Direct Contact Page 10

  “Well, you’ll do, I suppose. Best shot we’ve got, anyway.” She stuck out her hand, her long, slender fingers cut and chafed. “They call me Kat, down here,” she said. “Nice to meet you, Two.” She turned to Julie. “And nice to see you again, though my shoulder wouldn’t say the same.”

  “How did you know where to find us?” Julie eyed the woman suspiciously.

  “I didn’t,” Kat answered, not looking back at her but, instead, scanning the landscape before narrowing her view on the tunnel ahead of them. “We all heard the sirens start and carry on for at least a day. George got nervous and decided you must be on your way. Or you would be if you’d made it out alive. He sent a dozen of us out in all different directions, to wait at the different entrances to Manhattan. There’s not much good to say about this burned-out husk we call home, but it’s helpful when searching for someone. We can see for miles around. I’ve been waiting for you since I first spotted you an hour ago.” She shrugged. “Sure took your time, huh?”

  Malcolm laughed. “We’ve kind of been through a lot.”

  Kat turned and started walked toward the tunnel. “So have we all,” she said over her shoulder without fully turning her head. “You coming?”

  They followed a few steps behind her.

  At the mouth of the tunnel, she stopped and spoke into an old-fashioned walkie-talkie. “Josie, I’ve got them. Tell the others.” Kat turned to them. “The fiber optics have all gone out, no wireless, no internet, no cell communications. All we’ve got are rotted-out payphones when the electricity is working, like it is right now.” She pointed to the flickering scattered throughout the tunnel ceiling. “And these industrial walkie-talkies. A few of the girls have CB radios they grabbed from old trucks in junkyards—George got them to work. We operate through a phone-tree. Josie will tell a few others who will phone the base. Eventually, they’ll all know you’ve arrived. Hopefully, they’ll be waiting for us when we get there.”

  Kat led them through the tunnel and into the deserted city.

  “Where are all the people?” Malcolm asked, not seeing a soul.

  Kat smiled and slowed down. “Look more closely,” she said. “They’re all around you.”

  Malcolm followed her instructions, peering carefully into the darkened areas. Sure enough, here and there, he saw flashes of movement, whites of eyes. He heard rustling of clothing and maybe a fire crackling somewhere.

  “Why are they hiding?” he asked.

  “The sirens,” she answered. “They’re certain it’s the end of the world, although I’m not quite sure ending this world would be all that bad.” She kicked a nearby pile of boxes to make her point, and they clattered away, revealing two small children rummaging for rotted food along with the rats and vermin. They were filthy, hair hanging in oily strands about their bloodied faces. Pale and gaunt, they stared up at the four with wide eyes before running in their rags and bare feet for the closest alleyway.

  “Most of them don’t talk,” Kat said. “Either the plagues gutted their throats or their parents died too soon to teach them language or I don’t know what else.” She shrugged. “Maybe they just don’t have anything to say.”

  She ducked down quickly, motioning for them to do the same. Overhead, fighter jets whizzed by in a deafening roar, far too close to the city.

  “No air traffic control anymore,” Kat said, by way of explanation. “They almost take off the tops of the buildings.”

  “Are they looking for us?” Malcolm asked, unease growing into a hard lump in his stomach.

  “I don’t know. I doubt it. They could be, though.” She shrugged again. “The emperor flies those planes overhead weekly anyway, just to keep the people afraid and in line.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Malcolm said.

  “Me, either,” Julie added.

  Kat grunted. “There’s lots of things you all don’t know.”

  She grabbed hold of a chain-link fence and pulled herself up, hopping over it in one swoop. “We’re almost there now,” she said. “Just a few more turns.” She turned and started jogging. “Keep up, will you?”

  Malcolm glanced around while the girls climbed the fence one after the other. An old billboard hung by one of its corners, creaking in the wind. Piles of garbage lined the streets, covering rusty heaps of cars that hadn’t been used in decades. They’d just been left there when the sicknesses had hit, had never been removed, had never been cleaned, had never been used again. Broken glass crunched under his feet as he propelled himself over the chain links.

