Positive (23 page)

 

CHAPTER 63

I
t's that road pirate,” Caxton whispered to me. I nodded. I'd told her enough about Red Kate and her crew that she knew to be careful.

Together we walked into the clearing and faced the crew. Andy Waters touched his forehead in salute. I didn't see Archie, which worried me. He would be out in the trees somewhere, maybe overhead. I was certain he'd have a gun pointed at us.

Caxton still had her pistol in her hand. It was empty, of course. My knife was in my belt, and I knew better than to reach for it.

Red Kate seemed to find the situation hilarious. “Stones! I can't believe it. We looked everywhere for you, you know. When you ran away like that, I was just sick with worry. I was sure that something would find you in the dark and just gobble you up. But look at you! You made it!”

“I'm alive,” I confirmed. “Thanks to Caxton here.”

Kate bobbed her head. “Morning, Officer.”

Caxton glanced upward at the sky. “It's midafternoon,” she said.

Kate shrugged her fur-­clad shoulders. “I sleep late.”

Caxton turned her head a little and spat on the ground. Kate didn't move. I had no idea how this was going to shake out.

“You looking to start something here?” Caxton asked. “I've never been a big fan of talking before a fight. If you're not looking to tangle, I've got work to do and you're blocking my truck.”

Kate lifted one long leg over the top of her bike and dropped to her feet. She walked over to the truck and looked inside the cab. “I've heard of you, Officer. I've heard . . . stories. Enough to know Stones isn't your type.” She reached into the bed of the truck and hefted the plastic bag full of zombie ears.

“That's my property,” Caxton said. “You put that down.”

Flies buzzed around Kate's hand as she dropped the bag. “Sorry. I'm just naturally nosy.”

“We call that ‘larcenous' where I'm from.”

Kate favored Caxton with a big smile. “You're a treat. A genuine throwback. Well, never let it be said that I don't cooperate with the authorities. I mean, I totally don't. But never let it be said. No witnesses, no crime, right?”

Caxton's face started to flush. Her fingers twitched on the grip of her pistol.

Kate's eyes drifted to the gun. She pursed her lips.

Then she walked back to her bike. “Enjoy your day, Officer,” she said.

I guess she'd heard enough about Caxton not to want to start a fight, after all.

Of course, this was Red Kate. She couldn't just leave things at that. “Stones, I'm glad to see you're keeping well. Until we meet again, okay?” And then she started up her bike and roared out of the clearing. Her crew followed her, one by one.

When they were gone, when they'd been gone a while and we were sure they weren't coming back, we headed over to Caxton's truck.

Caxton climbed into the driver's seat, the pistol still in her hand. I climbed in beside her. Caxton put the truck in gear and got us out of there. We could see the dust cloud the motorcycles left behind, so we headed in the other direction.

For a long time Caxton drove in silence. She turned the radio on, then switched it off again when there was no music. Eventually she picked up a bottle of water and took a swig.

“I'm so sorry,” I said. “I didn't want to mix you up with them.”

“I've seen worse,” Caxton told me. “I've seen warlords come and go. Maybe a year after the crisis, when nobody had heard from the government for a while, armies of folks like her were out here. Gangs of a hundred and more. They swept through Pennsylvania, knocking over the smaller walled towns. Killing anybody they found. Always looking for drugs and guns, and finding plenty of both.” She shook her head. “Mostly they burned themselves out. Got too drunk, too high, killed each other or the zombies got 'em. The ones that lasted, they turned into little tribes of barbarians. The army took care of them. The government never let them get too big or too organized.”

“You think she'll . . . just . . . I don't know. Get herself killed somehow?” It seemed like too much to hope for.

“Eventually. I'll steer clear of her, and she'll forget about me after a while. You, on the other hand—­she's really got her hooks in you. Following you all this way. There's something between the two of you. You're chained up somehow.”

“I cut her once,” I said. “I took a knife off her, and I cut her wrist. Apparently I'm the only man who ever did that and lived to tell about it.”

Caxton tilted her head to one side. “I figure that's worth following you to the state line for. All the way across New Jersey. But this far?”

