“It’s running, then?” McClosky asked, coming up behind Nico without warning. Nico nearly hit his head on the hood as he checked over the systems with an amateur eye and then turned to glower at McClosky. In the natural light of the sunny spring day, the general looked alarmingly old, even frail. Strange, he hadn’t felt that way in bed, though it had been weeks since Nico had sought him out. McClosky’s admonishment about the possible sexual transmissibility of the virus Nico now carried had seen to that, even if Nico’s revulsion toward McClosky hadn’t.
He wished he could still look at McClosky and see the client of whom he’d been so fond instead of the man responsible for the deaths of untold millions—billions?—of people. He wished he could have something left that would enable him to look back on the general without horror and regret, but it was impossible. Where once he’d seen a mentor, now he saw a manipulator who had used him.
“Yeah, as far as I can tell, it’s working. Of course, for all I know, I could get it a mile down the mountain and then it could drop me twenty feet to the ground to be crushed to death in a pile of blazing slag.” He wiped his hands on his pants and grimaced at McClosky. “The nav-sat link seems to be functioning too, so I won’t end up in Topeka instead of Princeton. I’m going to raid your supplies. Fuel cells, rations, anything I can pack in the car. If we’re both taking off, you won’t need them here.”
McClosky could have argued, but he just nodded. “Of course. I’ll help you pack.”
Nico’s chest began to ache as they worked in silent tandem, stuffing every spare inch of the car full of supplies. He and McClosky might never see each other again. And however much he loathed the general, something about that idea hurt. Not the loss of McClosky, perhaps, but the loss of the idea of him. Of the valiant, patriotic soldier whose efforts Nico had aided, thinking he was on the right side. Of the kindly, older man with whom Nico had always been a little infatuated, even if he hadn’t loved him.
Some of the melancholy eased, though, when McClosky opened what turned out to be a weapons’ safe and began sorting through the firearms, choosing guns that would be best suited to Nico and his mother.
“I told you last summer, I don’t know how to use those,” Nico protested, but McClosky was insistent.
“Then we’ll spend the afternoon practicing, and you can leave tomorrow. I admire your competency in hand-to-hand, Nicolás, but you’re going to be up against two threats once you leave. The Gamma victims are one. You might be immune, but they’re still dangerous. Perhaps even more so are the people still alive. They’re holed up now, in places where the revenants can’t get to them. They’re hoarding their supplies and shooting on sight anyone who looks like they might be poaching. Or they might be looters trying to rob you. You may also—” Nico saw the general’s Adam’s apple bob before he continued. “You might come across Beta victims who are still alive. And suffering. Take the guns.”
The reminder of those horrific deaths was enough to eradicate the last of Nico’s sentimentality. He nodded grimly and spent the afternoon learning to sight, aim, and care for the cache of weapons and ammo McClosky was sending with him.
The sun was beginning to set when McClosky opened another lockbox. It held two ampules like the one he’d given Nico. “For your mother,” he said somberly, handing one over. He didn’t bother locking the box again.
“You still haven’t used yours?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
McClosky shook his head, and a sad smile tilted one corner of his mouth. “Would you believe guilt? Shame? Fear?”
Nico chewed his cheek a long moment, staring at the general dispassionately. “No,” he answered, and walked away.
That night he lay awake in the guest room, every instinct screaming for him to get to his mother as soon as possible. McClosky’s cautionary words about looters echoed in his head; surely his mother’s estate would appear an ideal target to someone foraging for supplies. He itched with the need to take action.
He looked at the one gun he hadn’t packed in the lightcar, sitting in its holster on his dresser, and thought of McClosky in the room down the hall. For just an instant, the temptation was strong to take the weapon and pass summary judgment on the man responsible for all of this. He could think of it coldly like that; he wasn’t angry anymore. McClosky was responsible for more deaths than any war criminal in the history of the world, and soon he would be in a position of power in the military government establishing itself within Cheyenne Mountain. There would never be a trial. No one would ever hold him accountable. Only Nico knew of his guilt.
At one point, Nico even went so far as to get out of bed, to lay his hand on the butt of the sidearm. But he couldn’t do it. Even now, he didn’t have it within him to murder the general in cold blood. Perhaps it was his history with McClosky, or perhaps it was just the fact that he was a human being.
When the first gray hint of dawn touched the sky, Nico crept down the hall in his socks to McClosky’s study. The bank of projection displays above the desk was dark, the feeds that had run on them continuously since December long since silent. Swallowing the eerie feeling, he opened the door to the storeroom McClosky had helped him raid earlier and lifted the lid on the small lockbox that held the last ampule of the Alpha virus. The one McClosky hasn’t used for himself yet.
Nico stared at it for a long moment, his hand shaking, then he pocketed the ampule and slipped out the door into the frosty predawn stillness.
Twenty feet off the ground was just far enough to confirm how much everything had changed in the months Nico had been sequestered in the mountains. He kept his altitude low, as lightcars were most efficient when close to the gravity well. He didn’t dare cruise higher, even though he wished everything were so small that he couldn’t see the scars where fires had broken out. According to the early reports he’d listened to, there had been a lot of those as people tried to heat their homes after the grid collapsed.
