Prep For Doom Read online

  It all seemed so obvious to her now, but when her mother was shoving clothes in suitcases and screeching at them to get in the car, they were too terrified to think of anything but escaping. Staten Island. Safety. She had promised. It wasn’t the only promise she had broken.

  The cracks started to show before they ever made it out of their apartment building that day. Sidney shivered at the memory of slipping on the first floor landing. She had stopped herself from falling completely, but her sister hadn’t been so lucky. Vivi’s hysterical screaming at finding her backside and left hand covered in blood when she tried to stand back up was a sound Sidney would never forget.

  She stunk of bleach for days afterward.

  Of course, her mother knew the bleach was useless against the virus. She just had to get rid of the blood from Vivi’s hands and clothes so no one would suspect the truth. Sidney knew she should have seen it then, should have asked questions, demanded answers. Instead, she followed blindly. She trusted her mother and got in the car. It seemed like such a relief to sit down on the soft seats that day. She should have savored the feeling, because she suspected she would never feel it again.

  “Sidney,” Vivi whispered from the back door. She peered out timidly.

  “Is she gone?” Sidney whispered back. Vivi’s eleven-year-old head bobbed quickly, her fear making her movements sharp. Sidney dropped the broom and abandoned the chores Mrs. Otis had assigned her. It wasn’t like sweeping the back stoop was going to help this place look any better or feel less like a prison. It was simply a task to keep her busy, to keep her from asking too many questions or coming up with an escape plan.

  Like so many other plans Peter Franklin Donalds had laid since the outbreak, attempting to distract her failed just as surely. The endless, mindless chores only gave her time to think. Scrambling up the steps, Sidney slipped into the house and shut the back door to keep the nosy neighbors from investigating.

  Sidney gently pushed her sister to the side and yanked open the broom closet. A ratty old mop and dust pan was all it contained…on the surface.

  Shoving aside the mop, Sidney pushed and prodded at a board. The old wooden floorboard had to be pried up from under the house the first time, which meant venturing into the rat and spider infested crawlspace. Blood oozed from scraped knuckles before Sidney was successful. Two more came easily after that. The basket she had hung beneath the opening contained the two backpacks they had arrived with, both of which were now packed with food, matches, and a couple of screwdrivers.

  The screwdrivers weren’t much in the way of weapons, but they were the best Sidney had been able to ferret away. She yanked both bags out and slung them onto her shoulders. Vivi reached for one, wanting to help, but the purple bruises and needle tracks caused Sidney to grip the straps even tighter.

  “I’ve got them,” she said.

  “I can help,” Vivi protested. Her accusing finger pointed at the marks on Sidney’s arms.

  At seventeen, Sidney had stood up to the relentless blood draws and invasive tests better than her sister. Vivi had always been tiny and frail. If anyone should have succumbed to the virus, it should have been her. She usually caught every bug and virus around, spending most of her early years taking medications and staying home from school. Somehow, she seemed to have more natural immunity now than any of the other survivors, including Sidney.

  Of all the things Sidney had figured out since coming here, that one unanswered question still bothered her. How had her mother known that PFD would want Vivi so badly? She knew the truth about this place because she helped set it up—Sidney learned much too late—but still she brought them here, expecting them to accept her daughters as payment for saving her life.

  Part of Sidney felt like her mother deserved what had happened to her after attempting to trade in her own children as science experiments. She clearly hadn’t cared about them as much as she had cared about herself, but no matter how angry Sidney was at her mother for what she’d done, she was her mother, her only parent. She was furious, but still missed her so badly she almost couldn’t stand it some days.

  “Did Mrs. Otis say where she was going?” Sidney asked her sister.

  Vivi shook her head. “I was pretending to be asleep, like you told me. She peeked into my room to check on me, then I heard the front door close a few minutes later. She probably won’t be gone long.”

  The fact that Mrs. Otis hadn’t told Sidney she was leaving didn’t offer any clues. She had been keeping the sisters away from each other as much as possible. Sidney was supposed to be locked out of the house while she cleaned. Mrs. Otis didn’t know Vivi usually snuck down and unlocked the door as soon as they were alone.

