“You can as well, if you like,” offered Vincent.
Melissa smiled at Molly and then at Vincent. “I’ll leave it to you. Molly and I will pick up the slack. You know, just in case nobody’s listening right now. Hand me another potato.”
Thirty
“…please rebroadcast it as often as you are able. Do not come…” the static surged over Sevita’s voice as they passed out of the lighthouse’s range. “…outbreak of a new form of the December Plague… the Plague will escape. Someone will find a way out. Or in…” Nella readjusted the sails trying to eke even a tiny bit more speed from them. Frank gripped the wheel and tried to trace the thread of Sevita’s voice, though they both knew the message by heart. “Don’t come here. Your family is dead. Your friends are dead. Do not come here to find them… find a way to wipe it out, so that nothing remains alive to carry it out… You must finish it.” The words were swallowed by a burst of snowy nothingness.
“We should be close enough to pick up the City’s broadcast directly,” said Frank. Nella sifted through channels of static searching for the right band.
“There’s nothing,” she said, frantically shuttling the dial from one end of the band to the other for a third time.
“The message is at least a few weeks old now. Maybe it’s been taken down,” said Frank.
“How long until we reach the harbor?”
Frank hesitated. He had no intention of going into the City. Not yet. Even after Sevita’s plea, he knew Nella wouldn’t understand that it had to be razed. Nothing could survive. And he had no tools, no weapons, no protection. He wasn’t ready.
“Frank?”
He sighed. “We should be able to see it in a few minutes. Around this next peninsula.”
She came and stood near him, leaning far forward, as if she would see it faster that way. As if she could somehow help stop the disease. It was more like visiting a graveyard and expecting the occupants to unearth themselves to Frank. All he could hope was not to fall into his own burial plot in the meantime. What were they to do? The Harbor Home had to be first, he had to let Nella try to find an answer from Ann Connelly. He knew it was pointless. Nella must know too, but she wasn’t talking about it. He wondered how far they were going to go, how much she’d risk to find what she knew couldn’t exist.
The boat slithered through the warm water, the summer sun’s heat struggling through the heavy ceiling of dark clouds that hung over the visible sky. Beside them, broken-backed huts slumped onto the beaches, gray and splintering or half-dragged, straddling land and ocean. Once they had been bright, pretty cottages with straight, polished docks in tidy lines. They’d seen so much emptiness, so much stillness, that both Frank and Nella ignored them. It was the natural state of things. The City had been the one spark of life. Nella expected it somehow to be still bustling and loud. The gray ash and flat shadow that had greeted them at the Capitol still haunted Frank. He felt like an astronaut shuttling between dead planets.
The truth was something different from either vision. The sailboat rounded the broad peninsula, slipping into the City’s wide harbor. The acrid sting of smoke hit them first, though the fires had been long ago extinguished. There was a break in the cloud cover, but instead of softening the blackened stone of the harbor arch, the summer light was ragged and harsh on the disintegrating docks and the bobbing flotsam that crowded the water. Frank turned the boat into the wind and the sails fluttered and emptied. Nella leaned out to get a better look at their home.
Theirs was the only boat. Strands of rope and splinters of burnt boards jostled and stuck on the brick buildings lining the shore. For a few moments, it was quiet.
“Sevita did this?” asked Nella in disbelief.
Frank slid an arm around her. “Either she did it, or the soldiers have been so busy with— with other things, that they didn’t have time to put out an accidental fire.”
A shadow shuffled into the large arch that overlooked the harbor. It rocked slowly, as if it were trying to comfort itself.
“Hello,” shouted Nella. The shadow’s head turned toward them, but nothing spoke. Frank tensed as it took an unsteady step forward toward the water.
“Maybe we should get closer,” said Nella.
“Don’t even think about it.”
“We don’t have to get close enough to worry about infection, but maybe they can tell us what’s going on. Hello!” she shouted louder.
