Those Who Lived: Fallen World Stories (6 page)

I had no idea if I had enough ingenuity to maneuver Nathan as well as I’d contrived Kaelyn’s safety. Given the gun, Michael didn’t either. The brutal option, if I needed it.

There wasn’t any getting out of his test now. I tossed the pistol on the bed, figuring it should go in the rucksack last so it’d be within easy reach if I needed it before we’d even made it to Toronto. It was still lying there when Zack knocked and I called him in. He ambled over and slid his arms around my waist from behind. I felt him noticing the gun, tensing.

I laid one of my arms over his, clay brown against freckled white. “Just in case,” I said.

“Hmmm,” he replied, with a kiss to the base of my neck. He’d been there when Nathan went off on me for talking to the prisoners, before I’d come up with my plan for Kaelyn’s escape; had seen the purpling scrape along my ribs where Nate had introduced them to the edge of a table, after. “I guess that’s what we signed up for, being here.”

Zack hadn’t really signed up for anything. I’d volunteered myself, with some idea what I was getting into, when I’d made it to Toronto looking for answers and seen the extent to which Michael had taken control. But Zack’s mom had been given the impossible choice of either supporting Michael’s efforts or wasting away in a locked room somewhere, and Zack had stayed with her—for her protection, I suspected he thought, though her expertise protected him more than the other way around. She worked long hours in the labs, helping manufacture the vaccine, but she’d arranged that Zack would never be assigned to leave the training center’s walls, where the infected and the hostile survivors who hadn’t joined the Wardens wandered.

She’d offered to come here when Michael had asked some of the doctors to travel south and I’d already requested a transfer so I could follow Kaelyn. Because she knew Zack and I would want to stay together. And now, a couple months later, I was turning around and heading back.

Maybe they’d follow me again.
I’m not disinclined to reward a job well done.
But that possibility hardly felt tangible right now.

“I’m sorry,” I said, squeezing his hand.

Zack made a scoffing sound. “For what? Not arguing with Michael over this? I’d rather take you alive and in Canada. We’ll make sure it’s not forever. I’ll survive somehow until then.”

I nudged him with my elbow at his teasing tone. “Just keep on keeping your head down, all right?”

“I should be the one saying that to you,” he said. “Look at you moving up in the ranks. One step from king of Toronto! You know what they say about power.”

“Absolute power corrupts absolutely?”

He smiled against my shoulder. “I was thinking, ‘With great power there must also come great responsibility.’ But the other’s true too.”

His voice was still teasing, but I could hear the apprehension underneath. “It’ll be okay,” I said, for both of us. “I’ll be okay.”

“Do,” he said simply. “Please.”

I shoved the last few items in my sack and tugged the drawstring tight. Zack loosened his hold as I turned to face him. My roommate was on gate duty for another two hours. Two hours. The last time we’d really have together in who knew how long. Even tomorrow... We hadn’t been hiding our relationship, but with the company we kept, it seemed safer to avoid public displays of affection.

A lump rose in my throat. “Let’s not talk anymore,” I said, close enough that our noses almost touched.

“What do you recommend we do instead?” he asked, a glint in his hazel eyes, and I pulled him into a kiss.

Something it was hard to miss if you spent a lot of time with people and electronics was that the two were a lot alike. People were more complicated, sure—I’d freely admit that while I could piece together a motherboard, brain surgery was beyond me—but nevertheless made up of a fairly predictable set of systems interacting with each other following fairly predictable patterns. You pushed certain buttons, you received certain reactions. Getting along with people, or getting what you needed from them, was mostly a matter of tracing the wires until you found the right connections.

At least, with most. A few people, like Michael, were so good at keeping what was going on in their heads hidden that it was hard to identify the connections at all. And others, like Nathan, seemed to rearrange their wiring on an hourly basis.

Sometimes Nate was so easy I was ashamed of how nervous he made me. Like, when I’d come down to meet him in the parking lot where Michael was overseeing the loading of the industrial coolers with our first batch of the vaccines for up north into the trailer hitched to the Mercedes’ rear, I’d patted the convertible’s gleaming red hood and said, “Couldn’t ask for a sweeter ride,” and Nathan had grinned and preened his dark brown hair and said, “Then get yourself in here,” as if there’d never been any hostility between us.

