PODs (7 page)

Memories of my parents were especially vivid at night. I stared at the ceiling and watched them play across the white surface like it was a movie screen. Birthdays and Christmases were all good memories, but so were the dance recitals my parents had never missed. Even the soccer team I’d played on that never won a match—my parents had still been at every game, cheering from the sidelines. And when we’d made our first goal of the season they’d cheered the loudest and acted the craziest. I smiled through my tears thinking of that day. That had been the only goal we’d made that year. My dad had said that it was special because it was the only one. I was only in first grade, but even I knew we sucked.

I was still awake when a nurse pulled the curtain outside my room. I looked inside the rooms next to me; the curtains were pulled there, too.

I heard a commotion in the hallway. The boy in the room to my right was asleep, but the boy to my left, Brad, was awake. I looked at him. He shrugged. We walked to the wall and listened. I couldn’t make out the noises. It sounded like scraping or scuffling. Whatever was making the noise was right in front of my room. My curtain moved back and forth. I backed away from the wall.

A scream pierced the darkness and I jumped.

“No, no, no!”

The hall quieted. The commotion outside my curtained wall stopped. I sucked in a deep breath and forced myself to walk back to the wall. Just as I reached the glass, something blew the curtain aside and I saw the wheels.

I turned and ran across the room to my bunk, my bare feet slapping against the cold tile floor. I scrambled under the blankets on my bed and pulled the pillow over my head, squeezing my eyes closed.

I knew what those wheels were attached to. And I didn’t want to be anywhere near it.

I don’t know when I finally fell asleep. I don’t remember getting tired. I woke to the sound of the nurse calling my name through the intercom. It was time for my morning blood check.

I climbed out of bed, walked to the wall, stuck my hand inside the box and waited for her to prick my finger and take her share of my blood. It was in the middle of the blood test that I noticed the empty room.

“Where’s Kelly?”

“Who?” the nurse asked.

“The girl who was in that room.” I pointed at the room across from mine.

“You ask too many questions.” She grabbed her supplies and walked away.

I dropped to the floor, staring at Kelly’s room through the watery blur of tears.

Quarantine, day ten

My blood was still clean. All the tests coming back showed I was in good health. I started to relax. Fewer people were being pulled out of quarantine. I hoped that meant the rest of us were healthy and would finish our time without a problem.

I was sick of watching television. It was the only form of entertainment I had except for a few books, which I’d already finished reading. I’d even read through the PODs packet—twice. I had no human contact—since Kelly had been pulled from quarantine our group wasn’t the same. Everyone seemed to want to keep to themselves. All that was left was television, with its constant coverage of the effects the virus—and the raffle—were having on the country.

There were new theories about the virus. Some people believed it was man-made and that’s why it’d shown up so quickly. Scientists were baffled by the first cases, stunned at how quickly it had spread. Where it had originated was a mystery, how it was transmitted still unknown. It was an enigma.

“The military has been experimenting with germ warfare for decades!” The middle-aged man in the worn baseball cap gestured with wild hands at a reporter wearing a surgical mask. “They made this! Just like they did with AIDS! With Ebola! They made them all!”

I shut off the TV when the nurse arrived to take yet more blood. “May I have another book to read, please?”

“No. If anything from the outside that hasn’t been properly prepared breaches your quarantine room, you’ll be deemed a liability and banned from the POD system. We still don’t know how the virus is transmitted. It may be possible to contract the virus through touching contaminated objects. If something were added to your room without being properly sterilized, you’d run the risk of contracting the virus.”

I stuck my hand in the little box set into the glass wall. “There’s nothing in the other rooms?”

“No.” She slid the specimen box into the port on one side, the outer layer peeling away as she pushed it into place. The layers of sealed plastic prevented any contaminant from the outside world coming into contact with the air of my isolation room, and vice versa. Sliding her already-gloved hands into the permanent gloves on the other side of the box, she reached for the inner layer sealing the specimen container, which seemed to gasp as she broke the vacuum seal.

“What happens when someone is removed from the quarantine area?” I asked.

“They’re replaced.” The nurse lanced the side of my finger with a little metal stick, and then squeezed my finger until a fat drop of blood formed. She collected the sample with a thin glass tube. They took blood several times a day; I had little nicks and scabs on all of my fingers. I thought I ran the risk of them getting infected. Death by blood tests—that’d be ironic.

“How are they replaced?”

“You’re always full of too many questions,” she snapped. Usually the nurses wouldn’t talk to me at all.

“You’re the only person I’ve got to talk to.”

“There’s a waiting-list of extras—extra people to fill spots when someone is removed from quarantine.”

“Why are people removed?”

“Either they are a carrier of the virus or they have another health issue that can’t be dealt with in the PODs.”

She placed the blood sample into the specimen container and wrapped a Band-Aid around my finger before pressing the inner seal onto the container and sliding the outer layer back in place as she removed it from the port.

Picking up her things, she looked at me. “All done. Lunch will be here shortly. That’ll give you something to pass the time. It’s spaghetti day.”

I loathed spaghetti.

Quarantine, Day… something

“How many more days?” I asked the nurse. I’d nicknamed this one “Happy,” since she was one of the few nice ones in the rotation. “Grumpy” had done the blood draw the night before.

