The Immortality Virus (18 page)

From the corner of her eye, Meg flinched.

“Who are you?” the farmer repeated slowly, as if Grace were stupid.

“Barracks 79,” Meg answered for her. Then Grace understood, she wasn’t a person–she was a number.

“You weren’t here at nightfall, and I don’t have any record of you being assigned to the horses. Get back to your bunk and don’t come round here again.”

That was their cue to leave. Meg took Grace gently by the arm and led her away, whispering, “I should have told you about that.”

“It’s all right.”

Meg led them to barracks 79, one busy with morning activity. No one paid the new arrival much attention as they went through their routines. A small knot of men stood in a line at the back of the room, waiting for their turns at the bathroom.

Meg followed Grace’s eyes and whispered, “The women get to go in next. There’s a nice room back there with two toilets, sinks, and showers. I’d never had a shower before I came here. I’m still not sure what I think about it.”

Grace didn’t reply. Her eyes continued to roam around the room until they fell upon a dozen bunks occupied by coughing, shivering, or groaning figures. One lay still–maybe a little too still. Obviously, they had whatever was going around.

“This way.” Meg took them straight through to the open center of the room, where a tall, stout woman with long, blond hair leaned over a pot of porridge cooking on the single wood-burning stove. The stove also seemed to be heating the room. The porridge smelled wonderful, and Grace’s stomach gave a loud growl.

The woman, presumably Sharon, the leader of the clan, looked up and frowned. “Who are you?”

“This is Grace,” Meg said. “She saved my life last night. Al and Andy abandoned me and two men from Clan Conway tried to kill me.”

Sharon studied Grace for a while. She seemed to want to take in every inch of her, from head to toes. She paused at the arm and stared. Grace realized too late that she had allowed the sleeve to bunch up, revealing the bone-setter. She pushed it back down.

“That how you broke your arm–fighting the men off?”

“No, it was already broken.” Meg seemed perfectly capable of handling the entire story, so Grace stood back and listened.

“She fought them off with a broken arm?”

“She knows how to fight. She was trained by the police.”

“Really? Where’d she get the bone-setter?”

“Alex Lacklin made them give it to her.”

“Sounds like you’ve got quite a story to tell.” Sharon finally faced Grace fully. “I suppose you’re hoping I’ll take you in.”

“Yes.” The word hung there, making Grace feel like she should add an honorific such as “ma’am,” but she took too long to decide.

“Why was the Conway Clan after Meg?”

Grace’s face turned pink. “They were after me, actually.”

“Figures. Oh well, not like we’ll notice them having one more reason to come after us. At least you can fight them off. Can you work?”

“Yes.”

“What can you do?”

“Whatever you need me to do. I stayed with Meg last night at the stables.”

“They give us food based on how much work we do. You got to pull your weight. If you try to escape, I won’t get in your way, but you’d best not put my clan in danger.”

“Who said I’d try to escape?”

“I’m psychic.”

Grace glanced at Meg, who shrugged.

“Most of the other clans would turn you out for that arm, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. We take care of our sick here, as best we can. We’ve got lots of sick right now, too. Almost more than we can handle. Everyone’s on half-rations and you’re on no rations until supper tonight. You understand?”

Grace’s stomach gave a piteous moan, but she nodded.

“We read the Bible at night and pray over meals. We take care of one another and we’ve all got to pull our weight. You report to the corn silo for cleaning duty. Make sure you give the overseer barracks number 79.”

“She’s been up all night,” Meg cut in. “Can’t you let her sleep?”

Sharon shook her head. “I got no choice. It’s all I can do to let her in this clan, but she didn’t get any credit for being up all night with you, did she?”

Meg shook her head.

“We’ve got fifteen people laid up with whatever’s going around here, and I can’t afford to have a healthy adult sleeping all day.”

“It’s no problem,” Grace said before Meg could speak for her again. It was a problem. She did not perform well on no sleep or food, but she was also a survivor who would do what she had to do. If cleaning the corn silo was in the day’s plans, then so be it.

“Good,” Sharon said. “It’s the big, tall thing over there.” She pointed vaguely to the west. “Get to it.”

* * *

When Grace returned to barracks 79 that evening, it was with every muscle in her body aching, her head practically numb with sleep deprivation, and her brain desperately trying to shut her body down for sleep. The farmers had not used whips. The workload had not been too unreasonable for a person with a good night’s sleep, but when Grace slumped down on the hard concrete floor near the stove, she felt as if someone had beaten her up. Then she remembered many people had beaten her up in the past thirty-six hours.

She groaned audibly.

“Sharon said to give you a full ration tonight,” Meg whispered in Grace’s ear as she handed her a bowl of some soupy substance with vegetables, potatoes, and beans in it. “Don’t tell anyone, though.”

Grace gave Meg a weary smile and took a grateful slurp of the soup. It was very good. She rarely ate real food, but found tonight she was incredibly thankful not to have been offered a nutri-bar.

“It’s good, isn’t it?”

Grace nodded mutely.

“Back on the other farm they mostly gave us nutri-bars. Sometimes we’d steal fresh fruits and veggies from the farm, but when they caught us—” Meg stopped and shuddered. “I told you this place was nice. I mean, Jane isn’t. There are some clans you wouldn’t want to get involved with. They don’t usually try to put new people with Jane. She doesn’t let her clan take care of the sick ones. She turns them out in the cold. They say she killed her mate that way. I can’t imagine.”

Meg looked at Grace as if looking for confirmation, but Grace was too intent on the soup. She knew she needed to slow down, that it was almost gone and she would get no more tonight, but she was so hungry.

“Most people make a lot of it, but it doesn’t sound any worse than what I was used to before. I mean, there wasn’t a clan there that was like a family, not like this.”

