CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Green and the other soldiers wanted to move quickly, hoping to travel another mile before nightfall, but Kira insisted that they bury the two Ivies. She had killed several of them by now, but this one had shaken her. They took the bodies to the nearest residential street, found a pair of shovels in the shed of a small, blocky home, and spent an hour digging a hole: first through the snow, nearly three feet high and frozen into hard-packed ice, and then through the stiff, unyielding soil below. Commander Woolf said a few words, and then Green and Falin performed a Partial ritual Kira had never seen before: They fanned at the body, spreading the link data of DEATH out into the air. If there were other Partials in the area it would give away their position, but Kira didn’t bring that up. It was obviously important to them.
Marcus and Woolf were traveling with a group of forty-seven refugees, including a soldier named Galen. They traveled as far as they could that night, exchanging stories along the way: Marcus and Woolf told of their excursion up to Trimble’s stronghold; Kira told of her journey out west, and of her eventual revelation about the dual cure for RM and expiration. That night they camped in a high school auditorium, tearing down the tall, moth-eaten curtains to build a series of smaller tents among the old rows of chairs. The auditorium had no exterior windows or walls, which helped keep the brutal cold at bay, and the tents helped trap their body heat where it could do the most good. Kira crawled into a small tent with Marcus and Woolf to discuss their plans.
“We’re only a mile outside East Meadow,” said Marcus. “We just follow this same road, but . . . I can’t say how long it’s going to take us to get there. The snow’s been slowing us down too much.”
“I remember this area from some of our salvage runs,” said Kira. “We’re closer here to the hospital than the hospital is to the coliseum. Do we know where the Partial army is stationed?”
“All over the island,” said Marcus. “That’s what I was trying to tell you earlier—the army’s been scattered, hunting down Tovar and Mkele and everyone else. They’ve been distracting the Partials, leading them away from East Meadow so the rest of us could escape.”
“Escape to where?” asked Kira. “The airport? Long Beach? You can’t just hide thirty-five thousand people, they’ll find us again.”
“We’re leaving the island,” said Woolf. “And we’re running out of time to do it.”
“We can’t leave,” said Kira quickly, shaking her head. “We have to stay—we have to work together, like I told you. We have to forget all our hatred and the wars and everything else—”
“Delarosa has a nuke,” said Marcus.
Kira felt like she’d been kicked in the stomach. “What?”
“She’s planning to set it off in White Plains,” Marcus continued. “The odds are against her, and she probably won’t even make it that far, but we have to plan for the worst. We’ve been making our way to East Meadow ever since we escaped, gathering refugees in the wilderness as we go. We have to warn them, and we have to get out.”
“Even if the nuke doesn’t go off,” said Woolf, “it’s still best to leave. Partials and humans are never going to come to a truce—minor exceptions notwithstanding. We can’t live in their shadow anymore.”
“We have to stay together,” said Kira, feeling her whole world slipping away. “We need them—they need us—”
“But who’s going to agree to it?” asked Woolf. “A few stragglers here and there, sure, but that’s not enough.”
“No, it’s not,” said Kira hotly. “We need to convince them, on both sides, that this is the only way any of us can survive. If we run away, we’re just going to put ourselves right back in the same old position again, losing every new child to RM, with no future and no hope for anything.”
“Kira—” said Marcus, but she spoke right over him.
“We need to stop Delarosa,” said Kira. “Warn East Meadow and evacuate and whatever you need to do, but if what you say about her is true, I don’t have a choice. I’m turning around and going after that nuke. We can’t let anyone else die.” She started to rise, but Marcus put a hand on her arm.
“Somebody’s already gone after her.”
She paused in midcrouch, listening tentatively.
“He’s a friend of ours,” Marcus continued. “A Partial soldier named Vinci. Delarosa’s got a two-week lead on you, but only a few days on him. For all we know he’s already stopped her, but we can’t take the chance of not warning everyone, just in case.”
Kira shook her head, fighting back tears. “But what if he doesn’t make it?”
“You wouldn’t even know where to start looking,” said Marcus. “You want to work together with the Partials? Then trust Vinci. Help us warn East Meadow—humans and Partials.”
“We can’t help the humans escape the occupation by telling the occupiers where we’re going,” said Woolf.
“This is a really terrible time to even bring that up,” said Marcus, shooting him a hard glance. He looked back at Kira, who was trying her best not to scream. She breathed carefully, forcing herself to be calm. This is just another obstacle, she told herself. I’ve overcome others, I can overcome this one.
“This is always the hardest part,” she said.
Marcus raised his eyebrow. “Evacuating the entire human population of Earth from a nuclear fallout zone?”
Kira gave a sad smile. “Accepting that I can’t fix everything.”
She curled up in her bedroll apart from the others and tried to sleep. They needed to rise early in the morning and get to East Meadow quickly. The Partials had to listen to reason. She’d seen too many groups like Green’s and Falin’s, lost and directionless as Morgan withdrew ever deeper into her obsession. They were occupying the island because they didn’t know what else to do—surely she could convince them of her plan?
