them as he checked off boxes with a stylus. “Have a good night.”
Chloe’s mom got the broom to sweep the mud out, but saw its needle sharp handle and hid the makeshift weapon.
Half an hour later, all the sodium lamps outside began winking off, and the quarantine facility fell truly dark except along the perimeter fencing. Chloe’s mom and dad slept in the lone bed at the far end of the trailer. Jake in the hallway leading to their bedroom. Chloe on the banquette, lying curled up on her side to fit. Across the room, Aunt Iz lay on the sofa and Captain Rick on the floor beside her. Aw, Chloe thought as her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she saw that they were holding hands.
* * * *
Wah-wah-wah-wah!
They had never heard the quarantine camp’s alarm before. It took everyone a moment to realize what it was as the lights outside began to come on. Chloe peeked out the curtains until her father snarled at her to get down on the floor.
“What’s goin’ on?” Jake said after Chloe’s mom tripped over him and cursed.
A sudden fusillade of gunfire sent everyone to the floor. A machine gun rattled. Chloe scanned the walls and ceiling for any sign of light through puncture holes.
“Listen up!” It was Rick. “If this camp is turning, we head away from the main gate! The fence closest to us is on the side by the hangar and tarmac, where the lights are brightest! So we should head the opposite direction! Away from—”
Before he could even finish his instructions, which had Chloe’s full attention, the shooting died down. Like the last kernels of corn to pop in the microwave, there were three more spaced, single shots, and then silence but for some shouting. A loudspeaker announced something no one could understand. The adults allowed themselves to look out windows on all sides. After another inaudible loudspeaker announcement, the lights began falling dark again. Chloe could smell plastic or rubber burning.
“Everyone go back to sleep,” her dad said.
Sleep! What a crazy stupid idea. But as Chloe lay there, trying to eavesdrop on the whispers between Aunt Isabel and her boyfriend, who curled up together and barely fit on the sofa, Chloe’s thoughts grew more random. She had never gotten to snuggle with her boyfriend—or ex-, Justin—whose body parts now presumably rotted away with the rest of his family in the upstairs closet of his McLean house. And the curly haired boy from New York on the shoulder of I-81—what way had he died? And why was Aunt Emma wearing a helmet and riding atop a military truck in a parade while confetti drifted down, Chloe and her cheer team shook pom-poms and did high kicks, and Margus lay bleeding at their feet?
Chapter 26
NEW LYNCHBURG, VIRGINIA
Infection Date 87, 2230 GMT (5:30 p.m. Local)
“It’s the same as yesterday,” Samantha said to Emma. “I thought you’d wanta see it.” They walked the leaf strewn streets of the walled, uninfected neighborhood escorted by two of Dwayne’s guards, both infected, and two of his uninfected guards from the barricades. The two pairs of armed men eyed each other warily. All four Infecteds wore masks and gloves in deference to the sensibilities of the uninfected members they passed as families filled the streets, jogging in large numbers at exactly the appointed time. “You see? They do respect the Rules. They’re all getting in shape just like you told them to. I think they’ll make great members of our Community.”
Samantha had increasingly become the leading champion of the Uninfecteds. Dwayne didn’t seem to care much for them, and would probably eradicate the lot of them if given his choice as that would simplify his concerns about security. Walcott didn’t seem to care about anything at all. He simply did what he was told, and nothing if told nothing—a stereotypical Infected, even though he too was classified high-functioning.
“Have you improved on the test we were using to categorize Infecteds by mental capacity?” Emma asked. “To reduce the amount of waste?”
“Sorta. I mean, I’m only twelve. But fewer people are failing, so…. I’m gonna have that NIH scientist lady who’s been helping me on the census and interviews work on that next. But do you know who we could really use to make that test better?”
My sister, came the voice. “My sister?” Emma said aloud.
“Yes. How’d you know that was what I was gonna say?”
“Just a guess.”
They passed a white haired lady in her front yard kicking one heel back, then the other, twisting her torso in time with her movements. “Hi!” Samantha said, waving to the woman, who hesitated before replying after some apparent confusion…or fear.
The joggers who passed them steered clear, sometimes veering all the way up onto overgrown front lawns. “If we keep getting refugees,” Emma said, “we’re going to need to pack people in more tightly. How densely populated is this neighborhood?”
“We’ll have that info in our census. But most houses seem occupied, and some are already full because people took in relatives or friends.”
“We need more food!” shouted a woman in a large group that jogged past. She was shushed by her fellow, running Uninfecteds.
“They already get more food than Infecteds,” Samantha noted in confusion.
“Start weighing people,” Emma said. “Add that to your census data. We can reweigh them in a month. If weights begin falling—or rising—we’ll need to adjust rations.”
“You know Dwayne thinks the uninfected farmers are hiding food.”
“Hoarding. Let’s make a special point of weighing the farmers and their families first. If nothing else, it’ll let them know we’re on the lookout for hoarders.”
Samantha’s gaze followed passing joggers until she walked backwards. An uninfected boy in their ranks was ogling her, too. “What’s the legal age for hooking up?”
“For what?” Emma asked as they passed an entire household under the tattered net of a driveway basketball hoop doing jumping jacks.
“Sex. We got a permit request by a boy who’s sixteen and a girl who’s fifteen. The uninfected woman who’s running the DMV turned it down, but…I was wondering.”
“You’re too young. You should wait. You’re not physically mature.”
“Wolverines!” shouted a young man who jogged past before he, too, was silenced by shoves from his fellow runners, all young uninfected men.
“They’re cute,” Samantha said, again turning.
“What does Wolverines mean?” Emma asked.
Samantha shrugged. “The woman at the DMV said it was immoral. Unmarried sex, I mean. We don’
t even have any way to marry people. Should we?”
“Don’t worry about morality. We’ve already outlawed murder, assault, rape, theft.”
“What about, like, being nice to each other?” Samantha’s voice always rose in pitch when she was uncertain. A tree had fallen across the road, presumably in the big storm from the day before, and many of the joggers had stopped to help move it. Emma watched as an uninfected man directed the others. People with tenuous handholds or footing responded with directions or requests for pauses. Emma marveled at how coordinated they were for such an impromptu endeavor. They self-organized and cooperated.
“What about picking your nose or peeing in public?” Samantha asked.
“If you want to add Rules like that, go ahead.”
“Really? I can add Rules?”
“You can propose Rules. But should we execute someone for picking their nose?”
“It is unsanitary.” Samantha had a point.
Despite the chill, a teenage boy lifting the heavy trunk had removed his shirt. The thin sheet of boyish muscles stood out from his hairless torso. Samantha was mesmerized. When the boy looked their way, she waved. The boy seemed paralyzed by uncertainty.
She doesn’t just like boys, came the voice. She likes uninfected boys. They turned the corner onto a block filled with groups doing calisthenics. “Samantha?”
The girl seemed startled. “What?”
“Do you like uninfected boys more than infected boys?”
Samantha stared at the sidewalk beneath their feet. “I guess. Why do you think that is?” Emma had no idea, and the voice ventured no guesses. “They’re more interesting,” Sam said. “They’re always thinking. Sometimes they laugh and smile, and that looks cute. I saw a boy yesterday clearing the railroad tracks outside Copper Hill who was playing a guitar during his break. He was sweaty, and his hair was, like, in his eyes so he kept flicking his head.” She imitated the motion. “And his eyes were so green. Like yours.”
“Is that why you’re going back to Copper Hill tomorrow? I saw it on your calendar.”
“Well…you said it was important to get those tracks clear.”
Resistance: Pandora, Book 3 Page 17
