by Anna Abner
“Why is Pollard crying?” she asked, satisfied I was alive and well.
“He wasn’t crying.” Was he? “We were just talking.”
She made a face. “It looked like he was crying. Did you break up?”
“We weren’t really together,” I said, and then came to the conclusion I would not get into a conversation about relationships with an eight-year-old. Too weird. “But don’t worry about that. Tell me about your trip here. Did anything exciting happen?”
“We waited on the beach for you,” she accused. “Where were you?”
I shrugged. “Different beaches, I guess.”
“Whatever.” She stood and messed with the stuff on the doctor’s coffee table. Discarded diamond earrings, a paperback mystery, and some drink coasters. “I thought you were dead.”
“I’m right here.” I cleared my throat. “We got chased by a pack of Reds, but we survived. Just like you. Is Juliet okay?”
“Yeah.” She didn’t seem interested in talking about the older girl. “Oh, I’ve been practicing.” She finger-spelled the alphabet so rapidly I couldn’t track every letter.
“Wow.” I chuckled. “That was really fast.”
“And this, too.” She signed, “Please. Thank you.” And then the first couple lines of “You’re a Grand Old Flag”.
I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. “Excellent.”
“I love you,” she signed, and then climbed onto my lap again. “I saved this for you.” From her pocket she produced a silver rectangle. The hinged photo frame from my dad’s desk.
I accepted it, opened the frame, and stared at my face and Mason’s. “Thank you.”
“I kept it safe for you.” She bounced off my lap and explored the doctor’s bookshelves. “I told you I would.”
“You did good.” I set the little frame on the coffee table, open and aimed at the front door so everyone who visited could see it. “How do you like this group so far?”
“It’s okay.” She twisted a marble figurine in her skinny little fingers. “There are lots of people. More than at the last place. There’s even kids.” She abandoned the shelf to face me, her eyes sparkling with excitement. “I want to stay.”
I couldn’t make any judgments. Not until I met more of my neighbors, saw how they treated us. It was hard for me to trust strangers after meeting the people I had encountered.
“Are you going to stay?” Hunny asked. “You are, aren’t you?”
I thought of Ben. And Pollard. And the antiserum. And my home on Cherry Blossom Court. If given a magical wish, what would I do? Where would I go?
“I don’t know yet,” I answered honestly. “I’m trying to figure that out.”
“You should stay here with me.” She smiled. “And you should take a shower. You smell gross.”
“Thanks a lot,” I said sarcastically, tickling her waist. She squealed and leapt away.
The bedroom door opened and Hunny got her first peek at Ben. My insides plummeted. The freshly blackened eye, the stitches, the milky white complexion. He looked awful. Worse than he had right after the fight. It was all the drying blood. I wanted to do something to help, but there wasn’t much I could do.
“Ben!” Skipping like a young colt, Hunny threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around his waist. He kept himself upright with one hand on the doorframe, while the other hand patted her narrow back.
“Sweet Pea,” he greeted in a growly voice. “I thought I heard you.”
“You’re alive,” she said. “I was scared you were both dead.”
“Nah.” He pried her off him. “We tussled with a couple bad guys, but we won the fight.”
“Ugh.” Hunny scrunched up her nose. “You need a shower, too.”
The word got stuck in my head. “Are there showers?” It would be heavenly to clean off the blood and grit and change into clean clothes.
“Yeah.” Hunny bounced on her toes as she glanced from me to Ben. “I’ll show you.”
“I’ll grab some towels and stuff.” I started for the hall linen closet.
“It’s all there already,” Hunny said, stopping me mid-step. “They share everything here.”
I paused next to Ben. “You okay to walk?”
“I’m fine.” Lowering his eyes, he asked, “Pollard left?”
“Yes.” I didn’t know how much of our conversation he had overheard, but I didn’t elaborate. I didn’t want to talk about Pollard.
“I’ll grab clean clothes, then.”
“I’m telling you,” Hunny argued, getting frustrated with me. “They have everything there. Just come on.”
We followed her out of the high-rise. There were still people lounging around the front gardens, and I couldn’t help remember the organization in Camp Carson. Either these people weren’t as worried about chores, or there were so many people they took turns.
“I wish I had sunglasses for you,” Hunny said to Ben when he caught some worried stares from the strangers.
“It’s fine,” I assured.
“I’m not hiding anymore,” he said. “This is me.”
I gave him a smile, my heart swelling painfully in my chest.
Hunny led us down the fenced street to the hospital, but we passed the medical center and kept walking. Another block and the walls widened to include a gray parking lot. There were no vehicles, though. Instead of cars and trucks, perched on the pavement was a six-stalled, solar-heated shower system.
“Wow,” I said. Someone had worked really hard to bring cleanliness to the camp. Beside the showers were two pop-up canopies covering rolling cabinets of toiletries, towels, and clothing. I jogged over to inspect the gear. Shampoo, conditioner, body wash. Jeans, skirts, lacy tops. I stood there for a minute, overwhelmed.
But then I snapped back to attention. “Here.” I set toiletries in the first stall with a dry towel and clean clothes in Ben’s size. “Go ahead.” I stocked the second shower and stepped in.