  He couldn’t make out any of the old advertisements. They were all spray-painted over or completely faded away. The air was heavy and dank, full of dust and grime. Each breath was a battle, his lungs choking with the density of it.

  “Malcolm, hurry up!” Julie’s voice echoed along the empty street, and Malcolm picked up his pace to join the others.

  * * * *

  “George!” Julie spotted him right away, though he looked entirely different from when she had known him, before his escape. His salt-and-pepper hair had gone completely white and now clung to his head in dirty wisps and streaks. The lines around his face had deepened, and his round frame had thinned to where she could see his bones jutting against the loosened skin. Liver spots danced on his temples and covered the backs of his palms. His green eyes were dulled, but he brightened at the sound of his name. He started toward them, arms outstretched, and Julie ran into them.

  “Julie, my darling Number Two! How are you, my dear?”

  “I’ve been better,” she said, looking him up and down. “But then, so have you.”

  “It’s true.” He nodded. “We’re just about at the end here. You’ve come just in time.” He motioned at the line of ragged people waiting just outside the doors of the old building Kat had brought them into. “Waiting for immunizations, they are,” he said. “But we can’t make it quickly enough. Not with limited resources. I’ve had the girls scouring the hospitals from here all the way up to Boston, but the journeys were long and treacherous. And by now, most of the medicine is gone anyway. I can’t make something from nothing, you know.” He frowned.

  Julie gave him another hug then disentangled herself, stepping back.

  “What is this place?” she asked, pointing around the old room which didn’t look like a medical facility so much as a mansion.

  “It’s a hospital.” George nodded at her confusion. “It was originally an old healer’s house, back in the early 18th century. Over time, they wanted to rebuild here, and instead of demolishing the historical home, they incorporated it into the hospital blueprints. As you go further back, the buildings are newer and more businesslike, but they kept the gentrified, homey feel of the original mansion up front.” He shook his head. “No time for a history lesson, though. Who have you got with you?”

  “Malcolm is here, too,” she said, pointing behind her. “And that’s Anna. Number Twenty-seven.”

  George’s frown intensified. “Where are the others? Twenty-six, Twenty-eight, Twenty-nine and Thirty?”

  “Well, Twenty-six chose not to go our way, and I’ve a feeling she’s the reason for the emergency lockdown up there. Last we heard, she was with the emperor in his quarters. We couldn’t get to the other girls in time.” She hung her head.

  George’s hand came to rest on her shoulder. “It’s okay, Julie. You can only do what you can do, you know. It’s all we have. But Twenty-six…how much did you tell her?”

  Julie shrugged. “I gave her the typical spiel, two vials, one keeps life as it is, the other prepares you for a long journey and helps you escape your numbered life, etcetera. Nothing more specific than that.”

  George nodded, pulling on his chin in contemplation. “Well, it makes sense that it would have been enough to send Stan into a frenzy. I’m almost surprised it didn’t happen sooner.”

  “Why?” His words surprised her. Who wouldn’t want to be sprung free from that dull life of servitude and confinement?

  �
��Ambition, selfishness, greed,” George listed off. “Not everyone is as altruistic as you, my dear.” His eyes crinkled in a fatherly smile. “Think about it. By going to him with your information, she secures his trust. The trust of the emperor is not to be taken lightly. I wouldn’t doubt she’s angling for empress, and why not? She’s been reared for the role, after all, in a roundabout way.” He paused, a faraway look coming into his eyes. “We were just lucky that so many of you agreed with us and didn’t have that drive in you.”

  “Empress?” Julie blanched. “I’d hate it.”

  “Aye, and so would many, but many more would not,” George said. “Quite a lot of power comes with it.”

  Malcolm interrupted. “And she hadn’t done so well in her interview with the emperor,” he said. “He had all but dismissed her. She might have seen this as her chance to change his mind.”

