The Ward

EPILOGUE


7:00 A.M., MONDAY


“As of two a.m. this morning, Governor Voss has successfully eradicated the HBNC virus in approximately seventy-five percent of the Ward’s sick population. Unfortunately, the remaining twenty-five percent of the sick population was not administered the cure due to a pharmaceutical recall in a number of the shipments. An unknown percentage living in private homes also remains uncured. Until further notice, the Ward will remain under quarantine. Entry and exit regulations will not change, nor will laws regarding Transmission of the virus. A city-wide celebration will be held at the following times in the following quad—”

This is what I wake to: a radio crackling the news in Benny’s garage.

I’m not allowed one moment of forgetting.

Even in sleep, there was a far-off hurt that I couldn’t place. But I could feel it everywhere.

I shift on the spare cot Benny set up for me in the office. It’s a small room; I’ve only been in here once or twice; it’s barely bigger than the cot. I like the smallness right now, I realize, and I pull the cool, white linens closer.

When I shift again, this time the springs lodge themselves between my ribs; I groan. In the other room, all voices go silent.

“You think she’s up?” I hear Callum ask after a moment.

“We should wake her.”

“Let’s let her rest.”

“She should see it, though. . . .”

See what? I wonder, but the voices are too muffled, too far away for me to tell who else is speaking. Now I’m curious. Swinging my feet onto the cool, concrete floor, I inhale. Prepare myself to meet the others.

As I stand, the radio transmission starts over from the beginning. It must be on a loop. “As of two a.m. this morning, Governor Voss . . .”

I take a few steps forward. Too achy for a lot of movement, I step slowly into the garage, find Benny, Derek, and Callum huddled around the radio, their faces drawn and tired. Terrence and Jones are sitting in the Cloud, docked—and floating—in the open pool Benny had built into the center of the garage. He made it so you could exit under the boardwalk and ride out onto the canal.

“What will I see?” I ask, and every guy in the room meets my eyes.

Except Jones.

He looks a bit like he feels he shouldn’t be here. Keeping himself too quiet, gaze flicking around the garage, landing anywhere but my face. If I had a friend like Kent, I’d be feeling guilty too.

If it hadn’t been for Kent calling the Blues on us . . .

“You really think it’s smart to be here right now? After what your best friend did?” I glare at him, shaking my head. “I wouldn’t be able to look at myself in the mirror if I were you.”

“Jones didn’t know—it’s not his fault. . . .” Terrence jumps outta the Cloud. He blocks off Jones like he knows how close to the edge I am.

“He didn’t know his friend is scum?” I scoff. “I thought everyone knew that—”

But then, faintly, in the background: “As of two a.m. this morning . . .”

My eyes get hot. Tears start to build, and next thing I know, Ter’s got his arms around me. I don’t want to fight anymore, especially not Ter, so I just drop my head to his shoulder. I can’t see the others; everything becomes blurry, but all I want is to turn around and run back to the cot.

I don’t want to see anyone.

“We failed. . . .” I say. Ter rocks me side to side, cradling me tight, his palm brushing what’s left of the hair on my scalp. I’m no different from an infant right now.

“She needs to see it,” Callum says, and something in his voice makes me turn.

“See what?”

Callum lifts himself from the chair and walks over to me. Places both hands on my shoulders. “We didn’t fail,” he whispers, trying to catch my gaze as I look away. “Not even a little bit.”

With that he strides over to the garage door, and lifts.

The air is thick with sunlight. It falls into the garage like a blanket, making all of us warm. Even me, almost. For a moment, we watch the Mad Ave crowds go about their business like usual . . . but nothing is like usual. The colors. The clothes. A young girl in a torn lavender tutu runs past, holding the hand of an old man. He’s grinning and sporting a shiny black suit with a bow tie around his neck.

I don’t say a word, though my jaw drops a little I’m sure.

Derek comes up behind me. I feel one of his hands on my shoulder, the other at the nape of my neck. “Look down,” he says into my ear, and I do.

And I stop breathing.

Littered in front of the door to the left—Benny’s doorstep . . .

Pennies. Dozens. A hundred, maybe. Their copper catches the light perfectly, and it’s almost as though we’ve got a Milky Way’s worth of tiny suns shining up from Benny’s worn-out welcome mat. I laugh, and wipe my nose with my sleeve. They’re too pretty, and my heart starts to hurt.

