Shudder (Stitch Trilogy, Book 2) (17 page)

His heart pounding, he strained to
hear what was going on. A squish, a crunch, all mingled with
constant shrieking yelps of pain. Nikhil flinched as something wet
splattered on the floor in front of his door. A drop had splashed
on the side of his nose, something warm and thick and sweet. He
smeared it away and slowly held his fingers up to the
light.

Blood.

Choking down the bile rising in this
throat, Nikhil noticed that the first two guards were silent
now.

But he heard other voices,
shouting with authority – “Alpha team – search east. Bravo team,
west. Do
not
let
that thing get away!” – followed by the dull thud of heavy boots
dashing off in all directions.

Several sets of footsteps headed
toward Nikhil’s door, pair after pair of thick rubber soles
stomping through the blood pooling on the concrete
outside.

Nikhil watched as a set of smooth
black leather boots paused in front of his door. His heart slowed,
waiting for the soldier to act.

One interminable second later, the
slot in his door slid shut with a clank and Nikhil was plunged into
darkness once more. The whooping of the sirens faded into the
background as Nikhil rolled onto his back, breathing a sigh of
relief.

Wiping the blood from his fingers on
his jumpsuit, Nikhil was suddenly grateful for the solid walls
around him.

At least in here, he reasoned, he was
shielded from whatever monsters lurked outside.

At least in here he was
safe.

19. LOGISTICS

There was a knock at the door. Phoenix
waited for the familiar whoosh as the door slid open, and an older
man, heavyset, with round cheeks and round glasses and a thick
flannel shirt stepped tentatively into the room. He smiled
good-humoredly at her and pulled up the usual visitor
chair.

He offered her his hand and she shook
it, surprised at the vigor in her own grip. She was healing, slowly
but surely.

“
Hello, Phoenix,” he
began, his voice booming, but gentle. “They call me the Draftsman,
but you can call me Pascal.”

There was something about this one
that was different than the others – something more frank. She knew
she shouldn’t trust her damaged senses, but nevertheless, his mild
demeanor put her at ease.

“
If you’re feeling up to
it,” he continued, “I thought you might be interested in hearing a
story – the story of how the place you know as Paragon came to be.
Would you like that?”

There was a grandfatherly quality to
this man that she could appreciate, a wisdom behind his eyes. A
story might be just what she needed. Phoenix nodded.

He smiled again, and sat back in his
chair. She almost expected him to pull out a pipe. But he didn’t –
this was a hospital, after all.

“
Very well. Where should
we start?” He scratched at the longish gray beard and whiskers
adorning his plump face. He lingered on her face for a moment, the
corners of his mouth curling into the hint of a bittersweet smile,
and she could see the glimmer of something welling up behind his
warm eyes. Phoenix wondered what he was thinking about.

Her curiosity must have been evident
on her face, because he quickly sniffed and wiped the back of a
thick fist across his eyes, laughing under his breath. “Oh, never
mind the nostalgia of an old man – you just remind me of someone I
used to know,” he explained. “Someone I used to love very
much.”

He smiled weakly. “Anyway. Where was
I? Oh yes, at the beginning.” He cleared his throat
exaggeratedly.

“
As you may remember, our
colony began as a quarantine zone. The old government had plans in
place for large scale emergencies, and one of those plans involved
moving small pockets of citizens to sanctioned safe zones where
they would have the resources to survive in the event of some kind
of devastating enemy attack. The town that would become Paragon was
one of these planned evacuation centers.”

That seemed to fit with what Phoenix
remembered – the panic – and the viral epidemic the Economist had
mentioned. They must have all fled to this quarantine area for
refuge.

“
After the outbreak, over
100,000 people showed up at the gates in a matter of weeks.
Luckily, the government had planned for this. They’d chosen a site
in a rural area – one which was less likely than the cities to be
targeted by our enemies – but which was also equipped to handle a
decent quantity of people. Paragon was a college town originally.
So even though the actual population was small, the city had the
infrastructure to accommodate ten times the number of people.
Between students and parents and other guests, there could be quite
an influx of visitors at certain times of year, as you can
imagine.”

He removed his glasses and casually
rubbed the lenses with a handkerchief from his pocket as he
continued.

“
It was an ideal location
for us to start over. The government had worked with town officials
to secretly stockpile supplies – food, medicine, other goods – and
had diligently engaged self-sustaining backup systems – power
generators, water filtration, sewage treatment, even year-round
small scale agriculture. It was impressive, the thoroughness of the
plan – I’d spent decades in mechanical, electrical, and structural
engineering, and I’d never seen anything quite like it. So when the
virus went rampant, everything was already in place – all we had to
do was initiate the distress signals, and the message went out to
the survivors: ‘Come here for help.’ And we were ready to deliver.”
He smiled reassuringly.

Phoenix was still a little confused
about who the “we” was. Were the Engineers part of the old
government? If not, how did they know all this? How did they end up
in charge? She resolved she would ask him if by the end of the
conversation this Pascal proved as trustworthy as he
seemed.

He put his glasses back on. “Of
course, there was still plenty of work to do. No matter how
well-equipped, a city doesn’t run itself. So when the people
arrived, we immediately started delegating the labor. I worked with
the General to do that.”

Phoenix thought she caught a small
twitch of something like distaste cross his face, but it was gone
before she could be sure.

“
We set to work
repurposing many of the town’s buildings into living quarters, as
there simply weren’t enough beds to accommodate all the refugees.
The first arrivals stripped down office buildings and condos and
schools and stores and retrofitted them as dormitories. That gave
us the ability to assign housing to survivors as they arrived,
usually grouped by age unless they came with family, which was
rare.