  Even still, she hadn’t called a replacement to watch them. They were always guarded, because of Vivi’s value. If she’d left Vivi alone, she probably just went to the neighbor’s. Rations, even on the island, were becoming scarce, and Mrs. Otis couldn’t survive without coffee. They only had a few minutes.

  “I’m going out first,” Sidney said.

  “I wish we could do this at night,” Vivi said. Her eyes were wide, darting around anxiously at every creak and groan the old house made.

  Sidney echoed the wish silently, but only said, “This is our only option. We can’t get out of the restraints at night. Be brave, Vivi, and trust me. I’ll keep you safe.”

  Vivi bit her lip as her hands twisted. Sidney knew she was thinking about their mom’s promise of safety. It hadn’t been true then, but Vivi nodded, putting her trust and her life in the hands of someone she loved one more time, hoping for a different result.

  With a quick nod, Sidney slipped out the back door. She walked as casually as she could to the middle of the yard. Anyone who saw her with the bags would be instantly suspicious, but this was the time of day when the morning coffee had worn off and the stress of living on an island prison caught up to everyone.

  There was an unnatural halt to the noise and motion of this compound, watched over every second by a deadly militia. For the first few days, it made Sidney’s skin crawl. After three weeks, the silence was beautiful. Closing her fingers into a fist, she put her right hand behind her back where Vivi could see it and motioned for Vivi to follow. The muted creak of the door opening was followed by the soft patter of Vivi’s worn sneakers as she scurried down the back steps.

  As soon as Viv was near enough, Sidney gripped her hand and they walked with deceptive calm to the back fence. Weeding the garden had shown Sidney the way out. She had no idea who might have lived here before the outbreak, before PFD had done just as much killing as the virus to secure this area. She tried not to think about it. She did discover that the previous occupants had a dog.

  The soft earth where the unknown dog had dug its escape route had been lazily pushed back into the hole. The bottom portion of the partially chewed fence slat had been left as it was. It hadn’t taken much time for Sidney to pry off the broken piece and turn it into a makeshift shovel. She’d carefully scooped all the dirt back into the hole each day, but loosely.

  Dropping to their knees, both girls pushed and scooped the soft earth furiously. They were careful to shove it out of the yard, into the alleyway, so it could be replaced after they left. Getting out from under Mrs. Otis’s harsh eye was only the first hurdle. They still had an entire city to navigate before they could reach the outer edges of the island. They couldn’t leave any clues behind.

  Vivi was the first to squeeze under the fence. Her waif-thin body made it through easily. Sidney struggled a bit more, but wrenched herself through with only a few more scrapes and cuts than she had started with. The pain was nothing compared to what she had already been through.

  The desire to run gripped both girls once they were upright. Sidney, especially, wanted to sprint through what was practically a ghost town. There were thousands of refugees living in the buildings. None walked about freely, though. PFD soldiers made sure of that.

  They also made sure no one escaped.
/>   Grabbing Vivi’s hand, Sidney led her sister forward. They reached the end of the alley too quickly. Sidney’s heart was racing, and she could feel her sister’s terror through her death grip. Sidney had tried so many times to get out of the nightly restraints. The monitor’s wires and electrodes were frightening all by themselves, but even more terrifying was being strapped to a bed all night so various needles could be inserted into her arms to collect and analyze samples.

  The worst, though, was the amber liquid that hung above her every night. It slowly dripped down the tube and into her arm, burning its way through her body all night long. Not screaming the first few nights was torturous. Listening to Vivi beg for them to stop was even worse.

  It would never happened again, Sidney promised herself as she scanned the empty street. The other residents were all safely tucked inside their apartments with the curtains drawn and the blinds down to shield them from whatever gruesome activities might be going on. There was no one there to stop them, but Sidney’s stomach twisted at some unknown fear.

  “Walk slow, normal. No running. Pretend it’s perfectly natural to be out on the street for a walk.”

