by Kat Falls
“Good job on the boot size,” I said, but he just waved me forward. Whatever. I wasn’t here to make friends. Still, I was pleased that everything fit. I even felt a little tougher dressed in military pants and a carbon-gray top. Now I could slip through the shadows like a real fetch instead of shining like a beacon of westerness in white vinyl.
We didn’t take the trail the guards with Bangor had hurried down. Instead, Everson guided me alongside the fence that enclosed the island. A high-pitched yammering echoed from the far bank of the river. Everson didn’t seem to hear it. I paused to peer through the chain link into the darkness beyond, but could see nothing.
“Don’t touch the fence,” he warned.
“Is it electrified?”
“Yeah. It’s set to stun-lethal. Meaning, touch it once, the shock will knock you flat. Touch it again, your heart stops.”
When the yammering started up again, he jerked his chin toward the sound. “Feral.”
I looked, but I couldn’t even make out the river, let alone the east bank. “You mean an infected animal?”
Everson cocked his head, listening. “Human, I think. One that’s too mutated to talk.”
My gut twisted. Mutated. So the rumors were true. “Is Bangor going to mutate?” Everson nodded. “Okay,” I said, though it absolutely wasn’t. “But why was he acting crazy?”
“Right now he’s just fevered. Bangor’s body is trying to kill the virus with heat, but it’s not working, so his body keeps upping his temperature.”
“Why were his eyes yellow?”
“Because even if he lives through the fever, Bangor is still grupped.” Everson glanced back at me. “Genetically corrupted.”
Ahead of us, a pool of light illuminated a massive gate made of chain link and corrugated steel, topped with cantilevered spikes wrapped in razor wire. As if that wasn’t intimidation enough, a guard booth was stationed beside it. Everson pointed past the gate. “We’re at the bridge.”
“The last bridge?” I peered through the fence and could make out its skeletal silhouette against the river.
“The one and only.”
Despite all the spotlights aimed at the gate, the bridge itself was disappointingly dark. Probably another security measure. Still, when Everson wasn’t looking, I pushed record and aimed my dial toward it. It was a famous landmark, after all.
“Listen,” he whispered.
I’d heard it too. A child’s voice saying, “Please help us.” The guard didn’t stir in his sentry station, even though he had to have heard the child as well. Everson slipped behind the guard booth. I followed and saw a little girl in a filthy T-shirt clinging to the chain link on the bridge side. Clearly the gate itself wasn’t electrified. A man in a blood-soaked shirt and torn pants lay in a wagon beside her, his limbs draped over the edges. At Everson’s approach, the girl looked up with eyes a nice, normal shade of brown. If she wasn’t infected, where had she come from?
“Please help him.” The girl pushed a snarl of black hair behind her ear. She had to be ten at most.
Everson peered through the fence at the unconscious man. “Was he mauled?”
Mauled. The word wound up my spine and clung there.
“My mom turned. She went — She was about to …” Shuddering, the girl looked down at the man in the wagon.
His face was tipped away from us, which was probably a good thing since the sight of his chest and right leg made me light-headed. I couldn’t tell stripped shirt from stripped flesh. Only the faint wheeze of his breathing revealed that he was alive.
“Get away from the gate, you stupid grunts!” shouted an angry voice. I turned to see a ruddy-faced guard step from the booth. His gaze skipped over me and onto Everson. “You,” he spat. “What a surprise.”
Ignoring him, Everson crouched so that he was at eye level with the little girl. “What’s your name?” he asked in a voice so low and gentle that I couldn’t help but stare. Where was this guy when I was back on the hill? Or standing in my underwear between the barracks? Moments that wouldn’t have been nearly so nerve-wracking if he’d used that tone with me.
“Jia,” the girl said, still clinging to the chain link.
“Did your mother bite him, Jia?” Everson nodded to the unconscious man with blood pooling by his outstretched leg. The girl gave a pained shrug. “Where is your mom now?” Rising, Everson looked past her into the darkness beyond.
