by Megan Crewe
A vague uneasiness washed over me, and I continued on to the stairwell.
Upstairs, the second room I peered into had to be Dad’s office. A framed photo of a younger me and Drew on the beach stood on one side of his desk, and the leather gloves Mom had given him our last Christmas together lay beside it.
The computer asked for a password I couldn’t supply. I pawed through the drawers, finding only reports on marine bacteria and plankton populations, and then sagged back in Dad’s chair.
How many hours had he sat here puzzling over the virus? Missing Mom? Worrying about me and Drew?
I blinked hard and pushed myself out of the chair. If I took too long, Gav would get concerned.
Three doors down, I came to a laboratory. When I flicked the light switch, the florescent panels flooded the room with flat white light. Microscopes and petri dishes dotted the shiny black tabletop beneath a wall of cabinets. A huge stainless-steel fridge stood in the corner, with an electronic display reporting the internal temperature. This was clearly where Dad had spent the rest of his time. A Styrofoam cup sat next to one of the microscopes, half full of cooled tea. Notebooks were scattered on the table beside it, one of them open to a page of Dad’s loopy printing.
I picked up the notebook and my gaze snagged on one small word.
Vaccine.
I leaned over the table, skimming the page. If I continue three more days without any side effects from the vaccine, I’ll discuss the next step with Nell, he’d written. And at the top of the page, Project WebVac, Day 18.
Heart thudding, I dropped into one of the chairs and flipped back through the book.
After several minutes of reading, I walked over to the refrigerator and opened it. On the second shelf, five sealed vials of a pale amber solution stood in a plastic tray. I closed the door before I let in too much warmth, and leaned against it. My hands trembled.
There they were. The samples of Dad’s new vaccine.
He’d kept working on creating one even after his team had sent their original attempt over to the mainland; even when he was the only person left at the center. He’d recorded the whole process in the notebook. Trying new methods of inactivating the virus, incorporating proteins from its earlier mutation, he’d come up with a formula he was almost sure would be both successful and safe. But first he’d had to try it out. And being Dad, he hadn’t felt right letting anyone else take that risk.
So without telling anyone, without telling me, he’d injected a sample into himself, eighteen days before he died. And he never got sick. Even though he’d been with infected people in the hospital every day.
We had a vaccine.
We had a vaccine that might work.
The hospital was a lot less crowded than it used to be, but in the empty reception room I could hear every stage of the virus’s progression. The coughs and sneezes and rasping of fingers chasing endless itches, in the rooms just off the hall. The bright babble of voices in the farther rooms, saying things the patients would have cringed to hear when they were well: a woman raving about her infatuation with a neighbor’s husband, a boy gloating over how he’d broken his brother’s favorite toys. And from the second floor, the screams and shouts of those the virus had gripped the longest. We had no sedatives left to chase away the violent hallucinations just before the end.
A couple weeks ago, Nell had told me they’d run out of face masks too.
“We’re not really supposed to reuse them,” she’d said, “but we’ll still have the patients wear them—it does help protect us, and it can’t hurt someone who’s already infected.”
The rest of us had been covering up however we could when out of the house. Because I’d been sick and so was now immune, I went to the doors first when delivering food around town with Gav or scavenging for supplies with Tessa, in case we ran into someone infected. Gav grumbled about it, but I wasn’t taking chances. Catching the virus was all but a death sentence. I’d survived because I’d caught an earlier mutation that had given me partial resistance. Meredith had only made it because of an experimental treatment involving my blood.
I didn’t see Nell on the ground floor, so I headed upstairs. A thin wail rose above the others, piercing the walls. I drew in a breath and climbed on. If I’d had enough blood to give, I would have tried to cure every patient here, but dying in the attempt wouldn’t have helped anyone. Just saving Meredith had weakened me enough to put me back in the hospital for a day. If Dad’s new vaccine did what he’d hoped, maybe it wouldn’t matter. Because no one else would be getting sick.
