Into the Yellow Zone Read online

  A horrified expression gripped Diane’s face. “Exterminate?”

  * * *

  Luke

  Luke woke to a loud purring at his feet. Pumpkin eyed him, then put his little cat head down between his paws and went back to sleep. He had become Pumpkin's new favorite spot to sleep. Luke closed his eyes and drifted off again, but a few moments later, a shooting pain through his arm jarred him abruptly out of his dreams. The clock on the wall said it was only 5:00 a.m. but no matter how hard he tried, he could not get back to sleep. Dr. Rosario seemed to be in the habit of rising early to work on his experiments, so it was no surprise to find the other mattress in the room unoccupied. Resigning himself to full consciousness, Luke dressed as well as he could with only one usable arm then went to find the doctor.

  The lab's three rooms were interconnected by a small central entryway from the radiation shower room, which doubled as the lab’s bathroom. Luke could only guess what kind of work had gone on here before the war. These days, the doctor had told him, one room was for experiments, and the other two had been set up as living quarters. Eight scientists had spent their lives cooped up in this small space. One of those living spaces now served as storage.

  Luke found the doctor hunched over his work at a lab bench.

  “Any closer to finding the cure?” he asked as he entered the lab, still moving slowly because of his injured ankle.

  Startled, the old man almost dropped a test tube. “Don’t do that! I’m not accustomed to people sneaking up on me.” As the scientist turned to face Luke, he knocked over another tube, this one empty. It was plastic, so it didn’t break when it rolled off the table, but instead continued under the lab bench, along the floor, and finally stopped under a tall chair.

  “I wasn’t sneaking. Don’t be so jumpy. You aren’t used to dealing with people, are you?”

  “And you are a very rude young man. Apparently no one ever taught you to be respectful of your elders,” replied the scientist.

  “Sorry,” said Luke. “My mother used to tell me I had entirely too much sarcasm inside one young boy. She probably had a point. I really don’t mean to be disrespectful. I just say what’s on my mind. It doesn’t always come out right,” said Luke, somewhat sheepishly.

  When Dr. Rosario did not reply, Luke bent down to retrieve the errant test tube and returned it to the old man. “I was thinking about breakfast. Can I get you something?”

  The kitchen was part of the main living space, but Luke really had wanted to know if the doctor had made any progress before he concerned himself with food. Last night, Dr. Rosario had explained the work he was doing with Pumpkin’s blood. Now that he had a feline in his hands again, his advances in the creation of an inoculation had sped up drastically.

  “No,” answered the scientist. Luke was not sure which of his questions he was answering, so he assumed both, shrugged, and went off to the bathroom first, then to get breakfast.

  The Le Rochér scientists had created the kitchen area out of appliances scavenged from the company cafeteria decades ago. However, no one had replenished their food supplies in the three years since the government abandoned this place. Dr. Rosario had rationed his food stores and lived on a bare subsistence diet of canned foods, leftover dehydrated meal packets, and thick, beige plastic packets of food labeled “MRE: MEAL READY TO EAT” stamped in block letters on the front. There were not a lot of them in the kitchen, nor much canned food left. It surprised Luke that the old man was sharing anything with him. Another excellent reason to get going soon, thought Luke.

  He was feeling stronger and wanted to get back Outside to find Isabella and get her the TB drugs, even if the old man persisted in his warning not to wander alone Outside. As if he had a choice! He had convinced Dr. Rosario to start the INH2 treatment on himself in case his sister’s group had infected him.

  The tiger had shredded his backpack and destroyed most of its contents, but it had not been interested in the plastic bottles or tools. Wearing his chem-rad suit, Dr. Rosario recovered some of Luke’s stuff, including the tent, but not the bag itself or Luke’s clothes or food.

  The wounds on Luke’s chest still ached, but he figured that would continue whether he stayed here or went after Isabella. He would not feel any better sitting still. The gash on his ankle had scabbed over and his head was healing well. He no longer wore either of those bandages. As soon as he could get rid of the sling on his arm, he would be able to continue his journey. He had been gaining on Isabella and this set back frustrated him!

