PODs Read online

“Miss? Do you need a medic?” a soldier asked.

  I took a shuddering breath as a wave of dizziness hit me—I hated the sight of blood. “I don’t think so.”

  “Fine. Take your belongings to the bus. You have fifteen minutes until boarding.” I watched him walk away, weaving around families standing in tight little clusters.

  “I hope the rest of the people aren’t as chipper as he is,” I muttered.

  My dad elephant sitting in the middle of ,Liou chuckled. “Come on, let’s get you to your bus.”

  The bus ride to the quarantine facility took more than ten hours. I was shoved against the window by my seatmate who slept almost the entire trip. He was a big guy, taking up most of the seat, and when he slept his body lolled to the side, wedging me against the metal side of the bus.

  As we traveled, the air turned hot and dry, different than the humid, sticky climate of my coastal Texas hometown. The old school bus didn’t have air conditioning and the small windows didn’t let much air in. My seatmate’s body heat didn’t help. I was hot, thirsty, and had to pee in the worst way.

  Wondering how much longer I’d be drooled on by the guy next to me, I strained my face against the window, looking for anything on the flat landscape.

  That’s when I saw them.

  I don’t know why I was surprised. I should’ve expected it after what had happened at the high school, but I hadn’t. It was worse than at the school—rioters everywhere. They waved anti-raffle signs and signs cursing the “chosen.”

  The land around the quarantine area was flat, dry, and dusty. The people lining the road sat under makeshift tents to keep out of the sun. Some stood on top of their RVs waving their handmade signs; one burned an American flag.

  I watched women holding their small children toward the bus, begging with tear-stained faces for us to take them. I wanted to reach out and snatch them out of their mothers’ hands as we drove past. Several of the other people on the bus reached up and pushed their windows shut.

  The National Guard at the quarantine site didn’t allow people to get close enough to touch the bus. They were shot with rubber bullets or Tasered if they tried to cross the police line. Every time I heard the shot of the riot guns I jumped. My muscles ached from tensing them—waiting for the inevitable sound.

  “Why are you crying?” A boy sitting in front of me looked at me like I’d grown another head. “They’d probably kill you and steal your place in the PODs if given the chance.”

  I shook my head, remembering what my dad had told me. “They’re just scared,” I said. After all, they were, essentially, the walking dead.

  The rioters screamed and cursed us. They threw rocks and eggs as we drove by. An egg hit the window next to me, the slimy insides plopping against my head, matting my hair.

  “Gross,” the boy sitting next to me said.

  I just looked at him and rolled my eyes.

  Yeah, the egg is gross. And the drool coming out of your mouth and dripping on my leg while you slept, leaning on me, was glorious.

  The bus stopped in a fenced area like the one at the high school. The crowd screamed and banged the fence posts with their crude, homemade picket signs. Some climbed on the fence, pulling at it like chimpanzees at the zoo.

  “Stay seated until your name is called,” a soldier yelled. “When you are called, grab your belongings and wait to be escorted into the building.”

  Oh please, call this guy’s name. He needs to move before I shove him off the seat. I’m tired of being pinned against the side of the bus. I need some room.

  Thankfully, to see each other.ldan will my name was called soon after we stopped. I stood, stretched the kinks out of my muscles, and plowed through the massive body blocking me. Clambering over the other luggage that filled the aisle, I grabbed my two suitcases and stood in front of the bus. The one-story brick building was large but had no windows, only a single green door. I couldn’t see the other sides, but I had a feeling there’d be no windows there, either—no glass for rioters to break through.

  The soldier walked up from behind me, tapping my suitcase with his clipboard. “Follow me.”

  I shuffled into the brick building, guided by the same guardsman who’d ripped me away from my parents hours earlier…

  “I love you,” my mom said through her tears, her voice thick and trembling.

  “I want to stay with you,” I pleaded.

