25

I LEAN MY BACK AGAINST THE DOOR AND STAY hidden in the alcove behind that old crape myrtle, trying to think. Fen, girl, you a fool. So what if Daniel done pulled us through the dark? So what if he help us get out of that blood farm? He been using us. Like the swamp rats the Professors used to experiment on. Best thing I can do for Orleans be lock Daniel up inside. Him and his damned virus.

I be breathing heavy, feeling like a trapped animal. But I got away, I tell myself. We got away. Baby Girl make a noise in my arms and I look down at her little face. Her mama’s eyes stare back at me.

“What you be looking at me like that for?”

She yawn, but this time she don’t go to sleep. She just stare and I stare back. I can’t help it. This baby got eyes like a sinkhole; they be pulling me in, and I let them.

“Can you believe that, Baby Girl? Fool trying to cure Delta Fever.”

Ain’t like a million other folks haven’t tried. Before the Wall, Daddy say everybody with a test tube and a kitchen sink be trying to cook up a cure. A medicine like that make you rich for life. You could own the Delta.

But a cure mean other things, too. If Delta Fever be gone and all the sick folks over here be cured, there’d be no more blood hunting, no blue tarp room in the Ursulines’ hospital. No Wall.

I be assessing my situation again, looking at my assets. I got Baby Girl. And I got a chance.

“You wouldn’t have to leave me,” I say softly. I think of Daniel again, dragging me after him through the night, torches on our heels. He a do-gooder. Maybe they all like that over the Wall. Daniel create a poison, but he ain’t using it. He coulda opened that canister back at the blood farm, killed us all and gotten out. Hell, he could be using it now and we be dead where we stand. But he ain’t. Daniel ain’t a killer.

And now Baby Girl finally be talking to me with them eyes of hers. She be telling me what to do next. “Baby Girl, you don’t know the world like I do. This gonna be more trouble than it worth.”

She just look at me and yawn again like she bored. Like I ain’t got any other excuses. Which I don’t. I curse under my breath and look out through the branches of the myrtle tree. Baby Girl ain’t never seen a crape myrtle in bloom, and she never will if she got to go to Father John and over the Wall.

“You want to see something pretty?” I ask her. “Maybe one day you see flowers on this tree.” She hiccup at me and I shake my head. Me, talking to this baby like it make some kind of sense. I don’t make her any promises, ’cause I know this one gonna be real hard to keep, but I’ma try.

It take a little doing, but I get that door pried back open and I shuffle back up them stairs. Back to where I used to be someone with parents, good people who tried to make a difference.

Doors be open up and down the hallway. I find Daniel sitting in the middle of the hall, like a dog that don’t know what to do without a master.

“You came back,” he say.

I shrug. “You saved me and Baby Girl last night. I owe you for that.” In my arms, Baby Girl gurgle and coo. I point to the open doors with my chin. “You find what you looking for?”

“There’s nothing here.” Daniel stand up, slow and stiff in his suit. “There’s nothing here on the Fever at all,” he say incredulously. “I don’t understand. There should be research, records, data. Something.”

I shake my head. “I told you it be useless. Come on, now.”

“Where are we going?”

I look at the baby in my arms one last time, make sure I’m doing the right thing. “To the only person who might help you. The oldest man in the Delta, Mr. Go.”

Daniel turn suddenly and look through the observation window into the infirmary. “My God,” he say.

My feet don’t want to move, but I make them, and I walk to see what he seeing. The screen over the first bed be lit up in big green letters: WHO’S THERE?

“Come on, Daniel,” I whisper. But he don’t move, and suddenly all the screens come alive with bright green lights. They blink at us like owls in a tree: WHO? WHO? WHO?