The last drawer held newspaper clippings, medical journals, and the research that had gone into writing the articles. This was all first-year textbook reading for any biology student. Nothing helpful, nothing new. The rest of the filing cabinets were filled with the same sort of archival documentation.
At last, Daniel gave up. This room didn’t hold any secrets. Except for one.
Feeling a bit like a voyeur, Daniel pulled the Jerome de la Guerre file from its drawer and began to read.
• • •
Jerome de la Guerre had been one of those idealistic graduate students, a doctoral candidate in social anthropology. Fen’s mother, Sylvie, had studied botany. They both signed on for field duty. Their type O blood had made them more resistant to the Fever than some of the other Institute workers, and they had volunteered to work in the city, outside the protective walls of the Institute’s old school building. They mimicked the lives of freesteaders at a time when freesteading was not as dangerous as it was today. There were still aide workers in the city then, church-run missions. Jerome and Sylvie had run a pipeline of information between a mission run by a Catholic priest, Father John Dunham, the Institute, and the Ursuline school. Together, the three organizations brought food, water, medical supplies, and structure to the struggling community of Orleans. Almost thirty-five years after the Wall had gone up, it seemed like a silver age, an age of hope. Somewhere along the way, Jerome and Sylvie fell in love, married, and had one daughter. Fen.
But something had happened. Fen’s parents had left the Institute. A falling-out with the management, the file said. A change in the Institute’s mission, a parting of the ways. If the Institute had been the de la Guerres’ tribe, then at some point they, along with a five-year-old Fen, had made a break with Dr. James and his organization.
And they were not the only ones to leave. A senior researcher and a few other field operatives were said to have “gone native” as well.
Daniel closed the file and returned it to the cabinet drawer. This was politics and strife, not science. He was here for data, he reminded himself, not gossip. He had a world to save.
25
I LEAN MY BACK AGAINST THE DOOR AND STAY hidden in the alcove behind that old crape myrtle, trying to think. Fen, girl, you a fool. So what if Daniel done pulled us through the dark? So what if he help us get out of that blood farm? He been using us. Like the swamp rats the Professors used to experiment on. Best thing I can do for Orleans be lock Daniel up inside. Him and his damned virus.
I be breathing heavy, feeling like a trapped animal. But I got away, I tell myself. We got away. Baby Girl make a noise in my arms and I look down at her little face. Her mama’s eyes stare back at me.
“What you be looking at me like that for?”
She yawn, but this time she don’t go to sleep. She just stare and I stare back. I can’t help it. This baby got eyes like a sinkhole; they be pulling me in, and I let them.
“Can you believe that, Baby Girl? Fool trying to cure Delta Fever.”
Ain’t like a million other folks haven’t tried. Before the Wall, Daddy say everybody with a test tube and a kitchen sink be trying to cook up a cure. A medicine like that make you rich for life. You could own the Delta.
But a cure mean other things, too. If Delta Fever be gone and all the sick folks over here be cured, there’d be no more blood hunting, no blue tarp room in the Ursulines’ hospital. No Wall.
I be assessing my situation again, looking at my assets. I got Baby Girl. And I got a chance.
“You wouldn’t have to leave me,” I say softly. I think of Daniel again, dragging me after him through the night, torches on our heels. He a do-gooder. Maybe they all like that over the Wall. Daniel create a poison, but he ain’t using it. He coulda opened that canister back at the blood farm, killed us all and gotten out. Hell, he could be using it now and we be dead where we stand. But he ain’t. Daniel ain’t a killer.
And now Baby Girl finally be talking to me with them eyes of hers. She be telling me what to do next. “Baby Girl, you don’t know the world like I do. This gonna be more trouble than it worth.”
She just look at me and yawn again like she bored. Like I ain’t got any other excuses. Which I don’t. I curse under my breath and look out through the branches of the myrtle tree. Baby Girl ain’t never seen a crape myrtle in bloom, and she never will if she got to go to Father John and over the Wall.
