Thirteen

Grace

We’ve been left here to die. It’s the same refrain, in the back of my mind, over and over again, along with all the things we don’t have. Generous supplies. Medication. Help. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything to Hunter. I could have let everyone leave and simply let myself stay behind with Case.

But I didn’t. I told others they could stay too.

We’ve been left here to die. And so we have to figure out ways to live.

“It’s the pneumonic plague,” I tell everyone at dinner. I’ve climbed up and sat down on the food serving station, so I can see the eighteen people in front of me. Everyone but Leah and Serenity.

Everyone keeps a little distance from each other, but none so much as Casey. I told him to come here for food, but he’s pale and uncomfortable. Everyone gives him a wide berth while we’re eating our precooked meals.

I fight to keep my voice even when I give them the details, confirming what some already heard when they called home. Isaiah was able to get into Warden Davis’s computer, but the information he’s found has only made things worse. The plague instead of a plague. The actual, medieval plague, but with a modern, virulent strain. Yersinia pestis modernis.

“Others will get sick. It’s inevitable. This plague is contagious, and it’s deadly, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do anything. We can be careful. We’ll keep our distance from each other. Wash our hands. Fashion ourselves masks. Clean everything we touch. Quarantine if you don’t feel well. Stick to your rooms.”

“And put up a sign like a plague cross?” someone calls out.

It takes me a moment to identify the speaker. Khalil Nassif. He leans his chair back on the hind legs. He’s crossed his arms, and his dark eyebrows draw together in a frown.

He meant the words like a challenge, I’m sure, but… “If that’s what it takes. If you get sick, the rest of us will make sure you have food and water. I don’t know when help will come—” I glance in Isaiah’s direction and swallow hard. “I don’t know if help will come.”

According to Isaiah, Better Futures knew about the plague outbreak a few days before the guards left. The instructions from upper management were for the warden and the staff to leave and go home to quarantine. The company wanted them to be safe and not risk their lives guarding us.

“Their exact words were ‘It’s not worth it,’” Isaiah told me. “Nothing more than that. There was nothing ensuring we’re safe or healthy or fed. There was nothing about anyone coming for us.”

I asked him to reach out to Better Futures regardless. Email, call if necessary. “Maybe the authorities need time to decide what to do. They can still come for us,” I said. Something cracked in my voice at those words, but what else was I supposed to say?

How do we move forward from here? What happens next? Should we figure out kitchen duties for all of us and take inventory of the medical supplies? What happens if our food runs out before winter comes? Why on earth should we stay here?