Inhuman

6

The moment I set foot in the dimly lit infirmary, memories of my mother threatened to shut me down. The building had clearly not been designed to be an infirmary — doors with frosted windows lined the hall, making it seem more like an old office building — and yet the antiseptic smell gave away its current function. The smell also brought back the desperation I’d felt the day they’d checked my mother into the hospital, knowing it was for the last time — that she’d never come home again.

Everson led the way through the echoing corridor, and I kept my face ducked until we stepped into a dark office. When he flipped on the light, I glanced at him and was caught by surprise. He was younger than I’d thought — only a year or so older than me. And despite the cropped hair, military fatigues, and the fact that he stood a head taller than me, he wasn’t nearly as intimidating as before. Probably because he wasn’t trying to be.

I tore my gaze from him and wiped my sweaty palms on my pants. The office was a mess. Crumpled food wrappers and blue inhalers littered the floor. All the cupboards were flung open and a mini refrigerator sat precariously on a stack of storage bins. Had biohaz agents come here and tossed Dr. Solis’s office because of his association with my father?

“He’s probably in the lab,” Everson said as he pulled a couple of latex gloves from a box. Since he didn’t seem the least bit alarmed, I figured the doctor must leave his office like this all the time.

“What kind of doctor is Dr. Solis?”

“A virologist,” Everson said, pocketing the gloves. “A long time ago he worked for the CDC.”

“What’s the CDC?” I scooped a midnight-blue inhaler off the floor.

“The Centers for Disease Control. It was a government agency that got cut before the plague.”

“What did they do?”

“Prevent plagues …” He loaded on the irony.

I snorted. Every history lesson about the early part of this century seemed to end with a ba-dum-bum-ching. I shook the inhaler by my ear but there was no slosh. At one point it had contained a sleeping spray called Lull, which I was somewhat familiar with. It had been prescribed to my father back when he’d had hernia surgery. After just one night, he’d thrown the inhaler away because the Lull had knocked him out cold for twelve hours straight.

Everson’s dark brows drew together when he saw what I was holding. “The doctor has trouble sleeping.”

He must — since the trash can contained enough inhalers to conk out a herd of stampeding elephants.

Everson strode to the desk and picked up an inhaler lying there. “He’s been on call since dawn, so he’ll be dying to sleep.” He met my gaze as he pocketed the Lull. “If he takes a hit before you two talk, you may as well ask the wall about your dad. I’ll tell him you’re here, then I’m going to try to convince a couple of medics to come back to the gate with me.” He headed for the door, snagging a white box off a shelf on his way. At the door, he paused. “Don’t touch anything.”

I stiffened. Did I look like a thief?

“I didn’t mean — There are eighteen strains of Ferae in there.” He pointed at the mini fridge. “You don’t want to infect yourself — that’s all I meant.”

“Oh.” No, I definitely did not want to infect myself. In fact, I was going to sit down and keep my hands in my lap until Dr. Solis showed up. Maybe I’d even keep my breathing to a minimum. I did a slow turn in place, trying to decide what spot looked the least germy. Would it be rude to move the doctor’s paperwork? I eyed the stack of files on the chair next to me. A corner of a photo stuck out from the pile. I stared at it. Moving the stack — questionable. Riffling through it — definitely rude. And yet I reached for the photo, gently pulled it free of the pile … and then nearly swallowed a lung.

I flipped the photo over before the image gave me brain damage, but of course, within a second I had to take another peek. The picture was of a person’s open mouth with a scattering of oozing sores where teeth should have been. In some of the gaps, new teeth were growing in — triangular, serrated, and definitely not human.

My conscience pinged but I couldn’t stop myself; I sifted through the stack and found a manila folder labeled “Stage Two: Physical Mutation.” Inside were more photos of human body parts gone very, very wrong. Two curling yellow horns that poked through someone’s dark hair. A child’s fingers that ended in claws. A man’s forearm sprouting patches of spotted fur.

“Not an attractive bunch, are they?” asked a voice behind me.

I spun as a man with graying hair closed the office door — Dr. Solis, judging by his white lab coat. He was so willowy that a child could have pushed him over. He smiled. “I don’t suppose they show you pictures like that in your science classes.”

“No, never.” I slid the photos back into the folder, despite feeling a pressing need to flip through the rest of the pile. Actually, what I really wanted was to swipe a few and smuggle them into the West to show Anna. I needed someone to shriek with.

