Generation M (The Toucan Trilogy, Book 3)

by Scott Cramer

  “We need to conduct more autopsies.”

  “Indeed.” He nodded. “I suggest a minimum of five corpses.”

  “Perhaps we can collect victims in the city?”

  Perkins typed a command on his keyboard and Monitor number four came to life, showing the mob of children outside the front gate.

  “Low hanging fruit right at our doorstep,” he said. “See Captain Mathews. She’ll arrange security for your team.”

  Her brow crinkled. “Captain?”

  “Mathews received her promotion for outstanding service to the colony.”

  “I’ll contact her immediately,” Hedrick said.

  “Sandra,” he called as she was heading for the door. He reserved first names for moments of paternalistic advice. “You could use some rest. We all need some.”

  “Sorry, Doctor Perkins, but now is not the time to rest.”

  “Generation M thanks you,” he trilled in a tone that spoke of his delight. Such dedication brightened his morning.

  4.01

  ATLANTA

  Abby let herself go limp, yet remained on her feet, propped up by the crush of surrounding survivors. Hundreds crowded the area in front of the CDC bunker. Most had the Pig, evidenced by the nonstop groans and cries for food. Abby added her voice to the chorus.

  She was within twenty meters of the perimeter fence. Another fifty meters beyond the fence, four doors, each large enough to drive a big truck through, were built into a concrete wall.

  It had taken her hours to reach this position so close to the fence. Using her hand as a crowbar, she had wedged it between kids to pry them apart, quickly moving into the gap she had created.

  “The adults have tacos,” a girl shouted.

  The crowd surged toward the fence, producing an enormous force that squeezed Abby’s chest. She took rapid, tiny sips of air, praying she would not pass out. As the taco rumor slowly died out, the pressure released and she could breathe again normally.

  About thirty minutes later, the large door on the right lifted and a truck drove out. The taller kids in the crowd shouted out what was happening.

  “Six adults wearing hazmat suits.”

  “They have food.”

  “They’re coming to help us.”

  An adult voice boomed from a speaker on top of the truck. “Move back from the gate. Everyone move back. Back up immediately.”

  Just the opposite happened. The predominant force of the crowd took aim at the gate. With her ribcage near its breaking point from the crush of bodies around her, Abby started to black out from the lack of oxygen. Colors leeched from her vision, and soon the world was cast in shades of gray. She tried to breathe with the rapidity of a hummingbird.

  The adults fired a water cannon, hosing the kids with a jet of icy water. The spray cooled Abby’s fever and seemed to do the same for the other survivors.

  Cries of “more” and “over here” changed the adults’ tactics. Something exploded high over Abby’s head, leaving a puff of white gas that slowly descended on the crowd. Her eyes and throat burned as more explosions followed and the little white clouds settled over the kids.

  Like a sudden shift of the wind, the crowd reversed direction, pushing away from the gate. Maybe the kids finally understood that the adults were not coming out to help them.

  The shades of grey darkened, a sign that Abby was seconds away from passing out. Believing the risk of suffocation was greater than the risk of kids trampling her to death, she raised one shoulder and pressed her arm flat against her side and wiggled her hips, shifting back and forth, moving with the crowd while at the same time sinking lower.

  Finally sprawled on the ground, eye level with a forest of legs and feet, the air was hot and stale, but at least she could breathe. Knees repeatedly knocked against her head. To protect herself, she curled into a tight ball and covered her head with her arms. The battering eased as the crowd dispersed.

  Eventually, the sky reappeared. She stretched out and lay motionless. Others were also on the ground, claimed by the Pig or by the same forces that had come close to making her a victim. The area looked like a battlefield after the armies had retreated.

  She closed her eyes until they were two, thin slits, and she watched the adults in hazmat suits climb out of the truck and fan out among the bodies. One of the adults had to be Sandy, but Abby couldn’t see the faces behind the bubble masks.

  Two adults came straight for her and knelt beside her. One of them carried a large black bag.

  “Don’t move.”

  Abby recognized Sandy’s voice.

