The Lost City: The Palumbra Chronicles: Book Two

by L. D. Fairchild

  Slowly, she rolled to her back and lowered her arms. A large, rough tongue licked the side of her face. Maeve opened her eyes to stare into Rufus's big, brown eyes. She started to laugh as Rufus continued to lick the sweat and tears off her face. "Oh, Rufus, where have you been?"

  She pushed herself to a sitting position, wrapped her arms around the huge dog and buried her face into his soft fur. Rufus whimpered and nudged at her arm, urging her to rub his ears. Maeve obliged and reveled in the feel of his fur against her face.

  "Guess we'd better get moving. Huh, boy?" Using his sturdy back to steady herself, Maeve regained her feet, feeling a bit stronger. She was still sick. She had no idea what she was going to do. But she was no longer alone.

  Maeve and Rufus approached Gray's dark house. Despite the fact that they had only been gone a few days, the house held an air of neglect. The grass had grown longer than normal and dust from the hot, dry summer had gathered on the windows. To be honest, Maeve knew it could have looked like that before they had left. Gray spent more time at her and Emma's place than she spent at his.

  Maeve stepped around the corner of the house, hoping she could avoid seeing anyone on this street. This was where she had grown up. She didn't want to be the reason that her friends and neighbors died.

  "OK, boy," she whispered to Rufus. "Let's be careful. We don't want to get close to anyone."

  Luckily, the street was deserted, and Maeve and Rufus stumbled toward the city center. Maeve knew she had to keep moving in that direction to keep Thomas safe, but as long as she didn't get too close to anyone, things would be fine. She could let someone know what was going on, then go somewhere to be alone and die. It was a good plan, she thought.

  Her toe caught on a twig that had fallen to the dirt road. She stumbled and reached grasping fingers toward Rufus to steady herself, but her fingers came away with nothing but air, and she hit the ground face first. She lay there unable to move. Her body was sore and achy. A cough once again wracked her entire being. Rufus nosed at her, urging her to rise, but her strength was gone. The sky seemed to shimmer and wobble. She blinked. Once. Twice. Then closed her eyes and didn't open them again. Rufus's cold nose pressed against her arm, then her head. Then it was gone.

  She was alone again. Maybe that was best. She wheezed in a breath, struggling to breath without coughing. She was so cold, yet sweat droplets dripped off her face and hair. There was a reason she needed to get up and keep moving, but she no longer knew what it was.

  She heard slow, purposeful footsteps and turned her head toward the sound. They were coming nearer. But they shouldn't. There was a reason no one should get near her. What was it? A cool hand touched her face. Maeve turned her face toward it. Something warm covered her. Rufus's nose was back, pushing at her head and her hands.

  "Maeve, Maeve, can you hear me?"

  Maeve knew that voice, but she shouldn't be near her. There was something about Maeve that would be dangerous to her. Maeve struggled to open her heavy eyelids. She caught a glimpse of the woman kneeling next to her, the woman who had covered her with the blanket and touched her face. Her eyelids slid closed and a silent tear rolled down her face.

  "Maeve, it's me. Emma." She patted Maeve's cheek. "You need to wake up."

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  "Get away." The words were barely a whisper. Maeve tried again and managed to add some strength to her voice. "Get away, Emma."

  Emma continued to examine Maeve, running her hands over her arms and legs, looking for the source of what ailed her. Maeve feebly pushed her hands away.

  "You have to get away from me." Maeve struggled to draw air into her lungs. "I'm sick. It will kill you. Please. Get away."

  Emma ignored her and placed her hand on Maeve's forehead.

  "You're burning up. We have to get you inside. Come on, John."

  Hands lifted Maeve to her feet, her arms were placed over others' shoulders, and she was half-dragged down the street.

  "We have to get you into bed and get some willow bark into you."

  Maeve struggled to stop her forward progress. She couldn't go into the house with them. She needed to get to the city center. Her thoughts were jumbled. She pulled her arms away from their shoulders and crumpled to the ground again.

