Orleans Read online

  Blood hunters won’t burn a smuggler. And they don’t hardly ever use them for farming, neither. They too valuable a resource, able to get across the Wall, provide things we ain’t got here. There be fewer smugglers these days, so this one be worth that much more if he go free. He just gotta show that suit and he can make a deal to walk. It be a wonder he don’t know it. But maybe he afraid they take his suit. And then he be exposed, toxic like the rest of us, and he die anyway. That an asset for me, then. He still got a reason to be afraid.

  I put Baby Girl in the sling and cradle her with me when I creep over to see him.

  “Eh la bas,” I say again real low. He be looking at me as I crab-crawl across the floor. I don’t want to stand up ’less they see me through them windows. I crawl over and sit next to him on the floor. “Ça va?”

  He stare at me, tilting his head like he listening to someone that ain’t here. Then he sit up. “Yes?”

  His voice pop a little like static.

  “Hey, mister, you want to get out of here?”

  The smuggler nod.

  “Then we got to work together.”

  He hesitate, then nod again. “What’s your name?”

  I look at him and shake my head. A name ain’t gonna save my skin. “You want to leave, we leave together. What you got?”

  He stare at me like he don’t understand, and I point to his coat, his rags, the pockets I can see in the dawning light. “What you got?” I ask again.

  He follow my gaze and I see he understand. “Uh . . . a datalink, my suit. A compass and a chronometer.” He look worried. “They took my duffel, and the rest of my gear is, uh . . . elsewhere.”

  I crab-walk back to my corner to think. He start to follow, but I wave him away. A compass and a watch ain’t much, but they be assets, too. A datalink. We don’t got that in Orleans, so I don’t know what to make of it.

  “Eh, mister, what the datalink do?” I whisper to him.

  He push up his coat sleeve and show me a sheet of black plastic wrapped around his wrist like a cuff. “It’s a computer. It translates for me, analyzes things, and acts as a guidebook.”

  “It got a rescue beacon?” I seen beacons in the bayou sometimes, marked with a smuggler’s sign. If they left behind, it ’cause the smuggler either been rescued or they dead, but every smuggler got at least one, if he smart and he work with a team.

  His face fall. “No. It’s not a transmitter, just a guidebook. And a translator.”

  I shake my head. No use to me. I speak patois, French, English, and some Chinese and whatnot from trading with the Asians in Shangri-Lo. I be learning Spanish. And I know the city better than some. A rescue beacon be worth all that right now, but it ain’t what we got.

  The baby kick in my lap and I see she made a mess in her diaper. She be too young for it to stink yet, but it black and sticky. I wipe her down with a strip of my sack shirt and replace the moss with a rolled-up piece of sack.

  The third rule of escape: Assess your weaknesses.

  Well, I got a baby. I got a smuggler who be as useless as a baby. I ain’t eaten proper since I vomited up that stew. I got no food and no diapers. And we running out of time. There got to be something else.

  “What they call you?” I ask the smuggler.

  He look surprised. “Daniel,” he say without even thinking.

  “Daniel and the lions’ den.”

  “What?”

  “That story, Daniel and the lions’ den. He be thrown to the lions for keeping his faith, but they won’t eat him ’cause he been doing right by his god.”

  Daniel sort of shudders and I think he laughing. “That’s supposed to comfort me?”

  I shrug. “Only if you doing right.”

  “What’s your baby’s name?” he ask. He be relaxing more, thinking I got a plan. I look down at Baby Girl and shake my head.

  “Don’t know yet.” There a lot I don’t know about Baby Girl right now. I don’t even know if she an OP like me. She could take after her daddy, and I ain’t knowing who he be, either.

  “How old is she?” he ask. I know he being polite, but I ain’t gonna say. Maybe he help me out of here, or maybe he just use me to get free. I sure be using him if I find a way. They won’t know Baby Girl clean ’til they type her. That buy me some time.

  He see me staring him down and look away. “It would be good to know a lion right now,” he say. That make me snort. Then I think of what he say about his equipment.

