Generation M (The Toucan Trilogy, Book 3)

by Scott Cramer

  He got Eddie in a headlock and squeezed him tightly, but he released the pressure, stunned at how hot Eddie felt.

  Eddie wormed his way free, wrapped his arms around Jordan’s waist, and drove him forward. Jordan lost his balance, and Eddie landed on top. Jordan braced for a new round of pummeling, but Eddie rolled off and lay on his back. It was over. They remained like that for a moment without speaking, both breathing hard.

  “I was afraid of the Pig,” Eddie said. “We all were. That’s no excuse, I know. I’m sorry. I still think about it a lot. I should have helped them.”

  “Yeah, maybe I should have stayed here,” Jordan said.

  Eddie pinched his nostrils to stem the trickle of blood. “How could you have known what would happen? I wish I could have gone with you.”

  Jordan knew Eddie had wanted to join him on Lucky Me, but he had needed to go by himself. “Hey, I’m sorry.”

  “Jordan, I want to go with you. Abby always said that if kids work together, they’re stronger, right?”

  He and Eddie had proven that many times. They made a good team. “I’d really like you to come with me.”

  Eddie dragged his blood-splattered sleeve across his eyes. “There’s something you need to know. I have the Pig.”

  1.04

  COLONY EAST

  Lieutenant Dawson moved to the window in his living quarters at the Biltmore Hotel where the morning sunlight made it a little easier to see. He unsealed the plastic bag and removed two separate photographs.

  Feeling light-headed, he fixed his gaze on his wife, Lisa, and then turned her photo over to review his notes: “Five feet, four inches,” “pink pajamas,” “black and white bathrobe,” “second floor bedroom faces west,” and “elm tree outside window.”

  Dawson braced his forearm on the table for stability and added with a fine-tipped marker: Wedding ring with three small diamonds.

  Next, the photo of Sarah. In the picture, his daughter was eleven months old, her toothless grin and chubby cheeks frozen in time. With a sob working its way up his throat, he reviewed the back of her photo: “three-years old now,” “small, round birthmark on her elbow,” and “light brown hair.”

  He swallowed the sob and unfolded the map he had drawn of Mystic. In the center was the address of the house he had shared with his family prior to the first epidemic. Twenty-three Walpole Avenue. He had traced two different routes from Colony East to the house. He added several details. One block west of his house, at the corner of Walpole and Berkley, he wrote, “International House of Pancakes.” The tall IHOP sign was an excellent landmark.

  He returned the map to the bag that he sealed and slipped into his rear pocket.

  At 0700 hours, he started for the wing of seven-year-old girls. He knocked on doors, poking his head into each room. “Good morning. Rise and shine. Fall out to the hall.”

  Soon, ten girls stood at parade rest in the corridor. Since the power was out, he trailed his flashlight along the ceiling. “At ease. Have a seat.”

  Earlier, by radio, Admiral Samuels had ordered Dawson to inform the cadets about the evacuation and determine if any of them showed symptoms of the AHA-B illness.

  The girls yawned and rubbed their sleepy eyes.

  “I’m proud of how you’ve conducted yourselves over the past three days,” Dawson said. “It’s not easy being cooped up together for so long.”

  Cadet William’s hand shot up.

  “Tabby, please hold your question.”

  She waved her hand and blurted, “Can we go outside today, sir?”

  “I’m sorry, but the answer is ‘no.’”

  The other cadets responded with a chorus of groans.

  Tabby raised her hand again.

  Dawson sighed. “What?”

  “What happened to Abby?”

  The cadet grapevine was alive and well. Abigail Leigh was a mystery to them. Here one day, gone the next.

  “Cadet Leigh is at Medical Clinic 17,” he said, hating to lie, but Job One was to keep the cadets focused and calm.

  The girls traded glances and were about to ask more questions.

  “No more interruptions or everyone will be confined back to quarters when the cooks bring us chow.” The threat brought instant silence.

  He told them about the evacuation. The first hand shot up before he had finished.

  He sighed and pointed to Cadet Baker. “Let’s start here.”

  “Where are we going?” Baker asked.

