Orleans (33 page)

“Power, power, power in the blood, there’s wonder-working power in the precious blood of the Lamb.”
The singing was deep, sonorous, and annoying as hell.

Daniel tried to sit up. The room dipped dimly, then resurfaced. He was in the chapel of the Super Saver on a cot placed on the stage next to the altar. Enola lay on the altar, wailing her heart out. The singer spoke. “Hush, child. All will be well soon.”

Daniel forced himself to focus. Nearby, a man wearing the tattered robes of a monk leaned over the altar, fiddling with something small—a butterfly needle. Daniel looked down at his own arms and groaned in fear and relief. He was strapped to a gurney, but his suit was still on. He hadn’t been compromised. Not yet.

The priest turned to him and smiled. “Ah, you’re awake,” the man said. “Welcome back. I’m Father John, and you are welcome to stay with us as long as you like.”

“What are you doing?” Daniel asked.

“Right now, I’m trying to find a needle small enough for an infant. It’s been many years since I’ve treated one so young. But her blood is pure, pure as snow. It has the power to wash away all sins,” he said by way of explanation.

“And you, young man, you are proof that the good Lord shall provide for all his honest servants. You see, there was a time when I was prideful and thought that I could single-handedly save the people of this parish. But I failed.” He stopped sorting his needles, a faraway look coming over him. “Instead, my helpmates grew sick and died. But still I stayed. I was healthy, and in my pride, I stayed. When the churches and the government decreed the Delta be cast out, I chose to stay, as if I could minister to fallen angels, to Lucifer himself. I let myself fall into Hell in the belief that I could pray my way out.”

He looked at his Fever-scarred hands, the makeup washed from his skin. “I have been punished for my sins. ‘But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, though I have seen my head, grown slightly bald, brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter.’”

Daniel struggled to get off the gurney, but he was strapped down at the waist as well.

“And now,” Father John said, ignoring Daniel’s struggles as much as Enola’s cries, “I’ve been forgiven!” He said it with such joy that Daniel almost wanted to be happy for him. The blue eyes in his scarred face were bright and clear.

“‘And a child shall lead them,’” he quoted. “And so she shall. This child will cleanse me. But you, my son, you are the truest answer. While her blood might purify me slowly, sustain me for a few days or weeks—you, with your pints and pints of glorious, wonder-working blood—” He stopped, overcome with emotion. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. The skin of his fingers cracked, slowly leaking dull brown ichor. “I can cast out my demons. I can refresh my soul.”

He leaned closer, and Daniel could see that the brightness in his eyes was caused as much by the Fever as by his faith.

“You have given me the keys to the kingdom. I just have to sacrifice you, my son, and this child. Then God will welcome me home.”

He began to sing again.
“Would you do service for Jesus, your king? There’s power in the blood, power in the blood.”

The song was punctuated by a small gasp. He had found an infant-size needle at last. Father John attached it to the IV tube and pressed Enola’s head to the altar, turning her neck to find the artery.

“No!” Daniel screamed.

The door banged open.

Fen stood there, clothes streaming with mud, leaves twisted in her hair like a madwoman. And Daniel’s voice was her voice. “No!” she screamed, and she flew at the priest.

Father John raised his hands in defense, singing louder and louder. Fen tackled him, sweeping a hand across the tray of instruments. Needles, scalpels, knives, she cut her own flesh gathering them into her fist, and she thrust them with one angry, desperate motion into the priest’s heart.

The singing stopped so abruptly that the silence was deafening to Daniel. Then Fen’s breathing came to him, hard and fast. She clambered off of Father John’s body and pulled a knife free from the thicket in his chest. She wiped it on his robes and cut Daniel loose. Then she stood over Enola, not picking her up, rubbing her hands on her clothes.

“I’m not clean.” She looked at Daniel. “Help her. Stop her from crying. Now!” she snapped, shocking Daniel into action. He couldn’t move fast enough to pick up the baby, to cradle her and let Fen know she was okay.

“Here, clean off. You can take her.” He tried to hand her a cloth from the tray of instruments.

“No, no, I can’t,” Fen insisted. “I don’t want her to be sick, Daniel. I’m covered in it. Fever be in the water, the air. In me.” She shivered with horror. “I won’t risk it now. We too close.”

She looked so young. Daniel wanted to hold her, to tell her she was okay, too, but he couldn’t. Instead, he waited for her to be Fen again.

He watched her grow calm and, in another minute, she was.

“What you doing here, Daniel? You supposed to be gone by now,” she asked.

Daniel took a breath, trying to replace the air that had been knocked out of him. He was surprised to feel himself blushing. “I tried to go back to Rooftops, but there were ABs everywhere.”

Fen looked at him and made a choking sound, like a laugh. “Rooftops? You trying to be a hero?” she asked.

“No. I’m just trying to set things right.”

“You want to set things right, you take Enola with you over the Wall,” she told him. “You find the Coopers. You get her to a good home.”

Daniel closed his eyes. He would do it, he already knew. He tried to read her face as he warned her, “It’s not perfect over there.”

Fen did laugh this time, harsh and sad. “Anything be better than this,” she said. “Now, don’t stand there looking at me, tourist. We gotta go.”

Fen shoved aside the lab equipment and knelt by the generator on the floor. She turned the machine off and yanked a hose from the casing, pouring clear ethanol fuel onto the floor.

Daniel watched as it spread across the church, toward Father John’s prone body. Fen ushered Daniel toward the door, then knocked over the stand of devotional candles on their way out of the chapel. The old priest’s robes caught light quickly. The flames roared across the pool of fuel, spreading to the altar cloth, the carpet, the walls. They left the Super Saver to quietly burn.

