The Worlds We Make (22 page)

Without moving away from him, I started flipping through one of Dad’s notebooks. I’d read Dad’s account of the first few months of the epidemic enough times that coming back to these scrawled notes was comfortingly familiar. I could hear the echo of his voice in the words he’d written. He’d been so smart figuring out the vaccine, experimenting with both the first, not-so-deadly version of the virus and its current mutation, finally constructing the samples we now carried by combining bits of both. If he hadn’t died, he could have handled all this himself. We wouldn’t have had to leave the island, to worry about Michael’s motives or the CDC’s.

But he had, and now it was up to me.

I’d reached the day when Dad had injected himself with the prototype when Justin rolled over with an inarticulate mutter and rubbed his eyes.

“Hey,” he said, and then yawned so wide his jaw creaked. “You get a hold of anyone yet?”

I shook my head. “Still waiting. I guess we might as well try again.”

He limped over to the table with his rough walking stick as I switched on the transceiver. The sun was beaming now, casting a golden glow through the window behind him and filling the house with a thin warmth. In the back of my mind, I saw the snow in the cold box disintegrating into slush.

I sent out our call twice, waiting a minute after each one. I’d just given it one more shot, my heart heavy, when Dr. Guzman’s soft drawl warbled out of the speaker.

“Kaelyn! Thank god. You were cut off before—I didn’t know what had happened.”

The relief that rushed through me was so overwhelming it carried away my words. “We…” I started, and realized I couldn’t quickly summarize what we’d been through in the last two days. “We ran into some trouble,” I improvised, “but we’re all right now.” All of us except Anika. I forced myself to go on. “We’re in Atlanta. In the suburbs up north. Can you give us directions? We’ll be coming on foot from here.”

“Of course! Let me get the map.”

Leo grabbed a pen and a piece of paper off the kitchen counter and brought them to me. When Dr. Guzman came back on, I gave her the street names from the intersection I’d noted nearby, and sketched a rough map as she walked me through the best route to the CDC.

“There’s a fence around the complex, with one main gate,” she said. “The militant types have made it their main focus, and there’s an even larger crowd of them out there than we had a few days ago, I’m afraid. But we do have a smaller gate around the back that’s securely barricaded, with a detachable section we’ve kept hidden that allows people to move in and out. No one outside seems to be paying much attention to that spot. If you work your way around to the south end and come along Houston Mill Road, and be cautious, you should be able to make it close unnoticed. We have a military presence here with us—I’ll ask for two or three of the soldiers to be sent out to meet you and escort you the rest of the way. How should I tell them to recognize you?”

“I’m wearing a purple sweater and jeans,” I said. “And I’ll have the cold box with me.”

“Excellent. And you’re clear on the route?”

“I’ve got it.” Based on her directions, I didn’t think it’d take us much more than an hour to get there.

Not long ago, I would have been overjoyed that our journey was almost over, that we could finally set everything right. But from the moment I’d started speaking with her, my gut had been twisting, because I didn’t really believe that anymore. Her earlier remarks, Michael’s insinuations, and my own worries were tangling together in my head. I couldn’t do this right until I knew for sure where she stood.

“Dr. Guzman,” I said, my hand tensing around the mic, “when we were talking before, you said something about—the people who’ve been attacking the CDC, who’ve been harassing us—that they’d lose out on the vaccine.”

“Don’t bother yourself about that,” Dr. Guzman said firmly. “The delinquents will just have to deal with the beds they’ve made for themselves.”

I shifted in the chair, and an edge of cardboard dug into my hip. A thought I hadn’t known had been niggling at me until that instant spilled out.

“It’s just, there was someone, a guy in our hometown,” I said. “He grabbed all the food that was left in the stores, and then was deciding who would get what.…”

I trailed off, trying to find the best way to explain what Gav had done, and Dr. Guzman jumped in.

“You won’t have to deal with anyone like that anymore,” she said. “The people who’ve crossed the line, they’re going to find there are consequences now.”

“Right,” I said. So it was as easy as that? She’d use just a few incomplete thoughts to judge whether a person was worthy of saving? “But there are some people who might have done things that weren’t the best, just because they didn’t know how else to stay alive. I mean, it’s a hard line to draw.”

“I’m sure we can work out the specifics once you’re here with the vaccine,” Dr. Guzman said, a note of impatience entering her voice. “Oh—you will be bringing your father’s notes, won’t you? You haven’t lost them? You said you had them with you.”

“I still do,” I said, my throat raw. She wasn’t really listening. She was just saying whatever she thought she had to, to get me and the vaccine there. Which meant I couldn’t have trusted her answer even if she’d given a real one.

