Inhuman

15

I rose abruptly as if the floor had pitched me upward. My dad didn’t know he had to do a fetch for Director Spurling, didn’t know that his life depended on it. Maybe there was still time to find him. How far could he have gone? Rafe gripped my arm. I stared at his fingers, tan lines against the white of my forearm. Why was he holding me so tightly?

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Going back to Arsenal,” I said.

“What exactly is going on?” Hagen demanded. “How did biohaz find out he’d come east?”

“They’ve got a recording of Mack in the exodus tunnel,” Rafe explained. “Now he’s got to grease a big wheel or they’ll turn him into target practice.”

“Oh no,” she whispered.

Rafe tugged me back into my seat. “Rushing off hot-headed isn’t going to help Mack.”

“You’re right,” I said, pulling my ponytail tighter. “If he’s going to try bribing a line guard, he’ll probably go through Dr. Solis, and Dr. Solis will tell him that I’m here.”

“Oh, that’s good,” Hagen said with relief. “Now all you have to do is wait for him to come looking for you.”

“But what if he doesn’t go to Dr. Solis?” They were friends. Maybe my dad wouldn’t want to implicate him. “Or even if he does go, what if the doctor is so whiffed out on Lull that he can’t tell my father he saw me?”

“That’s a lot of ifs that you can’t do anything about,” Rafe said and turned to Hagen. “What’s on the grill today?”

He couldn’t be serious. He wasn’t going to eat at a time like this…. Even Hagen looked put out until Rafe pulled a wadded-up shirt from his knapsack and unrolled it to reveal a bottle of viscous pink liquid. “Amoxicillin. That should be worth at least two meals.”

Hagen rose and slipped the bottle into her apron pocket. “We’ve got the usual, chicken and fish for the noninfected.”

“Is that how most people pay?” I asked. “With medicine?”

“If you live in the compound, you don’t pay, as long as you’re signed up for work duty. It’s the hacks who have to trade for food,” Hagen said.

“Ammunition, matches, weapons, booze,” Rafe said. “They’ll get you everything you need. Like a plate of Hagen’s grilled chicken, which is what I need.” He pointed at me. “You?”

The thought of food made me ill, and the mastiff-man at the next table wasn’t helping as he wolfed down a hunk of bloody steak and then licked his lips with his black tongue. “I don’t eat meat.”

“No one eats mammals,” Hagen said. “Well, unless you’re already infected, then it doesn’t matter if the animal had the disease before it got turned into a hamburger. The rest of us won’t take that chance.”

“Can you catch Ferae from eating an infected animal?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Who’s going to put it to the test? Since we know for sure that birds and fish can’t get Ferae, that’s what we grill up.”

“I don’t eat birds and fish either.”

Rafe exchanged a look with Hagen. “Are you sure you’re Mack’s daughter?”

How many times had my dad made that same joke while devouring a drumstick? “Do you have oatmeal?” I asked.

“Sure, but it’ll taste old to you.”

“That’s okay.” My brain was dangerously close to clicking into “thrash mode” — where anything and everything that made me feel crappy flashed through my mind at once. Until this moment I’d really thought that I would find my dad in time and he’d do the fetch. Now I didn’t know what to do.

As soon as Hagen headed off, I pulled out Spurling’s instructions and my hand sanitizer.

Rafe plucked the paper from my fingers. “Is this the job?”

I nodded and tried to squeeze gel into my palm, but the bottle was empty. “Great,” I muttered, tossing it onto the table. “Guess I’ll be getting dirty.”

Rafe glanced up from the letter. “You can wash your hands in the river.” He hooked a thumb at the back door.

I managed to stifle my ew. “There’s bacteria in the river. And parasites.”

“And fish pee. So what? The only germ that matters is the one that turns you into a slobbering animal. And that you can’t catch from a river.” He dropped the letter on the table. “All this for a photo?” he said with disgust. “Her kid died nineteen years ago. When is she going to get over it?”

Never. And if my dad couldn’t come home, I wouldn’t get over it either. He had to come home. But if he didn’t know about Spurling’s offer, how was that going to happen?

“I have to do the fetch for him,” I said quietly.

“Right.” Rafe chuckled and then saw my face. “Wrong! You’d get infected or killed.”

“I won’t,” I said firmly, though the words infected or killed did give me a mental shiver. “I’ll manage.”

Rafe groaned. “Fine. All right. I’ll go to Chicago.”

“You’ll do the fetch?” I wasn’t sure whether to be suspicious or hug him. “Why?”

“Mack saved me from the orphan camp. I owe him. Okay?”

“Okay.” I was too grateful to pull apart my tangled feelings about my father’s secret life. A life in which Rafe had played a major role. My gratitude slipped a notch. “But I’m going with you.”