Scraps of yellow barricade tape flapped around the hospitals and tenements that had been cordoned off by the National Guard. Nico had nearly lost his mind when he’d heard about that order on McClosky’s news feeds. The measures taken to battle the pandemic had been as cold-blooded and callous as they had been belated and futile. Many of those buildings were burned-out ruins, as well, though he wasn’t sure if that had been due to the National Guard or the people trapped inside.
By the time he was hovering over the gates to his mother’s neighborhood, he’d seen more than enough to convince him that the devolution of the world he knew—a process that had been a grimly abstract nightmare from the safety of McClosky’s cabin—was worse than anything he had imagined. He’d seen desperate people, drawn by the whining of his repulsion turbines, frantically trying to flag him down, but he couldn’t stop for them. McClosky had advised him to park on rooftops when he needed to change the lightcar’s fuel cell, and the one time Nico hadn’t listened, one of the Bane Gamma victims had charged him as he was getting back in the car. Nico had gotten off the ground but not before the unfortunate man had managed to tear off a portion of the lightcar’s front quarter panel.
He had to focus on his goal: get his mother out of harm’s way. God knew when she’d last had anything to eat or who was scavenging in the area and could stumble upon her at any time.
Unable to find a flat expanse of roof to land on, Nico lowered it to the ground behind the garage, hoping no one saw where he’d parked. His mother was running from the house before he even had the door halfway open, flinging herself at him.
“Nico! Oh, thank God! Mijo! You’re all right!”
“I’m all right, Mamá.” He crushed her to him, unconcerned with the fact that she smelled of old sweat and something coppery and putrid. “Are you hurt?” He pushed her back, frowning at the rusty-brown stains on her clothing. “Whose blood is this?”
“Not mine. Not mine.” She shook her head adamantly, looking dazed and feverish. “Come with me. Hurry! He’s sick. I think I�
��m losing him.”
“Who? Mamá, you can’t go near—” But she was already out of Nico’s arms and dashing toward the house.
The stench was stronger inside and intensified as he followed Silvia’s voice toward her bedroom. Nico had to stop in the doorway, fighting a rising gorge as he saw the man from whom the odor was emanating.
“Get away from him!” Nico snapped.
“I have to help him. This is Bryan. I was interviewing him at the office when the announcement came that everyone was to return to their homes and quarantine themselves. He had nowhere to go, so I brought him with me.” She stroked hair back from the man’s deathly pale face. “He was attacked by someone a few weeks ago while looking for supplies. Did you bring medicine?”
Nico could tell by the way she touched the man, the way she spoke of him, that Silvia and this Bryan had spent the long, horrifying winter taking comfort in one another every way they could.
The man’s face was mostly unmarked, but Nico knew what he would find if he looked beneath Bryan’s bedclothes. He was already catatonic, staring blankly up at the ceiling.
“He has the Rot. There’s no medicine that can help him. He’s dying. Please, you need to stop touching him. We have to go.”
“We can’t just leave him!”
“We can’t take him with us!” Nico scrubbed a hand through his hair. “He’s dying, and it’s not safe to stay here. People will have seen the lightcar pass overhead, and they’ll be after it and looking for our supplies. Please!”
She shook her head. Not quickly, as if in denial, but slowly, as though dazed. Her brow furrowed, and her eyes unfocused for a long moment. She was so different from his sharply focused mother that Nico placed a palm on her forehead, checking for fever.
“Mother?”
She blinked, looking startled. “All right. All right, mijo.” Silvia clung to the man’s hand, though, drawing away from him reluctantly.
Nico cleared his throat. What McClosky had said about encountering dying people came back to him, and with reluctance, he said, “I . . . I have a gun in the car. Should I get it?”
“What? Why would you—” Her eyes widened. “Nico! How can you even think such a thing!”
“The general said—” Even as he spoke the words, though, Nico bowed his head, unable to finish the thought. He needed to stop considering McClosky’s words to be gospel. The general might be the sort of heartless bastard who could kill people and call it mercy, but Nico didn’t have to be like him. He wasn’t a murderer.
“No,” Silvia said, her eyes losing focus again.
Shock? Terror? What had these months been like, here?
She kissed the back of Bryan’s hand and laid it across his chest. “No. He’s resting peacefully. We’ll leave him as he is.”
To Nico’s eye, there was nothing peaceful in the way the poor bastard lay there with his eyes open and his face frozen. His lips were bloodless and cracked, the whites of his eyes a sickly yellow. Only the shallow movements of his chest and the rattle of his breath said he was still alive.
Was McClosky right? Would it be a kindness to end the man’s life?
It seemed like Silvia should have known the answer to that. She was a pragmatic, logical woman. The fact that she wasn’t acting that way was a stark indication of just how traumatized she was.
“All right, Mamá. We’ll leave him. Come on, please. We have to go.”