“She wasn't looking for me. She said she was headed west, to find some warlord out there named Anubis. We just happened to bump into each other on the road.”

“She's still here. Still looking for you.”

“It was the second time I got away from her. Today makes the third, I guess. She really doesn't like me now.”

Caxton nodded. “She didn't make her play because she thought no matter how quick her ­people were, I would kill at least one of them.” She went on, “But for somebody like that, there's always a next time. She'll wait until she catches us asleep. Then she'll kill me and take you.” She sounded as if she were discussing which road we should take next. This sort of thinking was old hat to her. I wondered what that time of warlords she'd described must have been like. What death throes the world must have gone through.

“Okay,” Caxton said. “Okay.” It sounded final. Like she'd reached a decision.

“Okay?” I asked.

“Okay,” she agreed. “I know what to do now. I've been wrestling with it, but I guess I always knew. I'm driving you to Ohio. To Akron.”

My eyes went wide. I'd given up all hope of ever reaching the medical camp. Of having a safe life. I could barely accept this was real. “But—­but—­your work,” I said.

“It's going to set me back a ­couple of days, sure,” Caxton replied. “And I don't like it. But this is the right thing to do. And anyway,” she added, “if I keep you here, make you my intern—­she's just going to keep harassing us, isn't she?”

I could hardly deny it.

 

PART 3

Camp

 

CHAPTER 64

I
t took most of a day to reach Akron, but with each of us taking turns driving we ate up the road. A little after dawn I saw a sign by the side of the road welcoming us to the state of Ohio, and it was like a great weight was released from my chest, and I could breathe. Red Kate couldn't touch me while I was in the medical camp—­she would never dare go up against the government. I would be safe from zombies, safe from reprisal from the various looters and road pirates I'd pissed off. I would spend two years in camp and then be shipped back home. I was going to have a chance at a real, meaningful life, back in New York.

New York City.

It was funny. When I thought about the city, the place I'd grown up, it was like I was seeing it in a film, an old film that had sat around so long the colors had drained out. I thought of all the ­people I'd known there. All the first-­generation ­people, tending their gardens. Waiting for . . . what? Waiting for nothing. I thought of plundering high-­rises for canned food, and fishing in the subways, and though it seemed . . . nice, even pleasant enough, it was just so drab.

As dangerous as the wilderness might have been, the ­people there weren't just waiting to die.

I shook off such thoughts when we neared Akron and saw the helicopters.

They hung in the air over Ohio as if they were pinned there, mounted in the sky as permanent sentinels. The noise of their rotors shivered the air, and their shadows lay draped across the sunlit road like blankets of darkness. As I watched, one of them broke away from its position and swung toward the southwest. The helicopters were the most potent sign I could imagine that this was a place the government still controlled, a place that was protected. Safe.

Caxton didn't seem to find them as encouraging. She ducked her head and chewed on her lip as if she was worried they were spying on her. I chalked it up to first-­generation paranoia—­in New York my parents had always talked about the government as if they couldn't trust it, as if it were some nefarious regime with no interest in their well-­being. Despite what they heard on the radio. It had always seemed to me that the government was the only force in the world actually trying to fix things.

Green road signs appeared on either side of the highway, warning us that we were entering a Blue Zone, whatever that meant. Up ahead I saw a chain-­link fence stretched around acres of ground and thought it must be the camp, but then I realized there was nothing inside the fence but a few old construction machines, their paint giving way to rust and the probing tendrils of green weeds. A big sign had been posted on the fence, and I made out
HEARTLAND RECLAMAT
ION PROJECT #34
, but we passed by too quickly for me to see what else it read.

A few minutes later we saw the real camp. Or at least, its wall.

The wall stood twenty-­five feet high, and its entire length was lined with barbed wire. Lamps on high poles stood up from its top every hundred feet or so. It stretched away as far as I could see on either side of the road. A single gate pierced it, right where the road passed through. On either side of the gate was a small guardhouse. Machine guns were mounted above the gate as well as a number of cameras in armored housings.

A soldier stood in the middle of the road, flagging us down. He shouted for Caxton to stop a good hundred feet clear of the gate.

“Looks like this is the place,” Caxton told me.

