Blood Colony (3 page)

Johnny had always thought Caitlin was just paranoid. But what if he was wrong?

Omari was waiting for Johnny on the steps of his dormitory, leaning against his backpack in a sliver of shade. Cornrows wound around his glistening scalp in a succession of U’s, the style worn by the rapper Bizkitz. Students glanced curiously at Omari as they climbed the stairs, since he was barely five-foot-two and looked like he belonged on a playground instead of a college campus. No one would guess he was fifteen.

He was two hours early. And he was sweating.

“Hey, little dude, how long you been out in this sun?” Johnny said, trotting up to him. The sun had a clear sky in its favor, so it must have been eighty degrees.

“Thirty minutes. Maybe forty,” Omari said. With a lanky arm, he grabbed the iron bannister to pull himself to his feet. Omari needed extra support, the way an old man might.

Johnny gave him a one-armed hug. “Why didn’t you call me?”

Omari shrugged. “I didn’t wanna’ pull you out of class. Ain’t nothin, man.”

The first time Johnny took Omari to McDonald’s on their assigned Saturday after he’d joined Big Brothers/Big Sisters in Oakland, Omari had kept his face mean. Making conversation had been like mining for diamonds. “So, want some ketchup?”
“I’m just doing this for my mama, so don’t try to be my friend.”
“So, how do you like school?”
“I’m just doing this for my mama, so don’t try to be my friend.”

That was six months ago. Everything had changed when Omari had learned of their mutual interest.

As soon as Johnny had said he was premed, Omari bombarded him with smart questions:
“Hey, man, what do you think about gene therapy? And how come all this money gets spent on cystic fibrosis research, but way more people have sickle cell? What’s up with THAT?”
Omari knew more about sickle-cell anemia than Johnny did. He had to.

“How’d you get here so early? You’ve got school, too,” Johnny said.

Omari shrugged, dismissive. Omari was so bright that he was probably gifted, but his grades were awful. He missed too many classes with sick days, and he was allergic to homework. “When I’m sixteen, Mama say I can take the GED.”

“You still have to learn how to study. To go to college, you have to know how to work.”

Anger broiled Omari’s face suddenly. “You think it ain’t work gettin’ my Uncle Lem to drive me twenty miles outta his way when he can’t hardly pay for gas?” Omari said. “I didn’t bring my ass here to get preached at. And what the hell makes you think I’m goin’ to
college
?” He spat the last word.

That didn’t sound like Omari at all. Omari wanted to be a doctor, and the only reason he visited the campus was to make his dream feel real. Had something happened at home? Omari’s mother said there had been staff cuts at the hospital where she worked as a nurse. Even with health insurance, Omari’s medical bills didn’t leave room for surprises. If his mother was out of work, they wouldn’t be able to afford the chronic transfusion therapy that was the only thing replacing Omari’s sickled blood.

“You want to see the lab?” Johnny said. “We’re early, but we can still probably—”

Omari shook his head. “Nah. Let’s just sit and chill. Ain’t your room right here?”

Johnny hesitated. A month ago, he had toured Omari through the campus, only stopping briefly at his own room. Zach’s lifestyle was too wild, and Johnny didn’t want to take the chance that Omari would go home and tell his mother he was being exposed to sex and drugs. Johnny wanted to make a difference in a kid’s life, not end up on the nightly news.

“Bad idea, little dude,” Johnny said.

Anger melted from Omari’s face, and suddenly he looked like a child. “I gotta’ lie down.” He was wincing, shifting his weight.

“Pain?” Johnny said.

Omari bit his lip and nodded, but he avoided Johnny’s eyes.

“Bad enough for a doctor?” Johnny said.

Omari shook his head. “Nah. All this walking, that’s all. This school’s like a damn city, man. I just wanna rest.” Johnny could tell Omari was used to reassuring people, trying not to be a bother. His forehead was wrinkled with private agony.

“OK,” Johnny said, patting his pocket for his key card. “But I’m calling your mom.”

In the lobby, Omari headed for the stairs, but Johnny motioned him around the corner to the elevator. Johnny hadn’t remembered the elevator the last time Omari had been here, and the kid had climbed two flights of stairs without a word. Had Omari been in pain then, too?

With Omari’s gingerly steps, the walk to room 314 took a long time, but Johnny knew better than to offer him an arm to lean on. Omari was a proud kid. At his door, Johnny motioned for Omari to wait. “Sorry. I’ve got to check it out first.”

“Like I ain’t seen weed before,” Omari muttered. “I can smell it out here.”

“I have rules, Omari. Just hold on.”