  “Atlanta Colony or Colony West. However, I don’t know which one yet. I’m meeting with Admiral Samuels and the other company leaders later on. I’ll tell you as soon as I know.”

  They fired more questions at him, and Dawson realized their curiosity and pent up energy were too much to contain.

  “When are we going?”

  “Tomorrow, or maybe the day after,” he said.

  “Sir, I have a lot of friends in Sheraton Company. What if they go to a different colony?”

  He nodded, knowing how important friendships were at their age. “My father was in the Navy, and when I was growing up, we’d move to a new base every two years. Each time we had to move, it made me sad, but I soon made new friends. You will too.”

  “Can we see our friends before we go?”

  “I’ll speak to the admiral about it,” Dawson said.

  “What should we pack?”

  “I’ll tell you as soon as I find out,” he replied.

  “Will you still be our company leader?”

  He smiled. “You can’t get rid of me that easily. Now I have a few questions for you. Is anyone feeling hot or feverish?”

  Hands remained at sides.

  “Does anyone have a tummy ache?”

  Nobody spoke.

  Dawson pulled his shoulders back. “Please see me if you don’t feel well at any point. Chow should be here shortly. Dismissed.”

  He held similar meetings with the cadets on the second and third floors. After finishing with the fifteen-year-old boys on the fourth floor, he stood outside the living quarters of Jonzy Billings and barked, “Cadet Billings, is that any way for you to make a bed?”

  “I can do a better job, sir,” the boy announced loudly as they had arranged earlier.

  Dawson stepped inside, closed the door behind him, and removed the bag containing the photo of Sarah from his pocket. He handed it over to Jonzy. “Stow it under the mattress. After chow, study the material in the latrine.”

  Jonzy gave him a thumbs-up. The boy wore thick glasses and often tripped over his own feet, but Dawson was confident that if Sarah were alive, Jonzy would find her.

  “Okay, let’s review the plan,” Dawson said. “The pills are arriving today. I’ll pass them out and save the extra ones.”

  Jonzy outlined the next steps. “We meet on the top floor at 2300 hours. My two packs of supplies are up there already. At midnight, I will communicate with Abby. I hope she’ll be with Toby. I’ll tell them the fishing is good. They’ll know to meet me at the fish market.”

  Dawson took over. “We’ll leave the Biltmore and head up the west side of the colony. In the Red Zone, I’ll cut the fence and return to the Biltmore.”

  Jonzy spoke up. “If I find Abby and Toby, I will report on the radio at 0600 hours, ‘The eagle has landed.’ If I’m still looking for them, I’ll say, ‘The fish aren’t biting.’”

  “Good,” Dawson said. “Keep all radio transmissions short and confusing. You never know who might be listening in.”

  “Yes, sir. After I meet up with Abby and Toby, we’ll go to Mystic and meet up with her brother, Jordan. Then, we’ll look for your daughter.”

  Dawson felt a sob forming in his chest. “When I get to Atlanta Colony, I’ll convince the scientists to make more pills at the Alpharetta plant.”

  “Piece of cake, Lieutenant.” Jonzy went to give him a high-five and missed his hand by a good six inches.

  1.05

  EMORY CAMPUS

  With the spirit drill ove
r, Unit 2A was a flurry of activity as the girls straightened up and attended to personal hygiene. The countdown clock showed they had fifty-two minutes before they had to be at the dining hall for their first meal.

  After tucking the sheet under the mattress and smoothing out the blanket, Lisette jumped into her blue uniform and yanked the zipper up high. She tugged at her left sleeve to make it easier to read her colony ID. The numbers 944 were stitched in yellow.

  She grinned when Petty Officer Murphy entered the unit and barked, “Let’s move it, ladies.”

  Everyone loved Murph, who took charge of them every morning while Chandra and Auntie sorted out the mobile lessons. Murph had red hair, freckles, and very pale skin. She’d said she had joined the Navy because she was sensitive to sunlight. “You don’t get any sun on a submarine.”

  Zoe had yet to make her bed, and Murph stopped before her, placing hands on hips. “Is this any time to dilly-dally?”

