Lethal Seasons (A Changed World Book 1) (22 page)

“Some foods are gone. Pigs have all died off, that I am aware of. Chickens are making a comeback, and I have heard that a few wild turkeys have been sighted. Sausages, cold cuts, hot dogs, all sorts of manufactured meat produces are no longer being made because no one has the knowledge or the machinery.”

History of a Changed World
, Angus T. Moss

Tilly checked the stove. The people who had volunteered to help cook had done a decent job. They were transferring all the food into serving trays and loading up the steam tables. The warmth of the kitchen and the familiar aromas of cooking eased her emotions. She checked the dish room, made sure the flatware was set out. The multicolored pile of napkins caught her eye. Old Agnes, who was truly old, had spent weeks hemming scraps of old sheets so that they could have a steady supply of napkins. Tilly looked over the crowd of people wandering into the cafeteria for Agnes. The old woman was seated with a few other old-timers at a table in the corner. Tilly relaxed a little. They hadn’t had a case of flu today. She was cautiously optimistic.

She stood at the back of the steam tables watching people fill plates, chatting among themselves. They settled at tables in their customary clumps and bunches.

“Everything all right, Miss Tilly?” Harley held a tray in one hand, but he’d stepped behind the steam tables to check on her.

“Yes, just keeping an eye out that folks don’t waste food.”

He nodded gravely and rejoined the line.

Angus wandered in, his eyes on a notebook. Tilly felt a smile tug at her mouth as she watched people work their way around her husband. Angus moved erratically as he read more than walked. Tall Joe came in and guided Angus out of the way seating him at a table. She gave Joe an appreciative nod as he collected a tray. People were good to her husband.

Martin arrived looking flushed. His eyes skipped over the room till he located Angus. Tilly left her station to join her husband.

“What?” she asked nearly breathless with anxiety.

“A couple vehicles just passed the train station.”

“Nick?” Angus asked.

“Maybe. Probably.”

Tilly’s heart sank. “But you don’t know.”

“They’ll be here soon. Where’s Harley? They’ve got a horse cart with them.”

Angus let out a sharp laugh. “Then it is most definitely Nick!”

*    *    *

Tears threatened when Tilly saw Nick get out of the van. She ran over and gave him a hug. She could tell he was surprised, but she didn’t care. She even hugged Wisp, who surprised her by hugging back. “We were so worried!”

And then she met all the people that had been prisoners, and scientists, which had Angus nearly tap dancing with excitement and a pregnant woman and more biobots, tiny ones. She launched into her role as lady of the manor ushering them all in for dinner. She had rooms made ready. Harley came out to comment on the horses and show the young man where to bring his. Nick called her over to see the loaded cart he was bringing in.

She was thrilled with his discoveries. Poking through the boxes, she praised him.

“Where’s Susan?” he asked with a smile. “I knew she’d be over the moon with this lot.”

And there it was. She had to huff out a few breaths before she could speak. “We lost her, Nick.”

He went very still for a moment. “I’ll miss her,” he said. Simple and heart-felt.

Tilly fought the tears that threatened. Her plans for putting Nick and Susan together were over. She didn’t even know if it would have worked. “It was a bad season. They went so fast.”

“It is a bad one. Took a lot of people at the lab.”

Tilly nodded not trusting her voice.

“I’ll get someone to help me with this,” he said, pushing his cart down the hall toward the supply room.

He deserved more praise for what he’d pulled off. From what she saw, they would get through the winter more comfortably. She determined to make sure she talked to him later. Now she needed to check with all the new people and all their new needs. She hurried back to the cafeteria to find that Lily had taken the small biobots in hand showing them to the children’s table, which was more appropriate for their size. Tilly worried that they might have been designed for entertainment, or worse. She couldn’t imagine why someone would want people the size of children.

“How are we doing here?” Tilly asked with her best welcoming smile forced upon her lips.

Lily gave her a real smile. “They’re all grown up, but they’re still little,” she said.

“I’m Tilly. Is there anything you need? Any dietary restrictions? Or, um otherwise?” She stumbled over her concerns. “I know that Wisp can’t be around large groups of people, so we found him some space in the field house.”

“I am Elsa.” The little woman said, putting out a slender hand. Tilly shook her hand gently, noticing how fragile her bones felt. “It is kind of you to accommodate him. I was unaware of his sensitivity.”

