Orleans (8 page)

Daniel released a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. So far, the old smuggler had not let him down. The gap in the Wall had been where he said it would be. The jetskip had done its job, too, pulling him through the bayou that formed a moat on the Orleans side of the wall. On land, however, the skip was too heavy to carry, but Daniel wasn’t worried. If he hid it well enough in the woods, there was no reason to believe it wouldn’t be safe. Orleans was all but deserted these days, from what he had heard.

A few minutes later, heading southeast, he could see more than just the bulky shadow of the building through the trees. It was odd—one moment, he was thick in the bayou, the next, on a street in the middle of town. He marched through the skinny trees and came out on the edge of a crumbling parking lot. Civilization, he thought, or what passed for it these days.

He switched the definition on his goggles, refocusing on the shape blotting out the rain clouds overhead. The building looked like some sort of storage facility or megastore, with three walls still standing and a chestnut oak growing through the shattered roof. Tide lines marked the brick sides of the building like stone strata in a canyon, showing where the floodwaters rose and left their mark, higher each time, and now streaked with mold so virulent, it left black and green marks like rings around a dirty bathtub. He tromped forward to investigate.

It had been some sort of warehouse after all, with two cavernous rooms inside. The metal doors on the front of the building were still standing, but twisted to the side. The wall itself had tumbled in, a pile of large, dusky bricks, made deeper red by an earlier rain shower. Daniel looked around. The building fronted on a wide street, maybe a highway once, that ran level to the buildings. The pavement was shattered with cracks. Rich mud oozed out between the floes of asphalt, like dark blood on ashen skin.

Daniel went into the room with the tree growing inside. The roof was gone, but otherwise, the space itself was intact. The tree was young by oak standards, but still large enough to take up a good ten feet of the room between its sprawling roots. Daniel scanned the room, but found no sign that anyone had been here in a long time. There was a nook in the tree roots that was large enough to hide the jetskip.

Daniel dropped his duffel and returned to the woods where the skip lay waiting. He took care to carry rather than drag it to the warehouse. His footprints in the carpet of moldering leaves made him nervous enough. A deep groove leading up to the doorway would have raised curiosity in the idlest of passersby, or predators. The city might be dead, but that didn’t mean the woods were.

The last census was taken nearly fifteen years ago, and best estimates put the surviving population in the Delta region at eight thousand, approximately sixty-five hundred in or near the environs of the former city of New Orleans. And that was a generous estimate, given the easy transmission of Delta Fever, the hundreds of other hazards in the damaged city, and the lack of proper medical care. Blood transfusions, a common treatment for the Fever, were notoriously dangerous in the field, where blood could not be spun clean in centrifuges and separated from the plasma. A field transfusion could result in death from fatty deposits, liver damage, and even heart attacks. Daniel doubted the census guesstimates had factored in all of the ways a person could die. Even so, eight thousand people—that was less than a full football stadium, less than the student body of his university, and he had avoided hanging out with most of them rather easily. Navigating the empty streets of Orleans should be simple enough.

The
New
in
New Orleans
had been dropped after the second chain of storms, when the Fever was at its worst. It had been before Daniel’s time, but he wouldn’t be surprised to learn it was a publicity ploy or a media joke. There had been attempts to re-create New Orleans in the surviving South. Somewhere near Charleston, a private island was sold to the government with plans to relocate the more historical structures, and many of the city’s people. But Hurricane Lorenzo had dispensed with those plans. The first ground-breaking had been interrupted by a hurricane warning late enough in the season to take people by surprise, and the government had pulled its funding. Daniel knew this because the island, now simply known as Folly Island, had been one of the places he and his team were allowed to collect environmental samples. Not quite the same flora as you would find in the Delta, and certainly not the same mix of toxins in the water, but as close as one could get outside of the quarantine zone. It was like a theme park version of the real place, Daniel thought.

He accessed the datalink strapped to his wrist.

INQUIRY:
Entered city at coordinates 56 SW 32 NE. Draw map to Institute of Post-Separation Studies from here.

RESPONSE:
Feeding coordinates now. Instructions on screen.

Daniel tweaked his goggles again. A red line appeared on the green overlay of the city. The map was hopelessly out of date, but the main features would be the same. Especially for a landmark that important.
Assuming it was still there,
a cynical voice said inside his head.

The Institute of Post-Separation Studies had been established shortly before the Wall went up. Staffed with scientists willing to dedicate their lives to the cause, the goal of the Institute was to study the closed environment of Orleans—socially and medically. He knew the official charter was to study intergroup relations after the residents were divided into groups by blood type. They had an interdisciplinary goal of understanding social bias and hate crimes—if people divided along medical lines, would race or gender matter?

In the early days, data flowed freely from the Institute to data banks at universities across the States. But by the time Daniel was in school, the information had all but dried up. He was convinced the Institute still existed, in records if not in people. His goal was to mine their data and solve the riddle of Delta Fever.

Daniel’s excitement flared up again. He dragged some vines over the jetskip and shouldered his duffel, relocating its dangerous payload to an inner pocket of his coat for safekeeping. It was risky, traveling with the vials of his fatal virus, even secured as they were in their casing. But it would have been riskier to leave the vials behind where a supervisor or routine inspection might stumble across them, with the virus still in its weaponizable state. With luck, the Institute would have the equipment he needed to continue working. If not, at least the vials would be safe.

Patting the pockets of the weatherproof oilcloth coat he wore over his suit, he found another length of dirty linen gauze and wrapped it around his neck like a scarf. Feeling more like a dime-store mummy than a local with a skin disease, Daniel headed out into the gray afternoon.

