by Kathryn Hoff
Depressed, I slunk back up the stairs. I’d been dreaming that when the research was done, Paula would find a way to give Molly a better life, and Paula and I would go back to the way things were, her and me, living and working together. But life didn’t work that way. Molly would probably never have a life outside of a laboratory cage. Paula was probably never going back to the zoo. She had a new life now, an accomplished scientist doing important work, with no time for an almost-grown orphan.
Eclipse changed everything for everyone.
The babies were already over the virus, but Reyna had been hit so hard she’d had to go to bed. While Chubb wrangled Gabe, I fed Deedee between my own bites of rice and jello, and cleaned the pudding out of her hair when she was done.
“Thanks, Jackass,” Chubb said as we settled the kids in their cribs for a nap. “Corralling both kids at the same time is tough.”
I glanced toward Reyna’s closed door. “She must still be sick. Do you think I should take her some food?”
“Feel free to try. Maybe she won’t bite the hand that feeds her.”
I knocked on Reyna’s door and poked my head in, the first time I’d tried to enter her room since my intrusion when I’d first arrived. “Hungry? I brought some food.”
Reyna, reclining in bed, set aside the drawing she was working on. “Not really, but you may as well bring it in anyway.”
She looked over the soup, jello, and pudding. “Damn. Diarrhea diet. I get so sick of food that comes in cups.” She sat up gingerly, holding her middle.
I put the tray on her nightstand, taking the chance to gaze at all the dolls. Each dress had been handmade with tiny stitches and tucks, adorned with miniature beads and sequins and lace.
“These really are gorgeous,” I said. “What an amazing amount of detail.”
“Thank you.”
Thank you?
I glanced at Reyna’s drawing—not a simpering fairy, but a fashion model with an elegant, simple jumpsuit that put our gray uniforms to shame.
Astonished, I asked, “Wait—did you make the dresses?”
Reyna nodded curtly. “Most of them. My mama made the bride and the ball gown.”
“Wow. I had no idea! They’re incredible.”
She gave me a sly look. “You like the one in pink?”
“The other Jackie Kennedy? She’s great! Just like the picture in the Cold War unit.” The doll had a little pink pillbox hat, white gloves, and everything.
“Her suit was Chanel. Pink wool.”
“Is that what you want to do? Design clothes?”
“I did, once.”
I busied myself by straightening the sheets on Deedee’s crib. “They’re wonderful. I’m glad you were able to keep them when your family was Eclipsed.”
“He wasn’t Eclipsed.”
I stayed quiet.
Reyna sighed. “My dad. My mama passed in wave two, but I still had my dad. Until they killed him. He was a cop, just doing his job, trying to keep people from burning the empty houses down. Last spring somebody shot him. Left him all alone, laying in the street like he was nothing.”
Crap. Somehow that was so much sadder than just being Eclipsed like my family.
“I’m so sorry. That’s terrible.”
“When my dad died, his police friends came to the house to save my things before the ECA could take them. One of them knew Stonehouse, and he got me this job so I wouldn’t have to go to teen home.” She stroked the pretty quilt. “I know it’s too much. Orphans aren’t supposed to keep things, but they make me feel better. ’Specially the quilt. My mama made it for me when I was just little.”
“It’s beautiful. Don’t worry about Deedee. Chubb and I will watch her.”
She left the cups of food where they were and turned back to her fashion model, blinking—waiting for me to leave so she could cry.
CHAPTER 18
Happy New Year
Three days after Christmas was Chubb’s birthday. Seventeen, and one year away from being thrust into the world. Every time somebody said happy birthday he flinched.
After supper, old Dr. Mendez—whose smile looked like a Día de Muertos mask—led everyone in singing the birthday song while Chubb squirmed over a blue-frosted sheet cake.
Later, in the nursery, Reyna and I gave Chubb his birthday cards. Reyna had done a terrific drawing of Chubb with a grinning Gabe on his hip. She had Chubb down to a T, off-center smile, sandy hair, and freckles, and Gabe with his four teeth and cup-handle ears.