  "I can't. Don't want to infect you." Maeve's words came out in a rush, leaving her breathless. Emma crouched next to her.

  Maeve tried to scoot backward. Emma drew her eyebrows together and studied Maeve thoughtfully. Maeve tried to scoot away again, putting more distance between them. Rufus stood patiently at her side, and Maeve leaned her head against his flank.

  "Please, Emma. Get away from me."

  Emma heard the urgency in her voice and took two steps backward.

  "Fine." She turned to John. "Go get the willow bark and some water. Hurry."

  Maeve heard John's footsteps retreat.

  "What's going on, Maeve? How did you get sick?"

  A fit of coughing shook Maeve's body from head to toe. When the coughing subsided, she just shook her head. "It's too much to tell, Emma. I can't sit here long. Thomas's life depends on me moving toward the city."

  Emma's gaze took in Maeve's prone form. "You're not going anywhere under your own power right now, so you might as well tell me what's going on." She took a step toward Maeve.

  "No! You can't get near me."

  Emma held up a calming hand and stepped backward. "OK, OK. I'll stay here. You start talking."

  Between coughing fits, Maeve gave Emma a short version of all that had happened since they left. She had just finished when John returned with the willow bark mixture.

  "Take this, Maeve." John held out a tin cup filled to the brim. He stepped toward her.

  "Stay back," Maeve said weakly.

  "OK. I'll set it right here." He set down the cup and backed away to where Emma stood. Maeve scooted forward until she could reach the cup then raised it with shaking hands to her lips, a few drops spilling on her leg. She drained the cup, then leaned her head against the wall of the building behind her. Closing her eyes, she sat in silence, listening to Emma quietly fill John in on all that Maeve had told her.

  Maeve began to struggle to her feet.

  "What are you doing?" Emma said with alarm in her voice. "You're too weak to go anywhere. Let John go get Cleo, and she can come to you."

  Maeve looked at her with pleading eyes. "I have to keep moving, or Arabella will kill Thomas."

  "How does she know where you are?" John scanned the sky, looking for anything watching her.

  "There's a tracker in my arm."

  "Where?" John took a step closer. "Show me."

  "Stay there." Maeve pushed up her sleeve and pointed to the barely visible square below the flesh in her upper arm. John studied her arm from a distance.

  "We could take it out."

  "What?" Maeve's brain was sluggish.

  "We could take it out." John continued to study her arm. "Then I could carry it with me when I go to get Cleo. Arabella will never know the difference, and you won't infect half the government."

  Maeve shook her head as if to clear it. It seemed too easy. Wouldn't Arabella have thought of that?

  "Are you sure it will come out, that it's not, I don't know, grafted into me somehow?"

  John shrugged. "There's only one way to find out." John pulled a small folding knife out of his pocket. "We're going to need some water and a fire. Can you make it to the house?" John pointed toward Maeve's and Emma's house 100 yards away. The distance looked like a mile to Maeve. She wasn't sure she could make it at all, but she pushed away from the house she was leaning against and commanded her brain to put one foot in front of the other. She began to move in a slow, painful shuffle, stopping frequently to rest as a coughing fit tore through her body. John and Emma walked about 10 feet in front of her. Every time they stopped to wait for her, she motioned them onward. She didn't want them any closer. The ground in front of her wavered before her eyes. As she struggled to get her le
gs to do what her increasingly sluggish brain told them to do, she wondered how John was going to get the tracker out without getting near her.

  The 100-yard distance took Maeve 15 minutes to navigate. She knew she was going too slowly and Thomas's life was on the line, but what did Arabella expect? Arabella had made her almost too sick to move.

  Finally, they reached the house, and Maeve sat heavily on the front step. "Hurry," she said in a hoarse voice. "Get the tracker out."

  John entered the house and after a few minutes returned with a bowl full of water, holding his knife out away from his body. Maeve assumed he had sterilized it in the fire inside. When he got to the top of the steps, Maeve held up a hand.

