They decided to shuck the plastic suits as the day intensified into a blistering sear. They worked quietly, neither one wanting to waste time or breath. They had to stop frequently both because of the heat and to give Sevita’s arm a break. Even Tom seemed exhausted as the afternoon dragged on, and they both stumbled more than once. As the sun began to set and the factory cooled they lagged behind more and more. Sevita sat for a few minutes on the truck’s bumper while Tom splashed some water over his head at the well. She watched the long shadows of the buildings creep over the lot and up the little ridge toward town. It struck Sevita that the City was extremely dark without power. Her friend Nella had been afraid of the dark. Sevita had never understood it. But now, thinking of the disease lurking inside her, waiting to erase her, waiting to erase them all, she suddenly felt that ancient fear too. How many would turn in the middle of the night and kill their loved ones in the confusion of the dark? Nonsense, she told herself, you worked out that it would be a week. No one’s going to turn tonight. She glanced toward the small ridge that hid the City’s ordered buildings from her and wished the lights would suddenly stutter on. She sighed and got up for one last hard pull. The last glow had gone out of the sky and Sevita found the barrels by feel, knocking into them several times. She tipped one when the hand truck crashed into a post. It tumbled away spraying alcohol over the floor. The smell was overwhelming. She rolled the very last barrel to Tom.
“No more,” she said.
“Good,” He groaned as he lifted it. “Hope the others have more energy or it’s going to be a really long night.”
They were exhausted and out of time. It took her ten minutes to get the biosuit back on correctly, each limb more likely to obey gravity’s commands than her own. At last, she stumbled up to the cab door, dreading the rest of their job and hoping adrenaline would keep her going and keep the plague at bay.
The dog stood up and began barking as the truck rumbled by. “That’s a relief,” was all that Tom said. Sevita tried to find the dirt track where the road had been and rolled carefully toward the pitch black City. She stopped for a moment at the top of the ridge.
“Better put our masks back on. We’re definitely going to get stopped with the curfew and the untagged truck,” she said and pulled the humid helmet back over her head.
“Let me do the talking if we do,” said Tom before disappearing behind the black filters. Sevita let the truck roll down the road as it gradually became cobble and then cracked tar again. They made it almost to the harbor before meeting a Quarantine Team. One of the soldiers held up a hand and Sevita stopped. She slowly rolled the window down and tried to control her breath behind the mask.
“Why isn’t this vehicle tagged, soldier?”
Tom leaned forward past her. “It just came out of maintenance, sir. My CO needed these supplies ASAP down at the power plant. Governor’s itching to get the power back on.”
“What are you transporting?”
“Extra turbine. The power plant one had an explosion.”
The soldier nodded. “Carry on then, but keep your suits on. The power plant had the first exposure.”
“Thank you, sir. We’ll be sure to take all precautions.”
The soldier waved them on. Sevita took the turn toward the power plant until they were out of sight, then turned down a tight alley back toward the harbor.
The truck’s rumble echoed in the large archway and Sevita winced. She parked it and shut off the engine, hoping no one had heard. Tom opened the door and peered around. “Boss?” he whispered, “you here?”
The ticking of the truck’s cooling engine was the only response. Tom pulled his mask off and flung it onto the seat. He shoved his plastic sleeve up to check his watch. “They should be here by now.”
Sevita climbed out of the truck. “Maybe they are in the hotel?” she slowly took her own suit off. There’d be no hiding after they torched the boats, and she was sick of the hot, greasy vinyl.
Tom scowled. “Stay here, I’ll check.” He darted off into the dark. Sevita was too nervous to stay put. She pulled open the truck’s bay door. She pulled herself up into the dark interior and slid a barrel to the edge. She lined up the hand truck beneath and eased the barrel down. She heard running footsteps and her arm muscles clenched painfully around the cold plastic barrel.
“We aren’t supposed to use those if the other two don’t show up,” hissed Tom. Sevita let out a breath and relaxed. The barrel hit the hand truck with a small clunk.
