Splintered

by Jon McGoran

  When Doc had mentioned AAV therapy he said it only changed one generation of cells at a time, but that people were trying to extend that using viruses that re-infected the new cells as they arose. I thought back to the label on the SPLINTR inhaler: SUSTAINED AAV REINFECTION 90 DAYS. REAPPLICATION NOT RECOMMENDED DUE TO ACQUIRED IMMUNITY.

  A gust of wind whipped around me as the shock of realization hit. I hadn’t understood it then. But now I understood it meant the treatment could only be applied once. Each new generation of cells would be reinfected, but after ninety days, the patient would be immune.

  When Devon had told me about the sickness, he said the treatment not only changed their lungs, it killed them after three months. And in the mines, it did. In Centre Hollow, it did. But it didn’t have to. I opened my eyes and looked over at Henry, who was scowling at me for not helping him. He seemed perfectly healthy now, and I realized it was because of the storm, because he was breathing fresh air.

  “Henry!” I said, grabbing him by his sweater. “The SPLINTR treatment isn’t fatal, it’s temporary. It only kills you if it wears off when you’re still in the mines, or here in Centre Hollow.”

  We both looked at the chimeras lying on the ground as the wind lacerated our faces.

  Rex grabbed me. “We’ve got to get out of here, before we pass out,” he said.

  “No,” I told him. “It’s fine. The air’s fine. That’s what’s killing them.”

  “What?”

  “Holy…,” Henry said, suddenly getting it. “It’s the storm. The wind blew away all the gases, even down in the hollow.” He took a deep breath, smiling just for an instant as he savored the fact that he’d just been given his life back. Then his smile fell away.

  “So what can we do for them?” Rex asked.

  “We need to find someplace still safe,” I said. “where the wind can’t get to. Like a basement without windows.”

  Henry’s head whipped around. “The school basement. It’s big and it’s deep, and depressing as hell. No windows at all.”

  Rex and I nodded and all three of us sprang into action. As we each grabbed one of the fallen chimeras, a figure emerged through the snow and the trees, a big one. It was Claudia in her exosuit. She must have come on foot. “Jimi!” she called out. “Rex!” She sounded breathless. “Thank goodness. You’ve got to help us get everyone out of the snow.”

  “Claudia!” I ran over to her. “We need to get them to the school, into the basement.”

  “What?” Her breathing mask was plastered with snow and ice, but I could see her face, confused and exhausted beneath it. “Why aren’t you wearing a breather? Oh, God, did you get splintered?”

  “No, I’m fine. Where’s Devon?”

  “He’s fine. We got him out of the snow, but everyone else—”

  “I know,” I said, “the wind has blown all the mine gas out of the hollow. We can breathe here,” I told her. Then I pointed at the chimeras lying on the ground. “But they can’t!”

  CHAPTER 61

  Most of the chimeras were already indoors, having either walked there before the storm hit, or been carried or dragged there by Claudia and Henry. But with hardly a window intact in the entire town, indoors didn’t count for much. The intense winds had flushed out all the mine gases and replaced them with fresh air, so even those inside were still in danger.

  “If we can breathe here, I should go get Sly and Kiet,” Claudia said. “They’re waiting on the outskirts of town, where they could breathe safely.”

  “There’s no time for that,” Henry said, shaking his head vigorously. “We need to get these folks to that basement, now!”

  We started with the people still out in the snow. Our main worry was asphyxiation, but exposure was a serious concern as well. Henry and I each grabbed someone and started dragging. Rex carried Gus, and Claudia carried two others, one over each metal shoulder. Luckily, the school was one of the closest buildings in town, a hundred yards or so through the woods to Main Street and then a block up the hill.

  Close to twenty chimeras were already there, just inside the door, lying on the dirty floor, coughing and shivering in the snow that had blown in through the missing windows. A faded banner hung in tatters on the wall: HOME OF THE FIGHTING BOBCATS.

