Fragments (47 page)

Voices. Happy voices, laughing and singing, with another sound in the midst of it,
something Kira had thought she’d never hear again. She broke into a run, all caution
forgotten, and when she saw them she dropped to her knees, too overcome with emotion
to run or speak or even think.

Children.

The bonfire leapt and crackled in the middle of a clearing, surrounded by low buildings
and a crowd of dancing people, and dancing through the midst of them were children—infants
and preteens, ten-year-olds and toddlers. Dozens of children of every age and size,
laughing and whooping and clapping their hands, singing as a small band played pipes
and fiddles in the firelight. Kira sank into the grass and cried, weeping and sobbing
and trying to talk, but there were no words. Samm knelt beside her and she clung to
him, holding him, pointing to the children, and Samm was trying to pull her away but
all she wanted to do was get closer, to see them for herself, to touch them and hold
them. They had seen her now, the children and the adults and everyone; the music had
stopped, and the singing, and they were rising to their feet in shock and surprise.
Samm tried again to pull Kira to her feet, and she finally managed to speak to the
crowd of strangers inching toward them.

“You have children.”

A semicircle of strangers spread loosely in front of them, and Kira noticed now that
they were holding spears and bows and here and there a gun. A young woman about Kira’s
age stepped forward with a hunting rifle, aiming it with practiced expertise at Kira’s
chest.

“Drop your weapons.”

“W
ho are you?” asked Samm.

The girl with the rifle kept a perfect bead on Kira’s chest. “I said drop your weapons.”

Samm dumped his rifle on the ground. Kira was too shocked to move, still staring at
the children, and Samm pulled her rifle from her shoulder and threw it down in the
grass. “We’re not here to hurt you,” he said. “We just want to know who you are.”

The girl lowered the hunting rifle slightly, no longer sighting down the barrel but
keeping it pointed in their general direction. She had long blond hair pulled back
in a ponytail, and her leather vest seemed rough and homemade. “You first,” she said.
“Where’d you come from? No one’s crossed the mountains in twelve years.”

Kira shook her head, finally finding her voice. “Not the mountains, the wasteland.
We’re from New York.”

The blond girl raised her eyebrow, and the crowd of people around her murmured in
disbelief. An older woman stepped forward, holding a small child in her arms, and
Kira stared at the little boy like he was a miracle in human form: three years old,
plump and rosy-cheeked, his face streaked with dirt and whatever sticky food he’d
had for dinner. He stared back at Kira in perfect innocence, studying her as if she
were the most normal thing in the world, and then smiling as he caught her eye. Kira
couldn’t help but smile back.

“Well?” the woman demanded. “Are you going to answer?”

“What?” asked Kira.

“I said that you couldn’t have come from the Badlands,” said the woman, “because the
wasteland is all that’s left.”

Samm put a hand on Kira’s shoulder. “I think you tuned out, staring at the child.”

“I’m sorry,” said Kira, and rose to her feet. The crowd stepped back, but kept their
weapons ready. Samm stood beside her, and she gripped his hand for support. “It’s
just that . . . it looks like we have a lot of explaining to do. On both sides. Let’s
start over.” She looked at the blond girl. “Start with the basics—are you humans or
Partials?”

The older woman narrowed her eyes, and there was no mistaking the anger in them. Kira
knew at once that this woman was human.
Best to pretend we are, too
, thought Kira.

“My name is Kira Walker, and this is Samm. I’m a medic from the human settlement on
Long Island, on the East Coast—up until five minutes ago we thought it was the last
human settlement in the world, and from the way you’re talking, I bet you used to
think more or less the same thing about this place. We had no way of knowing there
were survivors out here, but . . . here you are. And here we are.” She held her hand
out, ready to shake. “Greetings from—” She stopped herself right before saying
another human being
, and felt a sudden pang of loss deep in her gut. She couldn’t say that anymore. She
swallowed and mumbled out an alternate end to the sentence. “—another human community.”

Kira kept her hand out, wiping her eyes with her other hand. The armed settlers stared
at her in silence. After a moment the blond girl jerked her head toward the east.
“You crossed the Badlands?”

Kira nodded. “Yeah.”