“You want to see something pretty?” I ask her. “Maybe one day you see flowers on this tree.” She hiccup at me and I shake my head. Me, talking to this baby like it make some kind of sense. I don’t make her any promises, ’cause I know this one gonna be real hard to keep, but I’ma try.
It take a little doing, but I get that door pried back open and I shuffle back up them stairs. Back to where I used to be someone with parents, good people who tried to make a difference.
Doors be open up and down the hallway. I find Daniel sitting in the middle of the hall, like a dog that don’t know what to do without a master.
“You came back,” he say.
I shrug. “You saved me and Baby Girl last night. I owe you for that.” In my arms, Baby Girl gurgle and coo. I point to the open doors with my chin. “You find what you looking for?”
“There’s nothing here.” Daniel stand up, slow and stiff in his suit. “There’s nothing here on the Fever at all,” he say incredulously. “I don’t understand. There should be research, records, data. Something.”
I shake my head. “I told you it be useless. Come on, now.”
“Where are we going?”
I look at the baby in my arms one last time, make sure I’m doing the right thing. “To the only person who might help you. The oldest man in the Delta, Mr. Go.”
Daniel turn suddenly and look through the observation window into the infirmary. “My God,” he say.
My feet don’t want to move, but I make them, and I walk to see what he seeing. The screen over the first bed be lit up in big green letters: WHO’S THERE?
“Come on, Daniel,” I whisper. But he don’t move, and suddenly all the screens come alive with bright green lights. They blink at us like owls in a tree: WHO? WHO? WHO?
26
FEN? FEN DE LA GUERRE?
“Shit.” I shake my head. “Yes, Dr. Warren,” I say for the first time in eleven years.
FEN. ARE YOUR PARENTS HERE?
“You know they dead the minute they left you. We made it five years.” Nobody survive as a freesteader for long.
I watch the screen. But it ain’t like him to say sorry or nothing like that. On to the next thing, then. “Where Priscilla at?” I ask.
“Who’s Priscilla?” Daniel whisper.
“His granddaughter. She twice my age but the closest thing to a kid the Professors ever had. When they got sick, she took over, caring for them and running the project. I thought she the one you been looking for.”
Through the glass, Dr. Warren’s screen lights up. SHE LEFT US. IN THE NAME OF THE WORK.
“Left you?” I think of the way the door been left cracked open. She ain’t planning on coming back here. Dr. Warren really be dead. He just don’t know it.
“Is she coming back?” Daniel ask. I hear the hope in his voice, like he might still find what he looking for here.
I shake my head. “Man, you don’t even know if she alive. Walk away, Daniel.”
“But I have questions . . .”
I shake my head. He ain’t gonna come with me ’til he ask. “Go ahead. But then we leaving.”
Daniel face the glass, so close I think he about to hit his nose on the pane. “Dr. James, my name is Daniel Weaver. I’m a military research scientist from over the Wall. We’re making progress on a cure for Delta Fever, but we still have questions. Where is your research kept?”
The screen stay blank for a long time. I shift Baby Girl to my other hip and wait.
THERE IS NO CURE.
“Not yet, but we’re working on one . . . I’m working on
one. And I’m very close. But I don’t have access to samples in the States, the way you do here. Finding a cure was one of your objectives. Any work you’ve done on the subject might hold the key for me.”
THERE IS NO CURE. PRISCILLA? ARE YOU THERE?
Daniel sigh and look at me. “Doesn’t he understand?”
“Sure. You the one not understanding. Why you think my parents left? They ain’t working on a cure here, Daniel. Orleans just a lab to them. We ain’t people, we rats.”
“If they weren’t looking for a cure, what is all this for?”
“You from the other side of the Wall. Don’t you know?” I ask. He stare at me. “Dr. Warren’s pet project,” I prompt him. “He ain’t interested in the Fever. He studying tribes.”