“Good. It’s unlikely we’ll be able to replicate the vaccine without his exact instructions, even with samples. I should let the soldiers know to be prepared for you. I’m looking forward to meeting you, Kaelyn. Be safe.”

“Yeah,” I managed, and switched off the radio.

Justin gave me a puzzled frown, but Leo’s expression was knowing. “Kae,” he said, “she didn’t hear the whole story.”

“She didn’t want to,” I said. “All she cares about is getting the vaccine. Do you really think they’re going to take the time to find out the whole story, for everyone like Gav? What do you think she’d say about Drew?” How would they react to half the things we’d done getting down here, if they hadn’t been more concerned about us bringing them the vaccine than anything else?

“I don’t know,” Leo admitted.

“It’s still better than giving the vaccine to that prick Michael,” Justin said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah.” I looked down at Dad’s notebook, thinking of the dogs tearing each other apart over a corpse. Of the way the girl from the town by the river had raced to warn us, because we’d helped her neighbors. Of Tobias’s panicked comrades dropping missiles on our island in some warped act of vengeance, and Tobias, risking his life to rescue us—a bunch of strangers. Of Michael, sending his followers to storm the CDC, the soldiers shooting back, the bodies that would pile up before anyone outside this city so much as saw the vaccine.

A vaccine that was still in my hands.

The sense of purpose I’d felt before flooded me, twice as strong. For such a long time, the responsibility of carrying the samples had felt like a burden. But it was actually a gift. I’d spent all this time intending to just hand it over to people with more authority than me, but I didn’t have to. It was up to me. I didn’t have to let them—Michael and the Wardens, the CDC’s scientists and soldiers, any of them—decide how the world should be. I could at least try for the world
I
wanted.

I had to.

As I smoothed my fingers over the indentations left by the pressure of Dad’s pen, months ago, the threads of thought that had been winding through my head started to meld into an actual plan. These notebooks didn’t just hold a record. Dr. Guzman had referred to them as Dad’s “instructions.” They told every protein that needed to be cloned, every procedure that needed to be followed, every bit and piece that needed to be intertwined.

Because the vaccine wasn’t just one thing. It was made of many parts, working together.

“We need another pen, and a bunch of paper,” I said.

“There was a desk in one of the bedrooms,” Leo said, standing up. “I think I saw some there. What are we doing, Kae?”

“I’m still figuring that out,” I said. “But I think it’s going to be good.”

My plan required that Justin part ways with us early. “You don’t have to worry,” he told me, when I went with him to the door. “I’ll stick to the script.”

“I know,” I said. Justin had come a long way from the hotheaded kid who’d joined us a month ago. “I wouldn’t have asked you to do this if I didn’t know that.”

He smiled, pleased but nervous, and gave me a brief salute before shambling down the street with his stick.

It took me and Leo a little more than an hour to finish our frantic copying of Dad’s notes. Then we left too, heading south. The neighborhoods between the one we’d holed up in and the Centers for Disease Control fit the same leafy, suburban mold. We walked through the yards hand in hand. Leo held the cold-storage box, and I had the strap of a soft-sided cooler we’d found in the house’s kitchen over my shoulder. We’d split the mushy snow that had remained in the cold box between the two. To make things as equal as possible, I’d filled a syringe with half the contents of one of the vials, so we each had one and a half samples of the vaccine. And a slightly differing set of copied notes. Dad’s original notebooks we’d left behind, wrapped in the plastic bag to protect them from damp and wedged into a gap under the basement stairs, out of view to anyone who didn’t know where to look for them.

As Leo and I approached the university grounds the CDC sat in the middle of, we had to duck behind fences and hedges three times at the sound of car engines. One of those cars drove directly past us while we hunched by a vine-strangled shed. The Wardens were gathering. My heart thudded as we hurried on. We’d know soon whether Justin had delivered our message unharmed.

We’d know whether Michael was truly as reasonable as he’d said.

When I spotted the taller buildings that Dr. Guzman had said would mark the end of the residential area, we halted. I turned to Leo. The bruise on his cheek was starting to fade, purple red blending into brown. I touched the skin beside it gently and rose on my feet to meet his lips when he tipped his head toward me.

He drew out the kiss, as if maybe we could just never stop, never have to face another moment of danger. When we finally eased apart, I had to catch my breath before I could speak.

“You’ll stay out of sight?” I said. “Until I call you?” I patted the two-way radio I’d hooked to one of my belt loops.

Leo nodded. “And if you don’t call after a couple hours, I’ll go to the CDC myself.”

Now that we were so close to our goal, now that I had to leave him, the doubts I’d managed to suppress before were bubbling up inside me. If any part of this plan went wrong, it would probably mean at least one of us dead.

But then, not trying might mean that too.

“Hey,” Leo said, and squeezed my hand. “Whatever happens, I’ll be right behind you.”

