Colony East (35 page)

Dawson’s throat suddenly thickened and he felt his face flushing. He needed fresh air. He needed to shout into the wind, even knowing what seeds the wind sowed.

~ ~ ~

Abby held on to Jonzy’s hand and had to tug repeatedly to move him down the stairs from the top floor where they had gone to get their packs. The burning madness in his eyes had extinguished, replaced with the wide-eyed look of a lamb being led to slaughter.

While Jonzy’s mind seemed willing to attempt an escape during Hurricane David, his body resisted. Abby hoped that once they stepped outside, and he experienced the full force of the storm, it would energize him, though part of her worried he might seize up completely.

Just before they entered the lobby, he stopped and whispered in her ear.

“Abby, let’s go through The Red Zone. With the power out, we can cut the electric fence. We’ll get wire cutters on the way.”

She paused, thinking it was late to make such a drastic change to their plans. But hadn’t she just done that? True, the power failure presented an incredible opportunity, yet she had hatched the idea to leave during the storm instantly.

“Let’s do it, Cadet,” she said, feeding Jonzy back his line with a half-smile.

Jonzy almost yanked her off her feet, leading her across the lobby to the door. Like a dog musher, all she had to do was hang on, and Jonzy would drag her all the way to Mystic.

He reached for the door handle and pulled. The clinking sound triggered a shudder of fear in her chest. It was locked!

The shudder passed, as Abby reminded herself they had come prepared. Neither of them had thought the Biltmore’s door would be locked, but Abby had been expecting the unexpected.

As she was lifting the flap of her pack to get the hammer and pillowcase, a pale wedge of light reflected on the door. She quickly turned. Someone with a flashlight was approaching the lobby from the first-floor hallway.

They raced to hide behind the lobby counter. Footsteps clicked on the tile floor. Keys jangled. They heard the front door open. The hurricane roared inside the lobby. Then the door closed.

Abby peered above the counter. Lieutenant Dawson stood outside the door. He seemed to be shouting to someone, but she couldn’t see who it was. Who else would be outside now? “The lieutenant,” she whispered to Jonzy.

“Should we go back upstairs?”

“No. Wait.” Abby patted the area beneath the counter with her hands and felt shelving of smooth, polished wood. Her arm sank to her elbow. It was deep enough, wide enough, and high enough for them to squeeze into, a perfect hiding place. She grabbed Jonzy’s hand and guided it to the shelving closest to him. “Crawl in.”

“You first.”

Face up, Abby shimmied her way onto the shelf. Jonzy pushed her knees down, getting her legs to fit. Then he shoved a pack between her belly and the top of her shelf, which compressed her diaphragm and forced her to take half breaths.

Just then, the door opened. Jonzy froze in response. The blast of the hurricane spiked and muted. The lieutenant’s footsteps grew louder. It sounded like he was approaching them.

Wedged like a sardine, Abby felt that her pounding heart might blow out her eardrums. She took baby breaths. Jonzy remained perfectly silent and still. When the flashlight beam reflected off the ceiling, she saw that he had plastered himself against the shelf, a pack beside him, her pack.

Keys clicked on the counter. The lieutenant had placed his keys six inches above her nose. Chills rippled down Abby’s spine and into her legs before they bounced back to the crimp of her knees. Jonzy was exposed. All the lieutenant had to do was look down to see him. Abby heard him put down the flashlight. She heard keys jangle. She could tell he was inserting a key into a lock, a padlock. The padlock clicked open. She couldn’t believe that he had chosen this moment to look inside the suggestion box.
All ideas are good ideas
. The words jumbled in her mind. She heard the lid creak open and close. Paper rustled. The flashlight beam shifted on the wall, splashing light that threatened to reveal Jonzy. The lieutenant chuckled to himself, likely reading a note. She thought he might be leaning against the counter, and worried that he might feel the vibration of her thundering heart through the wood.

After a long moment of silence, she watched the beam move to the floor behind the counter, like a bloodhound sniffing for a scent, then it zeroed in on the pack.

“What in the…?” the lieutenant exclaimed.

Jonzy jumped up. “Sir, it’s me.”

“Billings,” the lieutenant shouted. “What are you doing? What’s in that pack?”

