Emerge (6 page)

“As prepared as we can be.” He leaned forward and scooped my hand into his, a fatherly reassurance that only he would know I needed. “We are not prepared, however, for the virus to be inside New Caelum.”

I cocked my head. “Why is that? What do you mean?”

“If the virus breaks out inside New Caelum, close to a hundred thousand people will flee the city in search of a new way of surviving.”

I understood. “They’ll overcome us,” I said. Especially if they could be reassured that those surviving outside the city were living well.

“That’s right.” He took a drink. “And it’s probably the reason West is looking for you. You have the antibodies that might help battle the virus if it has, in fact, reared its ugly head again.”

Would West hurt me? I wondered. Six years ago, I’d have answered that with an emphatic “no.”

 
“I told West to get his friends and leave, but…”

“But we need to know what’s going on inside the city,” I finished.

He nodded. “But Cricket, I don’t want you anywhere near him. Nina and Dylan are already getting close to Ryder and Key. They’ll fish for all the information we need.”

I wasn’t sure I could stay away from West. I needed to know the truth of why he was here. And to be honest, I was just plain curious about his life. But I also knew that Caine was only trying to look out for me. “Okay. I’ll be in touch.” I stood and started for the door again.

“Cricket, if you decide to disappear for a while, I’ll understand.”
 

He was giving me permission to flee. It was what I was good at, after all.
 

“Protect yourself. West’s mom and any doctors she’s told inside the city must know that you’re alive—and they know that you’re their best hope of survival if the virus becomes a problem.” Caine knew this because he had once been one of them himself—before he helped me to flee New Caelum. He had been an infectious disease doctor for New Caelum, and one of the best of the best. Yet, like me, he’d ultimately chosen not to be locked inside.

“Then we’d better hope it doesn’t become a problem.” I took a look around Caine’s living quarters. The fact that he chose to live in a basement apartment said a lot about his personality, his own desire to hide in darkness. “Do you have enough samples from me?”

Caine directed his tired eyes at me, but said nothing.

“You need more.” He hadn’t taken blood from me in a while.

He stood, walked toward me, and placed his hands on my shoulders. “We’ll find a way.”

“I’ll meet you at the lab. It’s going to be harder to sneak away, though. Dax is watching me closely. He’s worried I’ll leave again.”

“He knows you well.”

“I was always destined to hurt him.”

Caine nodded. “Take the south exit. I’ll make my way to the lab by midday.”

I lingered by the door, debating whether to question Caine about the problem that haunted us every time we began working on a treatment.

“What’s on your mind, Christina?”

I squeezed my eyes tight. He never called me by my real name. “What if the virus mutates again?”

