Colony East (24 page)

Gowan pointed up ahead. “Over there.”

Dawson caught a glimpse of the small girl before the seam in the crowd sealed. Rattily dressed, she sat on a curbstone, alone, head in her hands. He swallowed hard, thinking that his daughter, Sarah, could be sitting on a curbstone in Mystic at this very moment, forlorn and infected with AHA-B. He picked up the pace, trying to banish that image from his mind.

Closing in on the girl, he and Ensign Jackson created space by barking commands. “Let us through. Everyone back up. Now!”

Dawson scanned the surroundings. The child sat before a fish market, Ribbentrop Fish carved in a wooden sign. Kids camped inside the market, and the cardboard that covered the smashed window had a message painted in bright purple: ADULTS PLEASE SHARE! Something deep inside him kept his eyes glued to the plea.

“Lieutenant!” Ensign Jackson needed help peeling a boy from her leg.

Doctor Gowan knelt beside the sick girl. She took her temperature with an electronic ear thermometer and then inspected the girl’s arm, poking and squeezing it the way one tests for a ripe cantaloupe. “A-H-A-B,” Gowan announced for the benefit of Bravo Team. She said to the girl, “Do you have a brother or sister?”

Dawson held his breath, praying this girl had a healthy sibling so they could take her back to Colony East and enter her into the drug trial. Billions had died, but something about this girl tugged at his heart. All of a sudden, his head swam. He knew he could not leave her, no matter what. If she didn’t go to Colony East, he wouldn’t return either. Dawson wondered if he was losing his mind.

The girl moved her lips and Doctor Gowan positioned her ear as close to the girl’s mouth as her white hood allowed. The girl spoke again.

Gowan nodded and looked up. “She’s got a sister and a brother.”

Dawson tried to wipe his eyes, surprised when his gloved hand scraped the plastic shield.

A teenage girl pushed forward and he held his arm out to stop her. Except for her torn clothing and awful stench from not bathing, she was like any of his third-floor, female cadets. They locked eyes. He saw fear and fatigue in her gaze. “I want to see my sister,” she said. “She has the Pig.”

“Pig?” Of course, he thought, AHA-B stimulated the appetite. “Go on.”

The teen hugged her little sister. Then Doctor Gowan performed the same tests on the older sibling, taking her temperature and squeezing her arm. Nodding to herself, Gowan brought the two-way radio to her face shield. “Alpha team.”

“This is Droznin. Go ahead.”

“We have a confirmed case of A-H-A-B. The child has a temperature of one hundred and three degrees. Fat content is high.”

The crowd of children pushed closer, straining to hear every word spoken by the adult.

“Does she have a sibling?” Droznin asked.

“Roger,” Doctor Gowan replied. “Brother and sister. The sister’s with us. Fifteen years old. Not infected.”

“Bring them in.”

“Lieutenant, can you carry her?” Gowan asked.

Dawson responded immediately, scooping up the child in his arms. “I’m Lieutenant Mark Dawson. Who are you?”

“Elsie,” she whispered hoarsely, gazing up through feverish eyes.

He hurried, knowing every second counted.

CHAPTER NINE
Brooklyn

Toby burst through the front door and slammed it behind him. “Adults. I saw adults!”

Abby sat up on the couch, trembling from the loud and sudden intrusion. Touk hardly stirred in her arms, delirious with a high fever.

Toby shifted from foot to foot. “Abby, they were from Colony East. Hurry up, we have to go. They’re looking for kids who have the Pig. They want siblings. You and Touk.”

He started pacing, which stirred up clouds of dust. Sunlight streaming through the window showed the particles swirling in the air. Last night, after Spike had dropped them off, they had entered the brick house on Livingston Place, concluding it was uninhabited because of all the dust.

“Please, sit,” she told him and adjusted the pillow under Touk’s head. “Look at her. She can’t even stand on her own.” Abby’s voice pinched when it hit her how much her sister’s condition had worsened over the past couple of hours.

Talking fast, Toby filled her in on his trip to the river. Just six blocks away, he’d seen adults wearing hazmat suits take two kids back to Colony East. “I heard them talking over two-way radios. One adult said the kid had A-H-A-B.”

Abby scrunched her brow. “Ahab?”