We made good time cruising along the vacant highways—the snow was long gone even in the northern states now. Nathan and I didn’t talk much, Nate preferring to blare club music from the convertible’s speakers, but he handed off the keys to let me take over driving for a few hours with only a narrow look and a warning to forget any stunts. We stopped to meet up with a group of Wardens in Pittsburgh, who refilled the tank and the jugs we were carrying and eagerly accepted one of the vaccine coolers, and continued on across the border in the fading daylight.

As night settled in and the headlights caught on a sign announcing just a hundred more kilometers to Toronto, I was starting to think maybe Michael was even more of a genius than I’d given him credit for. Maybe sending Nathan off to run his own fiefdom was exactly what the guy needed to simmer down. If he relaxed all on his own, I could just hang back and offer my approval, no maneuvering necessary.

Then the last song on the CD faded out, and Nathan didn’t immediately reach for a new one from the binder I suspected he’d found with the car. The last time we’d filled the tank, he’d pulled the top up, but he’d left his window down. The air washing in from outside had taken on an uncomfortable chill. I’d zipped up my jacket and tucked my hands into my pockets rather than complain. Nathan’s narrow face and hands were pale, but then, they were always pale. It was hard to tell whether he didn’t feel the cold or was making a show of how tough he was.

“You started out up here,” he said.

I nodded. “I was here a couple months, mostly doing the same work as in Georgia: the radios and that.”

“I want you making sure the existing establishment accepts their new management,” he said. “You know them, you encourage them to see it’s in their best interests not to mess with me. Do you think anyone will need extra persuading?”

If I was going to nudge Nathan toward a more diplomatic approach, I couldn’t get a better opening. “I haven’t seen them in a while,” I said. “But the people I worked with before, they’re like the Wardens down south. They don’t really
like
taking orders, but they do because they can see it works to their benefit. You show you’re there to lead them, not knock them down, and I don’t think there’ll be any trouble.”

“You sound like a shrink,” Nathan said. “I don’t care what they
like
. They’d better be prepared to get knocked down if they don’t get in line fast.”

“Michael’s informed them we’re coming. They’ll be ready for the change.”

Nathan’s mouth curled into a sneer. “What kind of ready, we’ll see.” He shot me a look, his eyes shadowed in the dim light that reached us from the headlights. “We need to watch out for ourselves up here. This is going to be
my
city, and that’s just the beginning. You prove yourself, I’ll keep you along.”

“Hey,” I said, backing off any intention other than gratifying him, “you’ve the one who’s here, not Michael. I know who I’m taking
my
orders from.”

His sneer jerked into a scowl. “Whatever Michael tells you to do, you do,” he snapped. “I don’t want to be picking up your slack.”

“Right,” I said. “Of course not. That won’t be a problem.”

He turned the music back on, and I resolved to keep my mouth shut for the rest of the drive. Maybe once we got settled in, and I’d been around him longer, I’d get better at predicting what he wanted to hear.

Or maybe, with Nathan, sometimes there was never going to be a right answer.

Since I’d left the city, the local Wardens had moved headquarters to one of the larger fire stations, with the rescue vehicles cleared out to make room for their assortment of cars and trucks and a large storage area. The inner circle of Wardens lived in the station’s dorms, and close associates in the low-rise apartment building next door. Janelle, the sharp-eyed woman with a boxer’s build who’d been at the top of the hierarchy when I left, had obviously gotten the message about the new leadership. Two of the dorm rooms had been vacated to give both Nathan and me a private space, while everyone else was doubling up. But after the long hours in the car with Nate’s uncertain temper, I didn’t have the energy to wonder who we’d displaced or do anything other than offer a few greetings before I crashed onto the cot at half past midnight.

The Wardens had reorganized elsewhere as well, in anticipation of our cargo. When I strolled into the common room the next morning, I noted the industrial refrigeration unit set against the wall, which the vaccine vials would have already been unloaded into. Janelle was sitting at one of the tables, eyeing the fridge over the top of her coffee mug. She turned her piercing gaze on me.

