Viral Nation

by Grimes, Shaunta

  Bennett put his hand on her shoulder and Clover barely bit back a yelp as she tore away from him. Mango, who had been thrown against the front of the van, scrambled to his feet and pressed his head against Clover’s thigh. She lifted his face by the chin and looked into his eyes. He seemed okay.

  “Clover, are you all right?” Bennett asked.

  “I think Mango peed.”

  Bennett blinked at her and then looked at the growing dark circle in the gray carpet under her dog.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have looked away,” Clover said.

  “Carpets can be cleaned. I’m not sure I could have avoided hitting that animal.”

  Clover breathed slowly, through her nose, trying hard to control the nausea that sat like an iron cantaloupe in her belly. “That was an American black bear.”

  Bennett pulled himself up straighter in his chair. “Yes, I think you’re right.”

  “Probably four hundred pounds. They aren’t in hibernation yet. Not until October, or maybe November,” Clover said, talking as much to herself as she was to Bennett. Six feet from Bennett’s seat, the ravine waited to eat them alive. She wrapped her arms around her body and shook, adrenaline working its way through her system. She had come so close to driving them into it. “No one would have ever found us.”

  “Oh, they would have eventually.” Bennett’s voice had lost its confident swagger. It squeaked and sounded hoarse, like he had a sore throat.

  “Do you want to drive now?” she asked, suddenly sure that she’d never be allowed behind the wheel again.

  “No,” he said. As upset as she was, he was worse off. His face was a strange shade of pale. If he drove, they’d both have to get out of the car, and there was no telling where the bear was now. “Not unless you want me to.”

  She did, but she wanted him to know she could still drive. “Should we go back?”

  “No.” He sat back in his seat and adjusted his belt. “No, let’s continue.”

  Clover tightened her hands around the steering wheel for a moment and then shifted into drive again. She forgot to ask any more questions about kid Messengers.

  “Do you remember how to get to the pickup spot?” Bennett asked when they were at the launch site.

  “Yes.” It was just a straight shot, maybe two miles around the lake.

  “And you remember the rules?”

  Clover stood near the van with Mango, adjusting her jumpsuit in a futile effort to make it look like she belonged in it. Her dog seemed to have recovered from their unexpected adventure. “I remember.”

  “I have no doubt that you’re going to make me proud, Clover.”

  She certainly hoped so. She needed the Company to consider her mature enough to live in the barracks full time so her brother could finally stop having to take care of her. Maybe avoiding the bear without killing herself, Mango, or Bennett, and then completing this mission perfectly would do the trick. At least she didn’t get carsick on the windy roads this time. Maybe being behind the wheel made a difference. Driving had concrete rules. It made sense, even when it almost killed her.

  The Messenger room in the submarine was all hers today. A Time Mariner named Casey Danner helped her get Mango into the hold. It wasn’t easy, since the man did everything he could to avoid actually touching the dog. She leaned against the curved wall and Mango settled close by. The Veronica’s engine started, sending a low rumble through the floor into her feet. She lifted them onto the little stoop that protruded from under her chair. She didn’t know how it worked, but somehow her chair itself was insulated from the worst of the vibration, which would have made this part of her job almost unbearable. Mango’s ears twitched as he felt what she didn’t. She took the big headphones from their hook to her right and settled them over her ears, blocking out the engine noise before it got worse.

  The submarine submerged and then a few minutes later reemerged. The whole experience was as anticlimactic as it had been the first time, except today she had the rush of knowing she’d be able to drive alone for the first time in a few minutes.

  When she came out, she was the only person in the hold. She stood near the dumbwaiter lift and looked up through the opening to the outside of the Veronica in time to see a man standing at the opening. He flapped the hand that was visible to her once, then twice at his waist, like a bird. Then he reached into a pocket with that hand and pulled out his fortune cookie before stepping out of her line of sight.

  Not far out of it, though, because she heard the plastic wrapping as he opened the package, and the crack of the stale cookie. And then: “There is always sunshine after a downpour.”

  Clover waited until she heard the Mariner walk away to leave the hold. After she got Mango up and out, she looked toward the dock and saw the Mariner walking alone toward a group near the parked vans. He’d read his fortune out loud, even though he thought he was alone. Clover patted her pocket, to be sure she still had hers.

  She made Mango get into the passenger seat of their van and buckled the belt around him. He tilted his big head and looked at her like she’d lost her mind, but she wasn’t taking any chances after the whole bear thing. When she settled herself behind the wheel, she looked between the seats. A faint stain, in the same shape as the considerably fresher stain Mango had just caused, was still visible. This was the same van, then.

  Driving to the pickup spot was a lot less eventful than driving to the launch site had been. No bears. No deer. Not even a coyote or a jackrabbit. She did see a blue jay, which was pretty cool.

  She left Mango in the car before she started toward the box. She thought about the bear, though, as soon as she got a good look at the dense forest, and went back for him.

  “Come on, boy. I’m not doing this alone.” He wagged his whole body, and Clover had to set her keys in the footwell and use both hands to unbuckle him.

