Some Fine Day (14 page)

“Where’d you find all those books anyway?” I ask as we move through a valley with huge moss-covered boulders. The sun comes out and the air has a moist, earthy smell. I feel really happy to be alive for the first time in a long while.

“I trade for them when we meet other groups,” Will says, holding a branch so it doesn’t smack me in the face. “Most people just want fiction. Two years ago I found one that has amazing hand-drawn illustrations. They’re perfectly detailed, which is important because some of the poisonous species look very similar to the ones with curative properties.”

He finds something called spiny amaranthus that’s used to control high blood pressure, and other plants I can’t remember the names of. Will moves through the woods with a natural, animal-like grace that I envy. All the exploring I’ve done has been in caves, and my feet keep tripping over hidden roots and hollows.

The island still bears the scars from earlier hypercanes: downed trees, patches of earth scoured clean by the wind, heaps of tangled brush. But like Charlie said, life is a remarkably resilient thing. Everywhere, new shoots have thrust out of the dirt, meadows taking over where once there was only forest, and before that, people. I wonder what it will look like in ten or twenty years. Something completely different, maybe.

“So what did you do for fun?” Will asks as we descend into a valley. Late afternoon sun slants through the trees and the woods are alive with the buzzing of insects.

“I flew planes,” I say.

“Seriously?” He turns around. “I’ve never seen one. I thought they were all gone.”

“Well, not real planes. I flew in a simulator at school. You can choose from hundreds of different programs. Anything from World War Two to the Fifth Gulf Conflict. I spent so many hours in there, I could probably fly anything. I mean, if we had actual aircraft. Which we don’t.”

“You have satellites though, don’t you?”

“A few. My dad says–” I cut off abruptly. “Well, most of them broke years ago. But we use the ones that are left to track the storms.”

“And search for hostages?” Will asks casually.

“What? I don’t know. Maybe. I mean, I seriously doubt it.” I realize I’m babbling and figure I’d better at least start babbling about something else. “Did I ever tell you about our political system? The satellites are actually the reason it turned out the way it did. See, we started with a federal government, just like the old days. There are five prefectures: Raven Rock in Pennsylvania, Greenbrier in Virginia, Cheyenne in Colorado, Kirtland in New Mexico and China Lake in California. All of them were dug out of existing underground bases. The builders just went deeper, a lot deeper.” I pause for breath. “Well, they were supposed to communicate by satellite but the orbits became erratic. It was twenty years before full contact was resumed, that was when they built the bullet trains. By then, Greenbrier had declared independence and Kirtland followed suit shortly after.”

Will’s staring at me and I could swear, if I didn’t know him better, that he’s trying not to smile, though for the life of me I can’t see why.

“And which one is yours?” he asks.

“Raven Rock,” I say. “We were the first capital. The seat of government. I don’t think the people running things ever got over the fact that the other prefectures seceded from the union. All except Cheyenne. . . Oh hey, isn’t that echinacea?” I pluck a purple flower that looks like a daisy and hand it to him.

“You’ve been studying,” he says, twirling the stem between his long fingers.

I bat my eyelashes and heave an internal sigh of relief that we’ve moved on to a new topic. I’m getting careless around him, and that could be fatal if he’s reporting to Banerjee. “Every night, professor.”

“Well, keep it up. I’ll make a physic of you yet.” He holds my gaze with those stormy grey eyes. “And please, no more nonsense about your worth, Jansin. I see how you treat the outcasts like Bob. You’re a good person. Like us, if you’d only see it.”

We hike down the mountain in silence. I feel more confused than ever. Will can be maddeningly aloof and arrogant and starchy, but then he goes and says nice things that make me like him even more than I already do.

Which, I realize with a sinking feeling, is a lot.

