Undaunted

by Kat Falls

  After recording the introduction, it was nothing to transfer my footage onto the chairman’s tablet and post it to the same social media site as my first video.

  By the time I stepped out of the RV, the manimals were herding the guards into the compound while Everson hunkered before a Moline resident, gently manipulating her wrist. Dr. Solis tossed him a rolled bandage from several patients down, all with what looked like minor injuries. I waved to Hagen and she beckoned me over.

  Chairman Prejean kept a gloved hand cupped over her nose and mouth as she spoke. “Exactly what do you hope to gain from this?” Her glare remained on Hagen as I joined them. “I have guards on sixty bases along this river. Do you think they don’t know where I am? I suggest you release us right now or the entire line patrol will descend on your compound like —”

  “A plague?” Hagen asked coolly. “Lady, we survived the first one you caused. We’ll survive whatever else you cook up.”

  “She’s not going to be cooking up much of anything.” My dad limped past the nose of the hovercopter, swinging his cane like he didn’t need it.

  I rushed over and threw my arms around him. Up close he wasn’t the civilized art dealer he’d once been — his khakis were rumpled, and he’d grown a beard. No doubt I looked rougher too.

  “You okay?” he hugged me back and asked.

  I nodded and then realized he wasn’t alone. Bearly stood several feet away, an assault rifle cradled in her arms. I drew back, trying to tug my dad with me, but he just smiled.

  “This is Special Agent Johnson,” he told us. “She reports to Director Spurling. Always has.”

  Chairman Prejean stiffened as if touched by a live wire while I gaped. Had Everson known about Bearly’s side gig?

  “Nice to meet you, Bear Lake,” Hagen said as she slung her crossbow onto her back. “Jia’s told us all about you. Now, if you three have this in hand, I’m going to check on our people. Though,” she added with a smirk for the chairman, “yours are the ones looking worse for the wear.” As she strolled past me, she smiled. “Hey, Delaney Park. It’s good to see you.”

  “How did you know the guards were going to ambush us?” I asked. “How did you even know we were coming to Moline?”

  “The orphans told us,” she said.

  “How did the orphans know?”

  “Bearly told them,” my dad said.

  “Don’t worry, hon, we’ll get you caught up later,” Hagen assured me, and hooked a thumb over her shoulder. “After that gets sorted.”

  She left me struggling to make sense of things. Chairman Prejean, however, had regained her composure.

  “It doesn’t matter if Guardsman Johnson has been spying for Biohaz,” she informed my father as if Bearly wasn’t standing right there. “Taryn Spurling has no authority on this side of the wall.”

  “Had,” my dad replied.

  “Excuse me?” The chairman’s tone was the vocal equivalent of freezer burn.

  “You had sixty bases along the river.” My dad pursed his lips as if reluctant to deliver the news, though his eyes promised ice-cold vengeance. Even though he’d agreed to fetch the missing strains for Titan, he still hated Ilsa Prejean for corrupting the biosphere on a whim. “According to Special Agent Johnson,” he went on, “the federal government is repossessing the Titan bases … and canceling your contract.”

  “Spurling doesn’t have the power to cancel Titan’s contract,” the chairman sputtered.

  “No,” Bearly agreed as she unclipped handcuffs from her belt. “But the State Department does — and has, since the line patrol is under investigation for using unnecessary and excessive deadly force in the field. And for withholding information about a potential cure from the Department of Biohazard Defense. Nine of your former employees — guards and scientists — are set to testify in front of a federal grand jury this week. And you” — Bearly pried the chairman’s hand from her face — “are under arrest for ordering the unjustified execution of a civilian.”

  As Bearly snapped on the cuffs, Chairman Prejean choked and coughed like she’d just sucked in a lungful of poisonous gas.

  “Sorry that got so close, Lane,” Bearly said over the noise. “I knew the guards were a threat. I figured they might shoot Rafe on sight … But I never thought she’d order an execution in the field.”

  “What?” The word burst out of my dad.

  The chairman stopped gagging long enough to bleat, “Everson,” when Bearly propelled her forward.

