by Scott Cramer
In the generator room, Dawson checked a fuel gauge.
“We have plenty of diesel,” he said and then punched a start button.
Four massive generators roared to life. Dawson threw on five light switches, illuminating the plant. It was a high-ceilinged cathedral of science, the walls and floors white and spotless, the equipment shiny and bright.
“I want to get back to Abby and Maggie,” Toby said.
They walked the length of the plant. Close to the door, something caught Dawson’s eye – a white substance fixed to the side of a fermentation vat. There were twelve vats in total, each as wide as an elephant, rising three quarters of the way to the ceiling. Sweeping his eyes across the other vats, he saw each one had a similar substance affixed to it.
“Toby, get back,” he barked, his heart contracting into his throat.
Dawson was certain it was C4. The reason for Mathews’s visit was now evident. She had wired the plant with plastic explosives, knowing exactly how to stop the production of antibiotics.
Mathews’s other motivations remained a mystery, though. Why hadn’t she detonated the C4? Given the limited range of a remote, she should have done so before leaving the grounds, unless she had set up a repeater, which would allow her to detonate the explosives remotely from inside the bunker.
With that as a possibility, Dawson wanted Toby out of the building as quickly as possible. He explained the situation, omitting the terrifying fact that the C4 could go off any second. He played up the fact that it was safe to handle, as long as you left the wireless fuse intact.
“I’ll help you get it,” Toby said.
“There are twelve vats. It will only take me a few minutes to clear them. Sandy needs to know about this. You need to get back to Abby and Maggie.”
Toby argued briefly, but eventually gave in and raced out the door.
As Dawson peeled off the first wad of C4, he wondered if the scientists knew he was in the area. No, that was impossible. Kids had seen him, “the adult,” but they would not have communicated with scientists in the bunker.
Convinced he still enjoyed the element of surprise, he got to work on ridding the plant of explosives.
3.13
ATLANTA
When Maggie awoke, Abby told her about the boy she’d seen dragging a body.
“Don’t be afraid,” Maggie said and took hold of her hand. “We have each other.”
Maggie brought the radio to her lips and tried to contact Sandy. “Alpha Zulu, do you copy? Alpha Zulu, do you copy?”
Dusk had fallen, and Abby wondered how long they should keep trying. With no other options, the answer was obvious: for as long as they had voices.
“If something happens to me, you have to keep trying to contact Sandy,” Abby said.
“I will,” Maggie replied with sadness filling her eyes.
Abby’s heart contracted from the swiftness of Maggie’s response.
After a long pause, Maggie added, “You’re going to make it. Hang in there.”
Abby realized she must look as sick as she felt. She was dying. Exhausted, she rested her head on Maggie’s shoulder and closed her eyes, thinking about Touk and Jordan, then Toby and Mark. Had they safely reached the pill plant? She hoped Toby would return before dark and press against her, but quickly a sense of dread cuddled up next to her when she wondered if she would ever see him again.
“Alpha Zulu, do you copy? Alpha Zulu ….”
Maggie’s voice grew fainter as Abby felt herself approaching sleep, sinking deeper into a quicksand of strange, fever-induced images and disconnected thoughts.
“Wake up! Abby, wake up! Abby!” Maggie said in an urgent tone, tugging her arm. “Abby, wake up.”
Abby blinked and the night pressed against her eyeballs like sandpaper. It was completely dark. She glanced at the glowing hands on her watch and realized she’d been asleep for hours. “What’s wrong?”
“Shhhh.” Maggie was inches away, but Abby couldn’t see her. “Some kids are just outside the alley,” she whispered. “They know we’re here. I heard them talking.”
Abby heard only the thudding of her heart, but a voice screamed a warning in her mind, and she squeezed Maggie’s hand harder when she felt her pulling away.
“Stay,” Abby pleaded. “We’re safe here.”
Maggie easily broke the grip and placed the radio in Abby’s hand. “Keep trying to get Sandy.”