Daniel frown. “Ending racism,” he say. “For the most part, the rules of blood make race irrelevant. Blood types cross all ethnicities.”
I nod. “If folks stop hating each other ’cause of skin color, the only difference be blood type.”
“A new form of racism,” Daniel say. His face go pale. “It’s like Tuskegee all over again. They never wanted a cure.”
I don’t know nothing about Tuskegee, but if it mean folks with power always gonna abuse it, then I got to agree. “How else they gonna study tribes?” I say.
Daniel look back into the infirmary at them dried-up husks. His fist clench and unclench, and he drop his head against the window. Then he turn to me.
“What do we do now? Just leave them here?” He point at they IV bags, more than half empty. I shrug.
“Why not? They ain’t tribe.”
“That’s insane,” Daniel say.
“That the world they made,” I say. “Now, I got a baby to take care of. You coming?”
Daniel hesitate. He maybe thinking how he saved me and Baby Girl out there just last night. And he be realizing I wouldn’t have done it for him. It ain’t wrong, but I don’t like the way it make me feel, so I look away.
“All right, Baby Girl, we going,” I whisper to Lydia’s little girl. This time, when we leave, I make sure Daniel and his virus come with us. No more “every man for himself.” If Orleans gonna have a better future, we in this together now.
27
“WE’RE GOING TO MR. GO’S?” DANIEL ASKED. He was moving slowly, weighed down by the visit to the Professors. Fen swept away the fallen leaves and flowers with her boot and shut the door firmly.
“Yeah, but I got to do something first,” she said.
“What?” Daniel asked, adjusting the rags around his neck. The day was growing warmer, the sky so blue it was almost purple.
Fen tucked her thumbs into her pack straps and took off for the back road to avoid the avenue they’d come in on, and any lingering ABs.
“I had some people on the outside. I need to get a message to them.”
“You can do that?” Daniel asked, hopping over the broken pavement. “Get a message over the Wall?”
“Don’t always work, but it worth a shot.”
Daniel hurried to catch up. “How do you do it? I mean, if I could do that, I could get help or something. I could—”
She gave him a hard look. “You could what? Don’t take a genius to see you ain’t supposed to be here. You got no idea what Orleans about. You here alone, not a single person got your back. So who you gonna contact, Daniel? Who gonna help you that didn’t before?”
Daniel didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything he could say. He’d made one mistake after another. Now it was up to Fen. Maybe it always had been. “I’ll wait for your Mr. Go.”
“All right,” she said.
“You still haven’t answered my question,” Daniel said. “Where are we going?”
Fen skipped ahead and gave him an easy smile. “The library. Then, maybe church.”
Daniel shook his head. “Oh. Of course.”
• • •
The library was a beautiful building on the leafy avenue they had run down last night. Fen led him down a backstreet before risking the main road. This far into AB territory, there were no torches strung between the old live oaks, and sunlight sifted through the canopy overhead. They moved as quietly as possible. After last night’s wild chase, Fen told him the ABs would sleep in. Daniel knew from his research that AB was the most Fever-susceptible blood type. Without constant transfusions, the Fever made ABs sluggish and weak.
Like his brother, Charlie. His sterile death in a hospital was cruel, but life in Orleans didn’t seem much better.
They reached a place in the stream where chunks of concrete had been laid out like stepping stones. Fen jumped lightly across them to the green lawn on the opposite side, where the library squatted, an implacable building of red stone. Fen mounted the steps swiftly. Daniel followed her in, swinging the heavy steel doors shut behind him.
Inside, the library was a throwback to another age. Heavy wooden furniture, walls lined with thick dark bookshelves, stained oak floors. But it reeked of mildew and the bookcases themselves were empty.
“Used to be a librarian here when I been real little,” Fen pointed out, breezing past the reception desk. The light leaching in through the windows was watery and thin, the old glass deep set into the walls of the building to protect them from storms. “An AB, since this be they turf. But she gone now. The computer be in the back.”
“Working?” Daniel asked.
