Immunity Index Page 18

  “Don’t do it, Dad.”

  “Murder is a serious charge,” he said.

  She was about to say she could prove it, but he kept talking.

  “So is extortion. Kidnapping. Conspiracy to commit murder. I can think of a half dozen other felonies just off the top of my head that you’re guilty of. Maybe even treason. Capital offenses.”

  Bowley said, “She’ll die if you don’t agree.”

  “Dad, I’m going to die anyway. I’ve been exposed. I’m trapped here with sick people. I’m helping to take care of them. Don’t do it.”

  His face softened. “I love you, Avril. I love you more than anything else.”

  “Prove it,” Bowley said.

  “Dad, we can’t let them keep doing this.”

  “I love you so much, Avril, that I’m going to listen to you and do what you say.”

  “Dad?” He’d do what she said. He loved her. She could barely breathe.

  “She’s a worthless dupe,” Bowley said, her voice now like flint.

  Her father looked at Avril—or rather, at her face on his screen—and she looked at him, his face stern and strong. She could be as strong.

  Bowley kept talking. “You won’t like what happens to her because of this. It can get a lot worse for her.”

  He shook his head just a bit. “You’ll make it much worse for yourself.”

  “You’re not going to win. You have no support.”

  “We’ve had a vast majority for a long time, and that’s why you’re so desperate. Avril, I’m sorry, but I don’t think this conversation is going to lead anywhere. I love you. I’m angry beyond anything I can say about what’s happening to you. They’ll pay. I promise you we’ll win and they’ll pay.”

  “I love you, too. And Mom. Tell her I love her. Stay safe.”

  He nodded. And his face disappeared from her screen.

  Avril took a long breath. This was how courage felt—like the worst fear and sorrow she’d ever felt. This fear and sorrow felt like a source of boundless strength.

  “How could he do that to you?” Bowley shouted.

  Avril opened her mouth to answer, then changed her mind. Her desire to rant had disappeared. She felt calm, she felt centered. Nothing that was going to happen to her in the future mattered. If she died, fine. If she lived, one day she’d hug her father tight.

  Bowley was still shouting. “We’re coming for you. It’s going to get a lot worse, and he’ll change his mind.”

  No, he wouldn’t. And in the meantime, her clothes were filthy. She went back to her room, left her phone in the hall with Bowley still raving, and inspected her closet for crawling cameras before she changed. She checked on Shinta and moved the desk back against the wall, and she took her time. When she came out, her phone was quiet. The hall was quiet. Most people had left—but all of them?

  She began knocking on doors. Maybe someone had been left behind, too ill to leave. If so, she’d help them. She had enough life ahead of her to still be useful.

  * * *

  Irene watched Ruby charge out of the house, Will following right behind her, pleading and arguing, and his mother ignoring him.

  Nimkii came to the edge of the fence, leaned over, and sniffed, watching Ruby and Will.

  Ruby turned around and screamed at Will. “Some things are more important!”

  He grabbed at her. She slapped him hard across the face and shoved him to the ground.

  “Irene!” she shouted. “Come here.”

  Irene ran. Being obedient might be the safest response.

  “I’m going back to work,” Ruby said. “You stay here and help Will.” She pointed to him on the ground, sulking.

  “Yes.”

  “Do what Will says.” She turned and left. Ruby would place duty before family. That wasn’t surprising. Perhaps it meant the prison management knew about the mutiny and expected trouble. Or that the delta cold had reached its staff or prisoners.

  Irene waited until she was gone, and waited some more until the dust had settled in the driveway. Then she approached the boy, who lay shivering.

  “Will, can I help you into the house?” She had no love for him, but human decency said she should offer him at least a little compassion. “Can I get you your dog?” It was tied up as usual near the shed, but it was friendly and might give him comfort.

  “No! Just leave me alone!”

  “Okay.” Arguing wouldn’t change anything.

  “Sooner or later,” he hissed, “it’s going to get us. I hate it all. Everyone.”

  So much for compassion.

  Will climbed to his feet unsteadily. “Dad was spreading it to everyone, and now we’re all going to die. He got what he deserved.” He stumbled to the house and slammed the door behind him.

  Spreading it? Yes, to his family and from there, maybe beyond. She walked back to Nimkii. His head was down defensively, his trunk curled, his ears spread wide.

  She put a lilt in her voice she didn’t mean. “Hey, Nimkii, you big pedazo. What do you think of all this drama? This isn’t good at all, that’s what I think. Would you like some food? I have some alfalfa.”

  She sent him a bale over the fence. Then she called a friend in Madison. She got through this time. Her friend spoke with hushed shock. Students were being shot on campus, and people were getting sick all over. The whole city had risen up in mutiny, and they were about to try to free the campus.

  This was worse than she thought. “I haven’t heard much up here.”

  “It’s going to be a war. We better win.”

  “How about my mother? Do you know where she is? She was arrested yesterday.”

  “At City Hall? That protest? I know a lot of people are trying to find out. I’ll pass on anything we learn.”

  “Can you tell them there’s a prison here? I know exactly where. Here’s the coordinates.”

  “Okay. Here’s where you can get some news. I gotta go.”