“I’m Vincent Solis,” he said. “And you are Delaney. It’s good to finally meet you, even if the circumstances aren’t the best.” He saw my surprise and added, “Everson says you’re looking for Mack.”

Yes, I was, but the mutated body parts had hijacked my thoughts. “Can you cure them?” I pointed to the file with the photos.

“No.” Sighing, he settled into the chair behind the desk. “I can’t even develop an effective vaccine until I have samples of all the different strains. So far the most I’ve come up with is an inhibitor that slows the rate of the mutation. It’s not much, but they’re clamoring for it over there.” He waved airily toward what I guessed was the East. “Every month, your father takes a crate of it to a group of infected people living in an old quarantine compound. They tell him about any changes they’ve noticed or if they’re experiencing side effects. It’s not an ideal way to conduct research, but until the law changes, I don’t dare go myself.”

“Why not?” It was okay for my father to risk infection and arrest, but not him?

“Titan pays for all of this” — he swept a shaky hand at the room and the corridor beyond — “in the hopes that I’ll find a way to immunize the line guards. They don’t care about those who are already infected. The CEO, Ilsa Prejean, has made it quite clear that if I ever cross the river to collect data, she’ll cut my funding. You see, the corporation that gets paid to enforce the quarantine can’t afford to employ a quarantine breaker. That’s why I’m so grateful to your father. I couldn’t have gotten this far without him.”

“Do you know where he is now?”

“Mack cut through camp last night. Stopped by just long enough to tell me that biohaz agents were right behind him. They weren’t. Not that I saw anyway.” Dr. Solis began patting down his lab coat until he found a blue inhaler in a pocket.

“Where did he go?”

Dr. Solis shook the inhaler, frowned, and tossed it aside. “To Moline, the quarantine compound I mentioned. Mack has friends there.”

My mouth went dry. He’d gone back into the Feral Zone where mutants with claws and horns went around mauling people? Inhibitor or not, that sounded suicidal. “What if one of them bites him?”

“I don’t believe any have progressed to stage three of the disease.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry. You’re worried about your father and I’m talking like a virologist.”

“No, it’s okay. I want to know.”

With a nod, Dr. Solis leaned forward, bracing his forearms on the desk. “There are three stages to Ferae. The first presents with a high fever within one to ten hours after infection. Once the virus is established, the fever ends and the patient regains his faculties. After that, the virus begins a slow takeover of the body and the patient starts to manifest physical signs of infection.” He gestured toward the file of photographs. “Anatomical deformities. Stage two can last anywhere from weeks to years. It all depends on the patient’s health, genetics, access to antiviral medication…. Many factors.” He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “The third and final stage of Ferae is insanity. The virus invades the brain, at which point the patient becomes animalistic and highly aggressive.”

“Oh.” And I’d thought his photos were gruesome. What was playing in my mind now, however, combined those images with sounds and actions to terrifying effect.

“Incubation, mutation, psychosis — those are the stages.” Dr. Solis rose and moved unsteadily toward the bookcase. “We used to compare Ferae to rabies. Now we know the better model is syphilis, which has a symptomatic stage that can last decades before dementia finally sets in.”

After a moment of scrounging through boxes on the shelves, he found an inhaler and gave it a dreamy smile. “Anyway, Mack tells me that in the past year, no one in Moline has progressed to the final stage. I’d like to think it’s because of the inhibitor he’s been taking them, but who knows?” Squeezing the inhaler, the doctor sucked in the Lull and, surprisingly, he seemed to straighten up. Guess the drug didn’t work very well on him. “You needn’t worry, Delaney. Your father will lie low for a while and then come back to check that the coast is clear, which it is.”

“It isn’t,” I said, feeling a throb in my temples. “The biohazard agents are after him. They recorded him breaking quarantine.”

Dr. Solis’s gaze sharpened despite the Lull in his system.

“Have you seen the recording?” he asked. “You know for a fact that it exists?”

I nodded. “Where is Moline?” What I really wanted to know was just how far my father had ventured into the Feral Zone. Stuffing the cap into my back pocket, I took out my dad’s map and spread it across the desk. “Show me?”

Why was I bothering with this? Spurling’s orders were to come right back if I couldn’t find my dad. Still, I watched as Dr. Solis pointed to a spot on the map — a city, which had been circled in dark ink.

