Orleans (7 page)

It ain’t gonna be easy—sniffer drones at the Wall would smell the Fever in my blood. But there be Father John. He a good man runs a mission across the city from here. When I been real little, he like family to me, like tribe. He used to trade supplies with my family. Ran a school out the old store where he set up his church. Not so nice as the Ursulines’ place, but he tried. Daddy used to say Father John be a servant of the people. Used to reach out to folks over the Wall, find sponsors to help put shoes on kids’ feet and the like. I had my parents back then, but I had a sponsor family, too, before the bad times come. I be needing that sort of help now.

So, we gonna go to Father John. Baby Girl brand-new. Cleanest blood there is. She ain’t got the Fever in her yet, and won’t if I be careful, don’t give her Orleans water, or cuts to taint her blood.

Seven days before the Fever take hold in a newborn. It be a dangerous time. Hunters love to get they hands on an untainted baby. Babies don’t know how to hide, how to stay quiet. They bring hunters down on they whole tribe if folks ain’t careful. Father John a long way off. More than a day from here. I got to take it in stages, then. That mean finding safe places to stay the night. And the safest place on the way be Mr. Go.

Mr. Go knew my mama and daddy, back when they still at the Institute with the Professors. Back when Orleans ain’t seem so bad. I been looking for Mr. Go the first time I found myself alone and naked in these woods. By then, I started to learn what the nuns say. The city take. Don’t know if God receive, though.

Hunters took my parents. Almost took me, too, but Daddy knew what they do to little girls like me on blood farms, so he say run, and I ran. Into the swamps, ’til the dogs don’t be chasing me no more. And I kept going, but it got dark and I got lost and I ain’t find my way for days. Maybe ’cause I been so little, I don’t know, but the forest weren’t the same without my parents showing me the way.

I been making my way to Mr. Go, but other folks found me first. To get to Mr. Go, you got to pass through some bad territory. If you see little children, you best head the other way. Back then, I been a kid myself. Didn’t seem dangerous, little kids all together, full bellies and smiling faces. I learned my lesson. I ain’t looking to learn it again. So I be careful this time.

Mr. Go brought me to Lydia and gave me a home. Halfway to Father John, he be the best place to rest. I feel so tired just thinking it, even though I know I dozed in the night. I want so bad to be there, safe and sound. But nothing more useless than a wish in Orleans. It don’t watch your back or feed you, that for sure. Only I can do that.

Baby Girl and I close enough to camp now that I can see it still smoldering. Nothing left standing anymore. Lucky for me, the fire ain’t gone as far as my hiding tree. I look up and there it be, my pack in the branches, tied tight against any hungry birds. I untie the baby and she start up crying when I lay her on the ground. It be okay, though. This place a graveyard now. Nobody here but ghosts. I shinny up the tree to the lowest branch, find my tie line, and cut it. The pack drop from the tree like old fruit, and I be glad I put the baby out of reach of the fall.

I scoop up Baby Girl and tie her back to my chest. She snuggle close. In summer, Orleans be steaming like a pot of stew, but it close to winter now. Never mind the heat at midday, it still be getting cold. Together, we crouch down over the sack and I see what I came for: that glass baby bottle from McCallan, wrapped in a sack to keep from breaking, and two cans of powdered baby formula that took me over a month of scavenging to trade for at the Market. We got all kinds of canned stuff in the Delta, left in warehouses and big food stores after the storms. Some be hidden underwater, and the best divers get it, the ones can hold they breath the longest. But diving in a sunken store be worse than a cargo ship, ’cause they ain’t meant to be underwater and a beam of metal be just as heavy today as it been fifty years ago.

Sometimes the water pull back and a grocery store be lying there like bones on the beach. Can scavengers, the little Japanese women from the Market, they go into the small places and pull cans out, clean ’em off, and if they ain’t damaged, it be safe enough to eat. The Delta got all kinds of things, Lydia say, enough to last a hundred years if the cans hold up that long.