Jia took up the man’s hand. “He shot her….” She said it so softly I wasn’t sure that I’d heard her right. “To save me.”
The ruddy-faced guard stalked toward us. “I told you, no one here is going to help you,” he snapped at her. “So, take off. And take him with you.” He pointed his gun at the mauled man.
“I’ll test them.” Everson turned on the guard. “If they’re clean, you’re going to open the gate.”
The two glared at each other. Then, surprisingly, the guard retreated. “Sure, let them in. What do I care?” he snarled before slamming back into the booth. “Let them all in, big man.”
Guess I wasn’t the only one who thought Everson was bossy.
“I need to get some things so I can test your blood,” Everson told Jia. “And his.”
“But he needs help now,” she cried.
“I can’t touch him yet. But I’ll be back with a couple of medics who’ve had a lot more training than me. If he’s not infected, they’ll help him. I promise.”
As we hurried toward a large building, there was so much I wanted to know — like did uninfected people live in the Feral Zone? But I was too worried about the little girl to think straight. “If Jia’s mother is dead, where will she go? Who’s going to take care of her?”
“If she tests clean, I’ll take her to the orphan camp,” Everson said. “It’s on the other end of the island.”
Orphan camp. That didn’t sound too awful. It had to be better than living with a mother who attacked people. “How could Jia’s mother have mauled that man?” I asked from behind him.
“Later.”
But as another series of screeches erupted from beyond the fence, I caught up with Everson. “What is happening to these people?”
He sighed, relenting, but didn’t slow his pace. “You know Ferae is a bootloader virus, right?”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“It means Ferae carries foreign DNA. Animal DNA, to be exact. So do other viruses — swine flu, avian. The difference is that Ferae dumps its load into the infected person’s system. It’s called viral transduction. And when that happens, the person is epically grupped.”
“Because he’ll mutate … but how?” The screech from across the river trailed off. A chill skittered through me and I stopped short. “They become animals.”
“Not all the way.” Everson faced me, his expression grim. “They’re still part human….”
The moment I set foot in the dimly lit infirmary, memories of my mother threatened to shut me down. The building had clearly not been designed to be an infirmary — doors with frosted windows lined the hall, making it seem more like an old office building — and yet the antiseptic smell gave away its current function. The smell also brought back the desperation I’d felt the day they’d checked my mother into the hospital, knowing it was for the last time — that she’d never come home again.
Everson led the way through the echoing corridor, and I kept my face ducked until we stepped into a dark office. When he flipped on the light, I glanced at him and was caught by surprise. He was younger than I’d thought — only a year or so older than me. And despite the cropped hair, military fatigues, and the fact that he stood a head taller than me, he wasn’t nearly as intimidating as before. Probably because he wasn’t trying to be.
I tore my gaze from him and wiped my sweaty palms on my pants. The office was a mess. Crumpled food wrappers and blue inhalers littered the floor. All the cupboards were flung open and a mini refrigerator sat precariously on a stack of storage bins. Had biohaz agents
come here and tossed Dr. Solis’s office because of his association with my father?
“He’s probably in the lab,” Everson said as he pulled a couple of latex gloves from a box. Since he didn’t seem the least bit alarmed, I figured the doctor must leave his office like this all the time.
“What kind of doctor is Dr. Solis?”
“A virologist,” Everson said, pocketing the gloves. “A long time ago he worked for the CDC.”
“What’s the CDC?” I scooped a midnight-blue inhaler off the floor.
“The Centers for Disease Control. It was a government agency that got cut before the plague.”
“What did they do?”
“Prevent plagues …” He loaded on the irony.
I snorted. Every history lesson about the early part of this century seemed to end with a ba-dum-bum-ching. I shook the inhaler by my ear but there was no slosh. At one point it had contained a sleeping spray called Lull, which I was somewhat familiar with. It had been prescribed to my father back when he’d had hernia surgery. After just one night, he’d thrown the inhaler away because the Lull had knocked him out cold for twelve hours straight.