Tilly got the feeling that Elsa was fishing. The man sat watching. He hadn’t said a word, nor touched the food in front of him. She decided to take the first step. “They tell me he’s an EE.” Elsa’s eyes widened, so Tilly figured she must know what that means. “He’s been very helpful around here. Nick says he’s a finder. I believe that’s how he makes his living.”

“He found my brother!” Lily piped up gleefully.

Elsa glanced at the child. “How did you lose him?”

“We had to run away from some bad men with guns. He went back...” Lily looked away, her lip trembling. Someone caught her eye and she sucked in a gasp. She grabbed Tilly’s arm. “Tilly, Tilly, who is that lady?”

Tilly looked where she was pointing. “That’s one of the people that were being held prisoner, sweetie.”

“By the men with guns?” she squeaked.

“I haven’t heard the whole story yet. I don’t know if there were bad men there. Do you know her?”

“I have to find William,” Lily said and she dashed out the back door of the room.

Tilly looked back to Elsa. “Kids,” she said with a sad smile. “To finish Lily’s story...the children got separated. William was taken prisoner and badly beaten. Lily went to Wisp for help. He found the boy for her.”

“No one here would help?” The man asked in a tone that immediately put Tilly’s back up.

“Oh, I’ve jumbled the story haven’t I. It’s a good deal longer actually.” Tilly took a breath trying to consolidate the convoluted story of Nick, the notebooks, Lily and the massacre at Riverbank. “Lily isn’t from here, she just ended up here. Nick was in the right place at the right time to run into her and William and Wisp.” She shrugged, suddenly uneasy with the turn the conversation had taken. “But I wanted to find out if you needed anything.”

“We are quite fine, thank you,” Elsa said, a bit formally.

“I’ll have rooms ready for you by the time you’re done eating. Do you want...” she hesitated, unsure of their relationship, “um, to share the same room?”

“Yes, please. Dieter is my husband.”

“Good,” Tilly said then flinched at her tone. “You must excuse me, I have to check on the others.” She came away feeling that she’d made a mess of things. She went over to see how the pregnant woman was doing. Some of the young mothers had already gravitated that way. She’d be up past midnight sorting out this lot, but part of her was deeply grateful for the distractions.

“After years of train food, we had a great celebration, in Year Seven, for the harvest of our first potato crop.”

History of a Changed World
, Angus T. Moss

Wisp snagged a tray of food and headed for the field house. Too many emotions in an uproar back there. The farmer folk were excited and worried in equal measure. The small biobots had a feel unlike any other he’d encountered. That worried him a little. He had no idea what their skill was. The fact that they had been with the farmers said that they were probably innocuous, but he needed to have a quiet word with Nick about that. He hadn’t been alone for more than the time to pee in days, and he could feel the tension in his shoulders and neck. His head ached from holding on to his mental barriers so tightly. It was a relief to be more than a few feet away from people. Walking across the campus to the field house helped the ache in his head. The press of human emotions receded, and he could reach out beyond himself again. He could feel the horses’ contentment. Harley and Harold were down there brushing them. The chickens were already in their coop, tiny flickers of sleepy thought. Further out, the Watch was doing the rounds, a few more than before. He approved of that. Beyond the watch, were the families up in the woods—no more nor less than the last time he’d been here.

The food wasn’t as good as the previous time he’d eaten here. He’d heard that the cook died. Nick’s happiness at being home had dimmed suddenly. Wisp supposed he was hearing about the people they had lost. There were less people here now than when they’d left for the lab. He didn’t know if it was deaths, or if people had left. He ate slowly, relaxing in the quiet, as cramped mental muscles eased.

Angus would want to talk to him. With all the scientists arriving, Wisp was sure that Angus would be busy with them for awhile. He needed to think about the events at the lab. It would be great to spend some time with Kyle, but he wasn’t sure what Ruth wanted. It was clear from some of her comments that she hadn’t experienced the reality of the new world. She loved Kyle. That was quite obvious, even to a unskilled mind like Nick. How far she was willing to allow that to go was a different question.

