Immunity Index Read online

  In the part Avril patrolled, a young woman started vomiting into a towel and seemed disturbed. Avril got a clean towel and helped her wash her face. The woman whimpered and looked around, wide-eyed, then looked at Avril with shock.

  “Rachel? How did you get here?”

  Mental confusion. Not good.

  “I’m here to help you.” That was the reply suggested at training. Don’t argue.

  A man whose badge said he was a nurse came over. “Was there any blood? No? Make a note of that. And hey, look, I think we’re getting this fever under control.” He seemed genuinely thrilled by what were objectively small improvements. She tried to follow his example.

  She checked “Vomit, no blood” in the screen at the foot of her bed and estimated the quantity, along with a note about the confusion. The patient’s record had additional information she could share that might be comforting.

  “Did you know your parents called?” she told her. “Just an hour ago. They were glad to hear that you’re getting good care.” The woman seemed to understand. “Would you like to rest? I’ll get you another towel in case you need it.”

  As she hurried to the supply cabinet, she wondered if this kind of care would make people well. She’d been assured that rest was healing, perhaps the best thing.

  Just after she delivered the towel, a man started shouting and thrashing. Avril ran to him. He was big—an athlete. He was trying to get out of bed. She pushed him back down, cooing soothing things. He kept struggling. She pinned his arms on his chest with all her weight, aware that he could have bench-pressed her, but instead it was like tussling with a five-year-old. A very feverish five-year-old.

  Doctors came rushing over, calling, “Keep him in bed!”

  He began gasping in a weird way. Someone called, “Oxygen! Stat!”

  Avril let up on his arms in case it would help him breathe easier. It made no difference. His eyes stayed wide with fear, his face in a rictus. Blood dribbled from his mouth. She didn’t know what to do. His skin felt dry and hot. He kept fighting spasmodically.

  “Cardiac arrest!” someone shouted, reading the monitor panel at the foot of the cot.

  Equipment was being pulled over. She stepped away.

  They attached things, they did things, they said things with practiced urgency. She kept backing away.

  “What’s going on?” someone in a cot rasped near her—an older woman, maybe from the university staff.

  Avril had no good answer. “He had a heart attack,” she said. “They’re helping him. Can I get you anything?”

  “I don’t want to complain.” She squeezed her eyes shut and rolled over, clutching her blankets tight.

  “You’ll get better faster if you’re comfortable,” Avril said.

  “Mmm.” Then: “I’m cold. I’m so cold.”

  “I can get you another blanket.”

  She fetched it from a supply shelf. Meanwhile work to resuscitate the athlete continued. She wrapped the woman in the blanket. She refreshed her water. She checked her temperature: a fever, but not as high as earlier, not in a danger zone. She noted everything.

  By then they’d given up on the athlete. They rolled him out still in the bed, his face covered, blood seeping through the sheet over his mouth.

  The next patient who died did it quietly. Only an alarm beep from the monitor screen alerted staff.

  She continued to do what she could. She knew the ventilation was set on high and fans rumbled in the ceiling, but the air smelled of bleach and flowery cleaning fluid, of unwashed bodies and sweat, and as she cleaned and helped patients, close up they smelled of urine and feces and vomit. The sound of coughing and weeping and moaning and shouts echoed continuously.

  Avril was helping, but nothing seemed to be helping very fast.

  At sunset, the lights were lowered. She turned a corner in a hallway, and for a moment the cots before her with their white sheets and blankets looked like a military formation of ghosts waiting to rise up.… Her first impulse was to run. Her next one was to stand up straighter and stronger.

  Shinta was down the hall in the other direction. Avril went to her, hoping she was still doing well—yes, no longer on oxygen. She lay on her side, her eyes open.

  “Hey, how are you?”

  She looked up, her eyes puffy, her hair a mess. “Can you get my phone? I want to call home.”

