Viral Nation (20 page)

“Later,” West said, and took off again, pulling Bridget with him. Clover had to jog to catch up with them.

“We have to go back to the Dinosaur.” She was prepared to argue with him about it if necessary. They needed a safe place to make a plan, and their house wasn’t it. The Dinosaur was the only choice. No one would look for West there.

“I’ve been thinking the same thing,” West said.

“Our house is the first place they’ll look. And those kids in the Dinosaur seem to know how to hide.”

“I said I agree already.”

“The Dinosaur?” Bridget looked and sounded a little lost. Maybe more than a little.

“Yeah,” Clover said. “The Dinosaur.”

“There are people in the Dinosaur?”

Clover let that go. She would have been surprised herself, if she didn’t know better.

“Maybe we should go to the Academy instead and talk to my dad,” Bridget said. Clover snorted. West glared at her, and Bridget just looked even more confused. “What? He’ll at least know why Mr. Bennett was at our house acting so weird.”

“Langston Bennett was at your house?” Clover stopped walking again, and this time, when West didn’t stop as well, she raised her voice. “Langston Bennett was at her house?”

West looked around, then came back to Clover, with Bridget still following in his wake. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“He—” Bridget started to say.

West put a hand on her arm and interrupted her. “He works with her dad, okay? You already knew that. But we don’t know why he was at her house.”

“Do you think he’s the one? I mean, I thought we had some time.”

“So did I. And I think we probably still do. Let’s go, okay?”

There was more. Clover felt it. But West was right; they needed to get moving. If Jude and the others didn’t let them stay, they’d need time to find somewhere else before the curfew bells rang.

When they reached a suppressant bar two or three miles from the Dinosaur, at the edge of the residential part of the city, West came to a stop.

“What are we doing?” Bridget asked. Her voice sounded funny. Too high-pitched. And her blue eyes darted all around, like she couldn’t find anything to focus them on. “Shouldn’t we keep moving?”

“Clover and I need our doses.”

That took Clover by surprise, even though it shouldn’t have. It was the right time of day. But this wasn’t their regular bar, and there was some risk involved in stopping somewhere unfamiliar. They wouldn’t blend.

There was no law that said you had to go to a certain bar, but it was what people did. Not just West and Clover, or some people or even most people. As far as Clover knew, all people chose a bar and stuck with it. Changing because of a move or a job switch that made another location more convenient was a big deal. The dosers, and anyone inside being dosed, would remember the strangers who came in today.

“Oh,” Bridget said. “Oh, okay.”

She didn’t let go of West, though, and when he took a step toward the bar’s door, she held on to him. “Bridget, you better wait out here. We’ll be right back.”

Even Clover could see that Bridget was wound tight enough to break.

Bridget dropped West’s hand and fidgeted her fingers at her sides as she looked up and down the street, nodding. “Yeah. What if he comes by here?”

“He won’t,” West said, firmly. “But if he does, you come inside. Everything will be okay.”

“West’s the one who needs to worry,” Clover said. West shot her the evil eye. “Come on. The faster we get in, the faster we can get back out.”

Bridget looked up at West. Her black pants were dusted with white flour, and her hair was falling out of its ponytail. “It’s just, I’ve never been to a bar without my dad.”

“Everything will be okay,” West said. “I promise.”

Just when Clover’s irritation felt on the verge of spilling over, Bridget straightened and said, “Right. I’ll be fine.”

Finally. Clover pushed open the door to the bar and walked in with Mango. West followed on her heels. Their father said they had several days before West had to worry. That was before West took Bridget. Could Mr. Kingston have reported his daughter missing already? Watching West go in and give his ID was nerve-racking. She could only imagine how scared West must have been that his ID would trigger a call to the guard.

The only thing scarier was the idea of not being dosed and the virus that was dormant in his body coming back to life. She was too young to have any memories of the virus. She knew that people like West and Leanne, who were scarred from their battles with it, still carried it in them. It crouched in their bodies, waiting for the opportunity to burst out again and eat them alive like miniature cannibals. Zombie cells.