Chubb kissed Reyna on the cheek and said he really liked it.
“I can’t draw,” I said. “So this is the best I can do.” I handed Chubb a folded page that said inside: I hope you have a pleasant, convivial, joyous, merry, awesome, happy birthday! I will be your minion for five favors.
“Uh, thanks. What’s a minion?”
“Servant. Run errands for you.”
He brightened up. “No kidding? Like change a dirty diaper? Give Gabe his bath?”
“Or fetch something or look something up.”
“Fetch something? Like Gabe’s bottle when it’s midnight and he wakes up hungry?”
“Yep.” Of course, I knew it was usually Chubb who woke up hungry.
“All right! Thanks, minion.” And he kissed me, too, on the lips for maybe a second, and hugged me. It was weird, like getting a kiss from your brother. I hugged him back until Reyna made an impatient humph.
Chubb let me go and turned away, his shoulders drooping.
I patted his shoulder. “Don’t worry, Chubb. You still have a year.”
“Yeah. One more year, then it’s out the door and look for a job. Except the factories have closed, and nothing gets imported anymore, and the stores only sell second-hand goods. And there are thousands of kids living in squats and needing jobs.”
“There’s the army, or the industry corps, or the ag corps,” I said. “You could work on a farm.”
“Yuck. And probably never see you guys or Gabe and Deedee again.” He looked gloomier than ever. “You know what I wish I could do? Run a shop. My family had a convenience store, so I know something about it. I could be my own boss. Stock the shelves with stuff that people need all the time, like diapers and milk. Spend the day chatting with customers and giving them what they want, place orders, figure out prices. There’s a lot that goes into running a business, you know, even a little one. I’d be good at something like that. Better at that than being a soldier or processing gasoline or digging potatoes.”
Then he laughed. “How about you, Jackie? You should be a writer, you know so many words. Convivial!”
“Me? I’ll probably end up in the ag corps. Clean out pigpens, that’s what I’m good for.”
For a moment, I pictured the other Jackie Kennedy, the elegant one, smiling and gracious in her little pink pillbox hat, mucking out pigpens. It wasn’t the mucking out that would bother me, if I ever worked on a pig farm, it was knowing that the pigs’ future would be pork roasts and bacon.
Like Molly. Her future was a cage until they decided they didn’t need her anymore.
I tried to shake off the gloom. “Reyna should totally be an artist.”
She grunted. “Yeah, sure. Sit on the street and draw portraits for a dollar. Design clothes to be made out of worn bedsheets.”
“T-shirts.” Chubb was serious. “Posters. With those cute little pixies on them. I’d sell them in my shop. Everybody would want one.”
Except there weren’t any factories to make T-shirts and everybody bought their clothes from ECA thrift shops.
And we lied and said, yes, that’s exactly the way it will be. It made me so sad I went to my room and blubbered myself to sleep.
My days fell into a new routine of caring for the dog, minding the babies, and twice a day, after breakfast and mid-afternoon, helping Paula dress for the red zone. It broke my heart to hear Molly’s lonely hooting from the inner room and not be able to go to her.
Chubb snagged a new fleece blanket for her,
and I rubbed it all over Barney before giving it to Paula. “Here,” I said. “Maybe this will let her know Barney hasn’t forgotten her.”
Paula just squeezed my shoulder and told me to go over her seams again.
Every morning while I cleaned Barney’s cage, Rico came to the primate lab long enough to shrug and say, “Nothing new,” or tell me about something Bert had done or said. None of it added up to evidence. Stonehouse had said Bert wasn’t the one who let Molly out, but maybe he’d slipped out of the kitchen when Mary Koh wasn’t watching, or maybe he’d gotten Tilly to do it. Or maybe Koh did it herself to put a scare into Jerry or just for a joke, not realizing how important Molly was.
I couldn’t see that Rico watching Bert or my finding excuses to go to the kitchen and spy on Tilly was getting us anywhere, but I couldn’t think of anything better to do.
The news said cases of strain seven had turned up in California and Arizona as well as Florida. Border patrols were stepped up. In southern states, vigilantes put checkpoints around their towns with fences and barbed wire to keep out people fleeing from areas of infection.
