Viral Nation (4 page)

And need for the room, because the government rations alone weren’t enough to feed a person. Everyone grew some produce. Some people kept backyard chickens and even dairy goats, if they were lucky enough to win a pair in the Bazaar. West and Clover had two laying hens in a pen in their backyard.

“Are you going to the Bazaar while I’m at the library?” She asked every week. The answer was always the same, but she still asked.

“Just to pick up our rations and Mrs. Finch’s.”

“We need candles,” she said.

He had thirty-five chances each week to win extras. Twenty-one he earned working at the cantaloupe farm, plus Clover’s minor ration of fourteen. Each ticket was traded for a token that he gambled for candles, toilet paper, soap, a butchered chicken. Maybe if he was lucky, some extra energy for the week. Anything above and beyond their bare-bones food rations. On Wednesdays, he pulled for Mrs. Finch’s fourteen elder ration extras, too.

“Reading by candlelight isn’t good for your eyes, you know,” he said.

“Just get some, okay?”

He didn’t answer. He had exactly zero control over what the machines gave him. Some weeks he came home with so much he could barely carry it, others with nothing more than their basic rations.

Clover waved over her shoulder as she turned with Mango toward the library. From behind, she looked more like twelve than
sixteen. Her black hair was cut short, in chunky layers. She had a habit of hacking at it with scissors when it started to bother her. She wore their mother’s red Converse high-tops and blue jeans cuffed at the ankle with a standard-issue white T-shirt.

She was so thin. He hoped for some meat, instead of the candles she wanted. The virus, which many expected to affect the chicken population, had jumped from humans to cows instead. They were endangered now and pampered like pets on dairy farms. It was hard for West to imagine that once upon a time people ate them. A pound of lamb or pork would go a long way, though.

West watched until his sister was out of sight, then walked the other way, toward the Bazaar.

There were two things he could count on every Wednesday morning. An unpleasant twinge of resentment when he traded a backbreaking week of hard labor for barely enough food and energy to take care of his sister. And passing by the Kingston Estate on his way to the Bazaar, where he knew Bridget Kingston would be somewhere near the gate.

The Kingston Estate was as big and grand as its name implied. A large white house and a smaller guest house sat on maybe two acres of land with stables between them. The estate had housed the current headmaster since the Academy opened fifteen years ago. First a man named Norton, and for the last four years Adam Kingston and his daughter.

A trio of horses looked up from where they ate alfalfa in a front pasture when West walked by. Beyond the buildings, the land dropped off into a ravine, leaving a backdrop of city below and mountains beyond.

The house was well kept, with walls repainted bright white by government workers every third spring and set off by the deep blue shutters and a red front door. Very patriotic. A wide porch wrapped around the front and both sides of the house.

As West came close, Bridget stood up from the bench swing that hung from the porch rafters near the front door. She wore her honey-colored hair swept away from her face and pulled into a high ponytail. The curled ends of it brushed the back of her neck.

Passing on his way to the Bazaar was the only time West saw Bridget since he’d graduated primary school and become a dirt slinger three springs ago. They rarely said more than “good morning” or “hello” to each other. There was more caught in the space between them, but it stayed there. West convinced himself he was fine with the slow progression. He’d be about forty before he was in a position to offer Bridget anything more than a simple greeting.

It hadn’t always been that way. Before Adam Kingston was headmaster, he was just a teacher and West’s father was a guard. A guard’s son could be with a teacher’s daughter. This guard’s son had time to fall in love with that teacher’s daughter, in fact, before things changed. Bridget moved with her father into the estate and that was that.

“Morning,” she said. She wore a pair of Academy gray pants that she’d cut off and neatly hemmed into shorts, and a white T-shirt that set off her long, golden limbs.

“Morning,” he answered. God, he was an idiot. She was the headmaster’s daughter. He smelled, constantly, of manure and rotting melon. He buried his hands in his pockets and quickened his pace.

“Are you headed for the Bazaar?” she asked as he passed by.

“Yes.” He stopped walking but didn’t know what else to say. He looked for something anyway. Anything to draw out this moment. “You, too?”

“I don’t get my own rations until November.”

Of course. He knew that she was seventeen. Her father would pick up her rations along with his, and those of anyone else he supported. He would never let his daughter near the Bazaar. West didn’t blame him.

“Have a good day, Bridget.” He liked saying her name. It felt sweet on his tongue. It always had.

She smiled, her cheeks flushed just a little, and he walked away.

“You’re in a good mood.”

West turned and smiled when he saw Isaiah walking toward him. “What are you doing here?”

“Got the day off and thought I’d get my grandma’s rations for her.”

“I’m just on my way to the Bazaar.” West balanced himself back on a garden wall, his thick-soled boots making it difficult, and reached into his pocket for Mrs. Finch’s ration coupons.

Isaiah took them, then pushed West’s shoulder until he lost balance again. “Saw you talking to Bridget Kingston. She why you’re so smiley today?”

He hopped back on the wall and walked backward a few steps. “Just saying hello.”