“
Next we created the job
schedules. Everyone was used to pitching in, with the war effort
and the required civil service program being implemented over the
past several years. In fact, most people seemed eager to help, so
we worked out a rotating schedule of jobs that we assigned to each
citizen. Some cooked, some cleaned, some stitched clothing, some
worked the sewage and water plants, some sowed crops. And of
course, at the beginning, a good number of people were devoted
solely to fortifying the compound’s walls, to keep out the infected
– we did have a small battalion of soldiers from the old army, but
it wasn’t enough to keep the city secure. Overall, it was a fair
arrangement – everyone got a chance at everything.”

“
Everyone?” Phoenix asked.
She wondered where the Ruling Class that the Economist, Ben, had
mentioned fit in with all of this.

Pascal smiled good-naturedly. “You’re
sharper than people think, aren’t you, Phoenix?”

She grinned at the compliment and
waited for him to answer her question.

“
Ah, yes, there was also
the issue of the Ruling Class. Ben – along with the Developer and
the Doctor – was more involved with that than I was, so I’m not
sure how much more I can share than he has already. But long story
short, once we lost contact with the outside, it was decided that
we could spare some of the population for a more academic kind of
labor, to help decide the future of the civilization and how best
to ensure our continued survival, now that we knew we were on our
own.

“
Ben had some pretty
theories about the kind of world we
could
live in, if only we could
fashion laws that would uphold certain ideals. But in practice,
it’d never been done before, so there was a lot of debate about how
to actually achieve his vision. The Ruling Class was selected as
the top 1% of our collective intellectual ‘talent,’ and they were
sequestered in their own efficiency unit in the old hotel downtown
and provided with whatever they needed to facilitate their
deliberations.”

He sighed. “I’m sorry to say that some
serious mistakes were made in that respect. I was personally too
busy with the day-to-day management of the compound to keep a close
eye on Ben’s pet project, and I was,” he swallowed slowly,
“appalled to find out about some of the unfortunate abuses of power
that group employed.”

Phoenix could see the
apology in his eyes, and the last vestiges of distrust in her heart
softened. There was definitely something different about Pascal
than the others she’d met – he seemed more practical, more candid,
more
real
. She
decided she liked him.

He slid his glasses to the tip of his
nose and rubbed his temples for a moment before replacing the
spectacles and meeting her eyes.

“
But that’s just human
nature for you, right Phoenix? Give a man some slack in his rope,
and he’s liable to hang you with it. Some things never change…” He
shook his head. “We did our best to curb it, but I’ll be honest –
our focus was on moving
forward
. We didn’t pay as much
attention to reining in the hitches in the present as we should
have; we just wanted to get on with the future.”

He sighed. “I should never have let
things get so far.”

He met her eyes earnestly.
“Listen, Phoenix. I know Paragon is not the best place ever
created. But if you were the person you remind me of – if you were
my granddaughter – I’d tell you to look at it from this
perspective: we’re alive, right? We’re fed, we’re clothed, and
we’re not at war any longer. Our planet is slowly recovering, and
someday we’ll even be able to leave this compound again. We’ll be
able to
really
start over.”

He stroked his beard for a
moment before leaning in toward her, his voice barely above a
whisper. “I’ll admit I had more than a few reservations when the
Developer first approached me, Phoenix. But the plans were already
in motion, whether I got on board or not. Perhaps I’m a coward,” he
admitted, shame coloring his features, “but I quickly realized that
I was better off
with
them than against them.”

He raised one eyebrow and held her
gaze with a meaningful look. “You think on that now.”

Phoenix caught the subtle note of
warning in his tone, but before she could ask him what he meant, a
familiar mechanical whoosh broke the silence and the Developer
poked his long, greasy face in the doorway. His eyes slid over
Phoenix and landed on the Draftsman.

The Developer’s voice sounded its
familiar whiny twang as he beckoned at Pascal to follow. “We have
an issue in the holding cells,” he wheezed. He turned abruptly and
left.

Pascal stood and shuffled after him,
but looked back at the doorway with one final message, imploring.
“Remember what I said, Phoenix. Please. Pick the right team. Trust
me, you don’t want to get this one wrong.”

20. RELEASE

The bleeding never did
come.

Alessa held vigil the whole night
through, watching, waiting, dreading. But after Isaac’s feverish
fit of delusions, he’d rested peacefully. Then morning had broken,
the sun spilling over a jagged skyline, and Alessa’s hope had
returned.

It’d taken two more days before he was
well enough to move, before the fire raging in his skull subsided
and Alessa could squeeze enough water down his throat to rehydrate
his withered body. But now, five days later, Isaac was almost
feeling himself again.

For his own part, Isaac could remember
practically none of this. His experience of the past few days
floated through his mind in bits and pieces, blurs of color and
sensation and smell mingling with wispy tendrils of visions that
may or may not have actually transpired. Time melded together, the
minutes and hours and days all pouring into one, everything seeming
to happen at once but also, perhaps, not at all.

The only thing that really
stuck with Isaac was one moment, the slow shuddering breath in
which he realized he’d turned a corner, that he was marching
steadily
away
from the yawning precipice of death instead of toward it. In
that moment, all he could see was Alessa’s face, the emerald of her
eyes swimming above him, as each beleaguered pull from his chest
came stronger than the last. He knew then that he would make
it.

And then, one afternoon, he woke,
lucid and hungry and alive. And Alessa – he’d never seen her smile
brighter.