Colony East (15 page)

She told him to help the captain.

Abby moved in front of Nikki. “Be gentle,” she told her helpers and nodded for them to begin. Eddie and Jordan each levered a hand away from Nikki’s face. Nikki tried to tuck her chin to her chest, but the captain and Toby pulled her head back and kept it secure. Overwhelmed, Nikki went limp.

Careful to keep her finger clear of Nikki’s teeth, Abby pulled down her lower lip and grimaced as yellow pus oozed out and dribbled down Nikki’s chin.

Mel gagged. Eddie turned pale, looking like he might get sick. They all backed away.

“Your gums are badly infected.” Abby maintained eye contact as she spoke to Nikki. “We have to remove your braces, and you need to take penicillin, otherwise… I really don’t know what will happen to you. This is very serious. We can’t help you unless you cooperate.”

While the captain whispered privately to Nikki, Abby sent Mel on an errand, assuming they would proceed. Then she instructed Eddie to grind up two pain pills and a penicillin tablet and mix the powders together.

The captain looked up. “Let’s do it.”

Abby held up the wire cutters and explained her approach to Nikki. “First I’m going to snip the wires that are connected to the bands. That should release some of the tension. Are you ready?”

Nikki put her head back, squeezed her eyes, and opened her mouth a crack. Jordan and Eddie held her hands. The captain directed the flashlight beam.

Abby zeroed in on a wire along the front row of teeth. When she snipped it, Nikki cried out and sealed her lips, but only for a moment. Abby was able to snip two more wires. Slowly Nikki started to relax. After cutting the final wire, she had Nikki rinse her mouth with salt water, and then sprinkled the mixture of pain medication and penicillin onto her tongue. They took a break to let the pain pills kick in.

Mel returned with a fishhook. The steel tuna hook, made to reel in a thousand pounds of fighting fish, was four inches long and measured two inches from shaft to point. The barbed point looked like a miniature spear.

Nikki’s eyes widened.

Abby patted her on the arm. “I know it looks scary. I’m going to use the point to pull down on the edge of the metal bands around each tooth.”

Starting what she hoped was the final phase of the operation, Abby positioned the sharp point of the hook at the top of a band on a front, upper tooth. But the band wouldn’t budge. When she applied slight pressure, Nikki cried out.

“We need something greasy,” Abby said.

“Burn cream?” Mel suggested.

Abby read the directions on the tube. “For external use only.”

Jordan’s face lit. “Peanut oil! We have some at the house.” He moved to the door.

“Wait,” Toby cried. He handed Abby a stick of lip balm. “Try this.”

As Jordan waited to see if it would work, Abby worked a gob of balm around the band with her finger, positioned the point of the tuna hook, and pulled down. The band moved. She slid the point on one side and then the other, wriggling the band down the tooth. When the band tumbled into Nikki’s lap, a cheer rang out inside Sal’s.

An hour later, Abby had removed every band but two. She was unable to reach two lower molars. Exhausted, she slumped in the barber chair next to her patient.

“Hey,” Eddie exclaimed. “I think Castine Island has a new dentist!”

Abby called him over and held the hook in front of his face, the sharp tip an inch from his nostrils. “Who are you talking about?”

Eddie swallowed hard and flipped his head, hiding his eyes behind a curtain of blonde hair. “Nobody you know.”

Abby sat back with a satisfied smile. “That’s what I figured.”

CHAPTER NINE
Colony East

Lieutenant Dawson looked up from his desk as students filed into the Grover Cleveland Conference Room on the first floor of the Chrysler Building. Many of the cadets, including Jonzy Billings, kicked off their shoes to enjoy the oriental carpeting. He nodded to Billings, letting the boy know that he had moved on from the earlier disciplinarian action.

The bottom four floors of the Chrysler Building housed the colony’s school. It was Dawson’s first period trigonometry class.

At nine a.m., the short blast of the air-raid siren signaled the start of the period. Dawson broke out his attendance book and requested information on the students he noticed missing.

“Alicia?” She was a member of Sheraton Company.

“Grief counseling,” a fellow Sheratonian replied.

He marked G next to Alicia’s name.

“Caroline?”

Marilyn from Hilton Company reported that Caroline was at Central Park Farm.

