Contaminated 2: Mercy Mode (9 page)

I’d have expected her to be more upset by this, but this is the world we live in now. “Crap.”

“It’s not any worse than being run over by a bike,” Opal says with a small, sad sigh and a frown.

I squeeze her arm. “You didn’t mean to.”

“It’s still dead,” she says, and there’s no argument from me.

Sandra’s not petting the puppy, but it’s obvious she knows it and it knows her. This gives me an idea. I hook my fingers in the puppy’s collar and tug it upright.

“Opal, take the puppy. I’ll take Sandra. Maybe she’ll follow the dog.”

“Velvet …” She keeps her distance. “Do we have to take her?”

I straighten. “We can’t leave her here.”

“Could we just come back and make sure she’s okay?” Opal whispers.

I’d rather do that, too, but … “She can’t take care of herself. Mama wouldn’t want us to leave her here alone. She’ll die, Opal. She’ll die.”

Opal’s lower lip quivers, but she nods and grabs for the puppy’s collar. “Come on, boy!”

Together, we lead puppy and person up the basement stairs into the kitchen, where Sandra balks again. My muscles are tense and aching, and it’s so much hotter up here that I pause for a drink of water. I should try to pack a bag for her, at least. Some clothes. Personal items, not that she’d notice. But all I want to do now is get home. I’ll bring Dillon and the truck back later to load it full of the stuff in the basement. I can get Sandra’s things then.

Opal finds a leash hanging by the back door and hooks
it through the puppy’s collar. There’s another leash beside the one she took, and I take it down, looking over Sandra’s collar. There’s no hook to attach a leash, but there’s room between the collar and her neck for me to loop the thin strap of leather and hook it to itself.

“Is that going to work?” Opal looks skeptical. The puppy dances on the end of its leash. Sandra doesn’t move.

“It might. She needs shoes, at least. Hold on.” In the front closet, I find a pair of flats. She doesn’t resist when I lift each foot and slip on the shoes, but when I’m finished, I have to wash my hands out of shivering disgust at how dirty her feet are.

Outside, the sun burns on the tops of our heads, making me wish I had a hat. The puppy lunges, chasing a butterfly, and Opal laughs as she runs with it. Sandra, on the other hand, cowers and bats at her face.

This isn’t going to be easy.

Sandra can’t ride a bike. She can’t walk any faster than a shuffle, and she balks every few feet unless the puppy’s in front of her. By the time we get to the end of her driveway, I’m already exhausted. My stomach growls. I think longingly of the basement full of foods I haven’t tasted in so long. Crackers and cookies and potato chips. I should’ve taken at least a few things. Water, especially.

“I’m hot.” Opal, pushing her bike with the puppy’s leash wrapped around one fist, makes a face.

“Me, too. We’ll be home soon.” We’ve barely made it to the next driveway. It’s going to take forever.

Opal looks at Sandra with a frown. “Where’s the guy?”

“What guy?”

“The one with her in the picture.”

I hesitate, then shrug. Lying’s not always the wrong thing to do. “Who knows?”

We walk. And walk. And walk. I try to keep Sandra in the shade but also out of the weeds on the side of the road, and that’s almost impossible. The third time I drop my bike trying to get her to keep moving, I mutter a bunch of words my mom would’ve grounded me for saying. I drag it to the side of the road.

“Leave the bikes. We can come back for them.”

Opal nods and puts hers down next to mine. “Hey, Velvet. I bet we could find a bike that would fit me better, anyway. In one of these houses. I bet we could find a lot of stuff.”

We could. There are about a hundred houses in this neighborhood, and even if most of them don’t have the stockpiles the last one does and even if a few of them have people living in them, I’m sure we could scavenge all kinds of things we need. I can’t believe I didn’t think about it before, but I guess there’s a little bit of a leap between squatting in your own house and looting your neighbors’. Still, it makes total sense, whether or not we leave IOUs.… There are reasons people aren’t coming back
to these empty houses, and one of them’s at the end of my leash.

We’ve just crested the small hill, giving us sight of the two wrecked cars, when I hear the low rumble of an engine. I know at once what it is. I’ve heard it before. Too loud to be a car, which means it’s an army truck. Probably more than one. Moving slowly but steadily, making a sweep of the neighborhood. Looking for Connies.

“Come on.” I jerk the leash too hard, and Sandra stumbles.

