Dead Reckoning
Prologue. The Pacific Star
The Pacific Star
In the spring of 2035, a cruise ship called the Pacific Star left port with three thousand people on board. One of them was already sick.
By morning the lower decks were full of the dead. The crew chained the stairwells shut and locked them in below.
Every port turned the ship away. The radio went quiet that summer, and the Pacific Star drifted into the fog.
Thirty years later, Salt Fleet sailors still tell the story on night watch. Most of them think it's just a story.
Chapter 1. Landfall
Landfall — Chapter 1
The North Pacific, off the coast of California. Late August, 2065. The Salt Fleet ship Tern is three weeks out of Honolulu with a hold full of salt, rope and dried fish.
It's past midnight. The wind is picking up. Three sailors sit on coiled rope by the stern, and the biggest one is finishing a story.
Caleb Dizon: ...and every port said no. Every single one. So the captain locked the stairs, and the ship just kept drifting. The radio went quiet in the summer. Nobody ever heard from it again.
Kendrick Rolle: And the people down below?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: Still down there, Kendrick. Thirty years. Walking up and down those halls in the dark, waiting for somebody to open a door.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Tunde Bakare: Every new deckhand gets this story. You know that, right? He told it to me my first week. I didn't sleep for a month.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: You slept fine. You snored through a boarding party in Lisbon.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Tunde Bakare: That was strategy. Let the bosun handle it. That's why we pay him.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Kendrick Rolle: Is it real, though? The Pacific Star?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: Real enough that no Fleet captain will sail within ten miles of it. Ask anybody.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Tunde Bakare: Ask me. It's real, it's haunted, and it's full of gold. Captain Vik's cousin went aboard in fifty-eight and never came back.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Kendrick Rolle: That's not helping.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rain starts to hit the deck. The ship rolls harder. Captain Ingrid Solberg comes down the ladder from the wheelhouse in an oilskin coat.
Ingrid Solberg: Bosun. Weather's turning. I want everything lashed down in ten minutes, and I want that boy below.
Caleb Dizon: Aye, Captain. Kendrick, below. Tunde, forward hatch.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ingrid Solberg: And stow the ghost stories. The fog's coming in thick tonight.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Kendrick Rolle: I'm not scared, Captain.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ingrid Solberg: Good. Be not scared below deck.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Tunde Bakare: Hey, Caleb. When you get your own ship, I'm your first mate. You promised.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: I promised you'd be cook. You burn rice, Tunde. Even I don't burn rice.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Tunde Bakare: Cook, mate, whatever. Just don't leave me on the dock.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Two hours later the fog is so thick the bow lamp only lights the rain. The lookout shouts something nobody can hear over the wind.
A wall of dark steel comes out of the fog with no lights on it at all. It's a ship, ten stories tall, streaked with rust.
Ingrid Solberg: Hard to port! Hard to port!
A wave lifts the Tern and throws it into the cruise ship's hull. Steel screams. Down in the big ship's lower decks, doors that were sealed for thirty years tear open.
The dead come over the rails above them. They can't swim, but they don't need to. They fall onto the Tern's deck by the dozen.
Caleb Dizon: Tunde, with me! Get the crew to the stern!
Tunde Bakare: Caleb, there's too many! There's too many of them!
The Tern drives onto the rocks off the coast. The deck tips. The water comes up white, and then there's nothing.
Morning. Gray sky, cold rain. A big man lies face down on wet sand among broken crates and torn sails.
[Picture: rain]
He coughs up seawater. He lies there a long time before he sits up.
[Picture: rain]
Caleb Dizon: Captain? Tunde! Kendrick! Anybody!
[Picture: rain]
The beach goes on for a mile in both directions. Pieces of the Tern are everywhere. A broken wooden board sticks out of the sand with TERN painted on it in white letters.
[Picture: rain]
[Picture: tern board]
Caleb Dizon: One. Just one. Come on. Somebody count off.
[Picture: rain]
[Picture: tern board]
He walks the waterline. He finds a life ring, a crate of salt, a boot. He finds Ingrid Solberg's wool cap snagged on a rock. He doesn't find Ingrid.
[Picture: rain]
[Picture: wool cap]
Caleb Dizon: Captain... you were always the last one off. You'd better be on another beach somewhere, yelling at somebody.
[Picture: rain]
[Picture: wool cap]
Out past the breakers, the Pacific Star sits tilted on the rocks, dark and huge. Something moves in the surf in front of it.
[Picture: rain]
THE DEAD. Slow, and they never stop once they hear you. One is easy. Ten will kill you.
[Picture: stamp head]
People are walking out of the sea. Gray skin, white eyes, life vests and old cruise ship uniforms. Water runs off them. They don't look at the waves. They look at him.
[Picture: rain]
[Picture: zombie front]
[Picture: zombie front]
[Picture: zombie front]
[Picture: zombie front]
Caleb Dizon: No. No, no. You can't swim. Everybody knows you can't swim.
[Picture: rain]
They didn't swim. They walked along the bottom, all night, and now they're coming up the sand.
[Picture: rain]
[Picture: zombie front]
[Picture: zombie front]
[Picture: zombie front]
[Picture: zombie front]
Caleb Dizon: Okay. Okay. Just like a boarding party. One at a time.
[Picture: rain]
The fire axe is still on his belt. He has held a deck against boarders a hundred times. But a deck has rails and doors and edges. The beach has nothing. They come at him from three sides.
[Picture: rain]
[Picture: fire axe]
Caleb Dizon: Get back! Get off me!
[Picture: rain]
He drops the first one. The second one grabs his coat and he tears free and loses his footing in the sand. The third one is close enough to smell. He swings until they stop moving.
[Picture: rain]
[Picture: zombie front]
[Picture: zombie front]
Then he sits down in the wet sand, breathing hard, shaking.
[Picture: rain]
Caleb Dizon: That was three. That was only three. How do people live like this?
[Picture: rain]
He hears footsteps in the shallow water behind him. Slow ones. He knows that walk. He's watched it cross a deck every day for six years.
[Picture: rain]
Tunde Bakare walks out of the surf in his brown leather jacket. His skin is gray. His eyes are white. There's a bite on his neck.
Caleb Dizon: Tunde. Hey. Hey, brother. It's me. It's Caleb.
Tunde doesn't stop. He doesn't know the name anymore. He reaches out with both hands the way the others did.
Caleb Dizon: I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. You should've been on the stern with me.
Caleb lifts the axe. He does it with one swing, so it's quick. Then he catches his friend before he hits the sand and lowers him down gently.
All afternoon he drags wood from the wreck into a pile above the tide line. Everybody in the world knows you burn the dead. Even people who live on ships know that.
He lays Tunde on top and lights it with a flare from a crate. He sits and watches it for a long time.
Caleb Dizon: You were supposed to be first mate. I was gonna let you cook, too. Even with the rice.
Caleb Dizon: You wanted to see every continent before you turned thirty. You got to five. That's more than most people get.
The rain stops. The fire burns down. Out on the rocks the Pacific Star groans every time a wave hits it.
When it's dark he sees a thin line of smoke rising out of a canyon in the hills behind the beach. Somebody up there has a cooking fire.
Caleb Dizon: Smoke means people. People mean water and food. Maybe they saw the wreck. Maybe somebody else made it to shore.
Caleb Dizon: Maybe the captain's up there right now, eating their food and complaining about it.
He picks up a sea bag from the wreckage and fills it with what he can carry. Rope, a knife, a tin cup, a flare, the TERN board snapped down to fit. He looks at the ocean for a long time.
Caleb walks up the old canyon road at dusk with the axe on his belt and the sea bag on his shoulder. Behind him the ocean is going dark. In front of him the hills are dry and gold and full of shadows.
He has lived on ships since he was three years old. He has never walked more than a mile inland in his life.
Caleb Dizon: Okay. Land. How hard can it be.
Chapter 2. The Nurse
The Nurse — Chapter 2
Dear Nanay. I don't know how to tell you this, so I'll just say it. The Tern is gone. I'm on land. I don't know anybody here, and I don't know where anything is.
[Picture: letter]
The smoke leads to a camp in a canyon under tall rock cliffs. Old park buildings, tents along a creek, terraces of corn and squash, beehives, goats.
Three arrows are pointed at Caleb before he's ten steps from the gate.
Gloria Esparza: That's far enough. Put the axe on the ground. Slowly.
Caleb Dizon: Yes, ma'am. Slowly. I'm putting it down.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gloria Esparza: You came up from the coast. Nobody comes up from the coast. Are you bit?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: Bit? No. No, I'm not bit. I'm just wet. Very, very wet.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gloria Esparza: Roll up your sleeves. Both of them. Then your pant legs.
[Picture: previous speaker]
He does. A small woman with gray-black hair walks all the way around him and looks at every inch of skin. Then she lowers her bow.
Gloria Esparza: Gloria Esparza. This is my camp. We saw the fire on the beach last night. That was you?
Caleb Dizon: That was my friend.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gloria Esparza: I'm sorry. Come in. You can eat. You can sleep in the toolshed. Nobody fires a gun in this camp after dark, and nobody makes noise. Those are the rules.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: I don't have a gun. I don't really have anything. I'm Caleb. Caleb Dizon. I'm the bosun of the Tern. I was.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gloria Esparza: A sailor. Huh. We trade honey to the Picker boats sometimes. You're the first sailor I've ever seen walk uphill.
