Quarantine (8 page)

I
'd fallen asleep in the medical room. I think it was mid-kiss. Paige didn't seem to mind. She was there when I woke, four hours later, according to my new watch. Its face glowed in the dark, the hands and dial luminescent under my blankets. She was reading a book.

“Hey.”

“Hello,” she said, putting her book down and getting from her chair to help me sit up. “How do you feel?”

“How do I look?”

“Kinda cute.”

“Oh, right,” I said, feeling my face flush red. “Well, I feel like crap.”

“Can I get you something?”

“First-class Qantas flight home?”

“Hmm, anything else?”

“Hot drink?”

She nodded and left the room.

The other patients seemed to be asleep. I wasn't entirely sure of the extent of their injuries but I could see one had a leg splinted. The nurse came in and helped me dress in some fresh clothes. I think Paige must have picked them out for me while I slept. They were all black: jeans, T-shirt, socks and jocks, with a zip-up leather jacket and boots. They were all new, still had the store creases in them, more spoils of the situation in which this city gave up everything material for its survivors.

Paige brought me steaming hot tea, and the nurse checked my hand and my temperature. My hand was feeling a little better but still resembled an overstuffed lump of meat, and I was told not to wear gloves until it healed. Fat chance of going against that advice—my palm was still swollen to about double its usual size. I swallowed another few pills, and was ready to get out of there. “Do you want to come and join the others?” Paige asked.

“Yeah,” I said as we walked down the hallway. “Sorry I skipped out this morning—I mean, without saying good-bye.”

“That's cool,” she said. “I guessed you'd headed out with the guys, which was good: my dad needed that space. Where'd you go?”

“We went to go see about a way out . . . then this snowstorm.”

“Bob's still out there—”

“Yeah, I know,” she said, holding my good hand as we walked. “He'll be okay.”

I nodded. “Hair looks good like that.”

“Thanks,” she replied. “I figured you prefer brunettes.”

I'm not sure—did I? I shrugged.

Daniel was leading a prayer group seated in the little chapel. Audrey was there, in the front row. Her mouth moved and her eyes were closed as she prayed. I heard Daniel say, “God will be our judge.” They nodded and smiled to show they got it, while I didn't understand it at all. I understood why and how they liked Daniel, taking comfort in his words and presence; I found that reassuring too, but I relied on a congregation of one. I wanted to be responsible for my own actions, however difficult they were to bear.

Another group, in the dining hall, was being addressed by Tom. I immediately sensed that the division between this group and Daniel's remained. I hoped it'd sort out, fast.

Paige took my hand, and I followed her out to a covered terrace where the wind blew snow in all directions.

“It's like snowmageddon out there,” I said. I wondered if Bob was sheltering someplace or still pushing on.

The other teens were out here too, huddled on plastic chairs, looking out at the snow-covered driving range as if it were a movie screen, blankets around their shoulders and junk food in their laps. These guys were not like my friends Anna, Mini, or Dave, nor the girls at the zoo. This group was a little bit whack—right now, a couple of them were saying this was the End of Days or some such.

“The infected are evil—it's God's work.”

The guy who said that was about fourteen. Maybe they'd had it too easy here, being remote from what was going on outside these walls. What would I be like if I'd stayed any longer at 30 Rock? Then again, maybe it was because they were simply younger than me. At fourteen I felt I knew everything, and I only knew half of that now.
Wow—what'll be left when I'm twenty? Thirty?

“They're not evil,” Paige said to him. “They're unfortunate. Until their sickness, they were our friends, our family, our neighbors—”

“Yeah, well, we've seen them kill!”

“And we've seen some of our own here kill, and I wouldn't label them as evil either,” Daniel joined in. I wondered if he was thinking of me as he said that.

He'd taken off his bandages, and he looked better than I'd imagined, despite the black eyes and the cut lip, a dark bruise on his cheek, and wadding stuffed in his angry-looking broken nose. Yeah, he looked a wreck, but I'd seen far worse injuries these last couple of weeks. The bandages reminded me of what could have been.

“No one will ever fully fathom the strangeness of Man, nor the compassion, nor the love and hate that we succumb to,” he said. He took a chair and dragged it over to join the group. “Give it time, my friends, live as you are meant to, act as if the less fortunate you see are your brothers and sisters, for that is surely what they are, what we all are, in this challenging time.”

