“And this is how the price is paid!” he say, loud enough for everyone to hear. I lower my eyes. “Mercy,” I say. It don’t come out half as loud as his words, but it don’t come easy to me, even in a play. Instead, I start to shake, try to say it again. “I yield,” I say so soft it be a whisper. Davis sneer at me.
“Your blood won’t do,” he say to the crowd, to me. “It’s too thin. Natasha had the blood of a warrior,” he roars. I want to laugh in his face. That woman had the hands of a baby and the eyes of a fox. Sly and cold. He right. We ain’t the same quality stock at all.
He get up off me a minute later and wipe his blood off my knife. He throw it over the heads of the crowd, into the woods.
“Bring the child,” he call to the basket weaver. He take the baby from her. Davis bounce Enola in his arms for half a second. “Leave us,” he say. “Your blood would weaken our tribe. This child would weaken our tribe. Do not return.”
I take Enola and wrap her sling around her like a blanket. I look Davis in the eye and wonder who Enola’s daddy really be. Got to be an OP or an O-Neg, and I know it ain’t one of our boys, or old Uncle Rom. I hope it ain’t Davis. But anything possible.
The crowd part and I walk into the woods where he threw my blade. I find my knife in the dirt and rub it clean on some leaves to get rid of the last of Davis’s scent.
Ain’t much later when I hear a howl split the air. Blood hounds or bloodthirsty ABs, it don’t make a difference. With all them O-Negs close by, they won’t be looking for me right away. Even so, I start to run.
37
THE AIR GREW MORE HUMID AS NIGHT CAME on. Daniel felt exposed on the flat expanse of grass. Rooftops at night was even more frightening than during the day. He should have waited, he knew, waited until morning. He should have listened to Mr. Go and not come at all. They had stayed up for hours, going over Daniel’s formulas, swapping theories, but made little progress. The tools Daniel had used to make the DF virus didn’t exist in Orleans, just as the samples available in the Delta could not be found in the Outer States. Without the missing vials, they might hit on a cure eventually. But it would take years. Time that Fen’s city did not have.
And so he’d had Mr. Go draw a second map, one that would allow him to retrace his steps. The map had done its part. The rest was up to Daniel.
He looked out across the gently rolling landscape. It was insanity to walk the hazards of this field in the dark, let alone attempt to go spelunking, even with his night-vision goggles. They’d be next to useless, but time was running out. Gingerly, he edged from the trees and onto the soft earth.
Fen. She kept popping into his head, unbidden. Fen. Enola. The reasons he was back here. What was it Fen and Mr. Go had both said? Daniel in the lions’ den. They couldn’t have been more right. He took another step onto the damp earth.
A high-pitched scream filled the air. Daniel dropped to his stomach like a frightened mouse, freezing in terror. The cry came again, like the hunting call of an owl, and he recognized it as human. His encounter suit reacted as he broke into a fear-induced sweat, his heart pounding faster. The war that Fen feared was already beginning. Now that he was still, Daniel could hear other bodies in the field, moving silently except for the susurration of grass as they passed.
Daniel withdrew into the tree line and dialed his goggles up higher. When he rose to his knees, he could see the hunting party. Fearlessly, they were dancing across Rooftops, whooping occasionally. Daniel recalled what Fen had said about the man named La Bête Sauvage, how he drugged his hunters to make them brave. Or suicidal, Daniel thought. But the grass beneath them did not give way. Like a joke in a child’s cartoon, unaware of the danger, they defied gravity. Across their backs were slung bows and bigger weapons: the guns that Fen said were on their way.
Daniel pressed his back to a rough tree trunk and tried to think. He was so close, but where there was one group of ABs, there might be more. Daniel’s heart sank. He couldn’t risk them finding the virus. If he managed to find it and they caught him . . . In the wrong hands, the virus would devastate Orleans, sweeping across the Delta like an avenging angel.