“And if something happens to me?” I said.

“Then I’ll keep at this until everyone in the world is protected, or I’ve died trying. Justin and I know where the notebooks are—we’ll make sure
someone
knows how to make the vaccine. Kaelyn…” He waited until I met his eyes. “I’m here for you, but I’m here for me too. Because I believe we’re doing the right thing. If something happens to
me
, that’s not on you. You know that, right?”

I’d thought I did, but hearing the words released something inside me. I kissed him again, hard, wishing I could convey everything I was feeling from my lips to his. Leo set down the cold box and pulled me into an embrace.

“I love you,” he said by my ear.

“I love you.” I tightened my grip on him until tears crept into my eyes, and then I let him go.

“No more than two hours,” I said.

“You’ll be calling before that.”

I took one last look at him, and then headed down the street.

After another block, the cover became sparse. I edged past a large building that looked like some sort of Gothic mansion, darting from pine tree to pine tree. The houses on the other side of the road had given way to office buildings and weedy lawns. I hesitated on the brink of a wide intersection, scanning the roads and listening. This was the street Dr. Guzman had told me to take. Where was the military assistance she’d said she’d send?

An engine gunned to my left, and then cut out. Footsteps thudded ahead of me. I dropped down behind an overgrown shrub as two men in civilian clothes hurried around the corner.

When the men had disappeared down the street, I dashed across the intersection. I was just coming up on the grassy slope beside the sidewalk when a couple soldiers stepped out from behind a tree made fat by loops of vine. Both of them carried rifles. The taller one, a square-jawed man with lightly tanned skin, waved me over.

“Kaelyn Weber?” he said under his breath. I nodded. “Where are the others?”

“It’s just me right now,” I whispered, and patted the cooler to indicate I had the vaccine. He frowned, but he gestured for me to follow him and his companion.

We jogged past the scattered trees and mounds of vine that covered the slope. A fence lined the opposite sidewalk, made of wrought-iron bars that rose from a brick base. It had been fortified with sheets of plywood and corrugated steel that blocked the gaps between the bars, and topped with curls of barbed wire. Up ahead, a lane branched off from the road toward the fence. What had once been a gate there was blocked with boards and battered furniture and more steel and wire. The barrier looked completely solid, but the soldiers went straight to it, scanning the street as we hustled across.

The moment our feet hit the sidewalk, one of the boards was wrenched aside, creating a narrow gap in the barricade. A hand reached through it. The guy behind me nudged me forward. I took the hand and let the person on the other side pull me in. My shoulders bumped against the sides of the gap, and then I was stumbling out into a wide uncluttered lane.

The soldiers who’d come to meet me ducked through after me. One shoved the board back into place and secured it while the woman who’d helped me through hopped back onto her post beside the gate. Another soldier perched across from her, rifle at the ready, watching the street.

The square-jawed man gripped my elbow, ushering me up the lane toward the buildings that loomed ahead.

“We expected you earlier,” he said curtly. “What happened? Dr. Guzman said there should be four of you.”

We hadn’t told her what had happened to Anika. I grasped the strap of the cooler to steady myself. I couldn’t let this situation slip out of my control.

“I need to go to the front gate,” I said. “Which way is that?”

The soldier’s frown deepened. “Dr. Guzman is waiting for you. If your friends went to the front gate, the maniacs out there have probably already caught them.”

“I need to go to the front gate,” I repeated firmly, “or I won’t be able to give Dr. Guzman what she wants.”

“I think you’d better talk to the doctor about that.”

“Then let her come down here.”

He was still frowning, but he pulled a walkie-talkie from his belt. “The girl’s here,” he said. “She wants Guzman to come down. Let’s have the doc sort things out.”

We strode past a building of red brick and another of pale concrete set with rows of high windows. “That’s the front gate,” the soldier said, stopping and motioning down another lane to a spot where a single sheet of steel stood amid the plywood-and-furniture barricade covering the fence, about twenty feet away. Two more soldiers were stationed there. The sound of murmuring voices carried through the wall, and then the rumble of a car sweeping past.

When my escort stayed where he was, I marched on toward the gate. I was halfway there when he caught up with me, yanking me to a halt.

“What are you doing?”

“I need to talk to someone,” I said.

“Do you have any idea—”

He paused as a door whined open on one of the nearby buildings. A stout woman with round-paned glasses hurried over to us, swiping her short black hair away from her eyes. Another woman and a man, both wearing lab coats, trailed behind her.

“You must be Kaelyn,” the first woman said. “I’m Sheryl Guzman.” She held out her hand for me to shake, and her gaze dipped to the cooler at my side. “You have the vaccine in there? Why didn’t the others come with you? What’s going on, Sergeant?”

