Lethal Seasons (A Changed World Book 1) (2 page)

“I think Nick’s back,” Tilly said. Susan was on her feet and moving toward the pass-through to check. Tilly saw Susan’s face light up when she caught sight of him.

“He’ll need to speak with Angus first thing,” Tilly said.

“Of course.” Susan smoothed her apron as she watched Nick load up a plate with eggs from the steam table. “Got a treat,” she called to him. Her eyes crinkled in a smile. She tucked a stray curl back into the braid of light brown hair that ran down her back to her waist.

“I can smell it,” he answered with a grin. “Been too long. Nothing like a good cup of joe!”

Susan leaned on the counter, head sticking out of the pass-through. “Any new contacts?”

“A few. But they’ve just gotten started. Won’t have anything for trade for a while.”

“Oh, well. Eat up while it’s still hot.”

Tilly watched the interchange approvingly. Susan and Nick would be an excellent couple. She’d been encouraging it for some time. Nick needed an anchor. Susan needed to produce a few children sooner, rather than later. Every woman needed to. If Tilly wasn’t past her bearing years, she’d be considering it herself. It didn’t matter how many they lost. She let her mind skip over that thought. No one here was unscarred. Every single person living had lost family and friends to the virus. And they lost more every year. So it was down to simple math. They needed to keep adding to the population.

Susan returned to the table where they did their planning. “Do we have any cucumbers? I could do gazpacho again.”

Tilly groaned. “I think we’ve all had enough gazpacho.” Between the uneven supply of crops and unskilled labor, it was difficult to produce good meals consistently. But five years into their residence, they were nearly self-sufficient. They only had to rely on train food occasionally. Like maybe tonight.

*    *    *

Nick loaded a little of everything on to his tray—omelet, salsa, roasted potatoes and a gloppy mix of amaranth and cornmeal. No bread today. He was disappointed. The spring wheat was supposed to be harvested while he was gone. He checked the tables. Angus waved to him from a seat by the window. The storm shutters were fully retracted allowing sunlight to shine off every surface including Angus’s unruly white hair. It gave him a bright halo. As usual, Angus’s table was covered with notebooks and pads, his knobby, veined hands working over paper and keyboards.

Nick nudged a pile aside and put his tray down. Angus brought his attention up from his studies and focused his bright blue eyes on Nick.

“I’m glad you didn’t try to brave the storm,” Angus said. He reached over and patted Nick’s hand. “Good to have you back.”

“It was too much even for me.”

“Even for you,” Angus chuckled. “You are late. I hoped that wasn’t an indication of trouble.”

Nick pulled a thick stack of folders out of his pack to hand over to Angus. “I think you'll be very pleased.” He dug into his breakfast.

Angus laid the stack on the table and gave it a pat. “Anything out of the ordinary?”

Nick nodded with a mouth full. “Couple of dead ends...” He took a sip of coffee. “And a murder.”

“Murder. Well, that sort of thing was quite common pre-virus. Though it pains me to find that as a species we are too stupid not to stop killing each other when we are facing extinction. Although from what you tell me, the virus has left us plenty of fools. What about this caught your attention?”

“It was an odd situation. Young girl. On her own, I think.”

“A young girl murdered? Are you sure? Was it a rumor?”

“I saw the body. She was shot.”

“Oh dear. I’m sorry you saw that, Nicky. How sad. And you’re sure it was murder?”

Nick halted a laden fork to speak. “From the look of the scene, she shot back.”

“I think that is the lawman in you speaking.” Angus sat back folding his hands over one another on his stomach in his customary thinking position. “You believe there is more to it.”

Nick gave him a dip of the head in agreement.

“Where did this happen?”

“Clarkeston.”

“You’ve been there before without trouble. What’s it like?”

“Not much different than here.” He said with a gesture toward the windows. “Built around a med center. They specialize in wool, so everybody's got sheep. Might want to remember them when we're getting ready to barter some of the grain.”

“When did this murder occur?”

“From the looks of it, a few days ago. Shot through the heart.”

