The side door to the warehouse clicked open, no doubt, she knew, the work of some bored underpaid contract worker somewhere at the security company’s office who needed a paycheck and didn’t give a shit otherwise. Berenike could sympathize. Neal strode inside, telling all the lights to turn on. How fast could they do their job before the asshole changed his mind? He had a gun, after all.
The warehouse was well organized and they found the antivirals easily. She scanned some boxes that identified themselves as a different antiviral. She called King, who said it was even better and to take that, too. They loaded it up as fast as they could. Neal sent instructions to lock the warehouse door, and they were off. She set the truck to maximum speed and autopilot. She didn’t trust herself to drive. Her heart was still beating too fast.
Behind them, three shots banged. They both instinctively ducked, but the truck seemed unharmed.
“I’ll call that in,” he said. “Another red dot.”
She let the truck drive itself most of the way and took over manually for the last half block to the first drop-off site, a community center. A crowd stood in front, everyone standing far apart.
“Pull in at the back,” he said. “We don’t want them to rush us.”
She knew the neighborhood, close to her home, poor and African-American for more than a century, and over time little had changed except that the population had declined as homes were lost to landlords who had let properties self-destruct during a succession of economic and bank crises. She’d attended a local history presentation at that very center. The people who remained were tough as concrete, “the tightest neighborhood in the city.” She hoped so. The city’s plan counted on it. They’d take care of one another. Probably. Everyone was scared and hurting, and people in pain reacted unpredictably.
She pulled up to the back door, and she and Neal jumped out. She stacked a hand truck with boxes and pushed them in, and Neal carried an armload. A woman wearing a face mask and gloves was waiting and began thanking them effusively. Berenike knew her.
“Just doing our job,” Neal said, setting down his boxes on the nearest flat surface.
“Hey, Berenike!” the woman said. “Good to see you.”
“I have a new job,” she answered. It felt fulfilling to say that.
“Good for you! Can I get you anything? Coffee, water, sandwich, wash your hands?”
“Water and soap, that would be good,” she said. “Then we have more deliveries and better hurry.” Neal nodded.
Back in the truck, Berenike said, “I’m liking this job.”
“Just try not to run anyone over,” he said. “I’d have to write you a warning ticket.”
Two more drop-offs remained on that loop, although she had to alter the route for red dots. A column of black smoke was rising up from where one of them was. Neal studied his phone.
“A fire,” he said. “Firefighters are on it. They’re tough to scare.”
“I hear there’s a big fire in California, but that’s all I can find out.”
“Yep. Two big fires out there. It’s bad. The problem is that first responders are getting sick, too. California is so fucked. Us, too.”
“Thanks for the happy thoughts.”
“It’s my job as a first responder to think strategically, including all the ways that this job could go wrong.” He kept studying his police screen. “It’s a good thing we’re in an unmarked vehicle. Less chance of being attacked.”
“By who?”
“People who want our stuff—for themselves, or to keep it from people they don’t like. Some really bad shit is happening in some places. I recommend wearing helmets at all times.”
Avril walked into prison undefeated. Because she was undefeated, right? Her superpower. Just another setback. When the mutiny succeeded … It would, wouldn’t it? With or without her, if she died.
She checked. Her phone had gone dead, no surprise. This prison was secret, or at least semisecret.
The door ahead of her opened, and she walked through, aware that some robot with a gun mounted in the ceiling or somewhere else had her in its aim. The door closed behind her with a tiny, unmelodramatic click and left her facing yet another door. It opened, and she stepped into a dismal low cinder-block hallway with grates overhead. The air inside reeked of body odor. At the end of a sloping corridor, another metal door opened—into a corridor, and it was filled with noise, heat, and a worse stench. She hesitated.
“Move forward,” a voice ordered, that same uncanny voice of a centaur. She did. Now is not the time to fight. On one side of the corridor was a chain-link fence wall up to the ceiling, with a series of pens on the other side walled off from each other with fencing, each holding dozens, maybe hundreds of people.
The door to the nearest pen opened, and she obediently took a step in. The mutineers stood in groups or sat on the floor, and they turned and appraised her. She searched for familiar faces and saw none. Furniture would be an amenity. She saw no amenities at all. Adults and even a couple of children of all sexes were in the pen. No amenities and not much planning, either. Quite a few wore purple clothes.
She’d heard once that every prisoner had the duty to escape, at least military prisoners, and this was a war, right? An elderly man approached with a snippet of lavender tape on his chest, and “Enos” had been written on it with a blue marker.
“Welcome. My name is Enos. Lemme fix you up with a name tag and an assignment. We’re organized into crews here.”
“Um, sure. I’m Avril.” Crews? What kind of assignment? She knew what she wanted to do. She dutifully wrote out her name tag and, because why not try, she asked, “Is there an