He gave Caroline an F for farm duty.

“Max?” Cadet Max Clemson came from Four Seasons.

When nobody responded, Dawson wrote U next to Max’s name for unknown.

From his satchel, he removed the stack of IQ tests, sealed in envelopes. Each envelope came marked with a barcode, the student’s name, and their company affiliation. The scientists, who loved collecting data on Generation M, issued the tests quarterly to all students. The focus of today’s test was abstract reasoning.

Dawson stood to address the class. “You know the drill. No talking. Finish as much as you can. Anyone need to use the facilities?” When no one raised a hand, he passed out the tests.

Once they had begun, he briefly panicked when he didn’t see his fly tying kit in his satchel. He breathed a sigh of relief when he found it hiding under his germ pack. Over the next hour, he tied a Wooly Bugger, an all-purpose dry fly made with red and gold Hungarian partridge feathers. He found the concentration required to tie a fly gave him a temporary feeling of peace.

The siren sounded to announce the end of the period. It also interrupted his fantasy of landing a striped bass in the East River. He collected the tests.

During his next class, Dawson occupied himself by doing calisthenics and stretches. Nobody batted an eye. His students had grown accustomed to him exercising when they took tests.

While his third and final class of the day labored over the abstract reasoning problems, he ate lunch at his desk. Spicy brown mustard on the chicken sandwich was a new and surprising treat.

At 2:45 p.m., the school day ended, and he headed for Central Command. With every stride, he felt the two sections of his fly fishing rod in his backpack, waving back and forth like bug antennae. He weaved among the thick throng of cadets on the sidewalk. They were on their way to Carnegie Hall for the daily lecture. It was a beautiful spring day with the temperature in the high sixties, and the scent of blossoms filled the air. A haunting melody drifted down from the Empire State Building as the wind whistled past broken windows. He thought of it as the world’s tallest flute.

Central Command was located in Trump Tower. Standing across the street, he waited for the light to change. No vehicles were in sight, but he wasn’t about to jaywalk. With his luck, Admiral Samuels would look out his fourth-floor window the moment he took his first illegal step into the street.

Dawson’s first stop was the CDC liaison office. On duty was Doctor David Levine, dressed casually in a button-down shirt, corduroy pants, and tan Hush Puppies shoes that screamed scientist. In his early fifties, with salt and pepper hair, Levine rarely made eye contact. Dawson figured he was shy, an introvert who would have preferred the seclusion of a quarantine lab, rather than dealing with the likes of company leaders. He gave Doctor Levine the bundle of completed IQ tests.

Then Dawson jogged up to the third floor and stepped into the office assigned to company leaders. Lieutenants Masters and Murphy, representing Sheraton and Four Seasons Companies, were there doing paperwork. They acknowledged his presence with slight nods.

Masters was short and muscular, built like a fire hydrant. He had been in the class ahead of Dawson at the Academy. Murphy, a landlubber from Kansas, stood as tall as the corn that once grew up to the sky in the Midwestern state. To qualify for sub duty, Dawson imagined that Murphy must have found a way to compress his joints to come under the height limitation of six feet eight inches tall.

“Max Clemson wasn’t in trig today,” he told Masters, hoping for an explanation.

“Medical Clinic 17,” Masters said without looking up.

“Poor little bugger,” Murphy said.

Masters turned to Murphy and raised his eyebrows. “Think of the bright side. It could have been Code 10.”

“Ever the optimist,” Murphy replied.

Dawson respected both officers, but they were a bit too casual for his taste.

“What were Max’s symptoms?” he asked.

Masters shrugged. “Ask the galley hands.”

“Galley hands?”

Masters nodded. “They report any kid who goes back for seconds.”

“Since when?” Dawson blurted.

“Since Perkins gave the order.”

Dawson frowned. Doctor Perkins would never issue a direct order to a sailor, or for that matter, an officer. The chief scientist would have asked Admiral Samuels to deliver the command. “He doesn't have the authority.”

Lieutenant Murphy chimed in. “I guess he does now.”

“How do you know this?”

“Levine let it slip,” Masters said.

Dawson pondered the fact that David Levine had said something more than thank you and you’re welcome. “Are you going to address it with the admiral?” he asked.

