27

“WE’RE GOING TO MR. GO’S?” DANIEL ASKED. He was moving slowly, weighed down by the visit to the Professors. Fen swept away the fallen leaves and flowers with her boot and shut the door firmly.

“Yeah, but I got to do something first,” she said.

“What?” Daniel asked, adjusting the rags around his neck. The day was growing warmer, the sky so blue it was almost purple.

Fen tucked her thumbs into her pack straps and took off for the back road to avoid the avenue they’d come in on, and any lingering ABs.

“I had some people on the outside. I need to get a message to them.”

“You can do that?” Daniel asked, hopping over the broken pavement. “Get a message over the Wall?”

“Don’t always work, but it worth a shot.”

Daniel hurried to catch up. “How do you do it? I mean, if I could do that, I could get help or something. I could—”

She gave him a hard look. “You could what? Don’t take a genius to see you ain’t supposed to be here. You got no idea what Orleans about. You here alone, not a single person got your back. So who you gonna contact, Daniel? Who gonna help you that didn’t before?”

Daniel didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything he could say. He’d made one mistake after another. Now it was up to Fen. Maybe it always had been. “I’ll wait for your Mr. Go.”

“All right,” she said.

“You still haven’t answered my question,” Daniel said. “Where are we going?”

Fen skipped ahead and gave him an easy smile. “The library. Then, maybe church.”

Daniel shook his head. “Oh. Of course.”

• • • 

The library was a beautiful building on the leafy avenue they had run down last night. Fen led him down a backstreet before risking the main road. This far into AB territory, there were no torches strung between the old live oaks, and sunlight sifted through the canopy overhead. They moved as quietly as possible. After last night’s wild chase, Fen told him the ABs would sleep in. Daniel knew from his research that AB was the most Fever-susceptible blood type. Without constant transfusions, the Fever made ABs sluggish and weak.

Like his brother, Charlie. His sterile death in a hospital was cruel, but life in Orleans didn’t seem much better.

They reached a place in the stream where chunks of concrete had been laid out like stepping stones. Fen jumped lightly across them to the green lawn on the opposite side, where the library squatted, an implacable building of red stone. Fen mounted the steps swiftly. Daniel followed her in, swinging the heavy steel doors shut behind him.

Inside, the library was a throwback to another age. Heavy wooden furniture, walls lined with thick dark bookshelves, stained oak floors. But it reeked of mildew and the bookcases themselves were empty.

“Used to be a librarian here when I been real little,” Fen pointed out, breezing past the reception desk. The light leaching in through the windows was watery and thin, the old glass deep set into the walls of the building to protect them from storms. “An AB, since this be they turf. But she gone now. The computer be in the back.”

“Working?” Daniel asked.

“Sometimes. That why I said maybe we could do it, maybe not. We not far from the Professors. My guess be one of them got this thing running. Someone did. Old car batteries and sometimes a generator. I don’t know who been keeping it up. Here.”

An ancient PC sat on a long oak table at the back of the ground floor, its casing filthy with age and use. The power cord snaked down to a box on the floor covered in black electrical tape.

“Don’t be touching that,” Fen snapped. She shifted the baby onto her lap so she could type. With one booted foot, she pumped a lever beneath the table, somehow attached to the box. Daniel recognized it as an antique sewing machine foot pedal.

“This is incredible,” he said. “And it’s communal? For everyone?”

Fen shrugged. “ABs had it to theyselves for a while and posted guards ’round the building. But they ain’t knowing how to keep it running, and it died. So they abandon it ’til somebody come ’round and fix it.” She peered at the blank screen. “That how it be. Share it, and it work. Mess with it and it don’t. “

A few more pumps and the computer sprang to life.

“There we go,” Fen said to herself. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand, opened a browser, and started to type.

“You have an e-mail account?” Daniel asked her.

“Every tribe do. Least the ones around before things got bad. They been set up by the missionaries. Supposed to keep folks in touch with they relatives on the other side. Only our chief ever used it, but I know the password. If they ain’t changed it on me.”

“What did your chief use it for?” It wasn’t like they could go shopping online.

“Smugglers. Medicine and stuff too hard to get in Orleans. Beyond that be her business. I didn’t ask.”