“It’s directly across the river,” he said. “Just off the northeastern tip of the island. There used to be a bridge there, back in the day, but not now.”

I touched the tiny line that was the last and only bridge across the Mississippi. Like the bridge that I’d crossed to get from the west bank onto Arsenal, the last bridge to the Feral Zone was on the south end of the island. “How big is Arsenal?”

“A thousand acres.”

“I mean from end to end.”

“A little over three miles.” He sank into the chair behind his desk. “Are they threatening execution?”

“Yes,” I said softly.

The doctor dragged his hand down his face. “Mack knew that it might come to this — that something could happen, making it impossible for him to return west.”

“Why didn’t he warn me about that possibility or tell me that he’s a fetch or mention anything about any of this ever?” It came out harsher than I’d intended.

“If it helps, Mack goes around that issue all the time. It always comes down to the lie detector test.”

“What?”

“The one they’ll give you if he’s caught. They’re very good now, those tests. Accurate ninety-nine percent of the time. A person’s body gives him away with the tiniest release of chemicals. If that test revealed that you knew your father was crossing the quarantine line, you’d be condemned as a traitor and executed alongside him.”

“Oh.” The vision I had of my dad being shot by a firing squad … He must have had a similar one of me — one that had played in his mind for years. For the first time since the jumpsuits had hauled me out of Orlando’s party, I felt my guts unknot a bit. Now my father’s silence made sense. If I only could talk to him and tell him about Director Spurling’s offer, then he could put aside that worry.

“How can I get a message to him?” I asked Dr. Solis.

“You can’t. All we can do is wait for Mack to come out of hiding.”

“Wait?” I didn’t have time for that. Correction, my dad didn’t.

“You’re welcome to stay, like Everson, like me,” the doctor murmured. “Stay because of a parent.”

What was he talking about?

“Like you, I’m here for my father.”

Dr. Solis looked old enough to be my grandfather. Could his father even be alive? “Is he living in the Feral Zone?”

“No, no, he died many years ago. He was a doctor too.” Dr. Solis sank lower in his chair. “He left Cuba the year he finished medical school. He had to go; to stay meant death. But for the rest of his life, my father thought about his countrymen — the cubanos who hadn’t gotten out. They didn’t fare so well. So when the exodus came, I couldn’t cut and run. I’d taken on the burden of his guilt.”

“What did your father have to feel guilty about? You said he would have died if he’d stayed in Cuba.”

“Yes, he had to go, just like those who left during the exodus. Fleeing death is perfectly reasonable.” He gave me a wry smile. “Reason has its advantages. Unfortunately, it doesn’t do much for insomnia. Or heartbreak …” His voice faded as his chin sank onto his chest. The Lull had finally kicked in. I hoped that sleep would bring him some relief from his exhaustion and sadness, even if only temporarily.

I picked up the map and traced the circle around Moline. If I were to cross the last bridge — a very big if — I would then have to walk three miles up the riverbank to reach Moline. Three miles in the Feral Zone …

I folded up the map and returned it to my dad’s bag. What was three miles? Nothing. If the road was flat, I could jog it in under an hour.

Suddenly a howl, long and pained, cut through the corridor. I swung around to stare at the closed door, heart jumping in my chest. Did I want to know what that was? No, I did not. But if I planned to cross the river — and I realized I did — I should know what I was in for. I snatched up the messenger bag, pulled the cap over my hair, and slipped out of Dr. Solis’s office.

I followed the keening sound down the hall to a door, open just a crack. Inside, the infected guard, Bangor — red faced and sweating — struggled against the leather straps that bound him to a bed. In the far corner, a guard hunkered in a chair, his hands over his ears, his body turned toward the window like he wanted to dive through it. I didn’t blame him. Bangor seemed to be having a seizure, with his throat muscles bulging and eyes rolling. What if he bit off his tongue? They should have left the muzzle on. He let out another savage howl, followed by a jumble of sounds — almost words — that sent me backing down the hall.

Voices around the next corner were heading my way. I darted into a dark room marked “Supplies.” I made a quick scan of the rows of metal shelves and then returned to the door. But as I peeked into the hall, hands grabbed me from behind and twisted my arm up my back.

“Crappy reflexes for a guard,” a harsh voice whispered in my ear.