  “I can get you a proxy phone.” She signed one out at the administration office and brought it to her. Should she stay while she called or give her privacy? Would she need help signing into the proxy? Then someone a few beds down wanted to go to the bathroom. If patients were lucid and could walk, they were encouraged to get up and get a little exercise.

  When that was done and duly noted, she returned to Shinta. She was lying on her side again, eyes open.

  “No one answered.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Avril took off her glove and put her hand on hers for a while, then returned the phone to the office.

  The staff sent Avril home in the late evening. Get some food, get some rest, see you tomorrow, thank you for your work. And change out of the scrubs and take a shower before leaving. Be sure to wash your hair. You’re covered with contagion.

  As she left the building, she noticed that it had rained. The air was warm and humid and smelled clean and good. She checked her phone, pinging her sisters and friends as she walked to the dorm. She ought to eat, but she had no appetite and went right to her room.

  She called Mom so they could each assure each other that they were still fine. Mom had wept when Avril told her she was immune. When she’d told Dad how she’d been treated and nearly burned alive, he’d wept silently, just a few tears.

  “But,” he said, “do not tell your mother I wouldn’t let them use you for extortion.” It was their secret, and both of them were proud of it, but Mom would never understand.

  He stayed busy at work recrafting the nation, Mom was helping her neighbors, Peng talked to her like a proud grandfather, and she and her new sisters offered one another sympathy and encouragement. Irene was coming back to Madison soon, heartbroken. Lillian and Berenike were keeping Milwaukeeans alive.

  Everywhere anger burned red-hot. She had found what she could do best to contribute to the ongoing mutiny and would let others battle it out on other fronts for now. For now. This wasn’t a setback, this was preparation, a gathering of strength for a big, long, hard fight.

  * * *

  Lillian watched Berenike over breakfast. It was like a movie where there was a person who was young in one part of the movie and older in another part. They never appeared in the same scene, though, in a movie. Or maybe it was like a movie with clones, but usually they were both the exact same person, and they were both evil.

  This was real life, and it was different. For one thing, they weren’t evil. She was pretty sure about that.

  Berenike was like Lillian in a lot of ways, except that she seemed to know what she was doing, and Lillian didn’t. Too much had changed. Their breakfast was instant oatmeal, which somehow Berenike had found. Food had become scarce since everybody—well, not actually everybody—started getting sick and dying. It wasn’t bad, oatmeal with bits of fake banana in it, just add hot water.

  The electricity still worked. Berenike slept with a light on to make sure.

  “You wanna come in to work again today?” Berenike asked.

  “Of course I do.” Lillian put sarcasm into her voice, but it was a joke.

  “Well, I’d have to commandeer you if you said no.” More joking.

  They sat in Lillian’s kitchen—Lillian’s house, not her mom’s house anymore because her mom’s body had been taken away and they’d never see her again, maybe not even see her buried, but Berenike promised they would go to a ceremony someday soon to remember her.

  “She sounds like a good mother,” Berenike had said. Yes, and if Lillian thought about it any more, she’d feel like she should cry—but she wouldn’t be able to cry, which bothered her a
nd she didn’t know why.

  Berenike had offered to stay with her, as if Lillian had a choice. Lillian needed someone with her, no matter how uncomfortable it felt to know how hard everything was and how little she could do. She didn’t even know where to find food. But Berenike had wanted to sleep on the sofa.

  “No, use my mom’s room. I think some of her clothes might fit you. She was so scared I’d be alone. She’d be glad if she knew about you.” This had made Berenike smile, which she didn’t do a lot. Lillian didn’t smile much, either, especially if she was thinking.

  Now she had three big sisters exactly like herself but no mother, which was a lot better than some people. But there was no school yet. People who were immune wore special plastic bracelets, and they both had one. Berenike took her with her to help and gave her important jobs, like unloading a truck. Sometimes the boxes were too heavy, but people would help, and she would tell them what to do—she could tell grown-ups what to do sometimes—and they did what she said. The world was strange and scary and sad and a little bit wonderful.