The days pass, and my hair gets long enough to start falling into my eyes, so I take to tying it back in a yellow kerchief Nileen gave me. I’d actually forgotten that my hair was curly, it’s been short for so long. But I like the silky feel of it when I take a bucket shower, and my skin feels smoother too from living in the open air. I study the books Will gave me every night. I can identify about two dozen herbs now, and even more flowers, which are easier for me because they look so distinctive. Learning his craft reminds me strongly of my mother, and how she used to take me into her greenhouse when I was a little girl and let me help water her beloved flowers. I think the two of them would have hit it off big time. They’re both quiet and precise and with prodigious memories for detail. Once I saw a spiky orange and blue flower I remember was one of her favorites, and I thought how excited she would be to see it growing in the wild. When I asked him, Will said it was called bird of paradise. I think my mom would be happy to know that there are still a few beautiful things in the world.

The more I read, the more impressed I am at Will’s vast store of knowledge. I can point to pretty much any plant during our hikes and he will tell me not just the common name, but the Latin name. Sometimes in the evenings we play a game where I open a book at random and try to stump him with obscure references. He usually wins.

I feel his eyes on me sometimes, when I’m gathering in the forest, or when we’re eating lunch. He still wears his indifferent stone-face in public, but when I catch him staring, I see something else before he looks away. What I see is a kind of simmering heat that’s about as far from Will the Actuary as it’s possible to get. It makes me nervous and intrigues me at the same time. He’s so different from Jake, in every conceivable way. Jake was goofy and open and easy to read. Will’s another country entirely.

I asked Nileen about him once when I was helping her repair a pile of nets. She’s basically the local scandal-monger and will tell you anything you want to know about anybody, including fact, rumor and idle speculation. Anyway, she said they picked Will up about eight years ago. He was alone on a small sloop at the northern range of their territory. From the state he was in, they guessed he’d been drifting for weeks. He didn’t speak for a very long time after they found him, and then he claimed he couldn’t remember how he got there.

I think I’m not the only one around here with secrets.

“So tell me some more about your city,” says Nileen, who trades in information like a fishwife hawking the day’s catch.

We’re scrubbing pots down at the beach, using handfuls of gritty sand to scrape off the burned bits of food from the bottom. It’s late afternoon. A fresh sea breeze discourages the flies. Fatima is washing a pile of plates next to me. She has long, slender brown fingers and hazel eyes that both Nileen and I envy. Unfortunately, she’s also super-nice so we can’t hate her.

“City-state,” I correct primly. “Anyway, it has four zones: Industrial quad, that’s where the factories are. Ag quad, where we grow the food. Capitol quad, which is government buildings and university. And Barracks quad, where we live. It’s not actually military barracks anymore, we have normal houses. But that was the name they gave it during construction and I guess it just stuck.”

“So everybody’s rich like you, huh?” Nileen says.

“I’m not even that wealthy,” I say, guiltily thinking that just the contents of my old room would be a treasure trove on the surface. “There’s people with a lot more. But there’s people with a lot less too. Especially the ones that work in Industrial quad, and the miners.”

“What happens when you get too old to work no more?” Fatima says, setting aside the last clean plate and grabbing one of my pots, the biggest and nastiest. That’s how she is.

“Some people go live with their families. But we keep a tight lid on the population. We have to. Zero growth policy. That means they sometimes end up on their own, if they don’t have kids or their kids don’t want them. Some go to Chalktown. It’s like a squatter camp. It’s supposed to be illegal.”

“Supposed to be?” Nileen says. She never misses much.

“Well, there’s no place else for them. So the authorities have a bit of a problem.”

“That’s messed up,” Fatima says in her slow drawl. “Look at Charlie. He’s crazy old. But we’d never ditch him just cause he’s useless or some kind of burden.”

“But he’s not useless,” I say. “He’s one of the most important people you’ve got.”

“Maybe so,” Fatima says. “But it don’t make no difference. Look, he’s teaching me to stormcast, ain’t he? If he was scared about getting replaced, he wouldn’t do that, would he? But he knows we take care of each other. He got nothing to worry about.” She thrusts her hand into the recesses of the pot and lets out a yelp. “Damn,” Fatima says, examining her palm. “Something bit me.”