Warm, clean water cascaded upon the top of my head and I exhaled, every muscle from the tips of my ears to the pads of my feet unwinding. I stood for a moment, not worrying about washing up yet, just enjoying the sensation.
A low, amused chuckled brought me back to reality. “It’s only been a day since our bath,” Ben teased, turning on his own shower.
“But it’s been a very, very long day.” I smiled at him as I lathered my hair and rinsed the blood and mud and bits of broken glass out of it.
Ben held up a bottle of body wash and a tube of frizz-reducing conditioner. “Am I supposed to wash my hair with this, or this?”
Laughing, I squirted a bit of my shampoo into my good hand and gestured him closer to the plastic partition between us. “Come here. This is the good stuff.”
Obligingly, he ducked his head and let me scrub shampoo through his dark hair, being careful to avoid his new stitches and my older ones. I spent longer washing the sticky blood from his hair than it probably warranted, but I couldn’t help myself.
“Since my last bath,” I said, double checking that all the bits of gore were washed from his face and throat, “I’ve been in a car accident, been robbed at gunpoint, took out a pack of zombies, and run barefoot for miles.” I gave him a nudge to rinse himself in the water. “I really, really needed a shower.”
Chapter Nineteen
I brushed a towel over my newly clean body and then dressed in fresh-smelling clothes. Since I didn’t have to worry about cutting my legs with my dad’s sword anymore, I chose jean shorts and a tank top. And since I, hopefully, didn’t have to run anywhere, I slipped my feet into cute, strappy wedges.
As I stepped out of the shower stall, a golf cart rolled into the parking lot.
“Hi,” Beatrice greeted, waving. “When you two are done, I’m supposed to show you around. Doctor’s orders.” She chuckled half-heartedly at her own joke.
“Sure.”
As soon as Ben was finished with his shower and dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, we climbed on Beatrice’s c
art with Hunny.
“When the lights went out,” Beatrice explained, steering the cart down the walled lane away from the condos and the showers, “there were two groups in D.C. The important politicos in a top-secret, underground bunker. And the rest of us locked in an apartment building.” We passed the hospital and kept going. “But after a week, we combined forces and started building the fence. And now that we’re safe, the next step is to get power and water to the city. If we can do that, then we can start pulling in other groups of survivors.”
We turned right and drove slowly along a walled path over a parking lot and a strip of grass toward the sound of rushing water. “Do either of you know anything about engineering?” Beatrice asked.
Ben and I just looked at each other.
“No? Oh, well. I had to ask.”
“It’s amazing what you’ve done so far,” I said. A lot of it I’d seen before in Camp Carson—sanitation, chores, safe housing—but without Malcolm’s cruel dictatorship, the community in D.C. had a much calmer vibe. Almost homey.
Beatrice drove us past a playground nestled within a bend in the road and three kids younger than Hunny chased each other up a slide and across a rope bridge, squealing and chattering like a trio of monkeys. But my eyes lingered on the woman supervising the play date. As if she didn’t even realize she was doing it, the pregnant woman’s hand caressed her bulging belly from one side to the other.
The cart continued, the road turned, and I lost sight of the family.
“Down here,” Beatrice said, “we’ve claimed a section of the Potomac River for clothes washing. I wouldn’t drink the river water unless it was an emergency, but it’s perfect for laundry.” She pulled the cart over at the start of an ancient wooden pier. “Do you want to see the river?”
Hunny darted ahead, but Ben and I strolled onto the pier at a more leisurely pace. The water was bluish green and lapped gently at the beach in a nice, comforting rhythm. Like a lullaby.
“Hello there!”
Ben and I turned simultaneously at the voice. A short, trim woman approached from the road where a second cart was parked behind ours, her high heels click-clacking on the wooden pier.
“Hello,” I called back, a little wary. She emanated authority, and I’d had bad luck in that department.
“I’ve heard a lot about you.” She smiled, extending her hand to me first and then Ben. “I’m Laurie.”
Finally it hit me why she looked so familiar. I’d never met her in person, of course, but I’d seen her on TV and in the newspaper.
“You’re the vice president,” I blurted out, and then flushed pink. “Sorry.”
“That’s okay.” She chuckled good-naturedly, flipping shiny amber hair over her shoulder. “I am, though please call me Laurie. We’re informal around here.” She eyed Ben up and down with an obvious fascination. “I didn’t believe Dr. Lutan when she told me we had a real, live ex-zombie in the compound. I thought it must be a trick. Colored contacts or something. But your eyes appear genuine.”
“I’m not a zombie,” he said. “And I’m not trying to trick anyone.”
“Of course you’re not.” She flashed her thousand-watt smile. “But you were infected with 212R?”
“I was.”
“He cured himself,” I tried to explain. “With an antiserum my father developed before things fell apart.”
“Forgive me,” she said. “Welcome to our little oasis.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“We’ve got big plans,” she said, “and now you’re both part of those plans.”
She turned her intelligent gaze on me. “Pollard tells me you’re not good at combat, but we could use you on our laundry team. You’d be helping keep our community clean and organized.”
