Authors: Heather Sunseri
chapter twenty-three - Cricket
chapter twenty-seven - Cricket
chapter thirty-three - Cricket
chapter thirty-seven - Cricket
EMERGE
Heather Sunseri
http://heathersunseri.com
Copyright © 2015 Heather Sunseri
eBook Edition
Sun Publishing
Edited by David Gatewood
Cover by Mike Sunseri
This work is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review or article.
Also by Heather Sunseri
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Mindsurge
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Emerge
“The Meeting” (An
Emerge
short story)
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For Dad
Life first began to disintegrate, for me anyway, on the day the president of New Caelum suspended all travel in and out of the United States, thereby closing off the last bit of hope that my parents would ever return to me.
I developed a fever two days later.
Three weeks after that, I became the first and only person out of millions to survive the disease that decimated the population.
I ran from the president, all of her people, and the city that should have kept me safe.
Not to be heard from again.
I was twelve.
~~~~~
The sound of the incinerator jolted me from sleep. It took little more than a second for the low rumble of the machine to register in my brain, and it took less than a millisecond after that for me to register what the sound meant.
I nudged Dax. “There it is again. That’s three nights in a row.” I quickly threw dirt over the remaining ashes of the campfire.
“Shit, Cricket. They’re just burning trash.” Dax was tucked in the sleeping bag next to mine, his arm bent over his head trying to drown out any and everything that might disturb him from a few hours of sleep. “Get some sleep.” He rolled over and burrowed his head further under the covers.
Nina rose on her elbows across the fire pit that had now been reduced to nothing more than a pile of charred logs and a thick ribbon of smoke. She shook her head. “It’s going to get cold quickly.” She lay back down and closed her eyes.
At least no one would track us by the smoke of a burning fire. I pushed back my covers and began pulling on my boots, not bothering with the laces. “I know. I’m sorry.” Nina Snow deserved better than the paranoid, crazy person she got for a best friend.
She snuggled in closer to Dylan, who had zipped a couple of sleeping bags together for the two of them to share—the power of body heat and all. Dylan was Dax’s identical twin brother, and the nicer of the two siblings.
It had gotten colder the last few days. Dylan, Dax, Nina, and I had been making plans to move south soon. To explore, maybe. Search for other settlements. Or, at the very least, discover that there
were
no other settlements in the southeast, forcing us once and for all to remain at Boone Blackston, the settlement I’d called home off and on for six years.
Grabbing my thin jacket—much too lightweight for the weather moving in—I stood to witness the smoke billowing from the twin towers in the distance. Puffs of white, like clouds, rose from the sleek steel smokestacks of the incinerator and glowed against the midnight blue sky. I stared at the disappearing shapes, remembering how my mom and I once lay on a blanket in the middle of the park, identifying animals in the cloud formations.
Giving my head a quick shake at the memory, I secured a sheath to my leg, allowing my cargo pants to cover the knife.
“Where are you going?” Dax grabbed my forearm. I hadn’t even heard him rise.
I let my line of sight drift from the distant smoke, down my arm, to Dax’s fingers as they slowly traced a direct path to my hand, linking with mine. “I’m just going to get a little closer. I’ll be back before morning. You don’t need to come.”
“You think I’m just going to let you wander off toward that place? Alone?”
I rotated my shoulders back and took a step closer to him. “You don’t have a choice. I don’t want you to come. I’ll check it out on my own, and I’ll be back before you’re even awake.”
“When are you going to stop trying to save everyone?”
“As soon as everyone’s saved, I guess.” I met his stare. I knew my face remained expressionless, whereas Dax’s chest rose and fell with rapid breaths, his nostrils flared, and his cheeks burned red. And that had nothing to do with the campfire I had just extinguished.
“Fine. Have it your way. But when you get yourself captured by the goons behind those walls,” he pointed toward the city in the distance, “don’t expect me to save your ass.”
I bit my lower lip for a second, pretending to consider what Dax was saying, then answered, “I understand.”
I turned and began making my way closer to the city of New Caelum. I didn’t expect Dax, or anyone else, to “save my ass.” If what I suspected was happening inside those incinerators was actually occurring?
I’d
be the one doing the saving.
The virus was gone from our world. That’s what the experts inside New Caelum thought. Everyone who’d contracted the illness all those years ago had died. Everyone but one.
A girl.
Only one person knew the identity of this girl.
I
didn’t even know her name.
I knew she would have been protected though, just like I was, inside this city.
But she ran away.
~~~~~
The alarm sounded on a Thursday night. And not just any Thursday night—the eve of the election that would decide the fate of my family going forward. Would my mother remain president of the city, or would the council decide that the citizens of New Caelum needed a new leader?
If Mother lost, we’d have to move from the private wing at the top of the city to a lower level with other people in our social class.