Again he thought of Charlie. Happy-go-lucky Charlie, scrabbling to eat the dirt from his potted plant. Even at his worst, with gums bleeding and teeth ground down to nubs, Daniel never once thought of euthanizing his little brother. Charlie had been alive, like Orleans. And that was the first, most important thing.
Daniel stared out across the field, alive now with hoots and burning lights. The DF virus was almost a cure, but almost was not enough. Mr. Go was right. Better to leave it buried and escape the city. Better to live and start again.
Torchlight moved toward him like a will-o’-the-wisp, driving him to hide in the scrub brush beneath the trees. He looked again at Mr. Go’s map, at the directions that would lead him to a breach in the Wall. He was less than a mile away from the area Mr. Go described on the map, but the war for Orleans had started, and the streets were filling with tribes. His only hope was to hide.
Daniel’s heart pounded in his chest. Panic fluttered inside him and he saw Charlie’s face again. Charlie when he was healthy and strong. Enola’s little face, so delicate and tender. Fen scowling, smirking at him.
What was it Fen had said? Churches are sacred. They are sanctuary.
Daniel looked at his map. Father John’s church was just west of him, and slightly north. Closer than the Wall. The church would have to do for now.
38
THE SUN LOOK LIKE A DYING CANDLE ON THE western edge of the treetops. My eyes be adjusting to the dark as I walk. Leaves and pine needles crunch beneath my feet. Father John’s mission ain’t far from here, and it won’t be in danger of the ABs, the Os, or nobody. He ain’t like Mama Gentille. Father John’s church still be sacred ground. Like the Ursuline Sisters with they schooling and praying, Father John put his faith to work. When he come down with his missionaries and open up the old Super Saver food store as his church, people start to come. There been food and water there when the Red Cross and the feds weren’t nowhere to be found. He brought in clothes, shoes, medicines for tribe and freesteader alike.
When the first round of Fever struck, he turned his mission into a hospital. Bed against bed, full of people moaning and dying, but Father John and his folks, they stay. That is, ’til some of them nuns and other priests be getting sick, and they go home. But they take the Fever with them. I guess there be a real crisis of faith in the Outer States when the ministry start dying. All them Catholic hospitals and Presbyterian hospitals and Methodist hospitals, the Jewish ones, too—all of them been infected with Delta Fever. Nobody be going to church when the pulpit be empty. Mr. Go say religious folks be right in line with the government when it come to building the Wall. Two thousand some years ain’t killed Christianity, or Islam, or Buddhism. I guess they be damned if some little Fever gonna do it in less than a decade.
But down here be different, ’cause some of us got immunities. Some of us learned to live. Father John survived and he kept on caring for us. When the borders closed, he still helped by getting us sponsor families. That been how I came to have the Coopers, with they care packages and pictures of a real house, with painted walls and glass windows, and a dog that weren’t a blood hound. That why I be having faith in them, and in Father John now.
The trees be thinning, but it true dark now. Good thing, too, because there be a road up ahead, and I see people coming. They carrying lights, but the lights go dark as they get close, and I hear whispers and I know they part of the AB raid. I stay in the trees ’til they gone past me. Then I see Father John’s mission up the road a ways. I stop and hold Baby Girl close in my arms, get to my knees, and say a prayer for them O-Negs, and for the O-Positives, too, if any still be alive. They don’t deserve what about to happen. Nobody do. And to think I used to want to be a chieftain. I be lucky if I can help this baby, but that be about it.
The Super Saver look just like I remember—a big one-story brick of a buildin
g that take up most of a block. You can see the edges of other stores that used to be next to it, but they gone now. Just this big old red thing left behind. The SUPER SAVER sign be broken where it attached over the double doors to the inside. Somebody gone and repaired it with a piece of plywood, and they changed the word saver to savior.
Behind me, far away, I hear faint pops and shouts, like there be a celebration in the woods. It make me break into a run. I reach the doors and pull hard, but they locked. Chained from the inside. Father John ain’t never locked his door. Churches be sacred.
