Orleans (34 page)

FEN WAS GONE. DANIEL LOOKED AT THE
ridiculously small child in his arms and swallowed hard. He moved through the trees downstream, and into the tall standing cattails on the edge of the moat.
Wait for her signal.

The moat wasn’t that impressive here, not like the wide swampland he pressed through on his jetskip. It was like a canal, a concrete culvert maybe fifteen feet across. A token blockade, really, this close to the Wall. The water was too murky to see the bottom, but Fen and Mr. Go had both said it wasn’t deep. Nothing to worry about. He edged closer to the water, as close as he dared, allowing the reeds on the bank to conceal him from the soldiers upstream. A soft rain was starting to fall, further darkening the cloudy sky. The tiny raindrops were almost beautiful, flashing brightly in beams from the searchlight on the Wall as they swung across the treetops and shoreline. Daniel ducked down flat as the lights washed over his head in a lazy arc.

He adjusted his grip on Enola.
Wait for the signal,
he thought, but what would it be?

Daniel flinched when it came. A splashing sounded from farther upstream and the searchlights passed him over, converging on one spot. Daniel risked a look upriver.

Fen was in the water, lit up like the midday sun. One arm tucked under the bundle of his coat, the other waving in the air. She was shouting, drawing the attention of every soldier at the post. She hollered the way she had at the blood farm, like a madwoman. Insane.

Daniel’s heart leapt into his throat. His stomach dropped. As fast as he could, he lowered himself into the water, trying not to splash. It was chest-deep, deeper than where Fen was wading waist-high in the muddy water. Daniel scooped Enola up, away from his body, over his head, and willed himself across the moat.

His splashing was drowned out by the frantic squawks of the soldiers’ radios along the wall. “Stop where you are! Stop where you are! Hands in the air! You are in a restricted military zone!”

He broke into a cold sweat beneath his suit and felt the industrious suck of the equipment as it pulled the sweat back in to be recycled for later. His hands, his face felt like they were on fire. He pushed on. The soldiers were not shouting at him.

At last, Daniel pulled himself along the shoreline to where the vines grew up and over the Wall.

There. The vines gave way in the center. There was a crevice, maybe three feet to the other side, where he could see gray daylight again. Taking a deep breath, Daniel pushed an arm through the vines. He could feel it, the crack in the wall, like a tunnel hidden from view. Behind him, Fen stood silhouetted against the searchlights, rain spattering the water around her. Her arms were raised, her face turned up, the bundle held high in the air. She rotated in a slow circle as the rain washed the mud from her skin.

For an instant, she looked at him. The moment hung in the air, Fen’s mouth curving into a smile, seeing Daniel and the baby almost there. Almost there. She turned away.

A shot rang out. The bundle fell from her hands.

Daniel jumped, pushing himself desperately through the vines.
Don’t stop, don’t stop.
He had made a promise to protect this child. To take her to a better life. And that’s what he was going to do.

The vines fell back into place as he pressed into the crack, all but crushing Enola to him as he passed beyond the dead city and the madness of the Delta. He was sucked into darkness smelling of green and loam, the sharp bite of asphalt and stone and, somewhere up ahead, a cool breeze.

They had made it.

Daniel stumbled through the last stretch of narrow tunnel to emerge, exhausted and blinking, into the light. Ahead of him was a wasteland, thirty feet of barren ground, empty now but for unoccupied military vehicles. All attention had been drawn to the girl at the gate.

Daniel closed his eyes for a moment, blinking back hot tears, still seeing that last glimpse of Fen swirling through the water, spinning like the wheel that turns the world. He braced himself, then ran for cover across the heart-pounding expanse, into the trees that would hide his passage back into Mississippi and the Outer States of America. In his arms, Fen’s baby girl was awake and wriggling against him, waving her small fists at the weeping sky.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

No book is written alone. It might feel like it is, especially in those last rounds of rewrites when you can barely remember why you started writing the thing in the first place. But then, when it’s done and you look back at all of the work, you remember that you did not do it alone. I have a lot of people to thank for
Orleans.
First and foremost, my mother, for having the foresight to be born in New Orleans and taking me home to visit my grandparents often. My mother was a Katrina survivor, and it is because of her, and the things we both endured in those days after the storm, that this book exists at all.

I’d like to thank my editors on the book: Tim Travaglini, for being excited enough to give me my first shot at writing speculative fiction (always my goal as a writer, so thanks, Tim!); and to Shauna Fay, for bringing the book into the home stretch. Garrett Hicks, my manager, who believed in the story from the beginning. Many thanks also to a host of writer friends who listened to me moan, complain, and shout in ecstasy: Claire Dederer (who saw the deadline in my eyes); Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, who gave the book a tarot reading with interesting results; Amy, Vito, Ruby, Denise, and all the folks at Hedgebrook writers’ retreat on beautiful Whidbey Island, for housing and feeding me while I gave birth to the first draft. To Jason Ho, for listening to me without having laid eyes on a single page of writing, and still giving me good notes. To Gentleman Jim Silke, who, when it comes to storytelling, has the eyes of a hawk. To my husband, Kelvin, for reading the story over and over, and assuming I would simply get it done one day.

On the research front I must thank Dr. Noah Federer, child hematologist, for an interesting discussion about viruses over lunch, and Dr. Rebecca Mandel, for introducing me to him. Becky, you’re always good for a talk about diseases! To Alice Litt, my oldest friend, who happens to be a biology teacher, for telling me how to destroy a virus; and her research scientist sister, Sarah Connolly, for educating me on the concept of retargeting viruses to attack an infection. And to think, we saw
Teen Wolf
together. My, how you’ve grown!

Lastly, I’d like to thank the Coast Guard for listening when no one else would, and helping evacuate my mother from New Orleans five days after the storm, three days after the levee broke, and the day before her insulin ran out. New Orleans has my heart in many ways. May She live on forever.