“A definite possibility. Let’s hope that never happens.”

~~~~~

I snuck away while Caine sought to distract and delay the others. I passed by the vegetable gardens, which were thoroughly picked over; the settlement had harvested every vegetable and grain we could, and having experienced the first frost last week, a month earlier than we had hoped, the growing season was over. As in years past, we could only hope and pray that we’d stored up enough food and resources to get us through the winter—especially since our winters had gradually become more and more harsh.

In the park across from the gardens, children played hopscotch and swung on swings—some made of wood, others made of tires. All of the rusted metal structures had been removed the year before, after being deemed too dangerous for the small children. It struck me funny how the adults in our community considered some old piece of metal dangerous, when more than ninety-nine percent of our population had been wiped out by a single illness. If we had survived that, you’d think we could survive a rusty swing. Why didn’t we just live as the invincible people that we apparently were?
 

I stopped to watch one girl who was swinging by herself. Her dark brown hair blew in the cool breeze as she leaned her head against the rope with a look of melancholy. She was about the same age I had been when I was told I would never see my parents again. Twelve was too young for that kind of loss. To never again see the two people who loved me more than any others, who made all of my important decisions, who held me when I had even the slightest scratch.
 

There had been no one to hold me when I was struck by an illness that would forever change who I was.

Just when my feet began involuntarily walking in the direction of the sad little girl, a woman passed in front of me. The girl smiled up at her, then climbed off the swing and into what I presumed to be her mother’s arms. I stopped myself, realizing that this little girl was not me. She had someone—and hopefully she always would.

I could see my breath as I turned and made my way down the broken street and out through the back gate, looking back several times to make sure I wasn’t being followed. Caine had long ago given up on trying to keep me caged inside the settlement. And since all the other settlements were out west, on the opposite side of New Caelum, the area we called home didn’t see a lot of crime. Except for a random incident here and there, there just weren’t enough people in the area for anyone to cause any serious trouble.
 

That was, until the New Caelum people showed up. Now, I wasn’t sure what was the bigger threat—the visitors, or what their presence meant.

I still hadn’t gotten to hear the story of how Dylan managed to forgive Ryder for tasering him. But Dylan had never been one to hold a grudge. In fact, we were a pretty forgiving society by nature. Most of us, anyway. I probably would have knocked Ryder unconscious the first chance I had—and if not, then Dax would have done it for me.
 

I smiled briefly at the thought before a tinge of guilt took over. It was my fault Dax had become so attached to me. We had both taken advantage of each other’s vulnerability and loneliness.

It was a quiet morning as I strolled through one of the warehouse districts on my way to the hospital; it was several blocks from Boone Blackston, outside the settlement walls. Caine had managed to set up a completely sterile lab there, dedicated to studying the virus, a possible vaccine, and treatments. For some reason, he continued to act like we were still fighting a disease that had been gone from our society for six years.

Of course, who was I kidding? Caine’s behavior was no odder than my own. Since the world had been altered so drastically, we’d all developed our own particular obsessions and insecurities. I spent most of my nights listening for New Caelum’s incinerators. Even last night, I’d snuck out of the Biltmore Estate, leaving Dax and West asleep on the floor, climbed up to the roof, and stared up into the mountains, listening for any sign of movement outside New Caelum. And for any sign that the city was once again awake in the middle of the night, burning all evidence of the return of a deadly disease.

Fortunately, I’d heard nothing. No incinerator, and no additional trucks leaving the east gate.

I knew Caine and I were feeding each other’s paranoia. I wanted to believe that the likelihood of the virus being back was ludicrous; maybe West was simply here because his mother finally told him the truth—that I was alive when I fled New Caelum. But why would she do that? Why now? And why would he and the others risk exposing themselves to the outside world without good cause? Surely they knew they were putting their own immune systems at risk by leaving their sterile environment and mixing with the poor communities on the outside. What was so important that they would take that chance?

My thoughts ping-ponged all over the place, racing through so many questions that I would never be able to ask West. I couldn’t tell him who I was—I knew that much. No one could know. But I did miss him. He had been my best friend once. He had stood beside me when the only other important people in my life were stripped from me.
 

Questions assaulted me. What kind of person was West now? Who was he becoming inside the city? A politician like his mom? He had always been into computer programming. Had he continued down that path? Maybe he—

Voices echoing off the sides of buildings stopped me mid-thought. I froze. No one from the community should be out here; they rarely ventured this far beyond the walls.

