Deception

by Teri Terry

  I stare at her in horror. Did she have to tell them that? The children are really wailing now, and I want to join them. Their mum, already dead; now their dad…was it really my fault?

  “They wouldn’t do that to somebody just for not passing some scan,” Kai says. “No way, it can’t be.”

  “He was pretending to be immune, that’s why,” the first woman says.

  “He was a survivor; he must have been,” someone else whispers, between spasms of pain. “I thought I was immune, but I was wrong. He was next to me when we were waiting; he made me sick.”

  Bobby huddles together with the two children as they cry, trying to comfort them, and Kai stands there next to them with a helpless look on his face. He doesn’t know what to do; neither do I.

  Like the one who spoke before, there are a few other people who are sick, crying, lying on the floor on mattresses. They have it.

  There is a girl on the ground who is close to death. She looks about thirteen or fourteen, a little older than me.

  Hi, I say.

  Her eyes widen so much they look as though they could pop out of her head, but she doesn’t scream. Good.

  “Hi,” she whispers back. She looks at me nervously, licks her lips. “What are you?”

  I’m a ghost. Could you give my brother a message for me? Without, you know, making a big deal about it that everyone can hear.

  She shrugs. “Not doing much else,” she whispers. “Who is he?”

  Kai. He’s one of the ones that just came in—the younger one.

  She waves until she catches Kai’s eye, then beckons him over. “Kai?” she says.

  He’s startled. “How do you know my name?” he says.

  “Your sister told me. She wants me to tell you something.”

  He kneels down next to her. “What’s your name?”

  “Jody.”

  “Hi, Jody.” He takes her hand, holds it. “Okay, what does she have to say?”

  Tell him: I’ll find Shay. Wherever she is, I’ll find her.

  Jody repeats what I said.

  “Thank you,” Kai says. “Thanks to both of you.”

  Jody clings to his hand. “Don’t go. I’m scared. Am I going to end up like her?” she says, and stares at me as if that would be worse than dying. She might be right.

  But do I look that scary?

  “I don’t think so,” Kai answers. “She seems to be a one-off.”

  He’s right. Just me, myself, and I.

  “If I die, will I be with my mum?”

  “Yes. I’m sure of it,” Kai says.

  She nods and blinks. There is blood in her eyes. They lose focus, and then she’s gone.

  The evening passes slowly. A few times the door is opened, and either a few new arrivals trickle in or names are called and some who have made it twenty-four hours leave. Bodies, like Jody’s, are removed. Boxes of food and water arrive.

  There’s a TV up on a wall with endless cartoons, and wails of protest when someone switches it over for the news bulletin.

  A reporter in a studio tells us that the new quarantine zone measures appear to be working.

  New measures: fences, guards, scanners, and a sickening smack to the head with a gun when an alarm goes off. And then what: the flames of the pyre?

  Even worse, it’s clear from what is said that they still don’t know what causes it. Does that mean they’re not even bothering to look for Dr. 1?

  They say the quarantine zone boundaries are holding. They think they can just lock everyone inside them and wait it out.

  But I’m here now. They’re wrong.

  Maybe if it spreads beyond the zones, that will make them try harder to work out what causes it, and to find Dr. 1.

  CHAPTER 9

  KAI

  THE DOOR OPENS AND IT’S FINALLY OUR TURN: the twenty-four hours are up. A guard calls out our names from his list, and those of the two children too—Adriana and Jacob.

  We get to our feet and walk to the door. To…freedom?

  No. At least, not yet.

  Bobby wants to argue with what comes next.

  “Seriously? It’s bad enough for us, but you’re going to tattoo children?”

  “It’s been too easy for people to steal or fake immune passes. It has to be something that can’t be faked.”

  “They can’t copy the tattoo?”

  “No. It’s a special ink that only we have access to that shows up a certain way on a hand scan. Look, you can refuse, but then you’ll never be let out of the quarantine zone.”

  “We’re going to get a tattoo?” Jacob is excited. “Can I get one of a dinosaur?”

  But his sister is horrified. “They don’t have the stick-on kind; real tattoos are done with needles.” His face falls.

  “I’ll go first, and you’ll see it’s not so bad,” I say.

  The four of us are ushered into a room together, and the guy inside there sighs when he sees the children.

  He’s not your typical government worker type—he has long hair and vivid, colorful tattoos up and down his arms.

  “Me first,” I say, and sit on the chair when he points.

  “Keep still and it’ll be over quicker.”

  Small needles; ink in a little jar. The needles pierce the skin, tiny little stabs; in, out, in, out. His hands are quick and sure. The ink seems to have no color at all in the jar; it develops under the skin to a silvery gray that soon starts to look like a capital letter I.

  And I have to fight to keep still. Not because it hurts—it does a little, but I can ignore that—but because here I am, eighteen, having my first ever tattoo, and I didn’t decide to have it. I might never have made that decision, but if I had, it wouldn’t have been some lame I for immune in God-knows-what weird chemical government ink. And I can’t make a fuss because of Adriana and Jacob, who watch with wide eyes.