  “What you smuggling? Something worth a trade? Them hunters have lots of needs you can negotiate.”

  Daniel shake his head. “It’s not like that. I—I’m not a smuggler. I’m . . .” He look at his lap and I feel my belly go sour.

  “You a tourist? You buy a suit and come over the Wall for vacation?” I don’t sound angry, but I am. I’ma die a blood slave, and this fool over here on holiday. Him and his damn fool datalink. If it ain’t gonna call for help, it no use to us.

  “I’m not a tourist,” he say defiantly.

  “Then what?”

  He drop his head back against the wall and look up at the ceiling. “It’s a long story,” he say.

  “You got somewhere to be?”

  He straighten up. “Yes. Do you have a way out of here?”

  I think of Daddy’s lessons, and the rules of escaping, and how I just got myself a new asset. “Yeah.”

  “Care to share?”

  I bounce Baby Girl on my knee. She fed and she be falling asleep again. The sun be rising, and soon it be full morning. “Everybody in bed now but the day shift. They doctors, nurses, not the big men. When they open that door, we going to walk out.”

  “How are we going to do that?”

  “Easy,” I tell him. “You a leper, and I got a baby. Do what I tell you when I say. Then we just gotta wait.”

  15

  DANIEL HAD HIS OWN WAY OUT. IT CAME IN SIX vials tucked away in his coat. If he just opened one of the vials and waited, it would kill everyone in this compound—the blood hunters, the other prisoners. The girl. Her baby. Everyone except him. One little vial and Daniel could go free. Part of him was almost scared enough to do it. He didn’t owe Orleans anything. They were all as good as dead here anyway. He still had his work to do. He could return home and spend the rest of his life tucked away in a lab, looking for the cure, like so many great scientists before him. All he had to do was wipe the slate clean.

  But he couldn’t. Because there was a baby, and a girl. And enough dead in Orleans already. He almost wept in relief when she said she had a plan.

  The girl looked so unconcerned, sitting there like this was an everyday occurrence for her, being kidnapped in the middle of the night. But maybe this was normal in Orleans. Daniel thought over the girl’s plan. It might work, but he doubted it. There were too many people with a reason to stop them for it to be that easy.

  And even if it did work, what good would it do him? They had crossed the river getting here. He would never find his way to the Institute or the Wall on his own. He needed more information, or escape was moot.

  “Where are we?” he asked the girl, hoping he didn’t sound too desperate. If she thought she had something over him, it could make things more difficult.

  The girl stuck her chin out, jabbing it toward the datalink cuff around his wrist. “Ain’t that tell you?”

  He shook his head. His maps were limited to the city, not wherever this place was, across the river.

  “We in Algiers, best I can say. Edge of East Orleans.”

  Daniel tried to access his maps for anything outside the city center. Nothing came up. He sighed and hoped the girl was willing to bargain. “I’m looking for a place called the Institute of Post-Separation Studies. Have you heard of it? Can you take me there?”

  The girl stared at him for a beat, then shook her head, laughing. “Boy, I got my own troubles. I ain’t no tour guide.”

  Daniel clenched his fist in frustration. “I’ll trade for it. I have supplies.”


  The look she gave him was appraising, but not friendly. “What you got you think I need?”

  Daniel shrugged. “All sorts of things—bottled water, food packs. Clothes. I could give you a new shirt.”

  For the first time, the girl seemed to notice she was half naked, with nothing more than a cloth sack for a shirt. She stuck her chin out defiantly. “Don’t see none of that on you.”

  “Well, not on me. I left my stash in a building across the river, west of here. I don’t have maps of this area. If . . . if we get out of here, and you take me to the Institute, then we can go to my stash and I’ll give you whatever you need.”

  The girl snorted and looked away. She was just some dumb kid, Daniel realized. She’d probably never even heard of the Institute, let alone know how to get there.

  “The Professors be all but dead,” she said finally. Her eyes focused on him. Maybe she wasn’t so dumb after all. “What you want with them?”

