Orleans Read online

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  AN IMPRINT OF PENGUIN GROUP (USA) INC.

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  A division of Penguin Young Readers Group.

  Published by The Penguin Group.

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  Copyright © 2013 by Sherri L. Smith. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission in writing from the publisher, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, Reg. U.S. Pat & Tm. Off. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Published simultaneously in Canada. Water splash photo copyright © 2013 by Okea. Water surface photo copyright © 2013 by Krystian Nawrocki.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Smith, Sherri L. Orleans / Sherri L. Smith. p. cm. Summary: “Set in a futuristic, hostile Orleans landscape, Fen de la Guerre must deliver her tribe leader’s baby over the Wall into the Outer States before her blood becomes tainted with Delta Fever”— Provided by publisher. [1. Science fiction. 2. Virus diseases—Fiction. 3. New Orleans (La.)—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.S65932Or 2013 [Fic]—dc23 2012009634 ISBN 978-1-101-60785-5

  For my mother,

  JOAN MARIE SMITH

  1937–2007

  Mother, Teacher, Survivor, Friend.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  BEFORE

  Timeline

  Excerpt from the Declaration of Quarantine

  Excerpt from the Declaration of Separation

  AFTER

  Part One: Tribe

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  Part Two: Freesteader

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  Part Three: Cheiftain

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  Part Four: Shepherd

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  SEPTEMBER 14, 2004

  EDMUND BROUSSARD MOUNTED THE STEPS TO the levee above the old Café Du Monde off of Jackson Square. The sky was pale and colorless above him, the grass a vibrant green at his feet as he faced the wide expanse of the rolling Mississippi River. Behind him, a handful of revelers on the ironwork balconies of the French Quarter could be heard drinking their Hurricanes and ignoring the voluntary evacuation order that had sent so many tourists home. The café was still serving their hot beignets and chicory coffee. A few persistent people strolled the green lawns of the square outside St. Louis Cathedral.

  Edmund opened the black case he carried in his left hand and pulled out his trumpet. The yellow brass reflected the city back on itself in the flat afternoon light. He put the horn to his lips and defiantly blew “When the Saints Go Marching In” into the unnaturally still air. He was not leaving New Orleans, no matter what the weathermen said. He was not leaving his home. New Orleans would stand against any storm that came her way. The TV crews loved it, the image of a lone man facing nature, refusing to bend.

  • • •

  Hurricane Ivan turned east, barely brushing the city with rain as it ran its devastating course along the coast of Alabama. It returned to the mouth of the Mississippi and faltered there. New Orleans was spared. Laissez les bons temps rouler. The fabled city that care forgot danced on.

  The next time, they were not so lucky.

  August 29, 2005

  HURRICANE KATRINA

  Saffir-Simpson Category 3 at landfall

  Casualties: 971; Survivors: 30,000

  September 14, 2014

  HURRICANE ISAIAH

  Saffir-Simpson Category 4 at landfall

  Casualties: 532; Survivors: 27,800

  August 25, 2015

  HURRICANE LORENZO

  Saffir-Simpson Category 3 at landfall

  Casualties: 1,432; Survivors: 22,345

  June 30, 2016

  HURRICANE OLGA

  Saffir-Simpson Category 5 at landfall

  Casualties: 2,022; Survivors: 20,323

  July 27, 2017

  HURRICANE LAURA

  Saffir-Simpson Category 4 at landfall

  Casualties: 1,371; Survivors: 18,952

  July 29, 2017

  HURRICANE PALOMA

  Saffir-Simpson Category 5 at landfall

  Casualties: estimated 3,500;

  Survivors: estimated 15,452

  October 20, 2019

  HURRICANE JESUS

  Category 6 at landfall,

  based on new Saffir-Simpson Scale

  Casualties: estimated 8,000;

  Survivors: estimated below 10,000

  AFTER THE STORM DEATHS CAME OTHER CASUALTIES: deaths by debris, cuts, tetanus, or loss of blood; suicide; heart attacks caused by stress of loss, or stress of rebuilding, or just as often from the lack of medicines used to treat common ailments. The list of no-longer-treatable diseases grew: diabetes, asthma, cancer. Domestic violence rose, along with murder.

  Then came the Fever.

  And the Quarantine.

  Excerpt from the

  DECLARATION OF QUARANTINE

  issued by FEMA and the Center for Disease Control,

  September 20, 2020:

  * * *

  For the safety of the population at large, we deem it advisable to seal off all storm-affected areas of the Gulf Coast region. No citizens or personnel will be allowed to cross the border without blood testing for Delta Fever. This is an epidemic of proportions we have not witnessed since the Spanish Influenza of 1918. The Quarantine will be reevaluated as the disease runs its course and we make progress toward treatment and a cure. Until then, all borders will be sealed.