Everson’s dark brows drew together when he saw what I was holding. “The doctor has trouble sleeping.”
He must — since the trash can contained enough inhalers to conk out a herd of stampeding elephants.
Everson strode to the desk and picked up an inhaler lying there. “He’s been on call since dawn, so he’ll be dying to sleep.” He met my gaze as he pocketed the Lull. “If he takes a hit before you two talk, you may as well ask the wall about your dad. I’ll tell him you’re here, then I’m going to try to convince a couple of medics to come back to the gate with me.” He headed for the door, snagging a white box off a shelf on his way. At the door, he paused. “Don’t touch anything.”
I stiffened. Did I look like a thief?
“I didn’t mean — There are eighteen strains of Ferae in there.” He pointed at the mini fridge. “You don’t want to infect yourself — that’s all I meant.”
“Oh.” No, I definitely did not want to infect myself. In fact, I was going to sit down and keep my hands in my lap until Dr. Solis showed up. Maybe I’d even keep my breathing to a minimum. I did a slow turn in place, trying to decide what spot looked the least germy. Would it be rude to move the doctor’s paperwork? I eyed the stack of files on the chair next to me. A corner of a photo stuck out from the pile. I stared at it. Moving the stack — questionable. Riffling through it — definitely rude. And yet I reached for the photo, gently pulled it free of the pile … and then nearly swallowed a lung.
I flipped the photo over before the image gave me brain damage, but of course, within a second I had to take another peek. The picture was of a person’s open mouth with a scattering of oozing sores where teeth should have been. In some of the gaps, new teeth were growing in — triangular, serrated, and definitely not human.
My conscience pinged but I couldn’t stop myself; I sifted through the stack and found a manila folder labeled “Stage Two: Physical Mutation.” Inside were more photos of human body parts gone very, very wrong. Two curling yellow horns that poked through someone’s dark hair. A child’s fingers that ended in claws. A man’s forearm sprouting patches of spotted fur.
“Not an attractive bunch, are they?” asked a voice behind me.
I spun as a man with graying hair closed the office door — Dr. Solis, judging by his white lab coat. He was so willowy that a child could have pushed him over. He smiled. “I don’t suppose they show you pictures like that in your science classes.”
“No, never.” I slid the photos back into the folder, despite feeling a pressing need to flip through the rest of the pile. Actually, what I really wanted was to swipe a few and smuggle them into the West to show Anna. I needed someone to shriek with.
“I’m Vincent Solis,” he said. “And you are Delaney. It’s good to finally meet you, even if the circumstances aren’t the best.” He saw my surprise and added, “Everson says you’re looking for Mack.”
Yes, I was, but the mutated body parts had hijacked my thoughts. “Can you cure them?” I pointed to the file with the photos.
“No.” Sighing, he settled into the chair behind the desk. “I can’t even develop an effective vaccine until I have samples of all the different strains. So far the most I’ve come up with is an inhibitor that slows the rate of the mutation. It’s not much, but they’re clamoring for it over there.” He waved airily toward what I guessed was the East. “Every month, your father takes a crate of it to a group of infected people living in an old quarantine compound. They tell him about any changes they’ve noticed or if they’re experiencing side effects. It’s not an ideal way to conduct research, but until the law changes, I don’t dare go myself.”
“Why not?” It was okay for my father to risk infection and arrest, but not him?
“Titan pays for all of this” — he swept a shaky hand at the room and the corridor beyond — “in the hopes that I’ll find a way to immunize the line guards. They don’t care about those who are already infected. The CEO, Ilsa Prejean, has made it quite clear that if I ever cross the river to collect data, she’ll cut my funding. You see, the corporation that gets paid to enforce the quarantine can’t afford to employ a quarantine breaker. That’s why I’m so grateful to your father. I couldn’t have gotten this far without him.”
“Do you know where he is now?”