“Don’t do—” Frank started to whisper, but the shadow had heard. Its figure snapped straight as if it had been jolted by electricity. It shrieked and the shrill cry echoed in the brick arch, first magnifying, and then, to Frank’s horror, multiplying it. It burst into an uneven sprint toward the water as more shadows tumbled into the arch behind it. The screams continued to bounce off the buildings as the first Infected splashed into the water. Nella backed up and tripped on the cabin’s roof, falling backward. She watched as half a dozen Infected dove in.
“Can they swim this far?” she asked.
Frank shook his head. “I don’t know, but we aren’t going to stick around and find out.” He helped her up. Nella tried not to watch the Infected floundering in the sooty water. A few were closing in, but most were choking or had leaped on each other. Frank handed her an oar just as shots began blasting into the arch. Nella pulled hard on the water, willing them out into open water with a steady breeze pushing them.
“It’s okay,” called Frank as he tried to keep up on the other side, “calm down Nella. It’s okay. You’re pulling too hard, we’re just turning in a circle. Calm down. We’re okay, they can’t reach us.”
Nella took a deep breath and looked back. He was right, even the closest Infected were flagging. A cluster of soldiers was fighting off the cluster on the beach.
“Should we go back?” she asked, her breath shaky. “Should we help them?”
Frank turned back to his oar. “Unless we find a cure, they’re already dead. There’s nothing we can do.”
She looked back once more, wondering if Sevita were on the beach somewhere, and then began rowing again. The sails snapped and stuttered until the breeze caught them with a sudden soft roar and Nella put her oar down onto the deck. She watched the gentle hill of the Farm rise slowly behind the flimsy roofs of the old vacation homes on the shoreline. The Farm’s wrought iron gate hung open, twisted sideways like a broken limb. The fence had collapsed in a few spots and the ground was dark and dead, trampled and empty instead of the silvery green threads of crop lines that ought to have been growing there. The undulating wail of a siren was clear, though distant. It gave Nella a pang to think of Christine. She couldn’t see the ambulance, but she knew that’s what it was.
“What is that?” Frank pointed to a thick fog on the far edge of the City. Nella squinted.
“Isn’t that the Barrier gate?” she asked. Frank ducked into the cabin and rummaged through a storage cabinet. He reemerged with an old pair of binoculars. Nella let the boat ease closer to shore as he adjusted them.
“I can’t even see the gate. It’s just— it’s a pile of rubble. The Barrier’s on fire. Or it was and it’s dying out. The entrance to the City is— it’s just gone.”
“It’s a giant quarantine zone. That’s what Sevita meant. But what about the people that live through quarantine?”
Frank hesitated. “Nella,” he started at last, “the last plague didn’t kill off the Infected.”
“I know, that’s why they were able to be Cured.”
“But this strain hasn’t spread the way that the first did. There are people just outside the Barrier that would become infected if they encountered anyone carrying the disease. Some people will be carrying it long after any type of quarantine.”
Nella was silent.
“We have to finish it,” Frank began again, “that’s what Sevita was trying to say. We have to destroy the City and any Infected in it.”
“There are other ways—”
Frank shook his head. He handed her the bino
culars. “Look. You need to see who and what we’re talking about.”
Nella focused the binoculars on the street near her apartment. It was just visible. The building’s door was gone, just a shadow where it led into the building. She watched as a tiny figure emerged. It hesitated, looked around and scuttled down the road toward the farm. She followed it with the binoculars. It only got a few dozen yards from the apartment building before other small figures began hurtling toward it, emerging from other buildings, from alleyways, one even dropping from a nearby roof and then lying still. The person from Nella’s building was soon enveloped, buried in the fury of the others. They grappled and tore, yanked and leaped at one another. Nella was grateful that she was too far away to pick up the smaller details.
“We’re going to cure them. We’ll find Ann, there had to be some kind of contingency plan,” she said, as she lowered the binoculars. Frank turned her away from the City to look at him.
“I hope you’re right. But we would have found it. Gerta Schneider would have told us about it, this whole thing could have been averted.”