  “That’s . . . that’s my business,” he said. “The Institute? That’s where these Professors live?”

  “And die, too,” she said. “Ain’t no help for you there. Besides, that a long way to go for nothing but a new shirt. That ain’t reason enough.”

  What else could he offer her? What more could she want? “I could get your baby over the Wall.”

  The girl’s face faltered for a second, and Daniel held his breath. Then she frowned. “Fool, you locked up here and all but killed. What make you think I’ma trust this baby to you?”

  Daniel thought of the vials of virus in his coat again. Using them would be genocide. He had to find another way. “You said you needed my help to escape. Well, I need you to get me to these Professors or I’m still stuck here. Help me and I’ll help you.”

  She sighed, almost imperceptibly. “Where you put your stuff? You say west?”

  Daniel’s eyes narrowed. It was one thing to ask for help, another to ask for trust.

  “Mister, look,” the girl snapped. “Daniel,” she said, softer this time. “I know you scared. Me too. And I got this baby to take care of. I got to do right by her, not just you and me.”

  We all have to do what’s right, Daniel thought.

  “You don’t deserve to be here no more than we do, so we gonna work together and get out of here. Then I get you to the Professors. And that be that.”

  Daniel watched the girl and the baby in her lap, thinking of what doing the right thing had cost him so far.

  “My name is Fen de la Guerre,” she told him suddenly. “I am an O-Positive.”

  The way she said the words sounded formal, like a ritual.

  INQUIRY: What is significance of blood type in the Delta?

  RESPONSE: Blood type is identity in the Delta. It indicates tribe and potential value of blood, if type is rare or useful. It can imply a tribal challenge, or an act of trust. Type AB is the rarest, but O is a universal donor, and therefore of increased value.

  “Fen . . .” Daniel sat up and cleared his throat. “Thank you,” he said. Trust might come slowly, but they both needed it if they were going to get out of here alive.

  “Mister—Daniel. You say that thing on your wrist analyze stuff. Do it read blood types?”

  Blood types, chemical compounds, air quality. The datalink was a very sophisticated computer, even if it was self-contained. “I suppose so,” he said.

  “Trade, then. You type Baby Girl, and I get you outta here, safe and sound.”

  “But we already—” he started to protest. How could he trust her if she kept changing their agreement?

  “Keep your shirt, and your water. It don’t matter to me as much as this.”

  He hesitated. “Bring her here.”

  Fen tucked the baby back in her sling and slid over to him. “Do it hurt?”

  “No,” he said, pulling up his coat sleeve to reveal the full datalink. Raising his arm, he showed her the scanning plate, a rectangle on the bottom like smooth green glass. “Look. It reads things from here without breaking the skin.”

  Daniel motioned to Fen and she held the baby’s hand up. Gently, he pressed it to the scanning plate and his arm lit up like fireflies weaving in the dark as the datalink screened the baby’s blood. Then it clicked softly and he let go of the baby’s hand. The datalink whispered the information into his head.

  “She’s O positive. Like her mother,” he said with a smile, wondering if the news was a relief. He couldn’t tell by the look on Fen’s face.

  Suddenly, the door handle twisted, the lock clicking open with a heavy grinding noise. Daniel cowered and Fen flinched, setting the baby to crying again.

  “Daniel,” Fen hissed. “Get down.” She motioned for him to lie down and feign sleep.

  Between slitted eyelids, Daniel watched Fen reach into the hay pile behind her, pulling out the moss she had removed from the baby’s diaper. And then he understood her plan. Newborns didn’t process food into feces, but a black thick substance called meconium. Quickly, Fen smeared it into the corners of her eyes, mixing it with spit until she had streaks down her face.

  Daniel recoiled, but lay still. Trust, he reminded himself. It wasn’t like he had any other options.

  The door swung open and a man in a dirty white lab coat appeared, needles in his hand.

  Daniel saw the man glance in his direction, then turned to Fen, who sat with her head tucked down, face hidden from view.

  “Come on, girl. We need to type your baby,” he said, and reached for her. Fen rose, head down.

