Orleans Page 5

  Mr. Go knew my mama and daddy, back when they still at the Institute with the Professors. Back when Orleans ain’t seem so bad. I been looking for Mr. Go the first time I found myself alone and naked in these woods. By then, I started to learn what the nuns say. The city take. Don’t know if God receive, though.

  Hunters took my parents. Almost took me, too, but Daddy knew what they do to little girls like me on blood farms, so he say run, and I ran. Into the swamps, ’til the dogs don’t be chasing me no more. And I kept going, but it got dark and I got lost and I ain’t find my way for days. Maybe ’cause I been so little, I don’t know, but the forest weren’t the same without my parents showing me the way.

  I been making my way to Mr. Go, but other folks found me first. To get to Mr. Go, you got to pass through some bad territory. If you see little children, you best head the other way. Back then, I been a kid myself. Didn’t seem dangerous, little kids all together, full bellies and smiling faces. I learned my lesson. I ain’t looking to learn it again. So I be careful this time.

  Mr. Go brought me to Lydia and gave me a home. Halfway to Father John, he be the best place to rest. I feel so tired just thinking it, even though I know I dozed in the night. I want so bad to be there, safe and sound. But nothing more useless than a wish in Orleans. It don’t watch your back or feed you, that for sure. Only I can do that.

  Baby Girl and I close enough to camp now that I can see it still smoldering. Nothing left standing anymore. Lucky for me, the fire ain’t gone as far as my hiding tree. I look up and there it be, my pack in the branches, tied tight against any hungry birds. I untie the baby and she start up crying when I lay her on the ground. It be okay, though. This place a graveyard now. Nobody here but ghosts. I shinny up the tree to the lowest branch, find my tie line, and cut it. The pack drop from the tree like old fruit, and I be glad I put the baby out of reach of the fall.

  I scoop up Baby Girl and tie her back to my chest. She snuggle close. In summer, Orleans be steaming like a pot of stew, but it close to winter now. Never mind the heat at midday, it still be getting cold. Together, we crouch down over the sack and I see what I came for: that glass baby bottle from McCallan, wrapped in a sack to keep from breaking, and two cans of powdered baby formula that took me over a month of scavenging to trade for at the Market. We got all kinds of canned stuff in the Delta, left in warehouses and big food stores after the storms. Some be hidden underwater, and the best divers get it, the ones can hold they breath the longest. But diving in a sunken store be worse than a cargo ship, ’cause they ain’t meant to be underwater and a beam of metal be just as heavy today as it been fifty years ago.

  Sometimes the water pull back and a grocery store be lying there like bones on the beach. Can scavengers, the little Japanese women from the Market, they go into the small places and pull cans out, clean ’em off, and if they ain’t damaged, it be safe enough to eat. The Delta got all kinds of things, Lydia say, enough to last a hundred years if the cans hold up that long.

  I got the formula as a gift, ’cause she been so busy saving the world and everything, ain’t always gonna have time to be breast-feeding the baby. I’d have been Lydia’s nanny when she needed, bottle-feeding the baby when we in powwow or whatever. Long as Lydia needed me, I’d do what I could.

  I look at the tiny baby in the shirt tied ’cross my chest. She don’t look a thing like Lydia, all purple and blotched and tight in the face. She ain’t beautiful or strong or nothing. Maybe she take after her daddy, whoever he be, but to me, she not worth the life of our chief.

  Still, I made a promise.

  There be bottles of water in the sack. Only three, but that still be something. I read the can and mix it up in the baby bottle, put on a nipple, and stick it in the baby’s mouth. She don’t like it at first, and I know it be cold, but not much I can do for that. After a minute she still ain’t taking it, so I put the bottle in my waistband and stuff the rest of the formula and water in my pack. The day be wasting. If she don’t mind not eating now, I don’t, neither. My back gonna be hot and sweaty by the time I get her mama buried. If I keep the bottle against me, maybe later it be warm enough for her to drink.

