Resistance: Pandora, Book 3

by Eric L. Harry

  Browner nodded. “We’ll settle them. Get them jobs, a house, ration cards.”

  Isabel was disgusted with everything and everyone, especially herself. But she croaked, “O-… Okay.”

  Chapter 28

  NEW ROANOKE, VIRGINIA

  Infection Date 91, 1600 GMT (12:00 p.m. Local)

  When the full meeting of The Community council was convened, one thing was immediately apparent to Emma. Everyone present was infected. “What happened with the uninfected representatives? That woman?”

  “Jane Finch?” Samantha found in her notebook. “No one can find her.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t like exercise,” Sheriff Walcott said.

  “Was that a joke?” Samantha asked. It wasn’t a challenge, just a question.

  “A joke? Ah, no, I don’t think so. The biggest rule change since we had our last all hands meeting was requiring daily workouts. Maybe she left because of that.”

  “We lose people every day,” Dwayne noted. He had begun wearing camouflage military uniforms, and the latest addition was a black insignia on his collar denoting his rank in the Marine Corps—“Lance Corporal,” he had explained, even though he commanded over a thousand troops. When Samantha had suggested he should be a general, or at least a colonel, he hadn’t seemed to understand. “But I’m a Lance Corporal.”

  “How many leave?” Emma asked. Dwayne clearly had no idea. “Maybe we should have them…sign out or something? Otherwise, our census won’t be accurate.”

  “Or should we end our policy of allowing people to leave?” Samantha asked.

  “No,” Emma replied. “It’s like a relief valve. If people are trapped, they might rebel. If we give them the option to leave, the most disgruntled will take it. I’d only consider ending the policy if Uninfecteds set up their own community right on our border and leaving was easy. But as it stands now, the Exclusion Zone and the ungoverned areas along our periphery are so dangerous most people are staying put.”

  Most of the Infecteds around the table said nothing. Emma wasn’t even sure they were listening. “We need someone to represent the interests of the Uninfecteds. We need to know what they need—what they want—so they don’t take up arms against us.”

  “Entertainment,” Samantha said.

  “What?”

  “I was talking to a boy yesterday—”

  “In Copper Hill?”

  “Yes. He said they’re all really bored.”

  Walcott surprised Emma by speaking up. “They’re lucky to be alive.”

  “One of our Boards was spray painted with swastikas,” Dwayne said as the floodgate of commentary opened. “Last night in Callaway. That’s not far from Copper Hill. Maybe it was that boy. Should Sheriff Walcott arrest him?”

  Emma scrutinized Samantha. Dwayne’s bodyguard/spy had reported that Samantha and the boy had eaten sandwiches near each other during his work break, and that Sam had clearly manufactured several other chance meetings with him before they left. But the girl displayed no distress at the suggestion that he be detained and executed.

  “No,” Emma replied. “And swastikas sound like a political protest. Like we’re Nazis.” She turned to Samantha. “What kind of entertainment would keep them happy?”

  She shrugged. “How should I know? A circus? Carnival rides? He asked if I knew where he could get any weed.”

  “There’s drugs in old police evidence rooms,” Walcott noted, “if we need ’em.”

  Emma said, “This is why we need a representative from them. They could tell us whether drugs would help.”

  “But I don’t trust Uninfecteds,” Dwayne said. “We can’t speak freely with them in here. Do you think they would listen to an Infected if we appointed her their representative? I nominate Samantha. She seems to get along with them.”

  “Hello, I’m twelve. I don’t think they’d listen to me.”

  She was right. With no resolution in sight, they moved on. Walcott reported two violations of density rules. His SE forces had received calls from Uninfecteds about a crowd of about fifty Infecteds in a work detail sent out to Smith Mountain Lake. The infected workers were piled up along a narrow road whose bridge had been felled and were already in a trance-like state, awaiting only a trigger to unleash their rampage. “They didn’t respond to commands. But there was a volunteer fire department down the road and we dispersed ’em with firehoses. But the second crowd—”

  Dwayne interrupted. “I thought we’d repaired all the bridges after that last storm.”