  "How are you going to do this?" She shook her head wearily. "You can't get near me or you'll get sick, too." She turned her head and coughed into her arm. When the coughing fit had subsided, John was sitting next to her on the step.

  "No, you can't do this!" She grabbed the railing and tried to pull herself up to get away from him.

  John placed his hand gently on her arm and eased her back to the sit on the step. "Maeve, I'll be fine. I promise. Let's get this done."

  "You can't know that." Maeve's voice rose hysterically. "You'll get sick. You'll die. I need to protect you."

  John patted her soothingly on the shoulder. "Maeve, listen to me. I promise I will be fine. I am not going to get sick, and I definitely don't plan on dying."

  His calm, measured voice broke through Maeve's panic and she stopped struggling to get away. "You can't know that," she said in a more normal tone.

  John nodded his head. "I can. I’m pretty sure I can't catch the virus."

  Maeve's fevered eyes studied his face, looking for signs that he was lying to her. "How? How do you know that?"

  "Because he's been injected with the vaccine," Emma said from where she was standing near the door of the house.

  Maeve looked from Emma to John. She knew she couldn't have heard Emma right. "What vaccine?"

  John took Maeve's arm and raised his knife to begin cutting out the tracker. "Focus on what I'm saying, Maeve. This is going to hurt a bit." He cut into her skin with the tip of his knife, and Maeve bit her lip to keep from making a sound.

  "I used to work for Arabella − a long time ago before I joined The Resistance. Back when I believed in her ideals of making Palumbra a haven of peace and plenty. Before power became her only goal. I was in the process of making arrangements to leave the government and go into hiding with The Resistance when Arabella insisted that all of her top advisors receive this vaccine."

  "Didn't that worry you?"

  John shook his head. "I was naive. I had no idea what the vaccine was for. We got shots to keep us healthy all the time. I just assumed this was another one, but when I went to get the shot, there were only about 10 of us in the room. Usually, everyone in the government got the shots, and the line would stretch through the building."

  Maeve winced as John's knife dug into her arm. Through gritted teeth, she asked, "How do you know the vaccine was for this virus."

  "Because I asked the nurse administering the shot. She said it was for a new virus and was just precautionary. My suspicions were great enough that I started investigating this new virus and found it was something Arabella's scientists had created in a lab."

  Maeve clenched her hands into fists as John made another cut on her arm. "Why didn't you do anything about it?"

  "I did. We did. When the WG fell, we went to the lab and destroyed all the samples. She must have taken a vial or two before we got there. While we were able to round up nearly all of Arabella's supporters, some got away. They must have followed her to The Hub. Got it."

  John placed a small chip on the towel he had laid next to his leg. "Let's get you fixed up. I can't do stitches, but we'll bandage you up and it should be fine. You might have a bit of a scar."

  "If I live that long," Maeve said.

  John patted her on the shoulder again. "We'll figure it out, Maeve. Have faith in your friends."

  John handed Maeve another tin cup filled with a greenish mixture. "Drink this. It will help with the pain."

  Maeve's arm had begun to ache where John removed the tracker, so she drank the vile-smelling mixture without complaint. John picked up the tracker and rose to his feet. "I'm going to get this to Cleo." He smiled at Maeve. "You let Emma take care of you."

  Maeve shook her head weakly. "She can't come near me. I may have already infected her." She slumped back against the step. "I'll just sit here."

  John hoisted her to her feet. "Come on. You can't sit out here where anyone can see you. I'll help you up to bed." John cut her off before she could protest. "Emma will stay outside your room, but you'll be more comfortable."

  John settled her into her own bed, plumping the pillow behind her. Emma hovered in the doorway. As he moved to step away, she grabbed his hand. "I'm going to die, aren't I?" she whispered softly so Emma couldn't hear.