  Yesterday Berenike had left Lillian at a community center for an hour to talk with other children whose parents had died. No one wanted to hug each other because they could spread the virus, so instead they raised their arms in a big circle in front of their body to show when they wanted to give someone a hug. They sat far apart around the edges of the room and talked about how they felt, which turned out to be scared, mostly. They also all felt sad, and the man leading the group explained how they could use their sadness to build memories of love to treasure, and their treasures would comfort them. They could make pictures or write songs and poems and stories.

  Lillian had one memory she would make sure she never forgot. Someone banged on the door. Her mother’s body was lying on the floor in the garage where she had collapsed and died just a little while ago. Lillian had no idea what to do. Maybe this was help. They kept saying on the news that people would help.

  She opened the door and saw people who had come to arrest her and take her away, which was terrifying, then the police came and there was gunfire and it got even more terrifying, and then she saw someone who looked just like herself but lots older get out of a van. At that moment she knew she’d gone crazy and was seeing things that weren’t real. The older version of herself spoke. It was her own voice. And she said: “I’m your sister.”

  Lillian didn’t have a name for that feeling. She said to the other kids, “I don’t know how I felt when my sister said she could take care of me because I didn’t know I had a sister. It wasn’t happy because I’m just not happy these days, but it was good, very good.”

  “Relief,” a boy suggested.

  “Love,” someone else said.

  “Supported.”

  “Safe. Wait, no, we can’t be safe, not yet.”

  “Rescued,” a girl said.

  The feeling had really been safe, at least for that moment. She and her sisters couldn’t get sick, and they’d help each other, and she was sort of safe. And maybe it was love, too. She wanted it to be love.

  Berenike had been upstairs with a different group like Lillian’s but for adults, then she talked with people at the community center who she knew. She spent most of her time at an office in City Hall figuring out what the city had and who needed to get it, sometimes making deliveries herself. Once Lillian had watched her talking to someone she had called. It sounded like an argument.

  “… And we will come there and load up what we need. We’ll give you a receipt. You can send us a bill.… We can break down the door, and we won’t pay for that.… I am deputized by the mayor as staff of emergency government operations, and I have the authority to commandeer what the people of the City of Milwaukee need. We’ll be there in a half hour. My name is Berenike Woulfe. I’ll be delighted to meet you.”

  She hung up and shook her head. “Most people are cooperative. But I wouldn’t have a job if everything ran right.” She didn’t let Lillian come that time because it might be dangerous, so she asked Lillian to help at the information desk under the arches at the tower end of City Hall. Lillian was there when a boy, maybe four years old, came and asked for food. He was dirty and his hair wasn’t combed.

  “I’ll get something,” she said to the adults at the desk and ran inside to the table of sandwiches and juice. He looked up at Lillian when she handed him the food with wide eyes, and maybe he felt rescued. He ate the sandwich in huge bites while the adults fussed over him and tried to find him a place to stay. She hoped he was safe.

  She told Berenike about it when she came back. Berenike nodded and said, “That’s what we do.”

  Lillian didn’t know what else to do, but it seemed like there was a lot more that needed to be done.

  * * *

  Berenike was remembering everything she’d hated about her old job. As far away as that job felt—five days now—the argument she was in seemed fresh and familiar.

  “No,” she said, “we can’t give you those vans for tomorrow.”

  Then she was silent. That was a negotiating tactic. She’d dealt with this guy before, the new southeastern Wisconsin manager of AutoKar, who’d gotten the job by battlefield promotion. He had always been far, far too competitive, and he wanted everything he could get. Old Man Tito and the Summer Ngan prayer lady—who were alive, she’d checked—would have been better choices.