Paige and I wandered the complex. We came to another room where several people were quizzing a science teacher. He was animated, using a whiteboard, while the young kids all had paper and pens and were seated on the floor over in a corner as if their lesson was over. There was a buzzy atmosphere between the few adults and kids there to listen and ask, and this man who was prepared to give some answers or at least steer conversation.

“He just got here yesterday,” Paige whispered into my ear.

I leaned against the doorway, listened to him.

“So they're not zombies?” someone asked.

“I really don't think so,” he replied. “I mean, for a start, zombies don't have beards.”

He let it hang for a sec and then cracked into laughter and his audience joined in. I liked this teacher.

“Zombies don't exist, or at least they're extinct or something,” he said, and everyone laughed again. “Okay, but seriously: what is this? I don't know. I have ideas, opinions, but I have no way of proving anything. So let's talk about what we know for sure.”

“It's a strain of the Shanti virus.”

The teacher laughed. “Too much TV for you. Next?”

“It was an attack,” an adult said. “Biological and conventional.”

“Yes,” he replied. “It was an attack—”

“By who?”

“We don't know.”

“I bet it was those—”

“Opinions—we all have them, so let's stick to what we know,” the teacher said. “It was an attack and it was partly a biological infection of some kind, right? It was airborne and contained to the initial ten, maybe fifteen minutes of a large-scale simultaneous attack on the city. What else do we know about it?”

“It killed the very young and the very weak,” someone said.

He looked at the floor, nodded, as if he'd seen some such event firsthand.

“It can't be transferred from person to person, and it can't—”

“How do we know?” the teacher asked. Every face in the room seemed open, awaiting answers, scared. “How do we know it cannot be transferred?”

No one spoke. Even I wasn't so sure about that. I'd seen no evidence either way . . .

“Look, what I do know is that the future is up to us,” the teacher said. “We here, and others like us, have to think about the generations to come after us, and say we want to make it a better place for our children and our children's children—we have to make it a better place.”

“He's right,” I said, and they all looked at me. “The choice is ours—we get to make this better, if we choose to. But not here, because it will get worse— we've seen that. Here's what I know for sure: can you catch this virus still? Yes. Are the worst of the infected still out there, ready to kill for what runs in your veins? Yes. Do the other Chasers, the infected, present a danger? No. I've met them, up close. They are doomed here, and that sucks, but we can't do anything about that. I'm not gonna lie to you; when Bob comes back with good news, I'll be the first in line to leave here, because I want to see my dad again. I want to go home.”

“I
like what you said to them,” Paige told me as we found a quiet space in an office. We sat on the carpet, leaning against the wall. It was an hour or so before dinner and we were eating a packet of peanut M&Ms.

“I meant every word,” I said.

Paige nodded. “If Bob comes back with good news, they'll leave straightaway.”

“But we still need your dad to come around.”

“Daniel and all his friends and followers are working on my dad and a few of the skeptics.” She paused, as if unsure whether or not that would work. “My dad was going to put it to a vote, to leave or stay.”

“When?”

“Like, ASAP, probably tonight at dinner.”

She studied a red M&M in her fingers. Her arm was touching mine.

“And he wants what, a majority vote?”

“I don't know. He wants a consensus, I guess.”

“Maybe he wants to cover his butt in case you all go and something bad happens—sorry, I didn't mean to sound mean.”

“He just wants everyone to stick together.”

“And that's great, I think that's best—to stick together.”

“What you mean is, we should stick together and leave together.”

“Well . . . there's something I haven't told you—”

I couldn't meet her gaze at that moment, and so she looked concerned. “Jesse, what is it?”

I told her about the soldiers. “One of them said that they'd found a way out to the north.”

Again she nodded. This wasn't news, after all—Caleb had come here and shared that. She studied my face closely.

“Caleb was a good friend of mine.”

She shook her head.
“Was?”

I let out a deep breath, blinked away the residual delirium from my medical treatment.

“The soldiers had an unexploded missile in the back of their truck—left over from the attack.” I looked at the tub of multicolored M&Ms between us. “Caleb and I were close by, and there was an attack and the missile went off.”