  Under Murph’s watchful eye, Zoe got to work, while those who had finished their tasks gathered around them.

  With a little smile, Murph tapped her toe. “Doctor Perkins likes us to use big words with Generation M, so this is my big word of the day. Promptitude. I’ll use it in a sentence for you. I wish Zoe would show greater promptitude in the morning. Now, who can tell me what promptitude means?”

  Lisette raised her hand. “Being on time?”

  Murph gave her a big thumbs-up. “Five gold stars for Miss Leigh.”

  Lisette gushed with pride.

  “This is Lisette’s last day at the colony.”

  Everyone turned. Molly was gliding a brush through her long brown hair.

  “I heard Mother talking to Auntie,” Molly said, crinkling her nose. “Mother said Lisette is too stubborn to be a member of Generation M. Doctor Perkins is going to kick her out because she can’t forget about her brother and sister.”

  Lisette shivered in the frigid blast of words.

  Murph cleared her throat and narrowed her eyes at Molly. “It’s not polite to spread rumors.”

  “Sorry,” Molly mumbled.

  Murph clapped. “What’s everyone standing around for? Look alive! Fall in.”

  The girls formed two lines, one for the west wing bathroom and one for the east wing bathroom.

  Murph knelt before Lisette and lowered her voice. “Here’s a special word of the day just for you … perseverant. It means never giving up. Doing what you think is right, and never giving up. Lisette Leigh is perseverant.”

  Still troubled by what Molly said, Lisette took her place in line waiting for the west wing bathroom.

  Zoe whispered in her ear, “If they kick you out, I’ll go with you.”

  Emily said in Lisette’s other ear, “Molly’s just mad that she lost at the duck game.”

  The kind words made her feel much better.

  The line moved and she received her toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste, and a mobile lesson from Chandra. Lisette strapped the iPod to her arm, inserted the earbud, and pressed play. The voice of her Russian teacher began reviewing vocabulary words. Doctor Perkins had said that he wanted every member of Generation M to be fluent in Russian, German, and English because of all the scientific work recorded in those languages.

  In the bathroom, Lisette stepped up to a sink and got up on her tiptoes to see her face in the mirror. She reached for her bottom tooth and felt the mad beating of butterfly wings in her chest when it wiggled. The tooth was much looser than last night. She put a dab of toothpaste on her brush and brushed carefully around the loose tooth.

  Lydia moved to the next sink. The six-year-old always had a serious expression, as if she had just made it to the final round of the Atlanta Colony spelling bee. Knowing what was coming next, Lisette grinned at Zoe, two sinks away, who grinned back.

  Lydia was the only girl in the unit who kept pace with her language lesson while brushing her teeth.

  “Ya paneemayoo,” Lydia said, dappling the mirror in front of her with white dots of toothpaste.

  Lisette and Zoe doubled over in laughter.

  A piercing whistle gained their attention, and they stopped laughing. Murph stood in the doorway with a stern expression. “Focus, ladies. The countdown clock is ticking.”

  They started giggling again as soon as Murph was gone.

  1.06

  BROOKLYN

  Hugging her pack against her chest, Abby limped through the crowd streaming to the bank of the East River to pick through the assortment of items that had been washed ashore.

  The kids surged forward to explore the bounty. Abby could see value in gathering boards for firewood or a soggy sleeping bag, but wondered what anyone would do with a rusty baby stroller without wheels, a broken umbrella, or a swollen paperback. Maybe the artifacts reminded kids of life before the night of the purple moon.

  She kept an eye out for Toby. It would be easy to spot the dark blue Colony East coveralls among the multicolored combinations of clothing worn by the survivors. Assuming he was still wearing the uniform, of course. Had Doctor Perkins, who had kicked Toby out of the colony, allowed him to keep it? Maybe Toby had discarded the uniform, wishing to blend in with the crowd.

  Despite the scrapes and bruises that hobbled her, Abby was glad to be on the move. The sights and sounds helped take her mind off her hunger. Better to focus on something louder, brighter, and more interesting than the gnawing sensation in the pit of her stomach.

