Page 14 of Blue Arrow Island
“Bring!” she shouts into a megaphone.
“Peace!” everyone yells back in unison.
“Create!” Her shrill yell makes me flinch.
“Order!” They pump their fists in the air as they respond.
“Ensure!”
“Prosperity!” They shout it like a war chant.
“What’s that about?” I ask Pax, remembering the same words from the commander’s announcement of the baby.
“That’s our mantra. Everything we do in Rising Tide is to create peace, order and prosperity.”
“For Whitman?”
He pinches his brows together tightly. “For us. Here. This island is beautiful, but it’s also dangerous. There are animals in the jungle that could eat you in three big bites. And the leader of the Dust Walkers, Marcus, he’d kill any of us on sight, no questions asked. The rules we have here are for our own protection and prosperity.”
My mind flashes back to Amira, carried away by someone from the Dust Walkers camp.
“That’s what they do to the people they take on the beach? They kill them?”
His expression turns grim. “Yeah, and they’re not merciful about it. They’re savages. We train to protect ourselves from them.”
Maybe I am safer here than alone in the jungle. I’m about to ask Pax what else he knows about the Dust Walkers when my eyes catch on the group that just finished running. Three of the women are visibly pregnant, one of them close to full term.
“What the hell?” I blurt it with no forethought. “There’s no way they just ran five miles that fast.”
Pax’s grin is proud. “They did. The Dust Walkers go after pregnant women first, so women here train up until they go into labor.”
I’m silent the rest of the walk to the well. I know the virus changed the world forever, and that New America is a cold, unforgiving place, especially for women. It’s wise to make sure pregnant women can take care of themselves. It’s what I’d want in their situation.
There must be very little to do around here for entertainment, because of the eight women in the group that’s dispersing, three of them are clearly pregnant. That’s almost half.
“So what were you doing when the virus hit?” Pax asks.
I shift my focus back to him. “I was a college student. You?”
“You won’t believe me if I tell you.”
“Try me.”
“I was a twenty-four-year-old accountant working for a firm in Boston.”
A laugh bubbles out of me. “An accountant?”
“I mean, I wore the hell out of my suits, I’m not gonna be modest. I was living the life and then”—he snaps his fingers—“there went civilization.”
“Did you get the virus?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. Everyone around me was so sick, and I never got sick. I heard some people are immune to it.”
The scientist in me comes out. “Some people’s bodies can alter the structure of the receptors viruses use to infect cells. There are also genetic mutations in humans that can prevent a virus from infecting their cells.”
He had been filling his canteen as he spoke, and the water is now spilling over the edge. He pulls it back.
“How do you know all that?”