I got the formula as a gift, ’cause she been so busy saving the world and everything, ain’t always gonna have time to be breast-feeding the baby. I’d have been Lydia’s nanny when she needed, bottle-feeding the baby when we in powwow or whatever. Long as Lydia needed me, I’d do what I could.

I look at the tiny baby in the shirt tied ’cross my chest. She don’t look a thing like Lydia, all purple and blotched and tight in the face. She ain’t beautiful or strong or nothing. Maybe she take after her daddy, whoever he be, but to me, she not worth the life of our chief.

Still, I made a promise.

There be bottles of water in the sack. Only three, but that still be something. I read the can and mix it up in the baby bottle, put on a nipple, and stick it in the baby’s mouth. She don’t like it at first, and I know it be cold, but not much I can do for that. After a minute she still ain’t taking it, so I put the bottle in my waistband and stuff the rest of the formula and water in my pack. The day be wasting. If she don’t mind not eating now, I don’t, neither. My back gonna be hot and sweaty by the time I get her mama buried. If I keep the bottle against me, maybe later it be warm enough for her to drink.

I put Baby Girl down one more time and rip three holes in the seams of the sack the glass bottle been wrapped in. I pull it over my head. It fit me like a tank top now, rough and prickly, but it give me a bit of warmth. I tie the baby back on against me, pull my backpack over my shoulders, and take a last look around before heading back to Lydia’s waiting grave.

• • • 

By the time we reach the stream, the baby be fussing, so I give her the bottle again and watch while she take it. She got a strong pull on the nipple, which be good. Books I been reading say that important. She know how to feed. She hungry, too. She take the whole bottle and a little more besides. I tuck the rest of the second bottle away in my waistband, burp the baby, and settle her on the ground between the roots of the tree.

With one of my knives, I cut clay from the edge of the stream, making rough bricks of it. I carry them back to the tree by the armful. It take half the day, but there be enough to seal Lydia inside the tree. I don’t say any special words or sing. If we had a tribe, they’d be doing all that. But there be no going back when the hunters come down on you.

I don’t look at Lydia’s face when I put in the final brick of clay. I smooth it over with my fingers and press the clay into place, then carve into it with the knife, an
X
in place of a cross. In the top crook of the
X,
I put the number one. To the left I scratch an
F,
to the right a plus sign. At the bottom, an
O.
One Female O Positive.
The only marker most of us get in Orleans. Don’t matter that she once been a chieftain of a tribe. That she had a baby, or that she been the only person truly good to me. She dead now. That be what counts.

There be folks who should know about it. Mr. Go, maybe the Ursulines so they ain’t expecting her at the hospital tent no more. But that gonna have to wait. For now, I got a baby to care for, and a promise to keep.

Lydia’s baby been staying quiet through all of it, but she be rustling now, fixing to cry, no doubt. I rinse my hands in the stream and scoop her back into my arms. When she settle down, I head deeper into Orleans.

This still be a crescent city. It still curve with its arms wrapped around the river. I be walking west, where most of the people be. I don’t want people now, but I’m gonna need more food, and shelter. On my own, I’d be at Mr. Go’s by now. But taking time for Lydia and walking with a baby in my arms make it slower going than usual. Dry land ain’t always dry here, and I can’t be dragging this child through Delta water. We pass canals what used to be roads and swamp what used to be dirt. We skirt the swamps and it take time. At this rate, we ain’t getting to Mr. Go’s ’til midday tomorrow, especially with night coming on. So we stuck, unsheltered and unfed.

I search the trees and brush as we travel, looking for fruit, for anything I can eat. Stupid, Fen. I should have taken some mirliton off Lydia’s vines at the back of camp. But I ain’t going back now.

I hear something in the distance; sound like someone walking through the brush. It ain’t fast, so I know it ain’t dogs, but it mean somebody out there. I hear him talking, though he far away. Birds be silent right now and a voice can carry. I drop down low and find a fallen log to slide under, pray the baby don’t cry. But she look up at me and I see it coming.

