Page 8 of Evolved

I avoid looking at any of them, head for the exit, taking my laptop, leaving my tea barely touched, unsure if I’m hoping for life after this plague—or for death.

“Ottilie,” she says when I’m just near the door. “We’re going to need a lot of talking points. Ten or eleven different cogent arguments we can use to sway each new group of people we meet.”

I never see Gina again without a door between us.

She dies two weeks later.

3|A stronghold we’re not strong enough to hold

OTTILIE

About a month later …

Jimmy is dead.

Frankie and Auden have left for the farmhouse.

Yorke is roaming the city alone, helping strangers die

IHOIST MYSELF UPonto the ledge with every ounce of strength I possess, stifling an ugly grunt and trying not to breathe like I’m dying. I’ve been working out since high school, or I did before the plague, but lifting myself up five feet above the ground is hard. No matter how I kick my feet or strain my arms, it’s not working.

So here I am, attempting—and failing—to break into theUnited States Capitol Building to leave a note in an attempt to rejoin any surviving tattered remains of the government.

Losing Gina did something to me.

Gran still hasn’t told me where she sent her and why.

Each of us has our missions—she’s set Knox to work raiding government buildings and confiscating guns, which he does, and me to writing, which I cannot do.

I haven’t written a single sentence since she got sick.

I put a little extra rage into my biceps as I try to lift myself a couple more inches. Nothing happens—until … up I go.

High.

Higher.

And I’m up, one hip on the ledge to cling to the uprights of the balustrade.

Panting, I look down to see Knox releasing my shoe.

He lifted me.

Without a word, he curls his palms over the ledge and hops up to the portico that rims the Capitol, lifting himself up cleanly, like he does it every day.

He’s not even out of breath.

“Ready?” he asks, hopping over the balustrade with ease.

“Yeah.” I follow him, up and over, heavy breathing, to a corner office window made of ballistic glass.

He smashes it with three sharp jabs with a crowbar, the noise exploding outward into the damp winter air, disturbing the city's silence, echoing chillingly.

I climb in after him, careful to avoid cutting myself on lingering shards, and stand inside the office—polished wood furniture, navy carpet, fussy drapes—a place I used to know well, a busy place, glutted with interns and ringing telephones, keyboards and politicians in back-rooms deal-making, a central ventricle in the heart of America.

There are no phones or emails or keyboards anymore.

I tuck my hands into my coat pockets reflexively and feel the sharpie and the post-it notes we brought.

---