Jonzy picked up the pack and quickly stepped away from where Abby was hiding. “I can explain, sir.”

“You better have an explanation, mister. What’s in the pack?”

“I have to use the bathroom.”

“Give it to me.”

“Sir, I have to go really badly.”

“Let’s go,” he grumbled.

When she could no longer hear their feet clicking on the tile, Abby counted to ten then squiggled out of the shelf. She grabbed Jonzy’s pack and hurried to the door, fumbling for the hammer in the pack. Her blood turned cold as her fingers brushed the unmistakable shape of the gun. She withdrew her hand in revulsion, gritted her teeth, and continued her search. Finding the hammer, she gripped the handle with both hands, and swung it against the glass in the door. The steel head just bounced back. So Abby gripped it harder, placed her feet wider, clenched her jaw, then swung at it again and again, chopping, chopping, chopping away until she finally made a hole big enough to slip through.

As she crawled into the jaws of Hurricane David, a single thought dominated her mind—cake with vanilla frosting.

~ ~ ~

From the cadet’s pack, Lieutenant Dawson removed water bottles, a screwdriver, a wrench, rope. An inflatable life vest? He rubbed his jaw, wondering where the boy got these things. He doubted Billings had found them in the Biltmore, which meant he had left the building without authorization.

“Billings,” he barked. “Hurry up.” The cadet was still in the bathroom.

He reached deeper into the pack and produced two maps. One was a street map of Brooklyn, the second map was of Connecticut. Incredibly, he thought the cadet was attempting to leave the colony. In a hurricane! What was Billings thinking?

A route traced on one of the maps caught his attention. He directed the flashlight beam onto the map of Connecticut and immediately felt as if someone had kicked him in the gut.

The line in pencil ran to Mystic.

~ ~ ~

Abby used her hand to shield her eyes from the blast of wind and rain. She squinted to make out the strange, dark shape next to the sidewalk on Lexington Avenue. She inched closer until she realized it was a quarantine van crushed by a massive hunk of concrete and bricks. The vehicle looked as if a giant had flattened it with a sledgehammer. She suspected the van had no occupants, or else, rescue crews would have been trying to do whatever they could, which would not have been much.

She jumped when another heavy chunk suddenly exploded in the street ten feet away. A building was being torn apart piecemeal by the roaring winds fifty stories above her. She hurried on her way, leaning hard to the right just to go in a straight line.

The stinging rain and wind diminished significantly once she crossed Lexington Ave and reached Broadway, where the buildings acted as a buffer.

The streets and sidewalks were empty of foot patrols and vehicles as far as she could tell. Once the streetlights flickered, but they never fully lit.

Abby moved to a spot across the street from the hospital and kept watch. After a minute, she raced across the street and entered the dark building.

She cupped her hand around the head of the flashlight and turned it on. The light shone like red lines between her fingers. She climbed the steps to the second floor, using this red lantern to find her way up.

Soon, she was standing before the window that looked out on Medical Clinic 17. She opened the window easily and looked down. The annex roof was three feet below. Abby needed Jonzy now, but she tried to put him out of her mind.

She climbed out of the window and onto the roof. Crawling toward the clinic, she dipped her right shoulder into the crosscurrent of howling wind. If she fell from here, she’d break a leg, or worse. When a sudden gust pried her up, she dropped to her stomach and pulled herself forward with her elbows.

She reached the end. Made of thick plate glass, the clinic’s window was taller than she was and wider than her outstretched arms. She removed her backpack—Jonzy’s pack—and slipped her leg through the shoulder strap to keep the pack from blowing away. She retrieved the hammer, thinking the roar of the storm was a blessing. It would drown out any noise she was about to make.

On her knees, she gauged the best spot to strike the glass, the window’s center. The rain blurred her vision, but she had a large target that would be impossible to miss. She reared back and swung for the bull’s-eye as hard as she could.

She flicked on the penlight and saw fissures had spread out in all directions, right to the window’s edges. It reminded her of a spiderweb of frost. She turned off the light, gripped the hammer tightly, and reared back again.

This time the hammer won and the window broke apart in large and small pieces. Shards dropped like the blades of a guillotine and lethal slivers whistled away in the wind.

