“This makes me uneasy,” I said.
But I didn’t smell anything, or at least, the scent was too faint for me to place it. If the Freaks had destroyed the place, they would still be there, and the buildings wouldn’t be so intact. The monsters tended to break windows and doors in their desperation to kill all humans hiding inside. Here, it was like nothing bad ever happened, as if Winterville was a special, blessed place. Momma Oaks would say her god smiled on it.
Just when I was starting to think nobody was here, a woman stepped out her front door. She looked startled to see us, but she lifted a hand in careful greeting. “What brings you around, strangers?”
There’s nothing stranger than this.
Fade answered for us. “The colonel sent us from Soldier’s Pond. She said Dr. Wilson has been working on a project and should have some information.”
“Ah.” The conflict in her expression cleared. “Then you want to follow this main road through town. When you come to the research annex, hang a left. Then go down two blocks, turn right, and knock on the back door of the lab.”
“What’s a block?” I asked.
She eyed me like I was simpleminded. “Two streets. The lab is where Dr. Wilson works. It’s a white building, no windows at all.”
That should be easy enough to find, though Winterville was bigger than I’d expected, based on what I’d seen of the world so far. “Are all these houses occupied?”
“No,” she said sadly. “Less than half, now.”
“Did the Muties get them?” Fade remembered to use the topside word.
“No. Since Dr. Wilson spread the pheromones, we’ve had less trouble with attacks, but … there have been other problems.”
She didn’t volunteer what those might be, and I didn’t ask. Our job wasn’t to fix Winterville, only to get the necessary information and survive the return trip. But I did wonder: “Do you have a standing military?”
Once again, she shook her head. “It’s possible to coexist peacefully with the mutants if you know how to avoid enraging them.”
With a polite smile, I decided she was insane. I followed her directions, hoping they weren’t as crazy. No matter her personal delusions, she did tell us how to find Dr. Wilson. As we stood outside his lab building, I felt properly grateful.
“It looks like a giant box,” I said.
The lack of windows made the place distinctive, but it also looked rather like a cage, a place where you hid things you didn’t want the light to reveal. Mustering my nerve, I circled around and rapped sharply on the back door, as instructed. I waited what seemed like a long time before I repeated the knock. Fade tapped his foot, no more pleased by the delay than I was.
Eventually I heard shuffling movement within and a white-haired man opened the door, squinting at me with obvious annoyance. He looked as if he hadn’t bathed in days and a noisome stench wafted from the darkness behind him.
“What do you want?” he demanded. “I’m a busy man.”
“I’m sure,” Fade said politely.
“May we come in? We bring word from the colonel in Soldier’s Pond.”
“Ah, Emilia, yes, has it been that long already? I suppose it has or you wouldn’t be here. Just let me fetch my notes, come along.” He babbled the words with scarcely a pause for breath, shuffling back the way he’d come with the apparent expectation we’d follow him with no questions asked.
We did.
Fade shut the door behind us. The slam made me flinch, but it also meant this was a good solid door, and it wouldn’t give way, no matter how the Freaks battered at it. But the crazy woman had said they didn’t have trouble with raiding—and the state of their town supported her claim, however outlandish it sounded. Dr. Wilson moved ahead of us, turning left and right, seemingly at random. The hall was dim, so I was left blinking when we stepped into a large, well-lit room.
These lights were similar to the magical-looking ones in Soldier’s Pond that they claimed were powered by the sun. But if possible, these were brighter still. I had never seen anything like them and, as Wilson peered at a mess of papers, I crept closer to the lamp. It hurt my eyes a little.
“Don’t touch it,” the doctor snapped.
I drew my hand away, guiltily. “I’m sorry.”
“It’ll burn you. I suppose you’re a savage who’s never seen electricity before?” Wilson sighed the question.
I shook my head, though I wasn’t sure what he was asking. The scientist launched into a complicated explanation about windmills, grids, power sources, and currents, and I understood none of it.
But Fade was looking at him in amazement. “My dad told me stories about the old wonders. And you got them working?”
“It’s not so great a thing, the least of my discoveries,” Wilson said modestly.
It was clear Fade had a burgeoning case of hero worship. Tegan would love to meet Wilson, I thought, and ask all kinds of questions about doctoring. But the colonel had said he wasn’t a medical man, so maybe his knowledge about windmills meant he couldn’t tell her anything about fixing the human body.
“I can report limited success in the trials,” he said, “but I wasn’t able to weaponize the pheromones as Emilia hoped, and there were … complications.”
That was only so much gibberish to me, but before I could say so, a snarl echoed through the warren of hallways. I froze; I knew that sound down to my blood and bone.
Somehow, there were Freaks in here.
Shock
I expected the old man to panic, but he didn’t look worried. He waved a hand dismissively, still rummaging in his papers. “That’s just Timothy, nothing to be alarmed about.”
Fade said, “Where we come from, sir, Muties inside a dwelling means big trouble.”
The scientist sighed. “You won’t be satisfied until I prove there’s no threat, will you? Come then. Let’s get this over with.”
He led us out of the main room, which was full of equipment for which I had no name, but I recognized the articles as belonging to the old world, which I had believed to be lost. I was a little awed that any of the things still worked and that Dr. Wilson employed them as a matter of course. Soldier’s Pond had more such artifacts than Salvation, where they eschewed old technology by choice, but this was a veritable treasure trove of functioning equipment. The Wordkeeper—the man who guarded our relics down below—would’ve been astonished.
The same bright bulbs—long strips of light that flickered—lit the halls, lending the pale walls a milky tremor. Fade stayed close and I noticed he kept a hand on the knife strapped to his thigh. Wilson opened a door on the right, and the reek was unmistakable; this reminded me of the tunnels, where the Freaks had lived and bred for years undisturbed apart from the occasional run-in with our Hunters.
I expected to find a breach in his security. Instead, I saw a row of man-size cages. They were all empty, save one. To my abject shock, a Freak occupied it. The monster rattled the bars, prompting a sigh from Dr. Wilson.
“Yes, all right. It’s past feeding time. Just be patient.” He went to a white rectangular unit and withdrew a bucket, then hauled out a substantial portion of bloody meat, which he then tossed into the cage as if the Freak were his pet.