Melt (Book 8): Hold

by Pike, JJ

  “She came here?” Christine brightened. “She’s not you, but she helped me a lot over the past week. She was quick and thorough. I can see why you like her so much.”

  “She shot herself,” said Alice.

  It wasn’t often that Christine Baxter and Michael Rayton responded in the same way but this was one of those times. Their mouths hung open and their eyes wide.

  “She shot herself?” Michael was incredulous. “Fran? Are you sure?”

  Alice nodded. “Here. In my woods. About a mile and a half down that path.”

  Michael bent over and threw up. He only had water in his stomach but he voided that in one go. “Sorry. It’s just…”

  What could any of them say? A bright young woman had made it all the way to safety and then shot herself in the head. It defied all logic.

  The next hour was solemn and somber. The sick soldiers were supplied with the few sheets and towels Jo had. Their general sorted out their sleeping arrangements, found Jo’s bunker, and set up a rudimentary shower unit.

  Alice and Betsy freed their prisoners from the couch and tied them to the wagon.

  Then it was time to say their goodbyes and head for home.

  “He’s coming with me,” said Christine.

  Alice looked where Christine bade her look. “The general?” The one with plastic hanging from his uniform? The one infected with MELT?

  “I can’t…” Even he knew it was a bad idea.

  “Then I stay,” said the Professor and put her cup on the ground.

  “Christine…” The general hadn’t stepped close to the healthy people. “They need you. Not just K&P, but the world. No one has figured out how to stop MELT yet. You said it yourself. We stop this or mankind—and thousands of other species—dies.”

  Christine shrugged. “I’m not leaving you. Either you come or I stay.”

  Alice and Michael shared a look. They were in agreement. Taking the sickness with them was a terrible idea. But what were they to do? He was probably right. The fate of the world was on Christine Baxter’s shoulders.

  “Fine,” said Alice. “He can come.”

  She turned back to the path. Now she had to collect her dead friend and go home. They were so close. She couldn’t lose focus now. Happiness—colored as it was by Fran’s death and the prospect of thousands of people dying—was down the road with Bill and Paul and Petra and Aggie and Midge.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “Did you know New York was a destination spot for spelunkers?” Alistair closed the doors to the funicular railcar that was the pride of his underground world. Without it they would have had to walk miles through caverns and down the staircases they’d cut into the rock. While that was doable, Alistair preferred to take the faster route that left him with both time and energy to deal with the more important tasks.

  “I did not.” Josephine was studying her surroundings. Let her. Even if she elected to leave Wolfjaw after all the splendors he was about to show her, he’d already ascertained that there was no one left for her to tell. She’d be talking to the raccoons and chickadees.

  “We have adapted the caves to create living spaces.”

  “Okay.” She was looking right at him again.

  He wanted to ask what she thought, but he had no intention of doing anything so weak and needy. The gravity-driven pulley system alone should have been enough to make her gasp, but it seemed she was going to play it cool. They had time. There was so much to show her and so much she’d want to know. How had they made a place this large? How had they made the roof secure? What about ventilation? And water? And food? And so on.

  The doors of the railcar opened into a corridor. They’d tunneled through solid rock to get to the caves beyond. What they were looking at now, thousands of feet below Wolfjaw, was legitimately the ninth wonder of the world. No one had done what he’d done.

  He waited. Josephine didn’t comment.

  Fine. He could match that. He was the king of cool.

  He handed her a headlamp, fixed his own to his forehead, and led the way.

  “They start with physical tests then move on to…what? You’ve never told me.”

  Oh, so that’s where her head was. She was thinking about the soldiers and the trials they faced. How could that possibly be more interesting than an underground city? He’d had plans to show her the gravity-driven water supply, the chain of farms he’d developed, the underground animal pens, the sanitation system, but if she was so fixated on the games above ground he wasn’t about to waste his time. He turned on his heels and walked back to the train.

