“No time,” he barked, “get out of the way!”
One of the soldiers hesitated, then stammered, “B-but there’s a curfew, I’m supposed to stop all traffic—”
“Don’t you know there’s a raging fire near the harbor? I’ve got to get to the fire station and get this truck filled with foam canisters to fight it.” Paul waited for half a second before shouting, “Now soldier! Get out of my way!”
“But we didn’t hear anything—” began the soldier.
“Turn your damn radio on!” shouted Paul, “They’re good for more than just pickin’ your nose with the antenna! I’m not here to educate you on the situation. Clear the road before I come out there and make you clear out. And get these people out of the street. You’re supposed to be enforcing a curfew, soldier.”
“Y-yes sir,” the soldier managed to spit out at last. He waved the others off and Paul pulled back onto the rutted tar, the truck’s wheels spitting gravel behind it. He started laughing.
“What?” asked Sevita.
Paul shook his head as he continued to laugh. “Always wanted to do that,” he said at last. He pulled the mask off as he drove. “I don’t outrank that guy. He probably outranks me, actually. But these suits— we’re all the same in these suits.” The smile on his face faltered. “We’re all scared shitless. Those guys aren’t enforcing anything. They know.”
“How can you tell?”
“Because the only way we got through that was due to panic. Any other night and they would have checked with a superior. Or at least checked to see if I was who I said. The fact that they didn’t— the chain of command must already be breaking down. Either nobody knows who is in charge or they know enough about what’s going on not to care. Whatever we’re going to do, we’ve got to do it soon. By tomorrow night, the next day at the latest, there will be deserters. And then it’s only a matter of hours before the general public knows.”
“Why are you so sure that the soldiers will desert? Aren’t they trained to obey in times of crisis?”
Paul nodded as he stared at the dark road. “Sure, they used to be. That’s why there’s still a city standing. Most of the soldiers who were defending this territory fought to the bitter end. But they were wiped out pretty quickly. And when it became apparent that city officials and even untrained civilians had to take their place, the ranks thinned out pretty quickly. It’s only because of the timing of the Cure that we’re still here. The soldiers we have now— some of them are the same people that turned tail and ran a few years ago. The others are untested. They’ve had bits of training but nothing comprehensive. Lots of them were conscripted, they won’t stay once they know there isn’t anyone left to shoot them if they desert. The few that stay will be slaughtered as people start to turn.”
Sevita shook her head. “You assume an awful lot about how people are going to react.”
“I don’t assume. I know. I saw it.”
“How could you have seen it? By the time society started to really break down, almost everyone who was Infected had turned.”
“I wasn’t Infected.”
“But I thought all of Dan’s men were Cured. I thought Immunes had their own units.”
“They do,” said Paul with a scowl, “And a Cured is only supposed to outrank other Cureds. Anything to keep us separate. But they made an exception for me.” The road smoothed as they hit the route to the airport. It was one of the few roads that were kept constantly repaired. “We were cops before. Dan and I. He was my chief. I was the only Immune. I managed to get most of our department into the city jail after they turned. Military hated that. The policy then was shoot on sight, naturally. But I took care of them and we were outside the Barrier for a long time, so the military couldn’t do much. I got conscripted, of course. Anyone with training was conscripted almost immediately. One day, a few weeks after, they sent me on an overnight scav mission. I knew that the City was in bad shape at that point. People were starting to starve and lots of soldiers were dying from infections when they got wounded at the Barrier. I didn’t want to leave the people I was caring for, but I knew they’d want me to go, if they could understand. This was our job, protecting people. So I agreed to go, as long as one of the soldiers on Barrier duty would agree to come feed my guys. While I was gone, they tested the first batch of the Cure on my friends. It didn’t go well. About half of them died. Something about the antibiotic— I don’t know if it was made wrong or they were allergic or it just didn’t work. Those that didn’t die weren’t cured. They were just the same. A few days after I got back, they took the survivors away to Carton’s lab. I was so angry. They didn’t ask me, they didn’t ask the relatives and they certainly didn’t ask my comrades. I got into an— an altercation with the soldiers trying to remove my friends. Dan got his scar during that fight because he got loose when I was trying to stop the soldiers. But it was me against about a dozen of them. I was put into one of my own jail cells. They left me to rot for a week. Someone brought me food and water, but that was it. I wasn’t allowed out or given any information. Finally, I was brought before the Military Governor. He said he didn’t have the resources to waste on one belligerent soldier. That if I couldn’t obey orders, he’d shoot me on the spot. He said he was going to transfer me, and that’s when he called Dan forward. He was the only one to survive the other attempts. Most people don’t know it, but Dan was really the very first person Cured, not Isaac Green.
