Generation M (12 page)

Feeling safer, they crossed streets and intersections faster than before.

They were back on schedule when they entered the five-block buffer zone at the colony’s northern perimeter. The few times Dawson had been to the Red Zone, he had always thought of Arlington National Cemetery in Washington DC, where the sacrifices of soldiers were on display in row after row of white crosses, stretching almost as far as you could see. Here, the horrors of the first epidemic were on display. Only recently had Navy teams begun the grim task of clearing remains, car by car, building by building, room by room.

He and Jonzy took a left onto Columbus Avenue, which led to the perimeter fence. Months earlier, a bulldozer had cleared the avenue of rusting vehicles, allowing security patrols to drive all the way up to the fence.

Dawson, realizing he was too comfortable, which made him less cautious and sloppy, suggested they resume the practice of splitting up and watching out for each other as they crossed streets and intersections. Continuing on, they moved more deliberately.

The fence came into view. He pointed it out to Jonzy and both took cover behind the rear wheel of a bus. He was surprised to see that no survivors were loitering on the other side of the fence. He’d heard stories of kids hanging laundry to dry on the fence surrounding Emory Campus, the main section of Atlanta Colony. Of course, there was a significant difference between that fence and this one. This fence delivered seventeen thousand volts.

“If you want to hide and wait until the colony has evacuated, now’s the time,” Dawson whispered, eyeing the buildings along Columbus Ave. There were hundreds of safe spots to pick from.

Jonzy looked all around. After a long pause, he shook his head. “I’m good. I’ll go.”

“Okay, wait here.”

Dawson darted closer to the fence, stopped, and removed a pad of steel wool from his pocket. He teased it wider until the metallic threads stretched to about a foot long. He approached the fence and tossed the steel wool forward. It came in contact with two strands of the fence without sparking. The power was off.

He hurried back to Jonzy and gave him a big thumbs-up. Dawson’s excitement, however, was short lived. Even in the prison of shadows, he saw Jonzy had narrowed his eyes in concern.

“I heard something,” Jonzy whispered.

He cupped his hands around Jonzy’s ear. “What?

Jonzy cupped his hands around Dawson’s ear. “A car door.”

The ropy muscles in Dawson’s neck twisted tighter as he listened intently for several minutes. He heard nothing but the torrent of blood coursing through his arteries and veins.

Dawson’s tension ratcheted higher. They were so close to the fence, and with this latest delay, time shifted from friend back to foe.

“We should find you a place to hide.”

Jonzy’s face brightened. “I’ll make it through the fence. I’m sure.”

The boy’s beaming smile and confidence almost knocked Dawson off balance, and he found himself nodding in agreement.

They reached the fence without incident. Dawson used the wire cutters to snip three horizontal wires, making an opening just wide enough for Jonzy to escape through. He dropped the pack he was carrying on the other side of the fence, and Jonzy did the same with his pack.

“See you in Atlanta,” Jonzy whispered and crawled through.

Dawson saluted. “Good luck, cadet.”

Jonzy slipped one strap over his shoulder and hooked the other pack in the crook of his arm. “Don’t worry, I’ll find Sarah.”

A metallic click put every hair on Dawson’s head on end. He’d know that sound anywhere. Someone had just taken the safety off a gun.

“Run,” he shouted to Jonzy.

In no time, Jonzy had disappeared into the night on the other side of the fence.

Dawson, with his heart thundering, wheeled around as a flashlight burst to life, the beam drilling directly into his optic nerves. Someone stood only fifteen meters away. Squinting, he made out the silhouette of the automatic weapon, but he could not see a face. He had nowhere to run, so he raised his hands, hoping to stall long enough for Jonzy to get away safely.

“Going somewhere, Lieutenant?”

Dawson dropped his hands to his sides in shock. Lieutenant Mathews. She raised the barrel of the M-16 rifle and stepped closer, keeping the light trained on his face. He shifted his eyes left and right, looking for any place he could dive for cover. This close to an automatic weapon, only a sudden, unpredictable move would give him even a small chance of escape.

“Hands up,” she barked as if she could read his mind.

He wondered how long she’d been watching them from the shadows. She must have seen him cut the fence and seen Jonzy crawl through. Why did she let Jonzy go?

