“Fine,” Niko spat. He waved us away with his hands, as if to dismiss us. “I’ll go alone. It’s better that way.”
“Niko, we all want Josie free,” Astrid said. “But you have to be reasonable!”
“I think Niko’s right. He should go get her,” Jake announced. “If there’s anyone on this black-stained, effed-up earth who can get to her, it’s Niko Mills.”
I looked at him: Jake Simonsen, all cleaned up. On antidepressants. Working out. Getting tan again. He and his dad were always tossing a football around.
Astrid was so happy about how well he’s doing.
My teeth were clenched and I wanted so badly to punch him.
“Come on, Jake!” I said. “Don’t do that. Don’t make Niko think this is possible. He can’t cross the border and get to Missouri and break her out of jail!” I continued. “It’s crazy!”
“Says Mr. Safe. Says Mr. Conservative!” Jake countered.
“Don’t make this about you and me!” I shouted. “This is about Niko’s safety!”
“Guys, you have to stop fighting!” Sahalia yelled.
“Yeah, watch it, Dean. You’ll go O on us.”
I took two steps and was up in his face.
“Don’t you ever, EVER talk about me going O again,” I growled. His sunny grin was gone now and I saw he wanted the fight as bad as I did.
“You guys are a-holes,” Astrid said. She pushed us apart. “This is about NIKO and JOSIE. Not you two and your territorial idiot wars.”
“Actually, this is supposed to be a party for the twins,” Sahalia reminded us. “And we’re ruining it.”
I saw the little kids were watching us. Caroline and Henry were holding hands, their eyes wide and scared.
“Real mature, you guys,” Sahalia said. “You two had better get it together. You’re going to be dads, for God’s sake!”
I stalked away.
Maybe Astrid would think I was being childish, but it was either walk away or take Jake’s head off.
Niko’s uncle’s farm was the common daydream that kept Niko, Alex, and Sahalia going. And me and Astrid, too, to a degree.
Niko’s uncle lived in a big, broken-down farmhouse on a large but defunct fruit tree farm in rural Pennsylvania. Niko and Alex had schemes for fixing up the farmhouse, reinvigorating the crops. Somehow they thought the farm could house all of us and our families when and not if we found them.
It was a good dream anyway. Unless the farm was overrun with refugees.
CHAPTER TWO
JOSIE
DAY 31
I keep to myself.
The Josie who took care of everyone—that girl’s dead.
She was killed in an aspen grove off the highway somewhere between Monument and Denver.
She was killed along with a deranged soldier.
(I killed her when I killed the solider.)
* * *
I am a girl with a rage inside that threatens to boil over every minute of the day.
All of us here are O types who were exposed. Some of us have been tipped into madness by the compounds.
It depends on how long you were exposed.
I was out there for more than two days, best we can piece together.
* * *
Myself, I work on self-control every moment of the waking day. I have to be on guard against my own blood.
I see others allow it to take over. Fights erupt. Tempers flare over an unfriendly glance, a stubbed toe, a bad dream.
If someone gets really out of control, the guards lock them in the study rooms at Hawthorn.
If someone really, really loses it, sometimes the guards take them and they don’t come back.
It makes it worse that we’re just a little stronger than we were before. Tougher. The cycle of healing, a bit speeded-up. Not so much you notice, but old ladies not using their canes. Pierced-ear holes closing up.
More energy in the cells, is what the inmates say.
They call it the O advantage.
It’s our only one.
* * *
The Type O Containment Camp at Old Mizzou is a prison, not a shelter.
The blisterers (type A), the paranoid freaks (type AB), and the people who’ve been made sterile (type B) are at refugee camps where there’s more freedom. More food. Clean clothes. TV.
But all of the people here at Mizzou have type O blood and were exposed to the compounds. So the authorities decided we are all murderers (probably true—certainly is for me) and penned us in together. Even the little kids.
“Yes, Mario,” I say when he starts to grumble about how wrong it all is. “It’s unjust. Goes against our rights.”
But every time my fingers itch to bash some idiot’s nose in, I suspect they were right to do it.
* * *
I remember my Gram talking about fevers. I remember her sitting on the edge of my bed, putting a clammy washcloth on my forehead.
“Gram,” I cried. “My head hurts.”
I didn’t say it aloud, but I was begging for Tylenol and she knew it.
“I could give you something, my baby girl, but then your fever would die, and fever’s what makes you strong.”
I would cry, and the tears themselves seemed boiling hot.
“A fever comes in and burns up your baby fat. It burns up the waste in your tissue. It moves you along in your development. Fevers are very good, darlin’. They make you invincible.”
Did I feel stronger, afterward? I did. I felt clean. I felt tough.
Gram made me feel like I was good through and through and I would never do wrong.
* * *
I’m glad Gram is long dead. I wouldn’t want her to know me now. Because the O rage comes on like a fever but it burns your soul up. Your body it makes strong and your mind it lulls to sleep with bloodlust and you can recover from that. But after you kill, your soul buckles. It won’t lie flat; like a warped frying pan, it sits on the burner and rattles, uneven.
* * *
You can never breathe the same way again because every breath is one you stole from corpses rotting, unburied, where you left them to bleed out.
* * *
It’s my fault that Mario is here in “the Virtues” with me. The Virtues are a quad of buildings with inspiring names: Excellence, Responsibility, Discovery, and Respect, as well as a dining hall and two other dorms, all contained by not one but two chain-link fences, each topped with razor wire. Welcome to the University of Missouri at Columbia, post-apocalypse edition.