Contaminated 2: Mercy Mode (18 page)

“What if we just give it to her when she starts to have seizures?” I hold my mom’s hand. It’s cold, and her fingers don’t curl around mine. “What if we don’t want to keep her doped up constantly?”

“I told you. You have to. Or you’ll regret it,” Ellen says sharply. “Do you want your mom to hurt you? Do you want to have to hurt her? Because that’s what will happen eventually. Sooner rather than later. She’s clearly been Contaminated, and the disease has progressed quite far, if it’s affecting her motor skills and speech patterns this way.”

“But she’s getting better!” I cry, hating what she’s saying. “Yesterday, she knew me and my sister. She recognized us and spoke to us, and she was normal. Dillon, she was normal, right?”

Dillon nods, but looks wary. “For a little bit. Yeah.”

Ellen tips my mom’s chin to look at her throat, pressing her fingers there to take her pulse again. Then she turns her face from side to side, peering close to look at the tiny, faint scars where they put the electrodes in. “She’s definitely an unusual case. But, Velvet, I don’t want you to get your hopes up. There is no known cure for Contamination. No reversal. The only hope we ever had was trying to keep the disease from progressing in people already Contaminated. That was the focus of the research when I was there. I don’t know what they’re doing now.”

Boldly, I stare her down. “How come you’re not there
anymore? If you were such a big-shot researcher and all?”

Ellen doesn’t look offended. Instead, she gives me a wry smile. “Let’s just say they were stepping on my civil liberties.”

On the table, my mom lets out a soft snore, then goes silent again.

“How long will she sleep?”

“Another few hours. Then she’ll be groggy, but you should be able to get some food into her. I assume she’s using adult diapers?”

“She uses the bathroom,” I say. “She feeds herself. Dresses herself. She knits socks and works in the garden and sweeps the floor and sings us lullabies!”

Ellen looks surprised. “But … you said she’d been collared. It’s obvious—”

“It’s not obvious at all,” I snap. “Dillon, c’mon. Let’s get my mom home.”

He’s helping me lift her to sit, and she’s so limp and unresponsive that it’s clear there’s going to be a problem getting her into the truck. We’ll have to carry her. Frustrated tears burn my eyes and throat.

“Hey. Wait a minute.” Ellen’s touch is gentle on my shoulder as she tries to turn me to face her, but I shrug her off.

I don’t want her pity. I don’t want her to touch me. I want to get out of here and get my mom home. I slap her
hand away hard enough to knock it against the metal table, making it ring.

“Velvet,” Dillon says.

I glare, sliding an arm under my mom’s shoulders to lift her.

“Maybe we should—”

“I’ll do it myself,” I tell him. My heart hurts at how skinny she is, light enough that I can lift her upright all by myself. “Mom, c’mon.”

Her eyelids flutter. Her mouth works. But she’s limp as overcooked spaghetti. The only way I’m going to be able get her out of here is if I sling her over my shoulder, and while I could carry her that way for at least a short distance, I hesitate and let her slump back against the table.

“Is this true?” Ellen asks Dillon. Not me. “She’s capable of all that?”

He nods. “Yeah.”

“Of course it’s true! Why would I lie?” I’m furious now. I move toward Ellen, who backs up a step and puts out a hand to keep me from coming closer.

I’ve scared her.

Good.

“Velvet, have you been tested?”

I know why she’s asking, and I can’t stop myself from baring my teeth in what should be a smile but I know looks more like a snarl. “No.”

“How have you managed that?”

I hesitate, already having trusted her with enough information to get us into a lot of trouble. “We live out of town.”

“How? They’ve been closing off all the roads, restricting travel. Getting the population into a more dense area.” Ellen’s brows knit. “They’ve made testing mandatory now. You know that, right? If you want to get your rations, you need to be tested.”

“Yeah. We know. We have supplies. We’re okay.”

“Is there a reason you don’t want to be tested?” she asks sharply, looking at both of us. “Either of you?”

“Because it goes against my civil liberties,” Dillon says smoothly.

Ellen laughs. “Well, I hate to break the news to you, kid, but there aren’t any civil liberties left, in case you hadn’t noticed. Not in the black zones, anyway. It doesn’t matter. Sooner or later, everyone will be tested, voluntarily or not. And you know what happens if you come up positive. But you”—she gestures at Dillon—“you’ve got the bracelet, which means you tested negative. I designed that test, by the way. Before they asked me to leave. It was still in the testing process. I’d intended it to be much less invasive, less damaging.”

