Ruins (26 page)
Technically I have a ton of explosives,
he thought, pelting between the cars. Partial soldiers had seen him now, and a few bullets whipped past him.
But that’s all going to change in three, two, one—
The coffee shop behind him exploded, the force of the shock wave so great that it threw him to the ground, even a block and a half away. The Partials behind him were shredded by the blast, and Tovar rolled onto his stomach, covering his head with his hands as shrapnel rained down around him. His ears rang, leaving him temporarily deaf; he gambled that the Partials couldn’t hear either, and scrambled to the nearest side street before standing up and bolting off again. The soldiers would be too preoccupied to chase him for another few minutes at least; he needed to use that time to get as far away as he could.
Even as he ran, though, he knew he didn’t have any options. Delarosa’s forces had survived against the Partials through guerrilla tactics—harassing their flanks, hitting their supply lines, and then fading away into the wilderness. Tovar had needed to do more to get their attention, to draw them away from the human refugees fleeing south, and thus he had been more aggressive. And now they’d chased him all the way to the North Shore for it. He was surrounded on three sides by water, and on the fourth by Partials. He had nowhere left to run.
If I can make it to the water, I might have a chance,
he told himself.
Maybe I can find a boat, or a piece of driftwood big enough to keep my head above water. Maybe I can just hide somewhere, and stay there for a week or whatever it takes.
He chanced a look back over his shoulder and was encouraged to find that he was still alone. They would find him eventually, but finding him would hold their attention. That was the goal.
Anything that keeps them here, on me, so the others can get out of East Meadow and off the island.
I knew I was going to die when I signed up for this,
he thought.
Dad always told me never to volunteer for anything—you’d think I’d learn to listen—
A light flared in front of him, bright and white and blinding. He stumbled on his bad foot, turning to flee, but something slapped into his back, sharp and painful like a sting from a giant bee. He dropped instantly, his body convulsing as a jolt of electric current ran through it. When his mind cleared he was lying on the ground, his face in a grassy gutter, his limbs twisted like a rag doll and completely immobile. He tried to talk, but his mouth felt like lead.
The Partials don’t use stun guns,
he thought.
Who has the electricity to spare for a stun gun?
A pair of hands, surprisingly gentle, turned him over. The man standing over him was a dark silhouette, framed by the bright lights behind, and Tovar couldn’t discern any features. “I want you to know that this is not an attack,” said the man. His voice was soft, with a nuance of expression that marked the speaker as human. Tovar tried to answer, but his jaw moved feebly, and no sound came out. “This will hurt you,” said the man, “but it will save you, in the larger sense. ‘You’ as a people. The human race.”
The man set a plastic case on the ground next to him, opening it with a click. Tovar couldn’t see what was inside, but the shadowy man pulled out a glass jar and unsealed the lid. “Everyone is going to die. I assume that’s not a surprise.” He set the open jar on the ground and reached back into the case to pull out a long, sharp knife. Tovar tried to move, but he was still paralyzed. “I say that to let you know that you dying right here, right now, is an honor. You were going to die anyway, but it would have been meaningless in any other circumstance. This way you can be a part of the new beginning. The new life that will replace the old. Little sting here.” The man placed the knife on Tovar’s hand and pressed down, chopping off his longest finger. Tovar screamed in his mind, the pain burning through him like a fire, but no sound came out. The man dropped the finger into the jar, and went to work on another one. “There was a plan, you realize, for everyone to survive.”
Chop.
“Not just survive but prosper—human and Partial, everyone together. It wouldn’t have been hard. But that plan’s gone now, and I’ve had to adapt.”
Chop.
His voice remained calm the entire time, as if he were simply talking to a toaster while methodically taking it apart. “Now, this is the part that’s going to hurt the most. Speaking biologically, I mean—I don’t know if it will cause more pain than the fingers, but it will certainly cause more damage. This is the part you won’t live through, is what I mean to say.” He held up the jar and shook it gently, rattling the three fingers at the bottom. “I need to fill the rest of this with blood.”