[Picture: previous speaker]
She sends him to the creek to wash. His hand is cut deep across the palm. He didn't notice it on the beach.
A young woman is sitting on a rock by the water with a heavy white cooler at her feet. She looks up at his hand, then at him.
[Picture: cooler]
Monique Whitlock: That's going to get infected. Sit down.
Caleb Dizon: I'm okay. It's just a cut.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: Everybody says that right before it turns green. Sit, sweetie. I'm a nurse. It's free.
[Picture: previous speaker]
He sits. She pulls a small kit out of her bag, cleans the cut and threads a needle.
Caleb Dizon: Is that a needle? That's a needle.
Monique Whitlock: You walked out of a shipwreck yesterday. Hold still for a needle.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: The shipwreck didn't have a needle.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: Okay, Sailor. Deep breath. Look at the goats. Good. Two more.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: Thanks, Doc.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: I'm not a doctor. I'm Monique.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: Okay, Doc.
[Picture: previous speaker]
When he reaches for his sea bag, his boot bumps the white cooler. She pulls it back between her feet so fast he flinches.
[Picture: cooler]
Monique Whitlock: Don't touch that. Please. Not ever.
[Picture: cooler]
Caleb Dizon: Okay. I didn't mean anything. What's in it?
[Picture: cooler]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: Something that has to stay cold. That's all I can tell you.
[Picture: cooler]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Up the creek, at the far end of the meadow, a man on a brown horse sits watching the camp. He doesn't come closer. After a while he turns and rides back into the trees.
[Picture: character Nolan Price wary]
Gloria Esparza: That's the Lifeline man again. Two days now he's been asking about you, Monique.
[Picture: character Nolan Price wary]
Monique Whitlock: I know. I'm leaving as soon as I can. I just need my things.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: What things?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: My notebooks and my ice packs. They're in a lab on the hill above Malibu Canyon. Lifeline burned it four nights ago. I got out with the cooler and nothing else.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gloria Esparza: And nobody here will go up there. There's dead in the building and Lifeline watching the road.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: I'll go.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: You don't even know me.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: You fixed my hand. That's a debt. Where I come from, you pay those.
[Picture: previous speaker]
The lab sits on a hilltop above the canyon road. The windows are broken. The records room upstairs is black from fire.
In the basement a freezer is still humming, running on the solar panels on the roof. Monique goes straight to it.
Monique Whitlock: It's still cold. Thank God. The ice packs are good.
Caleb Dizon: Doc. Where's the noise coming from?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: What noise?
[Picture: previous speaker]
A scraping sound. Something dragging. It's under the desk by the wall, and her ankle is right next to it.
CRAWLER. Lost its legs. Hides under cars, desks and tall grass and grabs your ankle as you pass.
[Picture: stamp under]
A dead man with no legs drags himself out from under the desk on his arms and grabs Monique by the ankle. She falls. The cooler hits the floor and slides.
Monique Whitlock: Caleb! Get it off, get it off!
Caleb grabs the dead man by the collar and hauls him back across the floor, away from her leg. One swing of the axe.
Caleb Dizon: Not her. Not today.
Caleb Dizon: Are you bit? Doc, look at me. Are you bit?
Monique Whitlock: No. No. It didn't get skin. Give me a second.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: Is the cooler okay? Caleb, check the cooler.
Caleb Dizon: It's fine. It's fine. You almost got bit and you're asking about a box.
[Picture: previous speaker]
She checks it anyway. The lid is sealed. She breathes out. They pack the ice packs, a folding solar panel, and a stack of scorched notebooks tied with string.
[Picture: notebooks]
There are footsteps on the stairs. A young man in a Lifeline jacket comes down with a pump shotgun held in both hands. His hands are shaking. He can't be older than twenty.
Kyle Brennan: Don't move! Don't... stay right there! I'm supposed to watch the building!
Caleb Dizon: Okay. Nobody's moving. What's your name?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Kyle Brennan: Kyle. Kyle Brennan. Lifeline Retrieval. I'm supposed to bring her in if she comes back.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: Kyle, if you fire that thing in here, every dead body in this canyon is coming up that hill.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Kyle Brennan: I know! I know that! Why do you think I haven't fired it?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: That's smart. You're smart. Now be smart one more time and hand it to me.
[Picture: previous speaker]
He walks over slowly, the whole time talking, the way he talks to a new deckhand on his first storm. He puts his hand on the shotgun and Kyle lets go.
Kyle Brennan: They burned all the papers. I didn't want to. Nolan said orders. I just stood there.
Monique Whitlock: What do we do with him, Caleb?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb ties Kyle to the stair rail with a length of rope from his bag. It's a good knot. He leaves a canteen of water where Kyle can reach it.
Kyle Brennan: Why are you helping me?
Caleb Dizon: Because you're a kid with a gun, and I'm tired. Somebody'll come for you by dark. Tell them she went north.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Night. They're back at the camp by the creek. Monique packs the cooler with fresh ice packs, then packs it again.
Horses are coming up the canyon road. Lanterns. Six riders in Lifeline jackets. The man on the brown horse is in front.
Gloria Esparza: That's them. Go. Out the back, down the creek. I'll talk slow.
Monique Whitlock: Gloria, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have come here.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gloria Esparza: You came because you were scared. That's allowed. Now go.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb and Monique wade down the creek in the dark, waist deep, the cooler held up between them. Behind them, lanterns move between the tents.
A rider stops on the bank right above them. The lantern light sweeps across the water. Caleb pulls Monique down under the overhanging reeds and holds still.
The rider turns away. They keep wading until the lanterns are just little dots behind them.
Monique Whitlock: You're good at water.
Caleb Dizon: It's the only thing I'm good at.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: Where are you going to go now? You don't have to stay with me.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: I don't know where anything is. You do. Where are you going?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: East. All the way east. There's a lab in Tennessee that still works. After that, home. Atlanta. I haven't seen my family in a year.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: Then I guess I'm going east.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: You don't even know where Tennessee is, do you?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: It's... east?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Chapter 3. Thirty Floors Up
Thirty Floors Up — Chapter 3
Dear Nanay. I met a nurse. She's very small and very bossy and she won't tell me what's in her box. We're walking to a place called Tennessee. I'm told it's east.
[Picture: letter]
Los Angeles. Twelve lanes of rusted cars that haven't moved in thirty years. Palm trees growing through the median. Total silence.
Monique walks in front. Caleb walks behind her and tries to step where she steps.
Monique Whitlock: Lower. Talk lower. Whisper, but not a hiss. Hissing carries.
Caleb Dizon: How do you know all this?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: I grew up inside a wall, but I worked outside one. You learn or you don't come back.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: They hunt by sound, then smell. Their eyes are bad. Stay downwind if you can. And always look under the cars before you walk past.
Caleb Dizon: Because of the ones with no legs.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: Look at you. You're learning.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: On a ship it's simple. You hold the rail and you don't let them on. Out here there's no rail. Everything's a way in.
[Picture: previous speaker]
A whistle comes from somewhere above them, two short notes. Monique stops and whistles back.
On the roof of a gas station, a young man with a crooked smile and a young woman in a red bandana are lying flat, watching them.
Marco Santos: Monique Whitlock! Gloria's honey girl. We heard you were dead.
Monique Whitlock: Marco Santos. You heard wrong. Can we come up?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Marco Santos: Who's the giant?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: Caleb. I'm with her.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Sofia Marquez: He's huge. Can he even climb?
[Picture: previous speaker]
The Haven Apartments is a thirty-floor tower in the middle of the dead city. The only way in is a rope bridge from the roof of the building next door.
Caleb crosses it without looking down. He's crossed worse between ships in a gale. Marco looks impressed and tries not to show it.
The roof is a garden. Tomatoes, beans, rain barrels, a dozen chickens. A man in square glasses meets them by the water tanks.
Luis Ortega: I'm Luis Ortega. I run this building. You're welcome to eat, and you're welcome to sleep, as long as you follow the rules.
Luis Ortega: No noise near the windows. No lights after dark. Nobody goes below floor twelve. If you're bitten, you tell me right away. No exceptions.
Caleb Dizon: Understood, sir. Same rules as a ship, mostly.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Marco Santos: So Monique. Still single? Because the tower's having a dance next month. Very exclusive. No noise, no lights.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: A silent dance in the dark? Marco, that's just standing.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Marco Santos: Standing close.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: Okay, maybe. If I'm still around.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb is watching the chickens very hard.
Monique Whitlock: Something wrong, Sailor?
Caleb Dizon: Nope. Nothing. Nice chickens.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Luis Ortega: You want to go east. The freeways are full of the dead and the passes are worse. Marco has the best map in the city.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Marco Santos: And the map costs. My crew's going out tomorrow for a pharmacy. Two blocks from the stadium. Nobody likes that run. Come with us and the map is yours.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: What's at the stadium?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Sofia Marquez: Everybody who used to live around the stadium.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Morning. Marco's crew of six moves across the rooftops and down through the empty streets. The pharmacy is just where the map says. Behind it, on the hill, the old baseball stadium.