  “If you can hear me, give a small nod,” Sandy said.

  Abby nodded.

  “Good. Doctor Perkins may be watching us on a monitor, so you have to remain perfectly still. Nod if you understand me.”

  Abby gave a little nod.

  Sandy and her partner rolled Abby to her side, positioned the long bag beneath her, and then carefully maneuvered her inside.

  The body bag blocked out all light and was smooth, but the zipper hurt where it pressed against her nose and forehead. In the chaos of the past minutes, Abby had completely forgotten about her desperate hunger and fever, but her senses were magnified inside the dark cocoon. As waves of painful cramps rolled through her stomach, she wanted to bring her knees to her stomach and hug them, but the bag constricted her.

  Abby heard voices — two men — and then felt herself being lifted by the handles above her head and below her feet. The men carried her the way they would a rolled up rug.

  The bag pressed against her face, forming a seal against her nose and mouth. She drew in a sharp breath that tightened the seal. A trillion bubbles of panic coursed through her blood stream. She was suffocating.

  Trying to create a little pocket of air, she tensed her stomach and chest muscles and blew out through her nose, emptying her lungs. Immediately, she tried to take a breath but only sucked the plastic against her mouth and nostrils, tight as tape. With her lungs depleted of oxygen, a burning sensation flared in her throat and down her legs.

  The voices of the two men sounded distant, and she tumbled into her mind.

  Sunshine splashed the tops of tall pines across the lake as they swayed in the breeze, and Abby followed the ribbons of air as they unfurled and picked up the scent of the forest floor. Standing on the dock, she could almost taste the perfume of moss and dirt as the fresh air blew across the lake. Added to it was the honey flavor of the green pollen floating on the surface. Filled with serene peacefulness, she closed her eyes and inhaled.

  She jerked her head and gasped, forcing hot, stale air down the constricted pipe of her throat. The bag lay against the side of her face, and she felt the warmth of the material on her ear. The men were still carrying her, and her heart thundered in fear.

  They finally set her down on a hard, flat surface, and a moment later, a truck engine started, the vibrations spreading throughout her body. The truck lurched forward.

  When the truck stopped and the engine turned off, she figured she was inside the bunker.

  She was lifted and placed on a new, flat surface. Soon, she sensed motion. They must be wheeling her on a gurney.

  “We’ll begin the first autopsy at zero one hundred,” Sandy said loudly.

  Again, Abby felt herself being lifted, and this time, her face was in a better position. She was placed on a smooth surface that moved and then stopped. Something clicked. It was dark, silent, still, and the temperature dropped.

  She felt as if she were buried alive, headfirst in a coffin-like enclosure. Her scream came without warning and was quickly absorbed in the heavy silence the way water soaks into sand. She screamed a second time and then a third. She kept screaming until her raw vocal cords gave out.

  4.02

  WASHINGTON DC - GEORGIA

  In Jordan’s motorcycle mirror, the Washington Monument faded in the early morning haze. Spike and Jonzy flanked him.

  Low had given them extra gas, drinking water, che
ese, and words of advice:”Go through Georgia at night. Maybe you’ll get lucky, and the Grits won’t see you.”

  The boys made steady progress and turned onto Route 85, the road that made a beeline for Atlanta

  At ten o’clock, after they’d gone one-hundred-and-seventy miles, Jordan signaled for them to stop, needing to stretch and take a leak.

  Jonzy raised the radio antennae and held the speaker close to his ear, aiming the antennae in a number of different directions.

  Jordan heard the robotic voice on the CDC station, urging survivors to stay indoors, keep listening to the station, and wait for help to arrive.

  Jonzy shrugged. “We’re too far from the tracks to pick up Pig Central.”

  Jordan bit his tongue to keep himself from blurting out that it had been a good but crazy idea.

  After filling their stomachs with cheese and grasshoppers, they got back on the road. Route 85 had only a few obstacles, allowing them to increase their speed to fifty miles per hour. They stopped next a few miles north of Charlotte, North Carolina. The Georgia border was about an hour away.

