The Ones (24 page)

For most of the service, James stared at the shiny casket resting just in front of him.
What could possibly be in there?
he wondered. James had seen the bombing site on campus—it was basically just a smoldering crater. Even his father's car had been burned to a crisp. There were no bodies, no personal belongings. Just the certainty that his father had been inside. As James walked around the perimeter the day after the bombing, he considered what had been accomplished. The lab with the Vaccine was destroyed. He knew that was a good thing. But the one man who could save James from it, the only person who was trying to find a reasonable solution, was gone. Murdered.

And now James stared at an empty casket.

When he stood with the other pallbearers and lifted it on his shoulders, it didn't feel light. It weighed down on him just as much as if a body had been inside. As he proceeded slowly down the aisle of the church, his emotions finally overwhelmed him. He would never ride on his father's shoulders and eat ice cream again. Today, his father rode on James's shoulders.

They drove in a long procession to the cemetery outside town. It was in a sloping field at the edge of the foothills. James sat silently by the gravestone as the casket was lowered into the ground. There was a prayer. A wreath. And then the handfuls of earth that landed with a hollow thump.

It was over pretty quickly, and everyone began to file slowly back to their cars. James lingered for a bit with his mother and Michael. They had their last moment as a family, then they began to walk away, too.

James had gone only a few steps when a man in a suit gave him a friendly wave.

“It's James, right?” the man asked. He took off his dark sunglasses and offered a handshake. James took it in a daze, as he had been doing the whole day. “I'm sorry about your father. He was a wonderful man.”

“Thank you,” James said, and started to walk away.

“There's something he'd probably want me to tell you,” the man said.

James stopped in his tracks and turned around. “Did you work with him?” he asked, trying to hide his intense curiosity.

“A long time ago. But I kept an eye on what he was doing. We stayed in touch.”

This man knew about the Vaccine, then. He seemed friendly, but James knew he should tread lightly.

“Your dad did a lot of great work for the government. You know how it is—the Department of Agriculture can never get enough corn, right?”

James nodded and forced himself to smile.

“Well, he made some arrangements with a few of his friends over there—”

“In the Department of Agriculture,” James said.

“Yeah, like I said,” the man in the suit continued. “Anyway, I'm sure you've seen all this hullabaloo about the new residential camps for the Ones. And I'm sure you know that the mandatory report date is tomorrow.”

Of course James knew about tomorrow. Like all the other Ones in his town, he was supposed to get on a bus bound for what was sure to be some horrific concentration camp. It was all to help the country deal with the Ones in a more “organized and productive” manner, as the government had put it. James hadn't decided what he was going to do yet. Some of the older Ones had obviously made the choice to disappear already, to go live underground, maybe slip into Canada or Mexico and hopefully wait out the Equality Movement in the shadows. James, with a better idea than most about what awaited them at the camps, considered this tactic. But to do so would surely mean needing help from the New Weathermen. He clearly wasn't about to stoop to that. Submitting to the camps wasn't any better, obviously, so James was torn. There were only a few hours left to decide, but it seemed like this stranger at his father's funeral had some relevant information.

“I know what tomorrow is,” he replied.

“Then you should know those friends of your father are going to honor their promise to him.” The man paused. “You are not required to report to a camp. The local Equality Team has been made aware, and they won't be contacting you. The deal is contingent on keeping this between us, is that clear?”

James nodded, not relieved but shaken by this turn of events. The man looked back up to the top of the cemetery hill.

“You can thank your father,” he said. “And again, my condolences.”

The man walked away and left James alone among the gravestones. He couldn't believe what his father had done for him. It was a bitter irony. To be granted such a gigantic favor, his dad must have done some truly commendable work on the Vaccine. And as he had said, he'd always planned on saving James. This didn't vindicate him in James's eyes, but he was still moved that his dad was looking out for him. He almost wished he could thank him—but what was left of his dad was unrecognizable and already underground. The churning of bitterness and grief in his stomach made James feel as if he had lost his father twice in a matter of days.

James, alone in the cemetery now, was about to continue his walk down the gentle hill when a flash of movement caught his eye. He turned his head and squinted. Sure enough, there was Cody, her face concealed by a baggy hooded sweatshirt. She was across the cemetery, not exactly hiding but keeping her distance. James stopped and stared at her. He wasn't ready to see her and hadn't imagined this encounter would take place here. But now that she was in front of him, he couldn't resist. He had held his anger in all day, and he was primed to explode. God, how he needed this. He marched straight over to her.

“James,” Cody started to say when he was within earshot. “I'm so sorry—”

“Shut up, I don't want to hear it,” he snapped.

Cody recoiled in shock.

“You knew this was going to happen, didn't you? You knew they were going to kill him!”

“It was an accident, James, I swear.”

“Why didn't you stop them? Kai is obsessed with you. He would have listened.”

Cody tensed up at the word
obsessed
but recovered quickly. “The plan was to bomb the lab in the middle of the night when no one was there. To blow up
the Vaccine.
No one meant to kill your father. I made them promise!”

“Cody, he saved your life! Do you remember that? Do you know where'd you be without him?”

“James, I tried, I swear. I said I wouldn't go unless we spared him. And then I tried to save him.”

James couldn't believe what he was hearing. “You were there?”

Cody didn't answer. Instead, she pulled down the hood of her sweatshirt. James couldn't help but grimace at the burn marks on her forehead, the bruises around her eyes, and the crusty bandages wrapped around her head. Her beautiful hair was burned at the ends, and she had obviously cut some off around her face. She must have been within spitting distance of the bomb when it went off. Still, despite how painful it looked, James hardened himself to her injuries. He couldn't believe that Cody had been instrumental in the death of his father.