They load bandages, glass bottles, a box of old pills nobody can read the labels on. It's quiet. It's going well.
Sofia Marquez: Marco. Movement on the corner.
A dead woman is standing in the middle of the street. Her throat is torn open from ear to ear. She turns her head toward them.
[Picture: screamer zombie front]
SCREAMER. Torn throat. When it sees you, it shrieks, and everything nearby comes running.
[Picture: stamp first]
Marco Santos: Screamer. Kill it! Kill it quiet, now!
Sofia raises her bow. The dead woman's mouth opens wide.
The shriek is high and endless. It goes on and on. Every window on the street rattles with it.
One of Marco's crew panics and fires his pistol. The screaming stops. Everything is quiet for one second.
Then, up on the hill, the stadium starts to make a sound. Thousands of feet.
Marco Santos: Who fired? Who fired?! Run. Everybody run!
HORDE. Thousands, moving together, following the noise. You can't fight it.
[Picture: stamp run]
The dead pour out of the stadium gates and down the freeway ramps in a gray flood. Thousands of them. They fill the street behind the crew from wall to wall.
The crew runs the rooftops. Caleb carries Sofia's pack and his own. At the rope bridge they go hand over hand, one at a time, the street below them full of reaching arms.
Caleb Dizon: Go! Don't look down! Look at my hands, just look at my hands!
Sofia is the last one across. As she climbs over the parapet, a dead hand comes up over the edge of the wall below her and finds her arm.
Floor twelve. The barricade is steel doors and furniture and wire. Below it, the dead are already in the stairwell, pounding on the doors.
Sofia is sitting against the wall holding her forearm. Blood is coming through her fingers.
Sofia Marquez: It's not... it's a scratch. It's a scratch, right? Somebody say it's a scratch.
Marco pulls her hand away. Two curved lines of teeth marks. Everybody sees it. Nobody says anything.
Luis Ortega: Sofia. I'm so sorry, honey.
Luis reaches inside his coat. Everybody knows what he keeps there.
Marco Santos: Don't. Luis, don't you dare.
Luis Ortega: It's the rule, Marco. You know it's the rule. Better now than later.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: Everybody move. Move!
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique drops to her knees and tears open her pack.
Monique holds up a small glass vial and a needle in a little steel case. Everybody on the landing knows what it is. Most of them have never seen one.
She puts the needle into Sofia's arm and pushes the plunger all the way down.
Monique Whitlock: Look at me. Look at me, sweetie. It's inside five minutes. You're okay. You're going to be okay.
Sofia Marquez: Is that... is that a Booster?
Luis takes his hand out of his coat. It's empty.
Sofia cries. Marco holds her. Behind the barricade the dead keep pounding until long after dark.
Midnight on the roof. The city is completely black. Monique sits by the rain barrels. Caleb sits down next to her.
Caleb Dizon: I saw your face when you opened the case. That was the only one, wasn't it?
[Picture: booster empty]
Monique Whitlock: Don't tell anyone.
[Picture: booster empty]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: Doc. That was the only thing between you and dying.
[Picture: booster empty]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: I know what it was, Caleb.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: Then why?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: Because she's twenty-two. Because I'm a nurse. Because I don't know how to stand there and watch somebody's face while they do the math.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: Also, if Luis shot her, Marco would've cried, and I can't stand it when men cry.
Caleb Dizon: I cried on the beach.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: Yeah, but you're a big ugly sailor. It's different.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: Ugly.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: I didn't mean ugly. I meant... go to sleep, Caleb.
[Picture: previous speaker]
In the morning Marco gives them his map, folded in oilcloth, and two days of food. Sofia is sitting up and eating. Her blood test strip comes up clean.
[Picture: map]
Sofia Marquez: Monique. You get a free silent dance with me. Any time, forever. I mean it.
Marco Santos: Hey. That was my silent dance.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: Sorry, Marco. I'm booked.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Chapter 4. Dry Country
Dry Country — Chapter 4
Dear Nanay. I've seen a desert now. It's like the ocean if somebody drained it and forgot to put anything back. There's no water anywhere. I keep looking for the horizon to move.
[Picture: letter]
Six days of walking east. The Mojave. Long rows of rusted rails, empty freight cars, a dead town baking in the sun.
Their water ran out yesterday. Monique's lips are cracked. Caleb is carrying the cooler now, because she let him, which means she's very tired.
Caleb Dizon: Marco's map says there's a railroad man here. A tower. Doc, which one's a tower?
Monique Whitlock: That one, with the windows. Caleb. Don't wave.
[Picture: previous speaker]
He's already waving. A round little man in an orange vest leans out of the tower window and waves back with both arms.
Rudy Salcedo: Visitors! Real live visitors! Stay right there, I'm coming down! Don't touch the rails, they're hot enough to fry an egg!
He comes out of the tower door at a trot. His skin is gray. Thin black lines run up his neck and down his forearms. Caleb's hand drops to his axe.
Monique Whitlock: Caleb. It's okay. He's Mutated. He's not dead. He's just a man.
Rudy Salcedo: Just a man! Thank you, miss. Most folks say "stay back." Rudy Salcedo. Barstow Rail, since twenty-oh-three. Well. Since the railroad was a railroad.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: Sorry. I'm Caleb. I've never... I've only heard about Mutated. On the ships they say you bite.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rudy Salcedo: I do bite. Corn on the cob, mostly. My teeth aren't what they were.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rudy Salcedo: Now, rules of the yard. Nobody fires a gun in my yard. Ever. I don't care if the devil himself walks in. You get one warning and then you're walking.
Caleb Dizon: No guns. We don't have one anyway.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rudy Salcedo: You look like you need water more than rules. Cistern's in the engine house. Bring your bottles.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: Why aren't you getting it for us?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rudy Salcedo: Because there's Husks in the shade in there. In the heat of the day they stand in the dark and don't move. They don't bother me. I smell wrong to them. But you two smell like dinner.
[Picture: previous speaker]
The engine house is huge and dim. Sun comes through holes in the roof in long bright bars. The cistern is at the back, past the old engines.
Between the engines, in the shade, the dead are standing. Dozens of them. They are brown and dried out, skin tight on the bones, mouths open. None of them makes a sound.
[Picture: husk zombie front]
[Picture: husk zombie front]
[Picture: husk zombie front]
[Picture: husk zombie front]
[Picture: husk zombie front]
HUSK. Dried out by twenty years of desert heat. It can't make a sound, so you won't hear it move.
[Picture: stamp silent]
Monique Whitlock: Don't talk. Don't even breathe loud. They can't make noise, so you won't hear them move.
Caleb and Monique kneel at the cistern in the dark, filling bottles one at a time so the water doesn't splash. Dried-out dead stand all around them in the bars of light, close enough to touch.
Monique's bottle cap slips out of her fingers. It hits the concrete and rolls. Tick, tick, tick, across the floor, and stops against a dead man's foot.
His head turns. Slowly. Toward the sound. Caleb puts his hand over Monique's hand and they both stop breathing.
After a long time the head turns back.
They walk out into the sun with six full bottles. Monique sits down on a rail and drinks half a bottle without stopping.
Monique Whitlock: Oh my gosh. Water. I'm going to marry this water.
Caleb Dizon: You'd have to fight me for it.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rudy Salcedo: Now. The cart. Five Chits a head to the end of the line, edge of Las Vegas. Takes two days if the wind's kind.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: We don't have Chits. I've got a knife. It's a good knife.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rudy Salcedo: Let me see it.
[Picture: previous speaker]
It's a Fleet knife, a sailor's knife with a marlinspike in the handle. Rudy turns it over in his hands slowly, twice.
[Picture: fleet knife]
Rudy Salcedo: That's a real knife. They don't make those anymore. Nobody makes anything anymore. Deal.
[Picture: fleet knife]
Rudy's cart is a flat iron platform on rail wheels, with pedals like a bicycle and a solar panel on a pole. It rolls east across the desert at the speed of a fast walk.
Rudy talks the whole time. About the old trains, about the Fall, about his wife and his son. Caleb pedals. Monique pulls a worn deck of cards out of her bag.
Monique Whitlock: You play?
[Picture: cards]
Caleb Dizon: Do I play. Doc, I grew up on a cargo ship. I've been playing cards since I could hold them. Sailors play cards in their sleep.
[Picture: cards]
[Picture: previous speaker]
She beats him four hands in a row.
[Picture: cards]
Caleb Dizon: How? How are you doing that?
[Picture: cards]
Monique Whitlock: Four years of night shifts at a camp in Georgia. There was a guard who played every night. He was very, very bad at hiding his face. So are you.
[Picture: cards]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: I don't have a face.
[Picture: cards]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: You have a whole face. Your eyebrows go up when you get a good card. Like a dog that heard the word "walk."
[Picture: cards]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rudy Salcedo: She's right, son. I saw it from here.
[Picture: cards]
[Picture: previous speaker]
At sunset Rudy makes beans on a little stove on the cart. Monique pokes at hers.
Monique Whitlock: I would kill somebody for rice right now. Just plain white rice. A whole pot.