  John leaned lower to hear her whispered words. "Not if I can help it," he said fiercely. He squeezed her hand. "You hang in there until I get back."

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  "This is never going to work." Ginger adjusted the rock in her bleeding fingers. "We'll be here until next week trying to get these things off our hands." She held up her still-bound hands to show what little progress she had made on cutting through the thick, leather ties holding her hands together. Blood from her raw fingers dripped down onto the leather.

  "Keep working at it," Gray said through gritted teeth. "We have to get back to Maeve." Gray sawed at the leather ties with his own rock though he hadn't made much more progress than Ginger.

  "Hey, guys." Emery's voice echoed through the cavern where they sat. Gray looked at where Emery had been sitting, sawing at her bonds like the rest of them but didn't see her. "Where are you, Emery?"

  "Over here."

  Gray turned to look behind him. The cavern was lit by the sun shining in through the high entrance, but the shadows hid Emery. All he could see was her outline. "You need to see this." Her voice drifted from the shadows.

  Tristan walked over to where Emery stood. "How did you... Oh, wow. Great job, Emery. Get over here, you two."

  Gray and Ginger scrambled to their feet and hurried over to Tristan and Emery.

  "What is it?" Gray asked. "How did you get your hands free?"

  "Ta-da!" Emery waved her hand as if presenting something. "Our key to freedom."

  Gray squinted in the shadows and made out a piece of rock protruding from the wall of the cave. "It's razor sharp." Emery held up her newly freed hands as if to prove that it worked. Tristan was already sawing through his bonds that came away with a soft snap as he broke through the last strand of leather. Ginger and Gray quickly removed their own bonds.

  "Well, that's one problem solved." Tristan shook his hands to return circulation to his fingers. "On to the next one. Where are we going to find food?"

  They looked at each other, no one sure where to begin. "We've been out here too long already." Gray began to pace then raised his head with an agonized look. "She could be dead already."

  Ginger rubbed his arm. "Or she could still be alive. She's smart, and she's tough. We have to focus on finding our way back. We can't help her if we're stuck out here."

  "Do we even know the way back?" Gray ran his hands through his hair in frustration.

  "I do." Emery tapped her head. "Photographic memory, remember? And I'm pretty good with directions."

  "How far do you think it is, Em?" Ginger asked.

  "Well, those hovercars don't have a really long range."

  Ginger sent her a questioning glance. Emery shrugged. "I didn't really have anything else to do in the hovercar all by myself except for Rufus, so I checked it out."

  "What happened to Rufus?" Tristan asked.

  "I don't know. He made a run for it as soon as the hovercar doors opened. I was surprised Arabella's guards didn't shoot him. I think he must have surprise
d them."

  "Back to where we are," Gray said impatiently.

  "Right. The hovercars have a very short range, and they needed to get back to The Hub. I figure we can't be more than fifteen to twenty miles outside of Bellus."

  "Fantastic." Sarcasm seeped from Gray's voice. "It will take us a day to get back to Bellus and another two days to get back to Palumbra. How does that help Maeve?"

  "But we don't have to go back to Bellus," Emery said. "Look." She picked up a stick and began to draw in the dirt floor of the cavern. "This is Palumbra." She pointed at an X she had drawn in the top right of the space. "This." She drew another X to the right of the first one. "Is Bellus." She drew a third X below and midway between the two X's. She pointed to it with her stick. "This is where I think we are." She drew a line between the third X and the one representing Palumbra. "We can just go straight to Palumbra, cutting off at least a day."

  Ginger moved so she could study Emery's crude map. "Are you sure, Emery? We don't want to wander around out here forever."

  Emery nodded decisively. "I'm sure. We go straight from here to Palumbra. We should be there in a couple of days."

  "What about Thomas?" Tristan asked quietly. "Where's the oasis?"

  Emery considered her map for a minute, then drew an X midway and slightly to the right of the line between Palumbra and their location. "I think it's there."

  Tristan eyed Gray warily before speaking. "It's right on our way."