I be too exposed standing here like this, so I run down the steps and around the building, away from the woods, to look for another way in. At the back of the store there be a loading dock with two trucks what used to bring food over the border. They empty now, but it look like somebody been sleeping in one. There be a little nest of clothes inside. The truck be parked so close to the dock, you could walk from the truck through the bay doors and back without getting wet in the rain. Maybe Father John be living back here now.
“Father?” I call out softly, and brace myself in case I need to run.
I try the back door. It be unlocked, so I walk in and call out.
“Father John?”
My voice echo down the back hall of the church. I feel guilty, sneaking in the back way, but it ain’t safe out front. A few torches flicker on the wall. They been added after the generator died years ago. It always strike me how churchlike they make the place feel, since it really be an oversize grocery store. The hallway be dotted with office doors that say MANAGER, ASSISTANT MANAGER, but somebody, maybe the same joker who did the sign out front, done changed Manager to Manger.
Most of the rooms be empty. I look through the little glass windows set in the doors. Nothing but darkness.
“Hello?”
The lunchroom be next. When Father John took over, it been a classroom for us, with computers to e-mail our sponsors. Father John used to set out our care packages on the long tables, and we kids be going crazy trying to see who getting what. I got my first pair of rain boots that way. But they too soft to be walking around in Orleans back then, with debris so high and nails and pieces of glass cutting up everything. Daddy say I’d be dead of tetanus if I try wearing them. They too small to fit over my work boots, but they bright yellow with little white daisies on them. I ain’t never seen daisies for real. I loved them.
The hallway end in a set of closed double doors. Back here be where the nuns used to live, and the priests, and volunteers. Father John, too. Out there be the chapel. I put a hand to the left-side door and push.
“Hello?”
I hear somebody scuffling, like they rushing to hide, then some softer sounds. A man clears his throat.
“Welcome, child, and all who enter here.” The voice be booming softly, like a storm in the distance. It like Mr. Go that way, like Lydia, too, with her important voice. I relax. I know that voice, those words.
“Father John, it be me, Fen de la Guerre. You knew me a long time ago.”
It seem like I always be giving the same speech these days, telling people who I be, why they know me. Like something in the air here erase who you been and you got to keep saying it so you don’t forget.
“Fen?” He don’t sound so strong now, like the man I knew. He sound old. I step through the door. The room be lit with stubs of candles all around, making it hard to see. I stand by the altar, on a little stage. Rows of hard metal folding chairs fill the floor in front of me. A thin maroon rug run down the steps of the altar between the chairs to the front doors, with they heavy chain crisscrossing the handles. Things have changed. But not everything. The smell of old incense be strongest here, sharp with wild sage and other herbs. The real incense ran out before I been born.
“Father, where you at?”
“Here, child.” And then I see him in the corner by the nave. He reach into the old desk for matches and start to light the rows of devotional candles. Father John be tall, one of the tallest men I know. He be wearing long robes today, not his priest robes, the pretty black thing with the embroidered collar he used to do service in. These look more like the robes of a monk, rough-woven and dark brown. The kind of cloth we be making in the O-Positive camp. Easy to weave.
He light the last candle and turn to face me. The glow from the nave light up more of the room, but it keep his face in the dark. “Good to see you, Father,” I say.
He move into the light then, and I see him, older and with more gray in his hair than used to be, but his skin pink and healthy, and he smile at me like old times. He sweep me into a big hug, and I smell the sage, even stronger now, and something beneath it, sharp, like kerosene. I pull back.
“I’m sorry for the smell. You caught me cleaning up a spill from the generator. It runs on ethanol now. Some tribes in the area run a still and bring it to me. Made from potatoes or some such, I understand.”
“It ain’t bothering me,” I tell him, even if Baby Girl be wrinkling her nose like she fit to sneeze. “I just be happy to see you,” I say again.
“And you, Fen. And your child, is it?” he ask, catching sight of Enola. “You’ve both picked an interesting night to visit us. There seems to be an . . . altercation in the woods.”