Anyway, the Governor said I was supposed to lead a new squad, that since I liked hanging out with the Infected so much, we’d be the first ones into an Infected zone and we’d take our recruits from the Cured.”
“So you’re really the one in charge of the soldiers at the power plant?” asked Sevita.
Paul shook his head. “I told the Governor that I was a police officer, not a soldier. That if he really wanted to rebuild the City, he needed more police and less military. I was never a fan of martial law. I said that if there’d been more police trying to protect people and fewer soldiers shooting them, then maybe things wouldn’t have become so bad. And that even if it was justified, with the Cure in place he should need fewer soldiers and I refused the command.”
Sevita whistled. “I’ll bet he didn’t take that well.”
“No, not at all. He actually reached down to his belt for his gun. I think he would have shot me as a deserter if he’d been wearing it that day. Lucky for me, he was announcing the Cure through your station and wanted to give the impression that everything was secure. Instead, he told Dan that he would be in charge and if Dan couldn’t keep me in line, he’d have both of us executed for treason. He also recommended that Dan beat the insolence out of me.” Paul chuckled. “Poor Dan. He’d only come around from the tranquilizer a few hours before. He didn’t know what was going on. Just nodded and sort of floated after me when we were dismissed. The Military Governor doesn’t issue idle threats, though, I’ll give him that. We really were assigned the most dangerous missions and we got the Cured that no one else wanted. The untrained, the unstable, belligerents like me. Still, we were both cops. We were trained to think that way, and we tried to train the others that way too. It was easy in the Cure camps. Those folks needed help, not protection. Mostly they just needed people that could understand what they’d been through.
For the past few years, we started to relax. Started to settle into some kind of normalcy. Our squad helped sort the supplies from scav missions and helped clean up some of the City’s rubble. We broke up bar fights and secured tunnels for the electric and water workers. It was starting to feel like we were doing what we were meant to do again. But when everything blew up at the courthouse and our squad was assigned to Pazzo’s floor— I knew it was starting up again. Dan had to kill him, you know. Pazzo and Dr. Schneider and one of our own guys. Should have known it was too late.”
He fell silent and Sevita stared out at the dark road. It wound around several large parking lots that were becoming scraggly fields pushing up through the lo
ose islands of tar. The dandelion puffs glowed in the moonlight, small halos hovering over the grass, a thousand small ghosts standing watch over the commuter lot. He parked the truck in front of the first terminal, the shadow of the overhang completely shrouding the truck in darkness. Sevita shucked the biosuit again and slid out of the passenger side. She hobbled around the truck and opened the loading door as Paul checked the airport.
Dan was crouched next to Tom’s form at the rear of the truck. “Is he alive?” asked Sevita.
“He’s alive. But he’s got a bad cough and he’s very confused. I think he got too much smoke. I should have made you wear your masks. I thought we’d be out of there too fast for it to matter.” Dan shook his head and looked up at Sevita. “I think he might be turning. The smoke made it worse somehow.”
“Maybe we can find some oxygen in the airport. That’s what you’re supposed to do, isn’t it? Christine would know. Maybe once the smoke is cleared out, he’ll have a better grip on what’s happening—”
“Can we risk it? What if he turns overnight while we’re sleeping?”