  “Come here, kiddo.” My dad, his face distorted with grief, folded me in a tight hug. He kissed the top of my head and told me he loved me and how proud he was of me. “I know, when this is over, you are going to do great things, Eva. You’re a fighter. I love you so much.”

  A rough hand grabbed my arm, pulling me away from my dad. “Get on the bus,” the male voice ordered, yelling to be heard over the crying of parents and children saying their final goodbyes.

  “I’m not done saying goodbye…” He didn’t let go, pulling me with him. My heels digging into the dirt, I tried to pull away. I needed one more hug, to hear them tell me they loved me and to tell them I loved them, too.

  “MOM!” I screamed. “DAD!” Tears stained my face. The man thrust me toward the steps of the old, yellow school bus. I screamed one more time for my parents, telling them I loved them, reaching my arms out to them.

  I could see my mom’s body rock with the force of her cries. Tears ran down my father’s face. “We love you, Evangelina,” I heard them call just before the bus door closed.

  It was the last thing I’d hear my parents say. It was the last image I’d have of them. I pressed my hand to the window of the bus, my head bowed as I sobbed. I didn’t try to hide my tears. Everyone on the bus was crying for their families. We knew what awaited them.

  Death.

  I shook my head, trying to erase the horrible memory. I wanted to remember the good things about them, not saying goodbye.
  Chapter 5:

  Quarantine

  Saturday, quarantine day one

  “Hold out your arm,” a burly nurse in a full hazmat suit told me. She swiped it with an alcohol pad and stuck the needle in without warning.

  “Hey!” I rubbed the welt forming where she’d given me the shot.

  A little warning would have been nice. Geez, this is going to be a long two weeks if all the nurses are as friendly as you.

  “That’s your first dose of birth control. You’ll receive a booster every three months while in the PODs.”

  It’s not like it’s spring break, lady. I’m not looking to hook up with anyone.

  After the friendly nurse gave me my shot and drew a disgusting amount of blood into little test tubes, I settled in and prepared myself for my two-week quarantine stay. The doctors would test and retest me for the virus. I knew from news reports that everyone had to go through quarantine before they were allowed in the PODs. There’d have been too many people if we all came at once, so people selected for the PODs arrived in staggered groups.

  A thick packet of papers had been on my bed when I’d arrived in my quarantine observation room. It outlined what I could expect during quarantine, what would happen when my two-week stay was over, how the POD system was arranged, what to expect living in the PODs—going into mind-numbing detail that made my high school economics textbook exciting by comparison.

  I quickly understood why my quarantine room was called an observation room. Everyone could see everything I did. The room was a box made of thick glass. Inside, I had a bed and a TV. The only privacy was in the bathroom in the far corner, which had curtains that ended a few inches from the floor. Additional curtains were bunched at each corner outside the glass; people inside had no way of closing them to get any privacy.

  Beyond my glass walls, rows and rows of identical glass boxes extended in all directions, the glass becoming blue-green like pictures of glacier ice. Across the hall in front of my room was a girl my age. On either side of her were guys. Behind my room was another row of observation rooms. I stood in the middle of my room and turn
ed in a slow circle. We were everywhere. The chosen—locked away in glass fishbowls while people behind surgical masks and hazmat suits waited and watched for us to show signs of the virus.

  At the front of the room was a box inset in the glass where I’d insert my arm when it was time for my blood check. Thick rubber gloves hung limp from where they attached to the outer wall. Next to that was an airlock mechanism through which I received my daily MREs—meals ready to eat. The nurse opened the door on her side, inserted the meal and closed the door. The chamber was then filled with an antibacterial vapor, killing any germs that may have enter,” he whisperedadl. favorite movieed on the meal’s container. When the vapor process was complete, the door in the observation room unlocked, allowing me to retrieve my meal. It happened four times a day—breakfast, lunch, dinner and a snack.

  At least it was just me in the observation room. I wasn’t ready to make nice with a stranger. My emotions were still too raw from the goodbye with my parents.