  Irene checked the site, and the news left her confused: mutiny everywhere, and the delta cold, and people dying. Reports contradicted each other. The Prez hadn’t been seen all day. She looked at Nimkii.

  “If it wasn’t for you, I’d leave right now.” But if she left, he’d die one way or another. “I love you.” She needed to decide how much, and soon.

  Something banged inside the house. Nimkii stretched his trunk toward it and growled. Had Will broken something big?

  She ran to the house and nervously opened the back door. “Will?” No answer. She walked in, at first cautious, sneaking, and then she remembered that she lived there, too, even if she wasn’t fully welcome. “Hey, Will, how are you?” No answer. “Where are you?”

  The air smelled wrong, sort of smoky. Around a corner, she saw Will’s legs on the floor, near Ruby’s desk.

  “Will?” He didn’t move. She came closer. “Will?”

  He was lying on the floor. Half his head was gone, spattered across the rug.

  Who did that? She looked around. No, wait, that made no sense. She forced herself to look again. A gun lay next to him. He’d done it to himself.

  Will, why?

  She couldn’t breathe anymore. She turned and ran out of the house and stood on the back stoop, gasping.

  Will, why? Because he was going to get sick and die. His father had been contagious. And Will … he hated everything and everyone. Including himself.

  She paced in the backyard, for a while thinking about nothing, wishing she could forget what she’d seen and what had happened. Everything kept getting worse. She paced a while longer. Some problems she couldn’t solve. They were too big. And they weren’t her problems. She could … what, leave? No. That was what Will had done. The ultimate escape. She … she had responsibilities. She would try to do the right thing.

  What should she do? The house had two dead bodies in it, and—she needed to tell Ruby. She’d practice more human decency, even for people who didn’t deserve it. Would Ruby come back? She hoped so. This was a problem for Ruby t
o solve, not her. She could call—if she had her number. Who would? Will’s phone, Alan’s phone, the house computer? They’d be locked to a retinal scan, probably. Would dead eyes work? She wasn’t even going to try.

  She told Nimkii, “I’ll be back.”

  Ruby had taken the truck, so she had to walk, and the walk seemed longer than ever. She trudged up the road trying to decide if she was a traitor, a martyr, or just a decent human being. Ruby deserved to know that her son had died, but Irene deserved to know a means of contact so she didn’t have to hoof to the prison farm and risk her own life just to be a decent human being for people who were not decent and treated her like a tool that talked. Maybe she’d go back, grab her stuff, and walk away—leading Nimkii.

  As she came close, she slowed and looked hard at the prison. Maybe she’d see something useful this time to help liberate it. There had to be a mutiny in Wausau. She spotted Ruby’s truck and a few of the same vehicles as last time, but most of them had left. A group of guards stood far away from the prison building. Irene raised her hands even before she was in shouting distance.

  “Hello!”

  They turned.

  “I’m here to see Ruby Hobbard! Her son died!”

  Someone motioned for her to stop. She did, and she slowly looked around, hoping she seemed to be trying to find Ruby. One of the guards lifted their wrist to their mouth and had a brief conversation.

  “She can’t come.”

  “But her son just died.”

  “I told her that.”

  Wow. “She should know that he shot himself.” It hurt to say that, but it had to be said.

  After another conversation, they said, “Are you Irene?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go back home. She’ll take care of it later.”

  The other guards seemed to be talking about it among themselves.

  “All right.” She began to walk away. Either Ruby was worse than she’d imagined, or something big was happening in the prison. Maybe both. She glanced behind her to see if anyone was following her. No. And she hadn’t learned anything useful to pass on if she knew someone to tell it to.

  * * *

  Berenike knew her papa would have made great fun of her work. “So there I was, fighting at the front lines, when I spilled coffee on my phone. It was a battlefield disaster.” Papa. No more jokes from him ever again. The AI counselor advised taking a deep breath, centering herself, and moving forward from sad memories. She considered that, and instead she smiled. He was still telling jokes—from the great beyond.

  Messages relayed by Emergency Government from utilities said they were having trouble with staffing and wanted its employees to get prioritized transportation to get to work. Done, with a little juggling. The city had also put out some news about effective home care and urged self-quarantine. She read it carefully and wasn’t sure about its recommendations. Everyone should act as if they were infected and carried the virus. Okay, that meant her. Then what?

  A client somehow made it through the automated system to talk to her directly. “I need more cars. We’re distributing food, and people need to eat.”

  She checked. He ran a high-end imported-food warehouse on the Northwest Side and used autocars for deliveries.

  She said, “The priorities are for medical supplies and transport.”

  “People want their orders filled.”

  “You’re not a priority business.” No one needed pickled green papaya to survive.

  “You can’t tell me that. We have a contract with your company.”

  “This company’s been commandeered. Priorities are different.” She pushed a few buttons. He’d been calling for quite a few cars, even more than normal. “You need to close and send your employees home.”

  “No, we have paying customers.”

  He hung up. She sent a message to the police. Something seemed fishy.

  Old Man Tito came to her office. “It’s time for me to go home.”