When I came out of the stairwell, Nell was standing halfway down the hall, talking to one of the volunteers. They both had strips of fabric tied across their lower faces. Nell’s was stark white above her stain-mottled lab coat. As I started toward her, she saw me and motioned toward the floor to say she’d meet me below.
The cries rattled in my ears as I hurried back downstairs.
Nell followed me a couple minutes later. She popped out her earplugs and tugged down her mouth-covering.
“Everything all right?” she asked wearily.
Her face looked worn, and her hair was falling out of its bun. I wondered how often she went home, slept, ate, even now that the hospital had only a fraction of the patients it’d held a couple months ago. She and two nurses were all that was left of the former staff.
“Yeah,” I said. “I had to tell you—”
The lights overhead flickered. I looked up at them, startled. Nell smiled thinly.
“We’re having a few issues with the generator,” she said. “No one expected it to have to run this long. Howard thinks he’ll have it back to normal in a couple days. What did you want to tell me?”
I pulled my gaze away from the ceiling, suppressing the nervous fluttering in my chest. “I found the keys to the research center today,” I said. “I went to look around, and—Dad made a new vaccine, Nell.”
She blinked at me. “A vaccine,” she said. So he hadn’t told her.
“For the virus,” I said, as if that wouldn’t be obvious. “He was testing it on himself, and when he was sure it was safe, he was going to make enough for everyone left on the island.”
No more deaths. No more fear every time Gav or Tessa or Leo stepped outside the house. I felt like dancing, but Nell seemed firmly planted on the ground. She shook her head and gave a shocked little laugh.
“I knew he was trying to find a formula, but he never… He never said he was that close.” She rubbed her forehead. “How much is there?”
“It looks like only five doses,” I said. “He wasn’t finished taking the data on himself, so I guess he didn’t want to waste time making more until he was sure. But he had it in him for eighteen days and he was fine. That means the vaccine probably works, right?”
“There’s a good chance it’s safe, then,” Nell said. “But he was taking all the same precautions as before—wearing a mask and gloves and a protective gown with the patients. To know whether it actually protects you…”
To know that, someone would have to take the vaccine and then allow themselves to be exposed to the virus. Was that what Dad had meant by taking the next step?
“But it might work,” I said, and paused, a gnawing question wriggling past all my other thoughts. “Why was he trying to make another vaccine, Nell? We know now from Leo and Mark that the first one, the one he made with the World Health people and sent over to the mainland, wasn’t effective. But Dad didn’t know that.”
“He did know,” Nell said softly. “His contact at the Public Health Agency reported back a few days before we lost satellite contact.”
For a second, I couldn’t speak. He’d known? Dad had known the virus was still spreading on the mainland, and he’d let me hope the world outside the island might still be okay, for weeks and weeks.
But that wasn’t important now. “Well, now we have it,” I said. “He left a lot of notes—could you use them to make more of the vaccine? Or, since the soldiers who
were guarding the strait have left”—or died—“we could bring the samples to the mainland and find someone there who can. There’s got to be someone.” No matter how bad the situation had gotten, not everyone would have given up. We hadn’t here.
“Yes,” Nell said. “You’re right. I wish I could do it, Kaelyn, but I don’t have the training. I’d be more likely to make a mistake than replicate the vaccine properly. We’ll have to organize a group to take it to the mainland and locate whoever’s still working on the virus.” She paused. “I wonder when they’d be able to go.”
“They should go now,” I said. “The sooner we can distribute a vaccine…”
“Kaelyn,” she said, “we have to think practically. I’ve talked to Mark. The roads on the mainland aren’t plowed; the gas stations are closed; there might not be anywhere to take shelter from the cold. There are at least two months of winter left. Sending someone now, it could be a suicide mission. And if something happened to the team, we’d lose the vaccine too.”
“We could lose it here if we don’t do something soon,” I said. “What if the generator in the research center dies?”