  Quarantine, day two

  I couldn’t sleep. Day one and two merged, creating one long day. The lights had dimmed for several hours, but it never got fully dark. I’d never been particularly claustrophobic, so I hadn’t been worried about quarantine. I knew I’d be in a small room. I was okay with that—I thought.

  But scenarios tumbled over and over in my head.

  What if there’s a fire, a tornado, rioters break in, a flash flood, a meteor—okay, the last one probably won’t happen, but still.

  It was hard to breathe in the little room. I felt like I was suffocating; I couldn’t get enough air. My blood pounded quick and hard against my temples.

  “What happens if there’s a fire?” I asked the nurse who poked my finger and filled the little tube with my blood. I tried really hard not to think about what she was doing. I hated getting my blood taken. I’d thought the little finger pricks would be easier. I was wrong.

  “The sprinklers come on,” she said. I swallowed back the bile that rose in my throat at the sight of my blood being squeezed into the tube.

  Sprinklers… no kidding.

  “I meant to us. We’re locked in here. How would we get out?”

  “Don’t worry. There’s nothing here to catch fire.” She stuck a tiny, square Band-Aid on my finger, passed the sealed test tube through the decontamination airlock, and walked away.

  Nothing to catch fire? Is she for real? With medical personnel like her there’s no wonder we don’t have a cure for the virus.

  I walked to my bunk and fell across it, throwing my arm across my eyes and trying to forget that I was locked in a small room with no way out.

  Quarantine, day three

  The first two days of quarantine I’d concentrated on my little room, my memories, my fears. The world beyond my little cell hadn’t really registered. But on day three I spent time looking out at the world outside the glass walls.

  I sat on the cold tile floor at the front of my observation room, watching the people in the other cells. When the girl across the hall met my eyes, I grabbed my notepad. In big letters I wrote my name across a page. I flattened it against the glass so the girl across the hall could read it. I saw her smile. She motioned for me to wait and ran to her bunk. She wrote across what looked like the back of a page from the briefing booklet, holding it up so I could read it.

  “Kelly.”

  Finally. Someone to communicate with—sort of.

  By the time the day ended I knew everyone’s name in the rooms around mine. We’d even managed to play a game of charades. It was fun, and for a little while I forgot where I was and why.

  Quarantine, day five

  I jerked awake, sitting up in bed. My heart hammered in my chest, echoing the banging in my head. I strained to hear over the blood rushing behind my ears. Was it just a dream? No. No, I could definitely hear someone—a male voice.

  “I’m not. The test is wrong!” The thick glass surrounding me muffled his pleading voice.

  I couldn’t tell where he was. Noises bounced around the quarantine facility’s cement and glass walls. I peered into the hall. The yellow glow of the security lights shining on the green hallway floor gave the room an odd, yellowish-green haze.

  The guy was still yelling, and the sound was getting louder. Shadows moved in the hallway, and my heart beat faster.

  “Don’t do this. Please don’t do this. I’m not sick. The test is wrong. It’s wrong.” He was crying now.

  I jumped back from the glass, sucking in a breath, as a person moved out of the shadows. Another person came into view; three people followed. Two of the three were medical personnel. The third, a guy about my age, was being wheeled down the hall inside a Plexiglas container. He sobbed, his feet flailing against the sides. I recognized him—his observation room had been four rooms to the right of mine on the same side of the hall.

  The members of the medical team wore hazmat suits and breathing apparatuses. My hand flew to my mouth and I stumbled backward toward my bunk. He’d failed. His test results must have come back positive for the virus.

  Someone else in a hazmat suit moved to the glass of my isolation room, staring at me through the unreadable facemask. I instinctively took another step backward, tripping and falling onto my bunk with a grunt. Once they moved beyond the end of the row, I couldn’t see where they took the crying guy. His sobs grew fainter until I heard nothing but my own breathing.