“This ought to get you a promotion,” he grimaced.

“Shut up and turn around.”

He faced forward, pulled his shoulders back, and maintained eye contact. The old Westerns he used to read always said that even a cold-blooded killer wouldn’t shoot someone while looking them in the eye. Mathews would need a heart of ice to shoot him now.

Fearing that her heart
was
that cold, he realized he was cornered. His mind whirred. Trashcans sat five meters to her right, but they offered no protection from automatic weapon fire. If he could make it to them and kick or hurl one at her, it might buy him a few precious seconds to sprint away. At the Naval Academy’s target range, he had learned that hitting a moving target was much harder than it looked.

She brought a two-way radio to her lips. “Doctor Perkins, this is Lieutenant Mathews, over.”

“Perkins. Over.”

The scientist had responded immediately, as if he had been waiting for Mathews to radio him.

“I’ve got Dawson.”

“What about the cadet?”

“Escaped,” Mathews said.

“With the pills?”

“Yes, sir.”

Hearing each new piece of data mystified Dawson as much as it troubled him. How did they know so much? Had he and Jonzy been seen on a security camera? Had Perkins or Mathews monitored the radio communications between Jonzy and Abigail? He was certain of one thing: Mathews could not have seen the pills that were inside the canisters buried inside the packs. His blood turned cold when he thought Mathews might have found the secret note he had written to Sandy.

“You know what to do,” Perkins’s voice crackled.

“Yes, sir.”

“Perkins out.”

Dawson gulped. Was Lieutenant Mathews supposed to execute him on the spot?

“I need to get back to Biltmore,” he told her. “Get the cadets ready for the evacuation.”

“We’ll tell them you were chasing a cadet who tried to escape and you both fell into a sinkhole.”

What struck him was her matter-of-fact tone. Mathews was going to kill him in cold blood and had already worked out a story to tell his cadets.

A vehicle approached on Columbus Avenue. The headlights were out. Dawson saw it was a quarantine van. Was it the same Q-van he and Jonzy had seen? It drove straight for them but at quite a slow speed. The headlights switched on, lighting them up.

“Don’t move,” she hissed at him, seeming to be just as surprised as he was by the mysterious van.

The van stopped and Admiral Samuels climbed out. “What’s going on?”

“Lieutenant Dawson aided a cadet in escaping. The situation is now under control.”

“I can explain,” Dawson said.

The admiral cast a hulking figure before the headlights.

“Stand down, Lieutenant Mathews, I’ve got this.” Samuels started toward them.

“Admiral, the situation is under control,” she repeated.

The admiral stopped and planted his hands on his hips.

“Under control?” From his tone, Dawson knew the admiral was about to unload a full broadside verbal attack. “I said, stand down.” His voice boomed, like the admiral of old.

Mathews’s eyes darted from him to the admiral and back.

“Mark, there’s something you need to know,” the admiral said.

Flames burst from the M-16’s muzzle and the admiral stumbled backward before he could say another word. Fighting to stay on his feet, the old man glared at Mathews.

Dawson leaped at her just as she squeezed the trigger again. As he was stretching out, in mid-air, he watched the admiral take several jerky steps sideways and crumple to the ground.

Enraged, Dawson clubbed his fist on Mathews’s forearm and the weapon dropped. She fell to the ground too. He reached for the gun, but she spun around and caught him in the windpipe with her elbow. He gasped and grabbed his neck, expecting to find something ruptured.

Sitting on the ground, she gripped the gunstock and twisted her upper torso to take aim at him. Dawson lunged and managed to get hold of the barrel, pushing it away as bullets whizzed by his ear. The deafening cracks of gunfire followed a split second later. He held on, despite the hot metal searing his hand. She squeezed off fresh rounds that obliterated the van’s headlights, plunging them all into darkness. A blunt object struck his head and stunned him. He received another blow. She was kicking him. He was still holding on to the gun, knowing that whoever held on the longest would most likely win this fight to the death.

Dawson’s head snapped back from another blow, and he had to let go of the gun. He fought to maintain consciousness. Mathews grabbed the gun, scrambled back a few feet, and went on one knee. He groped the ground, feeling around for a rock, a brick, anything heavy and hard to hurl at her. His fingers curled around the rim of the garbage can lid.