“We can move the samples to the hospital,” Nell said.
“Where the generator’s already having problems,” I said, and the lights flickered again as if to prove my point. Nell’s mouth flattened, but I kept going. “And some people from the gang were already trying to break in—where can we keep the vaccine that’ll be safe? What if something happens to us in the next two months?”
Nell touched my arm. “We’re going to be fine until spring,” she said. “I think we’ve proven we can withstand an awful lot. It’s fantastic that you found the vaccine, Kaelyn, and we’ll keep it safe, but I don’t think we have any choice but to wait.”
She said the words, but I didn’t hear even a hint of joy beneath the exhaustion in her voice. Nell had been working in the hospital so long, and seen so much, maybe she couldn’t believe in a vaccine appearing out of nowhere to save the day. Maybe it felt too much like a fairy tale.
Maybe it was. And she was right about the risks. But how many more people would get sick between now and the spring? If we even survived that long.
“We’ll be fine,” Nell said again, patting my shoulder. But as she turned away, the sense crept over me that she was saying it to convince herself as well as me.
The sun was glaring off the snow by the time I got back to the house, but the temperature had dropped, and the wind was grazing my face with icy fingers. I hesitated with my hand on the doorknob. As I’d walked from the hospital, the knowledge of what I needed to do had risen up on me. Now it sat like a stone in my gut.
I had no idea how to tell them. Tessa might support me, but I didn’t know what to expect from Leo. And Gav…
I set my jaw and pushed inside.
Tessa and Meredith were sitting by the coffee table, Meredith muttering at the knitting needles she was stringing with yarn, and Tessa frowning at the faded instructions that had come with the old kit we’d found. Her gaze flickered toward me with a half smile of greeting, and then she said to Meredith, “I think maybe you wind it the other way.…”
In the kitchen, Gav was sprawled on the floor half under the sink, while Leo crouched next to him with the toolbox. “Can’t get a good grip,” I heard Gav say as I slid off my boots. Leo cocked his head and then offered a wrench.
“Try this one.”
There was a raspy metal sound, and Gav let out a breath. “Perfect! You done this before?”
The corner of Leo’s mouth quirked. “My dad was always trying to get me into ‘guy things’—tools, boats, guns—his idea of counteracting the dancing, I think. A few things stuck.”
“Works out for us,” Gav said. He knocked on the pipe and squirmed out. “My dad was a plumber, so this is about the only thing he did around the house. Guess I should have paid more attention.”
Seeing them chatting together so easily warmed me a little. For a second I forgot the difficult conversation I was about to start. Then Meredith sighed and set down her needles.
“Kaelyn!” she said, snatching up a folded piece of construction paper from the couch. She dashed over, waving it. “I got everyone to sign it,” she said. “And I’m going to make you mittens or a hat with the knitting stuff. For everyone else too, but you first. As soon as I figure out how.”
She’d decorated the birthday card with shiny star stickers and a drawing of me with jagged hair and turned-out feet, surrounded by a ring of lines like the rays of a sun. For the best cousin ever! she’d written inside. The heaviness in my gut swelled with guilt.
I didn’t want to get her overexcited about the idea of a vaccine, or worried about what I was planning to do, not while I was trying to explain it to everyone else and dealing with the arguments I knew were coming. I wasn’t even totally sure what my plan was yet. But I’d talk to her when the arguing was over, when I’d figured out the details and could say exactly what was going to happen. Soon.
I wondered if that was what Dad had been thinking when he’d decided not to tell me about testing the vaccine. But Meredith was seven, and I’d been sixteen. It wasn’t the same.
“Thanks so much, Mere,” I said, bending down to hug her. “You want to take the ferrets outside for a bit? I’ve got some other things I need to do, but they could use the exercise.”
“Sure!” she said, beaming at me. Any request having to do with the ferrets was pretty much guaranteed a yes. She scrambled up the stairs to collect Mowat and Fossey, and I went to the dining room window as she dashed with them into the backyard.