  Excerpt from the

  DECLARATION OF SEPARATION,

  courtesy of the Smithsonian Collection,

  March 11, 2025:r />
  * * *

  Therefore it is with great regret and pain for our fellow citizens that the United States Senate has agreed to withdraw our governance of the affected states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. The shape of our great nation has been altered irrevocably by Nature, and now Man must follow suit in order to protect the inalienable rights of the majority, those being the right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, the foremost of those being Life.

  Signed this day, the Eleventh of March,

  Two Thousand Twenty-Five, in the presence of witnesses,

  The President of the United States of America

  The Senate of the United States of America

  The House of Representatives of the United States of America

  The Governor of the former State of Alabama

  The Governor of the former State of Florida

  The Governor of the former State of Georgia

  The Governor of the former State of Louisiana

  The Governor of the former State of Texas

  OCTOBER 30, 2056

  1

  THERE BE SEAGULLS CATCHING THE BREEZE overhead. I sneeze and wipe my nose on the back of my bare brown arm.

  “That’s the batch of it, Miss de la Guerre. The two books, the formula, and the bottle, genuine glass.” The smuggler McCallan point his boot at the things spread out on my blanket over the broken ground.

  We be near the Market, where the old levee used to be, across from St. Louis Cathedral. What once been a green hill now be a beach dune made of debris—everything from washing machines to refrigerators and old cars been hauled and dumped here trying to shore up the levee. But the land gave way when the river rose, and the junk be left behind. Daddy used to say you could give a history of the place just by looking at those layers of trash.

  Beneath us, on the river side of the hill, be a dusty gray beach of pulverized concrete, ground thin by storms. “The fabled cement beaches of Orleans,” McCallan call them. “Finer than the black volcanic sand of Hawaii, or the pink sugar sand of the old Caribbean.” I don’t know about that. Nothing left of Hawaii or the Caribbean since the water rose and the storms grew heated. It’d take a deep-sea diver just to find them. But Orleans still be here.

  I snort at the blanket and give McCallan a hard look. “And the blood, old man? I done give you a good, solid downpay on it. What about that?”

  McCallan’s eyes crinkle like he be laughing at me. He should know better. Grinning like a fool only make me angry. “Sorry, sugar, they were out of both positive and negative at the banks. There’s a blood supply shortage out there.” He wave his gloved hand behind him, toward the wall and the Outer States. “I ain’t risking my neck and smuggling to the Delta when I’m about to retire, now am I?”

  I fold my arms. “We had a deal. I need that blood.”

  McCallan shake his head. “We could use more with your fire back home,” he say. “I’ll be missing you, Miss de la Guerre, that’s for sure.”

  I’ll be missing him, too, though I won’t say it. McCallan an old guy, almost forty, but he smart. He been smuggling for more than ten years. He know who to bribe, where to breach the Wall, how to get over while the guard be changing, how to avoid the sniffer drones. I ain’t the only one he doing trade with, neither. His regulars know his goods be clean and fresh. He don’t sell dirty blood or fake medicine. Even after the government closed the Delta, he kept working—trading with the tribes. Delta Fever be harder to kill than a swamp fox. It be always changing, the way those little buggers switch back on they own trails. But if it stay confined to a blood type, if folks keep to theyselves by type of blood, then it slow down somehow. And that why folks like McCallan be necessary. Tribes ain’t able to mix together long enough for real trade.

  “I did my best, Miss Fen,” he say and spread his fingers with a shrug.

  I spit in the gravel and hold out my hand. “I want a refund.”

  McCallan sigh. “D’you want the stuff I got or no? I’ve come a long way and I’m not so sure anybody else is keen enough to buy these damn books off me. Baby Naming and The Developing Years. What are you up to, Fen? You’re not knocked up now, are you?” he ask, eyeing my belly.

  Shoot, skinny as I be, I sure as hell ain’t pregnant. Lydia say I’d pass for a boy, if not for the braids she do for me, all wrapped in a topknot on my head to keep out of the way.

  “Man, will you stop staring and just make good?” I say.

  McCallan blush inside his encounter suit, one of the old kind with thick, mucus-looking skin that turn orangey-yellow when the heat rise in his cheeks. I’d be like to suffocate in something so thick, hot as I already be in my cutoff shorts and tank top. My hiking boots be bugging me they so sweaty, but he be wearing that whole suit like a murky second skin.