“Sometimes. That why I said maybe we could do it, maybe not. We not far from the Professors. My guess be one of them got this thing running. Someone did. Old car batteries and sometimes a generator. I don’t know who been keeping it up. Here.”
An ancient PC sat on a long oak table at the back of the ground floor, its casing filthy with age and use. The power cord snaked down to a box on the floor covered in black electrical tape.
“Don’t be touching that,” Fen snapped. She shifted the baby onto her lap so she could type. With one booted foot, she pumped a lever beneath the table, somehow attached to the box. Daniel recognized it as an antique sewing machine foot pedal.
“This is incredible,” he said. “And it’s communal? For everyone?”
Fen shrugged. “ABs had it to theyselves for a while and posted guards ’round the building. But they ain’t knowing how to keep it running, and it died. So they abandon it ’til somebody come ’round and fix it.” She peered at the blank screen. “That how it be. Share it, and it work. Mess with it and it don’t. “
A few more pumps and the computer sprang to life.
“There we go,” Fen said to herself. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand, opened a browser, and started to type.
“You have an e-mail account?” Daniel asked her.
“Every tribe do. Least the ones around before things got bad. They been set up by the missionaries. Supposed to keep folks in touch with they relatives on the other side. Only our chief ever used it, but I know the password. If they ain’t changed it on me.”
“What did your chief use it for?” It wasn’t like they could go shopping online.
“Smugglers. Medicine and stuff too hard to get in Orleans. Beyond that be her business. I didn’t ask.”
• • •
HE BE ASKING TOO MANY QUESTIONS NOW, and I be letting my mouth run. I got business to take care of. I open the program and type in my e-mail. It be a hard thing to write, but I been thinking about it on the walk here:
Aunt Cee and Uncle Garrett, It’s me, your little Fen. I am sorry it has been so long since you have heard from me. I hate to ask, but I need your help. You were always good sponsor parents to me. You would make good real parents too. If you would like to be please write me back. There is a child that needs your help. No Fever. DELTA-FREE. Love, Fen de la Guerre.
I feel silly writing it, using my best English how the Ursulines taught us, but I got to make sure they understand me. I hit send and wait to see that it go. My leg be getting tired from pumping the generator, but I keep it up.
“How does it get transmitted?” Daniel
ask.
When it go through, I erase my password, clear the history, and log off.
“Maybe it don’t,” I say. “But I got to try. Now we wait and see.”
Daniel be staring at me like I be crazy, but that ain’t the first time. I stare right back. Then he say, “Can I send a message, too?”
Before I can answer, I hear the door open at the front of the building.
Hide, I mouth to Daniel. I put my hand over Baby Girl’s mouth in case she start to cry and scurry away from the desk through a side door that be broken, into another room. Full of old furniture, it be all rotten sofas and flood-damaged stuff, covered with mold. I worry about Baby Girl breathing it in, so I cover her face with the sling. Daniel be right by my side, so I know he scared. I lead him around a mound of cushions and we stand behind an arch in the wall. My knife still in my boot, but I ain’t starting nothing with this baby in my arms ’less I have to.
“Who?” Daniel whisper. I put my finger to his lips and mouth the letters AB and shrug. He nod. Then I lean forward and try to listen. Two men be talking.
“This thing don’t even be working no more,” First Man say. His voice be deep like his chest broad. He sound big.
“It work good enough to get what we want,” Second Man say. He got a voice like a reed flute, the kind they sell at the Market for little kids. “Can’t stop now, man,” Second Man continue. “That raid on the Os, that a bold move, but you know what they say—you got to back it up with some serious action.”
“You right, you right,” First Man say in his deep voice.
My mind be spinning. These be the bastards attacked us at the powwow. Lydia be dead because of them.
That explain why there weren’t no dogs after Lydia and me that night. It weren’t just a blood raid. Tribes be attacking each other all the time, looking for fresh blood. But blood ain’t enough for these bastards. They been looking to start a war.
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