Nella shook her head. “Maybe she didn’t know. We didn’t find the vial Pazzo hid. Why would we have found a cure?”
She could see his face tightening and flush. “Don’t,” he said, “we don’t have time to start agonizing over what we did or didn’t do. We did what we could. More than anyone else would have been able to. We didn’t find the vial because that idiot goldsmith lied to us, Pazzo probably convinced him it was harmless. We didn’t find the cure, Nella, because I don’t think there is one. I’m going with you to Harbor Home. We’re going to do what it takes to find Ann, because I want to be wrong. But what happens when we find her and she doesn’t have an answer for us? Or what if she does, but the cure takes technology and supplies that aren’t around anymore? Or a year to finish?
“The City is cut off. The people are trapped. There’re not many bullets left, there’s not much food— I’m not even sure there’s drinkable water once the power plant shuts down. That’s saying nothing of the battles between the Infected or between Infected and whoever is immune this time. We can’t— I can’t let them starve and suffer. If we can’t find a solution in the next few weeks— we have to honor Sevita’s request. We have to find a way to end it. For all of them.”
Nella shook her head and gently steered the boat away from the City, letting it dissolve behind them. “There are people in there that could be saved. There must be some who are immune or locked away like Christine, not exposed.” Her voice was wild and uneven and she struggled to calm herself.
The chances of survivors in such a tiny population were very bad, but Frank knew it wasn’t the time to say so. He wrapped the neck strap neatly around the binoculars with a gentle smile. “We’ll get them out first, Nella. We’ll find them and rescue them.” He went around her toward the cabin stairs and placed a hand over hers as he passed. “I’m on your side,” he said, giving her hand a soft squeeze. But in his heart he wondered if he’d be able to say that in a month or two.
Thirty-one
Nella had visited Harbor Home many times in the past eight years. She had been called in to consult even before she had left the Cure camps. It was a tidy, efficient and friendly place. Nella had marveled at how the staff managed to keep a sense of normalcy and structure after the Plague made even everyday things like cleaning supplies increasingly hard to come by. Eight years after the rest of the world shut down, at Harbor Home the large lawn was neatly mowed by half a dozen workers with clicking push mowers, the gardens were a neat patchwork of well weeded rows (though now they held vegetables instead of flowers) and the facility itself shone with fresh, clean paint inside and out. The day inside was structured, each portion beginning and ending with a ringing bell, though the only timepiece in the place was an old wind-up watch in the administrator’s desk. The Home ran exactly the way that its residents needed it to, all other considerations came after the calming, comfortable structure had been established.
Nella always thought it would have been a model institution even before the Plague. It served a wide range of the City’s citizens. Some, like Ann Connelly, had never fully recovered from the Plague after the Cure. Some were too shell-shocked by their experiences to cope with City life. Some were just unable to care for themselves and had no one to help them. Harbor Home tried to treat them all.
She stood at the end of the long smooth pebble drive trying to reconcile the place she had known with the picture in front of her.
“We can’t go in there like this,” said Frank, “We have to find some protection first. If it’s airborne, we could be in danger of infection if we get any closer. To say nothing of whatever may be waiting to attack us inside.”
The border hedge was broken by the dented snout of the Home’s only transport van. It sat diagonally across the edge of the drive and the passenger door hung open. It was dark inside, but Nella could see long smears of dried blood on the drivers side window, like the shadow of claws the morning sun couldn’t erase. And the shadow of a figure slumped against the seat.
The lawn was patchy and peppered with dandelions. The smooth plastic lawn chairs that had sat so neatly on the porch and scattered over the grounds in tiny groups of two or three were mostly overturned. A few were broken, their legs sticking up in wicked shards of irregular plastic. The ones that were still in place were beginning to grow algae in the dip of their seats.
“We don’t even know that it was the Plague. It could have been Looters. And whatever happened was some time ago now, Frank,” said Nella.
“That doesn’t mean it’s not still happening. I’m not saying it wasn’t Looters, but I’m not willing to take that chance. We need to find some kind of face mask or something. We’re not going in there without protection.”