Maggie started a little avalanche of cans when she stood and shuffled toward the front of the alley.
Maybe the kids had moved on, Abby thought, or maybe Maggie had been mistaken, or they were just a bunch of survivors sick with the Pig, trying to endure the pain, not wanting to cause any trouble.
“Oh my God,” Maggie cried out. “The smell is so awful.”
A bloom of icy shivers started down Abby’s neck, and before they had reached the base of her spine, Maggie screamed. The jagged grunts and cries of a violent struggle followed, Maggie’s voice mixing with those of strangers, both boys and girls. To help her friend, Abby tried to stand, but she immediately folded over from a cramp.
Frantic footsteps informed her that Maggie had broken free. She was running and her attackers were chasing her. The sounds faded into the night.
A startling truth struck Abby. Maggie had wanted to engage the strangers to lure them away from the alley, giving Abby a chance to contact Sandy.
With tears trickling down her cheeks, she anchored the radio against her lips. “Alpha Zulu, do you copy?”
She hung her head and wept, too choked with sadness to go on.
The brave pilot would lose her attackers and return to the alley. Toby, too, would arrive at any minute. Her positive thoughts did little to flush the despair from her heart.
An hour later, Abby turned on the radio and pressed the button. “Alpha Zulu. Please, do you copy?”
A voice crackled in the heavy silence. “This is Alpha Zulu. Who are you?”
“Abby Leigh.”
Abby waited for a response. None came. Had she lost the connection? She had forgotten to release the button. “I’m Abby Leigh,” she said and took her finger off the button.
“Abby, thank God. This is Sandy. Where are you?”
“I’m near the bunker. Mark and Toby are at the pill plant.”
“I discovered Mark’s message,” Sandy said. “I have several colleagues who I can trust. We’re preparing to go to Alpharetta. Can you meet us there?”
Abby slumped into the trash pile. “My friend disappeared. Someone chased her, but I’m too sick to look for her. I can’t go very far. I have the Pig.”
“You have AHA-B?”
“I took three antibiotic pills, but they aren’t working. I’m dying.”
“Abby, listen to me very closely, I want you to die.”
Abby’s heart stopped. Then, with the shockwaves of Sandy’s words echoing in her mind, she put the walkie-talkie close to her ear and learned how she was going to die.
3.14
WASHINGTON DC
“I lived there for about a year after the night of the purple moon,” Low said, pointing her mass of red dreadlocks toward Union Station, a huge granite building that was once the district’s train station. “That’s where I met Bombie and Single Cell.” With a smile, she added, “Two months later, I was sleeping in Abraham Lincoln’s bed in the White House.”
Jordan and Low were parked in a Jeep Cherokee a hundred meters from Union Station. Two trucks of White House Gang guards were parked nearby.
Thousands of kids were milling around the station, and Jordan’s attention was drawn to a fight that had broken out, likely over food.
Inside Union Station, Jonzy, Spike, and a contingent of other White House Gang members were splicing copper wire onto the tracks. Earlier, Low had arranged for her gang members to strip the wire off telephone poles.
Low scrunched her brow. “Do you really think Jonzy can broadcast over the CDC station frequency?”
“Honestly, no
,” Jordan said. “But he’s already started up two stations, and when he was at Colony East, he built a radio to eavesdrop on the scientists. Jonzy was born a genius. When he was little, his grandfather taught him how to build a radio using spare parts, so I could be wrong.”
Jonzy’s plan was to start up a local station and set the transmitter’s frequency to the CDC’s channel. To compensate for whatever transmitter he used being weaker than what the government was using, he would make his antennae longer than anything the CDC had — hundreds of miles longer.
He had explained his theory, saying that when he first learned about Doctor Perkins’s secret plan to let the epidemic finish off the survivors, he wanted to find a way to spread the news outside Colony East. At the colony library, Jonzy found an article that described what a small college station in Massachusetts had done. They had connected their transmitter to train tracks, and for the next twenty-four hours, the only station playing in Montreal, Canada — two-hundred miles north — was the college’s station.