  I put Baby Girl down one more time and rip three holes in the seams of the sack the glass bottle been wrapped in. I pull it over my head. It fit me like a tank top now, rough and prickly, but it give me a bit of warmth. I tie the baby back on against me, pull my backpack over my shoulders, and take a last look around before heading back to Lydia’s waiting grave.

  • • •

  By the time we reach the stream, the baby be fussing, so I give her the bottle again and watch while she take it. She got a strong pull on the nipple, which be good. Books I been reading say that important. She know how to feed. She hungry, too. She take the whole bottle and a little more besides. I tuck the rest of the second bottle away in my waistband, burp the baby, and settle her on the ground between the roots of the tree.

  With one of my knives, I cut clay from the edge of the stream, making rough bricks of it. I carry them back to the tree by the armful. It take half the day, but there be enough to seal Lydia inside the tree. I don’t say any special words or sing. If we had a tribe, they’d be doing all that. But there be no going back when the hunters come down on you.

  I don’t look at Lydia’s face when I put in the final brick of clay. I smooth it over with my fingers and press the clay into place, then carve into it with the knife, an X in place of a cross. In the top crook of the X, I put the number one. To the left I scratch an F, to the right a plus sign. At the bottom, an O. One Female O Positive. The only marker most of us get in Orleans. Don’t matter that she once been a chieftain of a tribe. That she had a baby, or that she been the only person truly good to me. She dead now. That be what counts.

  There be folks who should know about it. Mr. Go, maybe the Ursulines so they ain’t expecting her at the hospital tent no more. But that gonna have to wait. For now, I got a baby to care for, and a promise to keep.

  Lydia’s baby been staying quiet through all of it, but she be rustling now, fixing to cry, no doubt. I rinse my hands in the stream and scoop her back into my arms. When she settle down, I head deeper into Orleans.

  This still be a crescent city. It still curve with its arms wrapped around the river. I be walking west, where most of the people be. I don’t want people now, but I’m gonna need more food, and shelter. On my own, I’d be at Mr. Go’s by now. But taking time for Lydia and walking with a baby in my arms make it slower going than usual. Dry land ain’t always dry here, and I can’t be dragging this child through Delta water. We pass canals what used to be roads and swamp what used to be dirt. We skirt the swamps and it take time. At this rate, we ain’t getting to Mr. Go’s ’til midday tomorrow, especially with night coming on. So we stuck, unsheltered and unfed.

  I search the trees and brush as we travel, looking for fruit, for anything I can eat. Stupid, Fen. I should have taken some mirliton off Lydia’s vines at the back of camp. But I ain’t going back now.

  I hear something in the distance; sound like someone walking through the brush. It ain’t fast, so I know it ain’t dogs, but it mean somebody out there. I hear him talking, though he far away. Birds be silent right now and a voice can carry. I drop down low and find a fallen log to slide under, pray the baby don’t cry. But she look up at me and I see it coming.

  I reach back behind me, under the pack, and pull out the second bottle in my waistband. It ain’t hot, like I been hoping, but it warm enough and the baby be waving her fist at me, so I stick the nipple in her mouth and she take it.

  The leaves be thick here, and this old tree gave up its life only to turn into a foxhole, soft and quiet, covered with fungus and bright green moss. I hold on to Baby Girl and curl up deeper. It be a hidden place, as good as any. Be safer up in a living tree, but not with the baby. Can’t climb with her on my chest, and it ain’t safe slinging her across my back in this makeshift thing.

  Overhead, I see the outline of a
boat stuck in the trees, like a bird resting on a branch. Look to be a shrimping boat; still got the nets spread like moth wings in the leaves—I shake my head just looking at it.

  It dangerous, the storm fall that still be hanging in the high branches, tossed there by them killing winds. Sometimes the branches give way, and before you know it, there be a boat falling on your head, or a piece of house, or a hunk of car if you in a neighborhood where they ain’t all gone to rust. I hear the first few drops of rain spatter down on the leaves around us. The wind be picking up now with the shower. Above me, I hear that boat creaking and it give me the shivers. Plenty of people killed by trash in the trees, but it give me an idea.