  He heard the sound of approaching footsteps behind him. “Guess you changed your mind about breakfast,” Luke said. He reached for a box of protein bars.

  “I’ve got it! I got it!” The scientist shouted like an exuberant toddler. His body was in rapid motion, almost jumping up and down.

  “What do you have? TB?” asked Luke, terrified the old man had become ill.

  “No, no… the breakthrough I’ve been searching for! I found it in the last batch of Pumpkin’s blood that I tested. Two days ago, I injected the cat with a retrovirus that simulates the chemical composition of contaminated rainwater. He should be showing symptoms of poisoning by now, but he’s not! I knew the cat had an antibody that renders him immune to the chemicals, but it took until now to finally isolate it. And now I have it. All I need to do now is duplicate it.” Dr. Rosario paced the floor as he spoke, his arms akimbo, but a wide and easy grin erupting all over his face.

  “That’s great, doc, but does that mean that you can give it to people? Won’t it just work on cats?”

  “It’s not for cats, boy. Cats don’t need a vaccine – they are immune. Haven’t you been paying attention? As far as humans are concerned, it should work just fine. Our genetic structure is very close to other mammals and we are not as different from species to species, as you might think. We all have the same building blocks.”

  “Yeah, DNA. I do have an education, you know,” said Luke with his usual sarcasm.

  “Yes, yes, of course,” replied the scientist, dismissing Luke as he grabbed the protein bar from his hands and hurried back to the lab.

  “Crazy old man. Even if he finds the damn thing, he’ll never be able to get the military to believe it works,” Luke said to no one in particular.

  Unless I help him, he thought.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Isabella

  Isabella, Malcolm, Clay, and Kalla left Alpine before sun-up the next morning, hiking deep into the woods between the village and the Hudson River. They carried their bows and arrows on a mission. A hunting trip. Before continuing their upriver journey, they had to resupply their food stores. Diane had offered them supplies, but Malcolm did not want to take more than necessary from Alpine. Malcolm’s self-sufficiency was one of the things Isabella admired most about her husband.

  It did not take long before Clay spotted where a deer had recently bed down in the woods and then saw the ridge trail it had followed to the river for water. A rocky outcropping served as a natural hunting blind and the group positioned themselves behind it and waited patiently in the early morning light for the deer to come through.

  Trying to control her breathing and remain as quiet as possible, Isabella sat beside Malcolm, crouched down silently anticipating their prey. She had never been on a hunt before. She was excited, yet shivered in anticipation.

  * * *

  Luke

  Luke followed Dr. Rosario to the lab and sat down gingerly on the high stool. He winced in pain as the skin on his chest tweaked from the small movement. He felt as if he had been hurting forever and was not sure he would ever feel good again. Pain was his new normal. “Can that cat blood really prevent mutations in humans?”

  “Not the blood, boy, the antibodies contained within it.”

  Luke huffed in exasperation. Why must the man be so literal? “Will it work?”

  “Absolutely!” replied the old scientist. “But I wish I had the proper facilities to produce enough inoculation. I need to be
gin testing it on human subjects. I need shelter folk to test it on.”

  “What about me? I’ll volunteer.”

  “One test subject – two, if I count myself – is hardly a sufficient statistical test universe,” said the doctor sadly.

  “Doc, I hate to say it, but the only way you’ll get that is if you take this to the government. They can get you the subjects you need. I think it’s your only choice,” suggested Luke. He stared at the old man, who took quite some time to reply.

  “I don’t know how many volunteers they will find, but I agree. I need their help to test this.” He paused, looked around the lab for a bit, and then looked back at Luke. He nodded resolutely. “I should leave right away. You go back to Telemark and I will head to the nearest military base where this can be properly tested and eventually reproduced. I can inoculate everyone!”