  “Well, whatever she’s doing, it’s sure messing us up,” Anna piped in.

  George turned to her for the first time, assessing the spritely girl. “You’re in good spirits,” he said. “I can feel the energy radiating off you.”

  With that, Malcolm took his bag off his shoulder and rummaged through it. “We shot her up with a second dose of the serum before we left,” he said. “I’ve got three more small vials. A blue for you and two red.”

  “You figured out the equation!” George was elated. “I knew you could do it! And the notes?” George asked eagerly.

  Malcolm shook his head. “Right before I passed out, I burned them. The emergency system was already sounding, and I was afraid the emperor or his guards would pillage the room and find them.”

  “Oh.” The old man’s tone was disappointed. He sighed. “Well, you did what you had to do. If those calculations had ended up in his hands, or worse, in Mathis’ hands,” he shuddered, “we’d all be dead by the morrow.” He looked toward the ever-lengthening line at the old wooden doors. “Still, we could have used some enhanced genomes down here.”

  “I can make more,” Malcolm piped up. “I remember most of the formula, and what I don’t, I can reason through. It will take me some time, though.” He cast a glance around the room, looking for an appropriate workspace.

  “We’ll have to make do with what we’ve got,” Julie said. “And hope it’s enough.

  “Indeed,” George agreed.

  They all looked up as a thin woman crashed through the door, elbowing the people back. “They’re coming,” she said as she caught her breath, panting.

  “Who’s coming?” Malcolm asked.

  “The emperor,” she gasped. “The army. I don’t know. Them.”

  “How long do we have?” George was a pillar of calm strength.

  “Just until morning, I believe. The planes have been spotted circling around where JFK used to be. It’s quite a walk from there, but they’ll find a way.”

  Malcolm looked around. “What can we use to barricade us off? How many here can fight?”

  George went to answer, but was cut off by Julie, who spoke to the woman.

  “How do you know it’s them?”

  The messenger looked at her, annoyed. “It’s my job,” she said.

  “Don’t fret now,” George said, patting the girl’s shoulder. “These three have just arrived and have no idea what’s going on. They don’t know about the systems we have in place. I trust you fully, and we’ll prepare for their arrival. Now, be a good girl and shoo all those people away. Tell them to hide as well as they can.”

  Prepare for their arrival? What did that entail? Malcolm clearly couldn’t count on George to explain the situation, and he started making mental notes, laying out the grid of the hospital rooms he could see. It was no use. Too many unknowns. So he did what he could. He got to work on readying the serums, should they been needed.

  Meanwhile, George had turned back to the cot where he’d been working on a young boy before the group’s arrival. He gently pulled the lids shut over the child’s dead eyes. “I guess it’s really time,” he sighed.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Julie couldn’t sleep. She tossed and turned on an old cot in the corner of one of the hollowed-out hospital’s private rooms. It wasn’t even a room, really, but more like a closet, which is why she supposed it was private.

  Across the hall, Anna was situated with the other numbers. For a while, Julie had heard excited whispers coming from their large room, but those had died down an hour ago as the last of the girls had dropped off. The sleeping quarters had once been a luxurious lobby, but now it was a hostel with twenty or more beds and cots strewn about. Now, the buzz and fizzle of faulty wires and the chill of the night air kept her company. She wondered how Malcolm was faring as he readied to go back to Terrecina.

  Restless, she got up and pulled on a pair of ugly hospital socks with the gummy pattern on the bottoms. She went over the plan for tomorrow and decided it wasn’t much of a plan at all. They would simply wait for the guards to come—well, except the key component of their ragged group.

  Malcolm would leave before daybreak and make his way to the larger ship George had parked on the hospital’s old Lifestar pad. He would fly it back to Terrecina where George assumed the emperor would be, unguarded or lightly guarded.

  Malcolm would try to sneak into the palace through the side gates using his scientist’s badge…unless it had been deactivated.