  The baby finish her bottle. I rub her back ’til she burp up some milk, and I wipe it with the edge of my sackcloth. The moss be thick, so I take some and tuck it in around her bottom beneath her swaddling. It gonna have to do ’til I find more cotton to wrap her in a diaper.

  She seem happy enough with the moss, and she fall asleep fast.

  Once she quiet, I move out.

  Three things be sacred in Orleans, and a girl with a baby alone in the woods ain’t one of ’em. Places of the dead, like the potters’ fields and the Dome, be one. Only the Ursulines or tribal counsels be going there, but I don’t like the idea of being surrounded by dead people right now. The second place be the Market. But the Market ain’t safe for me tonight, with my own tribe attacked and the ABs on guard duty. I ain’t going there ’til I know my situation better. That leave me with: church.

  Churches, temples, whatever still be standing that used to have a god—for some reason, folks be respecting that well enough. Orleans proper, over by the Market and Uptown, had more churches than the woods have trees at some point or other. There be enough still that a body can find some rest in the middle of the city. But where we at be swamp and thicket, foxholes and sinking mud.

  I pick my way through dry land knowing that, sooner or later, there got to be a stilt house in these woods. Hanging in the branches like storm fall, they built to last, easy to rebuild, and stay high above the flood line. Some be hunting blinds kept by tribes for sighting boar and deer. I’d take one of them, too, if it be empty, but you always risk someone finding you. Better if you find a church.

  I almost pass it before I know it be there. Built on the legs of four close-grown trees, with a rope ladder tied to the side of the largest trunk. I look up and the rain splash my face as it fall, soft and light, through the trees. Clouds be purpling to deep blue now, but I can make it out, a square cypress hut wedged into the trunks, like a hunting blind, but with a tiny cross atop the roof to show you this be a house of God.

  I jump up and tug the rope ladder free from where it be looped to a stub of branch. It unravel into two ropes knotted to cross ropes every couple of feet to help with climbing. This’d be easier without a baby strapped to my chest, but a lot of things be easier without that. At least it don’t be like hugging a tree trunk. I hop onto the swinging ladder and let it bounce itself out. It be awkward, leaning so the rope don’t rub against the baby, but I do it. Then I shinny, slower than I’d like, all the way up to the trapdoor in the floor of the church.

  7

  DANIEL DRAGGED HIS JETSKIP OUT OF THE water. It was late afternoon now, the sun nothing but a pale pearl behind a sheet of gray sky. He dragged the skip through the soft mud of the bog, leaving a trail in the mossy grass that pooled with dark brown water swirled with bright yellow-green foam. In the distance he could just make out the silhouette of a building.

  Daniel released a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. So far, the old smuggler had not let him down. The gap in the Wall had been where he said it would be. The jetskip had done its job, too, pulling him through the bayou that formed a moat on the Orleans side of the wall. On land, however, the skip was too heavy to carry, but Daniel wasn’t worried. If he hid it well enough in the woods, there was no reason to believe it wouldn’t be safe. Orleans was all but deserted these days, from what he had heard.

  A few minutes later, heading southeast, he could see more than just the bulky shadow of the building through the trees. It was odd—one moment, he was thick in the bayou, the next, on a street in the middle of town. He marched through the skinny trees and came out on the edge of a crumbling parking lot. Civilization, he thought, or what passed for it these days.

  He switched the definition on his goggles, refocusing on the shape blotting out the rain clouds overhead. The building looked like some sort of storage facility or megastore, with three walls still standing and a chestnut oak growing through the shattered roof. Tide lines marked the brick sides of the building like stone strata in a canyon, showing where the floodwaters rose and left their mark, higher each time, and now streaked with mold so virulent, it left black and green marks like rings around a dirty bathtub. He tromped forward to investigate.

  It had been some sort of warehouse after all, with two cavernous rooms inside. The metal doors on the front of the building were still standing, but twisted to the side. The wall itself had tumbled in, a pile of large, dusky bricks, made deeper red by an earlier rain shower. Daniel looked around. The building fronted on a wide street, maybe a highway once, that ran level to the buildings. The pavement was shattered with cracks. Rich mud oozed out between the floes of asphalt, like dark blood on ashen skin.

