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Martin was on his way to his office when he saw the cluster of people on the corner and detoured to see what it was about. They were gathered around a man’s market basket, warily staring in at something. “What is it?” he asked as he shouldered his way closer.
“Eggs,” said the owner of the basket.
“They’re silver,” said his neighbor with a mixture of awe and alarm.
“Not really,” Martin said, but they were an odd color. “More like a smoky gray.”
“Never seen eggs like that before.” There was a lot of head-shaking and murmuring going on.
“I’ve heard it depends on what the chickens are eating,” Martin offered. “Probably go back to normal when they get their regular feed.” He was making it up on the spot, and he hoped that none of the people present had seen Snowball’s silver gray kittens. It was probably just a coincidence, but something like that could spook the more superstitious in the community. “How do they taste?”
“I ate one this morning,” a teenager said bravely. The faces in the crowd turned toward him like sunflowers following the sun.
“Normal colors inside?” Martin asked.
“I guess,” he said puffing up a little at the sudden attention. “It was just an egg, you know.”
“How many have they got?” Martin asked as he looked toward the market. “An omelet sounds good to me.” That broke up the crowd. Half hurried ahead to buy eggs before the store ran out, and the other half went about their business.
Before he could get to the store, Tall Joe waved to him from across the street. Martin waited for him to catch up. “Got a minute?”
“Here?”
“Your office would be better.”
Martin had only been half joking when he’d mentioned the omelet. He hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, and it had been a very long day. He led the way up to his office hoping that someone had made a pot of coffee. He was delighted to find one of the old lunch buckets waiting for him. There was a sandwich, a wedge of fruit cake packed with dried cherries and apples and a small paper packet of nuts. And the coffee pot was full.
“Tillie’s on the job,” Tall Joe said with a chuckle. “I just finished off mine. You’d better tuck in. You look like you’re going to fall over.”
“She’s a wonder,” Martin said thankfully taking a bite of the sandwich. “I don’t get it. Who did she pull off what project to get these out?”
“That’s just Tillie magic, I guess.”
Martin took another blissful bite before turning to Tall Joe’s problem. “What’s up?”
“All the women in Maisey’s band are asleep, and some of her men want to help out with them. I wasn’t sure what to tell them.”
“Maybe we can get Wisp to vet them real quick.”
Tall Joe poured coffee for them both. “That would be great. Because they’ve got a kid who’s working as a medic, and another guy said he was a baker.”
“Both skills we could use,” Martin agreed. “Too good to be true?” he asked.
“That’s what I was thinking.”
A youngster Martin didn’t know tapped on the open door. “Angus wants everyone in a meeting upstairs.”
He left before Martin could thank him. There were a lot of strangers around now. It made him uncomfortable to see so many unfamiliar faces. “Maybe Wisp will be there,” Martin said. He gulped down the last of the sandwich, pocketed the nuts and took the cake and coffee with him.
Tall Joe joined him walking up one floor to the meeting room. It was a large room with several tables put together in a u-shape and another long table at the head of the room. Toby was there, looking worn out. Nick was sitting at the table eating out of the same kind of bucket Martin had found on his desk. He sat down next to him to finish off his cake. “Thank heavens for Tillie,” he said in greeting.
Nick nodded as he chewed. “We made sure everybody else was fed,” he mumbled.
“And we forgot about us,” Martin said with a rueful chuckle.
Nick pointed to a table against the back wall that was stacked with lunch buckets. “There’s more, if you haven’t eaten.”
Martin showed him his handful of cake. “Mine was in my office.” He took a big bite as Nick wolfed down the rest of his sandwich. “Have you seen Wisp? I think we’re going to need him after this meeting.”
“I haven’t been out of the warehouse all day,” Nick said brushing crumbs off his shirt.
Tillie came in leaning heavily on Claude’s arm. She slowly walked over to take her place next to Angus at the head of the room. Other department heads and stand-ins for the sleeping women filed in taking seats around the tables.
“Seeing them up there takes a load off, doesn’t it?” Martin said.
“Sure does,” Nick agreed.
Angus knocked on the table, and people settled into chairs. “Tillie’s back,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.