  Henry led us past them, down the hallway to a set of stairs that led to the basement. Henry lifted his chimera and carried him carefully down the stairs, but I didn’t have the strength left. The girl I was carrying was no bigger than I was, but it was all I could do to try to minimize the bumping and not drop her as I lugged her down the stairs.

  The basement was dark, lit only by the dim gray light from a row of glass-block windows set high in one wall. We were well below ground level, so they must have looked out onto window wells. We rested the chimeras next to each other against a wall, then hurried back upstairs.

  As we ran out past the chimeras in the hallway, I saw that one of them was sitting upright against the wall. It was Devon.

  “Devon!” I said, as I crouched down in front of him. “You’re okay!”

  He looked up at me and coughed. “Jimi,” he said with a smile. Then he looked left and right, at the other chimeras. “I don’t think we are. What’s going on?”

  “I don’t have time to explain it,” I said, placing my hand against his cheek. “But you’re going to be okay. All of you.”

  He looked up at me, his eyes looking like they couldn’t focus. “How?”

  “I’ll explain later,” I said. “Just try to rest.”

  As I headed for the door, I wondered again if we should have stopped and moved them downstairs first, but as I stepped out into the wind, I knew we couldn’t leave the anyone outside any longer than we had to.

  I caught up with Henry, but Rex and Claudia had pulled way ahead of us. They passed us coming back before we were three-quarters of the way there.

  When we got back to the truck, Henry and I each grabbed someone, but as we dragged them to the school, I struggled to keep up with him. I was exhausted, and mad at myself because of it. I couldn’t bear the thought that I might not be able to keep going, even when there were lives at stake, lives that I had put in jeopardy.

  My legs were aching, but I increased my pace anyway, drawing close enough to Henry that the door to the school was still closing when I got there. But I didn’t actually catch up with him until I got down to the basement.

  He was standing at the bottom of the steps, slowly shaking his head. As I came down next to him, struggling to hold a slender kid who felt like he weighed two hundred pounds, Henry said, “I’ll be damned.”

  The chimeras Rex and Claudia had just dropped off were lying against the wall, looking much as they’d looked outside. But the others, the ones we had brought on the first trip, were already sitting up, blinking and looking around, confused but seemingly healthy.

  Gus looked at us and said, “Where the hell am I?”

  “In the basement of the abandoned school,” I told him, stunned, as I put the kid I’d been dragging right next to him.

  “You should be able breathe down here,” Henry said. “That’s why we brought you.”

  “Oh, thank God,” Gus said with a short laugh. “For a moment I thought I was back in high school. As if being stuck in that mine hadn’t been hellish enough.” Seeing them doing so well gave me enough strength that I felt like I could make one more trip, and hopefully get the last of those still out in the snow.

  As I headed back to the truck, I heard Claudia in the distance calling out to Henry that she was going to get Sly and Kiet. He replied that some of the people in the basement were already well enough to help bring the others at the school downstairs.

  When I reached the truck I circled it twice, making sure no one was covered with snow or hidden in a drift. When I was positive no one was there, I took a moment to reflect on it, to be grateful. I could feel the adrenaline fade away, and the burning in my limbs turn to a dull ache. Then I started trudging back to the school.
r />   I slipped in the snow, and landed hard. My hands were numb and my arms and legs exhausted. I barely had the strength to get back on my feet.

  Then a few steps later I slipped again.

  I knew that even though there was no one left out in the snow, there were people in other buildings, still in danger, who needed to be moved into the basement so they could breathe. But I also knew there were other people working on that, and they probably had the situation well under control. Besides, I thought, as I closed my eyes against the snow coming down, I needed to rest my arms and legs. Just for a second.

  CHAPTER 62

  I woke up in a shack with tattered red curtains flapping in the broken windows. I recognized it as the place Kiet had been staying. I was bundled in dirty blankets and warmed by Rex, who was asleep beside me, on top of the blankets but with his arms and legs wrapped around me. He woke up as soon as I stirred, his big eyes right next to mine.

  “Good morning,” he whispered, resting his hand gently against my face. The sun was out, and through the torn curtains I could see the painfully bright blue of a winter sky the day after a snowstorm. “Good morning,” I whispered back.