“Good heavens, what fool did this? Don't they know we can't afford that now? There are cities that have been completely depopulated. We cannot allow ourselves the luxury of crime! We need every human being left on this planet!”

Nick sipped the last drops of his coffee. “I know that,” he said in what he hoped was a calming voice. He didn’t think Angus needed to know about the other body, yet. Until he had all the facts, Nick didn’t want to worry him.

“Kill a young girl.” Angus threw up a hand in disgust. “She was of childbearing age?”

“She seemed young, but the body was a few days old.” He finished the last bites quickly.

Angus slumped with a sigh. “How can people be so short sighted? What could a young woman have done to deserve being shot?”

Nick pushed his tray to one side. “The virus didn't change the fact that some people are flat out crazy,” he said gently. He and Angus were old enough to remember the time before, when cities had police forces fighting violence of all kinds. When gangs killed indiscriminately and there were recreational poisons that people chose to put in their bodies. “I checked around. No one saw the murder. No one missed the girl.”

“We would have missed her,” Angus snapped back indignantly.

Nick nodded. Angus's settlement was a utopia compared to some of the places he'd seen. They had a Council and a Watch. People took care of one another. It was all because of the tone Angus set, thoughtful, gentle, caring man that he was. Nick had seen settlements that were little more than refugee camps, a few that were run with cold, military precision and others that were run by self-appointed tyrants. It was a new system, and the bugs hadn't been worked out, yet. A touch of anarchy that worried Nick. Why wasn’t there anyone supervising the creation of settlements and med centers?

“She wouldn't have been shot here,” Nick assured him. “Clarkeston is big. Spread out. They don't have a watch, and their council is shoddy. She lived at the edge of the population zone. It was down the street from an address I tracked down. The front door was off its hinges on an otherwise nice house. I went in to check and saw the body. When I went to report it to Clarkeston’s council, they said they already knew. A family tried to move into the house and only went close enough to smell it. They reported the death, but that settlement doesn’t have anyone to look into stuff like that.”

“Why would a young girl be alone?” Angus was persistent in his questioning.

“Why are any of us alone, Angus?” Nick couldn't keep the sadness out of his voice. All the deaths behind him, all the lost loved ones he carried in his heart weighed heavily on him at times like this.

“We're not, Nicky.” Angus grabbed his arm and squeezed gently. “We have each other. We have all these others,” he said gesturing outward. “Good people that care about us.”

“Yes. Sorry. Seeing some of these other places gets me down.”

“It's hard.” Angus patted him. “Hard to see how stupid and petty we still are when our very existence depends on cooperation.”

Nick pulled a small bundle out of his pack. “I think this is hers. I found it in a bedroom.” He unwrapped a silk scarf to show several small notebooks.

“Where is the poor girl now?”

“I buried her.”

“Thank you, Nicky. Always a gentleman. Poor child.” Angus took the top notebook and flipped through it. “Do we even know her name?”

“I haven’t had time to look through them.” He didn’t say that just holding those books had brought on such deep depression that he’d wasted the afternoon staring into space and mourning the loss of a sweet young girl who liked to scribble in notebooks. Nor the cold fear he’d felt when he’d looked through the one that was dog-eared and grubby. Nick left Angus paging through the notebooks and took his tray to the kitchen.

“How is it out there?” Martin Asbury leaned against the wall by the dish station. Dark haired and dark eyed, he radiated strength. The head of the Watch asked the same question every time Nick returned. In a time when last names were cast off or reinvented, Martin had taken on the fashion of using a dead city as his last name. Asbury Park, like much of the coast was under water and had been for decades. It was a way to remember what nature had taken away. Nick doubted there were many people still alive that remembered the Jersey shore, white sand beaches and lazy days sunbathing. His mother had told him about it. Lying in the sun sounded like a quick death of hyperthermia and sun poisoning to him.

Nick debated what to tell Martin. At any rate, what he needed to say shouldn’t be discussed here. “It’s quiet. People are waiting for the sick season to start.”

“It hasn't?”

