ADMIT IT, CALLIE, IF ONLY TO YOURSELF. You were so convinced you wouldn’t actually be able to leave Community that anything approaching a plan for after didn’t really enter your head.
Rain pelts down in heavy drops so hard they sting. Chamberlain has vanished; he probably ran home for a warm dry bed, and it’s hard to blame him. I can’t decide whether to huddle under a tree or keep walking.
By now somebody must have noticed I’m missing. Should I get off the path in case they come this way looking for me?
Or maybe no one has noticed. Without Shay there, I’m not sure anyone would have a clue where I should be.
I find a knot of determination, deep inside. Shay did so much for me. I have to get help for her—I have to.
I walk on through the rain. After what must be a few miles, the path leads to a road. There is thunder and lightning. Should I get away from the tall trees at the sides of the road? I don’t know if it’s better to be on the road or under the trees, and so I go for ease of walking: the road.
Another crash of thunder sounds, and the sky lights up. And this time when it does, I can see something ahead, on or near the road. Some dim lights and dark shapes in the rain.
Friend or enemy? I don’t know. I stand there, not sure what to do.
Then I see movement ahead. Someone is walking toward me on the road.
“Is that Callie?” a voice calls out. Anyone who knows who I am must be linked with Community. I’m poised to run when there is a touch on my mind.
It’s okay, Callie. It’s Beatriz. Elena is here too, and some other friends. We’ve come to help.
There’s reassurance, but the usual sort; no one is messing around with my brain.
Help is what Shay needs. They were her friends when they arrived, weren’t they?
I walk forward in the rain. As I get closer, I see the dark shapes are a truck and a van. A light flashes briefly in the night. I see a flashlight in the hand of the figure I saw. It isn’t Beatriz, but a man, one I haven’t met.
He’s soaked like I am. “Crappy weather or what?” he says. “I’m JJ. Come on, let’s get out of this.”
I follow him to the van, where the back door opens. And there are Elena, Beatriz, a few people I don’t know—and Chamberlain.
I’m pulled inside, wrapped in a blanket. Chamberlain is warm and dry already.
“A cat always finds the best place to be,” Beatriz says, and strokes him. “He found us, and that’s how we found you.”
“Why are you here?”
“We’re worried,” JJ says. “Shay isn’t answering hails. Freja is sounding weird. Xander was already known to be weird. So we’ve come to investigate.”
“Callie, do you know what’s happening?” Beatriz says.
“Yes, some of it at least. But it’s not easy to believe.”
“There’s a lot of that going around,” JJ says. “Tell us anyway.”
So I do. First I go back in time and tell them that Jenna was the contagion who spread the epidemic so fast, that she’d been a survivor and was made that way in fire. That Xander wants there to be another contagion—I don’t say this is what Jenna thinks; I’m not sure they’re ready to hear about her, or what I could say about her even if they are. And that Shay went missing, that she was last seen going into the research center—and now it’s locked.
“She must be in the quiet room,” Beatriz says. “That’s why she can’t hear us, or answer.”
“So let’s put things together,” the other man says—Patrick, he’d said his name was. “Xander wants to make a new contagion from a survivor. Shay is locked up in a quiet room. He must be planning to use her. His own daughter?” He shakes his head.
“I don’t understand,” Elena says. “Why would he want to do this?”
“He’s like Freja,” I say. “He thinks you’re all better than everyone else.”
“He wants everyone to die—is that it?” Patrick says. “And then survivors will be all that are left.”
“And immune,” I say.
JJ is shaking his head. “I can’t believe Freja could be involved in this,” he says, but the others seem to be having less trouble with it.
“There’s other news,” Patrick says. “There’s a force heading this way. We’re not sure who they are or what they want. We’ve been monitoring them from a distance. But they seem to be making their way to the same place we’re going.”
“You mean to Community?” I say.
“Yes.”