It was careful work, retargeting a virus, but he had done it. Daniel had bioengineered a new virus with one purpose—to attack Delta Fever in the bloodstream. It was a subtle invasion that attached a new protein to the infected cells. Like pulling a fire alarm, this new protein signaled the body to attack the infection with everything it had.
At least, that had been the plan.
What actually happened was something much more dangerous. Daniel’s cure for Delta Fever had created an even deadlier strain of the disease. Charlie had taken over a week to die. Daniel’s virus would have killed him in less than twenty-four hours. It was worse than a laboratory mistake. It was a weapon, a time bomb that only killed Delta Fever carriers, which now included every inhabitant of the Delta Coast.
The United States economy was suffering. If the Delta could be recovered, stripped of Delta Fever and harvested for its natural resources—timber, oil, shipping lanes, and more . . . If the military knew about Daniel’s virus, they might very well use it. Genocide in the name of money. And it would be his fault.
His first instinct had been to destroy it, to run his samples through a steam autoclave, a machine designed to cook viruses and bacteria until they were dead. Or he could have drowned the whole batch in bleach. But he hadn’t done it. Daniel had looked at those six tiny vials, each no bigger than his little finger, and seen years of effort, money, time, and determination. And something else: a key. One that could unlock the doorway to a cure. As dangerous as this step was, it was also necessary. Now Daniel was on his way to break through the quarantine, into Orleans.
A line of military trucks barred the entrance onto the freeway, an olive drab caravan of canvas-covered stake beds and flatbeds bearing heavy equipment. Daniel joined a long line of waiting vehicles. Work at the Wall was never done, he had heard. The military employed more and more civilians each year to keep back the swamp, shore up the barricades.
The final truck passed, and at last the line of civilian cars crawled forward, merging onto the four-lane highway. Daniel’s truck came up to speed and the dashboard chimed as it slipped into autodrive. Daniel pulled his foot off the gas and relaxed. He had a long drive ahead of him in one direction. South.
• • •
PEARLINGTON, MISSISSIPPI. The interstate sign loomed overhead, clearly visible in Daniel’s headlights now that the rain had stopped. According to the map, this was the last stop for gas and food before the Wall. The best place, a sign on the side of the road said, to turn around. Once upon a time, the country had gone on for almost another hundred miles, but now the Southernmost tip of the United States of America was here in Pearlington. Orleans was forty miles away by the old interstate. It was hidden by the Wall, which acted as both dike and quarantine for this tiny town. Pearlington had been all but erased from the map from storm damage until the Wall was built, forming a break against storm surge and high winds. Then the people rebuilt and stayed, for reasons Daniel could not fathom.
To Daniel’s right lay the Louisiana Delta Region Military Base, the entire state claimed by eminent domain for use by the military. It had been a staging area for rescue and relief operations until twenty years ago. Now, its main purpose was to protect the Wall. Daniel eyed the long, high fence that marked the state line. In the distance, the lights of watchtowers flashed intermittently across the night sky. Then the road turned away. Daniel followed the new freeway left as it dwindled into a two-lane road that stopped in the heart of Pearlington.
The scent of mildew rose up as he drove on. There were houses, a few with porch lights on. Dogs raced along fences as he passed. The street was well lit, and there were clear signs pointing to a cluster of motels along one side of the road.
Then the road stopped. Just stopped. And the smell of mildew grew stronger. Big concrete blockades had been dragged across the street, shored up with sandbags and detritus. Past that, the town continued on, but it was a ghostly reflection of Pearlington. Houses, like the ones he had passed, stood or staggered here, leaning, sagging on their foundations, faded to browns and greens as algae grew up the sides and black mildew devoured the rooftops. A fence had been built here, as well, and it marked the line of demarcation. A half mile south, Daniel knew, was the Wall.
He stared into the darkness at the dead side of town and wondered how people could live so close to their own ghosts. Then he backed up, drove to the nicest-looking of the three motels, and checked in.
“Tourist? Or you got family at the base?” the woman behind the desk asked when he signed the register with a fake name. “We offer a discount to military families visiting loved ones.”