Caleb Dizon: When we get somewhere with rice, I'll make you adobo. My lola's recipe. It's the best adobo in the Pacific.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: Excuse me. The best adobo in the world is my mother's. Lorna Whitlock's. Everybody on the campus knows that.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: That's because they've never had mine.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: Caleb. You don't say that to a Filipino woman about her mother's adobo. That's how wars start.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: Then it's war.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: It's war.
[Picture: previous speaker]
The next afternoon the wind changes. The sky to the south turns brown, then dark brown, then black. Rudy stops talking.
[Picture: sand]
Rudy Salcedo: Sandstorm. Big one. Cover your faces. If it buries the tracks we'll be stuck out here in the open, and that's bad.
[Picture: sand]
A wall of sand hits them. The world goes brown. The cart runs blind down the rails with the solar motor whining and Caleb pedaling with everything he has.
Monique wraps herself around the cooler and holds on to the rail of the cart. Rudy shouts directions from memory, every curve and every bridge, with his eyes shut.
Rudy Salcedo: Left curve coming! Now the trestle! Keep pedaling, son! Don't stop for anything!
Caleb Dizon: I'm not stopping! Just tell me where the road is!
They come out the other side of the storm into clear evening light, covered in sand from head to foot. The tracks ahead are clean.
Rudy starts laughing. He laughs until he has to hold on to the pole. Monique starts laughing too, and then Caleb can't help it.
Rudy Salcedo: Thirty years I've run this line. Thirty years. That's the best ride I've ever had. Goodness.
The end of the line is a broken bridge at the edge of the desert. Far off, the dead towers of Las Vegas stand in the haze. Rudy will go back alone, the way he came.
Rudy Salcedo: Do me a favor. If you talk to people out east. Tell them there's still a railroad man running the line out of Barstow. Somebody should know.
Caleb Dizon: I'll tell everybody I meet, Rudy. I promise.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: And I'll tell them the railroad man makes very bad beans.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rudy Salcedo: Go on. Get. Before I make you take the beans with you.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Chapter 5. The Gate
The Gate — Chapter 5
Dear Nanay. Today I'll see the only place on land with electric lights. A whole city built on a dam. Doc says they test your blood at the door. I said that's fine, my blood's mostly salt.
[Picture: letter]
Hoover Dam Stronghold. The capital of the Gate Compact. A high wall across the old highway bridge, guard towers, and a fenced pen where every traveler waits in line.
A guard at a folding table pricks fingers and presses each drop of blood onto a little paper strip. Then everybody watches the strip.
[Picture: test strip]
Caleb Dizon: What happens if it goes black?
Monique Whitlock: Then you have the virus in you. They send you down the hill to the quarantine camp. Or worse.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: How long does it take?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: About a minute. It's the longest minute you'll ever have.
[Picture: previous speaker]
The man ahead of them is an old trader with a mule. His strip stays white. He breathes out slowly.
Monique Whitlock: Listen. When we get to the table, we're married.
Caleb Dizon: We're what?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: Married couples go through on one entry and one search. It's faster, and they ask fewer questions. Just nod and look like a husband.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: What does a husband look like?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: Tired. You'll be great.
[Picture: previous speaker]
The gate captain is a tall man with a shaved head and a short beard going white. His name patch says WEBB.
Marcus Webb: Names. Where from, where to.
Monique Whitlock: Monique and Caleb Dizon. From the coast. Going east to family.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Marcus Webb: Married?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: Very. Very married. Doc can tell you.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: He calls me Doc. It's a joke. He's very funny. Always joking.
[Picture: previous speaker]
She elbows him in the ribs. Hard. The guard pricks both their fingers. Both strips stay white.
[Picture: test strip]
Marcus Webb: Clean. Welcome to Hoover. Two Chits each or a day of work. Now open the box.
[Picture: cooler]
Monique Whitlock: I can't open it. It has to stay sealed and cold. It's medical.
[Picture: cooler]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Marcus Webb: Then it doesn't come in. Every bag gets searched. That's the law here, and I don't break it for anybody.
[Picture: cooler]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Dean Colter: Captain Webb. I think we can make an exception for a nurse.
[Picture: previous speaker]
A man in a clean army jacket walks up to the table. Square jaw, green eyes, a friendly smile. He looks like he hasn't missed a meal or a shave in his life.
Dean Colter: Major Dean Colter, Continuity Command. Miss Whitlock, it's good to finally meet you. You're a hard woman to find.
Monique Whitlock: How do you know my name?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Dean Colter: I listen to the radio. Everybody between here and Atlanta is looking for you. I'll vouch for them, Captain. On my word.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Marcus Webb: Your word isn't Compact law, Major.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Dean Colter: No. But your council voted to keep me happy. Let them through.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Marcus Webb looks at Colter for a long moment. Then he waves them through without a word.
Evening. Inside the walls, the stronghold's lamps come on. Real electric lights, strung along the top of the dam, hundreds of them.
Caleb stops in the middle of the road and stares at them.
Caleb Dizon: Doc. Look at that. Lights. On land.
Monique Whitlock: You've seen lights before.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: On ships. A ship has to make its own. This is a whole city making its own. I didn't know anybody could still do that.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Colter catches up with them on the road. He falls into step next to Monique, smiling.
Dean Colter: I'll be direct. Lifeline wants what's in that box. So does my general. I'd rather it went to someone who'll share it fairly.
Monique Whitlock: Fairly. Your general wants to decide who gets it and who doesn't.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Dean Colter: Somebody has to decide, Miss Whitlock. If you hand it out to everybody at once, the strongholds will go to war over who's first. I've thought about this a lot.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Dean Colter: Give me one look inside. In return, a cold box from the dam's cold store and passes for every Compact gate between here and Tennessee.
Monique Whitlock: No.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Dean Colter: Think about it overnight. You're safe here. For now.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: What does "for now" mean?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Dean Colter: It means a Lifeline Retrieval team rode in an hour ago. Nolan Price. Ask your wife about him.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique goes pale.
That night they sit in a hallway by the powerhouse. Her ice packs are soft. The cooler is getting warm.
Monique Whitlock: Nolan. Of course it's Nolan. He's the one who taught me to play cards.
Caleb Dizon: The guard with the bad face?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: He's not bad at anything else, Caleb. He's the best tracker Lifeline has. And he's kind. That's what makes him dangerous. He'll be very kind right up until he takes the cooler.
[Picture: previous speaker]
A tall man with a short beard is standing at the end of the hall. He's been listening. He has a hunting rifle on his back and dust on his boots.
Wyatt Hansen: Your ice is going soft.
Caleb Dizon: Who are you?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Wyatt Hansen: Wyatt Hansen. I hunt for the cold store. I've got a key to it.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: Why would you help us?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Wyatt Hansen: I heard what the major said at the gate. I don't like men who decide who gets to live.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Wyatt Hansen: And I know a way east. Down the river and across the plateau. Nobody watches it.
He takes them down to the cold store. It's freezing inside, rows of meat on hooks, crates of medicine. Monique packs every ice pack until it's frozen hard.
Midnight. Below the dam, on the river bank outside the walls, the quarantine camp. Tents and boat sheds. Three hundred Mutated people live here, the ones whose blood tests turned black.
A young woman with a sly smile is waiting by a little aluminum boat. Black lines run up her neck.
Daniela Vargas: So you're the couple everybody's looking for. The Major's looking, Lifeline's looking. You're very popular.
Wyatt Hansen: Daniela. Can you get them downriver?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Daniela Vargas: I can get anybody anywhere. The question is what I get.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: We don't have anything. Honestly. I don't even have rice.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Daniela Vargas: Rice? You want rice?
[Picture: previous speaker]
She reaches into the boat and tosses Monique a small cloth sack. It's rice.
[Picture: rice]
Daniela Vargas: Wedding present. Now get in. The guards on the rim change at one.
[Picture: rice]
Monique gets in the boat and watches Caleb help Daniela untie the rope.
Monique Whitlock: She's pretty.
Caleb Dizon: Is she?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: Don't.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: What did I do?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: Just get in the boat, Sailor.
[Picture: previous speaker]
The little boat slides down the black river under the dam with its motor off. Floodlights from the canyon rim sweep back and forth across the water.
Up on the rim, men with rifles are looking down. Lifeline riders. Nolan Price is standing with them.
The light swings toward the boat. Caleb lies flat over Monique and the cooler. Daniela stops paddling and lets the current take them.
The beam passes right over the boat and keeps going.
Daniela Vargas: And that's how you leave Hoover Dam. Tell your friends. Actually, don't.
Five miles downriver Daniela puts them ashore at a gravel bar. Three horses are waiting, saddled. Wyatt is holding the reins.
Caleb Dizon: You came.
Wyatt Hansen: I said I knew the way.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: You coming the whole way?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Wyatt Hansen: Yeah. Yeah, I think I am.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: Caleb. Can you ride a horse?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: Is it like a boat?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Wyatt Hansen: No.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Chapter 6. The Cold Hole
The Cold Hole — Chapter 6
Dear Nanay. I can ride a horse now. Badly. Wyatt says the horse is doing most of the work. I haven't told Doc about Tunde yet. I don't know how. Every time I start, I stop.
[Picture: letter]
Three weeks later. New Mexico. Black lava fields as far as anyone can see, cracked and sharp, with yellow grass growing in the cracks. October, and the nights are getting cold.