Tovar’s voice returned just in time for him to scream.
K
ira was colder than she’d ever been. They’d stopped in a town called Brewster Hill for rest and new clothes, and then again in North Salem for warmer clothes and jackets, but even that wasn’t proving to be enough. Green was more resistant to the effects of the weather, and faster on the road, but even he was feeling it now. They’d gone nearly thirty miles in three days, all the way to Norwalk, and in that time the temperature had dropped twenty degrees at least. Kira was accustomed to a bit of a chill in the winter months, but nothing like this. Her breath came out in visible puffs, and her nose felt numb as she rubbed it with red, tingling fingers.
The streets of Norwalk were a deep metal canyon, just like Manhattan had been, but now there was frost on the deep-green kudzu that covered the buildings and crept in through the long-broken windows. She held out as long as she could, enduring the cold in silence, but finally decided that it wasn’t worth it—getting to Long Island one day or even one hour earlier wouldn’t do her any good if she died of hypothermia. At the next clothing store they passed, Kira led them in and they searched for heavy coats, but there were none to be found anywhere in the building.
“I guess the Break came in the summer,” said Kira. “Nobody’s stocked for this kind of weather.” She paused. “That never occurred to me before, but I guess I’ve never needed a coat before.”
Green shook his head, looking out the broken windows at the dark-gray clouds. “When was the last time you remember it being this cold?”
“Never,” Kira admitted. She recalled Vale’s wistful thoughts about the old winters, the real winters, and shivered. “Do you think it’ll last?”
“If it does, we might even see snow.” Green turned back from the window. “We need to find a hardware store—they’ll have work gloves at least, which is better than nothing, and then maybe a furniture store so we can burn some tables for warmth. I don’t want to cross the sound until this clears up.”
“What makes you think it’s going to clear up?”
“We haven’t had a storm like this in my entire life,” said Green. “Weather patterns that long-standing don’t reverse overnight. We might get a freak storm, but that’ll be it.”
“I hope you’re right.” Kira hopped down from the counter where she’d been sitting and walked back out into the frigid street. The wind had picked up, and blew her hair wildly around her head. “You know where to find a hardware store?”
“No idea. Seems more likely outside of town than in it, though.”
“That means backtracking,” said Kira. “There’s nothing ahead of us but the city and the sound.”
Green shook his head. “I don’t want to backtrack—we’re better off finding a boat and sitting out the storm in the building nearest to it. Then as soon as things are back to normal, we can jump in and race across the water.”
Kira nodded. “Keep your eyes open for parks, playgrounds, and schools. Anywhere with grounds had groundskeepers, which means they’ll have a shed or a garage somewhere with tools and work gloves.”
“Clever.”
“You know how to find maps, I know how to find gardening tools. My adopted mother was an herbalist.” The thought of Nandita quelled her cheerful mood. Nandita had helped create Kira, she knew everything about her, and yet she’d never said a word. Why? Why deceive her? Had she just hoped that the problems would all go away on their own, and that Kira would grow up and grow old and die, and never have to face the truth about who she was and where she came from?
If she’d really cared,
thought Kira,
she’d have given me something to go on. Some help or guidance or advice that would help me to deal with all of this. She would have told me what I was built for, and why, and what I was supposed to do.
With a flash she remembered an old conversation—nearly two years ago now, one of the last times she’d ever seen Nandita before the old woman disappeared. Kira had just come home from the salvage run in Asharoken, the one where they’d triggered a bomb, and Nandita was putting away her herbs.
I was troubled about something,
thought Kira,
probably the bombing, and Nandita said
. . .
Kira shook her head in disbelief, the words flooding back to her.
She said exactly what I needed to hear—not then, but now. Every life has a purpose, Kira. But the most important thing you can ever know is that no matter what your purpose is, that’s not your only choice.