“Apparently they came around front,” the soldier with me said. “She thinks she’s going to talk to them.”

“No,” I said. “I need to talk to someone else. If you’ll just listen to me we can get this over with, and everyone will have what they want.”

Dr. Guzman’s brow knit. “I don’t understand.”

“I’ll explain everything in a minute,” I said. “Believe me, if you want to be able to make the vaccine, I need to do this.”

The sergeant looked at Dr. Guzman. She pursed her lips, and then shrugged. “After all this time, I can’t see how another minute will hurt.” But she hadn’t stopped eyeing the cooler.

I stepped away from my escort and walked right up to the corrugated steel sheet that fortified the gate. “Hey!” I shouted, and kicked the metal so it rang out. “Is Michael there yet?”

My question was met by a momentary hush, and my heart sank. If he wasn’t there, if I hadn’t given Justin enough time, I wasn’t sure how long I could convince the scientists and their soldier allies to wait.

Then a familiar dry voice carried through the barrier. “I’m here.”

I exhaled. “And Justin’s with you? No one’s hurt him?”

“I received that part of the message too.”

“I’m here,” Justin’s voice called out. “They’ve been all right.”

“Then you know you’re not getting anything until he’s in here safely,” I said to Michael.

“I’m ready when you are.”

I turned back. “We need to open the gate,” I said. “Just long enough to let one person in.”

“Kaelyn—” Dr. Guzman started.

“If you want the vaccine, that’s what I need,” I said. “It’s not all here.” I raised my voice so it could be heard on the other side of the fence. “And Michael’s people know that if there’s one shot fired, they’re not getting what they want either.”

“That’s right,” Michael said. “For the moment, we’re here to talk.”

“You can’t trust them,” the sergeant said.

He could have been right, but I’d already committed to taking that risk. “If you’re worried, stay out of the way,” I said.

“Just open it,” Dr. Guzman said.

“Sheryl, I’m not sure—” one of the doctors behind her broke in, and she cut him off with a glare.

“We decided I would call the shots on this one,” she reminded him.

He and the other doctor moved to the side, out of range of any guns beyond the gate. Dr. Guzman stayed where she was, a few feet behind me, her hands on her hips.

The sergeant looked to his colleagues at the gate. “Be ready,” he said.

When the others nodded, he bent to shift the concrete blocks that propped the steel sheet in place. Then he slid the sheet a couple feet to the right, revealing the vertical iron bars of the actual gate. A dense cluster of vehicles and people stood on the other side, with Michael at the front of the crowd. A few of the Wardens jerked forward instinctively at the sight of the opening, and someone let out a hoarse shout. Michael’s arm shot into the air, signaling them to stand down. The crowd settled, but I could see the muzzles of several pistols and shotguns glinting in its midst.

Justin left Michael’s side and ran up to the gate as fast as his bad leg allowed.

“He’s the one we’re letting in,” I said to the soldier. “He’s with me.”

The sergeant grimaced, but he unlocked the heavy chain that held the gate closed. As soon as he’d eased the gate open, Justin squeezed inside and ducked around behind the wall. The sergeant jerked the gate shut the second Justin was through. No one else had budged. Michael watched me, his eyes hard.

When the sergeant reached to pull the steel sheet back into place, I said, “No. Leave it. I’ll be fast.” I needed to see Michael, to evaluate his expressions, his body language, before I could make the final decision about whether to go through with this.

“This is the deal,” I said, glancing at Michael and then at the doctors. “This is what everyone wants.” I set the cooler on the ground in front of me, knelt down, and unzipped the lid just long enough to grab one of the vials—the one that was only half full. As I held it up, the amber liquid caught the sunlight. A murmur rose on Michael’s side, movement rippling through the crowd. Michael motioned them silent.

“Millions people are dead because of the friendly flu,” I said. “This vaccine will mean we can finally stop being scared of the virus, but I don’t want to keep watching the rest of us trying to kill each other. We should be working together to survive. I don’t think we’re
going
to survive if we can’t stop fighting. No one should be forced to do things they don’t want to in order to get the vaccine.” I fixed Michael with a stare, and he glowered back. Then I turned to the doctors. “And no one should be told they can’t have it because of what they’ve done to stay alive. No one deserves to be infected.

“The vaccine was made with two different sets of proteins,” I went on. “So I’ve brought half my dad’s samples for the CDC, and a copy of his notes that includes instructions on how to clone and treat only one set of the proteins. If we can all agree, then I’ll call someone to bring the other half, and a copy of the notes that includes instructions on handling the other necessary set, for you.” I looked back at Michael. “The vaccine’s not going to work with just one set or the other. So at some point you’ll have to get together to combine them, and to figure out a way for you both to distribute the finished product. I don’t think one group of people should be making all the decisions anymore.”