  “You’re not going to give me the tour?”

  “You didn’t seem interested,” he said. “I thought we might as well cut it short.”

  “I’m fascinated.”

  Better.

  “You’ve done an amazing job.”

  He checked her out. He knew enough about the contours of her face to believe she was being genuine. “You didn’t suspect a thing, did you?”

  Josephine laughed. “Why would I? You already had a working village above ground. I had no reason to think you’d go below stairs, too.”

  “Do you want to know the hardest thing?”

  “I do.”

  He couldn’t help himself. He knew he was bragging, but it occurred to him that there was never going to be a new person down here ever again. This was going to be his home for the rest of his life. Josephine Morgan was going to be the last outsider to bear witness to his genius. “I designed a water filtration system that will make the water, which naturally flows through the caverns, drinkable.”

  Josephine smiled. “That’s amazing. Where does the water come from?”

  For the millionth time, Alistair was struck by how strange Josephine Morgan was. She should have been begging to join Wolfjaw already. Instead she was asking questions about logistics. Oh, well. Each to their own. Perhaps this was a tiny step in the right direction? She wasn’t gushing about how marvelous his underground city was, but neither was she running in the other direction. Give her time.

  “The filtration system is unlike anything that’s ever been built before. If the world above makes it through this catastrophe, though I doubt it will, I’ll patent my system and sell it to people who want to filter out the modern world. It’s that good.”

  “That’s a tall order,” said Josephine. She knew. They’d talked about it many times.

  The water supply in most municipalities was loaded with contaminants which were deemed to be found “at acceptable levels”. In Alistair’s considered opinion, there could be no “acceptable level” of chlorine, fluorine, nitrites, pesticides, hormones, or any of the other contaminants that had made it into the system. He neither needed estrogen nor Viagra in his drinking water. Both were found in alarming quantities in the New York City water supply. He wasn’t kidding when he said he could create hospital-grade clean water. It would save them. He was as proud of that system as anything else he’d achieved in his 56 years on the planet.

  “There are people out there who’d benefit from it now. We both know what’s coming. There’s going to be a wholesale breakdown of all water supplies across the northeast. Indian Point is just the beginning. I know we never talk about the world out there, Alistair, but I beg you, if you’ve found a way to make water safe, share it.”

  Well, what do you know! Josephine Morgan had begged him for access to his prize invention. “I’ll give it some serious thought,” he said. “But we’re not done. Through here, we have our decon zone.”

  “Decon?”

  “Over here…” He gestured towards the bunk beds they’d chiseled out of solid wall face. “We have a double-door system and a place where people can rest while they’re screened for contaminants. We’re going to have to send people out to consolidate our supplies, I know that. I built a chamber between the outer and the inner doors so we can monitor what’s passing between these two worlds.”

  She studied the firepit, the stove above, the heating and
cooling system, and the water supply. She hadn’t noticed how the latrines interfaced with the system, but when he revealed that to her—maybe at the end of the tour when she’d seen all Wolfjaw Down had to offer—she might elect to stick around.

  He couldn’t sit on it, he had to share at least a fraction of what he’d achieved. “We use our own sewage as fertilizer.”

  Josephine crinkled her nose.

  “I know what you’re thinking. You’re remembering all those history lessons and the stories of the night soil men.”

  “No. As a matter of fact I was thinking about human biosolids.”

  Alistair laughed. “You’re right, the sewer-sludge that’s added to store-bought fertilizer—euphemistically referred to as biosolids—is filled with heavy metals, BPAs, antibacterial soap, shampoo, endocrine disruptors, carcinogens, allergens, the works.” This was one of the magical things about owning your own land and building your own community. You got to study and decide what you wanted in your soil and water and, thence, your food and bodies. He’d spent hours digging into the literature and educating himself. Wolfjaw was the cleanest 300-acre patch of land in the United States of America. He’d seen to that. He had every right to be excited. “My people have been eating homegrown foods for years. Their waste is like the waste of the 1300s—organic and toxin-free—perfectly safe to spread on our fields.”

