Doomsday Rebirth novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Count Again

On Sunday morning I stood on a folding table in the main hall, and six hundred people looked up at me.

It was the same table.

I had known it by the dent in the leg, the moment the guards carried it out.

Lacey had stood on this table with a clipboard and told the room I was a thief.

Now the Commissioner stood on it in a pressed gray suit, with a microphone, and I stood beside him in my apron.

Ezra stood on my other side, between two guards, in his cardigan with the hole.

He looked at the ceiling lights and yawned.

"Friends," the Commissioner said. The speakers carried it to the walls. "We have good news."

He lifted a glass vial of dark liquid into the light.

"Two weeks ago, people in this hall would have died of the rain sickness. This week, forty of you did not."

The crowd stirred.

"This is a medicine," he said. "Our doctors produced it, and it is yours."

"It will be given first to the families on the roster who have signed the new Terminal charter."

He smiled at me.

"And I'd like our kitchen manager to say a few words about the work that keeps you fed."

He held out the microphone.

I took it, and it was warm from his hand.

Six hundred faces waited.

I saw cooks near the back.

I saw the woman who had stood at the front of my line, in the other life, and watched me go out the east gate without a word.

"Thank you," I said. "I do have a question first."

The Commissioner's smile did not move.

"Everyone who was sick and got better this week," I said. "Would you stand up?"

For a long moment nobody did.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Doomsday Rebirth from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.