I need to save everyone, she thought. I can’t live with anything less. I won’t leave anyone behind.
Anyone else.
She fell asleep and dreamed of Samm.
In the morning Kira rose early, roused Green and Marcus, and set out for East Meadow. Newbridge Road was wide and straight, lined with trees and stores and crumbling houses. The center strip, which had once been grass, was now bursting up with bushes and saplings, lumpy and white with mounds of snow. The storm had stopped in the night, letting them see farther than they had in days, and the sun was blinding as it reflected off the fierce white sheet. A small breeze blew whorls of loose powder across the surface of the drifts, white ghosts on a white field. The crust was brittle, and they sank to their thighs with each freezing step.
One mile took them nearly an hour.
The closer they came to East Meadow, the more Kira felt her nerves wearing thinner, her teeth more on edge. The city was familiar—the only home she could remember—but it was intensely unfamiliar at the same time, eerily empty and buried in a death shroud of snow. When they reached the turnpike and turned west, they could see the hospital rising high above the rest of the city, the tallest building for miles, but where it was once the hub of a bustling community, it stood now pale and lifeless, the street leading up to it as silent as a tomb. Kira had lived her life among the abandoned detritus of a lost civilization—homes and buildings and cars full of skeletons; wearing dead girls’ clothes and living in dead men’s houses; watched by a thousand lifeless eyes from the family photos of the ones who hadn’t made it. It had never bothered her because it couldn’t—because it was the only world she’d ever known. The old world was gone, and they were building a new one in its ashes. Now she saw her world as theirs, her own life become a lifeless ruin. It made her feel numb, even more so than the cold and the snow and the tiny trickles of ice sliding down her frost-hardened face.
A nurse sat in the hospital lobby, alone in the cavernous silence. She looked up with a stunned expression, as shocked to see them as they were to see her, and after a moment Kira recognized her from her old days as an intern.
“Sandy?”
The woman smiled, polite but confused. Kira pulled off the long strip of blanket she’d been using as a scarf, and Sandy’s eyes went wide. “Kira Walker?”
Kira smiled back, feeling suddenly self-conscious. “Hi.” This city had gone through hell for her, daily executions trying to draw her out. For all she knew Sandy may have lost a loved one because of her. Kira watched her stand up and step toward her, hesitantly at first, but after a moment she was running, wrapping Kira in a tearful hug without regard for the wet slush that coated her chest and legs.
Kira hugged her back. “Where is everybody?”
“Running,” said Sandy, “or getting ready to. Haru sent word that the Partials are planning a final attack, to get rid of us for good.” Her face was pale with fear. “They’re going to wipe us out.”
“It’s not the Partials,” said Green darkly.
Kira furrowed her brow, thinking. “Where’s Haru?”
“We haven’t seen him,” said Sandy, “but we’ve seen refugees who have. The message reached us a few weeks before the snow, and we’ve been sneaking people out when we can. Now there are barely any Partials left in East Meadow, just for show more than anything, and we can leave more freely.”
“They’ve gone to fight rebels?” asked Kira.
Sandy shook her head. “They’re leaving, so they can bomb the whole city and wipe us out.”
“They wouldn’t do that,” said Kira, and got ready to explain about Delarosa and the bomb, but then decided against it. As long as everyone is scared enough to leave, Kira thought. “But Haru’s right, we are all in danger. What about you? Why haven’t you left?”
“There are still injured people in the city,” said Sandy. “Someone has to stay behind to take care of them. Nurse Hardy is here, too.”
“And Skousen?” asked Marcus.
Sandy shook her head. “The Partials took him weeks ago, when the bioweapon first surfaced.” She noticed the confusion on their faces and frowned. “You haven’t heard? There’s a plague that kills Partials—their own version of RM. I guess someone’s finally giving them a taste of their own . . . nonmedicine. That’s the other reason their army left town; nobody wanted to stay here after Partials started falling ill.”
Kira wondered how Skousen or anyone else could have engineered a Partial plague so quickly, but that was the least of her worries. Wherever the plague came from, it was one more obstacle that would convince the Partials and humans they could never dare to trust one another. She clenched her fist, as if she was trying to hold on to her hope like a tangible object. “You need to get out now,” said Kira. “It was very brave of you to stay behind, but it’s time to leave; the Partials will be leaving too, so there won’t be any new patients to deal with. Get everyone dressed, gather all the food and medicine you can, and get out.”
Sandy shook her head. “Two of our patients can’t even walk.”
“Then we’ll pull them in rickshaws,” said Kira. “I’ll pull one myself. The threat is real, and we don’t have long—just go.”
Sandy hesitated a moment, then nodded and ran down the hall. She only got a few steps before a deep rumbling sound rippled through the air; Kira felt it first in her gut, shaking her ribs, then throbbing in her ears like a low, steady beat. She looked at Sandy, who looked back and shook her head; she didn’t know what it was either.
“It’s a rotor,” said Marcus. “A flying vehicle, like an airplane with vertical takeoff. We saw them in White Plains.” He looked at Sandy. “You didn’t recognize the noise?”
