Viral Nation

by Grimes, Shaunta

  It took everything Clover had to keep her voice calm. “I’ll go to my neighbor’s house until he comes home. Thank you though. I’ll see you tomorrow, Bridget.”

  She and Mango were out of the car before either man could argue with her. She bent to take the key from Mango’s vest pocket, fumbling in her haste, and finally let herself into the house that she’d lived in her whole life. It felt foreign. A wave of loneliness washed over her as she peered out the window until the car drove away.

  She went into her bedroom and opened the trunk at the foot of her bed. She packed a duffel with her mother’s clothes. For some reason, she didn’t care what Heather Sweeney and Wendy O’Malley and their friends thought about her wearing them.

  She should go see Mrs. Finch. Let her know that she was okay and be the one to tell her that West was dead. Mrs. Finch had practically raised them. She loved West like she loved Isaiah. The idea of facing her grief tonight made Clover a little sick to her stomach.

  She’d talk to Mrs. Finch later. Tomorrow. Right now, the only thing Clover wanted was to find Jude. She had two hours before curfew, plenty of time to get to the Dinosaur. She put the lead back on Mango and said, “Let’s go home.”

  chapter 24

  If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth.

  —RONALD REAGAN, “A TIME FOR CHOOSING” SPEECH, OCTOBER 27, 1964

  Clover made it to within two miles of the Dinosaur. As soon as she saw Jude walking toward her, the stress of the last hour caught up to her and she had to gasp for air.

  He closed the distance between them and wrapped his arms around her. He didn’t pull away when she stiffened slightly, and then she melted into him, her duffel bag falling to the ground at her side.

  “You made it,” he said against her hair.

  “So did you.”

  He kissed the top of her head, then pulled away and picked up her bag. “We should get to the Dinosaur before curfew.”

  “What was the train like?” Clover asked.

  “It moves so fast. You’d love it.”

  “I can’t believe you didn’t get caught.” Jude stopped walking, and she had to take a few steps back once she noticed. “What?”

  “You really thought I’d get caught?”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “Do you think I would have gotten on the train if I did?”

  Clover wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “How did you do it?”

  “I hid in the coal bin on the train, and then in the back of the truck.”

  An image, from an old movie she’d seen once, flooded Clover’s memory. The inside of a train’s engine car. A huge bin, full of chunks of heavy black coal, and a roaring fire that ate the coal like candy. “Under the coal?”

  “Yes, under the coal, and then under some blankets in the back of the truck. Everything was fine, Clover. I promise.”

  “You could have died,” she said, suddenly angry at the idea. “You could have been crushed. Or suffocated. Or caught. Or—”

  Jude put up a hand to stop her. “I wasn’t.”

  “You should have stayed on the ranch.”

  Jude put a hand on the side of her face and waited a few seconds for her to get used to the touch. “Do you really think that I would have let you come back into the city alone?”

  “Bridget came, too.”

  “I promised West I’d take care of you.”

  “I don’t need you to—”

  Jude moved his hand from her cheek to her hair, smoothing it back. And then he kissed her. It lasted only a second before he dropped his hand and stepped back a little. “I was worried about you, too,” he said.

  “I’m never going to see my brother again,” Clover said when they were almost to the Dinosaur.

  “Of course you are.”

  “How? When?”

  “We’ll find a way.”

  Clover stopped walking. “Let’s just go back now. Let’s get Bridget and go back to the ranch.”

  “I have something for you.” He opened his pack, pulled out one of Waverly’s notebooks, and handed it to her.

  “You shouldn’t have taken this,” she said, handing Jude her box so she could hold the notebook. “They need it at the ranch.”

  “Open it.”

  She did. Inside was Jude’s neat printing. She thumbed through and saw that about two-thirds of the book was filled. “What is this?”

  “I copied the letters for you. The first batch anyway.”

  Her emotions were too close to the surface, and for a second, she thought she might cry again. “You did?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe for me, too. And Bridget. To remind us that we’re still Freaks.”

  “We have to be careful with this.”

  “We will be.”

  They started to walk again, toward the Dinosaur. “This seems so huge. I don’t even know where to start.”

  “Me, either. But we’ll figure it out.”

  West sat in the rocking chair on the porch of the big house with Waverly’s laptop computer balanced on his knees. The five of them still hadn’t moved back to the smaller houses Waverly had gone to so much trouble to set up for them. None of them were ready to be so spread out yet.

  The computer was opened and turned on. West stared at it and waited for his sister to open a communication between them.

  Why had it taken so long to really hit him how dangerous it was for Clover, Bridget, and Jude to try to get back into the city? Sure, he’d known that it was a risk. They all did. But until now, faced with their absence, it hadn’t really sunk in.

