The Vines by Shelley Nolden (ebook and pdf reader .TXT) 📕

fruits. This spring, using a rusty trawl left behind in the supply shed and an old bucket to carry up the dirt, she would create a secret garden on the roof of the service building.

The tapping of his boot on the concrete warned her to finish her inventorying.

“I didn’t ask for this stuff”—she lifted a fur-lined mitten—“so I don’t owe you for it.” The lantern’s glow brightened, and she flinched in anticipation of a crack to her skull.

“Your comfort is my utmost concern,” he said, his mask not softening his voice nearly enough.

Ulrich never used sarcasm. She rounded her shoulders inward and remained in her crouched stance. Since Riverside had been abandoned the previous summer, he hadn’t experimented on her once. And now this: genuine interest in her well-being. She didn’t understand the behavior change. And she didn’t like it.

“I do appreciate your thoughtfulness,” she said because he expected it.

“I trust I’ve been including enough feminine hygiene products?”

“Yes,” she mumbled.

He brought the lamp closer to her face. “Your last menses: it began . . . ?”

Wishing she had Eleanor’s strength, she pictured the calendar he’d given her for just this purpose. “The thirtieth, of December.”

Through her jacket hood, she could hear the scratching of a pencil as he recorded the date in his journal.

“Sehr gut.” He snapped shut the book and picked up his doctor’s kit. “Daybreak’s almost here, and the river traffic will be heavy this morning before the storm. Get up.”

She slid on the new mittens and followed him outside.

Instead of crossing the street to his laboratory in the morgue, he turned east.

“Where are we going?”

“The male dormitory.”

The toe of her boot caught on the pavement, and she almost fell. The last time she’d entered that building had been three weeks ago, and then only to get a few books from the first-floor library. For all she knew, he’d recently sneaked onto the island and installed a new laboratory there, which to her would be just another torture chamber.

Ulrich had kept walking, still unhindered at sixty-two by his uneven gait. She sped up to reestablish her standard trailing distance.

As she followed, she fantasized about smashing a rock against his skull. Despite the ease with which she could hurt him, he never seemed concerned with having her at his back. Because he knew that without him, she couldn’t survive. Yet.

Third, I will kill him, she thought with even greater conviction than the first time she’d made that vow.

She rounded the corner of the physical plant, and the male dormitory came into view. One of the original Riverside structures, it had witnessed more than its share of misery. She scooped up a pebble and tossed it into the nearby cistern, one of the many pointless routines that now filled her long days.

He would take pleasure in any agitation she showed, so she refrained from asking for details. During their last session, after collecting the standard vials of blood, he’d probed her about her family tree. How long had her relatives lived and had they been healthy? Who’d had blue eyes, a widow’s peak, fair skin, and brown hair, like her? How had her sister differed from her, and what did Cora know of Maeve’s father? Absolutely nothing—the same as with her own.

At the end of the previous session, after measuring the distance between her eyes, the angle of her nose, and the height of her forehead, he’d said, “Your Irish lineage is unfortunate, but you appear to possess traces of Aryan ancestry.”

Biting the inside of her cheek, she’d refrained from mentioning that he’d missed the conclusion so obvious to O’Toole. Cora wasn’t merely Irish. Even though she hadn’t yet harnessed its fearlessness and savagery, she could feel her Celtic warrior blood coursing through her, as real as her microbial monsters. The previous autumn she’d found a book about the Roman dynasty, which had referenced Brunnus, the great Celtic war chief who’d led the sacking of Rome. If she were his descendant—and it was possible—any Aryan ancestry she had would have yielded to these Celtic genes.

A gust of wind stung her face. Already the flurries were thickening into a more substantial snowfall. Ahead, Ulrich stopped five yards shy of the dormitory.

Apprehensive about what this delay might mean, Cora reeled to a stop. This could be the day he finally infects me with a new, weaponized virus strain, she thought, her knees shaking.

Motion in a maple tree beyond him caught her eye.

A gray squirrel scurried down its trunk.

Even though his back was to her, she knew Ulrich was mesmerized by the animal. Having grown up in a city with only rats, cockroaches, and pigeons, he’d remained fascinated by the few rodents that had managed to reach this island.

Abruptly he strode through the main entrance without a backward glance and propped the door open for her.

Cora glanced back at the cold, cruel river. She could sprint there now and dive in. Hypothermia would shut down her body long before Ulrich found a way to rescue her. That, however, wouldn’t be the act of a woman of warrior descent. Nor was it her destiny. Over the past six decades, the island had been speaking to her through small miracles. This spit of land had given her the stamina to go on.

I won’t let you down, she whispered back to it.

Making the sign of the cross, she entered the foyer.

Ulrich beckoned for her to follow him to the second story. From the main hallway, the rooms within her view looked untouched.

He barked at her to hurry, so she began climbing. Out of habit, she refrained from touching the handrail.

“This way,” he called from the first of the communal sleeping quarters.

Cora peered into the room, which didn’t contain any medical equipment. Her insides felt like they were trying to dig their way out of her, with the hope of escaping even if the rest of her couldn’t.

“Macht schnell.” He crossed to the far wall and set his bag on a dresser. “The probability of success will