  “You had us worried,” he said.

  “How long have I been asleep?” I asked.

  “About eighteen hours,” he said.

  “Eight—”

  I heard a cough and realized we weren’t alone. I turned over, startled to see Doc and Claudia, sitting in chairs pulled up next to the bed with a chessboard between them, mid-game.

  “You’re awake,” Doc said, adjusting his glasses. “That’s good.”

  “Doc?” I said, stunned. “What are you doing here?”

  He shrugged. “That trove of OmniCare documents your friend Dara brought to E4E headquarters yesterday is very interesting stuff, from what I’m told. They’ll be trying to make sense of it all for some time. But they found Cornelius’s file right away, and that was enough to get me released. Jerry brought me up here this morning, so I could thank you in person. And to make sure you didn’t die.”

  Claudia yawned and stretched. “He also brought blankets and other supplies for the miners.” She smiled. “And a chess set.”

  I saw my clothes hanging on a line, and I lifted the covers to see that under them, I was wearing a baggy sweatshirt and under that my bra and underwear.

  Claudia snorted and raised a hand. “I did that. We had to get you out of your wet clothes.”

  “I found you passed out in the snow,” Rex said. “I don’t know how long you’d been there amid all the confusion of getting everyone into the basement.”

  Doc leaned forward. “You should have been in a hospital. But apparently, the only one nearby is, um, no longer an option.”

  “What about everyone else? Are they okay?”

  Doc nodded. “Mostly, yes. A couple had hypothermia, but they warmed up okay, like you did. One young man seems to have a nasty lung infection.”

  “Devon,” Rex added.

  “It’s not looking good, and I can’t figure it out. He said you told him he was going to be okay.”

  “He is,” I said. I sat up, grabbing the covers as they fell away, feeling suddenly cold and exposed.

  I explained to Doc about Henry and what I knew about the AAV treatment, what I’d read on the SPLINTR inhaler. “I think Devon’s not getting sicker, he’s getting better. He just has to make it through the transition.”

  Doc sat back and thought for a moment. “Hmm. That’s good news, but it’s tricky. How does one treat someone whose lungs are transitioning from processing one medium to another?”

  “You’re the doctor,” I said. “But Henry survived it, so you should talk to him. Maybe a mixture of air and CO2 or mine gas or whatever.” I told him about the CCU wards we’d seen under the hospital and suggested the files might have some helpful info. By the time I was done, I felt wiped out again.

  Doc nodded. “That’s what I’m hoping. Interesting. I’ll consult with some of my old colleagues and maybe we’ll try that. Matter of fact, I should go check on Devon and the others.” He stood up, then added, with a wink, “Of course, I’ll have to be careful no one catches me practicing without a license.”

  Claudia got up, too. “Glad you’re okay,” she said, stopping to put a kiss on my forehead before turning to Doc and gesturing toward the chessboard. “Should we finish this later?”

  Doc paused, looking down at the board. He moved one of the pieces and said, “Checkmate.”

  Claudia tilted her head, studying the board. “That’s just mean.”

  Doc laughed and she followed him outside. Then I was alone with Rex. “Glad you’re okay, too,” he said.

  “I’m glad you’re okay,” I said. “I was really worried about you.”

  He smiled. “To be honest, for a minute there, I was, too.”

  “Where’s Sly?” I asked.

  He smiled, then started laughing.

  “What?” I said.

  “I’m not supposed to say.”

  I growled and shook my head, but then he kissed my cheek and squeezed me tight. His warmth penetrated the blankets, and I wondered how warm it would be if the blankets weren’t between us.

  CHAPTER 63

  Kevin did write that note to my mom. It was messed-up, but I understood why he did it. I did not get to it before she did, and from what Aunt Trudy tells me, Mom was every bit as furious as I thought she’d be. Luckily, I wasn’t there for that.

  There wasn’t a phone in Centre Hollow, but Doc told me that the message that I was okay had been delivered the day before—maybe a little premature and unjustifiably optimistic, but ultimately more or less accurate.

