“Um, I’m Irene Ruiz.”
“Don’t worry, you won’t be here long. The cavalry is coming.”
“You know there are still guards outside. And those robots.”
He sighed, but his grin didn’t fade. “Not for long. You know this song? Feel free to sing along. We’ll be out soon.”
“What about the cold?”
“We all have the sniffles. Some cold!”
I didn’t find a prison, I found a lunatic asylum. “I might be carrying the delta cold. The killer cold.”
“We’ve heard about that. There’s the isolation ward.” He pointed to a table in a corner with a chalk line on the concrete floor to create a wide buffer zone. Three people sat inside, carrying on an animated conversation.
On a whim, she looked at her phone. No reception. They had no idea what was going on, did they? But she knew what she ought to do. “I should go over there.” She didn’t want to seem rude. “Thanks for the warm welcome.”
The people at the card table, two men and someone of uncertain gender, invited her to sit down. “We’re playing two truths and a lie,” a man said. He looked tired and wan, obviously ill. He coughed into his elbow. “No score. Honor system. Not much of that, either.”
Irene sat down to be nice—and because she wasn’t sure about what else she should do. Is insanity contagious? “I have some medicine for the cold.”
He brightened. “You do? We could all use that. I’m Roger, by the way. You’re an angel.”
They passed around the drops and gave her back a near-empty bottle.
“Your turn, angel,” he said. “Why do you look so glum? Can you tell us two truths and a lie about that?”
She had a lot of truths to choose from. When she told them who her mother was and what had happened to her, they immediately stopped the game to talk about her books and art—Mamá had fans all over—and assure Irene that down in Madison, the prisons would be liberated soon, too.
But they had no idea how that was going to happen. This is all just an act to make themselves feel better. And their optimism wasn’t very contagious. They might be liberated, or they might be trapped in there forever and slowly starve to death, since they had no food, only water.
Another glum truth: Irene’s life lately had been one long series of big and small mistakes, although not all of them her own fault, and they had led her to disaster and likely early death.
CHAPTER8
Berenike let the truck pull into place in the industrial park. A load sat on a pallet in a driveway, and no one seemed to be around. The codes matched the list from the city: face masks, gloves, and protective gowns. She and Neal loaded the lightweight boxes into the truck. The job was disappointingly easy.
At the next warehouse, a bit farther west, nothing waited outside for them. Neal, helmet on, pushed the buzzer at the entrance as she waited in the truck, windows down, listening. No response. He took out his phone. “Hello,” he said, “this is the Milwaukee Health Department. We’re here to pick up emergency supplies.”
A man came around the corner of the building—a big elderly white man in a tight rent-a-cop uniform, wearing the kind of mask on his flushed face that would protect him from everything including toxic gas. He pointed a finger at Neal. “You’re trespassing!”
“Good afternoon, sir. We’re here for an authorized pickup,” he said casually. “Emergency. There’s one going on, you know.”
“You can’t just come here and take what you want.”
“That’s between the owner and the city. We’re here to pick up what was agreed on.”
“That order has no legal standing.”
Neal looked at his phone. “The security company will open the doors for us.”
“What if I’m the owner? I won’t let you go in.” He had a gun on his belt and put his hand on it.
Neal sighed, unruffled. “You can let us take the shipment, or I can arrest you. Do you really want to be locked up with a lot of coughing people?”
“You can’t arrest me. It’s insurrection and unlawful. If you read the Constitution—”
“Right here, sir, right now, the city has requisitioned certain material and will pay for it. You can allow us to remove it or you can pay the legal penalty. The choice is yours.”
“You’re breaking the law.”
“I’m not here to argue. I’m here to escort the pickup and delivery of certain medications that can save lives.”
The two men stared at each other. Berenike watched, ready to drop to the floor at the first twitch of a gun. Then she remembered her customer service training and experience. She knew what this moment called for.
She beeped the horn and leaned out of the window. “Hey, people are dying. Let’s get moving! I don’t know who you are, but we’ve got the paperwork, so let’s get the stuff!” She pushed a button on the dashboard to open the back of the truck.
The guard stared at her, and judging from the movement of his mask, his jaw dropped. Good. She got out, holding her phone display toward him. “Right here, that’s the order. Take a look, but I know you’ve seen this already. We’re waiting. Fifteen cartons of antivirals, more if you have it. We’re authorized to inspect the warehouse.” She looked him right in the eyes, unblinking. “We can get backup.” That was a bluff. Was this worth risking her life over? Maybe, maybe not, but it felt triumphant to be yelling at him, even if her heart was hammering. The next move was his. She waited, holding her breath.
“I’m not having any part of this.” Red-faced with rage, he began to walk away, then turned and shouted, “It’s not legal! You can’t just take what you want!”
Neal gave her an admiring glance as the old man disappeared around a corner.
“I worked in customer service,” she said—worked! past tense! “I dealt with assholes all the time. Sometimes it takes a