  Jonzy tried the radio again and reported he only picked up the adult station. If Jonzy was discouraged, he didn’t show it. Just the opposite. He beamed like someone who had found a freezer filled with ice cream.

  Jonzy kept trying to pick up Pig Central while Jordan and Spike debated Low’s idea of holing up until nightfall.

  “I think we should keep going,” Jordan said.

  “Nighttime is safer,” Spike countered.

  “Time is not on our side,” Jordan countered back. “Abby, Touk, and Toby might need us.”

  “They might need us, but we wouldn’t be good to anyone if the Grits kill us.”

  Jordan swallowed hard. “I’m ready to take on Pale Rider.”

  The corner of Spike’s lip curled. “Okay, let’s roll,” he said and hopped on his bike.

  Jordan drew in a sharp breath, wondering if he had spoken too soon.

  Jonzy whooped, and they raced over to him. He was holding the antenna against a minivan. The burned-out hulk of metal allowed the radio to pick up a weaker signal.

  “Pig Central,” he exclaimed. “Listen!”

  The robotic voice of the CDC and the voice of the White House Gang DJ wove together in a garbled mess. They could clearly identify each source from a word here and a word there, but it was impossible to understand anything.

  Jonzy turned off the radio, thrilled that his experiment had worked, while Spike had a puzzled expression, likely thinking the same as Jordan. The Grits wouldn’t understand gibberish.

  They made their first contact with the gang members just south of Charlotte. Three bikers on Harley Davidsons, carrying rifles, approached them and then made U-turns and sped off. Jordan thought they were scouts.

  The boys slowed to twenty-five miles per hour, and Jordan resumed his habit of constantly looking right, then left, wary of ambushes.

  After ten miles, they stopped at the top of a long rise. Jordan squeezed the grips, fearing a puff of wind might topple him off his bike. He turned to Spike, who for the first time ever seemed speechless. On Jordan’s left, Jonzy stared in wonder or terror, or maybe both.

  A river of motorcycles stretched before them, filling the southbound lanes of the highway for as far as he could see. Not a single engine was running.

  “You told me you were ready,” Spike said.

  Jordan was ready for his heart to jump up through his throat, out his mouth, and flop around on the pavement.

  “Jonzy and I will wait here,” Spike added.

  Jordan revved his engine. Between him and Atlanta stood a super gang whose reputation of evil had spread far and wide. Gunning the engine, he felt his mind, and then his heart, fill with the belief that he could do anything.

  He put the bike in gear and powered forward, but his confidence evaporated when he got a good look at the four Grits at the head of the pack.

  He killed his engine and rolled to within five feet of them. There were three boys and a girl, all on different colored Harleys. The eerie silence gave Jordan the sense of having entered a tomb.

  Pus dribbled from sores on the face of the boy on the white motorcycle. Another boy had a shotgun slung over his back. The third boy, straddling a black Harley, was skinny as a skeleton.

  The girl on the green motorcycle wore a red bandana over a shaved head. She had to be Pale Rider. Her eyes terrified and captivated him at once. The irises were translucent orbs that pulled him into them.

  She glared at Jordan, turning his blood into icy slurry, but he managed to meet her stare.

  “We’re going to Atlanta to fight the adults,” he said, grateful his voice worked.

  “You have to get by us first.” Pale Rider’s low, raspy voice triggered a fresh wave of shivers.

  Suddenly, Jordan’s shivers vanished, and he laughed to himself. He didn’t care what happened next. Either he had lost his fear of death, or more likely, he had grown numb in the face of overwhelming odds. His spirit soared.

  “Join us or get the hell out of the way,” he shouted and fired up his bike.

  Pale Rider remained motionless, drilling him with her ghostly stare. With a small smile playing on his lips, he stared back.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  Pale Rider’s voice chilled his heart to the core.

  “Jordan Leigh.”

  She nodded. “We heard about you on the radio. I wanted to see what you were made of. We’ll ride together.”