I moved forward quietly. At the next corner, I poked my head around. Just down the street was one of the trucks from the city—it could have been the one Ryder drove, or maybe it was the one that had chased West and me the night before. No one was in it, but I could still hear the voices. They seemed to be coming from a building directly beside it—a warehouse with a large open door. Whoever it was, they weren’t making any effort to be quiet.

I inched closer, my back up against the side of the building. There were two male voices. They were yelling at each other. “Let’s just go back to the city. We have to get help. She
needs
help.” The voice sounded panicked. “What do we do, West?”

I moved closer, edged right up to the open doorway. Ryder and West were facing each other, arguing. Obviously Caine hadn’t found them.

“I don’t know!” West sounded just as desperate as Ryder. “I can’t reach Mother on the PulsePoint—she’s not answering. I don’t know what to do. We can’t chance how security will react when we pull up to the gates with her like that.” He clasped his hands behind his neck and paced. Then he turned back to Ryder. “When did you first see signs?”

“This morning after breakfast.”

“How about you? How are
you
feeling?”

“I’m fine.” Ryder sucked in a deep breath. “I feel fine.” He was starting to sound even more hysterical. “You don’t think—”

“I don’t know
what
—” he yelled, then stopped himself. “I don’t know what to think,” he said in a much lower voice.

They both turned away from me. They still hadn’t noticed me standing in the doorway.

Then I saw what they had turned toward. It was Key. She was lying on her side on the ground, curled up on top of some sort of blanket or sleeping bag. And she was shaking uncontrollably.
Oh no.

I stepped inside and cleared my throat. The warehouse was one of those buildings that reminded me of old movies where the mob ran stolen car operations. It smelled of damp mildew, and it was large and drafty. And currently, it was completely empty, so Ryder’s and West’s voices echoed off the walls.

“What’s wrong with her?” I said. I crossed my arms and leaned against the opening. My heart was gradually picking up speed, like a marathoner looking for a pace to settle into. I knew exactly what was wrong with her.

“Oh, great. Just fantastic.” Ryder turned and tried to cover Key with a blanket, but without getting too close to her or touching her in any way.

“Cricket, you can’t be here.” West stormed toward me, but stopped more than ten yards away. “Caine told us to leave, and that’s what we plan to do.”

I stepped forward. “Is that right? You plan to leave?” I nodded toward Key, who was shivering in the fetal position. “Is she sick?” I knew she was, but maybe it was a simple flu. Maybe, although I suspected not. I knew the signs better than anyone. Not only had I suffered through the illness myself, I had nursed so many others through it. I had watched them die right in front of me.

West held a hand out, stopping me from advancing and blocking my view of Key. “She’s just tired. She hasn’t slept well since leaving the city. She’ll be fine when we get where we’re going. You need to leave.”

“West, maybe she can help,” Ryder said.

“She can’t!” West answered quickly. His face was cold, hard.

My head spun out of control trying to remember the exact steps for quarantine that our entire settlement had memorized. Time was of the essence. We needed to isolate any and all people who had potentially been exposed to the virus, and then block off all locations where these people had been.

I stared at Key’s quaking body. She would need medical care before her fever escalated to the level of seizures. “I can help,” I whispered.

“No, you can’t,” West insisted.

How was I going to convince him I could help without exposing my identity? I had to take drastic measures if we were going to isolate the disease and have any chance of helping Key survive.

I lowered my backpack to the ground, then dug through it until I found a bottle of simple fever-reducing medication. I pulled the bottle of water from the side pouch and held out both the water and the pills to West.

“Just set the items down and step away,” he ordered.

I started to do as he instructed, but then I realized that I was the only person in the room who couldn’t get the virus. I looked up at West, and I almost lost my breath when I saw the fear etched in the grooves of his forehead, the redness in his eyes. “No,” I said quietly.

He cocked his head. “No? What do you mean, ‘no’?” He studied me, and I resisted the urge to turn the scarred side of my face away from him.

“My pills. My water. I’ll give them to her. And you’re going to let me help the three of you.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because I’m trained for this. I know how to deal with the possibility of an infectious disease infiltrating our society again.” I was lying, but if I could do something to keep this disease from spreading—keep West from getting sick… “Besides, she might just have the flu. The three of you have been inside a world devoid of most bacteria and all viruses for six years. Your immune systems probably aren’t prepared to fend off what for us would be a common cold.”

“She has a point.” Ryder crossed his arms, his hand shaking like a junkie, distraught with the possibility that his girlfriend was dying. “Please let her help us, West. You said yourself that you think the doctor and others inside this settlement know where your stupid Christina is hiding. Maybe Cricket can help.”