Johnny knocked and didn’t hear anything, so he swiped his key card and opened the door just wide enough to stick his head through. The room was smoky. Shit. Two-fifteen in the afternoon, and Zach and his girl were still in bed. Classic
Boondocks
episodes played from Zach’s computer screen on his desk, and Zach lay spread-eagled in his boxers. with his bong propped on his bare chest.

“Hide the bud and put on some clothes,” Johnny told them quietly. “Omari’s here.”

Behind him in the hall, Omari sniggered.

“Sure, man,” Zach said. He slipped the bong between his bed and nightstand, sweeping stray leaves into his drawer with his palm.

“I gotta’ go anyway. Rehearsal,” the woman said, climbing from beneath the sheet wearing only a T-shirt and white panties. Once she was dressed, she breezed past Johnny into the hall, stopping short to snake her finger across the top of Omari’s head. She traced the patterns in his scalp. “Ooh. The work of an artist,” she said. “Welcome to college, kid.”

Omari didn’t smile. His eyes were vacant.

“If it’s hard for you to get around, there are ways to deal with that,” Johnny said as they went into the room. Johnny stopped short of using the word
wheelchair
. He had yet to practice medicine, but he knew that was a word nobody wanted to hear. Especially a kid.

Sitting on Johnny’s bed, Omari didn’t answer. Zach slung a towel over his shoulder and excused himself to hit the shower; only then did Omari sink back, until he lay across Johnny’s mattress, his feet still on the floor. He hadn’t wanted a stranger to see how bad he felt.

Omari hissed. He had once told Johnny the pain was always there; it just got worse sometimes. Sickle-cell anemia meant that Omari’s red blood cells weren’t shaped right. His blood cells caused his body problems everywhere they went. His own blood made his life hell.

“Your mom will just tell me to take you to your doctor,” Johnny said, dialing his cell.

“Lemme talk to Mama. We got a system. No doctor unless it’s eight. I’m only at a six.”

“Six what?”

“How bad is the pain, between one and ten? It’s a six.” Omari sounded impatient.

“It looks like more than a six to me.”

“Then I guess you don’t know what pain looks like.”

That probably was true enough, Johnny thought. Caitlin had said something like that once, during an argument.
You’re a mama’s boy who’s never lived in the real world a day in your life,
she’d accused. After joining Big Brothers, Johnny thought he had seen enough reality to make up for it. He had asked to mentor a kid with health problems; he didn’t want to turn into one of those robotronic doctors who forgot the whole point. Already Johnny realized he wanted to be a pediatrician. Omari was teaching him that.

Johnny listened to Omari’s end of the conversation as his mother quizzed him on the telephone. He understood her worry: Omari was especially vulnerable because he’d been getting monthly blood transfusions for three years. Omari’s body might be getting overloaded with iron, his mother had confided, so she was always on the lookout for signs of organ damage.

“It’s my legs. I told you already, dag,” Omari complained to his mother. He suddenly handed the phone back to Johnny without a good-bye.

“Mr. Wright?” his mother said when Johnny got on, with the brand of formality Johnny recognized from his grandmother in Macon. “Omari says it’s his joints, but you sure it’s not his chest? No trouble breathing?”

“No, ma’am, not that I can see.” Omari’s face was still twisted with pain, but his breathing looked steady. Omari was absently flicking at the edge of the Jimi Hendrix poster hanging above him on the wall, the one from the Berkeley show almost forty-five years ago.

“You call me right back if he does, hear? Omari says he’s at a six, but he knows good and damn well that when he has chest pain, he goes to the hospital. Understand? If he has a clog in his lungs and doesn’t get enough oxygen, then we’re looking at hypoxia.” She was rushed, speaking in a low tone so she wouldn’t be overheard. But she wasn’t panicked. The mother of a child who suffered from chronic pain didn’t have room for panic in her daily life.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Make sure he gets liquids. Water or Gatorade. It’ll thin his blood and help his joints feel better. I’ll call Lemuel and see if he can’t come by and pick him up early.”

The woman was impressive. “Omari’s lucky to have a nurse for a mom,” Johnny said.

She breathed into the phone, and he couldn’t tell if she was amused or annoyed. “Luck ain’t got nothin’ to do with it. My boy needed me, so I went to school. You take good care of Omari, Mr. Wright. God bless you.”

“Yes, ma’am. God bless you, too.”

When Johnny hit End to hang up his phone, Omari was still playing with the poster without looking toward him. Johnny pulled up his desk chair and sat beside the bed. Telltale moisture dampened the bridge of Omari’s nose, and seeing his tears made Johnny’s eyes smart. What if he wasn’t helping this kid at all? What if he was only showing Omari his limitations?