I can’t believe that they mean what I think they mean. “I don’t get it. . . .” I whisper.

“Renata.” Benny laughs lightly, resting his hand on my other shoulder, squeezing it. “The people are not dumb. They saw the Blues removing our packages, and they saw that nothing was replaced. Rumor counts for a lot in this city, you should know that. Word of the infamous Red Rider and a team of dragsters dropping off the cure on sickhouse rooftops is newsworthy on any day.”

This is too much. . . .

“A hundred thank-yous, Ren. A hundred people wishing you luck.”

I choke on the last word—luck. Aven should be here right now. “Will I need it this time? To find her?” I ask, thinking no one but myself can hear.

Callum turns me around to face him. His blues are bluer than ever. “Never,” he answers. “You have us—all of us. We’re going to find her.”

Jones nods, along with Derek and Terrence and Benny, and I choke again, this time on the mixed ball of feelings rolling around inside me. Looking down at the galaxy of copper stars lighting up the doorstep, I start to get that fullness in my chest I had at the hospital, like my body simply don’t have enough room in it. There’s too much to feel. They have their Avens back.

And all of a sudden I’m able to do it . . . hold in my head all the numbers, even the ones that didn’t get the cure. Aven’s there, and it hurts, but I don’t dam myself off from it this time.

We’ll find her. We have to.

In the morning sky, the sun—the real sun—is its own shade of copper. Getting ready to shine for other people. Share its warmth across the globe.

For now, all I can do is watch it rise for everyone else. For the hundred others at my feet. ’Cause I know I’ll find my own again.





AUTHOR’S NOTES


There are a few things I’d like to bring to the reader’s attention in the hope that by separating fact from fiction we might honor the historical truths in this novel, which were both brutal and unprecedented.

In order to do this, what follows will look a lot like a history lesson.

If you grew up in the tri-state area, chances are you’ve heard of the Lenni Lenape. They were a peace-loving people who once inhabited much of the mid-Atlantic region, including New York and New Jersey, and were known by other Algonquin tribes for their diplomatic ability to settle disputes.

When the Dutch arrived in the early 1600s seeking to profit off the land’s many resources, the two cultures clashed; the concepts of profit and property were as foreign to the Lenape as the Europeans themselves.

In 1645, a man named Willem Kieft (sound familiar?) became the director, aka governor, of the region soon to be called New York City. Shortly after taking the position, Willem Kieft tried imposing taxes on the nearby native populations. The tribes resisted.

Kieft, angered by their refusal, launched a massacre.

That massacre, later known as Kieft’s War, ultimately got him fired from his position as director. Not only were most of the settlers against the movement, but the Dutch West India Company (which had chosen him as director) had never given him permission to attack.

It’s important to make clear here that Willem Kieft—the man who inspired my villain—started a war not because he believed the Indians would “resurrect,” but because they would not submit to colonization and taxation by foreigners. Kieft was not seeking a miraculous water source with healing capabilities. He wanted money and power, and upon this attack, no Lenape or any other tribesmen were inexplicably brought back to life. Though highly skilled warriors, there were hundreds of deaths, and each of them was final.

The Tètai—the guardians of the spring in the novel—are the product of my own imagination. The design for their tattoos, however, was adapted from images in the controversial Walam Olum—a historical narrative of the Lenape published in the 1830s by antiquarian Constantine Rafinesque. The document’s authenticity, however, has never been verified.

Lastly, though the Minetta Brook of The Ward is the stuff of fancy, a real two-mile-long Minetta Brook actually did run through Manhattan, emptying out into the Hudson River. You can even find Minetta Street on a current map of New York City. It’s a lovely, narrow little road in the West Village that the stream once traversed during its heyday.

The Minetta Brook may or may not still exist today, hidden deep beneath the city’s foundation.





ABOUT THE AUTHOR


PHOTO BY JOSHUA SPAFFORD

JORDANA FRANKEL is a creative-writing instructor at Writopia Lab and a former marketing associate at the Book Report Network. She received her BA from Goucher College and an MFA in creative writing from Hollins University. She currently lives in New York City. The Ward is her first novel. You can visit her online at www.jordanafrankel.com.


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