The Ward

32


12:45 P.M., SUNDAY


Sprinting for the nearest suspension bridge, I leap onto it, no care for balance or keeping the thing steady. Behind me, air churns, coughs up roof dust.

But that makes no sense. . . . The chief’s not following? Only when I’ve crossed to the other side do I look back. Make sure I’m not crazy.

Despite the vibrations running through the rope in my hands, I don’t believe it—Chief’s heli roars into the sky. Rises up from the rooftop, one building over.

But I have the vial. The governor should’ve sent him after me—his wife . . . he’d want to use it to cure his wife, wouldn’t he? The aeromobile doesn’t even head west over the Strait. Instead, it loops around over to Mad Ave.

Then, dangling out from the airborne beast is Chief Dunn. Holding a megaphone.

One time . . . One time have I seen this happen—I’m thirteen again, back on the Empire Clock with Benny before my first race. When they announced the Health Statutes, locking down the Ward and making Transmission of the virus illegal.

“Attention, citizens of the Ward!” Chief’s voice booms through the air.

The announcement . . . This is what the governor was talking about. I don’t breathe. I imagine no one’s breathing right now.

Across the roof, another man steps quickly off a bridge. Holding his hat, he looks up to the sky, then over to me. As if I know what’s going on.

“Attention,” Chief repeats, body half in the air. “Between the hours of twelve and two A.M., a squadron of pilots will fly through the city. Do not be alarmed. After that time, we ask that all HBNC-positive citizens gather on the rooftops of your respective sickhouses. No arrests will be made. There you will find shipments containing a new drug in development that has been proven effective at eradicating the HBNC pathogen.”

I can hear a hundred breaths catching in a hundred throats, it’s so quiet.

“I repeat.” A pause. “We have a cure for HBNC!”

With that, the heli rises into the air, the chief and his megaphone swinging back into its cockpit. As it spirals out in the direction of the West Isle, headed northwest toward Central Bay, the howling it makes against the blue is the only noise for miles.

Three unsure seconds pass.

Then, the city erupts.

But they don’t have the cure. . . .

From across the canals and gutters, manic yelps ring out in the crisp air. Hoots, high-pitched and frantic, echo all around. With a bird’s-eye view of Mad Ave, I can see everyone who’d ducked under an awning or behind a storefront stepping out. Looking around. As though they’re walking outside for the first time. People hug—people who don’t know one another.

If they don’t have a cure, what are they giving out?

I become my own island, fighting against the dizziness in my head, refusing to move.

“You hear that?” a stranger shouts, and rushes closer. When his eyes land on me, a heady grin splashes across his face. Without a word, he throws his arms round me. He picks me up, lifts me right off my feet. “A cure, they’ve made a cure! It’s a gift from above!”

I push against the stranger’s shoulders, a trapped animal. “They haven’t. . . . It’s not a gi—”

Gift. It’s not a gift, I’m about to say, but he doesn’t hear, or notice, or believe. I wouldn’t believe either, and then the pieces click together too quickly. . . .

An attack, disguised as a gift . . . the Trojan horse.

A CASE FOR DEMOCIDE.

The gift is the cure.

“Put me down!” I cry as he swings me through the air. I’m a mouse in a mousetrap. A roach on glue. Any living thing about to be exterminated. Eradicated.

I’m a host.

“What’sa matter?” The man shakes his head, tut-tut-ing. I grapple against him, legs straining to touch ground until finally, he lowers me down. As he walks away he mutters, “Ain’t she happy?” to himself. Looks back at me. I can see him feeling sorry. Pitying me.

All this wasted joy . . . I begin to feel hysterical with its wrongness.

Their cure isn’t a gift.

It’s a poison—it’s their extermination plan.