Clover was so nervous, she was sure she’d draw attention to herself. But nothing happened. They gave their identification cards to a woman who was nothing at all like the Caramel-Camel Man, and someone they’d never seen before inserted the suppressant delivery tubes into their ports. The whole experience was unnerving but happened without incident.

After it was over, they went back outside and found Bridget just where they left her.

“She’s still here. You did a good job scaring her,” Clover said.
West glared at her, and Bridget made a weird little sound. “What? You did.”

“Wouldn’t you be scared if someone told you that you were about to be killed?” Bridget asked.

“I said he did a
good
job. It was a compliment.”

They walked in a row, Clover on one side of West and Bridget holding his other hand. The sky was just turning shades of yellow and pink when they made it to the huge, tumbledown casino.

Now what?

“I’ll go in and talk to Jude,” West said. “You two wait here.”

“I don’t think so,” Bridget said.

“I don’t either.” Clover scratched Mango’s ears when he pressed his broad head against her hand. “I’m less threatening, and he knows me.”

“No,” West said. She hated when he got unmovable like that. Especially when the stand he took had to do with underestimating her.

She stood nearest the big glass door and Bridget was between them, so there wasn’t much West could do when she grabbed a light from the side pocket of her pack, pushed the door open, and slipped into the Dinosaur with Mango.

Jude wouldn’t hurt her. She knew that, somehow. She didn’t pick up on things like that very often. Or at least, not in any reliable way. Usually, she thought someone was her friend when they very much weren’t and managed to completely put off everyone else. But Jude was her friend in the future, and somehow, she trusted that.

She stopped before she’d gone far and cranked up her flashlight, releasing some of her excess energy, then flicked it on.

She trusted Jude, but she still wanted to see him coming.

“Clover!” West called for her, and she saw another light illuminate the space to her right.

“Come on,” she said, slowing to wait for him and Bridget.

“I don’t want to be here,” Bridget said.

“Oh, my God. Stop whining.” Clover pushed ahead and walked toward the stairwell.

“Clover!”

She slowed a little but didn’t look back at West. “What? It’s annoying. You’d never let
me
get away with it.”

They made their way up, again, to the fifteenth floor. Slower this time, because West had to help Bridget. Clover kept moving at a pace that was maybe faster than she really wanted it to be. She was at least as tired as Bridget. This was the second time she’d done this climb today, plus a ten-mile round-trip bike ride that morning.

Jude didn’t surprise them on the fifteenth-floor landing this time. Instead, they walked to room 1534 on their own.

West knocked three times, like Jude had, and the door opened casually. Not thrown open in anger or cracked open so someone could peek through. A girl, one of the twins, froze and looked out at them with brown eyes that went as perfectly round as her face. Marta, Clover thought.

She held the door in one hand, as if she might slam it closed again. But she didn’t. “What’s this, then?”

“We need to talk to Jude,” West said.

Marta looked West over with a bald, obvious appreciation that made Bridget look almost as uncomfortable as West did. Clover covered her mouth to capture a snort of laughter before it came out.

Marta made a disgusted sound and shooed them away with one hand. “He made you go once, and you come back with another hoodie?”

None of them answered or moved. After what felt like an eternity, the girl sighed and said with exaggerated enunciation, “You shouldn’t be here. Especially not with her.”

“We need to talk to Jude,” West said again.

Marta shrugged and pulled a flashlight from her belt. She
pushed between Bridget and Clover into the hallway. When the three of them stood there watching her, she turned back and threw up her hands. “You want the man, let’s find him.”

They walked—single file except for Bridget, who stayed next to West—down the dim hallway to a room four away from 1534. Marta knocked on the door.

Jude looked out, saw her, then them, and opened the door the rest of the way. “Are you kidding me?”

Marta gave Jude a look that said
They’re all yours
and went back down the hallway.

“You can’t just bring people here. Are you insane?”

“Probably,” West said. “Jude Degas, meet Bridget Kingston.”

Jude muttered a rude word under his breath. “Come in, then.”