Daniel smiled sheepishly. “No. I’m here for the hunting,” he said. “I hear there’s boar in these wood like we don’t get back home in Virginia.”
The woman snorted. “Got that right. My Herb caught a big old sow out by the fence there some ways east of here. Ate like kings for a week, the whole town did. Course, he’s dead now.” She nodded toward a photograph on the wall behind her, of a solidly built man in hunting gear.
“Sorry to hear it,” Daniel said with a nod. “He’d have been a great guide.”
The woman squinted at him. “The best.” She sighed. “The Fever took him. Some of the kids, too. Damned smugglers bring out more than gold and silver when they go digging around over there.” She scowled. “But that was a long time ago.” She reached beneath the counter and pulled out a key. “Lucky number seven. Sleep well, mister, but don’t sleep too long. Boar hunting’s best at night, or just before dawn.”
Daniel smiled. “Thanks for the tip.”
The woman nodded and pointed at a bowl of small candy bars on the counter. “Help yourself,” she said.
Daniel grabbed a handful of the black-and-orange themed wrappers. He’d forgotten. It was almost Halloween.
“Don’t be shy,” the woman said. “Ain’t nobody else here to eat them.”
Daniel blushed and took a few more. “Thank you. Good night.”
He drove his truck around to the far end of the motel and parked directly in front of his room. He stood for a moment with his arms out at his sides, letting the chill night air wipe away the humidity and sweat, then he hauled his gear from the truck bed and went inside.
The room had seen better days, but it was clean. Daniel spread out his equipment on the faded floral bedspread and double- then triple-checked it. It took a lot more than determination to get into Orleans these days. An old smuggler had told him as much when he interviewed him last spring about the rate of Fever deaths among smugglers. The encounter suit, standard hazmat gear for any smuggler breaching the quarantine, he had bought online, and he spent three solid weeks upgrading it. He had never planned on venturing into Orleans, at least not without military approval and support. But then he had created the DF virus. So close to a cure, but something was missing, something he couldn’t get in laboratories or catalogs in the United States. He needed to go to the source.
The suit maintained a vague human shape as it lay across the bed, limp as a deep-sea diver’s wet suit. Beside it sat his datalink, a black wrist computer no bigger than his forearm that fit like a cuff. Self-contained, with no satellite capabilities, it was more of an e-book than a full Web-access computer, linked to a receiver embedded in the bone behind his left ear. Such hardwired data ports and tech shunts were a necessity in the halls of higher learning, and had found a following among gamers, too. The datalink could present information on the goggles of Daniel’s encounter suit, or speak to him in whisper mode. Daniel need only think a question, prefaced with the key word inquiry, and the datalink would collate the data and respond like the old GPS systems in vintage cars, but in a voice only he could hear. Daniel had chosen a woman’s voice for the program. It helped him separate his own thoughts from the machine’s responses.
Of course, if he had upgraded it to do the “link” part of its name and access the Internet, he’d be in the brig quicker than he could blink. Satellite links were traceable, a huge liabilit
y for an illegal mission like his. And so his datalink was nothing more than a vast library and a small, if capable, computer. He had spent countless hours downloading every iota of information he could about Orleans, including census data and maps from before the storms. Most of the latter might be obsolete now, fifty years out of date, but it was his only guidebook through the Delta.
The jetskip was his biggest prize. Purchased off the black market, there was little use for them recreationally these days, when so few could afford real recreation. And this was of a more industrial grade, the kind used by the military, coastal construction companies, and smugglers. Looking for all the world like a glorified window fan, the jetskip was made out of a lightweight fiberglass shaped into a cone, with handles around the rim of the wider end and a turbine set inside. As it spun, water was pulled through the fan, propelling the skip and its rider through the water. He’d used them before, in research trips to Vietnam. The lab required a training session for every technician before they did any fieldwork.