  “It wasn’t storm damage. The bridge had been blown up. Maybe by some of the uninfected people who called 911, who were tryin’ to isolate their little peninsula neighborhood. Or maybe by the army. Do you want me to arrest the residents just in case?”

  Emma said, “No. We’re trying to avoid killing Uninfecteds if possible to improve their morale. What about the second crowd?”

  “Another work detail. About a hun’erd Infecteds cleaning up a hospital, and their boss, the hospital’s administrator—an Uninfected—served them lunch in the cafeteria. She phoned to say they weren’t eatin’, weren’t talkin’, weren’t movin’. When I got there, they was sittin’ elbow to elbow at long tables. Most turned to the door where we was standin’. I had the deputies and Uninfecteds tiptoe out and called Dwayne, who brought in some machine guns and fixed the mess. We had to get a second detail to come clean up the first detail. And I don’t know if that cafeteria is usable anymore. The Uninfecteds on cleanup duty kept throwin’ up from the smells, I guess, or the bodies and the blood and such, then panicked thinkin’ they was infected, which they weren’t. We hosed ’em down good.”

  Emma nodded before turning to Samantha. “How are those relaxation classes and anxiety testing procedures coming?”

  “I haven’t had time to work on them recently.”

  Because you’ve been spending your time talking to uninfected boys, came the voice in Emma’s head. “We need them. In the meantime, make sure our foremen know not to cram a bunch of Infecteds together. No more than six Infecteds per ten square meters, like the Rules say.”

  They went through the rest of their agenda. Food stocks were dangerously low but had stabilized. Plenty of military overflights had been observed, including drones loitering over towns, and several mysterious explosions that were probably sabotage but couldn’t be traced to ground incursions by military forces. They were still expanding successfully to the south and east, but had not yet reduced the holdouts at Virginia Tech. And they had received franchise applications from as far away as Indianapolis, Indiana, and Binghamton, New York.

  When they finished, Emma repeated, “We need someone to represent the Uninfecteds. Someone we can trust, but they can trust also. Any ideas?”

  She waited a full minute, but no one said a thing. Samantha had also been surveying the room’s blank faces, and finally turned to Emma, tilted her head, and arched her brow. It may have been some kind of silent comment on the futility of Emma’s exercise in democracy. Or it could be Samantha simply practicing being expressive like the Uninfecteds.

  “Any ideas what kind of person might work…Samantha?”

  “Someone famous that they recognize, like a politician.”

  “Do we have anyone like that?”

  Samantha turned to Dwayne. The head of her security forces returned the girl’s gaze, mute and blank. “Dwayne? That motorcade? South of Charlottesville?”

  “Oh,” he finally replied. But that was the end of it.

  Samantha gave up and said, “Some Secret Service agents dropped President Stoddard and his family off near one of our checkpoints. They took a job on a farm but I think he wants to be president again. Or his wife wants him to be.”

  “Why wasn’t I told this?” Emma asked Dwayne.

  “It didn’t seem important.”

  * * * *

  Emma had
to raise her voice over the rattles and road noise of her poorly insulated 2008 Honda CRV. “How long did it take you to figure out I sent a spy with you to Copper Hill?”

  Samantha replied, “About four minutes.”

  “How long till the spy admitted to you what he was doing?”

  “About a minute later. Are you spying on me because I like boys?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you like boys too.”

  “That’s different.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s sexual. Some men appeal to me because I might want sex with them.”

  “Not because you want to have their babies? You said we need babies to keep The Community going. And if a boy is really hot—tall, and muscly, and…and really cute—he probably has good genes that would make good babies, right?”

  “Probably. Statistically. And don’t forget smart.”

  “Obviously. It’s not different at all, really, between you and me. You like handsome men. You had sex with that pilot less than an hour after they put him in our hospital room.”

  “I thought you were asleep.”