The destruction of the lab and the shut down of the train stations were important in and of themselves. There was a bigger concern here. One he needed to think about, and he knew Nick and Angus would be chewing on it for weeks. How did the accident at the lab impact the lives of the people at High Meadow? There wouldn’t be any vaccine this year, but he knew plenty of settlements that survived without it. More important to Wisp, was whether the government would want Ruth and Kyle back. They were skilled assets. Someone somewhere would realize that eventually. Whether enough of the government was left standing to demand the return of two scientists was another issue that needed to be parsed. That was something he needed to discuss with Kyle. But for now, he wanted to enjoy being alone.

A sudden spike of joy shimmered out like fireworks. Three people. Wisp feathered it, unraveled it and felt the distinct pattern that was William, and one that felt like Lily. And the image that he’d remembered as someone else’s memory came clear. The ex-prisoner that he’d recognized—Melissa was William and Lily’s mother. The memory was of Melissa braiding Lily’s hair. He found himself smiling, coasting along on their happiness. Another distraction for the High Meadow folks. Another complication to take up a few hours of the day before anyone got back to working on the more serious issues at hand.

He finished his dinner and went for a walk out towards the stream. Martin had declared it unstable and off limits. That meant it should be a quiet place for Wisp. He sat on a fallen tree breathing the night air and enjoying the low murmur of people far in the background.

“It’s a death spiral of ignorance. If you don’t know what you don’t know, how can you learn? If you don’t know what you could know, how do you seek it?”

History of a Changed World
, Angus T. Moss

Nick was in Angus’s office first thing after breakfast, which had been a fabulous cheese omelet. Tilly was doing the cooking, and it looked like there were a few new faces in the kitchen. It had been hard to not see Susan there. Every year, he tried to not get attached to people, and every year he found himself mourning the loss of another friend. It snuck up on him, friendship. A smile here, a joke there and before he knew it, he was looking for certain faces in the room.

He settled in the old armchair to the left of Angus’s habitual seat. Someone had brought in a tray of coffee for the meeting. Nick proudly noticed the addition of the milk and sugar. Angus was at his desk gathering up way too many papers, which made Nick worry that the meeting might take all day. He helped himself to a cup and sank back into the comfort of the old chair. It felt good to be home and to not be in charge for once. If he was lucky, the only decisions he’d have to make today would be plain and simple, like whether to have seconds at lunch.

Ruth and Kyle arrived, hand in hand. Nick wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Kyle really wasn’t human, despite what Angus insisted. Biobots were printed, not born. He didn’t know if they could reproduce, but even he could see that the possible complications were staggering. They hadn’t been around long enough for anyone to sort these things out. And now there were so many questions that needed to be answered, and so few people capable of figuring them out that whether biobots could reproduce seemed pretty inconsequential. Unless of course, you were dating one.

Ruth was of childbearing age. She must reproduce. It was imperative. For the race to survive, every woman had to have at least two children. More was better. But if Kyle was sterile, which might be an urban legend, then Ruth’s children couldn’t be Kyle’s, and that was a nasty path he really didn’t want to go down. He knew Angus wouldn’t force a woman to get pregnant, but he had heard of settlements that did.

They took seats opposite him. Nick offered them coffee. Angus came over, but he was still putting his papers in order, which was probably the only reason Ruth got a chance to speak first.

“This is a very interesting set-up you have here.”

Nick heard the condescension in her tone and bristled a little. “From what I’ve seen, it’s one of the best.”

“Your doctor is in his seventies, at the least.” She avoided his eyes by sipping her coffee.

“He’s a good doctor,” Angus said defensively.

“But surely he doesn’t do surgery. His vision and hand strength couldn’t be up to it. Where do you send people?”

Angus stared at her, his thumb softly tapping against his pile of papers, then looked to Nick, who shrugged, then back to Ruth. “There is nowhere else. People come here from all over for medical treatment.”

She stared back, a frown forming on her brow. “Where’s the nearest hospital?”

“Wow, what planet have you been living on?” Nick asked harshly. “There are no hospitals.” He knew she’d been sheltered, but this was more than annoying.

She gave him the same look she had when he’d told her there weren’t any towns. “But...”

Angus started shaking a pen at her. “Yes, you see, I knew it. The country has become quite stratified. There are those like you who have been protected, coddled even. You don’t know about us, out here in the trenches and for the most part, we don’t know about you in the mansions.”