  The scientist was so excited that Luke hated to burst his bubble. While the old man had no love for the military that left him stranded for three years, he still seemed to trust his old government. “Ah, doc, there is something you should know before you head off to Picatinny.”

  “Not Picatinny – I need to go to West Point, the old military academy. That’s where the military’s science headquarters are. But, never mind that, what were you going to tell me?”

  “I discovered something at Picatinny that might surprise you. The government is rounding up mutants to use to clean up the poisoned cities. They’ve become slave labor, thrown into the worse areas of nuclear radiation and forced to collect the irradiated debris. They are hauling it off and dumping it in deep pits. The military is using mutants to do heavy, dangerous work, scouring the clean-up sites." Government and military had become synonymous in Luke's vocabulary these days. He didn’t know when it had become that way.

  “That’s the REAL reason I need to find my sib. Isabella is out there with a group of mutants who could be picked up at any time. I need to get to her and warn her, not just to give her the TB meds. So I’ll be going with you to West Point. That’s the same way her group went, wasn’t it?”

  “Luke, that’s a fantastic story if I ever heard one,” the old man chuckled. “While I wouldn’t put it past the government to do so, there just aren’t enough mutants out there to be manpower for such a tremendous undertaking. I didn’t believe your sister when she told me they were planning to exterminate the mutants and I find it just as difficult to believe your claims. My boy, the young are known to be gullible. I’m sure this fantasy of yours stems from boredom and misunderstanding. At sixteen, what do you know about the world and how it works?” The old man laughed.

  “Whatever, old man. Don’t believe me. I don’t give a rat’s ass! Take your cure to West Point. You’ll see when you get there, but I’m going with you. I’ll find Isabella along the way, and we’ll see who’s right.”

  The old man just stared at the boy, and Luke wasn’t sure who thought who was crazier.

  * * *

  Isabella

  That morning Isabella killed for the first time. The yearling came through the trees, aiming for her as if to run her down. She made a decision. She stood, raised the bow. Her left arm straight, her right pulled back and her arrow tight against the string. The doe charged, dodged, and then ran forward again.

  The arrow flew straight, singing its gusty song of death, the doe broke its gait, paused and staggered. A rush of scarlet burst from its neck and it fell, thudding into the russet earth. It stood again, ran forward through the brush, then collapsed. Isabella’s own blood pounded as it pressed against her skull, anticipating escape through her ear canals, and bouncing back again when no escape was possible. It was then that she finally exhaled. It took a moment for it to sink in.

  Malcolm stood over the deer, staring at the blood that pooled below the hole in its neck.

  Kalla rushed into the trees and returned holding Isabella’s arrow, fletched blue and yellow, as if holding a trophy. “It passed clean through,” shouted the younger girl.

  A clean kill. Difficult enough for experienced hunters, a shot that would have been impossible for a neophyte shelter girl without the training Malcolm had given her.

  Isabella’s breath came in shallow spurts, as if she had run a marathon. She dropped to the ground next to the game animal. A smile spread across her face as she knelt beside her first kill. She had done it! Isabella had killed a deer. As she gazed down at the animal knowing that in its death the deer provided people with food and warm clothing, she felt pride in her accomplishment. More importantly, she knew that she could do it again, whether it was game or enemy.

  Isabella wanted to keep the deer hide and said as much to Malcolm.

  He smiled at her, but it felt like the same smile her mother or grandmother reserved for occasions when she was acting like a stupid little girl. “Belle, tanning deer hide takes time. A lot of time. We don’t have any modern tanning solutions. If we are going to keep the hide, we have to scrape out all the flesh and fat from the animal skin, and then smoke the hide. We need either eggs or the brain of the animal itself. We whip it up and use it to tan the hide.”

  “Disgusting!” shrieked Isabella, trying not to gag at the thought.

  “It’s not so bad,” explained Malcolm. “But it’ll take at least four days. You sure you want to do this? We can stay here and tan the hide. But we are still turning back to Telemark in seventeen days, either way.”