Dillon winces. “Damaging? It didn’t hurt. I got a black eye, but …”

“The testing process I wanted would’ve eliminated even that.” She shrugged. “Not that it matters. They rushed it,
but it works. Though the false positive rate was too high for what I wanted.”

I cringe. “So they’re finding people positive who aren’t?”

“It’s possible.” Ellen pauses. “It’s also possible that the test is so sensitive that it can detect such low levels of Contamination that the patient would never show symptoms.”

“So what difference does that make if they’re taking away everyone who tests positive?”

She says nothing at first. Then: “Velvet, what’s your last name?”

I don’t answer her.

“Where’s your father?”

I make an effort to unclench fists I hadn’t realized I’d made. “He’s … gone. He’s been gone since the first wave.”

“But she thinks she saw him. A running Connie got chased into our backyard—”

“Dillon!”

Ellen studies me. “You think it was your dad?”

“They … went back home. A lot of them who were out when it hit them. They made their way back home.” I swallow at the memory of the news reports showing the swarms of people raging up and down the streets.

“They did. But that was two years ago. If your dad was part of the first wave, there’s a good chance he was killed.”

“I know that,” I tell her coldly.

She studies me again, eyes narrowed. “Where do you live, exactly?”

I give Dillon a warning look so he doesn’t answer. “Outside of town. You don’t need to know where.”

“But a collared Connie, running? How would he get so far out of town?”

“He didn’t have a collar,” Dillon says, and I want to punch him so hard.

Ellen looks like she’s thinking laboriously. “If he didn’t have a collar, then he had to have succumbed to the Contamination more recently. Unless …”

“It’s time to go.” I glare at Dillon, then Ellen. “Thanks for helping my mom. What do we owe you?”

“Nothing.”

“The drugs. They’re not free.” Nothing’s free—I’m old enough to know that for sure.

“No. But I didn’t pay for them, so I don’t charge.” Ellen shrugs. “Got to stick it to the man in any way you can. You can stay here with your mom until she wakes up enough, if you want.”

“No. We need to get home. And Dillon’s missing work.” I’ve just realized that, but I see by his expression that he’d thought of it already.

Ellen rubs at her forehead. “You can use my phone to call in, if you have to. I’m sure you don’t have access to one.”

Dillon looks at me apologetically. “I should, huh? Call in sick, I guess.”

“If you don’t show up, maybe they’ll fire you,” I say.

“If he just doesn’t show up, they’ll make note of it and he’ll be flagged the next time he goes into work. Probably get a retest. Might get detained, because they can.” Ellen’s voice is hard and blunt. “They’re not messing around out there, kids. I’m not sure you understand what’s going on, but this isn’t about stubbing the toe of your civil liberties. We have no rights here. The government has all the power, and believe me, there’s more coming.”

I think of the soldiers shooting the people trying to leave town. “I know more than you think.”

“Tell her,” Dillon says.

Ellen gives me a curious look. I look at my mom, who seems peaceful. “Can we move her to a couch or something, at least?”

We settle her on the sofa in the other part of the basement. Ellen closes the hidden panel door carefully, and directs Dillon to the phone upstairs in her kitchen, where she makes us both glasses of iced tea sweetened with sugar she scrapes from the bottom of the ceramic container on her counter. She sighs, stirring each glass.

“No more sugar. This is the last. They’re only disbursing chemical sweeteners now. I guess nobody told the idiots in charge that sugar isn’t made with animal products.”

We have several five-pound bags of sugar at our house.
Who needs cash, I think, when we’ve got sugar? I sip the tea. It’s not very good.

I describe the scene I witnessed to Ellen. The blockades, the soldiers, the collared kids. The tractor-trailer trying to break through. She leans closer, eyes wide, thoughts clearly racing behind her gaze.

“Damn. They really tried it.” She shakes her head and drains her glass, then wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. It’s shaking. “The soldiers shot people?”

“Yes.” I don’t drink more tea. “Who tried what?”

Dillon gets off the phone. “I told them I was puking and had diarrhea.”

I make a face. “Gross.”