“Mack cut through camp last night. Stopped by just long enough to tell me that biohaz agents were right behind him. They weren’t. Not that I saw anyway.” Dr. Solis began patting down his lab coat until he found a blue inhaler in a pocket.
“Where did he go?”
Dr. Solis shook the inhaler, frowned, and tossed it aside. “To Moline, the quarantine compound I mentioned. Mack has friends there.”
My mouth went dry. He’d gone back into the Feral Zone where mutants with claws and horns went around mauling people? Inhibitor or not, that sounded suicidal. “What if one of them bites him?”
“I don’t believe any have progressed to stage three of the disease.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry. You’re worried about your father and I’m talking like a virologist.”
“No, it’s okay. I want to know.”
With a nod, Dr. Solis leaned forward, bracing his forearms on the desk. “There are three stages to Ferae. The first presents with a high fever within one to ten hours after infection. Once the virus is established, the fever ends and the patient regains his faculties. After that, the virus begins a slow takeover of the body and the patient starts to manifest physical signs of infection.” He gestured toward the file of photographs. “Anatomical deformities. Stage two can last anywhere from weeks to years. It all depends on the patient’s health, genetics, access to antiviral medication…. Many factors.” He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “The third and final stage of Ferae is insanity. The virus invades the brain, at which point the patient becomes animalistic and highly aggressive.”
“Oh.” And I’d thought his photos were gruesome. What was playing in my mind now, however, combined those images with sounds and actions to terrifying effect.
“Incubation, mutation, psychosis — those are the stages.” Dr. Solis rose and moved unsteadily toward the bookcase. “We used to compare Ferae to rabies. Now we know the better model is syphilis, which has a symptomatic stage that can last decades before dementia finally sets in.”
After a moment of scrounging through boxes on the shelves, he found an inhaler and gave it a dreamy smile. “Anyway, Mack tells me that in the past year, no one in Moline has progressed to the final stage. I’d like to think it’s because of the inhibitor he’s been taking them, but who knows?” Squeezing the inhaler, the doctor sucked in the Lull and, surprisingly, he seemed to straighten up. Guess the drug didn’t work very well on him. “You needn’t worry, Delaney. Your father will lie low for a while and then come back to check that the coast is clear,
which it is.”
“It isn’t,” I said, feeling a throb in my temples. “The biohazard agents are after him. They recorded him breaking quarantine.”
Dr. Solis’s gaze sharpened despite the Lull in his system.
“Have you seen the recording?” he asked. “You know for a fact that it exists?”
I nodded. “Where is Moline?” What I really wanted to know was just how far my father had ventured into the Feral Zone. Stuffing the cap into my back pocket, I took out my dad’s map and spread it across the desk. “Show me?”
Why was I bothering with this? Spurling’s orders were to come right back if I couldn’t find my dad. Still, I watched as Dr. Solis pointed to a spot on the map — a city, which had been circled in dark ink.
“It’s directly across the river,” he said. “Just off the northeastern tip of the island. There used to be a bridge there, back in the day, but not now.”
I touched the tiny line that was the last and only bridge across the Mississippi. Like the bridge that I’d crossed to get from the west bank onto Arsenal, the last bridge to the Feral Zone was on the south end of the island. “How big is Arsenal?”
“A thousand acres.”
“I mean from end to end.”
“A little over three miles.” He sank into the chair behind his desk. “Are they threatening execution?”
“Yes,” I said softly.
The doctor dragged his hand down his face. “Mack knew that it might come to this — that something could happen, making it impossible for him to return west.”
“Why didn’t he warn me about that possibility or tell me that he’s a fetch or mention anything about any of this ever?” It came out harsher than I’d intended.
“If it helps, Mack goes around that issue all the time. It always comes down to the lie detector test.”
“What?”
“The one they’ll give you if he’s caught. They’re very good now, those tests. Accurate ninety-nine percent of the time. A person’s body gives him away with the tiniest release of chemicals. If that test revealed that you knew your father was crossing the quarantine line, you’d be condemned as a traitor and executed alongside him.”