Inspired, Jonzy wanted to hook up a radio station inside Colony East to the subway tracks. Train tracks were out of the question because Grand Central Station was being used as the mess hall. In the end, he had faced too many obstacles and had abandoned the idea.
When Jonzy and Spike piled back into the Jeep, Jonzy was bubbling with mad energy.
“We wired it up to tracks that go straight through Atlanta,” he said. “Doctor Perkins will turn on the radio in Atlanta Colony and hear ‘Pig Central.’”
The three-vehicle convoy drove two blocks to M Street, pulling up to a building that housed Radio Free Asia. Jonzy grabbed his tool bag, which Low had obtained for him, and together with Spike, entered the dark lobby, crunching over broken glass.
They quickly returned outside, reporting that survivors had stripped all the knobs from the soundboard.
The convoy made a U-turn, drove a block, and turned left on North Capital Street. The next stop was immediately on the right, National Public Radio. The windows were still intact in the three-story building. Spike used the butt of his shotgun to smash one, and then he and Jonzy entered the building.
Jordan turned on Jeep’s radio, tuning into the CDC station.
“Distribution of the antibiotic to the areas hardest hit has begun,” the robotic voice droned. “We expect to broaden the distribution to other areas as soon as possible. Until then, everyone should seek shelter and stay put. The AHA-B mutation syndrome is lethal, but we fully expect to eradicate it.”
Rather than drive his fist through the windshield in anger at the CDC’s lies, Jordan exercised discipline and lowered the volume.
Several minutes later, Spike raced from the building and reported that Jonzy had everything he needed, which started a chain of events. Low chatted on her walkie-talkie, organizing the move of a generator. It was on a flatbed truck, and she told her team where to bring it. Then she instructed her other team where to string the wire that was connected to the tracks.
Jordan remained with Low because he still held out a sliver of hope that he could convince her to send gang members to Atlanta with them.
“Why are you so afraid of the Grits?” he asked.
“They’re ruthless.”
”A lot of kids say the White House Gang is ruthless,” Jordan said.
Above her germ mask, Jordan could tell Low was blushing.
“Thank you,” she said, “but we don’t ride over our enemies. You know about Pale Rider?”
Jordan nodded. “I heard she’s the leader. She rides a green Harley.”
“Her eyes glow,” Low warned. “Her gang took over all of Georgia, and they’re moving north. Before the Pig hit us, the Grits were our biggest concern.”
“They’re not immune to the Pig,” Jordan said.
Nodding slowly, Low replied, “The Grits don’t care if they die.”
Jordan understood how a rumor started and took on a life of its own. Pale Rider’s eyes did not glow, and the members of the Grits wanted to live as much as the other survivors did. Rumor or not, though, he realized he would never change Low’s mind about Pale Rider and the Grits. Then he had an idea.
He found a pencil and envelope in the glove compartment and wrote a message to the Grits. If Jonzy’s crazy, railroad-track idea worked and the signal traveled all the way to Atlanta, he would ask the White House Gang DJ to read it on the air. It might give them a chance.
Jordan showed the note to Low. “What if Pale Rider hears this on the radio?”
Low chuckled coldly. “When Pale Rider puts her front wheel on your chest, I hope you die quickly so you won’t suffer much.”
As Jordan entertained that image, Jonzy’s voice came over the radio. “Test, test, test. Hello, Washington DC.”
Jonzy Billings, boy genius, had commandeered the CDC station frequency. “Test, test test. Lemon, I’m dedicating Pig Central to you.”
Lemon Billings had shown his grandson how to build a radio, and now his grandson hoped to hook up the world’s longest antennae and broadcast the truth all the way to Atlanta Colony. Lemon must be smiling down on them from above.
In honor of Lemon, Jordan slightly altered his message to the Grits.
3.15
ATLANTA
Shivering, Abby shuffled through the dark alley. The night swept through her the way icy fog sifts through bare tree branches.
“Maggie,” she called in a raspy voice, fearful of giving herself away.