His room had a bed pushed lengthwise against the wall across from the bathroom door. A round table and four chairs sat in front of the window. A cheap-looking brown laminate dresser and matching nightstands at the foot and head of the bed rounded things out. The space reminded her of her barrack. Except placing all the heavy furniture against the wall left a lot of open space in the center of the room.

Jude was claustrophobic, Clover remembered. The Dinosaur was big, but this room was isolated, hundreds of feet in the air. He wouldn’t like to feel closed into it.

A doorless closet held four shirts and two pairs of red pants, and two Academy uniforms, all neatly hung. A pair of boots sat on the floor next to a stack of red and blue plastic storage bins.

Jude stayed standing and didn’t offer any of them seats. Clover sat in a chair anyway. She was so tired her legs felt limp. West sat Bridget in one, too. The girl looked like she might fall over at any moment.

That left the two boys facing each other down.

“I can’t do anything for you,” Jude said. “And if you keep coming here, you’re going to get us in trouble.”

“Actually, you
can
do something for us.” West used his quiet, adult tone. The one he used on Clover when he thought he was right and she was wrong. He used it a lot. “We need to stay here for a while.”

“You have to leave. Now,” Jude said.

“We aren’t going anywhere.”

“You sure about that?” Jude said, his voice low. He didn’t back down an inch, even though he had to tilt his head back to look West in the face. Clover’s heart thudded and she felt the beats on her eardrums. She shook her head to clear that, and started to move closer to them, but they both put a hand out to stop her.

“I don’t want a problem,” West said to Jude.

“Then don’t cause one, hoodie.”

“We need to figure out what’s going on.”

“I agree, you do,” Jude said. “But what does that have to do with us?”

“You need to know, too.” Clover pushed West’s hand away when he held it out again. “You gave me that zine. You had the keys to the Company van.”

“Clover,” Jude said. He looked sorry for her.

“You kissed me!” Clover wrapped her arms around her body. This was so
stupid
. Mango was tense, sitting close to Clover and panting.

“Jesus, Clover,” West said. Jude just stared at her.

“Wait in the hall,” she said to West. “And see if you can find some water for my dog.”

Both boys said, “What?” at the same time.

“Take Bridget. And get Mango some water.”

West grunted and shook his head. “No way.”

“Jude will listen to me. Tell him you’ll listen to me, Jude. Otherwise, we’re just going to stand here all night going back and forth.”

West looked at Jude, who lifted his shoulders. “I’ll listen.”

West didn’t look happy, but he took Bridget out into the hall.
Clover sat again, with Mango so close to her he was nearly in her lap. “Do you have any water in here?”

Jude walked to his bathroom and came back with a little plastic bucket filled with water that he put on the floor in front of the dog. He scratched Mango’s ears once, then stood without making a huge deal about it.

“I want to help you, Clover,” Jude said. “I do. But—”

“You saved West’s life and Bridget’s, too.”

“That wasn’t me.”

Two years would change him. But this was still him. They had—would have—some kind of relationship then that she didn’t fully understand yet. But this was where it started, and she was surprised to find that she wanted it to start. Whatever it was.

“It was you. You knew Mango’s name. You had a key that you wouldn’t have, or even know you needed, unless I told you. And you warned me that my brother is going to be executed for Bridget Kingston’s murder.”

“And I kissed you?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” he said.

“What are you and those girls doing here, anyway?” Clover was genuinely curious. He’d obviously set himself up here, and those girls seemed like they had as well. “How many are there of you? How long have you been here?”

“Since I heard that I’d been accepted into the Academy. About two weeks after the kids from Foster City were given the entrance exams.” He didn’t say how many there were, and she decided not to ask again, even though she had to actually bite the question back. “All we’re trying to do is keep the guard from sending us back to Foster City. That’s all. As long as they don’t know we’re here, we’re fine. No one is looking for us. They’re looking for you.”

“No, they’re not.”

“They will be. You think Adam Kingston isn’t going to raise the alarm for his missing daughter?”

That question had buzzed around her head enough that she had an answer. “I think even if he does, they aren’t going to cause a scene about it. Not yet, anyway. People aren’t supposed to be able to be kidnapped anymore, remember?”