  In a stroke of genius, Jerry got Marcella DeWitt to deliver the message. That helped a lot, I think—not only getting word to my mom so she knew I was okay, but having it delivered by a semi-high-powered lawyer for Earth for Everyone, in the context of “Your daughter helped strike an important blow for the human rights of chimeras today and exposed and helped end an evil, oppressive, and murderous plot, saving the lives of scores of young people.” Oh, and by the way, she might be late for dinner.

  DeWitt did a bang-up job of softening her up before I got home, and while I didn’t want to set a precedent of involving a lawyer in every interaction I had with my mother, I decided I’d keep DeWitt’s phone number, just in case. Mostly, though, I wanted it because I realized I had initially misjudged her. DeWitt was pretty awesome, and even hilarious in her no-nonsense, get-stuff-done kind of way.

  After I got dressed, Rex and I visited the school basement.

  I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it or anything, I just wanted to see for myself that people were okay. When I came down the steps, I got kind of choked up at the sight. Everyone was grimy and exhausted, wrapped in blankets, but talking and laughing, giddy at being out of the mine and alive.

  I put my hand over my mouth, trying not to cry, and Rex put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed. I smiled up at him and nodded. I’d seen what I needed to see. It was time to go. But as we started up the steps, a voice called out, “Hey! There’s the nonk!”

  I froze, mortified. Part of me wanted to just keep going, but before I knew it, I was spinning on my foot and going back downstairs, ready to have it out with some Roberta-like jerk.

  But instead, when I looked back, I saw everyone in the basement grinning up at me. Standing at the front was Gus, and I realized he was the one who had shouted out.

  “Claudia told us what you folks did. And what you personally did back there, after we got out.” He winked, his eyes twinkling with humor. “We just wanted to say thanks.”

  “Yeah, thanks, nonk!” someone called out from the back. The room erupted in laughter at that, then cheers.

  Standing up on the steps, looking down at them, it kind of felt like the moment demanded that I say something better than “You all take care.” But nobody wanted a speech, least of all me. Besides, I was a bit of a blubbering mess.

  Rex p
ut his arm around me as we walked back upstairs and out into the sunshine. He took me to where Devon was set up, a windowless but semi-above-ground basement under an old hardware store.

  Kiet and Henry were sitting at the top of the steps, taking turns running down to check on him.

  “He’s still pretty sick,” Kiet said, “but…we’re both ecstatic that he’s actually going to get better.”

  Henry smiled. “I keep telling him, soon he’ll be as healthy as me.”

  “That’s great,” I said.

  Devon looked terrible, but he grinned when I came down to see him.

  “How are you doing?” I said.

  “Getting better, I’m told,” he said with a laugh. “Imagine that.” He struggled not to cough as he said those last two words, but afterward he was overtaken by it, a deep, wracking cough that lasted for over a minute and left him looking wiped out.

  By the time he was done, I felt wiped out, too. I’d been feeling woozy even before I went down there, and I didn’t know how much of it was from the hypothermia and how much was that the hollow was filling up with mine gas again now that the winds had died down.

  “You’d better get out of here,” he said when he was done.

  I nodded. “Yeah, I should. I have to go, anyway. You get better, okay? And next time I see you, maybe we’ll go for another walk in the woods.”

  “Sounds good,” he said. “Just not these woods. I’m a little sick of these woods.”

  * * *

  —

  After a tearful goodbye to Kiet, we left. Claudia insisted on driving, and she also insisted that Rex sit in the back with me, which was very nice. We didn’t talk all that much, any of us, and that was fine, too. We were tired, numb, and traumatized. And especially considering what was waiting for us when we got back to Philadelphia, it was great to have an hour to listen to the radio and drive with my friends in a kick-ass car.

  But after an amazing string of two songs I loved for every song I hated, a news break told us briefly about the fire at OmniCare, and the related story of how Earth for Everyone had released copies of some of Charlesford’s files. It was back to music after that, but the mood in the car was different then. We all had a lot to think about.