  Daniel went into the room with the tree growing inside. The roof was gone, but otherwise, the space itself was intact. The tree was young by oak standards, but still large enough to take up a good ten feet of the room between its sprawling roots. Daniel scanned the room, but found no sign that anyone had been here in a long time. There was a nook in the tree roots that was large enough to hide the jetskip.

  Daniel dropped his duffel and returned to the woods where the skip lay waiting. He took care to carry rather than drag it to the warehouse. His footprints in the carpet of moldering leaves made him nervous enough. A deep groove leading up to the doorway would have raised curiosity in the idlest of passersby, or predators. The city might be dead, but that didn’t mean the woods were.

  The last census was taken nearly fifteen years ago, and best estimates put the surviving population in the Delta region at eight thousand, approximately sixty-five hundred in or near the environs of the former city of New Orleans. And that was a generous estimate, given the easy transmission of Delta Fever, the hundreds of other hazards in the damaged city, and the lack of proper medical care. Blood transfusions, a common treatment for the Fever, were notoriously dangerous in the field, where blood could not be spun clean in centrifuges and separated from the plasma. A field transfusion could result in death from fatty deposits, liver damage, and even heart attacks. Daniel doubted the census guesstimates had factored in all of the ways a person could die. Even so, eight thousand people—that was less than a full football stadium, less than the student body of his university, and he had avoided hanging out with most of them rather easily. Navigating the empty streets of Orleans should be simple enough.

  The New in New Orleans had been dropped after the second chain of storms, when the Fever was at its worst. It had been before Daniel’s time, but he wouldn’t be surprised to learn it was a publicity ploy or a media joke. There had been attempts to re-create New Orleans in the surviving South. Somewhere near Charleston, a private island was sold to the government with plans to relocate the more historical structures, and many of the city’s people. But Hurricane Lorenzo had dispensed with those plans. The first ground-breaking had been interrupted by a hurricane warning late enough in the season to take people by surprise, and the government had pulled its funding. Daniel knew this because the island, now simply known as Folly Island, had been one of the places he and his team were allowed to collect environmental samples. Not quite the same flora as you would find in the Delta, and certainly not the same mix of toxins in the water, but as close as one could get outside of the quarantine zone. It was like a theme park version of the real place, Daniel thought.

  H
e accessed the datalink strapped to his wrist.

  INQUIRY: Entered city at coordinates 56 SW 32 NE. Draw map to Institute of Post-Separation Studies from here.

  RESPONSE: Feeding coordinates now. Instructions on screen.

  Daniel tweaked his goggles again. A red line appeared on the green overlay of the city. The map was hopelessly out of date, but the main features would be the same. Especially for a landmark that important. Assuming it was still there, a cynical voice said inside his head.

  The Institute of Post-Separation Studies had been established shortly before the Wall went up. Staffed with scientists willing to dedicate their lives to the cause, the goal of the Institute was to study the closed environment of Orleans—socially and medically. He knew the official charter was to study intergroup relations after the residents were divided into groups by blood type. They had an interdisciplinary goal of understanding social bias and hate crimes—if people divided along medical lines, would race or gender matter?

  In the early days, data flowed freely from the Institute to data banks at universities across the States. But by the time Daniel was in school, the information had all but dried up. He was convinced the Institute still existed, in records if not in people. His goal was to mine their data and solve the riddle of Delta Fever.

  Daniel’s excitement flared up again. He dragged some vines over the jetskip and shouldered his duffel, relocating its dangerous payload to an inner pocket of his coat for safekeeping. It was risky, traveling with the vials of his fatal virus, even secured as they were in their casing. But it would have been riskier to leave the vials behind where a supervisor or routine inspection might stumble across them, with the virus still in its weaponizable state. With luck, the Institute would have the equipment he needed to continue working. If not, at least the vials would be safe.