  “I heard things. And I have questions, like—”

  “What does this have to do with you and your crush on that uninfected boy, and on just about every boy you run into? Don’t lose your focus. We’re barely surviving an apocalypse. We need to work real hard. Plus, longer term, you seem to be developing—” Shush! said the voice in Emma’s head. Don’t share every thought you have!

  But Samantha somehow already understood the incomplete sentence. “Developing feelings?” Was it the girl’s keen intellect, or did Emma and Samantha share some bond? Some similar rewiring of their highest functioning postinfection brains. “Is there really much of a difference between sexual urge, and a crush? Aren’t they both emotions?”

  “You’d have to talk to my sister. That’s her thing. I’ll answer any epidemiology questions you have.”

  “I’d like to talk to her. I wish she and your brother’s family and Jake had joined.”

  “You liked my nephew.”

  “He is cute, and tall, and has a nice face, and he’s my age so we would both live more or less the same length of time if we’re not killed first. I hope he’s not dead.”

  “Am I supposed to turn here?” Emma asked.

  Samantha confirmed the turn onto the dirt road, which grew bumpier and dustier. “Sex is why there have been so many rapes,” Samantha summarized. “But it also holds uninfected families together. Parents have sex and want to keep on having sex. And they take care of children from previously having had sex. That didn’t stop my parents from making up the story that I was dead, but I had turned and they never came close to me after I killed that navy man. I don’t think they had sex anymore, but my father did have sex with his secretary in his study when my mother was visiting the States. I told her, and my father fired the secretary because she might be a Chinese spy or something.”

  “We’re almost there,” Emma interrupted. “Does this story have some kind of end?”

  “Should Infecteds get married, and raise kids in families like Uninfecteds? Or should we make a Rule that they have to have a certain number of children and then have The Community raise them so their kids don’t starve to death or wander off?”

  “You seem interested in the subject. Write me a memo with the pros and cons.”

  “Okay. And can I hang out with boys?”

  “Okay.”

  “Uninfected boys?”

  “Just uninfected? Why?”

  “Like I said already, they’re more interesting.”

  “Okay. I guess. But if you have sex with them—even if you kiss them—they’ll get sick, you know.”

  “I’m not ready for sex. I keep waiting, but I don’t feel anything like you do.”

  They parked amid pickup trucks at the gate. Dwayne had posted armed guards at every farm to prevent theft of food, but they recognized Emma instantly. So did Angela Stoddard, former First Lady of the United States of America. “Oh, thank God.” She rose, groaning, from her knees where she had been pulling radishes from the ground and piling them in a wheelbarrow. “Kids, get your stuff and your father! We’re outta here.”

  The woman, whom Emma remembered always being impeccably groomed, wiped sweat from her brow and left a streak of dirt on her forehead. “Dr. Miller, I presume?” Angela Stoddard held out her hand. Emma had trained herself not to infect susceptibles, and had to override her hesitation to shake the hand of a vaccinated and immune person. Samantha surprised the First Lady by holding out her hand too and by shaking it with a pronounced motion. Up walked a young girl about Sam’s age—Samantha’s wave was returned without hesitation—and a tall and muscular boy who stared not at Samantha, but at Emma. Behind them was President Stoddard, barely visible over his son’s broad shoulders.

  “Your capital is in Roanoke, right?” Mrs. Stoddard asked. “That’s not far. Should we talk title—for my husband, that is? I’ve got some ideas.”

  The two Stoddard children were staring at Emma and whispering. The girl pushed her big brother off balance and laughed before their gazes returned to Emma and they averted them. Samantha stared at everything they did, smiling inexpertly when they grinned, practically oblivious to their parents.

  “What’s your title?” asked Angela Stoddard.

  “Chief Epidemiologist.”

  The grimy woman, still exuding a regal bearing, made some indecipherable face and glanced back over her shoulder at the former president. “I think this is the beginning of an excellent partnership.” Mrs. Stoddard snaked her arm through Emma’s and walked her back toward the car just like Emma’s sister had done on long walks at the NIH hospital.