“We’ve never seen anything fly before,” said Sandy. “This is new.”
The door to the stairwell flew open and Nurse Hardy burst out in a frenzy, wheezing for breath and gripping the door frame for support. “They’re on the roof,” she gasped. “They’ve come for the patients. Is that . . . Kira Walker?”
Kira took a step toward her, raising her rifle in preparation. “Partials?” Hardy snapped out of her shock and nodded, still out of breath, and Kira stepped forward again. “Where are they taking them?”
“They’re not taking them anywhere,” said Hardy. She staggered out into the lobby, and Kira could see now that she was bleeding from her arm. “They’re going room to room, killing them.” She clutched her arm and tried to breathe. “They’re taking their blood.”
Kira looked at Green and snarled. “The Blood Man.”
“It’s about damn time,” said Green, raising his rifle and stalking toward the staircase. “I’ve been anxious for a little chat with him.”
Kira followed him up the stairs, with Marcus close behind, not stopping on each floor like they had in the mall, but climbing relentlessly. They heard a scream high above them, silenced almost instantly by a gunshot and a slamming door. “Sounded like the eighth floor,” said Kira.
“Morgan’s army confiscated most of the solar panels when they first arrived,” said Marcus. “They moved the patients up here because it made the few panels left just a little more efficient; all the power in the lower levels is cut off completely.”
“Can you link them yet?” Kira asked Green.
“No. As soon as I do, though, they’ll know we’re here.”
“They won’t know who, though,” said Kira. “You could be any Partial; they won’t know you’re an enemy.”
“They’ll know I’m not an Ivie,” said Green, “which seems to be the only distinction that matters to them.” He clenched his teeth and snarled, then stopped suddenly on the landing between floors five and six. “You go first.”
“Whoa,” said Marcus. “Who sends the lady into combat first?”
“A smart combatant,” said Kira, not even slowing as she brushed past Green. “I can read the Ivies on the link a bit, and they can’t read me. It’ll give us maybe an extra ten seconds before they know we’re there, but that’s better than nothing.”
As they neared the seventh floor she started to sense them—just a few, maybe three or four at the most. She remembered the victims she’d found so far, the Partial on the dock and the ice-cold Tovar, and she felt her blood rising. She remembered the dying girl Kerri, crying as her life slipped away. We’re trying to save you, she’d said, and Kira still couldn’t get it out of her mind. Save us from what? From who? She shook her head, clearing her doubts like cobwebs. The Ivies, and the Blood Man they served, were evil. She would put them down.
Eighth floor. She could feel the Ivies clearly on the link; her practice was paying off, and she fell into her combat mode like slipping on an old glove. Green was waiting below, holding his breath, giving her time to make her ambush. Marcus crouched beside her at the top of the stairs, his rifle ready in his hands. Kira closed her eyes and concentrated, trying to feel the presence of the Ivies, to pinpoint their locations as accurately as she could.
THIS ONE SAVED MOVING ON
HURRY NOT MUCH TIME
Behind their data was something else, larger and more powerful, like the vague outline of a whale swimming just beyond her perception in the deep of the sea. The Blood Man, she thought. It was the same kind of intense link data she’d sensed from members of the Trust, which only confused her more. What are you? she thought.
The hallway beyond was clear, the Ivies all working in different rooms, and she pushed open the door without a sound. She kept her rifle tight to her cheek and shoulder, the sights lined up to kill whoever appeared first. She sidestepped to a corner, taking what little cover she could, and when the first Ivie walked into her kill zone she fired a burst straight into its chest, dropping it in a heartbeat. A jar of blood fell from its lifeless hand and shattered on the floor. The alarm shot across the link: DEATH ATTACK PREPARE CAUTION. Another head appeared just out of her view, but Marcus was already firing as she tracked her rifle toward it, and the shape ducked back behind a doorway. Green raced up the stairs to join them, and she felt a ripple of recognition on the link as the Ivies sensed him, followed by confusion as they realized they were being attacked by both humans and Partials.
The deeper presence moved, a dark shape in the back of her mind, and she tracked her rifle back again to find it. Just step into view, she thought, daring him to come forward. Just give me one chance and I’ll end this horror show once and for all.
“You must understand that this is not a personal attack,” said a voice, and Kira felt her heart plummet, the ground dropping away beneath it, her entire world becoming a bottomless black pit. “We are trying to save this world, so that it can be a part of the next one. Think of it as an honor, that your body and blood will provide the seeds for a new Eden.” He walked into view at the end of the hall and Kira’s rifle dropped from her cheek, fell from her hands, clattered to the ground as she stared at the Blood Man, walking toward her through the bright fluorescent lights.
“Kira?” said Marcus. Green raised his rifle to fire, but all Kira could do was put up her hand and shake her head.
Kira felt her legs trembling, her stomach wrenching, her arms longing to reach out and touch him even as her mind howled at her to run, to stop him, to kill him, to scream. She gripped the wall for support and stared at the face that haunted her dreams, and spoke the word she hadn’t said since she was five years old.
“Daddy?”