“It’s just a bad day,” Johnny said. “You can come back.”

Omari’s chin trembled slightly before he caught it. “What for? Mama don’t have college money. It all goes to food, gas and blood. And with me like this? Ain’t no way.”

“When we don’t see a way, God finds the way,” Johnny said. “It’s up to us to bust our asses to get what we want, but God does the rest. He makes the way out of no way.”

Johnny’s grandmother in Macon might have quoted the Twenty-third Psalm:
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
His
Jaddah
Jamilah, his grandmother who lived in Jordan, would echo the sentiment with her favorite Muslim prayer:
I know that Allah is able to do anything, and that Allah knows all. O Allah I seek refuge in You from the evil in myself and every creature that You have given power over us. Verily my Lord is on the straight path.

“You should be a damn preacher, man,” Omari said in a small voice. “For real.”

“I just don’t want to see you give up, Omari. I know you can do it. I
know
you can.”

“How?” Omari’s bitter tone was foreign. “You gonna’ make a miracle happen?”

Suddenly, Johnny saw God’s plan woven throughout his day: the visit from Ryan LaCroix. His thoughts of Caitlin. Now, Omari. God’s message came to Johnny with such clarity that he marveled at people who insisted they couldn’t see them.

Glow.

After she’d left Berkeley, when her paranoia had kicked into high gear, Caitlin had made Johnny swear never to mention Glow to her again. But if Ryan LaCroix was right—if Caitlin’s Glow had cleaned out his blood—everything was different. Could he convince Caitlin to give him Glow one more time, even if it was dangerous?
“You gonna’ make a miracle happen?”

“Maybe,” Johnny said. His heart and head thundered in unison. “Yeah. Maybe I can.”

Seattle
Sunday

I
’ve got Kush…White Light…Glow.”

Caitlin O’Neal kept her voice low, as if she’d been talking to herself, as she haunted the storefront of Left Bank Books at Pike Place Market. Her cheeks stung from the cold wind spraying from Elliott Bay’s waters just beyond the tourist shops. Her elfin body was nearly hidden beneath the drab green of her oversized militia coat from a thrift shop.

Someone was watching her.

He was sitting in the window of the coffee shop across the street, reading an e-book at a table. He was a black man with white hair and a matching beard, but he might be one of them. Wearing a disguise. Or he could be a cop, which was almost as bad. Almost.

Caitlin remembered a summer sleepover party, when she’d played one of the sequels to the ancient horror movie
Candyman
and all of her Long Island friends had jumped and screamed every time black skin had shown up on the screen. Pathetic. And now she was just as bad. Would she have even noticed the man in the coffee shop if he hadn’t been black?

But Caitlin was almost sure she had seen him before. He looked like a man she’d noticed at the student union at Seattle U, where she’d ended up because she’d been low on cash. She could always find a student with a problem and a cash advance on Daddy’s credit card. Last week she’d sold Glow to a law student who had just been diagnosed with Parkinsons. Only five hundred bucks, but his grateful eyes still put a smile on her face. She should have charged more. The money was already gone.

Caitlin prayed she wasn’t being followed. She needed to get out of town.

“I’ve got Glow.”

A flock of men in suits walked past her, fresh from a meeting. The last man turned around to glance at her over his shoulder. She kept her face blank, as always. Just in case. Nowadays, Glow was worse than moving bricks of cocaine. Vince and Lana were doing
fifteen years
in Georgia, and a nurse was up for a felony trial in Vegas. Vegas! It was an insult to be arrested in a city as corrupt as Vegas, and it was a bad time for a Glow bust anywhere.

“Got weed?” a scrawny teenager said hopefully, appearing from around the corner. She assessed him in a glance: Five-three. Awkward, furtive manner. A lightweight Insect skateboard under his arm. Not even fifteen.
Yeah, right.

“Not for kids. Get ghost.”

The boy gave her a sour, childish pout and moved on. The last thing she needed was a bust for supposedly trying to sell drugs to a minor. If he was old enough, he could get a prescription and go to a dispensary like everyone else.

Shit, shit, shit.
It was late, and it was too dangerous to be seen in Seattle, especially since the Whitfields had moved to New York. After she interviewed Father Arturo, maybe he could loan her enough to take a bus. Or rent a car, if her dummy credit card still worked. She had six vials, and Laurel was waiting in Vancouver. Patients were dying.

Father Arturo Bragga had a personal recommendation from the Whitfields, which went a long way, and he had also passed his six-month assessment period and background screens. One last face-to-face with a conductor, then the five regional conductors would vote. The ones who weren’t in jail, anyway. It would be great to have reliable Railroad in Seattle again.