  If Bennett didn’t believe that West was dead, who knew what he’d do? He’d already tried to kill Bridget once. All he’d have to do to Clover was force her through the portal and then not let her come back to her own time line. And Jude. Sneaking into the city in a train suddenly felt like the world’s stupidest idea. Jumping-off-the-roof-of-the-Dinosaur-to-see-if-he-could-fly stupid.

  It was his job to watch out for his sister, and he’d let her go back into the city. He’d sent her into a thousand possible dangers. He’d—

  West?

  epilogue

  We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go.

  —THOMAS JEFFERSON

  “Langston Bennett sent me to tell you that your daughter has been found.”

  James closed his eyes. The woman who’d knocked on the door to his barrack had straight dark hair, like Jane’s only not as long, and he found he couldn’t look at her. “And West?”

  “Clover says that her brother didn’t make it. Mr. Donovan, are you okay?”

  James opened his eyes again. His heart felt twisted. Wrung, like a washcloth. “How?”

  The woman looked up at him. She was much taller than Jane. And she looked close to Jane’s age when she died. When he killed her.

  “May I come in?” she asked.

  He stepped back from the doorway, because suddenly he really didn’t want to talk about this in the hall. “Tell me your name again.”

  “Leanne Wood. I’m—I was your daughter’s trainer. She’s going back to the Academy.”

  “Good,” he said. “Good, she belongs there. She’s so smart. Smarter than anyone else I know.”

  “She is very smart,” Leanne said. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  If James had learned anything in the last sixteen years, it was that the only way to live with a wrung-out heart was to wrap it in steel. He said, “I lost my kids a long, long time ago.”

  “You still have Clover.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I suppose I do. Where is she now?”

  “Classes start next week.”

  “Have you seen her? Is she okay?”

  Leanne shook her head. The ends of her hair glanced over her shoulders. “She’s not a Messenger anymore. I’m not her trainer now.”

  “She’s going to need a friend.”

  “Clover has friends. She needs
her father. And my information is that she might have been less than truthful about her brother’s fate.”

  Anger billowed around the steel in his chest, and he balled his fists against his thighs to keep from lashing out. “My daughter doesn’t lie.”

  “I’m going to be dead in two years,” Leanne said. The change of subject and the bluntness of her statement put James off-balance.

  “What did you say?”

  “In two years, I’ll be dead. Of course, now that I know that, the future is back to what it should be, isn’t it? A mystery.”

  “What makes you think you’ll be dead in two years? That’s—they don’t keep track of that kind of thing.”

  “The real question is how I’ll die.”

  James waited for her to tell him, but she just stared at him until he finally asked, “Fine, how do you die?”

  “You kill me.”

  In another life, the idea of killing the young woman standing in front of him would have been so ridiculous, it would bounce off his brain in instant rejection. But this was this life. And in this life, he’d been on a firing squad for three years. “Then I stop you from killing someone else.”

  Leanne shook her head. “You stop me from helping the resistance. Maybe. No way of knowing now, is there?”

  “Resistance to what?”

  “You aren’t very good at asking the right questions. The real question is, who is the resistance?”

  James tilted his head and looked at her, putting off asking something he wasn’t sure he wanted the answer to. She was patient. She waited until the question had wormed its way into him and he had to know. “Who is the resistance?”

  “Right now, it’s mostly your children.”

  In memory of Donna-lynn,

  who taught me to read and made sure

  I was always surrounded by books.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I want to thank my agent, Kim Lionetti, and my editor, Michelle Vega, and everyone at BookEnds and Berkley who helped me make this story shine. I’m not sure how I got so lucky, but I did, and I’m so grateful.

  I absolutely could not have written this book, or any readable book at all, if I hadn’t been in the right place at the right time eight years ago to meet Melanie Harvey (and her children, who, as far as I’m concerned, are made of wonderful ideas). Mel held my hand while I learned to write, and then the universe took pity on me again and gave me Brian Rowe just when I needed him.

  I have an incredible writing community and group of friends, who have given me invaluable support. Thanks, especially, Leanne, Tee, Kati, Josephine, Cheri, Nessie, Wes, and Shylah for being my first readers.

  This book ended up being very much about siblings. That makes sense, since so much of who I am comes from being a sister to Jill, Russel, Alison, Kevin, Austin, Kyle, Patrick, and Ryan. If I ever start a revolution, you are the Freaks I want with me.

  A special thanks to my brother Kyle and our dad, Keith Grimes, for putting so much time and effort into helping me make this book the best it could be. And to my sister Alison for making one of the scariest parts of this whole process fun.

  My Adrienne and Nick inspired this story in so many ways. Thank you for growing up with me and making my life sweeter in every way than I ever thought it could be. And an extra big thank-you to Ruby, who was born bright as a jewel. It made all the difference, knowing the three of you believed, even before I did, that your momma was a real writer.

  And to Kevin, for never once, in all these years, doubting that it was true.