• • • 

HE BE ASKING TOO MANY QUESTIONS NOW, and I be letting my mouth run. I got business to take care of. I open the program and type in my e-mail. It be a hard thing to write, but I been thinking about it on the walk here:

Aunt Cee and Uncle Garrett, It’s me, your little Fen. I am sorry it has been so long since you have heard from me. I hate to ask, but I need your help. You were always good sponsor parents to me. You would make good real parents too. If you would like to be please write me back. There is a child that needs your help. No Fever. DELTA-FREE. Love, Fen de la Guerre.

I feel silly writing it, using my best English how the Ursulines taught us, but I got to make sure they understand me. I hit send and wait to see that it go. My leg be getting tired from pumping the generator, but I keep it up.

“How does it get transmitted?” Daniel ask.

When it go through, I erase my password, clear the history, and log off.

“Maybe it don’t,” I say. “But I got to try. Now we wait and see.”

Daniel be staring at me like I be crazy, but that ain’t the first time. I stare right back. Then he say, “Can I send a message, too?”

Before I can answer, I hear the door open at the front of the building.

Hide, I mouth to Daniel. I put my hand over Baby Girl’s mouth in case she start to cry and scurry away from the desk through a side door that be broken, into another room. Full of old furniture, it be all rotten sofas and flood-damaged stuff, covered with mold. I worry about Baby Girl breathing it in, so I cover her face with the sling. Daniel be right by my side, so I know he scared. I lead him around a mound of cushions and we stand behind an arch in the wall. My knife still in my boot, but I ain’t starting nothing with this baby in my arms ’less I have to.

“Who?” Daniel whisper. I put my finger to his lips and mouth the letters AB and shrug. He nod. Then I lean forward and try to listen. Two men be talking.

“This thing don’t even be working no more,” First Man say. His voice be deep like his chest broad. He sound big.

“It work good enough to get what we want,” Second Man say. He got a voice like a reed flute, the kind they sell at the Market for little kids. “Can’t stop now, man,” Second Man continue. “That raid on the Os, that a bold move, but you know what they say—you got to back it up with some serious action.”

“You right, you right,” First Man say in his deep voice.

My mind be spinning. These be the bastards attacked us at the powwow. Lydia be dead because of them.

That explain why there weren’t no dogs after Lydia and me that night. It weren’t just a blood raid. Tribes be attacking each other all the time, looking for fresh blood. But blood ain’t enough for these bastards. They been looking to start a war.

Before I know it, I be bending down and my knife be in my hand. I grip it hard. My life be over because of them. Theirs ’bout to be over, too.

I wrap an arm around Baby Girl and edge toward the door, knife at the ready. They want a war, they got one.

I feel a hand touch my shoulder. “Fen?” Daniel whisper. I hesitate, shake my head. I got to do this. He grip my shoulder. I should shake him off, do what I gotta do, but if the baby cry from shaking, I ain’t got no chance at all.

I look back at Daniel. His eyes be wide, scared. He shake his head no. Every muscle in my body screaming for me to go through that door.

In the next room, I hear somebody typing on the keyboard. They sending a message to someone, too. “A’ight, that done,” Second Man say. “We can tell LB we sent it, let him worry if it gone work in time for tomorrow.”

LB. La Bête Sauvage. That stop me. People say he crazy, but Lydia always treat him with respect. He a genius, she say, more going on behind one eye than most folks got in they whole head. I don’t know about that, but I know he dangerous. He got ideas. He AB, and he bring As and Bs into his fold, too. But not everybody want to follow a crazy person.

I lower my knife, but don’t be putting it away. The computer pings, and I know they e-mail been sent. “Two of two?” First Man say. “You send two messages on this thing?”

“Naw, man. It be a piece of junk. Let’s go. What he got coming could make things a whole lot better, or a whole lot worse.”

“Brother, war always be worse. And that what he got coming for us all.”

We wait ’til I hear the front door slam. I motion for Daniel to wait a little longer. You never know who be playing you, and they not always as dumb as they sound.

After about ten minutes, when anybody waiting be getting bored, we slip out the lounge and see the computer room be clear. I put my knife back in my boot.

“War?” Daniel ask.

“Nothing to do with you, long as you leave Orleans quick. Bad times come and go here. Just means they coming back again,” I say, and start pumping the computer pedal.

They ain’t as smart as me. They don’t be erasing they login or nothing. They ain’t even signed out. “They cocky. Think they own the library,” I say to myself, but Daniel nod like I meant it for him.