I don’t know how to tell him it be worse than that, so I say nothing.
“Tell me, child, how are your parents?”
My breath hitch in my throat. “They dead, Father John. Long time ago, too.”
He nod and fold his hands into his sleeves. “We never had a service for them.” He don’t say it like he be judging me, but I feel bad all the same. Just because I ain’t got much use for God don’t mean my parents never did.
“That true,” I admit, hugging Enola to my chest. “They been killed by hunters. Ain’t nothing I could do to stop it. They told me to run, and I ran.”
“I am very sorry,” he say, but I can’t look him in the eye or I might let these tears fall. He put a hand on my back and push me into a seat. I can’t stop telling the story.
“They say, ‘Run, Fen, and don’t look back.’ And I don’t want to run, but there be dogs and whips and I don’t know what else to do, so I run and then I be in the swamp, swimming and running, and I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t.” I look up and I be crying again and angry about it but I can’t stop. “And I’d’ve come here to you, but you been so far away and them dogs been chasing me and then they stop and I know they got Mama and Daddy. So I just kept going and I fell in with some bad folks, and it take a while, but then I find the OPs like Daddy say and they test me and take me in.”
Father John don’t say nothing. He just sit next to me, so solid and safe and steady that I start to breathe again and my eyes stop leaking and I sink into my seat and let some of it go.
Baby Enola be looking up at me with her eyes bigger than anything, like they hold the whole world. She yawn real big and Father John shift beside me.
“Tell me about your little one.”
I smile, but it be sad to say it. “This be Baby Girl Enola, Father John. She ain’t mine,” I tell him. “She the daughter of my chieftain, but her mama be dead and we need your help.”
“Shall I baptize her?” Father John ask.
I hesitate. I don’t know what Lydia’d be wanting there, but then I think of that Delta water running down Enola’s clean face and I say, “No. But you can give her a new life. Outside the Delta.”
“What are you saying?”
I turn to him. “Remember my foster family, the Coopers? I know it been a long time, but they sponsored me ’cause they wanted kids and couldn’t have one of they own. They good people and they wanted to help me. Now I need it. Enola, she brand-new, Father, born just a few days ago. She type O and she clean, healthy as can be. She can go over the Wall, if you help.”
Father John look at Enola for a long time, then he look away, toward the lights burning in the nave.
“Can you do it?” I ask.
He clear his throat. “I�
��d have to test her,” he say. “And contact my diocese in the States. They might have a family . . . or contacts to your Coopers.”
A knot I ain’t known been in my stomach relax. I be sorry to let Enola go, but I be glad for her.
“There be a war out there,” I tell Father John. “That fighting outside be just the beginning, so the sooner, the better.”
Father John tense up. “Another war?” He sound distant and I know he thinking of the last time things been bad. Bad times be like the tide in Orleans. Now the tide be coming in again.
“I have feared this day,” he say, and it sound like he read it from the Bible.
He stand up quick. “Well, let us make haste, then. Bring the child to the altar. I will get my instruments.”
Testing Enola take some time. He swab the inside of her cheek to check for Fever in one of the offices with medical equipment. She drink two whole bottles while we wait. I change her and we sleep in one of the rooms the nuns used to share. The walls of the Super Saver be thick, but not so thick that I can’t hear fighting outside. It make me wonder if Daniel got enough sense in him to make it over the Wall on his own. But it too late to worry about that now. All I got to think about be this baby in my arms.
• • •
I must have fallen asleep, ’cause Father John wake me from a dream about the cottage in the glade.
“I am so sorry,” he say to me in that deep, important voice. “But the child is unclean.”
39
I ASK HIM TO SAY IT AGAIN.
I make him run the test three more times, but the answer always be the same.
It don’t matter that Enola be only four days old. That she ain’t had nothing but pure water and pure formula.
“I don’t know who told you she was O positive, Fen,” Father John say. “She’s B positive. She had the Fever even before she was born.”
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