  “Does it hurt?” Adriana says.

  “It’s not a big hurt, just a little one,” I say. “You’ll be fine.” Just then a jab hits a sensitive spot, and I struggle not to wince.

  I glance up at Bobby. He’s a bit pale and very studiously not watching.

  Adriana goes next. She tries to be brave but there are tears in her eyes, and I hold her other hand. Jacob is worse. He howls and has to be held down.

  Bobby faints.

  CHAPTER 10

  CALLIE

  I’M FASCINATED WITH THE NEEDLES and watch as they go in, out, in, out.

  The man is very quick doing one on Bobby. He says that with a fainter it’s best to do it before they wake up. Who would have guessed that after everything Bobby’s been through, tiny needles would make him pass out?

  After it’s done, Bobby starts to come to and Kai helps him up. He seems confused about where he is and then looks wide-eyed with panic when he remembers.

  “No, I really can’t have a tattoo,” Bobby says. “I’ve got a phobia of needles.”

  “It’s too late, you’ve got one,” Kai says.

  Bobby almost passes out again, but Kai helps him out of the room and into the sunshine, and he starts to breathe easier again.

  The four of them are directed across the road to a registration desk, where a man notes their names and ages.

  “Can’t we go to Glasgow now?” Kai asks, impatient.

  “You can leave the zone and enter the Glasgow area if you have a place to stay there—friends or family—that we can verify. Otherwise we have to find a sponsor or a job for you.”

  “How long does that take?” Bobby asks.

  “There are jobs available for fit adults. Just a day or two.”

  “What about Adriana and Jacob?”

  He looks at the paperwork. “They are unaccompanied minors, so we need to find suitable foster homes. These are, well, stretched at the moment. We’ve been trying to i
ncrease capacity, but the thing is, even though we know these kids are immune, families are afraid to open their doors to them. Just in case.”

  “Stretched. How stretched? How long will it take to get them into a foster home?”

  “Weeks, maybe months.” He shrugs. “Really, we don’t know how long it’ll be.”

  “Can’t they come with me?”

  “Not unless you’re a blood relative, or a registered foster parent.”

  “And in the meantime?”

  He gestures across at the tent city we saw when we arrived. “Accommodation will be found here.”

  They are led toward it. Faces are pressed against the chain-link fence, eyes watching. Children and teenagers, mostly. Some elderly people—no jobs for them? A woman on crutches. A man in a wheelchair. There are tents in a muddy field behind them.

  “How many unaccompanied minors have you got?” Bobby asks. “At last count? In the region of three hundred.”

  The gate is opened and locked with a clang behind Kai, Bobby, Adriana, and Jacob. A frazzled woman is handling things inside.

  “John and Bobby, I see you’ll be temporary for work placement—take tent fifty-two. You’ll find it in supplies.” She gestures to a tent along the side of the fence behind her. “Adriana can stay in tent thirty-eight with some of the other girls, and Jacob in sixty-one with the boys,” she says.

  “Can’t we stay together?” Bobby asks.

  “No. There aren’t any family tents left, and anyhow, you’re not family, are you?” She hands each of them a sleeping bag, a water bottle, and a wrapped sandwich. “You’ve missed dinner. Breakfast bell rings at eight.”

  They find Adriana’s tent, thirty-eight, first. It’s wall-to-wall dirty sleeping bags on a damp floor. Girls stare back at them, quiet, still. There is the stink of latrines dug in ditches behind the tent.

  “No way,” Bobby mutters. “I don’t care what they say, you’re staying with us. Let’s find tent fifty-two.”

  They go to the supply tent, and their tent is handed over not assembled.

  They head as far away from the latrine pits as they can, and others must have had the same idea: it gets more and more crowded and muddy. They find a patch of ground that might be big enough.

  Kai and Bobby wrestle to get the tent up; it’s small.

  Bobby peers in. “It’ll be tops and tails, just like I did with my three when the power was out and they wanted to sleep with us.”

  They start sorting out the sleeping bags, but I’ve had enough of this place.

  I zoom up over the fence around the mud and the tents, out to where the barricade begins—the line that separates the quarantine zone from the rest.

  It looks like the barricade stretches forever in both directions—as far as I can see—and I’m curious how far it goes on.

  I zoom along the top of it to the left—fast and then faster, so the fence and ground blur below me.

  And it does go on and on all the way to the sea. It’s not the same everywhere. In some places it’s barely a fence at all, but in those places there are guards with guns in their hands.

  And at regular intervals there are signs on the fence, big and stark:

  YOU CANNOT LEAVE THE QUARANTINE ZONE. LETHAL FORCE WILL BE USED TO STOP YOU IF YOU TRY.

  Unless you are immune.

  Or unless you are me.

  CHAPTER 11

  KAI

  THE STARS ARE OUT, BUT WHERE WE ARE, it’s hard not to focus on the chain link of the high fence, to feel closed in, instead of focusing on the distance of the sky.

  “They’re both finally asleep,” Bobby says, slipping out of the tent to sit next to me.