“Just two more, sweetie,” she answered.

I stood still while she drew my blood for the third time that day.

She wore a green hazmat suit and large, thick yellow gloves, and even behind the clear plastic, her face was covered by a white mask from her chin to the bottom of her eyes. Her hair was shoved into a green hat the same color as the suit. She looked like she was auditioning for the role of “Green Bean Number 1” in a school play.

The only way I could tell her apart from the other nurses was her voice, soft and soothing. She’d talk to me, called me “sweetie,” even. The others just took my blood like greedy vampires.

“What day is it?” With no windows and no clock it was impossible to keep track of time. I guess it was preparation for the PODs. We’d be underground, so there might be no way of telling time or what day it was there, either.

“It’s Wednesday morning,” she answered. “There you go, Evangelina. You’re all done for another eight hours.”

I pulled my arm out of the hole and smiled. She’d used the vial marking pen to draw a smiley face on the bandage she put over the needle stick. She must’ve been a mother. She knew that even the littlest thing, like a hand-drawn smiley face on a bandage, made a bad day a little better. When she left, I peeled it off my finger and stuck it to a page in my journal, which was what I was now using my spiral notepad for. I wrote about the nurse and how she made me think of my mom.

D
ay
One

I finished quarantine and was moved to my new home—POD 78, sub-POD 29. According to the packet, all sub-PODs housed ten people, five female and five male.

Locked in an underground tuna can with strangers for an entire year? I sure hope we all get along
.

After being sealed in a transport container that felt like a glass coffin, the techs wheeled me to the POD entrance and sealed the edges of the container to the doorframe before letting me out on a landing at the bottom of a small ramp. My suitcases were marked with large stickers declaring them “Decontaminated,” along with chalk markings of “78/29” and what I assumed was today’s date on both sides. In front of me, elevator doors stood open, and a tech wearing a hazmat suit stood inside waiting for me. We rode down the elevator—the slowest ride ever—and when the door finally opened I stepped out into a large central room, round with high ceilings and ringed with doors. The tech walked me to the door labeled “sub-POD 29.” A red and white striped metal box was attached to the wall just beneath the sign; a glass panel revealed a red lever within, like an oversized fire alarm.

I walked down the metal corridor to the sub-POD I’d call home for the next year. The sound of my footfalls reverberated off the walls, and the grated walkway shimmied. I had to hold the railing to keep my balance.

Looking around, I saw the chute running from the main POD to the sub. According to the packet I’d received in quarantine, it worked like a bank teller’s window. Open the door, insert what you wanted to send, close the door and push the button. Suction and air flow did the rest. We’d receive our weekly allotment of fresh fruit and vegetables through the chute, and our required blood test kits as well. Much like in quarantine, a disinfectant vapor would fill the chute before items were allowed to enter the sub-POD. The same was true for things we sent to the main POD. This was designed to eliminate contamination between PODs.

On my right, a water line ran to the sub-POD from the water supply in the main POD. With the treatment and filtering systems in the sub-POD, the water was recycled, but each sub-POD could receive additional water through this line, if necessary. Under the water pipes were several large metal tubes. I guessed that one was our electrical supply, another the internet cable—the packet said each sub-POD had its own wi-fi node—while the others were the air supply and carbon dioxide filtering systems. I wasn’t sure how it all worked—I just prayed it did.

I hesitated when I reached the sub-POD door, biting my lip as something tightened in my chest. I’d spend the next year of my life—maybe longer—with my POD mates. What if we didn’t get along? What if…? The tech escorting me grew impatient and pushed me through the circular door, shutting and locking it behind me.

I stood just inside the POD and looked around. There were already seven people there; I made eight. Two more and the POD would be full.

“Hi,” I said to the others in the room.

I got a less-than-lackluster welcome. A pregnant girl sitting on the couch in the main living area smiled and said hello. She looked a few years older than me, with blonde hair a bit lighter than mine.

I guess there are nine people here. I sure hope the geniuses locking us down here have a plan for when that baby is born
.

The dark-haired guy sitting against the wall with earbuds in his ears didn’t hear me, or decided not to acknowledge me.

A boy and a girl about my age, both with laptops in front of them, sat at opposite ends of the table in the combo kitchen and dining area. The whole place was painted stark white—it looked very sterile and clean, even with the chocolate-colored carpet in the living area. The girl waved and said something in a language I didn’t understand. When I didn’t respond with anything more than a dumbfounded look, she smiled and said “Hi” in a thick accent. In my head I named her Friendly, because she’d offered me a nice welcome, even if I didn’t understand most of it.

The stubble-faced, heavy-set boy sitting across from her looked up, his blue eyes boring into me as he drummed his fingers on the table. After a few seconds, he gave a disgusted sigh and returned to his computer.

Mr. Antisocial. This could be a really long year
.

Sitting in a beanbag in the middle of the room was a boy with several facial piercings and tattoos; his blond hair was cut close to his head in a military style. He smiled in answer to my greeting, but didn’t speak. I dubbed him Beanbag Guy—I thought “Piercings Dude” was too obvious.