  “It’s my first kill. I really want to keep the hide, Malcolm. Kind of a trophy,” said Isabella, realizing as soon as she said it how ridiculous this whole idea was for a group on the go. They could not waste four days waiting for a piece of skin to cure and she could not jeopardize their mission for a souvenir.

  Malcolm waited for her to decide.

  “Okay, I guess you’re right. We can give the pelt to Diane, as a gift. At least we get the deer meat,” conceded Isabella.

  “Yes, we do, and we can butcher it today. It’s very hot so we need to do that right away. But they have a smokehouse here and can tan it too. I deem maybe we give the whole animal to Diane as a gift.” It was more a question than a statement, but he was not asking her. He was talking it out to make a decision. “I’m sure it would go a long way earning their trust. I was thinking maybe we trade. We give them the deer to hang and properly prepare, and they give us already smoked venison plus other foodstuffs for the trip. That way we aren’t accepting charity from them.”

  Isabella agreed.

  She caressed the coarse yellow and gray fur of the doe as they slung it from two tree branches for transport back to the village.

  Isabella felt enormously satisfied as they walked back to the village. They had accomplished what they had set out to do in Alpine. Diane believed them about the government’s plans and Alpine would spend the next few years ramping up their defenses to prepare for the government’s extermination plans. The people of the village would spread the word to their nearby trading partners. If the old scientist was successful in his research they might not have long to prepare.

  To top it off, she had practical experience now – and success! – using the bow and arrow. She knew down in the depths of her being that she could protect her family now.

  * * *

  Luke

  Two days later, Dr. Rosario was ready to go. He had documented and cataloged his experiments. Test tubes of blood samples from the cat from before and after his tests, rested securely inside a hard-shelled, foam-lined case.

  Luke had spent the last two days making a new backpack out of materials he found in the lab and storage area. With the handicap of being temporarily one-handed, it had been a trying exercise. Luke was often frustrated but eventually, he too, was ready to leave.

  “How sure are you that your inoculation won’t kill me?” asked Luke. He had weighed the options of donning a hot and heavy chem-rad suit for the journey, going without and absorbing more contamination, or being shot in his good arm with something that could kill him or save him.

  “I am
almost 100% sure my discovery will save your butt, boy. If you aren’t certain, you are welcome to wear one of my NBC suits. I however, choose not to wear one. Your sister was right: at my age, the damage the Outside environment can do to my genes is minimal. It may shorten my life, but not by much.”

  “Aren’t you going to inoculate yourself?”

  “On the off chance that the inoculation does indeed kill us, I can’t take the chance. Even if this formula is wrong, the knowledge of the feline protective gene must still be shared with others who can improve upon my process and continue this line of research. For that reason, I feel it is in society’s best interest that I carry my discovery to other researchers, not die from self-testing.”

  “Chicken.”

  “I am not a brave man, but I’ve managed to live this long.” There was no shame or regret in the doctor’s tone. “Do you still wish to volunteer?”

  Luke nodded. “Yeah, doc, shoot me up.”

  The old scientist removed a vial from the plastic case and prepared the injection. “Last chance to change your mind.”

  “Just do it,” said Luke. The needle stung as it broke through his skin. He hated being a pincushion. Nurse Lady at Picatinny had done much the same when she inoculated him against all the diseases he never would have gotten if he had just stayed in his family shelter.

  That, however, had never been an option for Luke.

  They were an odd team – the wizened old man and the injured teenager. The man had seventy-two years of experience, but knew little of the current state of the world. Of the two, the boy was the survival expert. Luke was young, strong, and healthy, but impeded by an injured arm, a healing ankle, and muscles that were still mending across his chest. Still, Luke carried most of their gear, using his makeshift backpack. He had secured the vinyl tent underneath it with improvised wire clamps and two c-clips. Pumpkin followed behind, used to human company and obviously unwilling to go it on his own.