Immunity Index, Sue Burke [accelerated reader books txt] 📗

the writing on the wall. Working for the city meant she heard lots of news, lots of it bad. Fires in California were out of control. And a hurricane …

She was staring and pounding on the desk again. Get back to work!

She was also trying to coordinate a refugee caravan headed north, a thousand survivors of an Alabama camp that had to get out of the approaching hurricane’s way. They needed food, shelter, clothing, medical care—and security, because so-called patriots were active in some areas. Transportation involved not just people but supplies timed with their arrival and departure. She wanted to strangle the self-proclaimed “realists” who thought the refugees should stay put. They’re surrounded by swampy mass graves. What are they supposed to do, stay there and die? A lot of those “realists” hoped they would die. Fuck them and their …

Take a deep breath. Think about something else.

At City Hall, politicians and staff had debated a lot of issues and reached a consensus about one of them. The mutiny would have likely failed if the Prez and his supporters hadn’t overreacted by introducing the Prez’s cold. A lot of minds changed when ordinary citizens realized that they had been targeted for death, and only incompetence on the part of the Prez’s supporters had saved them from total disaster.

Avril was working directly with patients, which she said she found fulfilling, but it had to be hell to watch people die every day. Irene hadn’t found her mammoth, so she’d gone back to Madison, and they’d had a good, long talk about their mothers. They shared a lot of mixed feelings.

Lillian had been talking to both Irene and Avril and it clearly helped her, and probably them, too. Pseudo-Grandfather had called once and finally seemed to accept that he was the needy one, and she didn’t owe him anything at all. He was lucky she hadn’t pressed charges.

Lillian was a fighter. She’d offered to staff the atrium food table one day, and she had suggested commandeering a nearby sandwich franchise, closed for the duration, so City Hall could offer some food. That girl was smart—and energetic, too energetic, probably a sign of stress.

Stale bread and mayo for everyone, thanks to her. Better than nothing.

A message appeared on her screen and pulled her out of her thoughts. A pharmacy chain needed more insulin. Could Berenike accommodate that? No, but she’d juggle things until she could, shifting priorities until everyone would hate her with good reason. This job sucked exactly like her old one, and she had the job because she could do what no one else wanted to do. She spent most of her time stuck in a tiny office with no windows, staring at a screen until her eyes were tired. Except that now she was keeping people alive. She hoped.

A glance at her sleeve reminded her that she was wearing one of Lillian’s mother’s shirts.

Berenike was effectively a mother now. That night, on the way home, she’d ask Lillian about her mother. Lillian might find it therapeutic, and Berenike might learn more about how to emulate the woman whose bed she now slept in and whose clothes she wore and whose child she would raise.

That morning she’d gotten up after another night of poor sleep—waking up every couple of hours to see if the desk lamp was still on, then staying awake for a long time after that—and at first she didn’t recognize where she was. Pink curtains, a rose-patterned bedspread … oh, yeah. With so much disaster around her, and such a bad experience with her own mother, could she avoid being a disaster for Lillian?

Because she really, really needed to punch someone, and sooner or later, that anger was going to boil over. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, tried to center her thoughts the way the AI counselor had taught her in what seemed like ages ago, and she felt calmer—for a few minutes.

I returned home to my little apartment a week after being dragooned into secret government service, and as I had hoped, my pet bird warbled in his cage and my house plants were a healthy green, thanks to Noah.

The bird, Milton, was a Grand Cayman thrush, a pretty gray and white bird much like an American robin. I had helped bring the species back from extinction, a sweet-voiced, gentle bird that ate worms and fruit, but Milton had been made blind as a chick by nest parasites, and I took him as a pet. He wouldn’t survive in the wild, but I could give him a loving home.

Similarly, I had made my children with love, and if I had a right to ask one thing of them (which I didn’t), it would be for them to love one another. Would they love me? That would be too much to ask for. But some of them spoke to me, and that was enough.

My drab neighborhood had been festooned with purple—not every home, of course, but enough to enforce a kind of civility. (For how long?)

Food was scarce, but Noah came with takeout pancakes. No one was yet allowed to sit in a restaurant. “People feel betrayed,” he said. “By everyone. I mean, where was this mutiny when we needed it? Months ago, maybe years? They could have done something.” His good nature had taken a turn—temporarily, I hoped. I tried to model sensible goodwill.

“What matters,” I said, “is what you want to change now. Here’s your chance.”

As for work, I had been hired by a bigger, better research lab to track the delta cold viruses as they mutated and responded to treatment, work as essential as it was repetitive. I had acquired the gleam of respectability, and that flattering shine carried me through the workday.

Before I could leave the Army installation, of course, I was debriefed and deposed. A congressional investigative committee subpoenaed me to sit in a conference room and speak via videocall to a pair of staff members who needed to know what