Caitlin had volunteered for the trip north, mostly to stop thinking about Maritza. The Railroad brought out the sane part of her ever since Maritza was murdered. The words still didn’t fit right in her head, so she must still be in denial. At least the rest of her head was still working.

Driving to Seattle had taken more than a week. Now that her car’s engine had finally died, she was stuck. Flying with Glow was out of the question, of course, and buses and trains were almost as bad. At least her problems kept her head busy.

Caitlin had only spoken to Father Arturo on the phone twice, never for more than two minutes. During her call from Portland yesterday, when she’d been hurting so much that she’d barely been able to pull a sentence together, Father Arturo had interrupted her with a long
“Shhhhhhh.”

“So often we blame God for the work of the Other,” he said.

Damn right,
Caitlin thought. Caitlin had seen Evil the night she’d identified Maritza’s butchered body at the morgue. Someone had stabbed Maritza fifty times.

Caitlin retrieved her denim duffel bag from the shadows beside the storefront and hunched her shoulders into the wind on First Avenue. She walked fast, just in case the guy in the coffee shop really was a tail. She had to lose him.

Is this how it started with you, Mari? Did you see someone who didn’t belong?

At Pioneer Square, the city reverted to red brick and cobblestones. Caitlin vanished into an alleyway near the warren of underground buildings that lingered from the city’s nineteenth-century subterranean past. The alley was deserted, a tomb behind the plugged rush-hour streets. The few cars parked here looked abandoned. She circled three times, keeping an eye out for her tail, and she thought he was gone. She hoped he was.

Caitlin never showed up for a meeting anywhere she hadn’t cased first, but this alley had looked safer three hours ago, in daylight. Caitlin stopped in front of the unpainted metal door at the end of the row of brick buildings.
NEW DAYS
, read small, faded letters stenciled on the door in white. She looked around once more to make sure she was alone. She heard the muffled sound of a baby crying from upstairs, behind one of the closed, cracked windowpanes.

One second. Two. Three.

She didn’t see anyone, so she tested the doorknob. Locked. From her back pocket, Caitlin fished out the key Father Arturo had mailed her. She slipped it in.

Not much light inside, only a bare forty-watt bulb doing its best at the far end of the hall. The dimly lighted hallway was lined with cast-off furniture, mildewed boxes and dirty plastic crates piled with canned food and children’s toys cast from their homes. The hallway smelled mildewed.

“Father Arturo?” she said, whispering into the quiet.

No answer.

Caitlin wished Father Arturo had been able to get away from his parish and meet her during daylight. With only twenty bucks left in her pocket, all she wanted was a greasy cheeseburger and a bed at the shelter. After all, wasn’t she homeless, too?
You can’t call it home if you’re afraid to go back there.

Caitlin couldn’t wait to get the hell out of Seattle, so close to Fana. Should she go down to Berkeley and see her friends on her way to Arizona? Johnny was trying to call her, and he kept leaving text messages, but she wasn’t sure it was safe to talk to him.
I need some candy,
he’d written, improvising a code for Glow, and she wanted to strangle him. Why had she ever shown him so much? Were her instincts failing her?

Too many mistakes, and mistakes had cost Maritza her life. Maritza hadn’t died randomly—someone had been trying to get
her
. If Johnny didn’t watch out, he might be a target too.

In the shelter’s kitchen, Caitlin found open food containers and double sinks filled with dirty dishes. The large fridge was disappointingly empty, except for rows of soda cans. Caitlin grabbed a Coke and opened it, swallowing in hungry gulps.

Good. Sugar and caffeine. Next best thing to a meal.

When Caitlin closed the refrigerator, she nearly walked into the black man from the coffee shop. He appeared like a hallucination, not even a foot from her. For a moment, all she saw was his white beard, nearly close enough to touch her.

Caitlin’s brain froze. Then she recognized the man, despite his phony beard and white hair. His hair wasn’t white. Couldn’t be. He was one of them. Caitlin considered pretending to be happy to see him, until his knife was at her throat.

He clamped a heavy palm across her lips. She felt her heart pounding against the blade. “
Quiet,”
he hissed into her ear. “Hide in the pantry. Now.”

“Oh, G-God,” Caitlin stammered through his palm. “I’m sorry—”

“I said
quiet,
you fool.” He shoved her toward the pantry, and she almost flew off her feet.