An odor slithered up her nostrils and left an oily, metallic taste in the back of her throat. She covered her nose with her hand, fighting the urge to gag, and stumbled out of the alley.
A half-moon provided some light in the street. The horrible stench was stronger here, and she doubled over, choking and spitting. Taking tiny sips of air through her mouth, she headed right, the direction to the CDC bunker, and the way she thought Maggie had run.
Two blocks farther on, she came to a corner. The bunker was to the right, and halfway down the street, in the middle of the road, a bonfire blazed. Black smoke billowed up from the flames, blotting out the moon.
Abby crept forward and stopped cold when four kids appeared. They seemed to step out of the fire. From thirty meters away, their stares sent chills rippling down her spine.
She had nothing of value. No pills, no food, and no weapon. The two-way radio was back in the alley. With Sandy’s instructions swimming in her head, Abby had forgotten to bring it. She was just another sick kid.
Sensing someone behind her, Abby spun around. The fire’s glow was putting on a freakish show of giant shadow puppets. Seeing no one, she turned back and shuddered. A boy had moved within ten feet of her. She rocked back on her heels when she identified him as the shirtless boy with long, straggly hair she’d seen earlier.
Feverish and on the verge of dry heaving from the stench, her insides churning with pain, Abby retreated to a tiny outpost in her mind and concluded the situation was dire. She was too weak to fight and too sick to run away.
With an expression blank as stone, Bare-chested Boy took a step toward her. Her eyes fell to his hand, and to the charred human foot he held.
Revulsion filled her and fueled her rage. She charged the boy, flailing her arms and shouting. His eyes widened in shock as her hand scraped his face.
Abby took aim at the others, and when they stood their ground, she had no choice but to veer and run through the perimeter of the flames. Blistering heat scorched her as she willed a heavy right leg forward, a heavy left leg forward, right leg, left leg, right, left and she broke through to cool air.
She plodded on for what felt like hours, but was probably less than thirty seconds. Ahead of her were the lights of the CDC bunker.
Survivors had gathered out front, and Abby wondered if Maggie was among them. She tapped into her last ounce of energy to keep on her feet until she reached the crowd. She pitched forward and caught a face-full of weeds between the sidewalk and street.
Abby clenched fistfuls of di
rt. The adults were doing more than withholding a cure for the Pig. They were responsible for turning kids against each other, for killing the human spirit. She had to stop the scientists from inflicting more evil. She was not ready to die.
DAY 4
CDC BUNKER
As Doctor Hedrick stood before him, Doctor Perkins noted her bloodshot eyes and sallow skin and recalled how much more vibrant she’d been at Colony East. He must look just as worn out to her.
She had entered his office unannounced, saying she wanted to discuss an urgent matter relating to Generation M.
Mulling another thought, Perkins considered the mutual fondness that Lieutenant Dawson and Hedrick had for one another. A conspiracy between those two was not out of the question.
“What is the issue, Doctor?” he asked.
“Ensign Royce and I conducted an autopsy on an AHA-B victim and discovered extreme kidney damage,” she said.
This concerned him. “The victim died of renal failure?”
Hedrick pondered the question. “It’s possible. My concern is a secondary infection. Even those of us who’ve taken the antibiotic might be at risk.”
“Have you heard from Lieutenant Dawson?” he asked, focusing on her eyes, watching for a flicker of fear, a split second of mental calculation.
“Excuse me?”
“The lieutenant is a dear friend, is he not?”
She crinkled her tired eyes and smiled sadly. “Yes, I have a great deal of respect for Lieutenant Dawson. I miss him as a colleague and a friend.”
“Has he contacted you?”
Doctor Hedrick appeared confused.
“Last time I checked,” she said, “Ensign Ryan couldn’t establish communications with Colony West.” She brightened. “Do you have an update?”
“I’ll look into it,” he said, sensing her optimism was genuine. Satisfied that Hedrick was here with a legitimate concern, he added, “How would you like to proceed?”