Immunity Index by Sue Burke (ebooks children's books free txt) 📕

“Maybe they’re just cowards,” a woman standing next to him said, never taking her eyes off the display from the phone on her wrist. “We really ought to take aim at the predators up higher on the food chain. I mean, look at this. Turns out there’s two kinds of cold. The one that kills people was aimed at us. It’s genocide.”

Koobmeej leaned in. “Let me see.”

Irene checked her own phone again. Nothing from Mamá, but she had a message from Cal that she wasn’t going to answer—and she could find more news than ever from everywhere, and some of it might be true. She wanted to believe it. An assault was under way on the prison in Madison—maybe the one Mamá was in. She held her breath and hoped. The university campus had been freed. But hospitals were overwhelmed and pharmacies were empty and, supposedly, the killer cold had been a conspiracy by the mutineers themselves to infect themselves and gain sympathy, or maybe it was a conspiracy and spread by Prez supporters, and one cure involved breathing argon gas. Bilge was sloshing around, and it might taste like good clean water to people who were desperately thirsty.

Traffic on the road, once a trickle, became a river. Cars were coming carrying personnel to check on the prisoners, and families to take them home or to medical care. Where was Irene’s home? Her stuff was at Prairie Orchid Farm, and maybe Ruby was there, too.

Her phone chirped. Cal again. Urgent. Really? Did he really think he needed to talk to a useless, untrustworthy clone? She had better things to do. A medical team had arrived and was setting up equipment and a tent. She should get herself checked.

Cal called again. Still urgent. Well, he’d been arrested at the same time as Mamá. Maybe he knew something. She answered, audio only. This better be important.

He didn’t waste time on a greeting. “Your mama’s very sick. You need to talk to her.”

“Where are you?”

“In the Madison prison. The one they’re trying to free.”

The one in the news? “How is she?”

“There isn’t anything here, no food, hardly any water, and she’s lying on the ground and has a bad fever and doesn’t understand what’s happening. She wants to talk to you. Why didn’t you answer?”

“I was in prison, too.” A nicer one, with beds and showers and singing and dancing, and an attempted mass murder, while Mamá was lying on the floor. Maybe dying. More mass murder, if the rumors about the cold were right. A slamming noise echoed behind Cal and made the hair on her arms stand up.

“Talk to her.” Off mic, he said, “Celia, here’s Irene.”

“Irene,” she said, “¿dónde estás?” Where are you?

“In Wausau,” she answered in Spanish.

“Come here, girl, come and be with me.” Her voice cracked, hoarse.

“I wish I could. Is Cal taking care of you?”

She coughed. “It’s not Cal, it’s Zac. Cal hates me. He hates you. He thinks we sold out the mutiny, and that’s why the robots came.” Zac was an old boyfriend. He looked nothing like Cal except maybe for his size. “You’re coming, aren’t you?”

“Yes, Mamá. I’m on my way. I’ll go now and get a car and come to be with you.” That would make her happy. Maybe it wasn’t a lie, either. “You should rest. Let Zac help you. I’ll be there soon. Give the phone back to him.”

Tears were dripping down Irene’s face.

After a moment, Cal said, “What did you say?”

“I said I’m coming. Maybe it will make her feel better. Give her strength.”

“I hope so. It’s bad here.”

“Why are you helping her?”

Mamá was coughing in the background. “Can we get some water here?” Cal called. “For her. Yeah. Thanks.… Look, I owe her. I was worried.” He coughed, too. “I didn’t think … I didn’t think, that’s all. And after we were arrested, I got a real talking-to about who I ought to trust. Look, I’ll do what I can. I’ll be in touch.”

“Thank you.”

Mamá was in a hellhole. She’d get a car and go.

But no one could leave until cleared by the medical crew. She could just slip away, couldn’t she? Maybe. She tried to call a car as she paced across the lawn. One service didn’t answer, the other said there was a wait, at least two hours because disinfecting took time.

She could walk to Madison in forty-seven hours, according to her phone, if she didn’t stop to sleep or eat.

She was about to call Mamá again, but Cal called back first, this time using Mamá’s phone. Mamá was worse, much worse, too bad to leave on her own with everyone else even if the prison was liberated, which was under way, but Avril was there, he said, that other clone. She could help.

Avril huddled by the door to her sector with her team, everyone watching the attack on their phone displays. Some sort of armed force, all mutineers, had surrounded the building, and someone who identified themself only as a citizen reporter breathlessly narrated a video feed from a highway embankment overlooking the site.

She suddenly remembered a poem—an odd and unwelcome memory—that said that the world would end not with a bang but a whimper. This attack might end with a bang, maybe a big one.

“There’s another one,” the reporter chortled, their camera held above a car being used as a shield. Bushes obscured much of what was happening at the entrance, but it did show a grenade flashing bright in the twilight at the feet of a centaur guard. “They never thought their own weapons would be used against them!” A column of smoke rose up. “Got ’em!”

Avril whispered to Enos, “How many are there? Robots?”

“We don’t know.”

More smoke was rising. “Wait,” the reporter said. “Let me get a better angle, although it’s not safe. I’m risking it all to bring you this.” The view shifted enough to show—“Oh my god. The building’s on