“Some of those doses had better be for us,” she said.

True to his word, Michael had given his very first batches of the vaccine to those on the compound in Georgia. I expected his orders here were similar, but he’d given them to Nathan, not to me. It was a little early to risk stepping on the boss’s toes.

Of course, Janelle’s bad side wasn’t a great place to be either. I’d seen her break a guy’s nose for mouthing off.

“I think so,” I said. “You’ve got a doctor prepped to do the administering?”

“A couple. They’ll set up shop in here, once we let them know they’re needed.”

“I’d imagine we’ll get started right away.”

“A lot of people out there already waiting for it,” she said with a raise of her chin toward the front doors. An edge crept into her voice. “You two are the head honchos now. You just say the word.”

“I don’t think it was a criticism of your work,” I offered. “Michael just wanted people in place who are a little more familiar with the vaccine. Anyway, it looks like you’ve got everything in good order already.”

Finally she gave me a hint of a smile. “Hard to believe it’s actually happening,” she said. “No more friendly flu! I’m looking forward to having that worry off my back.”

“The doctors are saying we should keep up the basic precautions, face masks and that, in case it doesn’t give total immunity,” I said. “But yeah. It’s a good feeling.”

A couple Wardens were posted in the entry hall. I peered past them through the glass doors, and saw what Janelle had meant about the people waiting. Word had obviously gotten around that the vaccine was on its way. A couple teens in ratty clothes were sitting on the edge of the sidewalk outside, eyeing the building, and a middle-aged woman was pacing back and forth across the road, darting glances this way.

Nathan stalked into the common room just after I stepped back, his cheeks and jaw pink from a fresh shave. He was wearing one of his usual slim suits, this one silvery gray. “All right,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “I want the troops in here a-sap so I can lay down the ground rules.”

Janelle headed to the radio room. “I’ll call everyone in,” she said.

“Nathan,” I said while she could overhear, “some of the vaccine is set aside for the Wardens here, isn’t it?”

“You’re getting ahead of me,” he said in a tone that walked the line between amused and irritated. “Anyone who deserves it will get it. We should see what sort of response we get to the initial announcement before we go dividing up what we have. Milk everything we can from the saps out there who want their hands on it right away.”

Janelle’s mouth tightened. Nathan was forgetting how desperate the people in
here
might be. Neither of us was going to make any progress toward Michael’s goals if we turned our supporters against us on the very first day.

“Good point,” I said carefully. “Could help us police things, though, if none of us has to worry about getting infected. It seemed like it gave us an extra edge in Georgia. But that’s more your area.”

His lips curled into a smirk. Remembering some recent exploit of his own, tangling with outside survivors, I’d bet. I wandered off toward the kitchen as if it didn’t matter much to me either way. As I reached the doorway, Nate turned to Janelle.

“We’ll start with our people. But I want to hear if there’s anyone you think should be left hanging a little while to consider their options.”

“Sure thing,” she said, and ducked out. I exhaled and kept walking.

Within an hour we had a crowd of thirty or so in the common room. The two doctors Janelle had mentioned were among them, laying out the equipment they had on hand—syringes and liquid antiseptic and the like—on a table near the entry hall. The crowd was mostly focused on that, muttering to each other and stirring restlessly.

“Listen up,” Nathan said at the head of the room, spreading his arms wide like a stage magician. “We’ve got the most valuable merchandise currently in existence, and we need to price it accordingly. When you’re making the rounds, I want you passing on word that the vaccine is available to anyone able to buy it—but supplies are limited, so they’d better get here fast and with a generous spirit.” He grinned. “Michael said he sent on a list of acceptable payments?”

Janelle nodded and held up a paper with scrawled notations.

“Good,” Nathan said. “
On top
of that, as our starting point, I expect anyone who wants that vaccine to give over either two gallons of gasoline or diesel, or a working gun, or a box of ammunition. Gas or gun, or they don’t get the shot.”

Janelle frowned, and a guy named Tyler, who’d been working in the radio room, stepped forward.