Paul returned from the terminal. “All clear, Boss,” he said. Tom moaned lightly and shifted, waking himself up with a ragged cough. Paul jumped into the truck, but Dan prevented him from leaning over his friend.
“We can’t just leave him out here,” said Sevita, “What if he’s not even really sick?”
“It’s warm, he’d be okay,” said Dan.
“And if he does turn?” she asked, “Do we just let him wander off to attack someone— or us tomorrow morning?”
“Be okay,” murmured Tom, “Fi’ minute. Jus’ fi’ more.”
Dan and Paul exchanged a glance.
“He’s just a kid. We can at least lock him in the luggage office. If he recovers then great, we’ll let him out. If he doesn’t— well, at least he won’t be able to hurt anyone,” pleaded Sevita.
“We can’t lock them all up,” said Paul sadly, “Tom’s just the first one—”
“What do you suggest we do with him then?” she asked.
“What I’d expect anyone to do for me. What you’d want done for you.”
“Not yet,” said Dan. “We’ll give him until morning. Then we’ll decide.”
Paul shook his head but helped Dan lift the boy. Sevita swept the dark terminal with the bright beam of Dan’s flashlight. She could hear rodents scuttle away, little claws scraping over the linoleum. Dan and Paul stumbled over to the luggage office with their half-conscious burden. Dan lowered Tom gently onto the carpeted floor and hunted around for a soft bag of clothes for a pillow. But they’d all become nests and he ended up tossing them out onto the carousel so that Tom wouldn’t be bitten in his sleep. Sevita searched first the security office and then the bathrooms for a first aid kit and a canister of oxygen, but the airport had been picked clean years before. At last, she gave up and returned to the lobby. The luggage room was tightly locked and Dan was stretched out on a row of plastic chairs, already snoring. Paul reached into a pocket and tossed her a small cloth bag before slumping to the floor.
“What is it?” she whispered.
“Just cookies,” he yawned. “Kind of hard and watch your teeth for stones, it’s City flour. But they’re what I’ve got.”
“Thanks,” she whispered, chewing. She picked another row of airport chairs. The skin on her burned foot tore and wept as she pulled off her shoe, but it was a relief all the same. She lay down on the cool plastic. An ache for Christine fluttered through her, but she was too exhausted to think for long. She slept without crying.
Nineteen
It was no use. Christine shook her wrist and then held it up to her face. She squinted at the watch in the dim light of the bunker. Four a.m. She sighed and sat up. This is not good for the baby, she told herself. You’re supposed to sleep MORE during the second trimester, not less. But something deeper rioted. A person wasn’t meant to be locked in a bunker or face high levels of stress either. Beating herself up wasn’t going to help anything. She stood up and quietly made her way toward the storage in the back, acting as if Marnie was asleep and shouldn’t be disturbed, though Christine knew very well that the teen was also only pretending, lying stiff and still and staring at the low, dark ceiling.
Christin stared at the wall of boxes. Most of it was food. She knew the short wave pieces were in one of them. She started opening boxes.
“What are you doing?” Marnie jumped down from her bunk twenty minutes later, and Christine realized she was sweaty and tired, but still not tired enough to sleep.
“I’m looking for a part.” She pushed another box of cans toward the kitchen. She’d been slowly emptying each box. If Sevita was wrong, if it was just a scare, at least the bunker would be cleaned and prepared as it ought to have been months ago.
“What kind of part?”
“There’s a short wave radio in here. If I can put it together, then we can call Nella. She can help us. She’ll know who’d have the cure.”
Marnie shook her head, confused. “There’s a cure? Why isn’t anyone looking for it?”
Christine stacked an uneven tower of tuna cans into a cupboard. “Nobody even knows they are sick yet. And I don’t know if there’s a cure. I think there must be, I mean, the Plague was invented by someone. They must have the cure for it. They did last time. Sort of.”