  “Bearly, hold up,” Everson called as he jogged toward us. “Where are you taking her?” He might as well have been covered in steel plating for all the emotion he was showing.

  “To the Department of Biohazard Defense,” she informed him. “In the ’copter.”

  “Everson …” his mother said again as sweat dripped into her eyes — a consequence of over-plucked brows.

  Everson spared her a glance and then addressed Bearly. “I’d like to go with you.” At her nod, he swung to me. “Let me get my mother settled in the ’copter,” he said as Bearly led her off. “Don’t leave, okay? I need to tell you something.” Without waiting for my answer, he caught up with Bearly.

  “Told you I’d find her,” a familiar voice called out from behind me.

  I pivoted to see Rafe leading several small figures through the compound’s open gate. Jia, Dusty, Sage, Tasha, Trader, Rose, and Fixit broke into a run, stampeding toward me, screaming, “Lane!” And when they had me surrounded, they did the unthinkable — they threw their arms around any part of me they could grab and hugged me so hard, they dragged me down into a warm writhing pile of bodies. I’d never felt so at home.

  I came up for air in time to see my dad draw Rafe into a hug. I hoped he would take the news well — the news of how close Rafe and I had become. After releasing him, my dad clapped a hand to his shoulder and they continued to talk quietly. Rafe nodded at something my dad said and lifted his shirt to reveal the dark markings on his ribs.

  Jia sprang to her feet, her eyes fixed on stripes along Rafe’s torso. Gesturing wildly, she shouted, “The tiger-man!”

  The other orphans crowded around her, their eyes widening as they took in the faint stripes on Rafe’s face, the gold coronas around his pupils. Sage and Tasha began to growl.

  Rafe glanced over and let out a wildcat snarl that must have sent every animal within a quarter mile scurrying for cover. The orphans flinched backward as one but then stood their ground, growling, baring their teeth, curling their fingers into make-believe claws. My dad just laughed while leaning on his cane.

  “All right,” I said, stepping between them. “Enough. He’s a friend. So, try to act human.”

  “Tell him to act human!” Trader protested.

  “Listen, you guys, I have a mission for you.” I beckoned them into a huddle. “If you think you’re up for it …”

  That was met with a chorus of assurances. I gave a covert nod toward the RV and whispered, “There’s a blue crate in there, on the floor — filled with little, yellow tubes.”

  Rafe’s attention snapped to me even though he and my dad were standing several yards away. Guess the antigen hadn’t messed with his new, improved hearing. When he questioned me with a lift of his brows, I nodded and then went on with my instructions: “Get the crate and bring it to me, okay? I —” let the rest of my sentence roll off. The orphans were already bounding across the broken asphalt like a pack of puppies.

  As Rafe gave my dad a quick rundown on the antigen, I closed the distance between us. My dad turned to me, his expression one of wary excitement. “And it works?”

  “Seems to. But they don’t know for how long.”

  “Vincent,” my dad called to Dr. Solis, who was crouched next to a man infected with bat.

  The doctor looked up to reply but then spotted several orphans dragging the blue crate out the van. He rose swiftly. “Oh, no, children. No!”

  More orphans scrambled out, clasping things that had nothing to do with their m
ission — including the microscope. Like a swan protecting its nest, Dr. Solis dashed for the RV, shooing off the orphans. My dad limped after him, using his cane for once.

  The orphans faltered in their getaway when the hovercopter’s head beams snapped on and Everson hopped out. Dr. Solis took the moment to reclaim the crate, letting the kids run off with the rest of their plunder.

  Everson held up a finger to let Bearly know he’d be right back and then headed for us. Rafe and I met him halfway.

  “You’re flying back to base?” Rafe asked.

  “Over the wall,” Everson told him. “As soon as we touch down, Bearly’s going to perp walk my mother into Biohaz. I can’t let her face that alone.”

  “No, you can’t,” Rafe said firmly. “Whatever she’s done, she’s still your mom.”

  I wanted to say something comforting, but there was no bright side to his mother’s arrest. Instead, I asked, “What did you need to tell me?”