  Mango jumped out of the van just as a soft, male voice from behind her said, “Mango.”

  Clover spun and then jumped when the door slammed shut.

  “No!” She yanked on the door handle, which didn’t do anything. She peered into the window, at her keys on the footwell, and then glared at the source of the problem. “Look what you did! I’m locked out.”

  It took a minute for her to realize what was happening. She was talking to someone she shouldn’t. And she knew who he was. She might not have recognized Jude Degas, except for his scar. Once she did, though, it was very clearly him. In the two years that had passed while she was in the submarine, Jude had shot up to almost as tall as West. He’d been nearly as skinny as she was at the Academy orientation, but had managed to put on some weight between then and now. His face had hardened; the leftover boyishness at sixteen was gone at eighteen.

  Mango tilted his head to one side, as if analyzing the boy who knew his name. Maybe remembering him from the Academy orientation.

  “Clover, do you remember me?”

  Bennett had told her not to speak to anyone. Not even people she knew. One word could change the course of the future, and she must avoid that at all costs. She’d already said more than one word, but that didn’t mean she had to make it worse.

  Bennett also told her it wouldn’t happen. No one was allowed outside the city walls except Company and government employees on a specific mission. Jude should still be in school. He shouldn’t be here.

  Stop-Turn-Ignore. She’d practiced it a hundred times in primary school. Teachers took turns walking through the classrooms in a black jumpsuit, giving students a chance to stop what they were doing, turn their backs, and ignore the pretend Mariner.

  Clover lowered her eyes and walked the three or four yards to the pickup box without acknowledging Jude. As if pretending he wasn’t there would make it so.

  The box looked something like a metal mailbox, maybe a foot square, attached to a post that was embedded into the ground. She punched the code into the number pad on the front and the door sprung open. She had the disc in her hand before it occurred to her that
she maybe shouldn’t have retrieved it with Jude standing there watching her.

  She didn’t mean to look at him again, but she couldn’t help it. He hadn’t moved. Maybe she should be scared of him, but just a few days ago he’d been nice to her. Mango was good at sensing danger, which wasn’t one of her strong suits. The dog wasn’t upset.

  “Clover,” Jude said. His voice had deepened.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” she said, then clapped a hand over her mouth.

  Maybe Bennett had sent him to see if she would break the rules.

  She never broke the rules.

  Except she just had.

  Clover shoved the disc into the pouch attached to her belt and turned toward the van.

  “Please,” Jude called. “Wait a minute.”

  No. No. No. Stop-Turn-Ignore. She glanced at her watch. Twelve minutes gone. She had eighteen left, or she’d be left here overnight and would have to face the consequences the next day. It occurred to her that she didn’t even know what the consequences were.

  She yanked on the van’s door handle and nearly took her own arm off when the door didn’t open. She tried again. And again, even though she already knew she’d been locked out. Then she ran around the vehicle, trying each door. When she came back to the passenger side, Jude waited patiently.

  “Clover.”

  She glared at Jude, her fingers so tightly clenched around Mango’s leather lead that her knuckles were white and fingers cramped. “What? What do you want?”

  “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m your friend.”

  “Do you know how much trouble I’m in? Do you? I’m going to be—well, I don’t even know what I’m going to be. Except in big trouble.”

  He unlocked the door with a single key on a silver ring, then backed away from her immediately. As if he knew that being too close would overwhelm her now. He didn’t try to pet Mango, didn’t even acknowledge the dog beyond saying his name the one time.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked him. “How did you get that key?”

  “I have something for you. We don’t have a lot of time for me to talk you into taking it. You’re barely going to make it back as it is.”

  “I can’t take anything from you.”

  “Yes, you can.” He pulled something from his back pocket and thrust it toward her. “You have to.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  He didn’t answer. Which could have meant yes, or could have meant no. The thing he was trying to give her was a stack of paper, folded into the shape of a book.

  He just held it there, until Clover took it and turned it over in her hand. A booklet made of stapled-together sheets of the same flimsy recycled paper she used at home, with a grayish cover made from thicker handmade stock.

  “What is this?”

  His dark eyes swept across her face. “I forgot we were ever so young,” he said, instead of answering her question.

  “I’m not that young,” she said. “And you aren’t that old.”

  He shook himself. “You better run. You can’t be late.”

  “But—” Clover looked at the little rough-made book in her hand.

  “Read it, Clover. And then make your choice.”

  “What choice?”

  He stepped forward and slid one hand along the side of her face and into her hair. He wrapped his other arm around her waist to pull her to him, then kissed her on the mouth. She was so shocked by the gesture, by being touched, that she couldn’t get herself together in time to pull away. He had already moved away by the time her nervous system kicked in with the message that he was too close. And kissing her. She jerked back anyway.

  He went into the woods. “There are bears in there,” she called. But it was too late.

  She should have thrown the booklet into the woods and forgotten about it. But for some reason, she shoved it inside her jumpsuit, between her T-shirt and her belly. It didn’t feel good there—the handmade paper was rough and its corners poked into her skin—but she didn’t know where else it could go that no one might accidentally find it.