Mathews cursed at him and connected the butt of the M-16 to her shoulder.

“Lieutenant Dawson, I got your back.” Jonzy stood on the other side of the fence.

When Mathews turned her head, Dawson hurled the lid at her and raced for the opening in the fence. He heard it strike her and rattle on the ground. She cursed once again. He rolled through to the other side and hit the ground. Bullets tore through the air and some of them kicked up bits of pavement.

He felt strangely calm, as if he had punched through the inner wall of a hurricane to find himself in the eye of the storm. His mind was clear and time seemed to slow. He saw Jonzy up ahead, within range of the weapon but relatively safe, peering out from behind an old rusting vehicle.

He ran toward him, zigzagging, keeping the pattern random. Not until he reached Jonzy did he realize that Mathews had stopped firing. He made sure Jonzy was fully shielded by the car, and then he peered around the front. She was banging the gun with her palm. It had jammed.

He clenched his fists as sour bile burned the back of his throat. Admiral Samuels wasn’t visible in the dark shadows, but Dawson knew the approximate location of the body. He trembled from the rising waves of anger, ready to charge Mathews.

“We have to go, Lieutenant. We have to meet Abby and Toby.”

Every hot fiber of his being wanted to kill Mathews with his bare hands, but cold military logic kept him rooted in place. The goal was to save hundreds of thousands of lives. The goal was to find Sarah. Dawson slung a pack over his shoulder and nodded to Jonzy. Next stop was a fish market in Brooklyn, then Mystic, and then his house at 23 Walpole Ave.

Jordan, Eddie, and Spike left the fuel depot in Spike’s red Mini, heading to a place outside of Portland where Jordan hoped to steal a motorcycle. Spike had told them that getting a motorcycle would give them their best chance of reaching Mystic, some two hundred miles away. “The storm caused a lot of road damage,” he’d said. “A car would never make it.”

From the passenger seat, Jordan turned to check on Eddie, who had started running a fever. Curled in a ball, he clutched his sides and groaned, his face buried against the seat.

“You good?” Jordan asked.

“Great,” Eddie said. A tortured cry followed his absurd reply.

Feeling helpless that he couldn’t do anything for his friend, Jordan faced forward as the headlights lit up the eyes of a pack of feral dogs. The pack bolted away into the night.

Spike kept one hand on the wheel and the other hand resting on the shotgun cradled in his lap. Jordan had mixed feelings about the gun. Abby had it right, he thought. Better to talk and reason rather than threaten. Sometimes, that approach backfired, but she had proved it worked most of the time.

A log fire burned ahead of them, and they drove by a group of kids who were digging in the soil by the side of the road.

“They’re looking for worms and grubs to eat,” Spike said. None of the diggers paid attention to the passing Mini.

The scene repeated itself again and again.

“What was Toucan like growing up?” Spike asked.

Spike had asked all sorts of questions about his sisters and Toby, obviously concerned for them, but something about Touk, in particular, had touched him.

“Our dad was a librarian, so there were always books lying around the house. Abby read to her a lot, and that made her smart. I liked to horse around with her, and that made her tough.”

Spike smiled sadly. “Well, I sure hope you find her.”

“Come with us to Colony East. Help us find her.”

Spike stared straight ahead for a long moment before he shook his head. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”

It was the second time Jordan had invited Spike to join them. Earlier, Spike had immediately declined, saying Martha had entrusted him with the fuel depot while she was in Canada. This time, he had hesitated. Was Spike having second thoughts?

As they neared their destination, Jordan’s stomach twisted as memories of two years ago flooded his mind. He and Abby, both deathly sick from the illness that claimed kids when they hit puberty, had sailed to Portland from Castine Island, on their way to Boston where the CDC was passing out antibiotic pills. Their greeting party in Portland had been a motorcycle gang led by Kenny. Mandy, a tough member of the gang, had tried to rob them.

Jordan recognized a landmark in the headlights. A gas station sign had melted into a cone of black, hard plastic. Two years of rain and snow, deep freezes, and the blistering heat of summer had not changed the fiery sculpture.

“That way,” he said, pointing out the road that led to Kenny’s compound.