  “We had your twin sister to the White House for dinner, you know?” Emma peered over her shoulder and caught the First Son staring at her butt. The Stoddard’s daughter had fully engaged Samantha in chatter—“I love your hair!”—but Sam had seen the Stoddard boy’s ogling of Emma and tilted her head as if to reiterate some earlier point about uninfected boys and sex.

  Chapter 29

  MOUNTAIN HOME AIR FORCE BASE, IDAHO

  Infection Date 93, 1200 GMT (6:00 a.m. Local)

  Isabel couldn’t discern the source of the fires dotting the landscape on final descent. Were they abandoned buildings left to burn? Bonfires providing illumination to defenders? Beacons guiding bombers? Or funeral pyres fueled by an endless supply of bodies?

  The few passengers aboard the Boeing 737 were all military. The economy seats were filled with supplies relocated several times during the civilian pilots’ pre-takeoff weight and balance debates.

  After landing, but before the plane finished taxiing, its passengers in first class had retrieved their rifles from overhead bins and packs from empty seats and were bracing against bulkheads in the galley. A middle aged army sergeant was tightening the chinstrap of his helmet. Isabel had knotted her still long hair into a tight bun at the back so that her helmet fit snugly.

  When the plane’s engines were cut, the soldiers by the door began chambering rounds with clacks, and Rick and Isabel did the same with both their carbines and their pistols. Rick even loaded a stubby grenade into the short tube beneath his carbine’s barrel.

  The whines of the engines were replaced by crowd noise. One of the soldiers peered out through the tiny porthole in the door and said, “Jeez,” in the tone of, “What next?”

  The pilot emerged from the cockpit and opened the door. The noise of some commotion suddenly filled the cabin. They had last heard those sounds—agitation and nerves expressed by masses of desperate people—on the ferry docks in New York.

  The soldiers began descending the mobile stairs. In the empty galley, Rick and Isabel shouldered their packs. Though heavy, they seemed feather light compared to the massive loads they had humped across Virginia. Unlike t
hen, they could now count on resupply and didn’t need to carry everything they needed on their backs…she hoped.

  When they reached the top of the stairs, Isabel instantly wished they had their old cumbersome loads. The scene below was one of barely managed chaos. Across the tarmac snaked a line, four abreast, into the distance, which led to their stairs. On the grass between the taxiways was a squatter’s camp of impromptu shelters made of blue FEMA tarpaulins, proper camper’s tents, and lean-tos fashioned out of discarded crates, pallets, cardboard, and plastic. The airbase was at the tattered edge of order.

  “One Infected,” Isabel said to Rick, “and this place turns in a few hours.”

  “And then, you’ve got a dense, ready-made mob.”

  The senior NCO in front of them said, “Best not be here when that happens.”

  At the bottom of the stairs, Isabel stared into the faces of people who must have thought they were crazy. Who would fly to a place like that? But they were silent and meek—hoping against hope that nothing would prevent them from boarding. The disorder grew, Isabel could hear, the farther away you got. A hoarse woman croaked, “How many more flights today?” Men growled, “Fuck you!” “No! Fuck you!” There was a, “You said there’d be water!” punctuated by, “Keep your fucking hands off her!” “The latrines are unusable!” “Don’t you stare back at me like that, you piece of shit weekend warrior!”

  “Masks on,” rippled down their slim line of unrelated newcomers.

  Isabel’s hand rose to pull her mask up. She had grown accustomed to its place beneath her chin before being vaccinated. It was an unnecessary pre immunity accessory, like a scarf in summer. The men Isabel followed past the mob toward the hangar pulled on gloves and lowered clear plastic visors from helmets or donned microbe resistant eyewear.

  They waited beside the ubiquitous sandbags. She remembered, in the early days, giggling at Rick’s witty but so true reply. “Because they work,” he’d said when she’d asked him why there were so many sandbags everywhere. Fun times.