Grace’s bowl was empty. She used the spoon to scoop out as much as she could and when that failed her, she used her finger.

“The farmers don’t force anyone here, either,” Meg went on. “Not that anyone usually refuses them. Being with a farmer comes with special privileges. Sharon likes it when some of her girls are holed up with them. One of them’s sick, though, and the rest are being turned down because I think the farmers are scared of catching whatever’s going around.”

Grace licked the last remnants of soup off her finger and stared at the now completely empty bowl. Her stomach whined. “I don’t suppose there’s water?”

“In the bathroom,” Meg said. “Use as much as you like; there’s no water shortage around here. One of the guys here is from out west and he says they have to ration water there.”

Grace took her empty bowl to the bathroom and filled it with water from one of the sinks. She drank it down and then filled it again. Then again. Finally, with her stomach stretched thin from the weight of the water, she turned to ask Meg where she could sleep.

“You get the bunk above mine.” Meg showed her.

It was right next to the bathroom where people would be coming and going all night, but Grace didn’t care. She even had a vague impression that the barracks building had become incredibly loud with singing, talking, eating, and after-dinner cleanup.

“You probably won’t be able to sleep until lights out at nine o’clock,” Meg said as Grace slipped into her bed. “It gets pretty loud after dinner.”

“Mmm-hmmm,” Grace said noncommittally as she drifted off into sleep.

The barracks woke before dawn, wrenching Grace out of a deep and dreamless sleep. Men began to flow past on their way to the bathroom while several women tended to breakfast and to the sick, who were still firmly entrenched in their beds. Most of them took the proffered water and food, but one man lay too still and the woman who had gone to his bunk shook her head sadly before pulling the sheet over his head.

Grace tried not to look at the sick and the dead as she swung her legs out of bed and stretched the tension out of her body. Her head felt clearer than it had the night before, which wasn’t saying much but at least it was something. Her arm tingled rather than hurt, a sign it was healing. The bone-setter should have completed its job in the next few days.

Unfortunately, Grace’s cloudless mind was now capable of fully registering her situation. She was a slave, imprisoned on a farm, and surrounded on all sides by twelve-foot high electric fences.

She wondered how easy it would be to dig under the fence. Probably very difficult, digging alone in the frozen ground. She could wait until the ground thawed, but by then…

Grace looked at the dead slave, who was being dragged out of the building. Then she looked at the other dozen or so slaves who could barely eat their porridge for the hacking coughs.

Jane would probably not have let them stay in her barracks. She would toss them out in the cold rather than let them infect the rest of the clan. As the door shut behind the dead man, Grace wondered if Jane might have the right of it in this situation.

A hand on Grace’s shoulder made her jump and turn around to stare into Sharon’s dark brown eyes.

“I’ve considered putting them all out,” Sharon said. “Many of the other clan leaders are doing just that. This is the worst I can remember and so far, almost no one is recovering. It might be more humane to stick a knife through their hearts. We’ll have to burn all his clothes and the mattress. The owners aren’t happy about that. They don’t want to replace the mattresses. No other choice, though.”

Grace had no idea what to say. She wanted the sick slaves turned out, but she had not lived with them like family. She tried to think what she would do if her mom, grandma, great-grandma, and sister were sick. Could she turn them out? Even knowing the tiny chance they could recover was outweighed by the number they could infect and kill.

“The good of the many outweighs the good of the few,” Sharon said without much conviction.

“So they say. That’s why Jane tossed me out after having ten men shake me up a bit.”

“Jane doesn’t care about anyone but herself.” The look on Sharon’s face spoke of a long, tense history between them. “She’d kick out her own sister if she bruised her knee. Won’t have a baby in her bunks. She’ll kick out a woman if she gets pregnant, too.”

“Seems like she’d have a high turnover rate. Where do the new clan members come from?”

“You’ll find there are many who agree with her point of view, at least until they’re the ones in need. It’s a hard life on the farm. Your hands are soft but they’ll toughen up. Meanwhile, try to steer clear of Jane’s clan. I doubt very much they’ll forgive and forget if they run across you on your own.”

“No, I’m sure they wouldn’t,” Grace agreed. Sharon retreated to tend to other tasks while Grace went to get herself some breakfast. The porridge wasn’t as good as the stew from the previous night, but it was better than her usual nutri-bars.

Meg came in from her night shift just as Grace finished breakfast. She grabbed a bowl of porridge then plopped down on the bed beside Grace.

“Jane’s thugs came snooping around the stables again last night,” Meg said. “They didn’t attack; they couldn’t because for once the farmers stayed, but I have a bad feeling about today.”

“I can take care of myself,” Grace said.

“I know. But there’s something going on.” Meg lowered her voice. “The farmers are edgy about something. They were asking about you.”

“Me?”

“Not by name, but they were asking for a slave with a bone-setter. Couldn’t be anyone else. I didn’t tell them where you were, but I think Jane’s clan told them you were with me last night. They kept asking me about it.”

“They didn’t remember running into me yesterday morning, did they?” Grace asked.

Meg shook her head. “They probably forgot five minutes later. They don’t really see us as people.”

“So, what did you tell them?”

“That I caught you prowling around, and then those two guys came and chased you off. I don’t know if they believed me, but I thought maybe it was better if they didn’t know right now.”

“I don’t know,” Grace said, half thinking aloud. How could she know? There was something going on up at that plantation house that directly involved and was completely beyond her. They... no,
someone
threw her on this farm, but who and why? Were there, perhaps, other forces unhappy with that decision? The Kansas City Establishment wanted her to investigate Stanton. She certainly couldn’t do that from the farm.