Nick started clapping, and it cascaded around the table until it became a standing ovation. Tillie blushed then waved them all back into their seats. “I appreciate the support. But we have work to do.”
The grin on Angus’s face slipped. “We have a few more points of data.” He gestured to Tillie. “We got a letter from Kin of the Earth. Bea slept for three and a half days. Two other women slept for four days each. They were both in their 70’s. Aside from a residual weakness, they seem fine. You may have heard that we lost Old Agnes. She was 96. The Kin lost an elder also. She was 92. So far we haven’t heard of any deaths for women younger than that.”
“So you’re thinking that older women sleep for a shorter time? But really old women...” Tall Joe hesitated to finish his sentence.
“Don’t wake up,” Tillie said flatly.
“From the information we currently have, that might be the case,” Angus said with shrug.
“Where’s Kyle?” Martin whispered to Nick.
“Haven’t seen him either.”
“He’s our scientist, right?”
“Maybe he’s working on some medicine,” Nick said.
“I’ve heard from a few of my connections out west,” Angus continued. “Their women are just falling asleep now. It looks like the flu may have begun closer to us here. Until a few more women wake up, we won’t know the actual duration, or how it is affected by age.”
“Why all the women?” Young Joe asked. “It’s never affected all of us before.”
“It depends on the parameters,” Angus said. “We don’t always know what encompasses the specific composition of the key flu target. Last year it seemed like it was brown-eyed people with at least one non-brown-eyed parent. Did all of those people get sick? Without doing an extensive analysis of our entire population, I can’t say. This year it appears to be females born before Zero Year. And it looks like all of them have gotten it.”
“Feels like Zero Year,” Tall Joe said. “Clinic’s overrun. Bodies on the floor.” He hung his head. “It’s bad.”
“But these bodies are sleeping,” Martin interjected. “I know what you mean. Going house to house checking on people. Brings back some bad memories, but these people aren’t dead. They’re just asleep.”
“But they will wake up?” Toby asked.
“As far as we can tell, yes, they will,” Angus said. He let that statement sit with people for a bit. “Now we need to talk about the attack on Creamery.”
“Done and dusted,” said Jack, who was representing the Harvest Crew.
“Not exactly,” Young Joe said. “Creamery is secure for now. South Warehouse was attacked early this morning. It was empty, so I guess that’s why they set fire to it. There was considerable damage to the roof. I think we’re going to have to find a different place for this summer.”
“Any action?” Nick asked.
“We had a brief shoot out, but they took off into the woods. I sent out some scouts, but there’s no sign of them.”
“How many?” Martin asked. This was the first time he’d gotten any details.
“I’ve got conflicting reports, but I’m guessing three or four men.”
“Armed?” Martin asked. Maisey said she’d had few weapons and not much ammunition.
“Probably just handguns.”
“They must have come through during the storm,” Toby said. “I can’t see how they could have gotten through the borders otherwise.”
“We can’t afford to risk our men to the weather when we need them for regular duty,” Angus said firmly. “They couldn’t have seen anything in that storm anyway. Can we use this as a training exercise for the dogs?”
Toby grinned. “I was thinking the same thing. Both Shaggy and Stripes have dropped their pups. Must have been the same male because they’re all the same color.”
A shiver went through Martin. “Are all the pups gray?”
Toby looked over. “Yeah, how’d you know?”
“Like Snowball’s kittens,” Tillie said
“And the eggs in the market,” Martin added. “Angus what does that mean?”
All their radios squawked. We need James, has anyone seen him? Martin glanced around the room, but no one offered an opinion. Tall Joe took the lead. “What’s happened?”
“Accident with injuries at the school. We can’t locate James, is Ruth awake yet?”
Martin stood at the same time as Tall Joe and Nick. By not saying who was hurt, they raised a slew of questions and worries. He glanced at the head of the room.
“Go,” Angus said. “Find James and let us know who got hurt.”
Tall Joe started coordinating a general search on the radio. Martin looked over at Nick. “Heading up to the school?”
“Tall Joe can track down James. I want to know what caused the accident.”
“Or who?” Martin asked.
“Exactly.”