  She was standing with Mango in the lift before she remembered her fortune cookie. She pulled it out, opened the package, and cracked the cookie to get the small paper out.

  “Do the thing you fear, and the death of fear is certain.” She pushed the plastic back into her pocket, along with the fortune paper, and pitched the cookie over the Veronica’s side for the fish or the birds, or whatever might want to eat it.

  She was the last person back, and a Mariner waiting inside to close the hatch glared at her as she slid into the Messenger cabin. He didn’t speak to her, so she didn’t bother with his name.

  After the Veronica docked in her own time, she found the van parked nearby with a single key hanging from a silver ring in the ignition. Her heart went into her throat as she ran a finger along the ring’s smooth edge.

  The whole drive back to the barracks building, she told herself, out loud, that she should toss the booklet. For all she knew, Bennett had sent Jude to see if she would take it. In the end, she wanted to know. Her curiosity trumped her natural tendency to follow the rules, and she couldn’t make herself destroy what Jude had given her before she knew what it was.

  Bennett wasn’t waiting to walk her into the barracks and debrief her, which was a huge relief. A Static Mariner walked her up to her room instead. She’d have to wait and see if that was any worse.

  “Did you speak to anyone during your mission?” he asked after taking the disc from her and locking it into a square, flat box attached to his belt.

  “A Time Mariner named Casey Danner.”

  The guard asked about the specifics of their conversation and took notes on a clipboard without looking at her. “Did you see anyone other than Mariners from the future timeline during your mission?”

  Clover’s mouth went dry, but she managed to say, “No.”

  “Do you have anything to report?” He did look at her then, and she was sure he could see through her, into the truth behind her lie.

  “No.”

  He stood and left, locking her into her room for her quarantine, without another word.

  Clover locked the door from her side as well and took off her boots and her jumpsuit. She pulled the booklet from under the hem of her T-shirt and sat on the edge of the bed. She’d be left alone until the doser came with her suppressant. Then a guard would bring food for her and Mango. She tried not to let herself draw too many similarities between being locked in her room and being in prison.

  She ran her fingers over the cover of the booklet. It had been printed somehow. It almost looked like someone had carved a stamp and inked the front that way.

  Freaks for Freedom, it said. What did that mean? The inside pages were covered with print. She flipped through, reading headlines, until she got to the middle and something fell out into her lap.

  Jude had stuck a folded paper into the pages of the booklet. Clover’s fingers shook slightly as she opened it. The air seemed to leave the room when she saw her brother’s face looking up at her.

  She knew what she was looking at as soon as she saw it. She closed her eyes and wished it away, but when she opened them again, she still held a dispatch flyer with West’s face on it.

  Was it a joke? Some kind of elaborate, awful prank? The picture of West was current; it looked like it had been taken from above as he was leaving the Bazaar.

  West James Donovan, age 19

  Height: 6 feet

  Weight: 165 pounds

  Dark brown hair, green eyes. Virus scars on the face and thighs.

  Subject is wanted for the murder of Bridget Hannah Kingston.

  Murder? The absurdity of it made her wonder again if this was some kind of prank.

  She stood and paced the small room in her underwear and T-shirt, her socked feet padding on the carpet. Mango hadn’t settled since they got back to the room, and now he did what he was trained to do, moving in front of her to stop her repetitive motion. She
nearly tripped over him.

  “Mango!” He pressed against her and she sank to the floor, wrapping her arms around him. The idea that West would kill the headmaster’s daughter was so impossible, she couldn’t imagine it.

  Until it struck her that of course he wouldn’t kill her or anyone else. The report of Bridget’s death would show up in the databases before it happened. A dispatch flyer would be distributed—this dispatch flyer—and stop the crime before it was committed.

  They’d stop it by putting her brother in front of a firing squad. Not their father’s squad, of course; that would be too cruel. But West would be executed.

  Clover reached for the booklet. Freaks for Freedom, it said on the cover. And under that, A Zine for Truth.

  She flipped through the pages again and saw an article about the prevalence of child abuse in Foster City. Another about the need for citizens to “cry out as one against the tyranny of the suppressant.”

  A little cheesy. A lot of typos. But what she read put her heart in her throat.

  Jude would lose his mind sometime in the next two years. That much was clear. Everyone knew you don’t talk to Travelers. Not Mariners, not Messengers. Not ever. Even Foster City kids knew that, surely.

  He must have made up these stories and the dispatch flyer. Because there was no way West would even think about killing Bridget Kingston. He wasn’t very good at hiding that he liked her. A lot.

  She turned more pages of the zine until she reached the back two pages.

  READ ME CLOVER was written in big, bold letters in purple crayon across the top with arrows pointing to an article torn from the sanctioned city newspaper, neatly trimmed and pasted to the pages. “Kidnap and Murder of Headmaster’s Daughter Averted by Arrest of Local Farmer.”

  Clover threw the zine away from her and went to the dresser where she’d stored her clothes. She pulled out her jeans. She couldn’t do this half naked.