Being careful to avoid the sharp edges of glass stuck in the frame, Abby placed the pillowcase over the window ledge and lowered herself inside the clinic.

She hoped she’d find the antibiotic pills on the second floor, one floor below her, but what really dominated her mind was the possibility she’d discover a cafeteria on her way to Doctor Droznin’s office.

~ ~ ~

Lieutenant Dawson wondered why Billings was taking so long. He drew in a sudden breath. Prior to now, Billings had obviously left the Biltmore to acquire the contents of his pack. The cadet had also snuck up to the fortieth floor and traced Mystic in the dust. He wouldn’t put it past Billings to try to weasel out from under his nose. Had he duped him and climbed out the bathroom window?

In a spike of panic, Dawson ripped the door open and charged into the bathroom.

Startled, Cadet Billings jumped back from the sink where he was washing his hands.

Dawson stomped past him and checked the window lock. It was engaged.

“Let's go,” he barked and instructed the boy to sit on a couch in the central area of his living quarters. Dawson paced, feeling a vice of tension gripping his neck and jaw. “Were you trying to leave the colony?”

“Yes, sir.”

Dawson stopped, struck dumb by the cadet’s candor. “Why, Billings? Why leave Colony East?”

“Sir, you know why.”

“Enlighten me, Cadet.”

“The hurricane is bringing billions of germs from the tropics. The scientists developed an antibiotic, but they’re only passing it out to the three colonies. The survivors should know about the new epidemic. They should know what you and the scientists are doing.”

Him?
Dawson dragged a chair across the room and sat before Billings. His ears were ringing and he felt numb all over. He briefly wondered if he could produce sounds with his vocal chords. “Where did you learn this fairy tale?”

“I listen to conversations between Colony East and Atlanta. Doctor Perkins and Doctor Droznin talk over the radio all the time.”

“Radio!” Dawson challenged.

“Six months ago, I got a two-way radio from a police cruiser in the Yellow Zone. I set it up in the restaurant on the top floor.”

Dawson’s head spun. He knew what the cadet had just admitted would result in an immediate expulsion. But what Billings had reported troubled Dawson just as much as the cadet’s bold infractions. Where did the facts end and the fiction begin? He swallowed hard at the possibility everything Jonzy had said was the truth.

Suddenly, Dawson had to know something. He looked the boy in the eye, “Jonzy, why did you trace Mystic in the dust on the top floor?”

His eyes widened, informing Dawson he knew nothing about it.

Billings shook his head. “Mystic? I don’t know anything about Mystic, Connecticut.”

Dawson knew he was lying. “A mystic is someone who sees the future. Who said anything about Connecticut?” The boy squirmed. “Is anyone else involved in your harebrained scheme?”

“No sir. That’s the truth.”

With a sinking feeling that he knew exactly who else was involved, Dawson shot to his feet. “Stay put,” he ordered and raced toward the third floor.

~ ~ ~

As Abby moved away from the smashed window, all she could hear was the soft pattering of water dripping on the floor from her wet clothing.

She slipped the flashlight from her pocket and turned it on just long enough to see the stairway exit sign. Dragging her fingertips along the wall for guidance, she moved down the hall to the stairway door, entered, and groped for the railing. In the dark, she climbed down the steps to the landing and then stopped. Buried deep in the lab, surrounded by brick and glass and steel, she could no longer hear the raging hurricane.

Feeling that her insides were swirling as fast as the winds, she crept down the next flight of stairs and stepped into the second-floor hallway. She briefly flicked on the flashlight. Room 202 was opposite the stairway door. Soon she was standing before Doctor Droznin’s office, Room 214, halfway down the hall.

Abby’s temples throbbed as she gripped the knob. She paused to say a prayer. The knob turned. She let out a huge sigh of relief and thanked her God, and all the other gods, just in case, and even gave a quick nod of appreciation to the random energy of the universe that spun up hurricanes.

Abby stepped into Doctor Droznin’s office and closed the door behind her. She flicked on her flashlight and went straight to the drawer where Doctor Droznin had kept the bottle of tiny blue pills. The drawer was empty. Then she opened the drawer below it. In it was a bottle containing three pink pills, the type of pill she had taken, which had infected her with AHA-B.