I grip her by the elbow, trying to help her, but she hisses and flinches. She snaps with what’s left of her teeth and rakes at me with her bone-tipped fingers. I don’t let go. I can’t let her go.

They’re coming.

“Opal. Take the dog into the woods. Hide!”

I’m not positive they’ll take us if they find us, but they
will
take Sandra, and if we’re with her, I’m not sure what they’ll do. Something bad, for sure. I pull again on the leash at the same time I grab at the front of her nightgown. The fabric tears, and I let go before I rip it off completely.

“Sandra,” I say in a low, urgent voice, trying to keep calm. The lights on her collar are blinking. “Please, listen to me. We have to hide. The soldiers—”

Something triggers her then. With a snarl scarier than anything that came out of the puppy, Sandra batters me with feeble fists. She’s so weak, I have no trouble holding
her off, but the problem is that she won’t stop. Not out of fear, not from pain. It must hurt her terribly when she batters at me with her raw fingers, but she doesn’t even flinch. She won’t stop because she can’t control herself, and I can’t quite bring myself to punch or kick her even though she’s coming at me with snapping jaws and clawing fingers.

“Velvet!”

“Hide,” I tell my sister.

Opal ducks into a thicket of trees, fading into the shadows. Anyone looking hard could see her, but I hope the patrol won’t be looking hard. Connies don’t hide. They come after you, even if you’re an armed soldier in a truck.

I yank on the leash. Sandra stumbles again. This time, she goes to her knees. Her collar is blinking yellow. The rumble is louder, closer. She rolls, kicking and screaming, swiping at me. Her shoes come off. Her dirty toes snag my shins, and I jump back. I don’t want her to cut me—who knows what kind of infection I’d get from those toenails.

I don’t have a choice. Leaving her in the middle of the street, I dive into the weeds at the side of the road as the truck clears the hill. Shaking, Opal clings to the whining, struggling puppy. I clamp my hands over its jaw, hard as I can. It fights me, scratching, then calms when it can’t get away. I’m hurting it, but I can’t help that now.

The truck moves past the wreckage of the two cars without stopping. The soldiers probably checked it out before. Just past the wreck, the truck screeches to a stop,
inches from Sandra. She’s on her hands and knees now.

A soldier hanging from the back jumps off. “Got one! Hey, this one’s collared. Holy shit, lookit this, a leash.”

He yanks her to her feet without any scrap of gentleness. Sandra bats at him, but there’s nothing she can do. He pulls the leather taut, lifting her onto her tiptoes. The collar blinks, blinks, blinks.

More soldiers pour out of the truck. Most of them are laughing, nudging each other, and pointing at Sandra. One hangs back, his expression blank. He looks like he’s still in high school.

They circle her. Poking. Prodding. One tears the rest of her nightgown down the front, and it flaps open. She doesn’t even try to hold it closed, but she lashes out with fists and feet and teeth.

She staggers.

“Watch out,” one of the soldiers says, dancing back. “She’ll getcha!”

I want to run out and stop them, but instead I hold the squirming puppy still and pray none of the soldiers looks around. I nudge Opal to get her to look away. She’s crying, fat, silent tears sliding down her cheeks. She buries her face in the weeds and dead leaves.

Sandra’s collar beeps. I catch a flash of steady red glare from it; my stomach twists and I swallow thick, copper-tasting spit. The soldiers poke and laugh until she goes back to her knees. Then to her side, twitching and jerking. A
low, steady grunt filters from her. She writhes in the gravel, and none of them does anything to help her.

They watch her die.

When it’s over, one nudges her with his toe, then gestures at another two to grab her and put her in the back of the truck. One alone could’ve lifted her, I’m sure; there’s so little to her. But one grabs her feet, and the other slips his hands beneath her armpits. They toss her in the open back of the truck like she’s a sack of garbage. I hate them.

The one who didn’t laugh or take part has been scanning the side of the road. His gaze meets mine. I know he sees me. The recognition is instant and clear. In the next moment, his eyes glide away and he shouts to the others.

“C’mon, let’s finish this up!”

The soldiers get in the truck and drive away, leaving behind the stink of their exhaust and the fading sound of their laughter. I let go of the puppy, which whimpers and scuttles away from me to the protection of Opal’s arms. Opal sits, her face dirty and tear streaked. I sit, too, and turn and spit over and over until I’ve cleared the taste of blood from my mouth.