He shot to his feet. “It’s their name for the Pig. Let’s go. They’re coming back.”

At first, Abby thought Toby couldn’t possibly know what the adults were planning to do. She also knew they were running out of time. They had nothing to lose and everything to gain by taking Touk to the spot where Toby had seen the adults.

“Hey, sleepy.” When she stroked her head, she noticed Toucan’s teeth chattering. Abby wanted to scream. The fever chilled her sister one minute, drenched her in sweat the next. She packed couch cushions around her for warmth, careful not to rile up too much dust.

“How are we going to carry her?” Abby asked. “Remember what it was like to get her in and out of the whaler.”

“What if we make a stretcher?” Toby suggested. “We could use a door.”

“A door’s too heavy,” she replied.

They discussed other ideas. Lug her using a lawn chair, a folding card table, a hammock. Push her in a wheelchair. Do the fireman’s carry, taking turns to put Touk over their shoulders. All might have been good ideas if they were stronger, if they had time to look for a wheelchair, if they were lucky, if, if, if…

Abby walked to the window. “We could ask someone to help us. While you were away, I saw kids go by on skateboards.”

“We have nothing to trade.” Toby reached into his pocket and produced his five remaining gems. “I tried to trade these for news. Nobody wants diamonds. Somebody flooded the market with fake diamonds, and rubies are worth half what I can get for them in Portland.”

“Kids might help us because we need their help.”

“Abby, they don’t think like you.”

“We can ask.”

Toby held up his hands in frustration. “They’d see Touk has the Pig and run the other way. Look what your friends did.”

“Spike helped us,” Abby reminded him before realizing that Spike was the exception, and that Toby was right.

He placed the gems in her hand. “I’ll stay with her. If anyone can convince the adults to come here to get your sister, you can.”

Abby knew he was right again. Besides, it was also her responsibility. Suddenly, an idea popped into her head. “Toby, you said they wanted a brother or sister of someone who has the Pig? Maybe they’ll take a brother and sister?”

Toby twisted his face. “They’ll never believe I’m your brother.”

“Yes.” She felt her idea taking root. “We can be twins!”

He rolled his eyes. “Give me a break.”

“Johnny Black and his sister, Mady, are twins. They don’t look anything alike.”

“Who?”

“They’re from Cambridge. We have nothing to lose. I’m going to tell you some things about my family. You can make up the rest. You’re good at making stuff up.”

“Thanks. I think.”

After giving him a quick history of the Leigh family, Abby moved beside Touk on the couch. Realizing it might be the last time she saw her sister, she started to shake all over. Then she forced that thought from her mind. Her best chance to help Toucan was to strip away her fear and sadness and focus on the job ahead. Abby whispered, “I love you.”

Toby was a different story. She stepped up to the boy who had done so much for them. If this was to be their last time together, she wanted to leave him with something that had been on her mind. She placed her hands on his cheeks and looked into his eyes. Her pulse quickened and she felt a funny feeling spreading throughout her body. She gently kissed him on the lips long enough for Toby to get over the shock and kiss her back.

CHAPTER TEN
Mystic

Fearing the shockwaves of pain that would result from sneezing, Jordan pinched his nose and held his breath. Making even the slightest movement triggered a searing jolt in his thigh. The urge to sneeze passed and he exhaled.

A snippet of conversation drifted through the walls, though he couldn’t make out the words. He desperately wanted to know where he was—exactly where. He recalled the two girls had said Mystic, Connecticut.

He vaguely remembered the older one coming into his room a number of times to change his bandage, take his blood pressure, give him a shot. Her last trip, he thought, she had taken away the IV setup.

How long had he been here? Was he in danger? When could he leave? He stared at the ceiling, trying to turn off the stream of chatter in his mind that made him more and more agitated.

He grimaced in frustration, which set off a chain reaction of muscles twitching and skin stretching, making him cry out from the sensation that felt like someone peeling the flesh off his femur.

The older girl entered the room and rushed over to him. “Does it hurt?”

Hurt?
Jordan grinned in disbelief. “Yes, but I’ll feel a lot better if you’ll answer some questions.”

He saw a sparkle in her eye. “We want all our patients to feel better.” She pulled up a chair and sat beside him. “What would you like to know?”