“Not where I was. Have we had any reports on what to expect this year?”

Martin shook his head. “I hate it when they wait like this. It makes me worry that the information is so dire, they don't want anyone to know.”

“They weren't this late on the Hoofed Flu. That was a bad one for the food supply. Maybe it's good news, and they want to make sure before they say anything.”

Martin gave him a shrug and a snort. “I don't hope for good news anymore.”

Nick sorted his silverware and rinsed off his plate, stacking them in the racks for the dishwasher. “I need a word.”

“My office?” Martin asked as he turned to go.

“Right behind you.” Nick didn’t especially like Martin, but he had to admit the man was more than competent. He projected an easy-going, relaxed manner that kept people calm, when underneath he had a sharper edge.

“The subsequent year’s virus was dubbed the flu by the government in an attempt, I assume, to have the populous believe it was more benign, more manageable. This was a mistake that would backfire egregiously. When the death rate stayed high, people lost faith. We knew it wasn’t simply a flu.”

History of a Changed World
, Angus T. Moss

Nick grabbed his gear and followed Martin down to the Watch's office. He would give Martin a more in depth report and update the map they kept. As he entered the office, Martin dropped the map file into the smartwall at the back of the room.

“Bad news?” Martin asked in a quiet voice.

“Maybe just weird.” Nick put his pack on the big worktable in the middle of the room. Martin might call it an office, but it felt more like a ready room. He pulled his paper map out of its waterproof case. It was creased and smudged and covered with notes in his tiny, tight writing. They kept track of trouble spots and new settlements which they might like to trade with.

“Weird how?” Martin asked, all his attention on Nick now.

“Saw a crime scene with way too many bullets, a dead girl and a dead guy in body armor.”

Martin’s brown eyes went a shade colder. “Could you tell what kind of armor? I’ve seen a lot of that stuff bartered. Stolen from police mostly.”

“It was brand new. Gun, too. I thought about bringing it back, but it was big. Bringing it on the train would have been . . .”

“Obvious?”

“Yeah. And I’m betting we couldn’t get ammunition for it.” Nick pulled a sketch of the gun out of his journal and put it on the table. “You seen anything like this?”

Martin frowned at the paper. “Not exactly. And not since I left . . . the service.”

Nick noted the hesitation. Martin didn’t discuss his past. He never said what branch of the service he’d been in. Nick always let it slide, but today he was a little more curious. That gun was something special, not the usual army supply. Which might put Martin in some sort of special ops. Nick filed away that information. Might be something he could use later.

He tucked the drawing back into his journal. Ever since his last camera had broken, losing over two hundred images of files he’d unearthed for Angus, he’d stuck to pencil and paper. “Not a good situation. New gear like that on a guy that gunned down a young girl.”

“Any idea why?”

Nick shivered. “Not sure.” He busied himself with putting the journal back in his pack. He could feel Martin watching him. “Might be jumping at shadows. It’s in Angus’s hands right now.”

“You told Angus about the merc?”

Nick wasn’t surprised that Martin had judged the killer to be a mercenary. He’d already made that assumption himself. “No.”

“Good.”

Released from Martin’s scrutiny, Nick walked over to the smartwall. Over the next half hour, they discussed the changes he had documented. There was a new dark station. It had been taken over by a gang of toughs and the train didn't stop there anymore. That gave him a faint hope that someone, somewhere might still be in charge. They saw these things and reacted. It wasn't in his experience to think that the country didn't have a guiding hand. Food and medicine were still distributed like clockwork. The trains ran on time. That had to mean something.

“The people in Clarkeston are keeping sheep now,” Nick said adding the notation to the map. “It's a pretty orderly settlement. They hope to have meat to barter next spring. North of High Bluffs, about a half-day’s walk, there's a settlement in a factory, but no med center. I think they decided on Riverbank as a name. They just got started, but said they'll probably have dried fish to barter by the winter. And they haven't had anyone down with a flu in three years.”

“Because they're isolated.” Martin said dismissively. “Once they start trading, they'll be seeing the flus again.”