An old trading post and a few cabins stand at the edge of a hole in the ground. Wooden stairs lead down into it. Cold air comes up the stairs even in the afternoon sun.
Monique Whitlock: The packs are soft again. Wyatt, how long does it stay cold down there?
Wyatt Hansen: All year. The Baca family's been cutting ice out of it since before the Fall.
[Picture: previous speaker]
A strong woman with keen black eyes comes out of the trading post wiping her hands. A big man with a gray-streaked beard stands behind her and doesn't say anything.
Teresa Baca: Teresa Baca. Water's free. Everything else costs. What do you want?
Monique Whitlock: Ice. As much as we can carry. Packed in sawdust.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Teresa Baca: Then you came at a bad time. Nobody's cutting ice. Not since last month.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: What happened last month?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Teresa Baca: The lava tubes go on for miles under the field. Something's living in the deep one now. It killed my nephew Ramon while he was cutting.
[Picture: previous speaker]
The big man behind her turns and walks away toward the cabins.
Teresa Baca: That's Eloy. Ramon was his son. He hasn't said ten words since.
Wyatt Hansen: What kind of something?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Teresa Baca: Nobody saw it. They found Ramon at the bottom of the stairs. Bitten on the back of the neck. From above.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: We'll go down. Kill it. Then you cut the ice and fill our box.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Teresa Baca: You'd do that? For ice?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: It's not for ice.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Eloy comes back from the cabin. He has a crowbar in one hand and a crank flashlight in the other.
Eloy Baca: I'm going with you.
Teresa Baca: Eloy. No.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Eloy Baca: His things are still down there. His helmet. His knife. I'm bringing them up.
[Picture: previous speaker]
They wait until the sun goes down, because the tubes are darker than night anyway. Caleb sits by the lantern and pulls a length of rope out of his bag.
Caleb Dizon: Doc. Come here. I'm going to teach you a knot.
[Picture: bowline]
Monique Whitlock: Right now? We're about to go down a hole and fight a monster.
[Picture: bowline]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: That's exactly why. This is a bowline. It doesn't slip and it doesn't jam. Rabbit comes out of the hole, around the tree, back down the hole.
[Picture: bowline]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: Out of the hole... around the tree... and back in. Like that?
[Picture: bowline]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: Your rabbit went around the wrong tree. Again.
[Picture: bowline]
[Picture: previous speaker]
She does it three times. On the fourth try it's perfect. He tugs it hard and it holds.
[Picture: bowline]
Caleb Dizon: That'll hold a grown man off a cliff. If you ever need to get off something high in a hurry, that's your knot.
[Picture: bowline]
Monique Whitlock: Why would I ever need to get off something high in a hurry?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: I don't know. But you'll have the knot.
[Picture: previous speaker]
The deep tube is a tunnel of black rock big enough to drive a truck through. Ice on the walls. The flashlight beam doesn't reach the end.
[Picture: frost]
Eloy cranks the light every minute so it doesn't fade. Nobody talks. Their breath smokes in the cold.
[Picture: frost]
At the bottom of a slope Eloy stops. A yellow hard hat is lying on the ice. A knife beside it.
[Picture: hard hat]
Eloy Baca: Mijo.
[Picture: frost]
[Picture: hard hat]
He kneels and picks up the hat. He holds it against his chest.
[Picture: frost]
Wyatt Hansen: Caleb. The ceiling. There's marks on the ceiling.
[Picture: frost]
Caleb Dizon: Look up. Everybody look up.
[Picture: frost]
[Picture: previous speaker]
STALKER. Climbs walls and ceilings. Waits in the dark above you and drops.
[Picture: stamp up]
Something long and thin is hanging upside down from the roof of the tunnel. It has been watching them the whole time. It drops.
It lands on Eloy's back and drives him into the ice. The flashlight spins away across the floor and the light goes wild.
Caleb Dizon: Wyatt! Light! Get the light on it!
Caleb grabs the thing by its neck and tears it off Eloy. It twists in his hands and goes for his face. He slams it into the wall. Wyatt finds the flashlight and holds the beam steady.
In the light, Caleb brings the axe down. Once. Twice. It stops.
Caleb Dizon: Eloy. Eloy, talk to me. Did it bite you?
Eloy Baca: No. It didn't. My coat's too thick.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Eloy Baca: That's the one, isn't it. That's the one that took my boy.
Caleb Dizon: That's the one. It's done now.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Eloy doesn't say anything else. He picks up his son's helmet and knife and starts back up the tube. Nobody tries to help him carry them.
In the morning, the whole Baca family goes down the wooden stairs together for the first time in a month.
The cave floor is a sheet of blue-green ice twenty feet thick. The Bacas cut it into blocks with long saws, kids and grandparents, all of them working, all of them talking at once.
The blocks go into crates of sawdust. The best pieces go into the white cooler. Monique packs them around the sealed box inside and closes the lid.
Monique Whitlock: Three weeks. Maybe four, if we keep it in the shade. Caleb, we have four weeks.
Teresa Baca: Take as much as your horses can carry. You've earned every block.
That night Eloy finds Caleb by the fire. He sits down next to him without asking.
Eloy Baca: You lost somebody.
Caleb Dizon: Yeah.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Eloy Baca: I could tell. You fought down there like a man who's already lost. Somebody who doesn't care what happens to him.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Eloy Baca: Don't be like that too long. It gets easy to stay that way.
He gets up and goes back to his cabin. Caleb sits for a long time. Monique sits down where Eloy was.
Monique Whitlock: Who was it?
Caleb Dizon: Tunde. Tunde Bakare. My best friend on the Tern. He was the one who walked out of the water on the beach.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: Oh, Caleb.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: He was going to be first mate on my ship. If I ever got one. He was a terrible cook. He burned rice. Who burns rice?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: And you had to do it yourself.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: There wasn't anybody else.
[Picture: previous speaker]
She doesn't say anything. She just leans her shoulder against his, and they sit there until the fire is coals.
Chapter 7. The Peak
The Peak — Chapter 7
Dear Nanay. It snowed today. I'm thirty-three years old and I have never once seen snow fall. It doesn't make any sound. Nothing out here makes any sound except us.
[Picture: letter]
November. A mountain above the dead city of Albuquerque. They need a way around the city and the highway east, and the only people with good maps live on the peak.
[Picture: snow]
The trail up is long and steep. By the top, the snow is up to their knees. An old restaurant and a tram station stand at the edge of a cliff.
[Picture: snow]
Wyatt Hansen: Too quiet up here. A camp of forty people, and nobody on the wall.
[Picture: snow]
Caleb Dizon: Maybe it's the cold. Everybody's inside.
[Picture: snow]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: Caleb. Look at the horses in the shed. Those are Lifeline saddles.
[Picture: snow]
[Picture: previous speaker]
The station door opens. Six men in Lifeline jackets step out into the snow with rifles. Then a tall man with a long weathered face and a white scar through one eyebrow.
[Picture: snow]
Nolan Price: Hello, Monique. You look cold.
[Picture: snow]
Monique Whitlock: Hello, Nolan.
[Picture: snow]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Nolan Price: You went around Albuquerque the long way, and you needed maps. There's only one place to get maps. I just waited.
[Picture: snow]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Nolan Price: Put the axe down, big man. And you, the rifle. Nobody needs to get hurt on a mountain.
[Picture: snow]
Caleb looks at the rifles. He counts them. Six. He puts the axe down in the snow. Wyatt does the same with his rifle.
[Picture: snow]
Nolan Price: Thank you. Ruth Keller's main team reaches the bottom of the trail tomorrow at sunrise. They'll take the box, and they'll take you, Monique, back to Atlanta.
[Picture: snow]
Nolan Price: Until then, you're my guests. I'm not going to put you in a cold room tonight. You and I have played too many hands of cards for that.
[Picture: snow]
Inside the old restaurant there's a fire in the hearth, a table, and a lamp. Retrievers sit by the door. The white cooler sits on a chair next to Nolan, where he can see it.
Nolan pulls a deck of cards out of his coat. The same kind Monique has. He starts dealing without asking.
[Picture: cards]
Nolan Price: Remember the night shift in fifty-six? You took my whole month's pay in one night.
[Picture: cards]
Monique Whitlock: You kept touching your ear every time you got a good hand. You still do it.
[Picture: cards]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Nolan Price: I know. I've been trying to stop for years. Your friend plays?
[Picture: cards]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: I play.
[Picture: cards]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: He plays very badly.
[Picture: cards]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Nolan and Caleb sit across the little table from each other in the lamplight. Monique sits between them. Snow blows past the window. The Retrievers watch from the door with their rifles across their knees.
Nolan Price: So. What is she to you?
Caleb looks at his cards. He doesn't look up and he doesn't answer.
Nolan Price: That's an answer too.
Nolan touches his ear. Caleb sees it. He folds.
Nolan Price: You know what's in that box, big man?
Caleb Dizon: No. She hasn't told me. That's her business.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Nolan Price: You walked her from the coast to here, and you don't know what you're carrying. Huh.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Nolan Price: I believe in what's in that box. I believe it can end all of this. If it costs something to get there, I can live with that.
Monique Whitlock: It doesn't have to cost anything, Nolan. That's what I keep trying to tell you.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Nolan Price: Good night, Monique. I mean it. Get some sleep.