8

THIS CHURCH AIN’T SEEN GOD IN A LONG TIME.
It be dark as pitch in here and don’t smell too clean, neither, but there be a fire in a grate to the side of the altar, and it nice and warm inside. Especially to me, without a proper shirt. I pull myself up and look around. The branches below done a good job of hiding this place. The floor be gritty with dirt, and the walls be dark from wood smoke. There be six rows of benches, a pulpit with space in front of it. There be a door in the far wall, so there be at least one other room. No priest, no priestesses. Might not even be a church anymore with no one here tending it.

Then my eyes adjust and I see there be a few people sitting on the benches. The front row even got real pews, probably taken from some drowned church. They been painted up and stuck in a place of honor right against the altar. There be no service right now, so I take a minute to check out who be here with me. We safe enough, it being a church, but you still got to keep your eyes open when you decide to leave.

In the second row on the right there be a big guy, muscle and fat from what I’m seeing. And he got tattoos, which mean he either AB or a blood hunter. I don’t like the thought of being in here with him, but if he here, it most likely because he reformed. Blood hunters don’t go to church. Too much temptation inside, and even they respect that one law. Nobody ever been taken from a church. Not to say they don’t get jumped at the door, though.

Behind him a few rows be a nervous little man muttering to himself. He got a bald spot on top his head and patchy hair growing ’round the sides. He tugging at it like he don’t even realize what he doing. Freesteader, I guess. Nobody with nerves like that be in a tribe worth its salt. He be in his church best, dress shirt rubbed thin with wear, and what used to be a decent pair of pants. I wonder where he camping down these days. Maybe that why he so nervous—’cause, like me, this be it.

What worry me most be the person on the other side, in the second to last row of the pews. Man or woman, I can’t tell, but they be shaking and sweating worse than the freesteader. Whoever it be, in the light I can see two things: First, he used to be a smuggler—still got parts of the encounter suit he wore rolled down around his neck like a scarf, afraid to take it off, but knowing he might as well; and second, he got the blood Fever. This smuggler be white, whiter than you see in Orleans anymore, with yellow-blond hair stuck to his forehead with sweat. It remind me of Lydia kneeling at that boy’s bedside the other day.

Yesterday.

It take the wind out of me, thinking how much be changed in so little time. How much lost. And I been worrying she’d catch her death in the hospital tent. Show what I know. Childbirth been killing women long before the world ever heard of Delta Fever or blood hunting or Orleans. Lydia didn’t have the baby the right way, in a bed with a healer or somebody watching who knew what to do. Just me, and I ain’t enough.

It be warmer in here than that little fire grate can explain, and I know I come to the right place, ’cause that mean there be a kitchen back behind the altar somewhere.

It started with the missionaries that came after the first storms. I guess there always been a tradition of church folks feeding the hungry. Even now, when the churches be in trees and religion be as mixed up as the people, there still be food coming out at the end of each service. I settle in to a back pew and tuck Baby Girl in my arms just as nice as can be. Maybe we both can rest up awhile, get some food in our bellies, and then be on our way. We in God’s house, so we gonna let him provide.

Soon as I think it, the curtain behind the altar open up and two kids come out, skinny and tall. They look enough alike to be brother and sister. The boy stand behind the altar, pale long-sleeve shirt buttoned to his chin, arms too long for the sleeves. His pants be too short for his legs, too, like he grew three inches just before he walk into the room. The girl be wearing a dress the same pale color as his shirt. Homespun, dyed with salmon berries. It look like a pillowcase on her, hanging on a drying line. She come stand by the front pew holding a big silver-painted tray. The boy raise his hands to the ceiling.

“Welcome, brothers and sisters, to the House of the Rising Son. I am Brother William, and this is Sister Henrietta. Join us, won’t you, in prayer?”

He got a soft voice, like a bale of cotton, serious for his age. Something change people’s voices when they find God—soft and gentle, or loud and fiery, there ain’t no in between. I been hoping for a fiery preacher to keep me awake. But with the heat and this boy talking, it gonna be hard for sure.

Before he get to preaching, the girl, Sister Henrietta, walk up the aisle, passing the plate for donations. I sit up and dig through my bag for a bottle of water, glad I got two left for Baby Girl. When Sister Henrietta reach me and hold out the plate, I put it in next to the freesteader’s dried fish and the pheasant the blood hunter already donated. The smuggler too far gone to be giving up anything but the ghost, and soon. Still, it gonna be a good dinner tonight, if the plate be any sign.

The trapdoor bang open across from me and I jump at the sound. A man with one leg climb through, and I wonder how he managed the rope ladder, even with them big arms. He drop a smoked ham hock on the collection plate, and that be it, five people and a tidy heap of food. They gonna give us some, save the rest for later, but that pheasant ain’t keeping like the hocks and the fish, so we doing all right.

The girl smile at the man, all soft and sweet, and let him pass. He move himself up to them front pews and prop up his legless thigh. I tuck into my corner and watch the whole room. Sister Henrietta slip behind the curtain with her platter of food, and I work harder than usual to keep my eyes open, waiting for the word of the Lord.

“Thank you, Sister,” Brother William say in that drowsy-making voice of his. “And many thanks to and blessings upon you, sisters and brothers. For it is a blessing that each and every one of us is alive and drawing in the blessed air tonight. Did not the Lord say that Heaven is like unto a grain of mustard seed, grown into a tree in which the birds of the air made nests in its branches? So, too, do we nest amongst the arms of cypress trees and know that we are closer to Heaven.”