  The shock of the last days is heavy on his face, and I feel it on my own. I can’t believe this is happening, here, in Scotland—in the UK. Those tents with children all sandwiched in filthy sleeping bags on the ground. No one to look after them properly or look out for them, and the people in charge are just going to leave them here until they can convince somebody out of the zone to step up and take them in.

  “Time to talk?” I say, my voice low, and he nods.

  “They keep asking for their dad,” Bobby says. “What has happened to him? Why?”

  “Do you think, what that woman said—about being tied up and thrown on the pyre—could they really have done that?”

  Neither of us can answer that question, and there is another question I can’t say out loud that is raised by the first: if the authorities are burning survivors, are they creating more Callies? She was a survivor until she was cured in fire. Callie might know if there are others like her around, but I have no way to ask her.

  “And that scan he failed,” Bobby says. “What were they scanning for?”

  “I’ve been wondering about that too. I’d assumed at first that the scan was meant to check that we were immune somehow. But then why did they lock us up for a day to make sure we weren’t infected? They must have come up with a way to scan for survivors. It’s the only answer that fits.”

  “That seems to be what the others thought. But Adriana and Jacob said their dad never had it, so he couldn’t be a survivor—but he failed the scan. I’m sure they’re not lying.”

  “Maybe they didn’t know—he could have hidden it from them.”

  “How could a scan identify survivors?”

  I lower my voice even further. “Maybe the authorities do know the cause now but aren’t letting on. You know how I told you that we learned on Shetland that the illness is caused by antimatter? Maybe survivors still have some of that inside of them and that’s why they’re contagious. Then the scan could be for antimatter or something weird like that.”

  “Could be. But on the news we watched in that isolation room, they said they still haven’t confirmed the cause of the epidemic.”

  “Maybe they’re lying. But why?”

  Behind us Adriana whimpers in her sleep; Bobby leans back into the open tent. He strokes her hair and she settles. His face is full of pain as he looks at this young girl—she must remind him of what he has lost.

  And what of her father—what have they done to him? Would they really throw him on a fire, still alive?

  Like Callie.

  I’ve been trying not to think about something by keeping my mind occupied with anything else, but it isn’t working. I shudder inside, struggling to keep it from my face. If they brought Shay out of the quarantine zone when survivors are treated like that for trying to leave it—what would they have done to her?

  No matter how hopeless it is, I have to try to find her. Callie said she’d help, but what good will that do? If Callie finds Shay, she won’t be able to tell me where she is unless there is someone dying at hand to relay the message.

  And Bobby may be sitting next to me now, but I know he is more with those two behind us than he can be with anyone else.

  “I need to get out of the zone as soon as I can,” I say. “To tell people about the cause of the epidemic and look for Shay. But you aren’t coming with me, are you?”

  He looks relieved to hear me say the words. “No, Kai. I need to stay here. You go and save the world. It is enough for me if I can save two kids, maybe more.”

  “It’s okay. I understand.” And I do, but I still wish he were coming with me.

  “You’ll be all right,” he says, as if he could hear the thought I never said. “All the things you and that girl have done already…well. There’s just no stopping you, is there?”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “But first up,” he says, and holds up his tablet, “I’m going to wander about tonight and tomorrow and take some photos. Then you take this with you. Show people what is happening here, and maybe it will help.”

  CHAPTER 12

  CALLIE

  AFTER THE WORST-LOOKING WATERY PORRIDGE in the history of the world is ladled into their
bowls, Kai and Bobby are called to report to the gate with their possessions.

  They go up together, but when they reach the gate, Bobby doubles over and clutches his chest. “I’ve got chest pains,” he says to the woman there.

  “Sorry. You can’t go, then. I’ll put you on the medical list to see a doctor, but it will be a while. It’s a long list.”

  She hands Kai some papers and a card. “John, show these to the guards at the gate and catch the bus into the city. On the card here is the address of a hostel where you’ve got a room; the bus will stop there. You get tomorrow to settle in, and then report to work crew thirteen, as detailed, the next morning.”

  Time to say goodbye.

  Kai nods at Bobby, holds out his hand. They start to shake, but then Bobby pulls him in close, gives him an awkward hug. “I hope you find her,” he says, his voice low. “Take care.”

  “Thanks. You too.”

  “This may help.” He holds out a wad of cash, hidden between his hands, and Kai starts to protest. “Don’t argue! Just take it. I’ve got more, and bank cards too—if they still work anywhere. You don’t, John.” Slight stress on the name.

  Kai stuffs it in his pack and puts it back on his shoulder. He walks to the barricade, papers in hand.

  A guard checks them, nods, and radios the guards at the gate. Kai walks toward them and then goes through. And just like that, he is out of the quarantine zone.

  The guards on the perimeter of the zone all wear biohazard suits. Those who come through this gate, like Kai just did, don’t have suits: they’re immune. They’re safe.

  But once we move away from there, farther from the zone boundary, that will change. Not everyone outside the zone is immune, but they won’t wear suits: it hasn’t made it there yet, has it?

  But things are about to change. All the fences and guards in the world can’t stop me.