Viral Nation (30 page)

Clover watched the shadowy trees, caught in the van’s headlights, as they drove until her stomach turned over and she had to look away. The lake would come up on their left soon, but she wasn’t sure they’d see it in the dark.

“Are you okay?” West asked her. He sat between her and Bridget, leaning against the side of the van.

“You could have been killed.”

“But I wasn’t.” He tried to put a hand on her arm, but she yanked away from him. “Isaiah wouldn’t hurt me.”

“That other guard would have. In a heartbeat. And you don’t know what Isaiah would do. He’s a guard, West. It’s his job to stop people from coming in and out of the city.”

“I’m fine.”

Clover pulled her knees up under her chin. It was crowded, cold, and uncomfortable in the van. “I’m not.”

“Try not to worry so much, Clover,” Waverly called back. He didn’t even pretend not to eavesdrop. “You’re going to love the ranch.”

“Don’t you think Isaiah probably connected you to the van, West?” Clover asked.

“Isaiah couldn’t wrap his brain around any of this if I told him flat-out.”

Emmy had fallen asleep with her head in her brother’s lap and stretched just then, her small foot connecting with Mango’s hip. The dog lifted his head, startled, but didn’t make a sound.

“Almost there,” Waverly said, turning the van off the highway.

Five minutes later, the van stopped. They were there. Not that Clover could see where
there
was. “Where?”

“Our ranch, of course. You’ll have to wait until morning to really see it.” Waverly turned down a long drive and then stopped and cut the engine. He turned around in his seat to look at them. “I can hardly wait until you do.”

Ned Waverly was sixty-three years old. He had curly graying hair growing in shoulder-length tufts around the edges of a bald scalp. He wore a purple t-shirt and a pair of blue jeans cut off at the knee. When he got out of the van and came to let them out, Clover glimpsed open-back leather sandals with two straps over the tops of his feet.

He was lean with a potbelly and stood several inches taller than West. Taller even than Christopher. He looked like the pictures she’d seen of him, only less well groomed and far more casually
dressed. And with considerably less hair on top. More on the sides. They all climbed out of the van and stretched. The rush of adrenaline, followed by a long car ride, had taken a toll. Clover guessed that, except for her, none of them had ever been in a car that they could remember.

The air smelled strongly of pine and had a chill bite to it that surprised her. When she looked up, Clover was stunned by the blanket of stars above the ridge of treetops just barely illuminated by the night sky. She’d had a dusk curfew her whole life. Clover had never been outside this far past sunset, except in her own backyard.

She squinted her eyes, trying to see more of the ranch, but it was no good. “There’s a house, isn’t there?”

Waverly swung his flashlight ahead of them. “That way.
Vamanos, mis amigos.
”

“
Hablan Español?
” Jude asked.

“Not much. Or well.” Waverly started down the path and they followed, fumbling their own flashlights out of their packs as they went.

“This guy is weird,” Jude whispered to Clover as he cranked the handle on his, then clicked it to life.

“Takes one to know one,” Waverly called over his shoulder.

The dirt path led to a large, wooden house. Clover caught glimpses of other buildings and strange structures as the flashlights flitted over them, and then Waverly opened the door and held it while they filed in.

He flipped a switch and electric light flooded the room. “Just for tonight, girls on the left and boys on the right. We’ll get you set up in your places tomorrow.”

“We got our own rooms?” Emmy asked. “Are they upstairs?”

“No, no, those stairs don’t lead anywhere.”

Emmy rubbed at her eyes with the palm of one hand and seemed
ready to question that, but just followed the twins to the girls’ side of the room.

“You have electricity?” Clover asked. They were in some sort of big living room, with a fireplace in one wall and heavy wood furniture pushed out of the way to make room for thick cushions on the floor.

“Electricity, of course, but no wasting. Fuel is precious, you know. Contentment consists not in adding more fuel, but in taking away some fire. That’s Thomas Fuller.”

“Thomas Fuller wasn’t a president,” Clover said, mostly to herself.

“No. But Jimmy Carter was. He said, ‘Put on a sweater.’ Damn shame we didn’t listen to him, isn’t it? Damn shame.” Waverly waved her away to the girls’ side. “I’m afraid you’ll have to use the bushes just outside the door if you can’t wait until morning. Can’t go roaming around here at night, when you don’t know where you’re going. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Okay, just bears, but they’re bad enough. Good night, children. And welcome home.”

He turned out the light and used his flashlight to pick his way around them to a door to Clover’s left.

As soon as he was gone, Phire and Marta and Geena all turned their flashlights on.

“What did he mean, ‘Welcome home’?” Geena asked.

“We’re all tired.” West lay back on his cushion and moaned softly. “Let’s just try to get some sleep.”

Emmy squeezed between the twins. One by one the lights went out. Clover was asleep within minutes.

“Christopher went up the stairs, just to see. They
really don’t go anywhere. Who builds stairs that don’t go anywhere?” Jude asked the next morning. Clover sat with him, cross-legged on his cushion, the computer open in front of them.

“That whole side of the house slides open, too,” Waverly said as he came out of the other room. He’d changed into a red and white striped shirt and worn blue jeans that went to his ankles this time. He was barefooted. “Remind me to show you that sometime.”

“What? Why?” Phire sounded more fascinated than scared, which Clover considered a good thing. He could be a little unpredictable. “Why would the side of a house open?”