  “That used to be true,” Viv said quietly.

  Sidney’s heart ached at all the horrible things her little sister had been forced to endure over the past few weeks. “It will be again someday.”

  The dead silence that answered her said everything that was running through Vivi’s mind. Deep down, Sidney wondered if Vivi felt the same clutching hopelessness she did. Even if they did somehow get off the island, the scars were too deep to ever heal.

  “Let’s go,” Sidney said before her fears could steal away her courage.

  Nodding, Vivi didn’t resist Sidney’s pull. Her hand tightened around her sister’s, but she didn’t say a word. They moved as quickly as they dared from one sheltered location to another. Once, taking a walk would have meant Vivi chattering endlessly, her arm swinging Sidney’s back and forth like a pendulum that never slowed or ran out of momentum. That was gone.

  Sidney shoved thoughts of before out of her mind and concentrated on the present. She eyed curtains and blinds for movement, checked alleys before walking in front of them, inspected abandoned vehicles as they passed them, and strained to catch even the smallest sound. They had gone almost six blocks before she saw the fabric of a pale blue curtain flick back into place. It stopped her in her tracks.

  “What’s wrong?” Vivi whispered.

  “A curtain, it moved. Someone saw us.”

  Vivi’s gasp was weak and fearful. “Will they report us?”

  There was no way for Sidney to know. She shrugged her shoulders and nudged her sister forward. “Just keep moving.”

  Speaking to others was rare. Especially after the PFD soldiers had found their mother infected and shot her in the head in front of everyone. Sidney doubted that knowing she had been on one of the many research and development teams at PFD would have spared her life anyway. Infected meant dead.

  Sidney and Vivi had cleared as non-infected and been shoved into a containment room for further testing. Neither of them had a clue what was going on. When the doctor who had examined them gave them the news that they were naturally immune to the virus, it had sounded like a good thing. It wasn’t.

  Since then, they had seen or spoken to very few. The glimpses Sidney caught of others through the windows revealed they were all terrified, but she wasn’t sure if they were more scared of PFD or getting sick. All she could do was keep leading Vivi further and further away from the labs and hospitals where they were tortured.

  The further they walked, the safer they should have felt, but that didn’t happen. Darting behind a broken fence at the sound of heavy boots, Sidney yanked Vivi down next to her and clamped a hand over her mouth. They huddled against the grimy slats in the dirt and the weeds, Vivi squeezing her eyes shut as Sidney watched the street. Her sister was too terrified to make a sound. Thud after thud pounded against her mind until her fears came spilling out to mix with Vivi’s silent crying.

  The wait to start moving again was interminable. Sidney’s heart felt like it was on its last leg before the clomping boots finally faded away and the girls slipped back onto the street. This time, it was impossible not to speed up. Even in their weakened and battered state, their legs were humming with unspent energy, desperate to move faster. Another twitch of blinds on the second floor of an apartment building held them back.

  By the fourth time, when she saw movement in a window from the corner of her eye, Sidney knew something was wrong. They dodged PFD patrols twice more, but none of the people peeking out at them did anything to alert the soldiers. Maybe they were all hoping they’d get away, that they would succeed in escaping this nightmare.

  Sidney couldn’t pinpoint why that seemed so off, but the creepy-crawly feeling continued to worsen with every block. Something was very, very wrong, but she had no idea what it was. The similarity to those last few moments before reaching Goethals Bridge set her on edge.

  Something had seemed off then as well. The diamond shaped logo was all too familiar. She saw it every day on the folders and notebooks that her mother brought home at night. Including the last time. Except, she hadn’t taken her paperwork to her office that night. Sidney remembered hearing the popping sounds of a fire, but had passed it off as nothing. Who would start a fire in June?

  Standing near the middle of the Goethals Bridge that day, she’d noticed the soot stains on her mother’s jeans, but hadn’t said anything. There hadn’t been any time. They’d left their SUV with the others in the graveyard of abandoned cars that clogged the street to be pushed around with the mob of people all trying to get into the supposed safe haven. As soon as they neared one of the soldiers, Sidney’s mother had tried to explain who she was and why they needed her, but he didn’t even hear her.