“You don’t seriously believe that just pulling up the anchors and letting the boats drift is going to stall anyone, do you? Those boats are going to be destroyed no matter what,” she said sharply. “If you want to help, help me splash all of them with the ethanol. It’s going to take hours. We’ll be lucky to get it done before dawn even if the other two show up.”
“But Dan said—”
“I know what he said, I was there, remember? But if we miss even one boat, if one flimsy dinghy doesn’t drift far enough, then everything we’ve done, everything we’ve been through in the past eight years is for nothing. It only takes one infected person escaping and stumbling into a surviving camp and it’s all over. You really willing to risk that?”
Tom shook his head.
“Good, then help me start getting these down to the docks.” Sevita rolled the hand truck through the deep shadow of the arch and rattled down the cobbled hill to the harbor. Once the harbor had held thousands of boats. During the original December Plague, some people had fled, thinking they’d be safer at sea. But most of them had been wrecked because their owners had become Infected and they had remained in the water through storms and rot and winter ice. When the City had finally recovered enough to spend resources on the harbor and began to think about salvaging the boats for fishing or possible trade, there were only a few dozen still in decent enough shape to be successfully repaired. Even the warehoused boats had cracked parts or warped hulls. Spare parts were hard to come by. So what remained the night that Sevita stood on the uneven dock, were about fifty floating crafts, each a conglomeration of ill-fitting substitute parts. She hoped that they were all there, that no one had overnighted elsewhere. The fishermen didn’t like being too far from the City, without a coastguard or a secure port, being out of sight of the City was as frightening as being on the moon. Very few ever stayed out past nightfall.
She struggled to pull the hand truck down to the end of the ragged wooden dock, each board popped up under the wheels as she yanked it onward. Her arm ached where it had been bitten and she could still feel the hot pulse of blood leaking into the gauze pad even hours after the bite. The hand truck rumbled to a stop beside the farthest boat. She looked back at the shadow of the City. It was peppered with tiny pinpricks of candles and lanterns instead of the ruby glow that usually arced over its skyline. Would it really be so awful if it were just a blank patch of dark? The past decade had been miserable. They’d slaughtered each other. They’d starved and stolen and lied to each other. Sevita knew it wasn’t so different, really, from the decade before that. It was just more total. Maybe this time it ought to be the real end. Why fight it? What was left to save, really?
Sevita pried the small plastic plug out of the barrel. The smell was sharp and dizzying. She tipped the barrel forward and it tumbled onto the boat deck, rolling across the fiberglass and gurgling the whole way. It wasn’t even going to work. She wasn’t even certain the fiberglass would burn. You don’t have to cremate it, she told herself, you just have to get it to sink. It’ll explode or warp enough for that.
It didn’t matter. The whole thing was an exercise in futility. People were like rats. Sevita and the soldiers could blow up every entrance they knew of, but people would just find more. Or make them. They’d squeeze through. The City needed to be wiped out. It didn’t need to just be wiped out, survivors outside needed to fear it, to be so terrified that anyone that even approached where it had been would be shot on sight by the others. She heaved the barrel
back upright, splashing herself with fuel. She pulled it onto the hand truck and over to the next boat. But it couldn’t be Sevita that did it. She didn’t have a bomb, she didn’t have an army, she didn’t even have a way to warn the outside anymore. She tipped the barrel forward again, emptying more fuel on to the next boat. Yes, I do, she thought abruptly, I can warn the outside. The people in the Cured colony had seen her. They had seen a broadcast beyond the wall. She knew she could reach the outside, she just needed the power to do it. She moved to the next boat. There was enough ethanol in one of the barrels to power the news station for days. She just needed one. There was a new, fierce spark inside her. She was just a warm body to Dan, just another set of hands. But broadcasting was what she lived for. If anyone could warn the world, it was her. She tipped the barrel upside down onto the fourth boat until it was empty and then righted it. The empty barrel thumped with a hollow burp as she set it back on the hand truck. She hurried down the dock toward the truck. She had to get the timing right. She had to do it after they’d closed off the City, but before the Plague made her start slurring her words too badly. If she did it before, someone inside would hear the broadcast. She’d start the very panic they were trying to outrun. She reached the back of the truck and stood there, out of breath. Tom was lowering barrels onto the street and keeping an anxious watch for Dan and Paul.