  He should have gone home a long, long time ago, but he kept refusing. She stood up and studied his face, at least what she could see around the mask he wore behind a protective visor. His eyelids seemed unusually heavy. “Are you okay? No, you’re not.”

  “The news says that not everyone dies.”

  “You’re feeling lucky?”

  “I don’t feel right staying here and infecting everyone and everything.”

  “Do you have someone to care for you?”

  “I’ll be fine.” He seemed sluggish.

  “Let me give you some supplies. You’re a priority worker, you know.”

  “Priority? Me?”

  She pulled a box of ibuprofen from a drawer and handed him a couple of blister packs. “Here, take these. They’ll help with the fever. Remember, drink lots of fluids. Do you need to get stuff from your locker? I can call you to see how you’re doing.”

  “You don’t need to do all this for me.”

  “You’re right, I don’t, but I want to.” If she had a cot in the back room, she might offer to care for him there. She followed him to a newly cleaned car. “I’ll call.”

  “Don’t bother with me. Keep up what you’re doing.”

  How long before she got sick? She had long willed herself into health out of necessity. That might not save her anymore.

  CHAPTER

  7

  Avril had found three people who were sick as she went door to door. Two were fending for themselves, although they asked her to get something to eat and drink. She brought them up trays of the best of what little was left in the food court. The third burned with a fever and could barely speak. She asked him his name and where he was to see if he was thinking coherently.

  “At the beach in Mexico. I mean, I’m in the hotel room at the beach.”

  She forced him to drink a glass of cold water despite all his complaints that he wasn’t thirsty, then she ran to the makeshift clinic and brought back some medications to fight a fever along with a glass of lemonade.

  “I brought you a cocktail from the bar.”

  “Pills? I don’t want pills.”

  “You want to party, right? These will have you dancing like you’ve never danced before. Special designer drugs, the latest from Brazil. What’s your favorite dance music?”

  By the time she left, he promised to go down to the club as soon as he finished his nap.

  “I’ll be there, too,” she said. Was it good medical practice to entertain his hallucinations? She didn’t know, but she hoped she’d done some good by playing along.

  She was knocking on doors in the other wing of Dejope Hall when her phone chimed. Bowley again. Now what? It wouldn’t be good.

  “Yeah?” Even to say hello would be more polite than the chancellor deserved.

  “We want to make a deal.”

  Probably a bad one. “What’s your best offer?” Always negotiate from a position of strength, even if that strength is as real as that guy’s beach resort.

  “We’ll unlock the dorm if you do what we say.”

  “Yeah?” she said again with all the strength of skepticism that she could muster.

  “We want you to surrender to our custody.”

  She weighed that for a second. “That’s a big ask for a small exchange.” Actually, it meant that Dad had to be worth a lot, which made her glad.

  “Everyone else would go free.”

  “By everyone, do you mean this dorm?”

  “Yes.”

  “They’ll get access to medical care?”

  “Um.…”

  Avril waited. Waiting was strength. Why would they be offering that deal now? She remembered when Cal said the music in the food court was loud so that people could talk freely. That meant that the staff had included mutineers. The chancellor might be having trouble holding the campus in lockdown. Dad often said that criminals overestimated themselves.

  Bowley finally spoke. “Understand, it’s hard to get medical care right now.”

  “They need care. D
enying care would be dereliction of duty.” As if Bowley and the Prez and all their supporters hadn’t broken a million other laws already.

  “We can try. They can look for it themselves, at least. They’ll be free to do that.”

  A crappy offer. Avril walked to a bench near the elevators. This might take some time, so she got comfortable. “And their phones would work, no interference?”

  “Of course.” Her voice had turned a little silky, an attempt to manipulate her somehow.

  “What about other dorms?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Are they locked down, too?”

  “Um. Yes.”

  She’s catching on to my plan. “I want them released, too. All of them. I want the campus to be free with access to phone service, medical service, freedom to come and go. Call off the centaurs.” That was asking for too much, unless either Dad was some sort of really big-time mutiny kingpin—she’d be even more glad if he was—or Bowley was about to lose control of the campus anyway, which would also make her very glad. For students like the guy at the imaginary beach hotel, every minute might count. Shinta’s lips had been blue.

  “Agreed. Walk outside of the building and wait.”

  “I’ll wait until I see that you’re doing what you promised.”

  What would happen wherever they took her? Well, Avril was going to die anyway. It wouldn’t matter. She added, “I want my phone to work all the time, even where I’m going.” She could say goodbye to Dad.

  After a moment: “Yes.”

  That was weird. And probably false, the stuff about the phone at least, and Bowley knew it, so making the promise cost nothing. More lies. “I’ll be outside, waiting and watching.”

  She ran one flight down to her room. “Help is on its way,” she told Shinta as she grabbed a jacket. She’d heard that prisons sometimes kept the temperature cold to torment the prisoners.

  “Can I call my family?”

  “Yes, soon.”

  In the clinic, she told them about the agreement. “I think they want to extort my dad. They don’t know him. Or me. They’re not going to get anything from this.”

  Hetta frowned. “You shouldn’t let them take you.” She looked at her phone, then held it up to show Avril. “Hey, it works!”