I memorize they account for future reference and open they e-mail addressed to orpheus@la.us.gov.

Daniel read the e-mail address over my shoulder. “Government? State of Louisiana.”

“But there ain’t no more Louisiana. Mr. Go say it became a military base after the storms.”

“It did,” Daniel say. “It’s the first-response area for the entire Midwest.”

“You come here through Louisiana?”

“No. Mississippi.”

With that mess he carrying, I got to know. “Anybody know you here?”

Daniel don’t blink or look away. “No. At least, I don’t think so.”

That ain’t a good answer, but that be all he got. I turn back to the AB’s e-mail. “Weird. There ain’t no subject line and the message be blank.”

“Look again,” Daniel say, leaning over me. He drag the mouse over the e-mail and it highlight white letters.

SAMPLE WAS IMPRESSIVE. GUNS ACCEPTABLE. PAYMENT ON DELIVERY OF ORDER AT USUAL DROP. TOMORROW, 0600 HOURS.

I read it and read it again. Someone in the Outer States military sending guns to La Bête over the Wall. With Lydia dead and the Os scattered, he could take the city. It’d be unity like Lydia been wanting, but not peace.

“How is that possible?” Daniel breathes in my ear. “You said . . . Dr. James is bedridden. Could he do this from his bed?”

“Maybe Priscilla? Or might be something planned a long time back. Don’t matter who, so long as it still happening.” I close my eyes and think of Lydia. Things be worse in Orleans than she ever imagined. War again. ABs with guns. It one thing to be kidnapped and made a blood slave, but ABs get a frenzy once the blood start running. They shoot a body and catch that scent, nothing gonna stop them from killing everyone.

It only stop when the gunmetal go bad. And that could take years. Add a stupid tourist with a batch of poison, and it starting to look like the end of the world. Daniel and I need to get out of here, and now.

“How much you weigh?”

“What?”

“How much you weigh?” I look at him hard. “Hundred sixty pounds? Hundred seventy?”

Daniel blink behind that encounter suit. “Uh . . . one sixty- five. Plus the gear . . .”

I sigh. “Come on.” I shut down the computer and grab my backpack. Hopefully Father John still got a computer running at the mission. I can see if the Coopers write me back. Otherwise, I got to trust that the nuns get them word, or McCallan on his way out the Delta. And then hope for the best.

Daniel head for the front door, but I shake my head and point left of the entrance. There another book room back here, with picture books I used to read when I been a kid. The best part be the window seat, used to look out on a garden, but that been ten years ago and things ain’t the way they used to be. Good news be the yard so overgrown now, there be vines up over the windows. No one can see us from the street, or move fast to catch us if they did.

“Listen,” I say, and point to the front door. “They might know we here. Probably waiting for us. We go out the back, we can still get to Mr. Go’s, but it dangerous. Ground ain’t what it should be this way, it ain’t stable. That be good for us—nobody running after you on Rooftops. But watch your step. Follow me close. Got it?”

Daniel’s eyes be big and wide. “Okay.” His voice crack. I give him a smile to calm him down.

In my arms, Baby Girl make a little mewing sound, like a tiny cat. I look down at her and my heart beat harder. I never been through Rooftops with a baby before. She don’t weigh nothing at all, but I still say a silent apology to Lydia. This ain’t no kind of road for an infant.

“Shh.” I jounce her a bit and hold her close. She still got that new smell, warm and soft. “I’ma get us out of this,” I whisper into the top of her head. Curls soft and brown tickle my lips. I take a breath and lower her to rest in the sling.

“Help me,” I say to Daniel. I get my fingers under one of the window sashes. Vines be growing between the window and the sill, holding it open and closed at the same time. I pull out my knife to saw through them. But the window too swollen with rain, wood too warped to raise right.

“Stand back,” Daniel say. He kick hard at the window frame. It be so rotten, it come loose in two kicks and fall out onto the weeds below.

“Pas mal,” I say to him. Not bad. We move out into the jungle quick, and I be glad we did, ’cause the front door open and I hear voices again. But we in the garden now, moving to the old fence, and there be alleys enough to hide in. This be the edge of AB territory, so we stay low and I try not to think about the message in the e-mail.

Instead, I think about Baby Girl, and how time be running out for both of us.