Pollard said that? “I want to help,” I said, trying not to lose my temper in front of the vice president, “but I’d rather assist the staff in the hospital. Even if it’s only cleaning up after them.” When she didn’t respond immediately, I added, “I have experience.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” She smiled wide, showing very white, very straight teeth.
“Is the president here, too?” I’d often wondered if, during the last fevered days before 212R took over completely, important people were rounded up and quarantined in a cave or a bank vault or something. Like in a movie. I liked to imagine it because the alternative, that the red plague had decimated everyone, regardless of rank or intelligence, was painfully disheartening.
She shook her head. “Infected.”
So, no secret caves. “Is the entire world infected?” I asked. “Is it like this everywhere?”
Her enthusiastic façade cracked, and she spoke not as a television personality, but like a real person. I got the feeling she was much tougher and much smarter than she pretended to be in the media. “As far as I know. Back when communications were still open, 212R was popping up on every continent in the world. Once it spread out of South America there was no stopping it.”
“So this is it.” I gazed across the lapping water. A world covered in zombies and disease and a handful of survivors.
“Young lady,” she said, turning steely in a flash. “I want you to understand something very simple. There are two hundred seventy-three hard working Americans living in this community, everyone from plumbers to senators, and my top priority is to ensure the safety and well being of these people. I don’t care if I have to learn electrical engineering and computer programming myself, but we will get this country back on its feet.” Her eyes narrowed. “A big part of doing so is ending the red plague. I heard you can help us with that.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I smiled up at Ben. “We can.”
* * *
On our way back, Beatrice stopped at the hospital. “Do you mind talking to the doctor one more time? She said she had some more questions.”
But we didn’t have to go very far. Dr. Lutan met us just inside the hospital’s main doors.
“Adjusting to camp life?” she greeted. “I see you cleaned up.”
“We showered,” I said.
“What about you?” she asked, turning on Ben. “How do you like our little enclave?”
He glanced at me, and then at the doctor. “It seems like a good place. It’s a lot better than the last camp we were at.”
She squinted up at him. “Your speech is impressive. Was it difficult gaining it back?”
“It was slow. My memories, too, took a little while. A lot is still fuzzy.” He tapped his left temple. “But I feel better every day.”
The doctor took out a penlight and examined his eyes for what must have been the tenth time. “Any vision problems?”
“No.”
“It’s just color,” I said. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Amazing,” the doctor said. “Completely normal.” She finally put the pen light in her pocket, and said to me, “Your father synthesized an antiserum and tested it on human subjects?”
“No. It never got that far. The virus spread too quickly. By the time we reached his lab about a week ago it had been destroyed. There was one vial left on the floor in a pile of broken glass. Ben injected it into his carotid.”
The doctor was interested in every step and symptom of the cure. Did the syringe look like this? What about the vials? Were they this size? She wanted to know what Ben experienced and what I saw. We told her everything from the seizure to the overpowered senses and the return of speech.
The doctor wrote quick notes on a pad of paper. “I have so much to think about. I’m going to need a much better microscope and another generator.” She left, still mumbling to herself. “The VP is going to be so angry at me."
Beatrice drove us back to the apartment building and dropped us off with a wave.
I hadn’t even closed the front door before Hunny started bouncing around me in ever-narrowing circles.
“Can we go upstairs?” she asked. “Please?”
Ben swept past us and flopped onto the so
fa.
“You feeling okay?” I called to him over the little girl’s head.
“Just a headache.”
“Come on, Maya, let’s go see Pollard and Juliet,” Hunny pleaded. “I want to show you my room. It’s on the fourth floor. Please?”
I still hadn’t gotten the full story of their trip north out of Pollard or seen Juliet. I’d have to see them eventually. I might as well go up there and face them with Hunny at my side.
I glanced apologetically at Ben. “I’ll just check in, see how Juliet is. I won’t be gone long.”
“Pollard,” he grumbled. “Right.”
“Just to say hi.” And find out what he was feeling. Did he hate me? Was he angry? Did I have to avoid him from then on? Or could we actually be friends?
“Pollard.” He closed his eyes and hugged a throw pillow as if he may fall asleep on the couch. “Go. I’ll see you later.”
“Come on, Hunny.” I clasped her hand, and we left the apartment.
Pollard’s condo was up four flights of stairs and down a long hallway. The door was cracked open, but I knocked anyway, feeling strangely shy. Though it had only been a few days since I’d lived with them, it seemed much longer.
Juliet rushed to let me in. “Hi,” she greeted, but we didn’t hug. Juliet wasn’t a hugger. She smiled instead, and I stood open-mouthed at her transformation. Away from Camp Carson, the girl had blossomed. Long hair in a sleek ponytail, short skirt, cropped top. She looked happy and peaceful.
“Hi.” I followed her into the living room, stepping around piles of dirty clothes and bags of trash someone really needed to take out. “How was your trip?”
“Not too bad.”
Hunny ran into me, squeezing me around the middle. “Maya, can I stay with you tonight? Please? You said so, right? I can?”
“Sure.” I really had missed her. “Go pack a bag.”
She scurried away to pack.
“Come on in.” Juliet led me through the foyer.