  “Here, doll, take the books and the formula, the bottle.” He bend down to the blanket and roll it up for me. “And here’s your goods back.” He hand me back the little bag of gold I gave as down payment. Took a week to scrounge it all up from the teeth of the dead inside the Dome, while I been pretending to pray with the Ursulines.

  “I didn’t even melt it down yet, in case you weren’t pleased. Use it in the Market. Or better yet, find the O-Negs. They’ll charge high, but there’s blood to be bought and sold right here.”

  I shove the books into my pack and string the sack of gold around my neck to drop down my shirt. “We don’t do that,” I remind him.

  My tribe be O-Positive, or OP. And our chieftain, Lydia, don’t take kindly to the blood trade. O types don’t be needing transfusions like ABs do. The Fever be in us, but it ain’t eating O blood up from the inside like it do other types. So O types got to be extra careful of hunters and the farms where they be taking they kidnapped victims to drain them alive. O blood be the universal donor. If we give a drop, they be taking all of it. Lydia say that ain’t right. Only ones worse off than us be O-Negs.

  O-Negs don’t got the Rh, or Rhesus factor, that O-Positives do. Daddy use to say O positive be like coffee and O neg be like water. You can add water to coffee and it still be coffee, but you add coffee to water and it ain’t water no more. Everybody drink water, so O-Negs be used by everyone. Like the rhyme the nuns taught us about the Rules of Blood:

  Types AB, B, and A

  Need to stay away

  From O and from each other,

  Plus from minus, sister from brother.

  O positive can feed

  All positives in need,

  But O neg is the one

  For all tribes beneath the sun.

  I feel McCallan’s eyes on my arms as I pack up. He be looking at the shiny scars there along the insides of my arms, wrists to elbows and then some. Burn marks so thick, ain’t nobody ever gonna get a needle in the easy way. Not everybody got scars like me. But then again, not everybody willing to die. Somebody want to take my blood, they got to go through the veins in my neck or thigh. They can only bleed me once and I be dead. But that better than being a blood slave.

  McCallan shrug. “Best I could do,” he say.

  If I hadn’t burnt myself up like that, I could give my own blood to Lydia. If she bleed too much while birthing and need it, I’d do it without being asked. But I can’t or I be dead and she get no help from me after that.

  So I nod. “Fair enough.” Some choices, once you make them, they stay made. And I had my reasons.

  “You know, there used to be music here all the time,” McCallan say. He looking out across the city like he see someone he used to know and like. “Jazz and blues, zydeco. The kind of songs that made your heart sing.”

  It be my turn to shrug. “Not anymore,” I tell him. Music be a surefire way to bring the hunters down on you, or any other kind of trouble you don’t want.

  With a final nod, I hitch up my shorts, raggedy edges tickling at the tops of my thighs, and walk away. My old army pack be slung across my shoulders, and my work boots scatter little rocks as I pick my way down the trash heap, pa
st the ruins of Café Du Monde, toward the bright blue tarps of the marketplace.

  • • •

  The Market be bubbling with people today. It hot for October, and folks be all about, trading and swapping this for that. There be food vendors selling fruits and vegetables, fish, and sometimes wild pig, or stewing it up in big pots over wood fires. I can smell the cooking and hear the clamor, but most of it be hidden by the roof tarps, bright blue in the afternoon sun. The Market be right at the edge of the Mississippi, with her back up against the Old French Quarter. The streets behind us belong to the A-Positives now, but the Market been here in one way or another since before Orleans been Orleans, and it be for everyone.

  From the early days before the Wall, they been rotating security, this tribe one day, that tribe the next, keeping it fair and safe. Back when the Fever started, that the only way Os, As, Bs, and ABs could shop without catching they death from Fever. Shop on the day your tribe be guarding—if not your own tribe, then another of your type—and you be okay. Us O types, we can shop any day. Fever don’t run through us quite so bad as it do the rest of them.

  It be an AB day, and I see Harney and his boys messing with them AB girls like they got a chance. Harney be an OP like me, but that where the comparison end. He fifteen and brawny everywhere except the head. Them girls got tattoos, which mean they tribe with La Bête Sauvage. Only thing dumber than making trouble around one of La Bête’s girls be making one pregnant. ABs and Os make A or B babies. That just giving La Bête more children for his tribe, and that ain’t a good idea for us Os.

  “Harney,” I call him off. He come over reluctantly, long legs and arms shining with sweat in the sun. He only a year younger than me, but he listen when I call. That be the benefit of my experience. “Where Lydia at?” I ask.

  He shrug and look around like he nervous or something. “You know. Where she ever at on Market Day?”