“You must be starving.” She lowered the rifle completely and took Kira’s hand; it
was just as rough and calloused as her own. “My name’s Calix. Come over to the fire
and have some food.”

Samm collected their rifles, and he and Kira followed Calix back toward the bonfire;
some of the locals were still watching them warily, but they seemed more curious than
scared. Kira couldn’t help but reach for the nearest child, a girl of about nine,
but pulled her hand back before touching her curly black hair. The girl saw her, smiled,
and grabbed Kira’s hand.

“My name’s Bayley,” said the girl.

Kira laughed, too overcome with joy to know how to respond. “It’s very nice to meet
you, Bayley. You remind me of my sister. Her name is Ariel.”

“That’s a pretty name,” said Bayley. “I don’t have a sister, just brothers.”

Everything about this place seemed magical—that Kira was talking to a child, and that
the child had brothers. “How many?” asked Kira, barely able to contain her excitement.

“Three,” said Bayley. “Roland’s the oldest, but Mama says I’m more responsible.”

“I don’t doubt that for a minute,” said Kira, and sat down on a low bench by the bonfire.
A handful of children ran up to gawk at the newcomers, then scampered off, too full
of energy to stop for more than a second. A portly man in a greasy apron handed her
a plate of mashed potatoes liberally whipped together with garlic and chives and covered
with a gob of smoky white cheese, and before she could thank him, he ladled on a pile
of rich, meaty chili. The smell of hot peppers tickled her nose, and her mouth watered,
but she was too overwhelmed to eat a single bite. Another little girl poured her a
glass of cool water, and Kira guzzled it gratefully. Samm thanked everyone softly,
nibbling politely on the food, but kept his focus on the people and the area around
them, ever wary.

Calix and the older woman who’d spoken before pulled up a bench and sat in front of
them. The three-year-old boy in her arms wriggled to the ground and ran off to play.
“Eat,” said the woman, “but talk between bites. Your arrival is . . . well, like you
said. We didn’t think there were any other humans left. And giving you dinner doesn’t
mean we trust you. At least, not yet.” She gave a tight smile. “My name’s Laura; I’m
kind of the mayor around here.”

Kira set down her food. “I’m so sorry about before, Laura—I didn’t mean to ignore
you, it’s just that—how do you have children?”

Laura laughed. “Same way everybody does.”

“But that’s the thing,” said Kira, “none of us can.” She had a sudden thought and
leapt to her feet in terror, afraid of what she might have brought into the settlement
with her. “Do you not have RM?”

“Of course we have RM,” said Calix. “Everybody does.” She paused, frowning at Kira.
“Are you saying you don’t have the cure?”

“You have a cure?”

Calix seemed just as surprised as Kira. “How can you survive without the cure?”

“How did you do it?” asked Kira. “Is it the pheromone—have you been able to synthesize
it?”

“What pheromone?”

“The Partial pheromone,” said Kira, “that was our best lead. Is that not how you do
it? Please, you have to tell me—we have to get this back to East Meadow—”

“Of course it’s not a Partial pheromone,” said Laura. “The Partials are all dead,
too.” She paused, glancing back and forth nervously from Samm to Kira. “Unless you’ve
got some bad news to go with the good stuff.”

“I wouldn’t necessary call it ‘bad,’” said Samm, but Kira cut him off before he could
say any more; the people here were suspicious enough already, there was no point in
telling them their newcomers were Partials until they’d built up a little more trust.

“The Partials are still alive,” said Kira. “Not all of them, maybe half a million,
give or take. Some are . . . nicer than others.”

“Half a million,” said Calix, obviously shocked by the sheer size of the number. “That’s
. . .” She sat back as if she didn’t know what to say.

“How many humans?” asked Laura.

“I used to know exactly,” said Kira, “but these days I’d guess about thirty-five thousand.”

“Thank God,” said Laura, and Kira saw tears streaming down the woman’s face. Even
Calix seemed pleased, as if the second number was a match for the first. Kira grew
suspicious—it was almost as if the girl didn’t really understand the size of either
number.

Kira leaned forward. “How many of you are here?”

“Almost two thousand,” said Laura, and smiled with bittersweet pride. “We expect to
pass it in the next few months, but . . . thirty-five thousand. I’ve never dreamed
there would be so many.”

