Immunity Index by Sue Burke (best fiction books of all time txt) 📗

She neared the prison farm. A half dozen people in gray uniforms stood outside talking, and there was Ruby, pointing and gesturing, angry as usual, but not looking in the direction of the road. The truck slowed and stopped to turn, and Irene twisted to keep watching. A car, red lights flashing, raced down the highway from the other direction, sped past her, and turned in to the prison farm—an unmarked car, maybe police, obviously official.

If Alan had whatever this was, then Ruby was exposed, and all those people she was talking to were exposed, and maybe even prisoners inside the building. Or maybe Ruby brought it from the prison. Did that matter? Irene had heard one sure thing about delta. It spread fast.

The truck turned down the county trunk road, and as soon as it reached the farm, she sprinted into the house. Will wasn’t downstairs. She rushed upstairs. He was in the hall. He grabbed the bag without a word, ran into his parents’ bedroom, and slammed the door. She waited. She heard his voice as he talked to Alan, then silence.

She should have used the eye drops when she could. No one at the farm cared about her.

She went out to check on Nimkii. He greeted her with a rumble, jerking his trunk. Time for breakfast, and he was hungry. She poured elephant chow into a box, a hearty breakfast, shoved the box into the sling, and winched it over. Maybe this would be his last meal from her, and then … He could escape when he got hungry. Could he learn to forage on his own?

“I love you, Nimkii.” He watched her as he ate. “I’ll take care of you as long as I can. Pedazo, these are going to be some rough days.”

What would happen inside that prison if the prisoners got the cold? The prisoners would be people like Mamá, and they needed help. Today. She tried again to call people she knew. She managed to leave a few messages.

Will came out of the house, empty-handed, tears running down his cheeks. She knew by his utter devastation what he was going to say before he came close enough to talk to her. Alan had died.

Avril and three other students tiptoed down a hall toward the building office. One stopped at a corner to act as a lookout. At the door to the office, Avril set down a dumbbell and peered through the glass door and the wide window in the wall to see if anyone was inside. No one. She tried the door handle just in case. Unlike dorm room doors, it was locked. She wasn’t surprised.

Then they waited. Avril tried not to fidget. Bessea tapped her foot, then realized she was making noise and stopped, and she flexed and unflexed her fists instead. Drew swayed from side to side and stared down the hall at the lookout.

Avril thought she heard a distant crash. She hoped she did. Other students were going to break a window, throw chairs down stairways, and send a screeching noisemaker down the elevator to draw off the centaurs. The lookout made an “okay” sign with their hands—both hands. Both centaurs had been drawn off.

She motioned for Bessea and Drew to stand back, glanced again at the lookout, and took two big steps back. She’d played a little baseball one summer. She held the dumbbell in something like a fastball grip, took her position, shifted her weight, brought her left leg up, swung her arm, strode forward, then pushed off with her back foot—and felt a twinge in her wrist as she extended her arm. She released the dumbbell. It flew straight into the window. Strike one!

The glass smashed gloriously. Even before all the pieces had tinkled to the ground, she and the other students scattered. As planned, she headed to the food-service area and ducked behind a counter. Soon, she realized that if she scooted a little along the floor, she could see a reflection of the entrance on a glass door of a refrigerated case. She tried to quiet her panting.

In the reflection, a centaur raced past the entrance toward the office. She kept still and waited. Ten minutes. The centaur reappeared, marching the other way. She kept waiting.

The lookout tiptoed into the food-service area and shrugged. “They’re not moving anymore,” they mouthed. “I’ll keep watching.”

It has to be a trick. Well, there was one way to find out.

Bessea was already in the office when Avril arrived and stepped inside through the broken window, avoiding the shattered glass. She noticed with pride that shards lay on the floor for a good twelve feet, and the dumbbell had made a dent in the far wall. Bessea motioned for Avril to follow her to a desk in an alcove.

Bessea pointed. A screen indicated security settings, such as fire emergency and access settings for doors and loading docks. “I wonder, would this bring the centaurs if I opened the doors? I don’t think so.”

Drew had climbed in and looked over her shoulder. “They left the system unsecured?”

Avril listened to their whispers as she examined some boxes stacked along a wall: they contained bottles of ultra disinfectant concentrate, the kind used in robot cleaners. Seven big boxes of it. And there were boxes of nitrile gloves. Some boxes of masks. They expected this. This epidemic. The same people who were trying to destroy the university, the same people they were in mutiny against, they did this. They were murderers.

She closed her eyes and tried to calm a rising rage. Yes, they were murderers. But that wasn’t news. And right now they were killing people she knew, trying to kill her, and maybe they’d succeed. They’d pay for that. She stood up, stiff with anger.

Bessea whispered, “My guess is that a centaur came in and unlocked the rooms and left the system on.”

“Centaurs wouldn’t need to do that,” Drew said.

“They might need to use manual controls. Their system and this system