  Behind us, the hovercopter’s blades whirred to life and the headlights strobed. Everson responded with an over-the-shoulder wave but kept his eyes locked on me. “You’re not going to believe this. It’s crazy. Before giving me the vaccine, Solis tested my blood to make sure I wasn’t already infected … I wasn’t. But it turns out, I don’t need the vaccine.”

  My mind shook out the puzzle pieces, looking for corners and edges. “What does that mean?”

  “I have antibodies in my blood,” Everson said like he still couldn’t believe it.

  “Crazy,” Rafe intoned. “Now, how ’bout a recap in English?”

  “Antibodies to Ferae,” Everson explained, though the extra clue didn’t help me any more than Rafe. Everson tried again, “Like what we see in the blood of cured manimals. Lane, you probably won’t need the vaccine either,” he said, looking pointedly at Rafe. “If Dr. Solis is right … the antibodies are passed through a manimal’s saliva, one who’s taken the antigen.”

  With that, the puzzle pieces snapped into place. “You’re saying immunity can be passed with a kiss?” I asked with a gasp.

  Everson held up a cautioning hand. “We’ll have to confirm the results with more testing first. But the implications are —”

  “Like something out of a fairy tale!”

  “That’s not how I’d put it, but sure,” he allowed.

  “The orphans are going to love it,” I said with a clap, and then laughed when Rafe wrinkled his brow, looking adorably confused. “The wild boy all grown up,” I explained. “Traveling through the zone, giving out magic kisses that protect people from Ferae. You were born to star in bedtime stories.”

  “So were you,” he replied, and didn’t even turn it into something dirty.

  Looking into his eyes, I guessed that, like me, he was thinking of the picture he’d painted on the prison wall in Joliet of a little girl and boy holding hands. Me and him. An illustration for one of my father’s stories. Our story.

  “Uh … yeah,” Everson said, looking between us. “Getting back to the science part, if that result is consistent, then it just got a whole lot easier to vaccinate the people living in compounds.”

  “Just so we’re clear …” Rafe directed a finger at him. “I’m not hiking all over the zone, giving out magic kisses.”

  “Ev,” Bearly shouted from inside the hovercopter. “Let’s go!”

  “Coming,” he yelled back.

  “Wait! What happens if your mother gets convicted?” I asked in a rush. “To the patrol — to Titan?” Everson glanced back, cheeks flushed, though his expression was steely. “It means Titan is mine. She said she’s signing everything over to me as soon as we land.”

  “Whoa,” Rafe and I whispered in unison.

  Everson shook hands with Rafe and gave me a tight hug. Close to my ear, he said, “Thanks again.”

  “For what?”

  “For being a bad influence. Right now, I’d be giving a lab tour if it weren’t for you.”

  As the hovercopter lifted into the darkening sky, the orphans surrounded me once again. Rafe and Dr. Solis carried the blue crate into the compound while my dad held the gate, but the kids and I didn’t follow them. Not yet. We watched the ’copter arc toward the looming shadow across the river. When the blinking lights finally disappeared past the wall, Jia slipped her hand into mine and we walked toward the open gate together.

  “You know the chairman-lady with the plastic face and no hair?” Jia asked.

  I nodded, trying not to smile at her description.

  “She’s mad at you. That’s why she kicked us off base.”

  I shrugged. Chairman Prejean was now the least of my worries. “It’s better here anyway, don’t you think?” I said.

  “I do!” Dusty said, catching up to us. “They’ve got secret passageways and tunnels and everything!”

  “I’m still thinking about it,” Jia announced, and I squeezed her hand.

  “You let me know what you decide,” I said, and she nodded.

  As we strolled through the gate under Sid’s narrow-eyed gaze, the orphans pressed close to me, heads ducked. I couldn’t blame them. Thrusting out his sharp tusks and tapping a semi-hoofed foot, Sid was doing his best to seem intimidating, though we were matched in height. I smiled at him. “Hey, Sid. How’ve you been?”

  “You’re moving too slow,” he snapped, sounding officious until his voice cracked and his words ended on a squeal, which he tried to cover by jangling his giant key ring. “This gate gets locked at sundown, girly, and doesn’t open again till dawn. No exceptions! Especially not for a friend of Rafe’s.”