“It . . . killed them all?”

I shook my head. After a moment she got it.

“The virus?”

“Caleb was closest. I ran. I had to. He—”

“He's one of
them
.”

I nodded.

“He's—he's one of the
chasing
kind, isn't he?”

“Yeah.”

She looked like she was going to throw up.

“And it might happen again, at any moment—there could be an unexploded missile or some of the contagion close by—”

“Stop it.”

“I'm just saying—”

She spoke to the floor: “You know those guys who tried to leave were attacked.”

Damn. I'd hoped she wouldn't have been told that, but I guess news traveled fast around here.

“My dad tried to stop them from leaving.”

“They knew what they were doing.”

She hesitated.

“My dad was out on the food party that day,” she said.

I didn't know what to say. Or what to think. What did she mean—did she suspect her dad of killing them? Why would he do that, to prove a point? To force the rest to stay? I let her reside in a moment of silence, willing her to continue, but she didn't.

“If you knew anything about that, would you tell me?”

She nodded. She didn't look at me, but she nodded. “You don't need to convince me to leave,” she said, her arms wrapped around her legs, her knees tucked under her chin. “But what if Bob comes back and tells us something that makes people think it's safer to stay here? It'll be even harder then.”

“Your dad would feel justified.”

“Please, Jesse, can't you speak to him?”

“That's not my place.”

“Please, he might listen to you.”

“Why do you think he'd listen to me?”

“Because
you
intervened in the fight. Because
you've
been outside—seen people, talked to them.”

She looked at me and she held my gaze.

“Tell my dad about the group of soldiers you met,” she said. “Tell my dad about them before it gets worse around here. Last night, Jesse, what my dad did to Daniel? We're turning on each other. First this attack, the infected, the weather, the other survivors—now we're turning on ourselves . . . Please.”

“Okay,” I said. “Okay.”

 

Dinner was rowdy. Expectant. Feverish. Voices were raised and arguments were spreading like little wildfires, flaring here and there, then gone again, only to flare up once more and travel around the packed tables like a wave. This room had been something of an oasis last time I'd eaten here. Calm, communal, nurturing. How things had changed.

Many people wanted to leave—up to twenty-five now. Daniel sensed a consensus was so close that he had organized a few people to start packing supplies on some improvised wheeled carts. Whatever news Bob brought,
they'd
be leaving; either tomorrow or soon. They'd seen and heard enough.

The old juice lady passed and I heard her say: “Somewhere
warmer
. Somewhere
safer
. Somewhere
better
than here—anywhere better than
here
.”

That was the crux of their argument, their soundbites, their best-of reel: Did they really grasp that this was life and death, the highest stakes there could be, with no room for error?

“I'm sick of this city!” a guy yelled. I recognized him: he'd been tending to their small stock of firearms when I first arrived. “Before all this I mean. There's—everything is surface, don'tcha think? And look at it now—we're living in a world where we're entitled to go out there and get some. Let's go shoot some people who are worse off than we are. Who gives a damn? They're a lesser class of human beings, the new minority. If they get in my way . . .”

I didn't have the heart to tell him that they weren't the minority, we were. I hoped his disposition and opinion wasn't contagious. You needed to be alert out there, open to surprise, not driven by rage and revenge.

“The hell with it all—and the hell with this place,” he continued. Well, at least he had spirit. “Let's get outta here!”

 

We walked between the tables, and loaded up our plates with more of the delicious food on offer. After we'd eaten, we walked up to Tom at his table. I had a bad feeling about this.

“He won't listen to me, he doesn't like me—” I said to Paige.

“He doesn't know you well, but he'll listen, he listens to everyone,” she said. He knew me well enough to know that I fancied his daughter—wasn't that reason enough not to talk to him? But Paige had already dragged me over until I was almost in arm's reach.

Tom sat on the edge of a table talking to a group that consisted of nearly every adult at the piers. He stopped talking, looked at me.

“Tom, can I say something, to everyone?”

In public, with everyone watching, he was generous and open. Maybe he was keen to save face after the fight. “You don't have to ask—”

“I met a group of guys a few days ago,” I said, scanning every face as I spoke. He seemed a little miffed that I didn't wait for the full answer to my rhetorical question. “They were dressed like US soldiers. They were walking, armed with assault rifles, with a couple of heavy trucks. Two days later I saw them motoring north, with one of the unexploded missiles from this attack in the back of their truck.”