“Wait,” gasped Sevita. “Save me one. Leave one.”
“For what?” asked Tom.
“I need it,” she said, unwilling to risk a disagreement.
Tom shrugged. “I guess we’re already blowing stuff up.” He rolled one of the barrels farther in and then hopped down to help her.
The night grew chilly as the wind picked up. They’d hurried to douse the other boats, fearing the alcohol would disperse too quickly. Sevita felt the deck rattle as she helped Tom tip the last barrel. She looked up. Two shadows were walking toward them. Sevita hissed a swear and Tom glanced up.
“Can you swim?” he whispered.
“What’s the point?” she asked.
“Maybe if I act drunk they won’t realize—” he began. Sevita shook her head. It was entirely obvious what they’d been doing. The shadows resolved into yellow suits.
“Boss? Is that you?” Tom called quietly.
“Thought I told you to just unmoor them if we were late,” came the rumbling answer. Tom sighed and gently lowered the barrel.
“Did you get caught?” asked Sevita as they came closer.
“No,” said Paul, “but we had to take a few detours to avoid the Q-team that’s maintaining the curfew.”
“Smuggler’s entrance is collapsed,” said Dan, “Now for the harder parts.”
“Boss, this pace is brutal. Sevita’s wounded and none of us has slept—” began Tom.
“One more push. We’re going to light these up and then head for the airport. If we stay quick and quiet we’ll be gone before anyone knows what’s going on. We’ll be able to catch a breather.”
“I thought we needed the fire as a distraction while we rammed the gate?”
Dan nodded. “How much gas did you get?”
“A few dozen barrels. It was all they had stored,” said Tom.
Dan whistled long and low. “The boats are going to burn pretty hot. It’s going to take some time to put out and the bulk of our guys are going to have to keep people out of the area because of the fumes. We’ll have time. No one’s going to be thinking of the gate— no one’s even going to be thinking about the quarantine, except those inside it. We’ll hit the gate just after dawn, while everyone is still on this side of the City watching the fire.”
“Maybe we should just push through, Boss,” said Paul. “We aren’t going to have to worry about sleeping after, no matter what happens.”
Dan nodded. “If I thought we could do it, you and I would already be headed up there. But I’m done in. I know that you two must be as well. If we go now, we’ll make a mistake. We only get one shot at this, we have to make sure we’re ready for it.”
“If we miss our window, it means we might have to hurt more people,” said Paul quietly.
Dan laid a hand on Paul’s shoulder. “I know. But if we screw it up, anyone that does get hurt will have been hurt for nothing. And we’ll die for nothing too.”
Tom swiped the back of his arm across his face. His youth hit Sevita again and she wondered if he were thinking of his parents. Or a lover. Or if he were just scared stiff. These men had already been through this. They’d already been recalled to sanity once. Resurrected almost. And now they faced the same nightmare again. Their unease had a greater impact on Sevita than her own half-denied expectations of dying.
Tom cleared his throat. “Let’s light this place up then, before the gas is all gone.”
Dan nodded and unzipped the top of his yellow suit. He pulled out a handful of cigarette lighters from an interior pocket.
“Where’d you get those?” Sevita gaped. “I haven’t seen one in years.”
Dan and Paul exchanged a grin. “You don’t think we just blew up everything in the Smuggler’s entrance without picking things over first, do you?” He handed her a lighter. “Everyone take a boat. Try to light fabric or paper or something first, the fiberglass will take forever, even doused with gas. Go as quick as you can and work your way back to the truck. Tom, Sevita, watch yourselves, you probably got splashed at some point.”