“They're new. Broke away from a walled compound. Want to make their own rules. Didn't know about the barter network ‘til I showed up. They didn't know the ether was back up. Hadn't even tried.”

“How many places like that are out there?” Martin asked. His eyes looked sad to Nick. “Folks that hid from the virus and haven’t looked back?”

“Without train food?” The corner of Nick’s mouth crooked up as he
thought about the odds of the average settlement surviving without outside support. “If you had some unlooted grocery stores and a couple of neighborhoods to rifle through for hard goods, you could stay vanished for a couple years. Problem is, people like that don’t think to work on self-sufficiency.”

“Hunters and gatherers.”

“That only works if you’ve got the skills. Look at our people. We’ve got over a hundred here—”

“One hundred twenty four,” Martin interjected.

“How many of those people could live off the land?” Nick felt
a sudden anger for the thoughtlessness of his species. “Without destroying it.”

Martin rubbed his mouth. He looked sorry that he’d brought up the subject. “You, me...” He shrugged in agreement. “That’s probably it.”

“Two hunters for a community isn’t enough. Ask Angus. He’ll give you a lecture on the support structure of a real hunter-gatherer tribe. We don’t have the skills. Worse, we don’t know what half of them were. Do you know how to make rope or tan leather?”

Martin looked at him for a long minute. “Rough trip?”

Nick sagged back in the chair. “Yeah.” He smoothed the wrinkles in his map. “Sorry.” He turned his attention back to updating their database. “There's a new settlement at an old resort site on the southern lateral. They got the light rail cars back on line from the resort to the train station.”

“That's impressive. I wonder if they’ve got some engineers. What are they trading?”

“Nothing yet. They’ve got some fields planted, chickens and I think they had goats. Didn’t want me poking around too much.”

“Paranoid or cautious?”

“Unfortunately, I was getting the paranoid vibe. They had an awful lot of armed guards. And when I asked about barter, they weren’t interested at all. Said they needed everything for their own settlement, but I didn’t see more than thirty, forty people in all.” Nick didn’t like the feeling he’d gotten from that place. “I don’t think I’ll go back there for a while.” He’d had a close call or two over the years. People didn’t always welcome a stranger asking questions. He didn’t blame them for caution. A settlement had every right to its privacy. It was the strict religious societies, cults and militia compounds that he was wary of. Now he thoroughly scouted a new community before approaching it. Any hint of rigid regimen or an excess of firearms, and he gave it a wide berth.

Martin updated the map and posted a edited version to the ether. They only shared problems and closed settlements. The High Meadow Council had agreed that if a settlement wanted to be advertised on the ether, they should do so themselves. Most didn't. High Meadow itself was simply listed as a med center. Despite Angus's altruistic view of human nature, there were still plenty of thugs and bullies in the world.

Nick went to his room to drop his things and take that long-awaited hot shower. He wanted to give Angus plenty of time to look through the notebooks. If that’s what had gotten the girl killed, they had to be very important. And yet, the rest of the house hadn’t shown signs of a search. They’d been tucked under a bedroll. Not the most secure hiding place. The girl had been living there with other people. Nick had seen three bedrolls. Things had been tidy, other than the dead bodies: one young girl and one heavily armed and armored man. He couldn’t shake the feeling that there was a whole lot more to this than he was seeing. If they hadn’t wanted the notebooks, why had they killed the girl?

Showered, shaved and in clean clothes, Nick went to Angus’s office to see if he had any questions. The wide, clean hallways were cool despite the sunshine flooding in through the skylights. With most of the building underground, the few places that let in natural sunlight were vital to maintain. Angus insisted the storm shutters be retracted as often as safety allowed. Nick had seen settlements where everything was bartered: food, water, sunlight. Something inside him clenched tight while he was out in the world, and it didn't release until he got back to High Meadow and saw that Angus's dream continued.