  “You have fields?” Now she sounded excited. And why not? There was plenty to be excited about.

  Alistair sidled past the rock that doubled as a door which would seal the outside world out and keep his people safely inside. “We have fields, diving pools, mineral lakes, cattle, livestock. We even have a working still.”

  Josephine laughed. “Says the man who doesn’t drink.”

  “Just because I don’t indulge,” he said, “doesn’t mean I don’t know the power of a good tumbler of vodka to raise morale.”

  “You’ve thought of everything.”

  “I’ve tried.”

  They passed the first of three health stations. Alistair waved at Patrice, his head nurse. She was the backbone of the healthcare brigade. What she didn’t know about the interface between traditional and holistic healing wasn’t worth knowing. She’d insisted she be allowed to cultivate her own medicinal garden and had already proven she could reverse type 2 diabetes.

  “Patrice. You remember Josephine Morgan?”

  The two women shook hands.

  “Make sure he shows you the fungal fairy caves,” said Patrice.

  “Well, now. If that doesn’t pique your curiosity nothing will,” said Alistair.

  Josephine nodded, taking in the well-stocked shelves and luxurious ward Patrice had outfitted for the Ridgers. You might hope no one would fall ill, but you should never bank on it. Bank on people getting sick and plan from there.

  He steered Josephine back into the corridor.

  “You didn’t ask…” she said.

  “Sorry?”

  “You didn’t ask why the general was wrapped in plastic.”

  Alistair stopped. “I’m not an idiot. I assumed he was ill. Was I wrong?”

  “I was surprised you allowed the soldiers to come here.” Her tone had changed. What was she trying to pry from him now? She put her hand on his arm. She’d never touched him before. It was shockingly intimate in the dimly lit corridor. “I thought you’d refuse them entry. Thank you for that act of kindness. I won’t forget it.”

  Alistair shrugged. If she wanted to believe that she was free to do so.

  “I want to share something with you.”

  Alistair held open the door to the fungal room. “I’m listening.”

  “If any of your people come down with the sickness, it can be managed.” She spoke as if she were sharing the secrets of the Holy Grail: hushed and reverent, but with a tinge of pride.

  “No one’s going to…”

  “But if they do.”

  The fungal room was a favorite among the Ridgers. Josephine was looking at him, rather than the walls and ceilings which glowed with a thousand bioluminescent spore-filled fungi. He’d designed it as a reminder of the night sky. His people weren’t going to go stir crazy or get cabin fever. He’d built a place of many wonders as well as catering to their material needs.

  “It has been spreading. The disease. It’s not just the people I came here with who have it. There are others. Localized outbreaks. Outside the zone. It’s not contained. Your people could have been exposed. It’s not spreading as fast as it was, nor showing up on contact. We think it might be able to incubate…” She stopped. There was something important she needed to say. The increase in her breathing rate told him so. “At least, that’s one theory.”

  How disappointing. If she’d had something pertinent to say, she’d talked herself out of it.

  Alistair turned back to his fairy room. Josephine still hadn’t looked at the ceiling. She was concentrating on the wrong things. He didn’t want to have to point out every single triumph.

  “You’re not going to want them down here and we have no idea what’s going to happen once the storm hits New York. More contaminants are going to be swept inland. I know you want to keep your exposure to an absolute minimum.”

  She was a fly in his ointment, no doubt about it. He should have been high on natural endorphins. Instead he found that he was suddenly irritated and cranky.

  “I think you should allow the infected soldiers to come with me.”

  He hadn’t expected that.

  “You and I are the same in this regard, Alistair. We’re emergency thinkers, with a penchant for predicting the worst. You won’t want the soldiers to come inside this marvelous creation while they’re still carrying the infection. Even if this storm system weakens and goes out to sea, we’re looking at storm surges, coastal erosion, more nuclear…”

  “I take your point.” He couldn’t say more. The soldiers might already be swinging in the birches.