I knew that the alarms that sounded now were not part of a drill. If this were a drill, then as a member of leadership, I’d have been notified on my PulsePoint. I lifted the device from my waist. No messages.
Medics dressed in red hazmat suits jogged past me like trained military. They were headed straight for the leadership residence wing—my home.
Ryder, my best friend since we were two years old, rounded the corner, followed closely by Key, his girlfriend. They stopped in front of me.
“Where are they going?” Ryder proudly wore charcoal gray and black—the colors of government—a societal promotion that meant he would serve the city’s leaders and eventually be eligible to hold an elected position.
Key bent over at the waist, attempting to catch her breath. Her pale blue lab coat covered her royal blue pantsuit, both colors carrying significant meaning. The pale blue told everyone she was of age and chosen for the medical profession within New Caelum. She’d keep the pale blue forever, a respectable color in its own right, or she would graduate to white when she became a doctor.
What the royal blue signified was arguably of much greater importance.
I touched her arm, prompting her to look up at me. “You’ve been matched? You’re wearing royal blue.”
She smiled, then traded an uneasy glance with Ryder. “You didn’t tell him? Come on, Ryder!” She lightly punched him in the shoulder, causing him to stumble. “Must I do everything?”
Ryder sidled up to Key and threw his arm around her. “Dude. If you’d check your messages? I’ve been trying to get a hold of you since late last night.”
I pulled them both into a hug, rubbing Ryder’s black curly hair and doing my level best to mess it up. “What am I going to do with you two? That’s fantastic.”
He pulled away. “Stop it, man. She hasn’t married me yet. I might still need my good looks.”
Key rolled her eyes.
My smile faded and turned more severe. “What do you know about the medics?” I asked Key. “Is it a drill? I didn’t get word of any drill.”
“I don’t know,” Key answered. “I don’t think so. I was working in the lab when the call came in. The senior medics dropped everything and convened in the emergency lab next door. I heard them say ‘Code 51.’”
I grabbed Key by her arms and forced her to face me. “Are you sure?”
She tried to wriggle from my hold. “Chill out, West. You’re hurting me.”
“Just tell me. Is that what they said? Code 51?”
Ryder stepped between us and shoved me backward. “Get off her, man. What is with you?”
Key’s eyes remained fixed on mine. “Yes, I’m sure. Why? What does that mean?”
I stood tall and faced them both. “I want you both to listen to me very closely. Turn around and go back to your daily tasks. Key, go back to the lab. Pretend you never left the medical sector. Neither of you are to tell anyone you’ve seen me or been in the leadership wing today. Okay?”
“What is it?” Ryder asked.
“Code 51 means Bad Sam is back.”
Key gasped. “And if they’re running toward the leadership wing—”
“Someone in my family or on Mother’s staff has the Samael Strain.”
~~~~~
My sister Willow stared at me from the isolation room, her eyes red from crying.
The medics said her fever was holding steady at 101.4, and that the virus hadn’t taken over her body yet. Which, I figured, was why she was still standing.
The Samael Strain, nicknamed Bad Sam, was named after the doctor in Africa who had first discovered the deadly virus. At least, according to the scientists inside New Caelum. The more popular claim was that the viral death sentence was named for Samael, the archangel of death in some religions. Given my memories and my own studies of the disease, I always thought the latter seemed more fitting.
On the other side of the glass, a nurse messed with Willow’s bedding while another organized supplies in a cabinet against the wall. Both were dressed in pale blue personal protective suits—a less alarming color than the red hazmat suits of the medics who’d escorted my family to the isolation suite. This wasn’t a standard medical enclosure; it had been specially set up within the government quarters in order to keep this outbreak confidential for as long as possible.
Willow, who now wore a hospital gown, slipped into the hospital bed with the help of a nurse. Her face was flushed. Her hands shook, causing the IV in her arm to vibrate.
Dr. Pooley, the doctor in charge of studying the Samael Strain for the past six years—and Willow’s and my biology teacher—spoke to Mother in a room just behind me. He wore white, the color of a successful doctor within our city, but I knew that underneath his protective gear he had donned a combination of doctor-white
and
black, identifying him as a member of council. Mother stood at the same height as Dr. Pooley, her black business suit and sophisticated high heels screaming power, and the two of them discussed not only the fate of her daughter, but what Willow’s illness meant for tomorrow’s election.
“She’ll have two nurses assigned to her at all times, Ms. President. She’ll be kept comfortable.” Dr. Pooley spoke through a small microphone in his protective mask.
The fact that neither Mother nor I wore a hazmat suit made it pretty clear that these would be our quarantine rooms until they could prove that we hadn’t contracted the virus. Fortunately, my mother’s room and mine were side by side and connected with a speaker that allowed us audio contact, so I could listen in on her conversation with the doctor.