  He’d even forwarded her contact information at City Hall to three customers who had pestered her: the imported-foods guy she’d had the cops shut down when the Prez’s cold first hit, a clothing retailer, and a law firm, which had no need for a van, but the lawyers knew how to sound threatening. In fact, none of those three needed a van. Cars would do. And the AutoKar manager had no right to tie up her line with annoying, fake-intimidating people asking for what they didn’t need.

  Vans? No such luck, asshole. But he knew silence was a good negotiating tool, too, and he was trying to outwait her.

  Finally, to get him off the line, she said, “We’re going to need those vans to pick up and deliver medicines and the supplies to manufacture medicines. This is critical because we needed them yesterday. So no, we’re not going to return the vans.” And you’re contractually bound to maintain them anyway, she could have added, and she wanted to gloat, but she had better things to do than to start an unnecessary argument.

  “I don’t have enough for my priority clients,” he said, “let alone regular clients with real needs.”

  AutoKar had never had a big enough fleet. He knew that.

  “I’m sorry. This is still an emergency,” she said. And she terminated the call. Then she wondered why she’d said I’m sorry. She wasn’t, and he didn’t deserve the courtesy.

  This was what she’d hated about her old job. Customer contact, including internal and business-to-business clients, and having to act responsible and proper rather than saying what she really wanted to tell people. As for the small fleet, she’d always believed that wasn’t actually due to underinvestment. Instead, she suspected that AutoKar and its competitors had a secret agreement with private-car manufacturers to avoid becoming rivals. The shortage was designed to encourage people to go out and buy their own car.

  Not much proof of that, though. A lot needed to change in the future about business transparency. A country couldn’t run on bullshit and expect to solve problems. That had led to disasters like the Prez’s cold. More disasters didn’t have to happen. Worse, refugee camps were filled with people dead from the Prez’s cold and then cholera, which was completely preventable, not just a dereliction of duty, actually probably deliberate.…

  She was staring at nothing, pounding her fist on her desk. Get back to work. She had plenty of it.

  The city didn’t have a big enough fleet for everything it needed to do. So just as she had before the Prez’s cold, she spent her days satisfying no one. Even worse, whenever she left the building, she saw private cars just sitting there waiting for their owners, and how many of those owners were d
ead? Probably hundreds of cars in Milwaukee alone now had no owners. They could be put to use.

  Perhaps the city could ask people who had cars if they could share them. She’d proposed that to the mayor, and he said it was a great idea and he’d work on it, but he’d also looked like he was about to get sick. A quarter of his staff was out, and they weren’t all coming back. Neal had survived a bullet, but then he got sick, and being already seriously injured …

  Karen never recovered, either, although Nina and Deedee were fine and reshaping the businesses where they worked. Some of the news was good.

  The rest … not enough cars, not enough medicine, not enough food, and broken supply chains. Her lunch had been mayonnaise on stale bread. Breakfast was banana oatmeal, which she’d pretended to like only for Lillian’s sake, and it had cost twice what it should have. She didn’t have much of an appetite anyway—well, that was one way to lose weight.

  In a lot of places, including a couple of incidents in Milwaukee, fear of contagion hadn’t staved off looting. In some places—too much chaos for exact numbers—local governments had collapsed due to loss of personnel or loss of authority, but that had happened in only one town run by a mutiny. Mutineers kept things going. Mostly, the lights were still on, despite actual gun battles with so-called patriots who couldn’t read the writing on the wall. Working for the city meant she heard lots of news, lots of it bad. Fires in California were out of control. And a hurricane …

  She was staring and pounding on the desk again. Get back to work!

  She was also trying to coordinate a refugee caravan headed north, a thousand survivors of an Alabama camp that had to get out of the approaching hurricane’s way. They needed food, shelter, clothing, medical care—and security, because so-called patriots were active in some areas. Transportation involved not just people but supplies timed with their arrival and departure. She wanted to strangle the self-proclaimed “realists” who thought the refugees should stay put. They’re surrounded by swampy mass graves. What are they supposed to do, stay there and die? A lot of those “realists” hoped they would die. Fuck them and their …