Tears traced down Silvia’s cheeks, and Nico noticed how much more silver there was now in her dark hair, how lines were carved around her mouth and eyes. Or perhaps it was merely the unaccustomed absence of cosmetics making her seem older. Nico grabbed a garment bag out of her closet and loaded it with her clothes, though nothing smelled as if it had been washed, except perhaps in the swimming pool. At least his own clothes were clean when he packed another bag with his things to supplement the handful of outfits he’d taken with him when he’d gone to fulfill his contract with McClosky. Then he wrapped an arm around his mother’s waist, half supporting her weight as he led her to the lightcar.
“Where are we going?” she asked when they stepped into the daylight.
“Colorado. Logan says they’re convening anyone from the government still alive and healthy at the underground facility in Cheyenne Mountain. There will be people there who can help us, keep us safe.”
“Colorado.” Her accent was thick, her voice slurred. God, she must be exhausted. “Fine. We’ll go.”
“Here. First, you need to use this.” Nico dug in his pocket and pulled out one of the two ampules he’d brought with him from McClosky’s cabin. “It’s a nasal spray. Inhale it.”
She stared at it as though it might bite her. “What is it for?”
“It’ll keep you safe from the Rot. It’s another version of the virus. A nonlethal version. It won’t hurt you.” He’d explain it all to her later, when she was less shaky.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. I’ve already taken it myself. The general gave it to me. Please. I don’t know how long you have until it’s too late.” Jesus, if her companion had been infected weeks ago, it might already be too late. But he couldn’t even contemplate that. “Take it.”
Her hand was trembling, but she accepted the ampule and inhaled its contents. Nico enfolded her in another tight hug. “Good. That’s good. You look tired. Let’s get you into the car. I have food, and you can rest while I drive, okay?”
“Okay, Nico.” She cast a hollow-eyed gaze back at the house. “Let’s go.”
His mother slept like the dead while Nico drove, keeping the car high enough to be out of range of any looters who might try to take a shot at them but low enough to make an emergency landing if necessary. As the hours passed and Silvia slept without stirring, Nico tried to assure himself that she was merely exhausted. Caring for a dying man for weeks on end with no help, no hope of getting away. It must have been horrific. No wonder she was drained.
They were about halfway across Pennsylvania when his own exhaustion compelled him to find a place to land. He chose a high-rise office building, settling the car right up against the roof-access door to prevent anyone from coming through it. Then, with his gun loaded and lying in his lap, he closed his eyes.
Silvia was still asleep when he woke up hours later, the sun beginning to rise over the Allegheny Mountains. Nico tucked the gun in the waistband of his trousers, opened the door, and stepped out into the chilly morning. After relieving himself over the edge of the building, he opened the back hatch of the car to dig through their rations.
“Nico?” his mother called, and he looked up to see her climbing across the front seat to get out the driver’s-side door, since her own was against the building.
“Back here, Mamá. How are you feeling?”
“My head hurts, and my back aches. Do we have any food?” He blinked at her querulous tone, then shook his head. She was exhausted and traumatized, and she’d just awoken in a strange place. What else should he expect?
“Yes, plenty. The general stocked us up. Why don’t you stretch your legs and grab something while I check the fuel cells? Then we’ll need to get going. We shouldn’t stay in one place too long.”
“Why are we on top of a building? You know I don’t like heights!”
Nico clamped his lips against a sigh. “I’m sorry, Mother. I didn’t want to park where someone might get to us. There are looters everywhere. I’ll try to find somewhere rural next time, but this was the best I could do last night.”
Silvia made a dissatisfied sound but didn’t say any more, and Nico rounded the front of the lightcar to open the hood and check the cells. By the time he was finished, she was climbing back over to the passenger side.
“I’m hungry, Nico. What do we have to eat?”
The trunk of the car was still open, just like he’d left it for her, but she hadn’t helped herself as he’d suggested. He looked at it and frowned.
“Here.” He handed her two protein bars and a vacpack of dried
fruit before closing the compartment. “We need to get moving again.”
He got into the driver’s side and shut the door. As he started the turbines, Silvia stared at the rations he’d handed her in distaste, which he couldn’t really blame her for. The initial lift generated by the repulsion engines made his stomach lurch too.
Silvia grudgingly unwrapped one of the protein bars and bit into it, making a face he caught out of the corner of his eye. “Don’t we have any meat, Nico?”
What? He eased the car over the edge of the roof and into the air. “You almost never eat meat, Mother. You’re practically a vegetarian.”
“Yes, well, that was before I spent several months surviving without fresh groceries,” she muttered, eating with more vigor. “Right now I can’t imagine anything that would taste better.”
Could the Alpha strain be affecting her already? His own appetite had easily doubled when he began to feel the effects of the virus, but it had taken weeks.
“I’ll get some jerky out of the back for you next time we stop,” he promised, patting her knee.
He tried not to frown when she flinched away from the touch. Even though she’d just been outside and it was a crisp March morning, a bead of sweat ran down her temple, and he could see the fabric of her shirt was darker under the arms and between her breasts.
Night sweats? No doubt she hadn’t had her estrogen supplements in months.
It certainly couldn’t be the Rot. Those people became lethargic until they slipped into catatonia. Now that she was awake, Silvia was about as far from lethargic as a person could get. She was practically vibrating with energy, her legs and hands twitching, her eyes bright.
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