Chapter 11 Cora
The southwest corner of the Urbana enclave was burning when we arrived.
It was not a fire. The fire had been three days ago.
The smell was the post-fire smell. Charcoal and wet ash and the thin oily smell of synthetic-roofing-material that had melted and then been rained on.
The walls of the perimeter were down on the southwest face, in a hundred-foot gap where Hess's cell had punched through and then pulled back.
The east face of the enclave was still standing.
I could see the tops of the dormitory buildings of the old University of Illinois campus from where I had stopped the convoy on the highway approach, half a mile out.
The east face was still standing.
That was the count I read first.
The east face had been Nina's quadrant. Nina would have been in the dormitory buildings during the raid. If the east face was standing, Nina was probably alive.
I keyed the radio.
"Renn."
"Cora."
"East face is up. Southwest face is down. The raid was three days ago. They are still here. They are alive."
"Yes."
"Sylvia. Field kit ready."
"Ready."
"Drew."
"Cora."
"You with me."
"Yes."
"Cruz. Veron. Trail vehicle. Hold the highway approach. If you see a Hess-cell scout, hold position. Do not pursue. Cruz, you have the call."
"Copy."
I rolled the lead truck forward at five miles per hour.
The Sidney-Urbana road was sixty miles of two-lane that had been good once and was less than good now, but the last six miles approaching the southwest corner of the campus had been deliberately bulldozed by the Free-the-Children network in year three.
They had created a clear approach so any incoming convoy would be visible from the east-face guard tower.
The clearing was still maintained. Somebody had been here within the last six weeks to cut the new growth.
The guard tower was empty.
The empty was not the same as the dead.
I drove the lead truck up to the gap in the southwest wall.
The wall was concrete-and-corrugated-steel, the post-invasion improvisational construction the Urbana cohort had built around the salvaged university dormitories.
The concrete had cracked and the corrugated steel had bent inward.
Somebody had pulled bodies out of the gap and stacked them on the inside of the wall, covered with tarps.
The tarps were the green army-surplus kind.
I counted seven tarps.
I did not say seven.
I parked.
Drew got out.
I got out.
We walked through the gap.
The inside of the southwest quadrant was the damage I had been afraid of for four months and had also been hoping I had been overestimating.
The damage was worse than I had been hoping.
The Free-the-Children safehouse, the converted dormitory east of the gap, the building Mara had been running for three years, was burned to the structural frame.
Two floors had collapsed. The third floor was a half-floor.
The fourth had been the roof, which was now in pieces on the second floor and the ground.
I stopped at the safehouse.
Drew stopped beside me.
He said: "Cora."
"Yes."
"The bodies in the tarps are not the bodies in the safehouse. The safehouse fire was three days ago. The bodies in the tarps were pulled in the last forty-eight hours. The pulling means somebody has been here pulling. Somebody is alive."
"Yes."
"Cora."
"Yes."
"The seven."
"I know."
"It is not yours yet."
"I know."
He did not say anything else. He did not push.
I walked into the safehouse frame.
Mara had been on the second floor. Mara had run the second-floor operation since the camp opened.
Mara was Crystal's oldest friend in the alliance.
Mara had been the godmother to Deedee, in the post-invasion sense of godmother that meant the woman who would have taken the child if Crystal had not made it to Mojave alive.
I walked through the second floor.
The second floor was the debris that had been pre-organized. Somebody had moved the rubble, deliberately, into piles, creating walking paths. Somebody had pulled the bodies from the rubble. Somebody had been preparing the floor for the team's arrival. Nina.
That was Nina. That was Nina's method. Nina pulled bodies. Nina pre-organized.
The walking paths led to the southeast corner of the second floor, to a small office that had been the staff office, where Mara had kept the supply ledgers, where I had stood twice in year three and once in year four. The office door was closed.
I knocked.
A voice from inside, female: "Cora?"
"Nina."
"Cora. Oh. Cora."
The door opened.
Nina was thirty-eight years old. She had been thirty-five when I had last seen her in person, in year eight, on the visit before the radio had failed. She looked sixty.
She fell into my arms.
I held her.
Drew stood at the door behind me. He did not come in. He gave us the space.