“We weren’t in mansions,” she snapped. “I was working eighty hour weeks in the lab for a vaccine for you people.”

Angus giggled. “Eighty hours.” He leaned over and slapped Nick on the knee. “When’s the last time you heard someone talk like that?” He turned back to Ruth and gave her a gentle smile. “I don’t mean to make fun of you, my dear. But you have to realize that we, out here, have been roughing it for the past decade. And for you, I imagine, life has gone on with little disruption. You still do the work you trained for—”

“I have an MD, and two PhDs—” she burst in.

“Of course. I don’t mean to make little of it. But none of us can do that. None of us here do the work we went to school for, trained our whole lives for. Look at Nick. He was an FBI agent. My wife, Tilly, ran a hospital. We have accountants and architects and insurance salesman and even a stock broker. None of those people can do their jobs anymore. Now they work in the fields or bake bread or mop the floors. The only professions out here deal with survival.”

“I can’t do that!” she snapped. She slammed her cup down on the table. “Do
not
expect me to mop floors.”

“Ruth is a doctor,” Kyle said in an even, calm voice. “You have need for one.”

“Yes, doctors are rare and very welcome,” Angus agreed in an equally calm voice.

“I am a biochemist. But I am strong. I can work in the fields.”

Nick flinched at the resignation in his voice. This conversation had gotten off on the wrong foot.

“Only if you wish to, Kyle,” Angus said. “We don’t force people to do anything here. Find something that interests you. Do something different every week if you like. We keep a jobs list going on the message boards of things that need to be done. And that’s supposing you folks choose to stay.” He said it calmly, but the look he gave Ruth was firm.

“What do
you
do?” Ruth demanded.

“I run this place. I chart the course we take. My research is a sideline. Also, I keep an eye on the power plant and pretty much anything mechanical. If it breaks, they come to me to fix it.”

“What did you do before?” Ruth demanded.

Angus smoothed his papers with a sigh. Nick saw a rare moment of sadness and loss that drained the vibrancy from his face. Angus never talked about what he did before. If asked, he usually said that it didn’t matter.

“I designed vehicles for exploration on other planets, orbiters, landers, that sort of thing.”

“Huh.” Nick was impressed. He would never have guessed. He grinned at Angus. “So you’re a rocket scientist.”

A bit of life trickled back into Angus’s eyes. He gave Nick a small smile. “Yes. Now, as I was saying, if you choose to stay, we will have a meeting to discuss having you join the community. Everyone here helps to keep this place going. Whether you want to make soap or bread or muck out the stable, we need every hand here to make it work. We are a community, and all that entails. We share the chores and the harvest. We have rules. All of that will be made clear to you before you make your decision. My wife and I run this settlement. If you don’t feel able to accept our rules and our vision, then it’s best if you go.”

Nick felt a rush of pride. Angus was seen as a day dreamer, a whimsical pied piper that many people loved at first sight, but it was this man, the nuts and bolts sincerity of him that had won Nick’s heart. And every time he saw that in Angus, he was glad he’d found his home here.

“What kind of research are you doing?” Kyle asked.

“A bit of everything. I’m trying to compile a census of the established settlements and med centers. I also keep an eye on weather patterns to see if the lack of human intervention has caused any shifts. I’ve been trying to make an estimate of the mortality rate of each year’s flu.”

“How do you collect your data?” Kyle asked.

“Nick mostly.”

Ruth scoffed. “You’re working with hearsay,” her voice was dismissive.

“That’s pretty much all there is,” Angus said, peering at her over his glasses. “Unless you know of a government entity that is doing that.”

“Well, they must be. How else would we know how much vaccine to prepare?”

“We put in orders,” Angus said.

Ruth blinked at him. She turned a stricken face to Kyle. “This is insane.”

“May I look at your data?” Kyle asked.

Angus puffed up with a touch of pride. “It’s a bit rough, still. Jean has been helping me sort through it.” He led Kyle over to a monitor and brought up his research.

Nick followed them over. He didn’t care about Angus’s research, but he wanted to see how they would react to it. Kyle scanned through page after page, too fast for Nick to read, but slow enough that he wondered if the biobot was actually absorbing the data. He started mumbling to Ruth, words that didn’t make sense to Nick. He glanced over to see Angus nodding.

