There was a pause and I could imagine exactly what her face looked like—outraged.
“Open. This. Door.”
“Well—we might… be… sick.”
Silence. Then, “What? Why would you think that?”
I explained what I’d read in the newspapers. “After the first wave, the New World party wanted… survival of the fittest for the future. So they infected everything, everything with an… aerosolized virus. At least, that’s what this paper says. So everything in here after 2037 could have come in contact with the virus.”
My chest felt tight and I hoped that she would tell me to quit being stupid, open the door, of course there was no plague.
She didn’t. Instead there was an even longer pause, then: “What kind of plague? From where?”
Her words turned my heart to ice. They showed that she accepted this insane premise as a real possibility.
My soldier’s brain went on autopilot and I turned the page of the crumbling newspaper. “A virus,” I reported, running my finger down the page. “They spliced a virus with… like, yeast?” I read quickly, aware that Tim was taut with tension next to me. “The yeast allowed the virus to be dormant for a long time and then reactivate again in the right conditions.”
I thought of her, holding on to the rope ladder below the trapdoor, in the dark, thinking hard.
“What kind of conditions?” she asked.
“Like… in people,” I said shakily. “In other mammals. If that’s true and the virus came into contact with newspapers and clothes and stuff—then maybe Tim and I have breathed it in. Touched it. It could be reactivating. Inside us.”
She was silent for once.
I tried not to panic. “So, Tim and I should probably be quarantined in sick bay,” I said. “Just in case. And you might want to, you know, keep back a good distance.”
“No,” she said. “No, don’t come down.”
Tim and I looked at each other.
“We feel fine,” I clarified. “This paper is from a long, long time ago. I’m probably worried for nothing.” I clenched my fists, mentally begging her to tell me I was worried for nothing.
“You two will stay there,” she said. “I’ll have supplies brought to you. You are to stay up there until we know for sure it’s safe for you to come down.” Her voice already sounded farther away, as if she was climbing down the ladder.
“What?” Tim said loudly, pounding the trapdoor. “I’m not staying here! I can’t even stand up straight!”
“You’ll stay there!” she shouted from down below. “I’ll post guards, so don’t try anything. We can’t risk you infecting the entire camp.”
This plague was so dangerous, Ms. Strepp was willing to reveal the secret room? My mouth dropped open as I pictured Tim and me dying in this filthy attic, surrounded by junk.
“The things you’re discovering are hugely important, Cassie and Tim,” she called up, sounding just a touch softer. “You’re providing crucial pieces of the puzzle. It’s exactly what I need you to do.”
I looked at Tim: We were thinking the same thing. She meant, even if we died doing it.
45
BECCA
AFTER THE FIELD OF GRAVES, we started climbing some rocky hills, still headed east. Mills, scouting ahead, found a cave barely big enough to hold all of us. After some tense discussion, Nate and I agreed that we could light a fire near the mouth of the cave.
“Use only the driest wood you can find,” I instructed my squad. “The drier it is, the less smoke it puts off.”
We sat around the small fire, our hands and feet stretched out to it as we ate our dried rations.
“What could have killed so many people all at once?” Bunny asked. “A bomb? A disease?”
“War?” Nate suggested, moodily poking at the fire.