It was good to get out of the lab and into the field again. Orleans. That mysterious, abandoned city. It was legendary in the rest of the United States, like Shangri-La or Avalon. And Daniel was going to be one of the few civilians of his generation to see it. With the exception of a handful of scientists at the Institute of Post-Separation Studies, no one did research over the Wall anymore. The Institute’s people had made the ultimate sacrifice for their research—they remained in the city after the quarantine, and could never leave. As far as Daniel knew, there had been no communication with the Institute in his lifetime. But it might still exist. If he could find the Institute, or remnants of their work, he might also find answers. The kind that could lead to a real cure.
A few hours before dawn, he reloaded his truck and drove east down a dirt road and onto matted grass. He angled south until he was screened by a cluster of twisted old crape myrtle trees. He cut the engine, grabbed the jetskip and a large duffel, and headed for the fence.
It took some doing, climbing the fence with a towline tied to his waist. Once over the other side, he used the rope to pull his gear over the top. First his waterproof duffel bag, with the encounter suit and his payload inside. Then the jetskip, dangling from the end of the rope like a fish strung through its gills. Shrugging the duffel bag onto his shoulder, he hoisted the skip in his other hand and dashed into the dark. In a matter of minutes, the Wall was before him.
It was huge, at least twice as tall as he was, and gleamed pale in the moonlight. He crouched down against the rough cement blocks, filled with steel rebars and concrete. He scanned the top of the Wall for the telltale blinking lights of the little remote-controlled sniffer drone hovercrafts—named sniffers for the biofilters that helped them detect Delta Fever carriers—but he saw nothing. It was time to suit up.
The encounter suit was essentially a hazmat membrane, a thick wet suit–style coverall that encased the wearer like a second skin, albeit a thick one. The suit was the translucent yellowish color of an umbilical cord and acted like a placenta, protecting the wearer. Like an umbilical cord, it also processed bodily waste, sweat, and other secretions into pouches, breaking solids into fluids, and distilled fluids into drinking water. Putting it on was like trying to climb inside an uninflated party balloon. It took close to half an hour of struggling to peel the last of it securely around his fingers, where the skin was thinnest to allow for dexterity, and then up and around his face.
Even though he had practiced wearing the suit, the moment the seal tightened around his throat, Daniel panicked. He started hyperventilating in sharp, quick breaths, too rapid for the suit to process soon after activation. Unable to draw in enough oxygen to support himself, Daniel blacked out.
• • •
Daniel came to with a jolt. He tried to sit up too quickly, and the rubbery tightness of the suit snapped him back. His heart was racing again, but his breathing was regular. As it warmed, the suit would become more malleable. Stiffness would not be a problem by the time he got over the Wall. In the meantime, it felt like his skin was numb, as if his entire body had fallen asleep from lack of circulation. That, he knew, meant it was working. The suit regulated body temperature, compensating for the air outside, making him feel as though he were floating in a bath the exact same temperature as his skin. A necessity, Daniel knew, for the humid days and frigid nights of Orleans in late autumn. After a moment of adjustment, Daniel rose to his knees and began to don the rest of his gear.
“Dress as a leper.” That had been the old smuggler’s advice. It would disguise his hazmat skin and have the added effect of keeping away what locals there were. Fever carriers were particularly susceptible to blood and skin diseases. “Lepers are anathema in Orleans,” the old man had said. Daniel pulled on a pair of brown canvas cargo pants, a long-sleeved shirt, and sturdy black boots to protect from the dangerous debris known to still cause tetanus and death to the unwary swamp traveler. Wherever his “skin” was exposed, he wrapped himself in long windings of gauze, doctored with food dyes and Vaseline to resemble bandages over weeping sores. His face was hidden behind a long black scarf, his hands and ankles wrapped like an ancient mummy. The dun-colored overcoat with several sealable pockets remained inside his duffel bag. He would pull it on, and the accompanying wide-brimmed hat, once he was over the Wall. For now he needed mobility. And a little bit of luck.
A dull sun was beginning to stain the eastern sky. Daniel moved toward the growing light at a trot, hoping the smuggler had told him the truth. “The Wall gets shorter as you go along it to the east,” he’d said. “Short enough to climb onto eventually. Then you double back west until you hit water.”