They listened, all of them. Thirty-something adult faces turned towards me.

“One of them had told me that if I were to leave, not to head south or west, not to head anyplace warmer—”

“Why?” Tom asked.

“Because this virus is worse there,” I said. “He said the warmer the climate, the worse the infected are.”

Tom shook his head, and there was murmuring among the group.

“That all?” Tom asked.

“He said to head north, where it's colder.”

“Old news,” he said. “We heard that from someplace else, Jesse. This is where we need to wait it out.”

He went back to arguing, to putting forward his case to stay put. Tom wanted to stay, maybe to help those who kept turning up—there were at least three unfamiliar faces here and they'd obviously integrated well, as everyone seemed to, so quickly—maybe just to stay in a place he thought he knew. Here they had beds and warmth and food and security.

“I know you heard it before,” I said, but he didn't hear me as he was talking loudly at the same time, “But what if you're wrong? What if there's no ‘waiting out,' beyond waiting to die?”

“We've heard enough, thanks. We'll make our own decisions.”

“I have to tell you something,” I said.

“You
have
to?”

“Your daughter asked me to.”

He looked past me to Paige.

“Please listen to him, Dad.”

“I don't care if you listen to me or not,” I said to Tom. I stood right next to him, at the head of the table, so that I could be heard by everyone seated there. Daniel was at the far end, and his congregation looked on in particular interest.

“You all do what you have to do, decide your own destiny. But I want you to know what I know, because it may help you make your decision.”

Most people nodded in acknowledgment.

“I've been here since the attack, just like you,” I said. “I've lived through hell, just like you. But you know what else? I met these soldiers. And one of them did tell me to head north, if I could. That things would get worse here. And you know what? Things
have
got worse here.”

There was a murmuring of agreement.

“Thanks for that,” Tom said, dismissing me. “Now—”

“There's one more thing—”

“That's fine, thanks, kid—”

“Give him a moment,” Daniel said, and every face at the table turned to me—Tom could see that, as clearly as I could. “What else, Jesse?”

“These soldiers were transporting a missile out of Manhattan when it was hit by a US drone aircraft,” I said, talking quickly. The murmuring stopped and the group watched me, waiting for more. “A US unmanned aircraft. Attacking their own men on the ground. The missile from the aircraft hit the truck and detonated the missile left over from the attack. It was a huge explosion.”

I looked down to the end and was surprised to see that the look on Daniel's face was mirrored by pretty much everyone else at the table. They all wanted to hear every little detail.

“The explosion set off the virus.”

Some chairs moved at that, perhaps out of fear, to get away from me.

“I know you were told that there was a path clear to the north because my friend told you,” I said. “My friend, Caleb.”

I could tell there was recognition there, even on Tom's face.

“Caleb was there with me that night. He was closest to the explosion.”

“No!” a lady yelled.

“He became . . . he's infected. He's infected and because he was so close to the contagion, he became one of the—he's one of the deranged ones.”

The woman gasped again. Others murmured to their neighbors. A couple of people began to sob.

“He's lost. He's gone.” I stood by Tom and looked him square in the eyes. “Given the chance he'll hunt you down and drink what's in you. Hell, he'd kill me too, given the chance.”

The room was silent.

“That's what's here. That's what I've seen. That's a big part of why
I
want to leave.” I looked all around, every face attentive, an assembly of truth. “If there's a way out of here, off this island and out of this city, I'm
taking
it. Whether it's Bob's water-tunnel plan or something I have to engineer myself, I'm outta here. That's all I know. It might not be any better, it might kill me, but it's what I have to do. Whatever is ahead of me, it's the choice I make.”

I could hear the people around me breathing. But I felt as if I was holding my breath. I knew the words that were coming next, because I'd said them before to Paige—I'd said them to anyone who had listened to me. Didn't seem to make them any more real. But I liked the fact that they seemed to mean something to these people who were hearing them for the first time. It gave me a kind of hope.

“You decide what you want. Follow your heart, your mind, your gut, whatever. Me, I just want to go home.”