“Not happening,” he said firmly. I opened my mouth to protest but he held up a hand and said, “I know that Mack would rather face a firing squad than risk his pretty princess getting Ferae.”

I smacked his shoulder, but Rafe didn’t so much as wince. Still, it was satisfying. “Call me that again and I will mess you up,” I added for good measure.

“Okay, that’s hilarious, but it doesn’t change the fact that Mack wouldn’t want you going into the zone for him.”

“I’m already in it.”

“Please. This is the cradle of civilization. The quarantine compounds around here are actually on the map. But head east and who knows what you’ll find. Those compounds have been isolated for eighteen years — enough time to go native. And they have. There are cults and cannibals that come in more flavors of scary than you want to sample.”

Cannibals? He was exaggerating for effect. He had to be.

Crossing his arms, Rafe tipped back in his chair. “Remember the chimpacabra?”

I shuddered, remembering it too well. It would be a miracle if I ever got a good night’s sleep again.

“Well, there are mongrels out there a lot more dangerous than a chimpa, and then there’s the feral that’s ripping out people’s —”

“Okay, all right.” I put up my hands to ward off any more nightmare fuel. “I get it. I’ll stay here.”

“Glad that’s settled,” he said as Hagen plopped a whole spit-roasted chicken in front of him. “Is Mack’s bike still in the garage?” he asked her.

“Yep.” She set a steaming bowl of oatmeal in front of me. “If you take it, it comes back in the same condition.”

“Bike as in motorcycle?” I asked.

“Bike as in bicycle.” Rafe ripped off a chicken leg. “Ferals don’t hear you coming, you can carry it over rubble, and you don’t have to feed it.”

“Why not take a car?”

Rafe snorted. “Why not a hovercopter? We can fill the tank with magic fairy dust and wish ourselves there.”

Got it. All the gas in the East had probably been siphoned out of the stations long ago. “How long will it take you to bike to Chicago?”

“Eighteen hours.”

“What? Why so long?”

“It’s one hundred seventy miles from here,” Hagen explained. “Over broken road.”

“But I have to get back to the tunnel by Thursday, before the line patrol fills it in with rubble.”

Rafe dropped the chicken leg onto his plate. “Guess I’m getting this to go.”

“Bring the bike around,” Hagen said, picking up the plate. “I’ll wrap this and meet you in front.” She headed off.

“So, can you get to Chicago and back in time?” I asked as he rose.

He zipped up his knapsack and slung the whole pack onto his back. “We’ll find out.” His tone wasn’t reassuring. He left through the station’s back door — after shoving a bear-man out of his way. Even if I could keep up with him on a bike, and that was unlikely, I was just as happy not to go. I’d seen enough of the Feral Zone and had my fill of adventure. Staying here was a much saner plan.

Hagen returned with a child’s old lunchbox, into which she packed the chicken. “Don’t worry. He’ll do the fetch and wear himself out to get back in time. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for Mack.”

“Because my dad got him out of an orphan camp?”

“Yes, after Mack saw how bad it was. The guards treat the kids like slave labor.”

My skin prickled. Everson had said he’d take the little girl, Jia, to an orphan camp. Were they all awful?

“Mack felt responsible because he was the one who put Rafe there,” Hagen added.

“Why?” I asked.

“On one of his fetches, Mack found Rafe living like a wild child out in the woods. Half-starved and alone.”

“What happened to his parents?”

Hagen pursed her lips as if considering how much to tell me.

“They were killed by a feral, weren’t they?” I guessed. That would explain why Rafe hated infected people.

She sighed, relenting. “I don’t know what happened to his parents. He was raised by his sister. But you’ve got the right idea. When her husband got infected, the three of them moved out of the compound where they were living. Not Moline. They were squatting in some abandoned house, making the best of it, and then one day, the guy turned and killed Rafe’s sister right in front of him. He was eight.”

I clapped a hand to my mouth. Eight?! No wonder he’d made a career out of killing ferals.

Hagen angled a finger at me. “Don’t tell him I told you. He hates anyone feeling sorry for him.”

I nodded, though it would be hard not to look at him differently. How could anyone help but feel sorry for him after hearing that story?

“You want something to drink?” she asked. “There’s no coffee, but we have tea.”

“What I really want is more information.” If I was stuck in Moline, at least I was going to learn as much about the East as I could — especially about my father’s life here. “Is my dad coming over just to fetch art and make money, or is it more than that? Dr. Solis said he brings medicine over here, to the compound.”