  I sat on the edge of my bed, my heart beating so fast it hurt my ribs. I pushed my hair out of my eyes with shaking hands. I shoved them under my thighs on the mattress and forced myself to take deep, cleansing breaths.

  I sat on the bed for a few seconds, listening to my own overloud breathing and wondering what was happening to the boy, terrified that I’d be the next to be wheeled out in a plastic box. I ran into the bathroom, falling on my knees and sliding to the toilet before puking up the “tuna surprise” I’d forced myself to eat for dinner.

  Hanging over the toilet bowl, I said a silent prayer that my blood tests were clear and I wouldn’t be pulled out of bed in the middle of the night and hauled away to suffer God only knew what.

  And then I said a prayer for the guy who had been.

  Later that morning I was waiting at the glass wall when Kelly woke. She sat down across from me, dark circles ringing her eyes.

  The boy? I wrote.

  She nodded, her gaze darting to the room to the right of me. I turned and looked down the row of glass rooms. His was still empty. I was hoping that it was all a bad dream—that I’d wake up and he’d be there like he’d been every other morning.

  I looked back to Kelly. She held up her notepad before quickly laying it in her lap.

  V to see each other.ldor I wasirus, she wrote.

  Where is he?

  DEAD.

  My blood ran cold. I dropped my notepad and scrambled backward, kicking against the floor with my feet, scooting myself across the tile floor until I was jammed between the toilet and the curtained wall. The only place in the room I could be alone, just me and my tears. And my fear.

  Quarantine, day seven

  One week down, one week to go. I was counting the hours. At least I was trying to. There wasn’t a clock in my observation room.

  Quarantine was brutal. Since the first guy had been dragged out of the facility two days before, three more had been removed. Each time, the screaming and pleading had been horrible. I had lain in my bunk with the pillow over my ears to block it out.

  Every morning I said a prayer of thanks that I’d made it through another night. My blood was clean… so far. Then I’d look around the other observation rooms and see who was missing.

  The only things that made the days bearable were the few people I’d learned to communicate with since quarantine began. We’d write notes on our notepads and use hand signals. We’d even developed our own form of sign language. It helped pass the time and kept us from going insane from lack of personal contact, because the nurses sure weren’t bubbly conversationa
lists. We affectionately called them Grumpy, Grumpier and Grumpiest.

  Quarantine, day eight

  I was lying in bed trying to fall asleep. It was always the worst time of day. Memories and fears suffocated me in the darkness.

  Memories of my parents were especially vivid at night. I stared at the ceiling and watched them play across the white surface like it was a movie screen. Birthdays and Christmases were all good memories, but so were the dance recitals my parents had never missed. Even the soccer team I’d played on that never won a match—my parents had still been at every game, cheering from the sidelines. And when we’d made our first goal of the season they’d cheered the loudest and acted the craziest. I smiled through my tears thinking of that day. That had been the only goal we’d made that year. My dad had said that it was special because it was the only one. I was only in first grade, but even I knew we sucked.

  I was still awake when a nurse pulled the curtain outside my room. I looked inside the rooms next to me; the curtains were pulled there, too.

  I heard a commotion in the hallway. The boy in the room to my right was asleep, but the boy to my left, Brad, was awake. I looked at him. He shrugged. We walked to the wall and listened. I couldn’t make out the noises. It sounded like scraping or scuffling. Whatever was making the noise was right in front of my room. My curtain moved back and forth. I backed away from the wall.

  A scream pierced the darkness and I jumped.

  “No, no, no!”

  The hall quieted. The commotion outside my curtained wall stopped. I sucked in a deep breath and forced myself to walk back to the wall. Just as I reached the glass, something blew the curtain aside and I saw the wheels.

  I turned and ran across the room to my bunk, my bare feet slapping against the cold tile floor. I scrambled under the blankets and shook her head. Rlou1 on my bed and pulled the pillow over my head, squeezing my eyes closed.

  I knew what those wheels were attached to. And I didn’t want to be anywhere near it.