  He’d ignored her words while keeping a rifle trained on her head. Vivi was bawling next to Sidney, but she just held her hand and stared as some guy in a yellow plastic suit jabbed a needle into their mom’s finger. She kept talking, ranting about being able to help. The guy in the suit stepped back without hearing and shook his head.

  Even without understanding what was going on, Sidney knew enough to grab her sister and bury her head against her chest to block her from seeing. It spared Vivi from witnessing their mother’s murder, but not from anything else. Sidney felt the need to shelter her sister again, but from what?

  “How much farther?” Vivi whispered when they crouched down behind an abandoned car to avoid another PFD patrol. It was the fifth patrol they had seen in the last hour, which wasn’t normal.

  Sidney had no idea how much further they needed to travel in order to find safety, but she said, “We’re about halfway there.”

  Nodding slowly, Vivi gave no hint of whether or not she believed her. She didn’t ask again, even when the hours stretched on longer than they should have and the sun disappeared behind the towering buildings and left them with only half-light with which to navigate the streets, which had been made clear by too many deaths.

  Sidney had no idea how long they’d been walking when she finally heard the soft lapping of water against rocks. At first, she thought she was just imagining it. Nearly convinced they were walking in circles, her tired limbs and starving body had just about given up hope of ever reaching the docks.

  In the darkest corners of her mind, she felt certain Mrs. Otis and the others were just playing with them, sending out patrols to watch them fumble around, just waiting for the right moment to swoop in and capture them. Perhaps they were simply waiting for the two girls to give up and realize there was no escape. That wouldn’t have surprised Sidney in the least.

  The sweet sound of water freely washing up against the docks made her giddy. Her breathing picked up and she yanked on her sister’s arm. Vivi stumbled behind her, half-asleep as she walked, but her eyes snapped open in fear a second later.

  “Where?” she demanded, thinking they had been
found.

  “Water,” Sidney gasped as she dragged Vivi along behind her.

  Hope replaced fear, and her pale limbs came alive. She broke free of Sidney’s strangling grip and sprinted into the open to find the source of the sound. Sidney was running as well, too high on the idea of being free to watch for danger. She just ran and hoped and begged for this to be a way out.

  She didn’t see the dark shape running toward Vivi until he was nearly on top of her. Her scream came too late. Vivi was tackled to the asphalt of the dock, her breath whooshing out of her on impact. Terrified that the force of the impact had crushed all the bones in Vivi’s fragile little body, she launched herself at the attacker.

  The fear coursing through her was solely for her sister. Somewhere in the back of her mind she suspected she was about to die, but the hint of rationality she managed to hold onto said it would be worth it. She dove for the black-clad head, intent on ripping the figure apart. Weak and hungry as she was, she knew her chances of success were just a shade above zero. The chance to find out how much desperation accounted for in a fight never came.

  The impact of a body much larger than hers smashing into her from the side reminded her of the first time one of Mrs. Otis’s gigantic needles was shoved into her spine, only about a dozen times more painful. She wanted to scream at Vivi to run, to bite or kick or fight. Her burning lungs were incapable of breathing after the impact. Screaming was a fantasy. Convulsing as the heavy weight pinned her to the ground, tears poured down her face. She had failed.

  “Focus. Breathe,” a rough voice commanded.

  Confusion bounced around in her head like a gunshot inside a metal room. Her entire chest burned like the amber liquid seeping into her veins at night. She was trying to breathe, desperately!

  Why was he trying to help her, anyway?

  “I know it hurts,” he said more calmly. “You have to try, though. Breathe in slowly. Don’t gasp.”

  Her wild eyes scanned his uniform—what little she could see while he was lying on top of her. The PFD diamond wasn’t there, which only confused her even more. Despite that, she did her best to take his advice, and slowly was able to suck in the fishy, oily air of the dockside. Only once she didn’t feel like she was suffocating, did her mind clear enough to think about Vivi.