[Picture: previous speaker]
They're locked in a back room with one window and a Retriever outside the door. The window looks straight down the cliff. Below it, a long way below, is the dark trail.
Monique sits on the floor with her back against the wall. After a while she starts to talk, very quietly.
Monique Whitlock: You should know. Before tomorrow. You should know what you've been carrying.
Monique Whitlock: There's a girl. Fourteen years old. She was born in a donor camp in Georgia. Two years ago she got bitten, and nothing happened. She never got sick. She can't get sick.
Caleb Dizon: Can't? Not ever?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: Not ever. Her blood is the only thing in the world that could make a vaccine. Lifeline found out. Their research director wants to use her brain and her spine to make it. That means killing her.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: The man I worked for, Dr. Hartley, found another way. Just her blood. She gives a pint every couple of months and she lives. The samples and his first batch are in that cooler.
Monique Whitlock: Lifeline took him. I ran. If the cooler goes to Atlanta, they'll say his way doesn't work, and that girl dies.
Caleb doesn't say anything for a long time.
Caleb Dizon: Okay.
Monique Whitlock: Okay? That's all you're going to say? I just told you we're carrying the end of the world in a picnic cooler.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: Okay means okay. It means we're not letting them take it.
[Picture: previous speaker]
He gets up and looks out the window. Then he looks at the rope in his bag. Then he looks at her.
Caleb Dizon: Hey, Doc. You remember how to tie a bowline?
Monique Whitlock: No. Caleb, no. That's a cliff.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: It's a cliff with a trail at the bottom. Wyatt, can you get the cooler and the horses?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Wyatt Hansen: The cooler's on a chair by the fire. The guard's asleep. Give me twenty minutes.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Wyatt goes out through the roof hatch. Caleb ties a rope to the window frame, then helps Monique into a harness made of rope.
Caleb Dizon: I'll be right above you the whole time. Hands on the rope. Feet on the rock. Don't look down.
Monique Whitlock: I'm looking down.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: Okay, look down, but don't tell me about it.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb and Monique go down the frozen cliff on a rope in the dark, snow blowing sideways. The white cooler hangs on a line between them. Far below, Wyatt waits with three horses at the bottom of the trail.
Halfway down, the rope runs out. There's a ledge. Monique pulls up the second rope, ties it to an old iron bolt, and tugs it hard.
Monique Whitlock: Rabbit out of the hole, around the tree, back down the hole. Caleb. It's holding. It's holding!
Caleb Dizon: That's my knot. That's my knot, Doc!
They reach the trail an hour before dawn. Wyatt has the horses, the rifle, the axe and the cooler. Nobody is following them.
Wyatt Hansen: The guard's still asleep. I left him a blanket.
Monique Whitlock: I tied a knot on a cliff. In the snow. In the dark.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: You did. Rabbit went around the right tree.
[Picture: previous speaker]
At sunrise, up on the peak, Nolan Price opens the back room. The window is open and the room is empty. There's a perfect bowline tied to the frame.
[Picture: bowline]
Nolan Price: Huh.
[Picture: bowline]
He almost smiles. Then he goes to tell Ruth Keller he lost them.
Chapter 8. The Blue Truck
The Blue Truck — Chapter 8
Dear Nanay. Doc told me what we're carrying. I can't write it down, in case somebody reads this. But I understand now why she won't let go of the box. I wouldn't either.
[Picture: letter]
The Texas Panhandle. Flat to the edge of the world. Frost on the grass, and the sky going pink.
Wyatt stops his horse on the old highway and holds up a hand. Then he points.
A herd of bison crosses the road in front of them in the frost, hundreds of them, slow and huge, their breath steaming in the cold.
Nobody says anything. Caleb takes his cap off. Monique reaches over from her horse and holds his sleeve. Wyatt just watches.
Wyatt Hansen: My granddad used to say there were none of these left. Before the Fall. Just pictures.
Caleb Dizon: And now they've got the whole country back.
Monique Whitlock: I've never seen anything that big just be alive. Everything big out here is dead.
Caleb Dizon: Whales are like that. You're on watch at three in the morning, and something the size of the ship comes up and breathes next to you. And then it goes away.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: You're telling me you've seen a whale.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: I've seen a hundred whales, Doc. I'll show you one some day.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: Okay. That's a promise.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Amarillo. Big steel sheds on the flat plains, smoke from smokehouses, the smell of cooking fat. And in the yard, a blue semi truck with a cold trailer and solar panels on its roof.
A broad woman with faded red hair stands in front of the truck with her arms crossed.
Lorraine Pike: No. Whatever you're going to ask, the answer's no. That truck is the last cold truck in the Panhandle, and nobody touches it.
Monique Whitlock: Mrs. Pike, I can pay you. Not in Credits. But I can pay.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Lorraine Pike: Then the answer's still no, but I'm listening.
[Picture: previous speaker]
A lanky young man with red hair and freckles comes around the side of the truck, wiping grease off his hands and singing.
Travis Pike: Ma, the cold unit's dying again. Oh. Hi. We've got company. Travis Pike. I drive the truck. And fix the truck. And push the truck, mostly.
Lorraine Pike: The cold unit needs a part. A compressor coil, from the old air force base in Oklahoma City. Hangars full of them. Also full of dead soldiers.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Lorraine Pike: Go with Travis and bring back that coil, and he drives you east. As far as the fuel goes. That's the deal.
[Picture: truck keys]
Caleb Dizon: Deal.
[Picture: truck keys]
[Picture: previous speaker]
That night they eat in the plant kitchen. Travis's little daughter Maisie sits on his knee and asks Caleb if he's a giant. Travis laughs and sings to her. He keeps not looking at Monique.
Monique Whitlock: Caleb. Did you see his face? When I said Lifeline at dinner?
Caleb Dizon: I saw him look at the floor.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: Maybe it's nothing. Maybe I'm just tired of everybody.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Tinker Air Base. A hangar the size of a city block. Inside, the shells of huge gray planes, scaffolding, tool carts, and shadows. The four of them go in quietly.
Dead soldiers stand between the planes. They turned thirty years ago in their gear and never took it off. Body armor. Helmets.
[Picture: armored zombie front]
[Picture: armored zombie front]
[Picture: armored zombie front]
[Picture: armored zombie front]
ARMORED. Turned in 2035 in full gear. The helmet stops a blow to the head.
[Picture: stamp helmet]
Travis Pike: Don't bother with the head. The helmets stop it. Knock them down and keep hitting.
They find the coil in a parts cage at the back. Travis wraps it in a blanket. It's going well. Then Travis stops walking.
Travis Pike: I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. They've got my girl's shot on a list. They said they'd take it back.
Caleb Dizon: Travis. What did you do?
[Picture: previous speaker]
The hangar doors slide open. Retrievers in Lifeline jackets, a dozen of them. And a lean woman with a hard face walks in front.
Ruth Keller: Ruth Keller. Lifeline Retrieval. Monique Whitlock, you're coming home.
Three Retrievers drag Monique toward the door, kicking. Two more carry the white cooler out between them.
Monique Whitlock: Caleb! Caleb!
Caleb hits the first man, then the second. Then three of them put him on the floor, and a rifle butt comes down.
Travis stands by the plane with tears on his face and his hands empty.
Ruth Keller: Leave the big one and the hunter. Lock the doors. The dead can have them.
Travis Pike: You said nobody gets hurt. You said!
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ruth Keller: Get in the truck, Mr. Pike.
[Picture: previous speaker]
The doors slam. The bar drops on the outside. Inside, the armored dead are already turning toward the noise.
[Picture: armored zombie front]
[Picture: armored zombie front]
[Picture: armored zombie front]
[Picture: armored zombie front]
Caleb is on his knees with blood in his eyes. Something big is hitting the side door of the hangar. The metal bends inward.
BRUTE. Seven feet of dead muscle. It goes straight through doors and barricades.
[Picture: stamp doors]
The side door comes off its hinges. A huge dead man walks through it, bigger than Caleb, with the door still hanging off one of his fists.
[Picture: brute zombie front]
Wyatt Hansen: Caleb! Up! Get up!
Wyatt drags Caleb off the floor by his coat and shoves him up the ladder onto the wing of a plane. The giant grabs Wyatt's leg. Wyatt kicks free, climbs, and kicks the ladder away.
They lie on the wing, breathing hard. Below them the dead circle the plane and reach up. Wyatt's boot is torn open. The skin isn't.
[Picture: armored zombie front]
[Picture: armored zombie front]
[Picture: armored zombie front]
[Picture: brute zombie front]
Caleb Dizon: Are you bit? Wyatt. Look at me.
Wyatt Hansen: No. Just my boot.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: You came back for me.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Wyatt Hansen: You'd do the same. Now get your head on straight. They've got her.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Night. They get out through a roof hatch and down a fire ladder. Ruth Keller has made her camp at the edge of the base, in an old guard post with lanterns and a fence.
[Picture: embers]
Caleb doesn't stop to make a plan. He picks his axe up off the hangar floor and walks toward the lights.
[Picture: embers]
Wyatt Hansen: Caleb. There's twelve of them.
[Picture: embers]
Caleb Dizon: Then there's twelve of them.