  “Get me outta here, mister,” she pleaded. “That man a leper. He making me sick.”

  She stepped closer. Daniel braced himself. Maybe he could rush the door, take the man off balance.

  Then Fen screamed, “He killing me!”

  She thrust her face into the lab man’s, black ooze leaking from her eyes, and he screamed, falling out of the door. Daniel didn’t hesitate. He leapt to his feet, moaning the way his brother had, ravaged by Delta Fever. They both groaned and stumbled out into the main room, but the man in the lab coat was nowhere to be seen. There was one other attendant, but he had no weapons. One look at Fen’s face and Daniel’s rags, and the man cursed and ran. The old smuggler had been right about the leper rags after all.

  Daniel raced after Fen out of building 17. To the left lay the road into the camp toward the cook fires, all cold now in the morning light. A dog started to bark, and Daniel wondered how long it would be before the hunters woke up and caught them again. The lab men were halfway across the yard, calling for help, calling them infected. Daniel followed Fen’s lead, staggering and moaning until they were close to the back fence, more a log pile than a real structure. They clambered over the logs, Daniel clumsily, Fen surprisingly agile even with the baby slung across her chest. Then they were out of the farm and in the woods. They ran.

  16

  WE LUCKY. THEY DON’T BE COMING AFTER US right away, and there be a stream right behind the farm. I splash into the water and run across it, then back again. “Follow me,” I call. Daniel not so limber, but he do the same.

  When our scent be on both sides of the stream, I run back into the middle where it deep enough to almost hit my waist, and I run best I can with water pulling at me. We go upstream, far away from the farm, and I don’t be hearing no dogs because, as much as a new baby might be worth, they think we infected. In they mind, we a waste of fuel if they got to burn all three of us.

  When we gone far enough I think we out of danger, I crouch by that stream to wash my face and scrub and scrub ’til I can stand to stop. Baby Girl be thinking it a game ’cause she waving her arms in the air and punching her fists and I think she be happy, maybe. If a body that young even know what happy be like.

  Daniel sit on a log beside me and check his suit for tears.

  “You alive, Daniel. I done my part.”

  He maybe grinning or scowling, the suit make it hard to see. But he nod a bunch of times and try to catch his breath. I look up at the sky. The sooner I be done with th
is fool, the sooner I can get Baby Girl to Father John. He the only one who can get her out of Orleans alive. Which be more than this boy can hope for. City always been easier to get into than out of for smugglers. But that be his problem, not mine.

  “You still want the Professors? I can take you to your stash instead and you can get outta here.”

  He take a deep breath, like he making a big decision. “The Professors,” he say, and his filtered voice sound even flatter out in the open with no walls to bounce off.

  “Okay then.” I wipe my hands on my pants and tighten Baby Girl’s sling.

  • • •

  There be only a few ways to cross the Mississippi from here. One be that barge the hunters use. Too soon for me to get on that thing again, plus it likely they be waiting for us there if they waiting anywhere. The other way be a mud skiff. Sometimes there be crabbers and shrimpers in the river, but mostly they on the lake or the Gulf. What you see more of be them Chinamen and they junks, plying the river and mudflats for clams and oysters.

  The shellfish beds be real big ever since Hurricane Jesus, like the mud been mixed up just right. First few years after the big ones, the water been poisoned. All them bottom- feeders been toxic. The military been dropping food supplies back then. Still, lots of folks got sick or starved. But the shellfish done they job eventually, cleaning up the river. Daddy told me there ain’t been oysters this big since the white man first came to this country. Father John call it a gift from God. Mr. Go say it be Nature taking care of herself. I don’t know ’bout that, but I know we can get a Chinaman to take us across the river for a fee. We just gotta find something worth trading.

  “What part of the States you from?” I ask Daniel. If Baby Girl going over the Wall soon, it can’t hurt to know what it be like.

  “East coast,” Daniel say. He still breathing kind of hard, and I wonder if it ’cause of the suit. “Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina. I’ve moved around.”

  I repeat the names in my head. “Sound exotic.”