  Julie didn’t take the thought any further. Malcolm would have to fend for himself, and she’d have to trust him to do it. She would be here, with George and the numbers. Their one objective was to fight off and, if necessary, kill all the guards coming to The Levels. The girls had knives, ropes, axes and several guns George had been able to collect as payment for the vaccinations he’d been performing.

  Julie looked over at the gun she’d carried from the palace. It lay on the metal shelving right near her cot. She picked it up, feeling the cool weight of it against her hand. She played with the safety, getting used to it. She cocked it and aimed at the door, practicing her sights.

  When Malcolm walked in, she almost shot him.

  “Jesus, don’t scare me like that!” she snapped, the annoyance in her voice born of fear, not anger. “What are you doing here?”

  “Well, I didn’t expect you to shoot me, first of all.” Malcolm smiled at her, though his expression was tight, particularly around the eyes. He dipped his head, and a swatch of black hair covered part of his face until he brushed it back away with his hand. He stood in the doorway until Julie remembered she was pointing a gun at him and put down the weapon, never moving from her cot.

  “Thanks,” he said, walking into the cramped space and towering over her where she sat on the small bed.

  “Shouldn’t you be resting?” Julie tried to keep her voice calm and even. She didn’t want to burden him with her worry.

  “Can’t sleep,” he replied. “I was pacing the halls, and I heard noises coming from your room, and I need to know where the satchel is for tomorrow, in case I need it…I’ve been trying to make more serum, and I want to ready the vials tomorrow, so anyone can take an injection immediately, and…” He paused. “Hell, Julie, I just wanted to see you.”

  “It’s hidden in that small closet area,” she said pointing. “You should be concentrating on yourself right now,” she prodded. “You’re the key tomorrow.”

  “And I may never see you again.” He punctuated the sentence by slamming his fist against the concrete blocks of the wall. The echoed hollowly. Swearing, he rubbed his hand. “Doesn’t that mean anything to you?” He looked at her, his eyes hard. “Or was I just a way to get you back to George. Just a pawn in your little revolution.”

  The words shocked Julie. What part of the last few days said she didn’t care about it? Heck, all she did was care about him, maybe to the destruction of their plans. Even now, especially now, she wanted to go to him, to melt into him, to have him make this all disappear so they could simply be together without any of the mess. Just two people who found each other living
their lives together. She started to say something then decided now was not the time to pour out her heart. And if he were half the man she wanted him to be, he’d have understood that her feelings were there and stronger than fire, but that the lives of the innocent had to come first. Instead of going to him, she bristled, finding her strength. How dare he insult the effort she’d made over the past years of her life to help this occur? It was nothing but huge.

  “It’s not little, Malcolm,” she said, staring at the door behind him. She couldn’t bear to look at him. She wanted to stay angry, not to see the hurt on his face, not to see his vulnerability. If she saw it, if it was there, she might crack and dissolve into tears. It would be easier to hate him for a callous remark and jump to shoddy conclusions than to admit that he was lashing out at her because of fear and helplessness. She was afraid and helpless, too. And those feelings were worthless to a revolution. Those feelings spelled victory for the other side.

  He walked three steps toward her and was close enough to touch her. She pulled away, looking at the spot on the shelf where she’d laid the gun.

  “Was it all a lie, then?” he bit out in a gritty tone. “Pretty words to keep the nerdy scientist going?”

  “You’re not nerdy,” she whispered, and her throat threatened to choke out the words. She flicked a gaze over his face. His eyes were full of fire, nostrils flaring. His lips parted as he took a deep breath and pushed it back out, the whoosh coming on a shaky sigh.

  “You didn’t answer the question,” he replied through clenched teeth. “Was it a lie?” He inched forward, nudging his narrow hip between her legs. He forced them apart while spreading his hands behind her lower back and drawing her to the hard hot length between his thighs.

  She gasped as that fire flared from her core up through her belly.

  “Was this a lie?” He ground into her slowly, each motion causing an electrical current to shoot all the way to her fingertips.