“Groundskeeper,” said Green. Kira looked up and saw a large brick building, the white gabled roof now cracked and yellowing with age; all around it was a wide green lawn, now overgrown with bushes and weeds and a loose forest of ten-year-old trees. There was a sign buried in the middle of the foliage, but it was too vine-choked to read.
“Looks like a government building,” said Kira. “City hall or something. They don’t always have groundskeeping equipment on site, because they handled all their properties from a central location.”
“Maybe this is the central location,” said Green. “Doesn’t hurt to check.” They walked around the side and back, finding a parking lot but no toolshed. Behind the building there was a baseball field, but this, too, had no tools or gloves or anywhere to store them. They made their way back to the main road, ready to press on and look for another park or a school, but Kira stopped in front of a house. Green shook his head. “Too fancy; they didn’t do any of their yard work themselves.”
“Not yard work,” said Kira, “but look at the sign. ‘Home Theater Design and Installation.’ I don’t know what a home theater is, but I bet they used gloves to install them.”
They started their search in the front room, moving quickly through the building; it had been converted from a home to a business and was mostly empty. The back room held a lost fortune in holovid projectors, but those were useless now. She’d have traded the entire thing for a single pair of gloves. Finally in the back parking lot they found a rusted white van, weeds growing up around the flat, deformed tires, with the company’s logo faded and peeling off the side. Kira wrenched the door open and found the back full of power cords and old projector parts, and four pairs of canvas work gloves in the top drawer of a tool chest. They pulled on two pairs each and jogged back to the main road to make up for lost time. The sky was darker now, far darker than it should have been for the time of day, and the wind was practically howling.
“We need to find shelter,” said Kira.
“We need to find a boat,” said Green. “I told you before, the instant this clears up we need to get on the water.”
“Are you afraid it’s going to start up again?”
“I’m afraid that we’re running out of time.”
“Look,” said Kira, “I’m every bit as anxious about this as you are, but we’re not going to do any good if we’re dead of exposure. It feels like it’s dropped another five degrees in the last few hours—this weather is well below freezing, and Partials or not, we’re in a very real danger of hypothermia.”
“We don’t have time to sit around waiting,” Green snapped, and picked up his pace.
“We’ll live a lot longer if we get inside—”
“Really?” said Green.
Kira stopped, trying to figure out what he meant, and the answer hit her like a fist to the gut. She wrapped her arms tightly over her freezing chest and ran to catch up with him.
“How long do you have?”
His voice was emotionless—all the more eerie considering his words. “It just now occurred to you to ask?”
“I’m sorry,” said Kira. “I’ve been focused on expiration as a concept, as an enemy to overcome. . . . You left Morgan’s army. Does that mean you didn’t think she was going to cure it fast enough to matter?”
Green walked silently, head down.
“The youngest batch has seven months left,” said Kira.
Samm’s batch,
she thought. She swallowed nervously, feeling tears creep up behind her eyes. “Do you have half that?” Green didn’t answer, and she felt her heart sink. “Two months?”
“One,” said Green. “I’ll be dead by the end of the year.”
“That might be enough time to help you,” said Kira quickly, practically racing through the words. “The sooner we get across and find humans, the sooner we can—”
“Then stop arguing with me and look for a boat.”
Kira fell silent, trying to imagine what it would feel like to know you were going to die in one month—and worse, that you knew there was nothing you could do about it.
But we can,
she thought.
This plan will work.
I think.
Green stopped suddenly, putting up his hand to stop her too. “Do you feel that?”
Kira concentrated on the link but felt nothing. “What is it?”
“I have no idea,” said Green. “Something big—like a whole squad’s worth of link data, that kind of signal strength. It’s just that . . . it feels like a single person.” He turned his head slowly, as if trying to pinpoint the exact source of the data. “This way, come on.”
Kira ran a few steps to catch up with him. “Wait, you’re going to look for it?”
“Of course.”
“But we’re in a hurry,” said Kira. “We don’t have time to stop and maybe get captured by a patrol squad.”
“I’m telling you, it’s one Partial,” said Green, still walking.