Daniel looked up. He raised a hand. The top of the Wall was just inches from his fingertips, but the sun was rising. He dropped the jetskip and slung the duffel bag across his body lengthwise, the strap firm against his chest. Retying the jetskip’s towline around his waist, he took a minute, pumped his legs, and jumped. His fingers grazed the top of the wall, then held. He scrambled for a few horrible seconds, boots kicking and scuffling for purchase. And then he was pulling himself up and over, across the wide surface atop the Wall and down again, towing his equipment behind him. He landed hard, gasped, and flexed his legs. He was fine. He was alive.
Most importantly, he was over the Wall.
6
I be at the cottage in the woods. The sun be shining, and Mommy be sitting in the chair outside, reading from one of her books. Daddy be in the shed behind the house, stacking wood for the fire. I sit at Mommy’s feet and read a book of my own, a big one with pictures about the Flood and the Ark. I ask Mommy if the Flood was Hurricane Jesus, and she say no, and I ask if it was Lorenzo, and she say it was long ago, before that. And I think that must mean Katrina, and she laugh when I say it and kiss me on the head. And I laugh, too, though I don’t know why.
• • •
I wake up when an owl fly overhead, wings beating like a sheet in the wind, clapping over my eardrums. My knife already be in my hand. Sun be coming soon if the night birds flying home. Stupid to let myself shut my eyes. That as good as asking to be killed around here.
I look down. It got cold in the night, and the baby be quiet against me. For a moment I think she dead, like Lydia. But she stir and I know she alive and be hungry soon. Food and shelter be high on the list, then I got to look after Lydia.
I see there been some prowling in the night, tracks in the dirt from foxes and the like. In the early light I walk the clearing and find a good tree. It take some work, but the stream that feed the little pond got the right kind of bank, soft clay that dry up hard. Wrapped in the sheet, Lydia gone stiff, which only help me now. I untie the baby from my chest and set her down in a soft protected spot. Then I put her mother inside the tree. That the best I can do before this baby start wailing, so I tie her back on and race through the woods to find my hiding tree. There be food up in that tree for the baby, formula and bottled water. Lydia’s funeral gonna have to wait.
I got to figure out what come next.
Only so many places to run to when you ain’t got a tribe. Maybe I find another group of OPs somewhere, but Lydia’s tribe been one of the biggest and strongest. If they ain’t safe, nobody be. It ain’t easy finding a new tribe, neither. Everyone take babies glad enough. If you live with folks your whole life, you ain’t so likely to turn against them. But if they take in someone older, even if they only seven or eight, they ain’t got an idea what kind of egg they got—chicken or snake. So even if you ain’t turning against them, they might turn against you, just to be sure.
Lydia say she want Baby Girl to have a better life. Can’t see how a tribe gonna give her that. Ain’t no such thing as a better life in Orleans. Not really. Only chance this baby got be in the Outer States. So I gotta get her there.
It ain’t gonna be easy—sniffer drones at the Wall would smell the Fever in my blood. But there be Father John. He a good man runs a mission across the city from here. When I been real little, he like family to me, like tribe. He used to trade supplies with my family. Ran a school out the old store where he set up his church. Not so nice as the Ursulines’ place, but he tried. Daddy used to say Father John be a servant of the people. Used to reach out to folks over the Wall, find sponsors to help put shoes on kids’ feet and the like. I had my parents back then, but I had a sponsor family, too, before the bad times come. I be needing that sort of help now.
So, we gonna go to Father John. Baby Girl brand-new. Cleanest blood there is. She ain’t got the Fever in her yet, and won’t if I be careful, don’t give her Orleans water, or cuts to taint her blood.
Seven days before the Fever take hold in a newborn. It be a dangerous time. Hunters love to get they hands on an untainted baby. Babies don’t know how to hide, how to stay quiet. They bring hunters down on they whole tribe if folks ain’t careful. Father John a long way off. More than a day from here. I got to take it in stages, then. That mean finding safe places to stay the night. And the safest place on the way be Mr. Go.
Orleans Page 4