“Why?” Opal asks, but I have no answer. Her next question is what gets me to my feet, suddenly frantic. “What if they took Mama?”

WHEN OPAL AND I COME THROUGH THE FRONT
door, we find Mrs. Holly in the living room, knitting away like there’s not a thing wrong in the world. At least that’s what you might think if you didn’t notice that she’s just moving the needles back and forth, not actually doing anything with the yarn. She looks up, relief clear on her face, and puts aside the knitting. There’s a streak of what looks like blood on the edge of her nose, like it came down from her eye and she wiped it away, but missed some. At the sight, everything inside me turns cold, even though I’m still sweating.

“Thank God it’s you, girls. I thought it was the soldiers come back again.” She shakes her head and mutters something that I don’t need to speak Dutch to understand. The puppy sniffs everything, including Mrs. Holly, who laughs in surprise and bends to pet him. “Oh, where did you find this little love bug?”

“In one of the houses. We found chickens, too, but they were all dead.” Opal frowns. “Instead of Bokky, we should call our chicken Lucky.”

I want to ask Mrs. Holly what happened to her eye, but not in front of Opal. I flop onto the couch. “Where’s my mom?”

Her mouth goes tight. “She’s safe.”

I sit upright. “Safe?”

“They would’ve taken her,” Mrs. Holly says, “if they’d found her.”

“But … she’s not collared!” Frantic, I jump up.

She shakes her head again. “Now they are testing. They come here, banging on the door, saying they have the right to enter. They have kits with them. Test kits, you know. They say they are going to test us all.”

My shaking legs don’t want to hold me up. It’s what I’ve been afraid of since they started the random screenings. “Where is she?”

Mrs. Holly pushes herself to her feet. She points at the basement door. A vivid image of Sandra crouching on the concrete hits me like a hammer. Our basement is finished, but even so …

“She’s in the closet under the stairs. I was outside in the garden when I heard their trucks coming. I knew. I just knew.” Mrs. Holly’s voice shakes. “I made her go inside and hide. And I was right, Velvet. They had the test kits. They came in.”

She touches the inside corner of her eye, where now I can see a purpling bruise. “They used a thin needle. They say they can test everyone this way, much faster than before. No need to take anyone into a center to be hooked to machines. They can do it wherever they like.”

“Mama!” Opal’s at the head of the basement stairs. She gives me an accusing look. “I’m going to find her.”

Together, we go into the basement, which is darker than the one where we found Sandra. But we have battery-operated lanterns set up in different places, and using one, we open the accordion door to the closet beneath the stairs. This closet is full of odds and ends we haven’t used since moving back here. Old camping cots and sleeping bags, spare towels and sheets in plastic garbage bags that my mom used for us when we were sick enough to be on the couch instead of in bed, or for sleepovers.

One of my favorite movies, when I was a kid, was
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
. Finding my mom in the closet reminds me of the scene in which E.T. is hiding among stuffed animals. Mom’s covered up with blankets and towels, sitting patiently in the dark, but she pushes her way out when Opal calls for her.

Incredibly, she laughs as she struggles to get to her feet. She enfolds us, hugging hard. She strokes Opal’s hair and makes a face at the dirt.

She doesn’t have to talk to make herself understood. When my mom gets upstairs with us into the light, she
makes a face at Opal’s dirty skin and clothes, and sends her off to get washed up. Opal grumbles, but goes. My mom turns to me next, taking my face in her hands and turning it from side to side.

She hugs me close, patting my back over and over again. I cling to her, wishing I could tell her about the soldiers and Sandra, the man in the den, and be sure she understood. Then I decide it doesn’t matter if she knows what I’m saying, only that she listens to me say it. With Opal upstairs and Mrs. Holly puttering in the kitchen, I sit with my mom on the couch and tell her everything.

She holds my hands through the entire conversation. She doesn’t let go. And I know that even if she can’t answer me, my mom always knows how to make me feel better.

THE BRACELET DILLON IS WEARING REMINDS
me of the ones we used to get when we went to the water park. Plastic, with holes punched in it to fit any size wrist. This one’s bright green, and whoever put it on him made it a little too tight. I try to soothe the angry red line on his skin around the edge of the plastic, but there’s not much I can do about it or about the dark bruising on the inside of his eye socket. It’s not as bad as Mrs. Holly’s. Maybe the person who did Dillon’s test had a gentler hand.