Sevita looked down at herself nervously. She’d been careful, but her shoes were soaked. She shrugged and then slid them off, throwing them down the dock toward shore. Then she climbed onto the first boat while the others turned back to their own. It wasn’t much more than a dinghy with a motor. She looked around for something to light, a cushion or a map or some old wrapper. Only the tow rope looked promising. She sparked the lighter and a small flame wavered between her fingers. She held it to the frayed edge and the rope shriveled and blackened but didn’t catch. The lighter burned her finger and she let it go out. She looked around again, but saw nothing else of help. She thought of using one of her shoes, but she knew she’d need it later. She looked down at her feet. The cuffs of her dress pants were spattered too. She pulled Dan’s small knife from her belt and knelt down, slicing a small section of fabric from the leg of her pants. She looked up as a whoosh of air and then a roar hit her side. The boat beside her was a sparkling stalactite of flame, but it was still too far to light hers. She hurried to finish and rolled the bit of fabric around the tow rope to make a sort of fuse. She sparked the lighter again and lit the fabric. It sputtered and shrank around the rope. She dropped the rope onto the boat’s deck and jumped back onto the dock.
The dock had begun to catch from the other boat, but she couldn’t resist one look back at hers to watch the little flame crawling and multiplying, the old paint melting and bubbling in the heat. She looked back down the dock and began to run, barely skirting the burning timbers with her bare feet until she got to the next empty boat. Another roar began behind her as Paul’s boat caught. She could feel the wave of heat pushing against her. She sawed away another section of pant leg and stuffed it into a dry lobster trap before lighting it. There was a loud pop as one of the hulls behind her began to warp and crack. She winced away from the noise and tried to hurry. The fabric lit and then the trap’s brittle wooden bones. She hurried off the boat. The water around her was already turning to steam, bits of the first boats dropping with sizzles into the harbor. She could see Paul tearing open a cushion to light the stuffing and Dan was running down the dock ahead of her, but she didn’t see Tom. She turned around, squinting against the blinding yellow light.
“Tom?” she called. No one answered. There was a shadowy lump partway down the dock, just past where the flames were twisting and curling around the damp boards. “Tom, is that you?” she shouted, but her voice was whipped into the engulfing roaring of the fires. She ran toward the lump, trying to dodge the sparks and coals that rained down between her and it. She stepped on a melted bit of plastic and
shrieked as it seared her bare foot. But she didn’t stop. The lump became an unconscious man and Sevita began coughing and gasping against the heavy air that was thick with acrid chemicals. She was limping, but she’d reached Tom. The dock behind him was rapidly crumbling away, even the top of the water burnt in a brilliant film now. She tried to lift him, wincing as the bite in her forearm opened again.
“Wake up,” she said shaking him. “Wake up, Tom.”
But Tom was still. She wasn’t even certain he was breathing. She looked toward the shore for help, but neither Dan nor Paul were in sight. She did see strobes of light between buildings a few blocks over and knew they were running out of time. She took a deep breath and then lifted the young man over her shoulder with a groan. She walked as quickly as she could down the dock. She couldn’t see where to step past Tom’s legs. She hoped she wouldn’t be burned worse or fall through the dock. She made it halfway before Dan came running up to relieve her. He pulled the slumped body from her shoulder.
“Is he-” Dan began.
“I don’t know, but we have to go,” said Sevita quickly. She pointed to the nearby buildings. “People are coming.”
Dan didn’t argue, just turned around and carried Tom to the truck. Sevita limped as quickly as she could, pausing only to pick up her gas soaked shoes. The boats were all aflame, their neighbors and the dock spreading the flames far more effectively than Sevita or the others had. The harbor was as bright as day. The truck started with a rumble and Sevita swung herself inside. Paul was driving. She heard the back door grate closed and then a thud next to her head as Dan banged on the interior. Paul tossed her the quarantine suit and pulled his own mask down. “Last time. We have to get to the airport without looking suspicious,” he said. He didn’t bother with the headlights until they were a block from the fire. Sevita struggled into the suit in the dark. She hissed with pain as she slid her burned foot past the plastic crotch.
It was another three blocks before they began to see people sleepily standing in their lawns and yellow suited quarantine teams trying to make them return home. A cluster of soldiers waved Paul over. Sevita pulled her mask down onto her head as he yanked the truck to the side of the road. She winced as she heard the thump of someone in the back, but Paul cranked the window down as if he’d rip the small knob from the door.
Poveglia (After the Cure Book 4) Page 10