Nina cried for maybe a minute. The crying that was not catharsis. The crying that was the daily release of the thing that could not be put down. After a minute she stopped. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She looked at me.
"Cora."
"Nina."
"I have her."
"Who."
"Deedee. I have her. She is in the boiler room.
She is sick. She is sick, Cora. The bug went through the safehouse the day before the raid.
Half the kids had the fever. Mara. Mara had it too.
Mara was running a hundred-and-three when she went into the raid.
She was not at full strength. She knew. Cora.
She knew when she went down to the gap. She had told me at the door, I am sick, get the kids to the boiler room, do not come for me.
I did not come for her. I got the kids to the boiler room. I did what she said."
"Nina."
"Yes."
"Where is everyone."
She did not answer for a long second.
"Jet is with the kids. He is fine. He has the fever now but it is light. He is on his feet."
"Patrick."
"Patrick is gone. Cora, Patrick. They took him alive. Hess's cell. They took him as a hostage. We have not heard. He has been gone for four days. We do not know if he is alive."
"Saul."
"Saul is in the boiler room. He has the fever too. He is fine."
"Mara."
She looked at the floor.
"Mara is in the gap. The southwest gap. She held the wall for forty minutes.
She killed two Vampyren and three humans before she went down.
Cora. She went down on her terms. She had the fever and she went down on her terms and she killed five of them.
The Hess cell pulled back because she had killed five.
The cell did not come back. I do not know why.
I do not know if it was because Mara killed five or if it was because they ran out of daylight or if it was.
Cora, I do not know. But she stopped them.
With a fever of a hundred and three. She stopped them. "
"Nina."
"Yes."
"How many kids in the boiler room."
"Eleven."
"Eleven of the."
"Of the thirteen who came in three days ago, eleven are in the boiler room. Two died of the fever. Not the raid. The fever. We did not have antibiotics. Two of the kids. Two of the small ones. Cora, I."
"Nina."
"Yes."
"Drew."
I turned. Drew was at the door. He stepped forward.
"Sylvia is on her way," Drew said. "Field kit, full. Antibiotics. Fever-down protocol. Antivirals. The boiler room kids will have something in an hour."
"Drew."
"Yes ma'am."
"Run."
He ran.
I stayed with Nina.
Nina put her face in her hands.
I held her.
The second floor was very quiet. Somewhere above us in the broken half-fourth-floor, something dripped.
The slow drip that meant the rain from the supercell two days ago had still not finished working its way through the structural damage.
The drip was a metronome. I sat with Nina on the floor of the staff office.
I held her. Her shoulders shook. She did not make noise. She just shook.
After a while she said:
"Cora."
"Yes."
"Mara would have wanted you to know she was sick.
She did not want you to think she was not.
She did not want. Cora, Mara loved Crystal more than her own sister.
She did not want Crystal to think she died because she was caught off guard.
She wasn't off guard. She was sick. She was sick and she did the job anyway.
That is what Mara. That is what Mara did her whole life.
She did the job sick. She would have wanted Crystal to know. "
"Crystal will know."
"You will tell her."
"I will tell her. Word for word."
"Cora."
"Yes."
"Crystal cannot come here. Cora. Crystal cannot come. Mara is in the gap. The gap is. The gap is not a place where Crystal should see. I have not pulled Mara out. I could not move her. The Vampyren bodies are around her. I have not had the manpower. The gap is. Cora, the gap is the bad part."
"Nina."
"Yes."
"I will pull her out. I will pull her out with Drew. Crystal is not coming. We will pull Mara out and we will take her body home and Crystal will bury her at the Mojave camp. The Urbana enclave does not have to be the place. Crystal will have her at home."
"Cora."
"Listen to me. Crystal sleeps tonight at Mojave for the first time in two hundred and fifty-three days.
She slept last night because Drew was with me.
She will sleep tomorrow because Deedee is on her way home.
She will sleep the night after that because Mara is on her way home, and Mara will be home where Crystal can bury her under the rosemary by the kitchen tent. Are you listening."
"Yes."
"Crystal sleeps. The rest is the count."
She nodded.
She wiped her eyes.
She stood up.
"Take me to the boiler room."
I took her to the boiler room.
* * *