Chairs, benches and overstuffed oddities lined the sun drenched halls, clustered into intimate groupings. Most were empty this early in the day, as it was the best time for work outside before the blast furnace heat of the day arrived. A few elders sat together doing whatever their skills and health allowed. As Nick passed them, he realized they were making a baby quilt.

A chill hit him at the same time his throat tightened. There were three pregnant women in the settlement. He couldn't imagine how they could face bringing a baby into a world as screwed as this one. But every child was needed. Every normal-looking child, every mutated one, gave them clues to their future. And three out of five wouldn't live past their first flu season. Angus tracked them all—the blonde, blue-eyed and the mottled-hair, orange-eyed. Nick forced a smile for the three old women bent over their sewing. Their smiles in response looked equally sad. No matter the pain, they must all put on a brave face for the young.

Nick burst into Angus's office with a little more force than he'd meant, but Angus was absorbed in his research and gave no notice. The office had been a small classroom. The walls were covered with the med center’s family trees. Angus kept track of all the births and deaths, changes and surprises, illnesses and vaccinations. But he hadn’t discovered any pattern to who survived. And going backward into peoples’ family ties hadn’t provided any useful information. Too many of the branches dead ended. Nick's ended with him. He was the only one in all the siblings, parents, aunts, uncles and cousins that had survived through all the mutations of the virus. Most of his family had died the first year the virus was released. Dead and buried before people found out it wasn't supposed to kill normal humans, just the biobots.

Again he had that strange longing that tightened his guts and raised hair on his arms. Wasn't someone, some large government department, doing this? Tracking the immune and searching for a cure? But Angus hadn’t found any type of information available on that sort of thing. He’d searched the ether, sending out inquiries to a slew of dead ends. Not everything was on the ether. Nick asked wherever he went if anyone had heard of research labs or government installations. There might be secret labs out there. But Nick worried about why they needed to be secret.

“Nicky,” Angus beckoned him over. He had the small notebooks spread out across his desk. “I’m sure some of these aren’t the girl’s. Different handwriting and some rather sophisticated formulas here.” He tapped a blue notebook that sat away from the others. “This one though, was probably hers. I believe she had siblings.” He squinted at a page before flipping back through it. “William and Lily.”

“There were three bedrolls at the house. I asked around, but no one knew she was there, so they wouldn’t have noticed if there were other kids around.”

“We need to find them.”

Nick nodded. He wanted this. He needed to unravel this mystery. Although he had hoped for a few more nights in his own bed and a few more of Susan’s excellent meals before hitting the road again. Tracking down the children would be difficult. There wouldn’t be any records of who they were or where they came from. He’d have to go back and canvass the area looking for anyone who might have encountered them. Unfortunately word-of-mouth was the only information available.

There were no national databases to consult, no official registration of births and deaths. Old records were useless. The population had scattered as it was being decimated. When the dead began to outnumber the living, people fled. There was an animal instinct in human beings to flee when an unseen killer was stalking the neighborhood. Although the drive might be universal, the response was anything but. Frightened people had headed for the mountains or the desert or the coast, or a relation with medical knowledge, or a commune promising safety, depending on their own logic. There was no mechanism by which to determine when they had reached their destination. Or if. No government agency to track the movement of the survivors. That lack had at first been simply an oddity to Nick. Now that he'd seen a good portion of the country with its deserted cities and abandoned towns, that lack frightened him.

He reasoned that there were too few hands to keep the country's skeleton of infrastructure going to spend any precious time on simple data input. Or perhaps that information wasn’t available to the average citizen. The vaccine centers knew how many doses were required for each med center, so they must have an idea of what the population numbers were. But it seemed as though not enough questions were asked. When Angus ordered vaccines, he wasn’t required to list names or ages of people living in the settlement. The why of that worried Nick the most.

“Nicky?” Angus called him out of his musings.

“Huh?” He shook aside his concerns and focused on Angus.

“Weighty thoughts,” Angus commented with a knowing smile. “You have an inkling of what these notebooks might be.”

“I read a few of the entries in the older one. Could be the ramblings of an idiot.” He folded his arms tight against his body, unwilling to speak his fears aloud.