44

“WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR?” DANIEL ASK.
We be winding our way through the woods, the Super Saver behind us. The trees be bigger the deeper into the woods we get. Soon we be coming out the other side.

“The Charity Gate,” I say. “You ready to go?”

“We’re ready.”

He say
we
and it hit me that Enola don’t belong to me no more. She ain’t looking up at me with her mama’s big brown eyes; she looking at him. It make me fold my arms against my empty chest. I want to hold her again, but then I might not let her go.
It gonna be all right,
I tell myself. Daniel know what to do. He got the Coopers’ address in San Diego. He got they e-mail address, too, so they can know he coming. Baby Girl be all right, as long as we get them out of Orleans.

We hear the Wall before we see it. The trees be so close together here, there ain’t no leaves on they trunks except for at the top. Ain’t nothing to muffle sounds, so we extra quiet, in case there still be ABs around. That be the only reason I hear it: a burst of radio, like a louder version of Daniel’s voice filter.

“Hold up,” I hiss, putting my hand up for him to stop. Radio static. Only folks I know who got radios be Mr. Go, Father John, the Ursulines, and the Professors. None of them be here now. Daniel crouch next to me and I signal for him to stay put. He nod, and I inch my way out to the edge of the trees ’til I can see it. The Wall.

Surprise me every time, how short it be. Maybe twenty, thirty feet high. Look like you could climb it with rope or something. But it almost as wide as it be high, and between the soldiers and the razor wire, you’d be stopped before you made it across. That be why Mr. Go so clever. The Wall ain’t as kept up as it could be, this close to the gate, and a crack in the mortar be enough to get a body through.

No more than a couple yards downslope from us be the moat, where they dug a channel for the bayou to go along the Wall. To my right, across the muddy channel, be the Old Charity Gate. The army checkpoint still there, a big concrete bunker squat in the middle of the Wall, like a frog sitting on a log. It look like it always do, covered in vines and crumbling around the edges. There still be searchlights mounted on the roof on both sides of the gate, and a drawbridge, too, where there used to be a road out of the city. The old highway been blown to bits long ago to make way for the moat. I used to come here with my parents when I been little, just to look at it all. I liked to see the people, the soldiers in they black jumpsuits and camouflage hats, they guns strapped across they chests, new ones every month ’cause they don’t be lasting out here for long. The outpost been empty for a long time, with just a sniffer drone to keep watch. At least, it supposed to be.

I guess we been wrong about that.

Soldiers. Two of ’em I can see, and that burst of radio mean there be more somewhere I can’t lay eyes on. Cigarette smoke drift toward me. There be more of them, all right. The two on the Wall ain’t smoking.

Then the searchlights come ’round, bright as stars against the gloomy afternoon. I scuttle back into the trees.

“Fen?” Daniel ask when he see me coming back.

I shake my head. “Change of plan.”

I lead him deeper into the trees so we can talk without being heard. “Mr. Go say there be a way through just south of the gate.”

Daniel pull out his map. He point at a spot on the drawing of the Wall, marked on the paper with an
X.
He take a deep breath. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“It’s what I
be
telling you that you got to listen to, Daniel. The gate being watched. Not just drones, neither.”

Daniel don’t say nothing, and I know it ’cause he scared. But I need him not to be. I need him to do this for me, for Enola. I squat down next to him.

“Listen to me. You take Enola back downstream outta sight of the gate and wade across. The moat ain’t too deep. If it was, they’d risk losing stuff that fall in by accident. I seen it happen.”

Daniel shake his head. “They’ll see us. I heard their radios, too, Fen. This place must be crawling with soldiers. Jesus, this is stupid.” He run a hand over his hat, like he be smoothing his hair if he not been in the suit. He be worrying like an old woman. I want to slap this boy. I close my eyes.

“Course it be dangerous, but it be necessary. Look at the Wall. You see what Mr. Go be talking about?” I point through the trees. Maybe thirty yards downstream from the gate with its old drawbridge welded shut in the raised position, the Wall ain’t reinforced with steel sheeting like the gate. Whatever been there done rusted away and it be just concrete now. Vines be growing, eating at the Wall like acid. Where the vines be thickest, Mr. Go found a hole.

Daniel nod and look at me. “Fen? Don’t make me do this. I’ll stay. We can find a cure together. I promise.”

I look at him; I look at Baby Girl. She be sleeping in her sling. I fight the urge to wake her, have her look at me one last time. I didn’t know I had any heart left to break ’til she come along. But there ain’t no use in crying on it now.

“Say you stay here, you and Enola. And them vials you dropped in Rooftops break open. We all be dead then. Say they don’t break, and we stay the same. You been in a blood farm once. You think it can’t happen again?”

Daniel hang his head and nod, like he be convincing himself. He know I’m right. We both do.

“It ain’t what I want, Daniel. But it got to be. Now, give me your coat.”

“What?”

“Give me your coat. But don’t wake the baby.”

Daniel hesitate a second, but he do it without asking why. That a first. I smile at him, but I don’t feel it. I glance at his encounter suit, seeing it fully for the first time. Thick as gator skin, with fluids that be pulsing and pumping inside. It nasty and uncomfortable-looking, but it going to save two lives. I bundle Daniel’s jacket up ’til it just about Enola’s size. Then I tuck it into my arms.

“Wait for my signal. The moat ain’t wide. Just start moving. When you hear me, run.”

“What are you going to do?” he ask, looking at the bundle.

I sigh. This boy never learn, but I forgive him this last time. “They won’t shoot a woman carrying a baby. Now, listen for me, and hustle.”

Slowly, Daniel rise to his feet. “Keep her above the water,” I tell him, and I squeeze his arm through the bulk of his suit. “It been nice knowing you, tourist. Take care of your souvenir.” I nod at Enola and head north, toward the gate.

Away from my tribe.

45