“You were gone for a while,” Gav said, coming in.
“I stopped at the hospital,” I said. The rest of the words stuck in my throat. I glanced out at Meredith again. I only had so long to do this before she came racing back inside. “Actually, I need to talk to all of you. Let’s sit down.”
When he, Tessa, and Leo had gathered at the table, I explained briefly how I’d found the keys and gone to the research center. When I mentioned the vaccine samples, their eyes widened.
Tessa spoke first. “It’s so lucky you found them,” she said, brightening. “If it works—”
“We could make sure everyone’s protected,” Gav jumped in, catching some of her enthusiasm. “It’s worth a try, anyway. You went to the hospital to talk to Nell? Is she going to start making more?”
Leo just watched me, silent, a stiffness in his posture. As if he knew I wasn’t finished.
“Nell can’t,” I said. “She doesn’t know how. My dad was the only one left on the island who would have.” I paused. “But there’s got to be someone on the mainland who does. A scientist, or a doctor. People were still trying to find a cure over there, weren’t they?”
Leo nodded. “Last I heard,” he murmured.
“So she’s going to send people over?” Tessa asked.
This was the hard part. “Not now,” I said. “She thinks it’s too dangerous for anyone to go during the winter. She wants to wait at least a couple months, until it warms up. But the generator at the hospital’s acting up. The one in the research center could fail too. If the samples aren’t kept at the right temperature, they’ll be ruined. I don’t think it’s safe to wait.”
Gav shrugged. “I know a few of the guys on the food run have been getting restless, especially knowing the army’s abandoned the strait. I bet if I talked to them—”
“I don’t think they’ll listen,” I said. Most of the remaining volunteers were adults, and while they respected Gav, I was sure none of them had forgotten we were teenagers. “Especially if we ask them to keep it secret. You know one of them will mention it to Nell, and she’ll tell them not to do it, and then she’ll probably insist on locking up the vaccine so no one can get to it until she decides it’s safe to go.”
“Maybe she’s right,” Tessa said, brushing a strand of carrot-red hair away from her face. “It is going to be dangerous. A couple months isn’t that long.”
; Leo laughed weakly.
“In a couple months, the people who might be able to make more vaccine could die,” I said. “In a couple months, who knows what will have happened to us here?”
“So what are you saying, Kae?” Gav said, but I think he’d already guessed.
I drew in a breath. “I’m going to take it. I’m not going to be able to think about anything else until I know the vaccine’s with someone who can make more.” Gav looked like he was about to argue, but I pushed on. “My dad was working on this vaccine up to the day he died. He risked his life to test it. I can’t just let it sit in some fridge while more people die. I’m going to be careful, I’m going to make sure I’m prepared, but I have to do this. No one else is going to.”
“You can’t prepare for everything,” Leo said.
My chest tightened. “Maybe not,” I said. “But I’m going to try.”
He met my eyes. A strange heat washed over me as I saw the look in his—startled but awed. Then he blinked, and the only thing I saw was fear.
“Kae,” he said. His mouth stayed open, but no other sound came out. He jerked back his chair, standing up.
“Sorry,” he managed, and walked out of the room. Tessa’s face went even more pale than usual.
“He’s just…” she started, then trailed off, obviously not knowing how to label what was going on with him any better than I did.
Gav cleared his throat, breaking the silence. “You shouldn’t go alone,” he said. “That’d just be crazy.”
“But—” I said, and he took one of my hands.
“So I’ll go with you,” he said. “We’ll do it together.” He paused. “I mean, as long as you’d want me there.”
The tension inside me released. “Of course,” I said. “But are you sure? The food run, everything you organize here on the island—”
“The rest of the volunteers can look after the food run and the drop-offs for a while,” he said. “I’m not going to be much use if I’m spending the whole time worrying about what might be happening to you.”