  Pale Rider raised her fist and hundreds of Harleys rumbled to life. The Grits, as if reenacting the parting of the Red Sea, backed up their bikes.

  Pale Rider gestured to the open lane down the middle of the highway. “There’s a fuel truck ahead. Gas up your Lemon Gang.”

  Jordan raised his eyes. Lemon Billings was most certainly smiling down on them now.

  4.03

  CDC BUNKER

  Touk pressed against Abby, using her shoulder as a pillow. The night was so dark that Abby couldn’t see her sister lying beside her on the dock. Not a star was out, nor a blade of moonlight between the clouds, and not even the blink of a firefly. They had snuggled like this for hours.

  Touk vanished, and Abby worried she had fallen asleep and Touk had slipped into the water. When she tried rolling on her side, something pinned her shoulders and arms down, preventing her from moving.

  Abby cried out and lifted her head, but immediately the tip of her nose bumped into something. Recent events flooded her mind. Toucan was not drowning. Abby was. She was inside a body bag, inside the CDC bunker, in a soundproof vault.

  Gasping, she sucked in stale air. She needed more oxygen, but it was almost too much of a chore to breathe. Her lungs burned, signaling something was terribly wrong, but she found the spreading warmth strangely comforting.

  Abby startled at the river of light flowing beneath her, growing brighter, and rising ever higher. It washed over her and carried away her fear and pain. All she had to do was go limp, submit, and let the brilliant light sweep her away.

  Never give up! The words tore through her brain. She might suffocate in this plastic cocoon, or maybe the AHA-B bacteria would kill her first, but she would never willingly quit living. She’d fight the blissful calling one strained breath at a time.

  She inhaled and then exhaled. Breathed in and then breathed out.

  It felt as if someone were piling bricks on her chest. Her muscles, starved of oxygen, fatigued, and each breath she took satisfied her lungs less and less. Jagged huffs of air turned into sips, and exhalations became feeble puffs that would not have made a candle flame flicker.

  Never never never give up!

  Light from above exploded and unleashed a silent waterfall of cold, fresh air. Sandy, who had just unzipped the body bag, peered down with concern.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t get you out sooner, but I had to block the camera.” She pointed to a corner of the room where a wall-mounted camera had silver tap
e covering its lens. “Doctor Perkins likes to keep tabs on what’s going on inside the clinic. We have to move you before he sends someone here to investigate.”

  Sandy helped her sit up, and Abby gulped air until her head spun from a rich abundance of oxygen. She started to fall back, but Sandy caught her.

  “How long have I been here?” Abby croaked.

  “Only a few minutes,” Sandy said.

  How was that possible?

  Abby felt a pinch in her arm. Sandy was giving her an injection.

  “The antibiotic,” Sandy said. “You’ll recover from AHA-B, but you’ll feel very weak for several days.”

  “I took three pills already,” Abby said. “Why didn’t they work?”

  Sandy shook her head. “One pill should have worked.”

  “We handed out hundreds of pills. What if they were all bad?”

  “All we can do is start making pills and distribute them as quickly as possible,” Sandy said.

  “How are you going to do that?”

  “I’m working on that. First, we need to get you to my living quarters and hook you up to an IV to hydrate you.”

  “Where’s my sister?” Abby asked.

  Sandy crinkled her brow. “Lisette is doing well. She’s here with the other children.” She looked over Abby’s shoulder. “Ensign?”

  “This is becoming a habit,” a deep voice said.

  Abby turned to see Ensign Royce. She had liked him when she was at Colony East. He, along with Sandy, had cared for her right after she had attempted to swim across the East River to reach the colony.

  Ensign Royce reminded her of a gentle bear. He was tall, broad, and had enormous hands. He gripped Abby’s shoulders with his paws and lifted her as Sandy tugged the body bag in the other direction.

  He carried Abby across the room and gently placed her into a large laundry bin on wheels.

  “We’re going for a little ride,” the ensign said as he covered her with several hospital gowns.

  She briefly tried to claw them away until she realized she had plenty of fresh air, and it wasn’t completely dark under the gowns.