  “He took his gun back, huh?” I asked, trying to sound sympathetic.

  He slammed the dead bolt home, twisted three keys into three different locks, and then trotted off, grumbling under his breath the whole time.

  “Good night, Sid,” I called after him, and then steered the kids toward the brick building near the river’s edge, where my dad and Hagen lived. As we navigated the narrow street single file, the orphans relaxed and got their swagger back. Maybe someday the slightest hint of a threat wouldn’t throw them into high alert, but we weren’t there yet. “Who wants to hear a story?” I asked.

  “About the tiger-man?” Tasha asked as we crossed the town square at the center of the compound. People lounged in rocking chairs along the boardwalk that edged the square, laughing and retelling the events of the day. They waved as we passed.

  I returned their greetings and then answered Tasha, “Nope. This story is about a dragon-man.”

  “Did the brave little girl kill him?” Rose asked.

  Sage pushed between the others, trying to get closer to me. “Or the wild boy?”

  “Nope,” I said, warming to the task. “This time it took the whole compound, including the infected people who’d been driven out … humans and manimals, all working together.”

  What a difference a week made. The manimals gathered around me in the town square had all tested clear for the virus. I had to believe that Rafe would too, but I didn’t know for sure. Not yet.

  He’d left Moline the night we’d arrived to take twenty tubes of the antigen to Chicago. He was worried about Dromo, who’d been infected for years. Rafe wanted to get him the antigen as soon as possible. My dad said it would take about twenty hours to get to Chicago on a bike and twenty hours back. Rafe had been gone six days. I got that he’d have to spend a couple of days tracking down his friends, but hopefully he was on his way back to me now.

  The sun had just disappeared behind the wall when my dad pushed open the double doors of the old brick building that was our home. Well, the second floor was home, anyway. The gutted first floor was something else entirely.

  “Thank you for coming out to celebrate this momentous occasion with us,” my dad said, booming like a ringmaster, and then he dropped the act with a laugh. “But you’re too early. The sun just set.”

  “Come on, Mack,” a voice in the crowd cajoled. “It’s dark enough.”

  “You won’t get the
full effect,” my dad protested. “Come back later.”

  “Please, Mack,” a woman called. “I’m letting the kids stay up just to see it.”

  Two little voices echoed, “Please!”

  “I think you’re outnumbered, hon,” Hagen called from the doorway. Like the other buildings in the town center, ours had the look of a lush ruin with its crumbling mortar and vine-draped facade.

  “Oh, all right,” my dad relented. That got him a smattering of applause, so he bowed. He was in his element here, which explained why he kept coming back to the zone all those years even with the stakes so high.

  As for me, I might never get totally comfortable with the Wild West feel of Moline or hearing the howls and chittering of ferals at night, and sometimes I did long for a sparkling-white bathroom where the hot water never ran out … But still, this was home.

  “You sure, Mack?” Hagen teased. “We can send everybody away and wait for the perfect moment.”

  “Go ahead.” Dad waved her on. “Flip the switch.”

  With a chuckle, Hagen disappeared into the building and, a moment later, those of us gathered outside gasped in unison. Above the double doors, the words “Mack’s Place” strobed to life for the first time ever — in neon cursive, no less. A hack found the sign on one of his trips into the zone and sold it to my dad for a month’s worth of meals. And it was worth every crumb!

  Applause broke out, followed by whistles and whinnies and roars. I clapped and cheered along with my neighbors but then scanned the edges of the square for a familiar head of light-brown hair. If Rafe wasn’t back by tomorrow, I’d officially start worrying. Even if he couldn’t get infected twice, there were so many ways to die in the zone. Maybe he —

  This.

  This was why my dad had kept me in the dark about his life as a fetch. To keep me from imagining the worst every time he ventured east. Worrying wouldn’t bring Rafe back any faster and it wouldn’t keep him safe. I might as well get to work, welcoming people to Mack’s, our newly electrified social club. It was the first of its kind in the Feral Zone … at least, as far as we knew.