Jordan couldn’t take his eyes off her. He felt himself drifting in a breeze of sweet perfume that was only the scent of minty antiseptic soap coming off her hands.

“I’m Jordan Leigh.”

“Hello, Jordan. I’m Wenlan Lu. My sister is CeeCee.”

“This is Mystic, Connecticut?”

She nodded.

“I think I heard you and your sister talking to each other in a different language.”

“Our parents came from Taiwan. CeeCee and I try to speak Chinese so we don’t forget it.” She gave him a little grin. “You didn’t imagine that.”

He winked, “So I’m not going crazy?”

“You talk a lot in your sleep, but I don’t think you’re going crazy.”

He thought Wenlan had moved closer to him, but then realized that her dark eyes had pulled him closer to her. “Is this a hospital?”

“Not exactly. When I was in sixth grade, the teacher, Mrs. Griffin, had a boy named William sit next me. She told me William was shy, and she wanted to put someone friendly beside him.” She pointed to herself. “Mrs. Griffin loved me because I was friendly and I never goofed off. So I talked to William. I didn’t know it at the time, but that would change my life.

“After the night of the purple moon, shy William became a fuel king. Now he has a large gang and controls the entire state. When he wanted to open a medical clinic to treat the members of his gang, he remembered that my mother had been a doctor so he asked me if I wanted to run the clinic.”

“Did you want to be a doctor when you grew up?”

Wenlan whistled softly. “Are you kidding me? My mom never stopped working. She’d get calls in the middle of the night. My father was an accountant. I think I might have tried that.”

“William must have figured a doctor’s kid would know at least a little something about it,” Jordan said.

She nodded. “He was probably right. He makes sure our generators run, and he gets us all the medicine and supplies we need.”

Jordan debated whether he should ask if the pirates that sank
Lucky Me
were part of William’s gang. Not just yet, he decided. He wanted to learn more.

“How do you know how to treat people?”

“CeeCee and I study the
Physicians’ Desk Reference Manual
. It’s a fat book with lots of diagrams. There’s also a lot of trial and error.”

Jordan’s heart pumped harder. “Am I your first gunshot victim?”

She paused a long moment as if she were trying to decide how much to say. “Unfortunately, no. You’re very lucky. The bullet missed the main artery in your leg.”

“Do you know what happened to me?” Jordan heard the anger rise in his voice.

She rested her hand on his arm. “I don’t know exactly, but you’re safe here.”

Just her touch drained some of his anger away. “I’m not a member of William’s gang. How can you take care of me?”

She narrowed her eyes, pretending to look fierce. “I’m the last person William wants to have an argument with.” She wagged her finger at him. “Remember that.”

Jordan wished she hadn’t pointed at him like that, because it meant she had to take her hand off his arm. “Yes, doctor,” he smiled and immediately paid for making a physical gesture with a stabbing pain in his leg.

“Is this talk making you feel better?”

His leg was killing him. “Much better. Can I ask you a favor? I live on Castine Island. My sister is going to worry about me. If I write her a note, could you have someone take it to a trading zone? If they give it to a gypsy traveling north, maybe she’ll get the note.”

“Of course I can. Is Emily your sister?”

Jordan felt his heart stop, and he turned his head towards the wall away from her.

“You kept mentioning Emily in your sleep,” Wenlan added.

He looked at her. “She was my girlfriend. She died in the epidemic.”

Wenlan squeezed his hand. “I know what it’s like to lose someone close.”

When neither of them spoke for a long moment, Jordan knew they would leave it at that.

“My sister is Abby,” he said finally.

The glow returned to Wenlan’s eyes. “Abby. I like that name. I’ll get you a piece of paper to write your note.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN
Colony East

Alone in the company leader’s office, Lieutenant Dawson read over his note to Lily.

Dear Lily,

Tomorrow, your fellow cadets are going to get a big surprise. After dinner, they’ll be served the first batch of Colony East ice cream. The flavor is vanilla!

By the time you get back, I hope they figure out how to make chocolate ice cream. That’s my favorite.

Well, we hope to see you soon. Tabby keeps asking about you.

Lieutenant Mark Dawson,

Biltmore Company Leader.