  Moments after she congratulated herself for this newfound approach, an aroma of roasting meat slowly crept up her nostrils. She spun around, looking for the early morning barbecue, ready to march over and ask for a bite. When she didn’t see the source, she considered investigating the side streets. The odor was like a vine reaching out and lacing around her wrist, pulling her away from the river and her ultimate destination: the fish market. She had to resist the temptation.

  She tried breathing through her mouth, hoping to eliminate her sense of smell, but her taste buds and pores soaked up the delicious aroma in the air. Gripped by hunger, she wandered across the road where she fell to her knees on the sidewalk and squeezed her eyes shut.

  “If I have the power to stop, I have the power to avoid distractions,” she said to herself. She got to her feet and stumbled back toward the river.

  Farther on, kids were wading into the water to snag floating debris; some were building a raft by lashing inner tubes together. She stopped near them to rest.

  She was about a mile from the Brooklyn Bridge. The fish market was another hundred meters beyond the base of the bridge. To reassure herself she still had the walkie-talkie, she reached into her pack, letting out a sigh of relief when she felt it inside, then shuddered as her fingertips brushed the bag of rice. Her mouth flooded with saliva, and she ripped her hand from the backpack to wipe the drool from her lips.

  She thrust her hand back into the pack, grabbed the bag of rice and gobbled down the last morsels of her food supply. She marveled that her stomach cramps disappeared instantly.

  With new energy, she pushed onward, but soon the cramps were worse than ever.

  She picked her way among the carnival of scavengers to the river’s edge for a drink, hoping that filling her stomach with water would ease the pain. She brought the water to her mouth in a cupped hand and gagged when she swallowed. It was salty.

  Nearby, a large fish floated on its belly. She waded up to her waist into the water; careful to keep her pack high above the water, she pinched the tail between her fingers, and then pulled the fish onto the mud. She recognized it as a striped bass and guessed it weighed twenty pounds or more. They had caught stripers off the rocks at Castine Island. She poked its fleshy belly and lifted a gill. The fish was dead. She brought her nose close to the scales and sniffed. Rotting fish had a distinctive odor, but this fish didn’t smell rotten at all. An alarm suddenly sounded from deep within Abby, and she looked around warily, eyeing kids in her vicinity, potential competitors for her meal, but none of them seemed particularly int
erested in the fact that she was hovering over a large, dead fish.

  The fish presented as many problems as it solved. It could satisfy her hunger for days, and she could share it with Toby and Jonzy, but once it started to rot, it would be useless. She needed to clean and cook it soon.

  She wondered if she could scrape off the scales and slice open the belly with a sharp piece of glass. Broken glass littered the ground outside most buildings. But how would she cook the fish? She could strike a deal with someone who already had a fire going, offering a portion of it in return for them cooking it.

  She cradled the fish in her arms and began walking, but after a few steps, she realized it was too heavy and awkward to carry this way. She set the fish down, opened her pack, and then worked the pack over the fish’s head.

  Head first, only half the fish fit into the pack. She slung the pack on her back. With her arms free and the weight centered, she could take small steps.

  Most kids ignored her, but a few gawked. From the desperate look in their eyes, she thought they had the Pig and wanted her fish. She met the gaze of some, trying to show she was strong, that she would fight to keep her food. She lowered her eyes at those survivors she sensed might accept the challenge and trudged onward, desperately hoping they wouldn’t attack.

  As frightened as she was, she counted her blessings. For those infected with AHA-B, a fever spiked in the advanced stages of the illness. She could not imagine the burden of a soaring temperature and hallucinations on top of the savage hunger she was already experiencing.

  Abby stopped before a puddle. The salt from the river water she had swallowed burned the back of her parched throat. She went down on one knee and drank some of the brown water. It tasted good, so she drank more. Soon, she started coughing from the mud residue. Strangely, the grit coating her tongue and throat seemed to diminish her hunger pangs. She smiled, recalling how she had made mud pies as a little girl and served them to her dolls. Telling herself she had no time to reminisce, she took another mouthful and swished the water between her teeth to sift out the grit.