“The money’s a part of it, don’t kid yourself.” Hagen settled in the chair next to me. “But yeah, Mack brings medicine that we wouldn’t get any other way. It slows down the virus.” She gestured to the man infected with mastiff and another with froggy eyes who now sat on opposite sides of a checkerboard. They wore blue jeans and sweaters that were too small for them — probably scavenged from abandoned stores. The mastiff picked up a mug, his claws clicking on the ceramic handle, and tipped it to his muzzle. His black tongue lapped as he swallowed and hot chocolate dribbled onto his shirt, which he dabbed at self-consciously.

“Keeps them from mutating as fast,” Hagen went on. “But they have to keep taking it. Every month.”

A man approached the table. “Hagen, if you’re going to set a curfew, you should issue a shoot-to-kill order along with it. Post people on roofs. Anything out on the street tonight gets a gut full of bullets. That’ll solve our feral problem real quick.”

“The way the military gunned down people during the plague?” Hagen snapped. “Great idea, Nestor. Let’s bring back anarchy. It worked so well last time.”

“Forget the plague. Remember two years ago? Do you want to lose eight more people — full-blooded humans?”

“What I’m not going to do is resort to tactics that end in tragedy — always.” Hagen’s voice took on a steely edge. “Thanks for your input, but I got this one.”

“I hope so. Because a lot of people have been saying it’s time to hold another election.” He moved off.

Hagen massaged her temples. “This is going to get ugly before it gets better. I don’t see a way around it.”

“The rogue killed eight people two years ago?”

Hagen nodded. “We only found three bodies. But the other five people were never seen again, and those are just the ones we know about. No one notices a missing drifter, and there are a lot of those in the Feral Zone.”

“Does my dad know that there’s a man-eating feral on the loose?”

“He heard the talk last night before he took off. I wouldn’t worry about him. Your dad deals with worse every time he goes into Chicago. He says the people in that city have gone truly insane.” She leaned back with a sigh. “Actually what’s more surprising is that the rest of us haven’t.”

“Why didn’t you leave during the exodus?”

“You say that like it was my choice. The plague hit so fast — there were a million people diagnosed with a new, unnamed virus in one day.”

I imagined something like that happening now, in the West, and it staggered me.

“Of course,” Hagen went on, “all those people managed to go feral and bite someone before anyone knew what was going on. And animals were getting it too. By the third day, public transportation was shut down and the interstate roads were all closed to try to stop it from spreading any farther. But the hospitals were overflowing — there were just too many new cases — so infected people ran through the streets, and the police began gunning them down. The rest of us didn’t dare leave our homes for fear of getting bitten or shot. We barricaded our doors and watched the news as city after city was overtaken with feral people and animals, not to mention corpses, because back then most people died within days.”

I nodded. This part had been on the history sites.

“The exodus across the Mississippi began, and those of us stuck in the East stayed put, waiting for the government to get the situation under control, which they promised to do. But they never even tried.”

“What do you mean? They did get it under control. That’s when they set up the immigration checkpoints, to make sure the survivors would be safe.”

Hagen smiled at me grimly and shook her head. “I finally ventured out, and made my way here.” She cocked her head toward the river. “They’d already put up an electric fence on the western bank. Within a year, the wall replaced it. I’ve never seen anything that huge constructed so fast.”

“But did you cross to Arsenal and go to a checkpoint? They were still letting people in after the wall went up.”

“Only if you had a guaranteed contact over there who could give you a place to stay and help you find a job. They said they didn’t want refugees living on the streets.”

“What? No. You just had to be an American citizen and —”

“‘Not pose a health risk to the general population.’ On paper, it looked like you just had to test clean for Ferae. But that phrase was twisted to suit the gatekeepers. And it suited them to keep a lot of people out.”

My hands had balled into fists on the table. How could the government have abandoned all these people? “I just can’t believe it,” I said.

“Sorry, honey.” Hagen chuckled. She reached out and patted one of my hands. “It’s true. I should know, I lived —” A long, loud squeal cut her off. We turned to see Sid running through the front door. “Mayor!” he shouted.

She sighed. “It’s always something. Come over here and spit it out, Sid.”

“Line patrol,” Sid wheezed. As others turned to listen, the place fell silent, except for Sid’s hooves tappity-tapping across the marble floor. “They’re here!”

“What?” Hagen strode over to meet him with me close on her heels.

“They have assault rifles!” Sid said. “When I wouldn’t open the gate, they shot off the lock and drove in. Drove! They wouldn’t answer my questions. And they nabbed Rafe.”

“Rafe?” I echoed.

“Yeah. Out on the square.” Sid dabbed his brow with a dirty handkerchief. “He gave them a good run, but they got him.”

I turned to Hagen. “I thought line guards weren’t allowed to cross the bridge.”

“They aren’t,” she said, her jaw tight.

I still couldn’t fathom it. “They broke quarantine just to come after Rafe?”

“No, missy.” Sid cast his piggy eyes on me. “They came for you.”