I reach back behind me, under the pack, and pull out the second bottle in my waistband. It ain’t hot, like I been hoping, but it warm enough and the baby be waving her fist at me, so I stick the nipple in her mouth and she take it.

The leaves be thick here, and this old tree gave up its life only to turn into a foxhole, soft and quiet, covered with fungus and bright green moss. I hold on to Baby Girl and curl up deeper. It be a hidden place, as good as any. Be safer up in a living tree, but not with the baby. Can’t climb with her on my chest, and it ain’t safe slinging her across my back in this makeshift thing.

Overhead, I see the outline of a boat stuck in the trees, like a bird resting on a branch. Look to be a shrimping boat; still got the nets spread like moth wings in the leaves—I shake my head just looking at it.

It dangerous, the storm fall that still be hanging in the high branches, tossed there by them killing winds. Sometimes the branches give way, and before you know it, there be a boat falling on your head, or a piece of house, or a hunk of car if you in a neighborhood where they ain’t all gone to rust. I hear the first few drops of rain spatter down on the leaves around us. The wind be picking up now with the shower. Above me, I hear that boat creaking and it give me the shivers. Plenty of people killed by trash in the trees, but it give me an idea.

The baby finish her bottle. I rub her back ’til she burp up some milk, and I wipe it with the edge of my sackcloth. The moss be thick, so I take some and tuck it in around her bottom beneath her swaddling. It gonna have to do ’til I find more cotton to wrap her in a diaper.

She seem happy enough with the moss, and she fall asleep fast.

Once she quiet, I move out.

Three things be sacred in Orleans, and a girl with a baby alone in the woods ain’t one of ’em. Places of the dead, like the potters’ fields and the Dome, be one. Only the Ursulines or tribal counsels be going there, but I don’t like the idea of being surrounded by dead people right now. The second place be the Market. But the Market ain’t safe for me tonight, with my own tribe attacked and the ABs on guard duty. I ain’t going there ’til I know my situation better. That leave me with: church.

Churches, temples, whatever still be standing that used to have a god—for some reason, folks be respecting that well enough. Orleans proper, over by the Market and Uptown, had more churches than the woods have trees at some point or other. There be enough still that a body can find some rest in the middle of the city. But where we at be swamp and thicket, foxholes and sinking mud.

I pick my way through dry land knowing that, sooner or later, there got to be a stilt house in these woods. Hanging in the branches like storm fall, they built to last, easy to rebuild, and stay high above the flood line. Some be hunting blinds kept by tribes for sighting boar and deer. I’d take one of them, too, if it be empty, but you always risk someone finding you. Better if you find a church.

I almost pass it before I know it be there. Built on the legs of four close-grown trees, with a rope ladder tied to the side of the largest trunk. I look up and the rain splash my face as it fall, soft and light, through the trees. Clouds be purpling to deep blue now, but I can make it out, a square cypress hut wedged into the trunks, like a hunting blind, but with a tiny cross atop the roof to show you this be a house of God.

I jump up and tug the rope ladder free from where it be looped to a stub of branch. It unravel into two ropes knotted to cross ropes every couple of feet to help with climbing. This’d be easier without a baby strapped to my chest, but a lot of things be easier without that. At least it don’t be like hugging a tree trunk. I hop onto the swinging ladder and let it bounce itself out. It be awkward, leaning so the rope don’t rub against the baby, but I do it. Then I shinny, slower than I’d like, all the way up to the trapdoor in the floor of the church.

7

DANIEL DRAGGED HIS JETSKIP OUT OF THE
water. It was late afternoon now, the sun nothing but a pale pearl behind a sheet of gray sky. He dragged the skip through the soft mud of the bog, leaving a trail in the mossy grass that pooled with dark brown water swirled with bright yellow-green foam. In the distance he could just make out the silhouette of a building.