“It’s not my dad’s fault. He doesn’t know what I’m doing,” Caitlin said in a shaky whisper she didn’t recognize. “P-please don’t do anything to hi—”

He slapped her, hard. Caitlin felt her bladder loosen as a realization swamped her:
Maritza was killed with a knife
. Caitlin sagged, losing control of her muscles. She had never felt a sensation like it. Only the man’s support kept her upright, and she should be running from him as fast as she could, even if he was her best friend’s father.

“You’re in danger,” Dawit Wolde said. “Do as I’ve said, or I’ll kill you myself.”

The rules for a police bust were easy:
Don’t resist. Call the lawyers. Say nothing.
But this was different. Caitlin didn’t have rules for being discovered by Fana’s father.

Caitlin dropped her soda can and ran, holding her burning cheek with both hands. She knocked over a metal mixing bowl, making an explosive clatter against linoleum. Caitlin vanished inside the pantry, slamming the door.
You have to hide the Glow.
Caitlin fumbled with the flaps of her knapsack and dug inside the bag for the can of hairspray with a false bottom she used to hide the vials. Her hands shook.

Father Arturo’s voice came from the hall. “Caitlin?”

Caitlin saw Father Arturo in her imagination from his photograph: long-faced, about thirty, a Mediterranean man with a thick Florentine accent. Large, kind eyes. She had to warn Father Arturo, but her body wouldn’t budge. Her mind was stuck on three words:
He killed her.

Three heavy footsteps. Father Arturo must be in the kitchen. Bottles on the shelves rattled behind her as she hid her stash behind cans in the dark pantry. She heard a sudden sound, like a harsh breath. Then, silence. Caitlin’s heart thrashed.

“Who sent you?” Dawit’s voice said.

Caitlin tried to think of a lie.

But he wasn’t talking to her. A sudden, agonized man’s scream came, an Apocalypse on the other side of the door.

“Answer, and you’ll see a doctor,” Dawit said. “Who sent you?”

Was Father Arturo dead? Caitlin couldn’t hear anything over the din of her heartbeat.

“
Per favore,
” Father Arturo said. “I d-don’t know what you mean. We have n-no money…We’re a shelter for homeless w-women and children…” Father Arturo was alive, but he was coughing. He might be talking through his own blood.

“
Basta!
” Dawit said. “Begin again. The truth, this time.
Ora
.”

“I’m a p-priest!” By now, Father Arturo could only wheeze.

“Why the gun?” Dawit said. “
Dimi
.”

“
Sicurezza. P-protezione,
” Father Arturo said, hardly a whisper. “We have r-robbers.”

Caitlin heard another scream, but this time it was hers. She couldn’t see beyond her tears, but she felt herself come flying out of the pantry.
“Stop! You’re hurting him!”

Everything was blurry at first, but as she blinked the scene came into focus: Father Arturo lay helpless on the floor, and Fana’s father was kneeling on top of him with his knee pinned to Father Arturo’s chest. The priest was already impaled with a knife beneath his ribs, pushed to the hilt. Blood dribbled from the priest’s lips. He groaned, writhing.

Caitlin shoved Dawit with all her strength, but not hard enough to push him away so Father Arturo could breathe. “He’s a
priest
. That’s Father Arturo!”

Suddenly, Dawit’s elbow snapped out at Caitlin, jabbing into her stomach with enough power to topple her to the floor and steal her breath. Caitlin blinked with tears of pain. Even with the room robbed of all its oxygen, Caitlin clawed toward Dawit again.

“He had a gun, Caitlin,” Dawit said, pushing her away. Again, she fell back, this time hitting her head against the kitchen counter. The room swam in a way that made her realize she was stunned. But she pulled herself up again, scrabbling for the counter.

“Caitlin, you know th-this man?” Father Arturo gasped. Momentarily, his struggle ceased.

For a hysterical instant, it all seemed like one tragic misunderstanding. It must be.
Dawit Wolde, meet Father Arturo. Father Arturo, meet Dawit Wolde.

But Caitlin O’Neal couldn’t say a word.

Father Arturo tugged at Dawit’s jacket pocket, and for the first time Caitlin saw the gun. Caitlin watched a horrifying maelstrom on Dawit Wolde’s face. This man was not Fana’s father. He was someone she didn’t know.

“I’m a p-priest!” Father Arturo cried, his arm flailing toward the gun.

“A dead one,” Dawit whispered.

Father Arturo’s neck broke with a damp, muffled crack. Dawit was nearly panting, his face wet with perspiration as he held the dead man in a perverse embrace, his arm locked tight around Father Arturo’s neck long after the priest’s head dangled in his collar, silenced. Finally, Dawit pushed him away, as if the corpse disgusted him.