Krisis (After the Cure Book 3) by Deirdre Gould Page B

the city. She tried to concentrate on just her feet, watching one foot settle after another. She knew her fear of the dark had been irrational once, that she would have treated a patient with the same phobia by doing exactly what she was doing now. Exposure therapy. But it wasn’t irrational any more. It was a survival instinct, some sense that had lasted through modern life until it became useful again. She didn’t know that she wanted to treat it. She tried not to hear the scuttling noises of rats around them. Frank seemed completely at ease.
    “Aren’t you nervous?” she whispered.
    “Not really. It’s an empty tunnel. But I can understand why you are.”
    “Are you sure it’s empty?”
    “What would be down here? There’s no food for wild animals— well maybe at the stations, but I doubt it. Nobody has been here in eight years. There’s no litter or trash for them.”
    Nella tried to let the thought comfort her. “What do you think is down here?” Frank asked a moment later. Nella blushed.
    “I don’t know. I guess maybe I expected Infected or some sort of underworld gang.”
    “I doubt there’re any Infected left. What would they eat? I kind of felt like this whole mission was more of a goodwill thing from the governor, not really a rescue operation. I doubt we’ll find more than an odd handful of Infected left in the whole world. And if we hadn’t been through all that empty space yesterday, I might believe a gang would use the subway, but as it is, why lurk around down here when all those vacant buildings are just sitting, still full even, out there? There’s no one down here but us. We’ll be okay, but we can take it slowly. Do you want to get out at the next station and get a breather?”
    Nella shook her head. “It’s only four stops. Let’s get it over with.”
    It was colder than Nella remembered a subway being. No lights at the station, no train exhaust, no hot water pipes overhead. She could hear the wind blowing down the staircases before they reached each station, like listening to the emptiness of a long-dead seashell, but the summer air didn’t reach the track. It was a long time to be in dread and even Nella’s adrenaline wore off long before the third station. The tunnels had been empty, an occasional rodent nest or some long-discarded trash, but nothing new. No food wrappers or empty cans, no water bottles or used up batteries. Nothing to show the tunnels had been used at all since the Plague.
    Until they reached the third station.
    Frank tripped over a loose sand bag, and Nella caught him before he could slam into the cement floor. She lifted the lantern higher to look around them. The tunnel should have opened into the smooth dome of the station, but the tunnel had been blocked with sandbags and trash barrels stacked above.
    “Do you think it was to protect the city from the Infected?” asked Frank.
    “I don’t know. Did they really think they could quarantine the city? It had already spread through the population before people started showing symptoms. What good would a barricade do?”
    “We have a barricade.”
    Nella nodded. “Yeah, we do. But we also have people manning it to let refugees in. It wasn’t meant to keep everyone out, just to keep the Infected from overrunning us.”
    Frank shrugged and grinned. “Hello?” he yelled. There was a shuffling around them, but it was too slight to be human. “We’ve brought help! A cure. A chance to trade.”
    Nella winced at his lack of caution, but no one answered anyway.
    “Well, it was worth a shot,” sighed Frank. He started tugging on the debris blocking the tunnel, testing it for weakness.
    “I don’t know if you should announce what we have to the first stranger we meet. They may not all be friendly.”
    “I know you’re probably right, but I’ve been thinking about what we’ve come all this way to do. The farther we go without seeing anyone, the more I think that when we do find someone, we might be the