“You put that bomb in his office, right? What did you think would happen?” he asked. “My God, Cody, what have you become?”

James saw Cody's countenance change from compassion to anger.

“I'm the same as I ever was, James. I stand up for what's right. Your dad was creating something to destroy the Ones. I am sorry he's dead, but he shouldn't have been—”

“He was trying to help us!” James yelled. Then he remembered that Cody wasn't a One. She was in no danger of getting the Vaccine. “Trying to help the Ones, that is. He was finding a safe solution. The other people in the project wanted to lobotomize us. My dad was going to prevent that.” It felt strange to suddenly be defending his father, but it was also a relief.

“At least that's what he told you.”

“It's the truth! But I guess it's too late to prove it now. You murdered him. You ran off with Kai and the Weathermen, and you murdered my father.”

Cody sighed. “I'm sorry you feel that way. I came here to pay my condolences, not to fight.”

“Well, you shouldn't have come. You can take your condolences and stay away from my family.”

“James, it doesn't have to be like this.”

“Go away, Cody! You left once—do it for real this time.”

James glared at her, but Cody didn't budge.

“I always meant to come back, James. I told you, I needed to go somewhere terrible, and I didn't want to take you there. I thought that you'd have faith in me.”

“I did.” James pointed back to his father's grave. “And this is where it got me. Now go.”

Cody hesitated. “The Equality Team will be in town by tomorrow. They are going to try to put all the Ones on a bus. Ship them off to a camp—you included. We're not going to let that happen to us. We've decided to stand up and fight. You should fight with us, James.”

“I'm not like you. You are terrorists.”

“So you'll get in line with the other sheep and march to the slaughter?” Cody asked with disgust. “Tomorrow we aren't terrorists. Tomorrow we'll just be Americans fighting for our freedom.”

She was starting to sound like Kai. James didn't know who she was anymore. And he decided not to tell her what he had just learned from his father's colleague. He knew she would just throw it back in his face—the rich kid always catching a break.

“I'll be fine,” he said. “I'll figure something out that doesn't involve destroying the people I love. You guys are just going to get yourselves killed.”

Cody looked at the ground, clearly disappointed. “Well, then I guess this is probably the last time you'll see me.” She took a deep breath and reached out to take James's hand as tears filled her eyes. “PQ3318, right?”

James didn't move, and he didn't respond.

After an excruciating moment, Cody's hand fell limply back to her side. She spoke through her tears. “It was real, James. The bond we had—the love—it was real, and I held it in the deepest part of my heart. I protected it to the last. I even survived off it. I still do.”

James stared her straight in the eye. “It was nothing,” he said. “I didn't even know who you were.”

James turned his back and walked away through the gravestones.

*   *   *

Later that night, James paced the length of his bedroom. Every few minutes he would refresh the news update on his computer and check in on the progress of the Ones' roundup. It was midnight on the East Coast already, and Equality Teams were fanned out across the region, starting to load the kids who had volunteered onto buses. If you checked only the mainstream news outlets, everything was proceeding peacefully, but James found plenty of first-person reports of ugly violence already breaking out and shaky videos of the agents tearing kids out of their parents' arms.

The explosion at a small university in California a few days earlier had fallen off the front page, of course. And anyway, there had been no report that the lab was home to an experimental project designed to re-engineer Ones. The official story, rather, was that a gas leak had mixed with some volatile chemistry materials and turned the building into a crater. One professor, working deep into the night, was killed. Two security guards were in the hospital.

James clicked through images from the roundup, feeling a mix of shame and relief. His family would be spared a knock on their front door tomorrow, but what had they done to earn that privilege? James could remain in his home, but what did that even mean anymore? Who was left for him here? His mother was in shock. His brother was enraged. Cody was probably going to die fighting tomorrow. And all the other Ones would disappear into the camps or go underground. If James had felt isolated before, as a member of a one-percent minority—an island in history—then he was about to get a rude awakening. After tomorrow, James would truly be alone.

As he kept pacing, there was a knock on his bedroom door. Michael cracked it open and stuck his head inside.

“Hey, how's it going?” Michael said.

“You know, not great.”

Michael sat down on James's bed. He stared at the wall, obviously reeling and exhausted. “He didn't deserve it, James. He really didn't deserve it.”

“I know.”

“He was trying to help! These animals are so stupid; they don't even realize he was helping them.”

James just nodded. Michael sat in silence for a bit, his body tense with rage. Then he turned to James.

“I saw you talking with Cody after the funeral. What was that about?”

“She knew she wasn't welcome, but she wanted to pay her respects.”

“She's running around with the people who did this, right?”

“No. Not with the crazies. She would never go that far,” James lied.

Michael stared at him for a moment. “Well, they deserve what's coming to them. I don't mean the camps, you know, for all the normal Ones. I'm sure that will be fine. The people who killed Dad, though … they deserve to burn in hell.” James didn't respond, so Michael continued. “I'm going to make sure of that.”

“What does that mean?” James asked.

“I'm joining one of the Equality Teams. They need local guides tomorrow, people who know the lay of the land. There are rumors of Ones hiding in the mines. They think it's that group, the New Weathermen. It's going to be like shooting fish in a barrel up there.”

“Michael, what's the point? Let them handle it without you. You're not going to bring Dad back.”

“The point is to punish the assholes who killed our father! I thought you might want to join me.”

“Nobody deserves to die tomorrow,” James said.

“But Dad did?”

James had to think about that. He saw Michael grow disgusted at his hesitation.

“Jesus, James, don't you remember what he said? He was trying to help you guys. He was the only one protecting you all from turning into zombies. Why can't you understand that?”