[Picture: embers]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb comes through Ruth Keller's camp like a man ready to die. One man with an axe. He doesn't run and he doesn't stop.
A Retriever swings a rifle at him and goes over the fence. Another one fires, the shot goes wild, and dead start moving at the edge of the base. Caleb keeps walking.
Caleb Dizon: Where is she? Where is she!
A Retriever backs up against the wall with his hands up and shouts, "Who the hell is she to you, man?"
Caleb doesn't answer him. He just puts him on the ground and keeps walking.
In the back of the guard post a door opens. It's Kyle Brennan, the young Retriever from the lab on the hill. Monique is behind him with her hands tied.
Kyle Brennan: She's here. She's here. Don't hit me. I'm opening it.
Caleb Dizon: Kyle?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Kyle Brennan: They sent me out with Ruth's team after the lab. You tied me to a rail and left me water. Nobody's ever... just take her and go. The cooler's in the next room. Go!
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb cuts Monique's hands free. She doesn't say anything. She grabs his coat with both fists and holds on.
Headlights swing across the yard. The blue truck comes around the fence with its engine roaring. Travis is driving.
Travis Pike: Get in! Get in, get in, they're coming!
Wyatt Hansen: Him?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: Get in the truck, Wyatt!
[Picture: previous speaker]
They throw the cooler and the coil in the back and the truck tears out of the base with the dead of Oklahoma City coming out of the dark behind it.
Morning. The truck is parked on the empty highway. Travis has been crying for a while. He finally says something.
Travis Pike: Maisie got bit in the yard last spring. On her hand. Lifeline had a Booster, and they gave it to her, and they wrote my name down. When they came, I said yes. I'm sorry.
Monique Whitlock: You came back, Travis.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Travis Pike: I'll drive you as far as the fuel goes. Then I'm going home. Ma's going to skin me alive.
[Picture: previous speaker]
In the cab, Monique holds Caleb's bandaged hand the whole morning. Neither of them says anything about the guard post. When Wyatt wakes up she lets go.
Chapter 9. The River
The River — Chapter 9
Dear Nanay. It's December. We're almost there. Doc says four more days, maybe five. I keep counting heads in the morning out of habit. One, two, three. Three is a good number. I'd like to keep it.
[Picture: letter]
The truck ran out of fuel two days ago, on the Arkansas side. Travis turned around on foot for home with the coil and a long walk ahead of him. He hugged all three of them, even Wyatt.
Now it's night on the west bank of the Mississippi. The river is a mile wide, brown and fast and freezing. On the far side, the dead city of Memphis.
A steel barge is hidden in a creek under the trees. A tall man with gray skin and a gray beard is checking the ropes.
Odell Freeman: You're the ones the Marked radio's been talking about. The nurse and the giant.
Caleb Dizon: Everybody keeps calling me that.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Odell Freeman: Everybody's right. Odell Freeman. I'll take you across. No charge. Loretta Banks says you got friends at Black Canyon.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: Daniela. That's Daniela.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Odell Freeman: Now listen, all three of you. The dead that fall in the river walk along the bottom. They come out on the stone landing on the Memphis side. That's where we're going.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Wyatt Hansen: So we land right where they come out.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Odell Freeman: I didn't say it was a good plan. I said it was the plan. The landing's the only place a barge can put in for twenty miles.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Odell Freeman: When we're close, you push them off with the poles. Don't use your hands. Don't let them grab the poles. And nobody falls in.
Caleb Dizon: Nobody falls in. That's my whole life's philosophy, Mr. Freeman.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Odell pushes off. He works the tiller and sings an old river song under his breath. The current pulls the barge downstream and he lets it.
The barge crosses the black river under the steel arches of the dead bridge. Ahead, on the stone landing, the dead are walking up out of the water one by one, dripping, turning toward the sound of the barge.
Caleb and Wyatt stand at the bow with long poles. As the barge grinds onto the stones they shove the dead back into the river, one after another. Monique crouches over the cooler. Odell keeps singing.
Odell Freeman: Keep 'em off! Just keep 'em off! Nearly there!
Caleb Dizon: Doc, go! Run for the stairs! Wyatt, cover her!
Caleb holds the bow alone with the pole while the others jump ashore. Then he jumps last. Nobody's hurt.
Odell is already pushing back out into the current. He's laughing.
Odell Freeman: Thirty years and I've never lost a passenger. Don't you make me start now! Go on!
Five days east through Tennessee. Snow on the hills. They ride with a Marked wagon for two of the days and walk the rest.
[Picture: snow]
Wyatt counts their food out loud every night. Caleb counts heads every morning. Monique counts the ice. It's almost gone.
[Picture: snow]
On the fifth evening they come over a ridge, and there it is. A lake in the hills. A low concrete dam across one end. Lights on top of it. Real lights.
[Picture: snow]
Monique Whitlock: That's it. That's Melton Hill. That's the lab's power. Caleb. We made it. We actually made it.
[Picture: snow]
Caleb Dizon: You made it. I just carried stuff.
[Picture: snow]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: You carried me down a cliff.
[Picture: snow]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: You climbed down a cliff. I just yelled at you.
[Picture: snow]
[Picture: previous speaker]
She laughs. She walks ahead of them along the lake shore toward the dam, humming an old Tagalog song. It's the first time she's hummed since the mountain.
[Picture: snow]
Wyatt Hansen: Monique. Slow down. Stay off the water.
[Picture: snow]
Monique Whitlock: I can see the gate from here, Wyatt. It's right there.
[Picture: snow]
[Picture: previous speaker]
The water at the edge of the lake moves. Something is coming up out of it fast. Not walking. Running.
[Picture: snow]
[Picture: athletic zombie front]
RUNNER. Fit when it died, and it still sprints and leaps.
[Picture: stamp outrun]
A dead man in a torn running jacket comes up out of the lake at a sprint, water flying off him. Monique turns around too late.
It hits her and takes her to the ground. Its teeth go into her shoulder, by the neck.
Monique Whitlock: Caleb!
Caleb gets there in four strides. He pulls it off her and ends it on the rocks with the axe. Then he drops to his knees next to her.
Caleb Dizon: Let me see. Let me see it. Doc. Let me see.
Her coat is torn at the shoulder. Underneath, the bite is deep. Blood runs down her collarbone into the snow.
Wyatt Hansen: The Booster. Where's the Booster?
Monique Whitlock: There isn't one. Remember? Sofia has it. Sofia's got my Booster.
[Picture: previous speaker]
She opens her bag anyway, takes out the little steel case, and opens it. It's empty. She looks at it for a while.
[Picture: booster empty]
Caleb Dizon: Cut it. Burn it. There's other ways. Tell me what to do and I'll do it.
Monique Whitlock: It's on my shoulder, Caleb. You can't cut off a shoulder. And it's too deep to burn. I'm a nurse. Listen to me.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Nobody says anything. The wind blows snow across the lake. A minute goes by. Then two. Then five. The window closes, and all three of them know it.
Monique Whitlock: Okay. So here's what happens. In a few hours, a fever. Tomorrow, black lines on my neck and arms. And then sometime the day after that, I die. And then I either wake up or I don't.
Monique Whitlock: That's a day and a half, maybe two. So the only thing that matters now is that box gets to that lab. Do you understand me? Not me. The box.
Caleb Dizon: Don't say that.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: Caleb. Promise me. If I turn, you don't let me hurt anybody. You know the rule. Everybody knows the rule.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb doesn't promise. He doesn't say anything at all. He takes off his coat and wraps it around her shoulder. Then he picks her up, the way he'd carry a crewman off a deck.
Wyatt Hansen: I've got the cooler.
Monique Whitlock: I can walk.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: I know you can.
[Picture: previous speaker]
He doesn't put her down. He walks toward the lights on the dam.
Caleb Dizon: Then let's go.
Chapter 10. First Dose
First Dose — Chapter 10
Dear Nanay. This is the first letter I'm going to try to send. I don't know how yet. But you should know where I am, and that I'm all right, and that I met somebody. You'd like her. She's very bossy. She has a fever right now. I'll write more when I know more.
[Picture: letter]
Night. The gate on the dam opens for them. Fifty old lab workers and their families live here, in the powerhouse and the visitor buildings. A small woman in wire glasses meets them on the walkway. She's wearing a second pair of glasses on her head and doesn't know it.
[Picture: snow]
Carmen Lowry: Stop there. Who's bitten?
[Picture: snow]
Monique Whitlock: Me. Three hours ago. Dr. Lowry? I'm Monique Whitlock. I worked with Leon Hartley. We brought you his samples. And his first batch.
[Picture: snow]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Carmen Lowry stares at the white cooler in Wyatt's arms. She takes her glasses off, finds the other pair on her head, and puts them back.
[Picture: snow]
[Picture: cooler]
Carmen Lowry: Leon's samples. Here. You carried those all the way from California?
[Picture: snow]
[Picture: cooler]
Caleb Dizon: She did. We just walked next to her.
[Picture: snow]
[Picture: cooler]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Carmen Lowry: Then we don't waste a minute. Infirmary tent, outside the gate, that's the rule for anyone bitten. I'm sorry. Somebody get her blankets and water.