I swallowed—­my throat was thick with emotion—­and I nodded.

“Do not exit the vehicle at this time,” the soldier shouted. “Display your left hands outside the vehicle windows.”

We did as we were told. I held mine up so the soldier could see my tattoo—­my ticket to entry.

“There are no scheduled intake times today,” the soldier said, not shouting as much now. He came closer and studied Caxton's face. “Ma'am, I don't recognize that uniform.”

“I'm law enforcement. From Pennsylvania,” Caxton told him.

He looked confused, but he let it go. Coming around to my side of the truck, he peered in through the window and looked me up and down.

“I'm from New York—­” I said, but he interrupted me.

“The positive will step out of the vehicle,” he said. “The positive will move ten feet clear of the vehicle and stand with hands visible at all times.” He didn't even look at my face. To Caxton, he said, “Ma'am, if you're dropping off, you have to go back the way you came. If you want to remain in the area for more than ten minutes, I need to issue you a pass, and that means getting my CO down here.”

“No need,” Caxton told him. “Just let me say good-­bye.”

The soldier had nothing to say about that. He ran back toward the guardhouse as if he was afraid I was going to jump out of the truck and bite him.

“You sure about this? This is where you want to be?” Caxton asked me.

“Yeah. Absolutely,” I told her. Kylie and the other girls were in there somewhere. My future was in there.

“Good luck, then.” She sighed. “Finn—­it was nice having some company. Do me a favor and be okay, huh?”

“I will,” I said. Then I leaned across and hugged her. I'd never met anyone like her before, and I doubted I ever would again. “You be okay, too.”

Then I stepped out of the car and hurried to get clear—­ten feet, or as close as I could estimate—­and watched as Caxton backed up and turned the truck around. When it was gone, a loud squawk from behind me made me jump in place.

“Enter the gate when it opens. Follow the green line to the processing waiting area. If you do not follow all instructions and announcements, you will be shot.” The words echoed off the wall like the voice of God.

Slowly the gate swung open, and I saw a green line painted right down the middle of the road. I headed forward, staying far away from the guardhouses. Ahead I couldn't see a single human being, just a little courtyard between low buildings.

I hurried inside as if the gate would clang shut any second and seal me out forever.

 

CHAPTER 65

T
he green line led me across the courtyard and to the door of a building on the far side. Beyond the door lay a cavernous room, maybe a hundred feet wide and twice that long. Electric lights burned high overhead—­there were no windows, though I did see a ­couple of camera lenses mounted between the lights. Benches were set up against the walls, and the green line on the floor snaked and doubled back on itself over and over again, so that if I followed it I would end up walking across most of that vast floor. I think the room was meant for processing large numbers of positives at a time—­maybe hundreds—­and the snaking line was meant to force the processees into single file.

The room was empty. Cavernous. I walked across it feeling like a thief moving through a house while the occupants were away, like my every footfall was likely to set off an alarm. At the far side of the room, I found a door and I stepped through.

The next hallway ran for several hundred feet. A recorded voice spoke from the ceiling—­a calm, friendly woman's voice, her words backed up by calm and peaceful music.

“—­you. We promise,” she said as I entered the corridor. I got the sense the recording was on a loop and if I listened long enough, I would hear the whole thing over and over again. “Welcome to the Akron Medical Monitoring Station. Please keep moving forward to avoid congestion in the line.”

“Oh, okay,” I said, even though I knew the woman couldn't hear me. I started walking forward.

“When you reach the door ahead, please, men and boys head to the left; women and girls head to the right. If you are here with your family, please understand that for hygiene reasons we must split up the genders.”

“There were some girls,” I said, in case anyone was listening. “They came in a while ago, maybe a week, and—­”

But the woman was still talking.

“Please comply with all orders given by station staff and our military guards. Please do not approach or make contact with the guard dogs. Everything we do here is for your safety and well-­being. We're going to take care of you. We promise. Welcome to the Akron Medical Monitoring Station . . .”

I headed forward until I came to a door at the far end of the hallway, a regular door with a knob and everything. I opened it and sunlight poured into the hallway, dazzling me for a second. Then my eyes adjusted, and I saw my new home.