“So they could take a long shot, of course. Don’t you know where you are?”

“No.”

“You don’t recognize the old homestead? Now that’s a true shame. Well, come with me, then.”

Waverly slid his feet into the same sandals he’d worn the night before, which he’d left near the front door, and waited while they all scrambled to get their own shoes on. The sun was up, but the day was still cool. Clover inhaled deeply, and the sharp scent of pine made her nostrils flare.

Waverly’s ranch was a whole little town. Brightly colored buildings lined both sides of a dirt path. Wooden sidewalks ran along the front of them. A pair of fake horses stood near a church down the road.

“I want to see them!” Emmy struggled against Phire, who had a firm grip on her hand. “Let go!”

“Not now,” Phire said.

Clover peered at a grassy area next to what looked like a church. “Is that a cemetery? What is this place?”

“It’s the Ponderosa Ranch. Don’t you just expect Hoss to come out of the saloon any minute now?”

“What?” She turned and looked at the little buildings.

“No, I guess you wouldn’t know. You’re too young. Maybe getting rid of television was a good thing, but now some things are just lost forever, aren’t they?” Waverly shook his head. “They used
to film a television show here. Or part of it, anyway. A western called
Bonanza
. This place is a piece of American history. Now it’s mine. Well, ours. Okay, it’s ours.”

“Ours?” West came up next to Clover, and Mango pressed his head into her brother’s hand.

“Sure. I’ve spent two years getting it ready for you to show up.”

“You’ve been here alone for two years?” Bridget asked.

“I’ve been here alone for most of fourteen years. I only found out you all were coming two years ago.”

No wonder the man was a little off his rocker. Clover didn’t like to be around too many people, but that was too much solitude, even for her.

“Come on, let me show you around.”

Waverly walked ahead, toward the tiny town.

“They meant this to be Virginia City, you know.” He looked back at them. “Of course, it isn’t. The real Virginia City is a ghost town now.” Waverly stopped at a building marked
Taxidermy
. “Here we are.”

“Here we are where?” Clover asked.

“Why, your house, of course.” The old man opened the door and swept his arm toward the inside of the building. “Enter the Donovan abode.”

The whole bottom floor was a single room with a wood floor covered by a worn rug. A squat black wood-burning stove sat in one back corner with a staircase near it. The room was furnished with two overstuffed chairs, a small couch, and a table with four chairs. Smaller tables sat on either side of the couch, with a lamp on each one. Waverly went to one and clicked it on and then off again.

“Electricity via generator. Be frugal with it or you won’t have it for long. Two bedrooms upstairs. Now that you’re all here, we can work on getting plumbing into these buildings, but for now,
there’s a bathroom with a shower in it near the restaurant. That’s the only kitchen, too.”

West sat on the little couch and bounced a little, like maybe he was testing to make sure it was real. “This is unbelievable.”

“What about us?” Geena asked.

“You and your sister are in the ice cream shop. Phire and Emmy in the justice of the peace, and I paired up Christopher and Jude in the gift store. I hope you boys don’t mind.”

“Can I see my room?” Emmy asked. When Phire elbowed her, she added, “Please?”

“’Course you can.”

Everyone left but Clover, West, and Bridget.

“He didn’t make a place for me,” Bridget said. “I guess that means I’m going home.”

“Of course you’re going home.” West pulled her into the seat next to him. “We all are. Until then, you’ll stay here with us.”

Clover ignored them both and snapped the lamp on again. “How do you think he’s running electricity in here?”

West reached over and turned the lamp back off. “I don’t know. But we don’t need lamps in broad daylight, regardless. Let’s check out the upstairs.”

The first bedroom was clearly Clover’s. The walls were painted yellow, fluffy white curtains fluttered over the open windows, and one whole wall was covered in shelves lined with hundreds of books.

“Oh,” Clover said, staring at the books. “This is—West, look, he got me
Gone with the Wind
and
To Kill a Mockingbird
. And look at all these books about beekeeping!”

Two beds sat on either side of the window. Each was made with a comforter covered in white lace. A huge dog bed took up a lot of the space between them. “See,” West said. “He did mean for you to stay at least for a little while, Bridget.”

Clover did her best not to let her instant dislike of the idea of
sharing her room show. “Let’s look at your room. Maybe it has two beds, too.”

Waverly obviously had some fairly traditional ideas about gender. The walls in West’s room were painted navy blue and the window was covered with red cotton curtains. West had just one bed. A double with a comforter covered with baseballs and bats.

“Baseball?” Bridget asked.

West tried to shrug it off. Clover would have bet that not many people knew about the baseball card collection in the top of West’s closet at their house. It used to be their father’s. She knew that he still took them out sometimes. Somehow, Waverly must have found out, too.

Once everyone had seen their new rooms, they gathered
in the living room of the little house Waverly had called the Donovan abode. West sat on the couch and watched them all get comfortable. They were, too. Far more than they had the first time they all sat together like this.

“We need to get dosed soon,” Christopher said.

Clover dug the leather pouch out of her pack. It was too early for her, but after the initial shock that she had them, and Jude taking time to explain how she did, everyone else got a dose in their upper arm. That raised up a round of gasps and moans as the thick needles went in and the fiery medicine flowed through their veins.