  “So we’re agreed? I don’t want them exposed to nuclear rain. You won’t want them in your underground caverns. The only reasonable solution is to let them come with me.”

  There was a hole in her argument. It irritated him more than he could say. “Where are you going to put them? In your barn? That won’t protect them from your nuclear rain.”

  “I have a bunker,” she said. “I’m going to put them down there.”

  “With you?”

  She smiled. “You know me better than that, Alistair. I’m risk-averse. I’ll stay with my neighbors. Alice will allow it.”

  “Yes, Alice…” He had admired Alice Everlee before this industrial disaster. She was like him in so many ways. She saw the world for what it was and planned around the greed and foolishness of men. He’d expected great things from Alice, but she’d turned out to be little more than a functionary in a broken system, no more able to stem the tide of disaster than anyone else. At least, that’s what he assumed. If she’d pulled off some heroics he would have heard about it. The radioman Widget, from The Raw Truth, had his finger on the pulse. If there’d been anyone standing up and doing something useful, he’d have been right there, reporting on it. The fact of that silence led Alistair to believe that Alice and all her colleagues had abandoned their duties and fled or died trying. Either way, that she could be party to such a cataclysm was disappointing. “What must she be thinking now?”

  “I imagine she’s doing everything in her power to stop this tragedy.” Once again, Josephine Morgan showed how little she understood about human nature.

  “She knew it was coming.” He waited. Josephine didn’t comment. Couldn’t she connect the dots? Had he misjudged her, too? “Why else would she tell us to get rid of all plastics?”

  “Because they are inherently bad for you? Leave a plastic container in the sun and BPAs are leaking into your water. You know all this. What’s your point?”

  “Your friend thought that she had prepared for the worst, but the nightmare she unleashed on the world outstripped everyone’s i
magination.”

  “You can’t blame Alice. She’s not the reason we’re in this mess. You’re looking for a scapegoat. I get it. This disaster has us all on tenterhooks, but I won’t let you paint her as the villain. Alice has been good to me. And, it seems, you. If she came here and warned you, which frankly is stunning to me, then you should count yourself as lucky.”

  She was lecturing him. Miss Morgan had the audacity to lecture him. It soured everything. Best thing would be to cut the tour short and show her the door. He turned around, without comment, leaving her at the entrance to the fungal fairy room that now felt like a cave of glowing mushrooms rather than his dream-come-true, impossible-vision-of-loveliness. She’d rained on his parade, ruining everything.

  “We’re headed back?” she said.

  “I have a village to run.”

  They marched back through the few chambers he’d managed to share with her and were at the transport within minutes. Alistair held open the door to the train car. They got in without comment. The journey would have been uncomfortable if he had cared about what she might be thinking or feeling, but she’d driven all those considerations out the door. She was unbiddable, stubborn, looking west when he would have preferred her to look east. He was lucky she’d never signed up to join his thriving community. She’d have been too willful, too scratchy, too annoying.

  The car reached the surface. Josephine was lost in thought. Or at least, keeping them to herself. Either way, didn’t matter. She had her mouth shut. That’s what he cared about. He didn’t need to hear another word from her. He wished he hadn’t taken her down there.

  When they broke out into the open air they were met with a stream of runners. At least that was going to plan. Alistair cleared his mind of all that had transpired in the last half hour and took stock.

  Jacinta had begun the games and handed off their supervision to her deputy, Kurt. That meant she was off taking care of their “Birch” problem.

  Excellent.

  She was the best second he could wish for: loyal, hardworking, and utterly, utterly reliable. He never had to wonder what she was thinking or whether she had his best interests at heart. Josephine Morgan might outstrip Jacinta in the brains department, but what did brains matter if you didn’t put them to good use?