Nileen pokes cautiously at the pot, which has rolled onto its side. A second later, a small brown spider comes scurrying out. Nileen tries to stomp it with her flip-flop but the creature’s too fast, vanishing into the rocks.

“What was it?” Fatima asks, clutching her wrist. There’s an angry red welt on her left hand, and it’s starting to swell.

“Not sure,” Nileen says with a frown. “I didn’t get a close look. Coulda been a brown recluse. Except I think I saw a yellow band around the body.”

“Well, it hurts fierce,” Fatima says.

“Let me see.” I examine the bite without touching it. I can see two tiny holes where the spider’s fangs sank in. The skin at the edges is starting to turn black, and fine red lines are already spreading out from the wound. I don’t know much about spider bites, but this seems like a rapid, extreme reaction.

“We’d better go find Will,” I say.

Fatima is starting to sweat. “Good idea.” She’s sitting cross-legged and leans forward, propping her right palm on the ground like she’s going to stand up, but nothing happens. Her voice is scared when she says, “I can’t feel my legs. They’re like, numb.”

Nileen and I exchange a look. “Go get Bob,” I say. “Bring him back here. And tell Will what happened and that he needs to prep the infirmary.”

She nods. “You gonna be OK, Fatima,” Nileen says, and then her skinny knees are pumping at a dead run toward the jungle path.

“What’s a brown recluse?” I ask, mainly to keep Fatima talking and distracted from the pain.

“Just regular,” she says with a shrug. “Black widows is worse. But I never heard of one of them doing nothing like this.” She shivers, and then she’s falling to the side. I get an arm around her just in time and prop her head on my shoulder. Her braids tickle my cheek. We sit that way for what seems like forever. I watch the waves wash in and out, and feel her twitching against me as the venom attacks her central nervous system.

Then Bob appears. For such a big man, he’s moving incredibly fast. Even Nileen can’t keep up. He scoops Fatima into his arms without a word and starts running again, carrying her weight like it’s nothing.

The camp is quiet. Most of the adults are still out fishing, cleaning and repairing the boats or tending the container gardens. A few young children and their minders stand in wide-eyed silence as Fatima is brought into the medical tent. I follow Bob inside. He lays her down on the table Will uses as a surgery. Almost immediately, she turns her head and vomits on the ground.

“Where’s Will?” I demand.

“Here,” he says, ducking through the tent flap, and seeing him makes me realize how absolutely terrified I felt a moment ago, and how much better I feel now.

His grey eyes assess the situation in an instant and then he’s issuing orders.

“Bob, fetch a bucket of clean water. Nileen, I need Lisa.” He looks at me. “You were there?”

I nod. “A spider bit her hand. Nileen said it looked like a recluse, but that it had a weird stripe.”

Will has one forefinger pressed against the pulse in Fatima’s neck. His other thumb is lifting her eyelids to check the pupils, which are hugely dilated. When I describe the spider, he looks up sharply.

“What color?”

I try to remember. “Yellow, I think.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. She said a yellow band.”

“Damn.” Will prods the bite and winces. It’s now the size of a grape and the color of an eggplant. “That’s the ramped up kind. Genetically altered to be thirty times as venomous.”

“Altered by who?”

“Old-time scientists, I heard. Some experiment that got loose. There was a lot of that happening at the end, when things broke down.” He looks at Fatima. Her eyes are closed and her breathing is rapid and shallow. “They’re rare. I’ve never seen one. But I’ve been told about cases by other physics.”

“What can we do? Will she live?” I feel stunned. We were just having a normal conversation not twenty minutes ago. For the first time, I understand how casually life can be snuffed out on the surface, without hospitals or machines or technology. For thousands of years, we were Earth’s top predator. Now we’re the prey again. And sudden, violent death is always a heartbeat away.