[Picture: snow]
[Picture: cooler]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Carmen Lowry: Now the bad news. The lab can make doses. That's what we've kept it clean for, thirty years. But the freezers and the clean room need more power than our one turbine makes.
[Picture: snow]
Wyatt Hansen: And the second turbine?
[Picture: snow]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Carmen Lowry: Clogged. The dead who fall in the lake walk along the bottom until they hit the steel grate at the intake. They pile up there, still moving, still reaching through the bars. Hundreds of them. Nobody's been able to clear it in years.
[Picture: snow]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: They're already dead? I'll clear it.
[Picture: snow]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Carmen Lowry: Dead doesn't mean they've stopped biting. You'll be in freezing water up to your chest with them grabbing at you.
[Picture: snow]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: I'm a sailor, ma'am. Water's the only thing I'm good at.
[Picture: snow]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: Dr. Lowry. Will a dose help somebody who's already bitten?
[Picture: snow]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Carmen Lowry: Honestly? I don't know. Nobody does. Nobody's ever had a dose to try.
[Picture: snow]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: Then I'll be the first one to find out.
[Picture: snow]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Morning. Monique's fever came in the night, the way she said it would. Caleb sat with her until Wyatt made him eat.
[Picture: snow]
Now Caleb and Wyatt stand on the steel gantry above the intake. Below them in the green water, against the bars of the grate, the dead are packed so tight they can't fall over. Gray faces turn up toward the gantry. Hands reach through the bars, opening and closing.
[Picture: snow]
[Picture: zombie front]
[Picture: zombie front]
[Picture: zombie front]
[Picture: zombie front]
[Picture: zombie front]
Some of them are swollen huge with water and gas.
[Picture: snow]
[Picture: zombie front]
[Picture: zombie front]
[Picture: bloater zombie front]
BLOATER. Swollen with water and gas. When it dies it bursts, and what comes out of it infects you.
[Picture: stamp close]
Wyatt Hansen: Those big ones burst. Don't let them burst near your face. If that stuff gets in your eyes, you're next.
Caleb Dizon: Then don't let me fall in, Wyatt.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Wyatt Hansen: I've got the rope. I won't let go.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb climbs down into the freezing water at the grate with a rope around his chest. Wyatt holds the other end on the gantry.
He works with the axe and a long hook, pulling the dead off the bars one at a time while they claw at him, and pushing them down into the deep water past the dam. The bloated ones he hooks from as far away as the pole will go.
Hours go by. His hands stop working and he keeps going anyway. The last of the dead comes off the grate. Water rushes through the bars.
Caleb Dizon: That's it! Wyatt, that's the last one! Tell them!
Inside the powerhouse, slowly, the second turbine starts to turn.
The power runs four miles through the snowy woods on a line of old wooden poles. On the hill above the river, inside a sealed lab building, the lights come on one room at a time.
Freezers start humming. Machines that haven't run in thirty years blink awake. Carmen Lowry stands in the middle of it with her hands over her mouth.
Carmen Lowry: Doris. Doris, look. It's on. It's all on.
Carmen and her people work all through the day and into the night. The cooler sits open on a steel bench. The samples inside are still frozen. Monique packed them right.
At dusk, horses come up the road to the lab. A dozen Retrievers. Ruth Keller in front, and Nolan Price beside her.
Ruth Keller: Dr. Lowry. My name is Ruth Keller. Those samples belong to Lifeline. We're taking them to Atlanta.
Caleb Dizon: No, you're not.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb is standing in the lab door. He's still wet from the intake. He has his axe.
Ruth Keller: We have twelve rifles. You have an axe and a hunter.
Wyatt Hansen: And a door.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Nolan Price: Where's Monique?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: In the tent below the gate. She was bitten yesterday at the lake. She's got the black veins now. Go look, if you want.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Nolan rides down to the gate. He's gone a long time. When he comes back up he gets off his horse and doesn't get back on it.
Nolan Price: She's asking for him, Ruth. She can't even sit up, and she's asking the guard if the big man ate anything.
Ruth Keller: That doesn't change the orders, Nolan.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Nolan Price: No. I know it doesn't.
[Picture: previous speaker]
He takes his rifle off his shoulder and leans it against the wall of the lab.
Nolan Price: Let them finish. Let Lowry make the dose. If Hartley was right, it'll show by morning, and you'll have your vaccine without killing a fourteen-year-old girl.
Nolan Price: And if he was wrong, we take everything to Atlanta tomorrow, and I'll carry it myself.
Ruth Keller looks at the lab, then at the lights, then down the hill at the tent.
Ruth Keller: I buried two kids in sixty-one. Both of them bitten. There wasn't a Booster for a hundred miles.
Ruth Keller: Until morning. Not one minute longer.
Just after midnight, Carmen comes out of the clean room holding a small glass vial. Her hands are shaking.
[Picture: vial]
Carmen Lowry: The first dose. It's the first one there's ever been. I can't promise you anything.
Caleb Dizon: You don't have to. Just come.
[Picture: previous speaker]
A canvas tent below the gate, with a cot and a lamp. Monique's veins are black from her neck down both arms. She's barely awake. She's very cold.
Monique Whitlock: Hey, Sailor. You eat anything?
Caleb Dizon: I ate. Wyatt made me.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: Good. Good boy.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Carmen puts the needle into Monique's arm and pushes the plunger down. Caleb holds Monique's hand on the other side of the cot.
Her breathing goes wrong. It gets slow. It gets slower. Carmen has two fingers on her wrist and her face changes.
Carmen Lowry: I'm losing her pulse. I'm... it's gone.
Monique lies still. Her hand in Caleb's hand doesn't move.
Carmen leaves the tent. She doesn't say anything. Everybody knows the rule for what comes next.
Whoever sits with a bitten person who has died sits with an axe. If they wake up and they aren't themselves anymore, you do it before they can hurt anybody. Caleb has known that rule since he was a boy on a ship.
He sits on a crate by the cot with the axe across his knees. He sits that way for a long time.
Caleb Dizon: I never told you about the whales, Doc. I said I'd show you one.
The lamp burns down. Outside, snow is falling on the tent.
Some rules are worth keeping. Caleb has lived by them all his life. He decides this isn't one of them.
He sets the axe down on the floor of the tent, all the way over by the flap, where he can't reach it. Then he moves his crate next to the cot, takes her hand in both of his, and holds on.
[Picture: fire axe]
Sometime before dawn, still holding it, he falls asleep.
Morning light comes through the canvas. Caleb opens his eyes.
Monique is sitting up on the cot. Her color is back. The black lines on her neck are gone. And she is furious.
Monique Whitlock: What if I turned?! I would've killed you in your sleep!
Caleb doesn't say anything. He just looks at her.
Monique Whitlock: Where's the axe? Caleb. Why is the axe over there by the door?
[Picture: fire axe]
Monique Whitlock: You put it down. You put it down and you went to sleep next to me. Are you stupid? Are you trying to die?
[Picture: fire axe]
Caleb Dizon: You're okay.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: That's not the point! I'm a nurse! I have watched people wake up, Caleb, and they don't know anybody, and they... you don't get to do that. You don't get to just... put yourself...
[Picture: previous speaker]
She stops. Her eyes are wet. She's still holding his hand. She hasn't noticed.
Neither of them moves for a long moment. Then she leans in, a little. He leans in, a little. They're very close.
Carmen Lowry: Okay, I need a drop of blood, and I need it right... oh.
Carmen Lowry is standing in the tent flap with a blood test kit and her glasses on top of her head. She looks at them. They look at her.
Carmen Lowry: I can come back.
Monique Whitlock: No! No. Come in. Do the test.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Carmen pricks her finger and presses the drop to the strip. Ruth Keller and Nolan are standing outside the flap. So is Wyatt. Nobody breathes.
[Picture: test strip]
A minute goes by. The strip stays white.
[Picture: test strip]
Carmen Lowry: Clean. It's clean. She's clean.
[Picture: test strip]
Nolan Price: Huh.
[Picture: bowline]
Ruth Keller: Then Hartley was right. Just the blood.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ruth Keller: Dr. Lowry. I'm taking one dose to Atlanta. Samuel Whitfield is going to want to see this himself. And they're going to want to know who carried it.
Nolan Price: Good luck, Monique. Next time I'm bringing a better deck.
[Picture: previous speaker]
They ride out an hour later. Wyatt watches them go from the gate.
That night, in the powerhouse kitchen, Caleb opens Daniela's sack of rice. He cooks a whole pot. And he makes adobo, his lola's recipe, for everybody at Melton Hill.
[Picture: rice pot]
Monique Whitlock: Okay. It's good. It's very good.
[Picture: rice pot]
Caleb Dizon: Better than your mother's?
[Picture: rice pot]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: Don't push your luck, Sailor. Second best in the world.
[Picture: rice pot]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: I'll take second.
[Picture: rice pot]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Monique Whitlock: Caleb. My family's in Atlanta. Five days south. I want to go home. Will you walk me?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Caleb Dizon: I was always going to walk you, Doc.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Dawn on the dam. Snow on the hills, the lab lights still burning on the ridge behind them, the lake gray and still.
Caleb and Monique stand at the rail and look out at the water. Neither of them says anything.
They stand by the cold steel rail, holding on to each other.