“There must be a medical kit in the transport van.” Nella started toward it, but Frank grabbed her.
“Someone died in there— the bacteria was definitely there. You’ll be exposed.”
“It’s been too long to still be in the air, the blood is dried. There may still be viable bacteria on the seats, but that’s why we need gloves and antiseptic. I’ll be careful and we’ll scrub ourselves after, throw away our clothes even.”
“It’s too risky,” said Frank. He rubbed his head with one hand.
“I don’t know what else to do. If we don’t get the masks and gloves from here, where will we get them? The hospitals and doctors’ offices have been cleaned out for miles by the scav teams. And we can’t go back to the City. It’s this or…” She shrugged.
“Maybe it should be ‘or’,” Frank said. “She’s probably dead, Nella. You know that right? Or turned. It’s obvious what happened here. My only hope is that only the one person escaped. People are too spread out for one Infected to really spread this, as long as they’d already turned and weren’t heading for a group. Maybe we should just walk away.”
“You can walk away, Frank, if you need to. I’ll understand. But we agreed to try and I need to. And it isn’t obvious to me what happened. All we’ve seen is a crashed van and some blood. For all I know, a band of people attacked the place and a survivor tried to leave and crashed instead. Maybe he got a head wound from hitting the steering wheel or from a fight. I have to try.” She started for the rear of the van again.
“Wait,” said Frank, “At least don’t touch the handles with your skin.” He pulled down his backpack and fished around for a moment. He grabbed a pair of socks and pulled them over his hands. “Ready?” he asked, grabbing the back door handle. “There might still be someone in there.”
She nodded and looked around for something to defend herself with. There was a tall red ash bucket at the end of the drive. She picked it up and it sloshed with old water, but it was heavy enough. She nodded at Frank. He pulled the doors open. Nothing jumped out or growled or reached for them. There was no one inside. The back of the van was immaculate, just as it had been the last time Nella had helped seat a patient
inside. Whatever had happened in the cabin, it hadn’t spread to the cargo area. The interior light was dead, but so was the cabin’s. The emergency medical kit was bolted to the interior wall where it had always been. Nella set the ash bucket down and reached for the kit.
“Let me do it,” said Frank, waving his sock covered hands in the air. “You never know.” He fumbled with the latch for a few seconds and then the tin top swung open. He rolled the socks down and off of his hands, tossing them onto the floor of the van. He pulled on some medical gloves instead, handing a pair to Nella.
“You better grab it all,” she said, “I don’t know when or if we’ll find another. I’ll get the bag.” She held his pack open for him and Frank began throwing items in. He saved two yellow, flimsy looking masks and then closed up the kit. He jumped down and handed a mask to Nella. His face was grim as it disappeared behind the papery husk.
This is insanely stupid, he thought. Nella was zipping up his pack. She was very pale and as she stood up and unfolded her tiny mask he could see her hands shaking. She already knows that, he thought and kept his doubt to himself. She’d go without him if she had to. He’d persuaded her not to, a few weeks ago, but once he’d changed his mind and agreed to try, he knew he’d never be able to convince her again. Not now that she’d seen it. There was no way he was going to let her go alone. He pressed the mask a little harder to his face, willing the mask to cling tighter, to be more than what it was. Then he picked up his pack and they walked up the drive toward the gleaming white Harbor Home.
The smell hit them about halfway up the drive, when the breeze from the ocean died away. “This is bad,” was all that Nella said and kept climbing toward the shady porch. Frank sucked at the air through the damp mask, trying to get some bit of freshness, some relief from the sour meat smell that hung around the building. A heavy droning buzz erupted from the porch and Nella came running back down. She ran toward the edge of the lawn, making it only halfway before ripping off the mask to vomit into the thick grass. “Don’t go up there,” she said, standing up slowly as Frank reached her. He handed her a bottle of water from his pack and glanced back toward the porch.
Poveglia (After the Cure Book 4) Page 17