Viral Nation Read Online Free Page B

her name. It felt sweet on his tongue. It always had.
    She smiled, her cheeks flushed just a little, and he walked away.

     
    “You’re in a good mood.”
    West turned and smiled when he saw Isaiah walking toward him. “What are you doing here?”
    “Got the day off and thought I’d get my grandma’s rations for her.”
    “I’m just on my way to the Bazaar.” West balanced himself back on a garden wall, his thick-soled boots making it difficult, and reached into his pocket for Mrs. Finch’s ration coupons.
    Isaiah took them, then pushed West’s shoulder until he lost balance again. “Saw you talking to Bridget Kingston. She why you’re so smiley today?”
    He hopped back on the wall and walked backward a few steps. “Just saying hello.”
    “Watch yourself, West. That girl is way out of your league.”
    “Don’t worry. That’s not why I’m happy today.” Not mostly, anyway.
    “No?”
    “Clover got accepted into the Academy. Boarding and all.”
    Isaiah stopped walking, and West did, too, after a few more steps. “So you going to join the Company?”
    There were only two things to do in Reno. Work for the Waverly-Stead Company, or work for the government. Company work for people as young as West required living in the barracks, at least for training. He couldn’t leave Clover, so West worked for the government raising cantaloupe to be sent by train to feed people in other states.
    Are you going to join the Company?
wasn’t a real question. AllWest had ever wanted was to work for Waverly-Stead, just like his father.
    “As soon as she’s settled in, I can apply,” he said.
    Isaiah ran a hand over the stubble growing on top of his head. “School starts in what, a month?”
    “About.”
    “You could start training the next day.”
    West’s stomach tightened. He could start the process now. Today. That letter was for Clover, but it sure changed his life, too. He’d been taking care of her since he was sixteen and she was thirteen. Since their father was promoted from guard to executioner, part of one of the five-person firing squads that were the center of the most efficient law enforcement system in the history of the country. People convicted of future capital crimes were brought from every state’s walled city to Reno so that their sentences could be carried out. Executioners were required to live in the Company barracks, and promotions within the Company weren’t something anyone could turn down easily. Their father signed guardianship to Mrs. Finch, but it was West who had taken care of not only himself and his sister, but their guardian as well, until Clover’s care passed to him officially when he turned eighteen.
    “You’ve waited long enough,” Isaiah said.
    Hell, yes, he had.
    West received a similar letter to Clover’s from the Academy a few months after he convinced his father he could take care of his sister. By then it was clear that, official documents aside, Mrs. Finch couldn’t even care for herself. He declined the invitation. What else could he do? Foster City was supposed to be a perfect system, allowing children to be cared for so their parents could do the work of recivilization. Somehow he’d known that system wouldn’t work for them. Foster City would have chewed his sister up and spit her out. But now that she was accepted into the Academy herself, he had his life back.

chapter 2
     
    She got to go to heaven four days early.
    —BILL CLINTON, ON HIS MOTHER’S TRIP TO LAS VEGAS FOUR DAYS BEFORE HER DEATH.
     
     
    A man at least as old as Mrs. Finch stood, ramrod straight, just inside the big library building. Clover stopped in front of him, as she had a thousand times.
    “Morning, Clover,” he said. “Help you find anything today?”
    A large whiteboard stood next to him, and someone had written that day’s class offerings on it. “Any good classes today?”
    “One on preserving meat. Another on making soap.”
    She’d taken those already. More than once.