Page 7 of A Light in the Dark
“We can do that, and if you need any vaccinations, we’ll give you the list. And if you received a placebo of the Earth vaccines, we’ll know in a hurry.” The man’s eyes narrowed. “After a guide misleading at least one refugee, I’m concerned.”
I held out my arm. “I’m willing to be tested.”
“We’ll handle that at your table—and if you’re all right with it, I’ll have the doc give you a look over before we steal your blood.”
After learning that Gabriella had been set up to die, I questioned everything I thought I had known about my home. “All things considered, I think that’s a good idea.”
The Hunters’doctor suspected I’d suffered from a mostly asymptomatic case of the various illnesses that had been imported from Earth during the exodus. From a higher resting heart rate than he preferred, swollen lymph nodes, and suspicious spots on my upper arms I hadn’t noticed, I had the markers of having beaten the disease without the assistance of a vaccination.
As I kept all my records, I retrieved them, consenting to have them copied. Both the doc, who went by Al, and the other Hunter, who finally accepted being assigned the name Wolf due to his reluctance to be identified, thought the whole thing reeked.
Moonriver had given the vaccinations to the other city-states free of charge, even the ones they’d hired to be produced in orbit.
There was a healthy universal market for the vaccines, and Stonecreek had a reputation for pushing the limits of our tech levels and the boundaries to get their people into space.
Someone planning to leave the planet could make afortune off a few doses of the vaccines—and who better to give a placebo vaccine to than someone who hadn’t been born in the city proper? While the whole thing did reek of a conspiracy theory, the Hunters made a good enough point that I spent a great deal of time thinking about what I’d learned. The idea of leaving tempted me, but I’d made my house into a home, and I loved everything about our community when we got together to recover from the yearly floods. However, I couldn’t deny the struggles I’d endured when I’d first come to the city.
I had not been welcomed, but I’d had the money needed to buy my house—and after the first year of floods, I’d proven my worth.
Well, mostly.
The vaccination should have prevented infection altogether.
Three hours after the arrival of the Hunters, the helicopter returned, Al helped Gabriella into the litter, and everyone, including the luna moth, left. I wondered what the Hunters would learn from the shifter, but they seemed to have no problems with taking an extra with them.
They left the bags of fruit with me, which I would enjoy over the next few days.
What was going on in my city-state? I could buy into the possibility that a poorly trained guide had misled some of the refugees. If I hadn’t been vaccinated, what had been in the syringe?
My questions ate away at me, but with no way of answering any of them, I focused my attention on cleaning my home. As the electricity hadn’t yet gone out, I did my laundry, I swept the floors, I mopped the hardwoods, and Idid a deep clean of the carpets and rugs. Once I finished that, I attacked the furniture, scrubbing my worries away and doing anything I could to distract myself.
As the weather tended to do this time of year, it worsened. I questioned how the electricity remained on. Once I ran out of chores, I slept, read books, and settled in to wait.
The storm lasted three days.My electricity survived the entire time, a miracle I refused to question. When all was said and done, I had no steps left, but the landing, built on a mix of concrete and slab stones, had withstood the flood’s fury. I waited for the waters to recede to the point I could spot the silt in the street. I pitied the fish, frogs, and turtles trapped in the muck, which resulted in me doing my next good deed of the week.
Once I rigged a rope ladder to get back into my home, I got down onto the street and soothed my frugal spirit, hunting for free dinner while saving what I wouldn’t eat.
While I tossed the smaller lake trout, catfish, and other species into a bucket of rainwater retrieved from my barrel, the larger ones lost their heads, were cleaned, and went into my freezer. Once out of the lake, Stonecreek’s rules were easy: first come, first served.
I rescued five buckets of fish, frogs, and turtles before I called it a day, and as long as the electricity stayed on, I’d have enough fish for a month.
The power washer came out next, and I cleaned the area in front of my steps to get a better idea of the damage.Fortunately for me, my foundation, which included the section below the landing, had held. I would need to patch where the steel rods secured the steps to the building, but the rods themselves hadn’t been shorn off, which would save me a great deal of work. If I went with stone and mortar, I could have a new set of steps built in a few days.
It would do.
After refilling the power washer’s tank, I headed up the hill, cleaning away the muck from around the foundations of each of my neighbors to get a better look at the damage. By nightfall, I’d determined we’d all gotten off lightly enough. Building new steps would keep us busy for a week or two, but the damage ended there.
In a way, I appreciated that my neighbors remained holed up in their homes while I did the initial cleaning work and damage evaluation. In the next few days, the mess from on the hill would wash down the street, but the curb, which had survived the flood itself, would keep most of it penned in. I’d be able to clean the sidewalks tomorrow without much worry, and once the sidewalks were cleaned, I’d worry about getting my neighbors to open their doors and talk to them about what they needed in the days to come.
The entire time, I wondered if I had been in Gabriella’s shoes without knowing it—and how I’d dodged her fate.
I feared the vaccination results would give me answers while forcing me to ask even more questions.
It tookme three days to clean the streets, and for the first two of them, I saw little of my neighbors. Once most of the filth had been relocated off the sidewalk and onto the street, the librarians emerged, and they came armed with their endless pool of knowledge and a willingness to purchase the stones needed to build new steps. By my calculations, hiring someone to bring in a few tons of rock slabs would be far cheaper than trying to cure concrete in a place where the sky was likely to rebel on us again within a week.
Nobody wanted to spend the sort of money I had on shoring my foundation.
We replaced the lift first to get my nearest neighbors mobile again, an expense they footed and I oversaw. I fielded questions about Gabriella, but after commenting that I’d made use of the number on the commercial, I earned praise for a job well done. If anyone had any other questions, they didn’t ask.
