Page 119 of One Adult, Please

I watch from the fountain, which I've turned into a field station. My veterinary bag is open on the fountain's stone rim. Bandages, antiseptic, the remaining sedation supplies, the broad-spectrum antibiotics I keep for the animals that work on humans in a pinch because biology, at its core, is biology and a wound is a wound whether it belongs to a wallaby or a woman named Sara who hasn't slept in three days and has a laceration on her forearm.

"Sara," I say.

She turns.

I keep my voice at a frequency designed to communicate safety before the words do. "I'm Grant. I'm a veterinarian, which isn't the same as a doctor, but the bandages work the same way. Can I look at your arm?"

She hesitates. Then she looks at Lily, who's watching Grace attempt to explain Kevin's probation status to a man named Carl who appears to be reconsidering his decision to enter the park, and Sara pulls back her sleeve.

It's a deep cut. A few days old, starting to inflame at the edges. The angry pink of an infection getting comfortable.

"This needs cleaning," I say. "And antibiotics. I have both."

I clean the wound, apply antibiotic ointment, and bandage it.

Sara watches my hands. "You're gentle," she says.

"I work with animals. They don't give you a second chance if you're not."

Fourteen people. Diane, the point woman with the rifle and the cold-engine laugh. Sara and Lily. Carl, who's tall and skeptical and has the bearing of someone who was in charge of something before the world ended and hasn't fully recalibrated. A couple in their twenties who are holding hands and haven't let go since they walked through the turnstile and I don't think they're going to for a while, maybe ever. A man named Tom who has a leg wound that I'll need to look at. An older woman who's carrying a backpack that clinks with canned goods. Two men who look like brothers and move in tandem, always aware of each other's position. A teenage boy with a backpack held against his chest. Three others, quieter, staying close to the group, watching.

Grace processes them all.

"After the question room, you'll go to the waiting garden," Grace tells the group, gesturing toward the Sunrise Grill’s fenced terrace, which she and Joel designated as the quarantine zone.

It's stocked with blankets and water bottles. There's a hand-painted sign on it that Joel made in block letters that says: THE WAITING GARDEN. PLEASE STAY. WE PROMISE THIS PART ISN'T FOREVER.

Grace wrote the second sentence. Joel wrote the first.

"Twenty-four hours," Grace says. "Not because we don't trust you. Because the bitey thing has an incubation period and we'd rather know now than know later. Grant will check on everyone. Grant's a vet. Like an animal vet. But also a people vet now. He's branching out."

"Diversifying," I offer from the fountain.

"Diversifying! Grant is diversifying his medical portfolio. He's very good. He fixed Pepper, who's a wallaby. She's often in his jacket. Grant is basically a kangaroo pouch with a medical degree."

The guns are logged before anyone enters the waiting garden. Joel's rule. Grace's wording.

FIREARMS GO IN THE NAP BOX, she wrote on the clipboard, and Joel crossed out nap box and wrote SECURED WEAPON STORAGE underneath it, which means the sign now says both because democracy is complicated.

Diane keeps one rifle, unloaded, because her people are scared and because Joel, after three seconds of jaw math, allows one visible concession. Beck keeps the ammunition.

Nobody likes the arrangement. That's how I know it's probably the fairest one available.

The new people file into the waiting garden. Diane positions herself at the edge of the group, rifle across her lap, eyes on the park. Carl sits on a bench and crosses his arms and evaluates everything, deciding whether to trust this or not. Lily sits on the ground and introduces her bear to an ant she found on the pavement.

It's messy. It's tense. It's eighteen people and a wallaby and a goat and a hawk and nobody knows the rules except Grace, who invented the rules twenty minutes ago. But the rules are somehow working.

Beck's on the perimeter. I can see him from here, circling the east gate. He's moving fast, checking trip wires, reinforcing weak points.

Joel's in the operations center, monitoring comms. The radio is live. The signal is out. The world, or what's left of it, knows WonderSphere exists. He's listening to the static for more voices, more survivors, more people watching the walls and wanting in.

We decided the thinking box is off-limits. The crime boat is home base. The captain's quarters belong to the four of us. The new people will have plenty of buildings.

"It's like a... bedroom," Grace said, trying to explain why strangers couldn't be in the thinking box. "It's a private... strategy... bedroom. A room where we... do strategy. Privately. In our bed. Not in a bed. There's no bed. There's a bench. The point is it's private."

"The thinking box is private," Joel said.

"Thank you."