Ruth stepped away looking pale. “This information must be incomplete.”

“Of course. As I said, I get most of my information from Nick. There are a few med centers on the ether that I get numbers from, but there isn’t any dock with official numbers that I could find.”

Kyle looked up at Angus from where he sat at the monitor. “May I?”

“Please do.”

Kyle started a number of searches. Nick couldn’t see what he was typing, but dock after dock came up “unavailable.”

“No, that isn’t right!” Ruth barked at yet another broken dock. “That can’t be. Did you use my password?” She leaned against Kyle to watch his fingers as he typed. A few more unavailable pages came up. “Why are they all down?” Her voice had a tremor of panic to it.

Kyle leaned back, a thoughtful look on his face. “I don’t know.”

“Perhaps we in the trenches are not allowed access,” Angus said quietly.

“I don’t believe that is the difficulty. It seems that they are not operating at this time.”

“Like the Vaccine Center’s dock or the weather dock or the mapping dock,” Nick said tiredly. “Those are the ones we really need. We’re in trouble if the weather dock is permanently down.”

Angus gave Kyle a thoughtful look. “Do you know where the weather center is?”

“The physical location? No, I’m sorry.”

Angus turned to Nick. “I was thinking that might be the next place you need to go.”

Nick slumped a little. “I’d like a couple of days...”

“Of course, Nicky. You’ve been away quite a bit. I only meant that this is our new mystery.”

“I don’t think we ever finished with the old one,” Nick said irritably. “Why did the security guards for Rutledge’s lab kill Lily’s sister?”

Ruth spun around. “What?”

Angus shooed everyone back to their chairs. “Do we have anyone from the lab’s security here?”

“No. We left the last guy at the Creamery. But he told me that not everyone was briefed on the prisoners. Now that we know Rutledge was locking people up, I guess that they were trying to take the kids into custody, too. Iris fought back, and they killed her.”

Angus turned to Ruth. “Have you any ideas why they were there?” Nick heard a faint note of appeasement in Angus’s voice. He was trying to be nice to her.

“I don’t,” she said tersely.

“Nicky, did you interview the prisoners?”

Nick poured himself a second cup of coffee. “I talked to a couple of them, but they were still pretty loopy from the drugs. Mike said he thought that Rutledge wanted his factory. That he’d tried to buy it at one point, but his memory was still fuzzy. Maybe in a couple days people will be more lucid.”

“I do not think any of them are criminals,” Kyle said tentatively. “Wisp said that none of them felt, um, like criminals.”

Angus grinned. “Your brother is amazing! I am so delighted to have him here.”

“And now you have two biobots,” Ruth said, some bitterness in her voice.

“Four actually, with the little folk. I haven’t had a chance to talk to them yet. Kyle, you said that your skill is biochemistry?”

“Yes.”

“Excellent, excellent.” Angus got that distracted look about him. Nick knew he’d be gone for a bit, wandering off after a stray thought.

“You two get settled in okay?” Nick asked.

“The room is adequate,” Kyle said.

“Do you all live in here together?” Ruth asked.

“Mostly. I hear Bruno, one of the survivors of Riverbank, is working on some housing down the street in the old neighborhood.”

“Wisp told me about Riverbank,” Kyle said in a near whisper. He hunched his shoulders looking dismayed, which suggested to Nick that Wisp told him everything about Riverbank.

Angus lurched to his feet with a grunt. “Kyle, I would like to show you something.” He went over to his desk and poked through a few precarious piles of paper. He returned with a small blue notebook. He stood before Kyle clenching the notebook for a moment. “Please let me know what you think of this.” He handed the book over slowly.

Kyle took it reverently. “This is more of your research?”

“No!” Angus responded sharply. “Absolutely not. I, we, well let’s just say we stumbled upon it.”

Kyle nodded, a look of mild consternation on his face. He opened the notebook and started reading.

Nick finished his coffee and contemplated a third cup. He trusted Kyle a bit more than Ruth because he had come to trust Wisp, but he was concerned that the information in that little notebook was a game changer. What Ruth would want to do with it was up in the air. She trusted Kyle, so if they could rely on him to convince her... His thoughts stumbled there, because he wasn’t sure what they needed to do with it.