“Watch yourself, West. That girl is way out of your league.”

“Don’t worry. That’s not why I’m happy today.” Not mostly, anyway.

“No?”

“Clover got accepted into the Academy. Boarding and all.”

Isaiah stopped walking, and West did, too, after a few more steps. “So you going to join the Company?”

There were only two things to do in Reno. Work for the Waverly-Stead Company, or work for the government. Company work for people as young as West required living in the barracks, at least for training. He couldn’t leave Clover, so West worked for the government raising cantaloupe to be sent by train to feed people in other states.

Are you going to join the Company?
wasn’t a real question. All
West had ever wanted was to work for Waverly-Stead, just like his father.

“As soon as she’s settled in, I can apply,” he said.

Isaiah ran a hand over the stubble growing on top of his head. “School starts in what, a month?”

“About.”

“You could start training the next day.”

West’s stomach tightened. He could start the process now. Today. That letter was for Clover, but it sure changed his life, too. He’d been taking care of her since he was sixteen and she was thirteen. Since their father was promoted from guard to executioner, part of one of the five-person firing squads that were the center of the most efficient law enforcement system in the history of the country. People convicted of future capital crimes were brought from every state’s walled city to Reno so that their sentences could be carried out. Executioners were required to live in the Company barracks, and promotions within the Company weren’t something anyone could turn down easily. Their father signed guardianship to Mrs. Finch, but it was West who had taken care of not only himself and his sister, but their guardian as well, until Clover’s care passed to him officially when he turned eighteen.

“You’ve waited long enough,” Isaiah said.

Hell, yes, he had.

West received a similar letter to Clover’s from the Academy a few months after he convinced his father he could take care of his sister. By then it was clear that, official documents aside, Mrs. Finch couldn’t even care for herself. He declined the invitation. What else could he do? Foster City was supposed to be a perfect system, allowing children to be cared for so their parents could do the work of recivilization. Somehow he’d known that system wouldn’t work for them. Foster City would have chewed his sister up and spit her out. But now that she was accepted into the Academy herself, he had his life back.

A man at least as old as Mrs. Finch stood, ramrod
straight, just inside the big library building. Clover stopped in front of him, as she had a thousand times.

“Morning, Clover,” he said. “Help you find anything today?”

A large whiteboard stood next to him, and someone had written that day’s class offerings on it. “Any good classes today?”

“One on preserving meat. Another on making soap.”

She’d taken those already. More than once. “Looks like the first-aid class has a new teacher.”

“Yes, indeed.”

Clover wandered off, holding Mango’s lead in her right hand. At the last minute, she remembered and turned back. “Thank you, Tom.”

The old man’s wrinkled face softened into a smile. “Pleasure.”

Clover inhaled as she walked among the shelves of books. The library’s scent of dust and old paper filtered through her as she lifted her free hand and let her fingers trail along the spines of a row of art books. The world changed just as she was born. It had
shrunk to the size of the city. But these books let her see what it used to be.

She picked one full of prints of Georgia O’Keeffe’s work. Cow skulls and desert landscapes. Clover traced the petals of a huge flower that held secrets she didn’t quite understand. Then she slid the book back into its spot, where she knew she could find it anytime she wanted it, and went to look for books on beekeeping. If West couldn’t get her candles, maybe she could make her own.

The Waverly-Stead building and the Bazaar sat across
four lanes of Virginia Street from each other. A huge arched sign, declaring Reno
The Biggest Little City in the World
, bridged the road. Back in the day, the buildings must have used as much energy between them every day as the whole rest of the city combined did now.

West passed with Isaiah under the sign and through the heavy double doors into the Company’s headquarters. The artificial cool inside gave him goose bumps as they walked along the marble entrance to a large wooden desk.

The woman behind the desk stopped typing when they approached, her fingers curved like claws over the keyboard. “How can I help you?”

“I’m here to apply for guard training,” West said. “Please.”

The receptionist was maybe forty. Her light brown hair was teased and fluffed to an arrangement that didn’t move when she turned her head. Pitted scars on her cheeks meant the Company had saved her life.

West had the scars, too. He rarely thought about them, but they marked him as a survivor. The woman glanced from his eyes to his right cheek and back.

“Take the elevator to the third floor, honey, make a left and then a right, and you’ll see the recruitment offices at the end of the hall,” she said.

West and Isaiah walked toward the elevator together. The Bazaar had a bank of them, too. No other building in Reno except for the hospital had enough energy reserve to save people from walking up stairs.

“You’ll get a packet to fill out, and they’ll want a start date,” Isaiah said as the doors slipped closed.

Just like that, the long wait to start his life was over. He pressed the button for the third floor and rocked on his toes as the elevator lurched upward.

He looked at Isaiah in the mirrored elevator door. His friend wore guard uniform pants, mottled with shades of green and brown, and a white T-shirt the same as West’s.

All work was important. Without farmers, no one ate. But West was so ready to do something really interesting, he could barely hold it in.