He grins. “Hey. They told me not to come back until I’d been puke and poop free for twenty-four hours. I figure that bought me at least three or four days.”

“Who tried what?” I ask again.

“Not everyone was asked to leave when I was. Some of the docs were fully invested in what was going on. Some just knew how to kiss butts better. I keep in touch with a few of them. They were talking about trying to get out of town with some of the research subjects, getting out of the black zone. I’m not part of the planning; they had to keep it supersecret of course. And honestly, I’m surprised they tried.”

“Research subjects?” My heart sinks. “They were in the tractor-trailer? The one that blew up?”

Ellen looks stricken, as if it had just occurred to her. “Oh. God. Yes. Possibly. Oh, Velvet, I’m so sorry you had to see that.”

“Be sorry for the people in the back of that truck,” I say. “Because I’m pretty sure they’re all dead.”

“They’d have been dead, anyway,” she tells me gently. “That’s what they do to them when they’re finished with the testing.”

The three of us sit there in sick silence. Dillon drinks some tea; ice clinks in the glass, and I am envious of Ellen’s refrigerator. Her electricity. Her phone.

“But we have real sugar,” I think.

“How can this all be happening?” Dillon says in a low voice.

“In the matter of public safety, a lot can happen.” Ellen rubs again at her forehead, then her mouth as though to wipe away the taste of her words. “When soldiers with guns outnumber the private citizens, when the population has been decimated by disease and subjugated with fear, all it takes is a handful of people in charge who think they’re doing the right thing.”

“But it’s not the right thing! Taking people away and putting them down like stray pets, that’s not right!” I stand and pace. “None of this is okay or right!”

“And you’re not the only one who thinks so, Velvet.”

I turn to her. “So … what do we do? How can we stop this?”

Ellen’s mouth twists. “I wish I knew. I wish I could tell you. But all I know is that there are people out there who are trying to stop it.”

I want to be one of those people.

Before I realize it, I’ve gripped the glass in my hand too tight. It shatters, spreading tea all over the table. Ice cubes skitter and fall onto the floor. Pain slices me, and blood wells up on a couple of my fingers.

“Velvet, are you okay?” Dillon reaches for my hand, but Ellen pushes her way in front of him.

“Let me see.”

At the sink, she washes the wounds and checks them for splinters of glass, but once the water rinses away the blood, it’s clear they’re only scratches. She pats them dry with a dish towel and pulls open a drawer to take out a package of adhesive bandages.

“I can do it.” I wrap them one by one around my fingers. “Thanks.”

“You’re angry a lot,” she murmurs. “And you’re strong. Aren’t you?”

“Lots of people are angry, and, yeah, I guess I’m getting stronger.” I look at Dillon, who frowns.

“I’d like to test you—”

“For Contamination? No.” I back away. “No way.”

“I’m not on their side. You can trust me,” Ellen says. “Velvet, if you’re afraid you’re Contaminated—”

“What good would knowing do?” I toss the question at
her. “You said yourself, there’s no cure. There’s barely any hope, even, about stopping the progression. And anyone who’s Contaminated becomes violent and dangerous and loses their mind. Right?”

Ellen says nothing.

A soft sound in the basement doorway has us all turning. It’s my mom, looking groggy and unsteady. I go to her quickly, grabbing her arm to keep her from falling backward down the stairs.

“Hi,” she says.

Ellen looks startled. “Hi. Malinda, right?”

My mom nods. She yawns. She looks at me with a confused smile. “What’s going on?”

“Velvet, I wish you’d let me test you. And your mom.”

“No!”

Ellen sighs and goes to another drawer, one she pulls out entirely. Then she reaches into the open hole. She stretches her arm deep into the depths of the cabinet and pulls out a small box, which she opens to reveal a number of colored bracelets like the one Dillon’s wearing. “Then, at least, let me give you these. They’re from different testing periods. They should be enough to pass you through any sort of roadblocks if they ask to see if you have one, but they’re not going to hold up against any real scrutiny. And if they snag you for random, actual testing instead of just checking to see if you already have been tested, they definitely won’t. But … it will be better than nothing.”

“Way better,” Dillon says. “Wow. Thanks.”

I’m reluctant to take them from her, but my mom holds out her wrist obediently when Ellen picks out a blue bracelet and slips it on, adjusting for the fit. Mine is orange, and she binds it a little too tight. It pinches the skin.