“What’s it like?” asked Calix. She addressed the question to Kira, but kept stealing
glances at Samm. “The world outside the Preserve? We’ve explored some of the mountains,
and we’ve tried to explore the Badlands, but it’s too big. We thought it covered the
whole world.”

“Just the Midwest,” said Samm, “and not even all of it. From here to the Mississippi
River, more or less.”

“Tell me about the cure,” said Kira, trying to steer the conversation back to this
most important element. “If you didn’t get it from Partials, what is it? How do you
make it? How did any of you survive the Break in the first place?”

“That’s Dr. Vale’s work,” said Laura. “Calix, run and see if he’s still up, he’ll
want to meet our visitors.” Calix stood, taking a last look at Samm, and ran into
the darkness. Laura turned back to Kira. “He’s the one who saved us when RM first
hit—well, not right away. It was a few weeks later, about the time everyone started
to realize that this was really the end. He grabbed as many of us as he could, friends
of friends and whoever we could find that was still alive. And he gave us the cure,
which I guess he must have synthesized himself, somehow. Then we holed up here in
the Preserve.”

“You’ve had the cure that long?” asked Kira. She stammered for a minute, uncertain
how to ask the next question politely, then gave up and asked directly. “Why didn’t
you tell anyone? Why didn’t you save as many people as you could?”

“We did,” said Laura. “I told you, we found every single person we could find, young
and old, everyone who wasn’t already dead from the war or the virus. We scoured the
city for weeks, and we sent drivers out in every direction. We brought back everyone
we found, but there weren’t many left alive at that point. I wasn’t lying to you,
Kira, we honestly thought we were the only humans left in the world.”

“We all went east,” said Kira. “The last bits of the army gathered us all in one place.”

Laura shook her head. “Apparently they missed a few.”

“And what made you think all the Partials were dead?” asked Samm. His voice was typically
emotionless, but Kira could tell something was bothering him, and had been since they’d
arrived in the Preserve. She strained to pick up his feelings on the link, but without
the heightened awareness of combat, her senses were too weak.

“Why wouldn’t they be dead?” asked Laura. “RM killed them the same as us.”

“Wait, what?” asked Kira. This was news—not just news but an outright shock. “RM doesn’t
affect Partials,” said Kira. “They’re immune to it. That’s . . . that’s the whole
point of it.” She felt a moment of panic—if this part of the world had a mutant, Partial-killing
strain of RM, they were in terrible danger.

But if that was so, then they were already exposed. Better to stay calm and learn
what they could.

“That’s all true,” said Laura, “but then the virus mutated. It happened here, in Denver—a
new strain that appeared out of nowhere and burned through the Partial army like wildfire.”

Kira couldn’t help but glance at Samm, looking for a sign of recognition on his face,
but he was as impassive as ever. He was listening so intently that Kira thought this
must be the first time he’d ever heard the story, but she couldn’t be sure, and she
couldn’t just ask him here in front of everybody. She filed it away to bring up later.

Kira turned back to Laura. “If a new strain hit in Denver, they must have quarantined
those forces and kept it from spreading. Back east, no one’s even heard of an RM strain
that targets Partials.”

Calix ran into the firelight, breathless and pointing back deeper into the Preserve.
“Dr. Vale’s awake,” she said between breaths. “He wants to see you.”

Kira leapt to her feet. If this Dr. Vale had cured RM, maybe he knew more about Partial
and human physiology than she did; maybe he’d already found the records they were
looking for, and he could tell them more about the Trust, and the expiration date,
and maybe even about who and what Kira was. She practically ran ahead of Calix as
the girl led them through the village—a sprawling campus of office buildings that
had long ago been converted to apartments. There were people here who hadn’t been
at the bonfire, but apparently word had spread, and Kira found herself watched by
hundreds of curious eyes, standing in doorways and leaning out of windows and clustering
at the street corners. They stared at Kira and Samm with the same wonder Kira had
felt on first seeing them, and she couldn’t help but wave as she passed. There were
more people, and they had a cure, and they lived in a paradise. It was the single
brightest hope she’d felt in possibly her entire life.