The End-Timers came to the gate every day to tell us we were all going to die.
On the last day of December, after dinner in the nursery, Chubb said, “I have a plan.”
I groaned. “Don’t tell me. Your plan involves one of your birthday favors.”
“The last one, minion, so it has to count.”
So far, I’d gone for midnight snacks once, done an extra hour of babysitting twice, and looked up references on Civil War medicine for one of his essays.
Chubb spread his arms wide. “Tonight is New Year’s Eve. My last one as a kid.”
“So what?” I grumbled. “Westerly said no late parties, work as usual tomorrow.”
“You always do what you’re told?”
“I do when I have to get up early and take the dog out.”
“I wouldn’t mind a little fun,” Reyna said. “We could watch the fireworks on television.” The network would show a rerun from some pre-Eclipse year, but that would be better than nothing.
“Right! And to celebrate, we need food and drink. So, minion, your last favor is to raid the kitchen after everyone quiets down, but before midnight.”
I groaned again. “The last time I went for snacks at night the guard gave me hell.” The night guard was a guy named Perkins, an E-5 who was bored and lonely sitting in the principal’s office watching security feeds all night. Needed enrichment. And, just like any caged animal, if a human was witless enough to walk into his cage, he was gonna take his frustration out on him…or her. I’d had to answer a dozen irrelevant, brainless questions. What’s your name? What are you doing walking around at this hour? Who said you could? What do you do here, anyway? When he’d got to, So, what do you think these scientists are up to? I’d told him the baby was crying and I needed to get him his damn bottle.
Chubb laughed. “It’s your own fault. Do what I do, go down to the second floor to cross over. That way you’re not waking up the dog or using the hall where Westerly sleeps—she can hear a mouse on tiptoe. Just wave at the camera on the second floor before you go down the stairs by the kitchen, so the guard recognizes you. He won’t leave his post if he knows it’s you.”
So, there I was, at a quarter to midnight on New Year’s Eve, creeping down to the kitchen in pajamas and sneaks. The stairwell was cold enough to make me wish I’d stopped to put on an extra sweatshirt over my jammies.
On the second floor, I started down the office corridor, but stopped.
Voices.
Light leaked out from under Mendez’s office door. Maybe Mendez, being so sick, worked late when he couldn’t sleep. Just my luck, to have him or Westerly find me out of bed after she’d ruled out any parties.
What would Chubb do? The answer was easy: he’d listen.
I slipped into room 213 and crept over to Chubb’s spy hole.
Mendez’s voice rasped, “Why would we withhold such a thing? I assure you, young man, no cure exists at this point. Our work holds great promise…”
“No? Then how come your babies don’t get Eclipse, eh?” The other man’s voice was high with tension. “You’ve got something to keep them safe, don’t you? I gotta have it. Lydia and our kid…Hand it over, old man, or someone’s gonna get hurt.”
Oh, hell.
Keep your head, call for help, use your knowledge of behavior to control the situation.
There was a guard in the principal’s office watching the camera feeds.
I tiptoed into the hallway to where the camera could see me and waved both arms frantically. Surely that damn fool Perkins was watching? Surely, he’d come pounding up the stairs with those heavy boots to ask questions?
Nothing.
The door to Mendez’s office opened and Mendez shuffled out, leaning on a cane. “I’m sorry for your situation. I, too, have lost a child to this dreadful disease. That is why we work so hard here.”
“Shut up.”
Crap. The soldier who followed Mendez out was none other than the guard Perkins. He had his pistol out and pointing at Mendez.
No help was coming.
Perkins caught sight of me and suddenly the pistol was pointing in my direction. It looked as big as a cannon.
“You!” he grunted. “What are you doing?”
“Going to the kitchen!” I shouted. “Baby needs a bottle!” Maybe Westerly, who could hear a mouse on tiptoe, would hear me and come down.
Behind Perkins came a woman holding a baby even smaller than Deedee.
The baby whined and fussed, making tiny, weak coughs.