Master’s scrunched his brow. “Address what? That one of my cadets had Code 4 symptoms that I missed? Yeah, right. I don’t need Samuels chewing me out. I got enough problems.”

Dawson thought he had a good point. He began doing paperwork that involved making observations on the behaviors of cadets in each of his three math classes. Since they had all taken tests and he had spent the time tying flies, exercising, and eating, he had few observations to report.

Thirty minutes later, his paperwork completed, he jogged to the South Street Seaport where he hoped to put new bacterial strains, Max, Doctor Perkins, and all other problems and concerns, even Sarah, out of his mind temporarily, and make his dream of landing a big striper come true on Pier 15.

The pier was part of a seaport complex along the East River. While many of the shops and restaurants had burned down, much of the pier remained intact. Dawson moved to a floating dock attached to the pier, where he had fished the day before. He liked the way the river flowed here, figuring the swirling eddy attracted baitfish, and baitfish attracted striped bass. He assembled his fly rod and made other preparations, including clipping on the Wooly Bugger.

Using mostly wrist, he moved the rod tip forward and backward—ten o’clock to two o’clock. The weighted line whipped out as an elongated S. He gave a final, hard snap and the Wooly Bugger landed thirty yards away. He let it rest on the surface for a moment before slowly stripping the line into the basket fixed to his waist.

Flicking his wrist, stripping line—doing this same motion over and over—Dawson felt his mind calming. He studied the windmills midway in the river, their giant blades chopping up the rays of the late afternoon sun. The Brooklyn Bridge, its middle section missing, was to his left. A freighter had crashed into one of the abutments at the time of the comet. Across the river, tents and plywood structures extended beyond the perimeter fence, while on this side, ensigns patrolled in Zodiacs. Even with heavy, powerful motors, the rigid inflatable boats could hug the shoreline.

He recalled Admiral Samuels announcing that patrol boat activity had dropped by half since the new incinerator had come online. Prior to that, kids outside the fence brazenly ventured into the East River to collect the colony’s garbage.

Aware that he was facing the direction of Mystic, Dawson took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He pictured his home at twelve Orchard Lane and started choking up. Icy chills of anxiety followed when he realized that Sarah, if she were alive, would be at risk of contracting the new illness that attacks the hypothalamus gland.

At least the scientists discovered the germ mutation early, Dawson thought. They would have time to develop an antibiotic before a full-fledged epidemic broke out.

He nearly tumbled into the river from his next idea. He would volunteer to help with the distribution of the antibiotic, making sure that survivors in Mystic received the pills. He would search for Sarah at the same time.

A fish jumped which he took as a good omen. Mirroring the ripples of water made by the splash, ripples of hope spread out from his heart. With a new zest, he moved the rod tip forward and backward—ten o’clock to two o’clock.

CHAPTER TEN
Castine Island

They held the trading session at Toby’s house. The gypsy contingent included the captain and a new boy, Monty, close in age to Abby. He was tall and lean and spoke with an accent she couldn’t place.

Toby had steered them into a room where a single candle burned and photos of parents, older siblings, grandmothers and grandfathers, crowded the shelves of a bookcase. Most homes on the island had memory rooms to honor those who had died during the night of the purple moon. Scanning the photos, Abby was quite sure they belonged to Toby’s housemates. Toby, she thought, would not want any reminders of his father.

Trading sessions usually began with both parties sharing food, and Toby had gone to the kitchen for snacks.

Sitting next to the captain, Jordan pointed out the window. “You’re lucky you got here when you did. Those streaky clouds mean the wind’s going to veer to the southwest. Fog will roll in.”

“I’m impressed you know that,” she replied.

“I’m the best sailor on the island.”

Abby rubbed her chin, perplexed. It was not like her brother to boast.

Eddie nosed between the captain and Jordan. “I’m the second best sailor.”

Jordan elbowed his friend out of the way. “Do you like being a news gypsy?”

The captain frowned. “Not when there’s an emergency. “Otherwise, yes. I love it. Every day is an adventure.”

Jordan’s face lit up. “What’s the farthest place you’ve been?”

Abby couldn’t remember the last time her brother had looked so… happy.