“Someone made this?” cried Marnie, “This wasn’t just— wasn’t just, I don’t know, fate or God or bad luck or something?”
Christine turned to look at her. The girl was young, fourteen or fifteen maybe. It struck Christine that she must have been very small when the December Plague happened. She’d lived her almost her entire life in the shadow of the epidemic. Things like laboratories and advanced medicine didn’t make sense to her. The world of Before, the world that still made up Christine’s version of “normal” didn’t exist for Marnie. Not at all. “I’m sorry,” said Christine at last, “I’d forgotten you just came to the City. I assumed everyone knew.”
“But why? Why would anyone— make this?”
Christine pushed the girl gently down onto the kitchen bench and handed her a bottle of water. “It was an accident. The scientists that made the Plague were trying to make something else, something good. But experiments don’t always go as planned and the bacteria got loose and changed.”
“You said it was cured. Henry was cured. I saw him, I talked to him.”
Christine nodded. “Yes, it has been cured. By the same people that made it. But there was another strain. A different version. And one of the scientists— it’s hard to explain. This time it wasn’t an accident. The man was angry. He was so angry he wanted everyone to suffer. I hope there’s a cure, but we have to find it. There’s only one scientist left that would know. But she’s had brain damage, from the first plague. Only my friend, only Nella would know how to ask her the right way.” Marnie was very pale. Christine reached over and opened the water bottle. Then she folded the empty box and tried to give Marnie a reassuring smile. “That’s why I need to put the radio back together. You can help if you want.”
The girl looked down at the bottle blankly, then took a sip. Christine walked back to the wall of boxes to give Marnie what little privacy that she could.
“You know,” said the girl after a moment, “the place where I was— the camp I came from— the people weren’t good. I know that some of the things they did were wrong. Maybe all of the things they did. It was hard to be with them. To do what they made us do. But I wouldn’t want the rest of the world to get sick because of it. And Henry— and the others— Phil called them the Dogs, but they were just people sick with the Plague. They got hurt or starved or killed. Sometimes Phil did worse things. They should have been angry, but Henry didn’t want the world to suffer. When I saw him last, he had the chance to get back at Phil, and he let him go. What was so bad that the scientist wanted everyone to die? What was worse than what we went through?”
Christine shook her head. “I hope w
e never find out. I never want to be that angry.” She fished around in a large box for a moment. “Here it is.”
“You found the radio?” Marnie perked up.
“I found the part. I still have to put the radio back together. I took it apart a few months ago so I could fix the ambulance radio. The scav team brought me a spare part a little while ago, but we’ve been so busy with folks coming into the City and new babies— I just didn’t think it was a priority.”
“How long will it take to put it together?”
Christine shrugged. “A few hours probably.”
“And then you’re going to call your friend to come save us?”
Christine shook her head. “I’ll try.” She pulled a slim metal case from the corner and placed it on the small Formica table, sitting heavily into the seat behind it.
“Maybe— maybe we could call Henry too? Warn him about what’s happening. He said he had lots of friends.”
Christine opened the case and began sorting parts into small piles. “We can try. If he has a radio, maybe he’ll be checking the old government stations. No one but the City broadcasts on those any more, and without power, the band will be free. Can you pass me the small Phillips-head from the drawer over there?”
Marnie found the tool and sat down across from her. “How do you know all this stuff?”
Christine shrugged. “When there wasn’t anyone around to fix stuff, we had to learn how to do it ourselves. It didn’t happen overnight and I’ve burned and shocked myself once or twice, but we needed things like running engines and radios and medical tools. We learned from each other. The guy that taught me how to fix the ambulance runs the junkyard and fixes everyone’s cars. There’s an older lady upstairs who used to be an x-ray technician. She’s actually become the hospital machine expert. She just has a knack. Not everything is usable, or at least, not yet, but we’re regaining what we lost gradually.”
Poveglia (After the Cure Book 4) Page 11