I froze. Holy hyenas, the baby was sick. The brainless, witless, asinine son of a baboon had snuck his sick baby in here.
I tried to imagine a three-meter circle around the baby. Perkins and his girlfriend were inside it, and Mendez too.
No way was I going any closer. Memories flashed through my mind: being in restraints in a red zone bed, coughing and hurting, tubes in my arms, white suits looking down at me saying: Stay still. This is for your own good.
The gun frightened me, but nothing—nothing—scared me more than the possibility of getting Eclipse again.
Perkins waved the gun. “Give me the cure, old man, or I start shooting. You, girl, get over here.”
Hell, no. I stayed put. “You don’t want to do this.” My voice shook. I raised it louder. “They just do research here. No vaccines. No antibiotics. Strain six isn’t so bad. Lots of people get through it.”
The girlfriend was young, still had her orphan bracelet. “Vern, baby, we gotta go. I don’t feel good.” Her face was sweaty.
Calling for help didn’t seem to be working. There was a fire alarm halfway down the hall, but it was on the other side of the man with the pistol. Knowledge of behavior? Perkins was no chimp and I had no biscuits to offer.
The gun wavered between pointing at me and pointing at Mendez, like a rattlesnake deciding who to bite. “You hear me, old man? You give me something for my kid or I start shooting and your little babysitter gets it first.”
The girlfriend said, “Vern, no. We’ll just go. It won’t be so bad…” The baby in her arms coughed again.
Mendez drew himself up. “Young man, anything I gave you would be a sham. I cannot allow you to take that poor child out of here to infect others. You must let me call for a quarantine unit.”
I said, loud, “Dr. Westerly’s a physician. Maybe she can help? Why don’t you let me get her? She’s right upstairs.” I edged toward the steps.
“Move and I shoot!”
I froze. “It’s not hopeless, you know.” I spoke mostly to the orphan girlfriend. “They could cure Eclipse in another year or so. If your baby gets help right away, she could live through it and maybe never get sick again. You both got through wave five, right?”
Perkins started to sob. “I wish I hadn’t. My first wife died, and my baby, and now it’s happening all over again. Lydia, I couldn’t stand it if…”
Westerly’s deep, harsh voice boomed from the other end of the corridor. “Leo? What the devil is going on?”
The soldier spun around and the gun went off. Maybe he didn’t mean for it to happen, but the gun went off and Mendez went down.
CHAPTER 19
Medical emergency
Westerly started forward. I yelled, “Stay back! The baby’s sick!”
The girlfriend, Lydia, backed away, sobbing. “Oh, Vern!”
“I didn’t mean to!” Perkins was crying worse, but he still had hold of the pistol.
Westerly, dressed in her flamingo-pink bathrobe over a purple caftan, was as calm and cold as a pink mountain. “Young man, if you want to help your child and yourself, you will allow me to call for medical help at once. Now put that damn weapon down and do something right for a change.”
The man just stood there, holding his pistol limply at his side. The girlfriend muttered to her fussing baby.
Westerly snapped, “Soldier!” as sharp as a drill instructor.
She knew her primate behavior. Perkins snapped to attention with a “Yes, ma’am,” even though Westerly, in her bathrobe, didn’t look like any officer.
“Administer first aid, soldier, unless you want to be guilty of murder as well as stupidity. Pressure on the wound.”
Perkins finally holstered his pistol. Kneeling beside Mendez, he took off his shirt to stop the oozing blood. Mendez grunted in pain.
Westerly looked at me. “Jacqueline, listen carefully. My office is directly to your right.” I nodded. “I am throwing my badge to you. Use it to enter my office and bring the medical kit.” She tossed the badge in my direction.
I shuffled forward just enough to snatch the badge, then ran to Westerly’s office to grab the med kit and ran back.
In the hall, the girlfriend sat on the floor, trying to comfort the coughing baby. Westerly had edged closer to Mendez, a bare four meters from the mother and child, while she directed the soldier where to put pressure. I slid the med kit to the snuffling soldier.
“Leo?” Westerly’s voice was kind and tender.