by Kathryn Hoff
Maybe I wasn’t beautiful and rich and elegant like the other Jackie Kennedy, but she hadn’t had life so good either. Maybe I was just as glad not to be her.
The bag of chips I’d lifted the day before was on my conscience, so on my way back to the primate house, I put a dollar on the counter at the snack stand and told Mr. Lee, “I think you dropped this.”
He frowned at me, but he kept the dollar.
In the primate house, I didn’t even mind the smell. Two-year-old Henry Orangutan jumped around the shift cage while I cleaned the enclosure for the night. I made faces at him over my mask and squirted water at the glass for a game. Every time, he ran to his mother and hugged her for reassurance, and then he ran back to the glass for me to do it again. Tika watched over him like a proud mom. Just the two of them, but they were a family. In a way, they were my family too.
On the bus home, Paula and I decided to make minestrone for supper, and we stopped at the corner market for some veggies. On the sidewalk, some nutcase talking about the end of the world tried to give me a pamphlet, but Paula gave her a crisp no thank you and pulled me along. I was looking forward to a hot shower and soup.
But when we stepped off the elevator, two uniformed soldiers were standing at our door.
Gray uniforms. Eclipse Control.
I stopped short and turned around, but the elevator door had already closed behind me. Paula grabbed my shoulder to keep me from bolting to the fire stairs.
I shuffled behind her, holding the groceries and trying to stay out of sight.
They were two young guys, probably not long out of a teen home. Their hair was buzzed short, their boots were shined, their surgical masks were clean and fresh. They stood straight and proud in their gray uniforms and badges and black leather holsters holding pistols.
“Dr. Bardo? Dr. Paula Bardo?”
“That’s right. Can I help you?” Paula seemed very calm.
“We’d like a word with you, ma’am.”
She let them in and I zipped to the kitchen with the groceries. The second soldier watched me with his hand resting on his gun.
“Dr. Paula Bardo,” the first soldier said, “under the authority of the Eclipse Control Act, you are ordered to report for duty to ECA Research Facility 3352. You’ve been drafted.”
CHAPTER 4
Here’s the deal
Paula stared. “Drafted? That can’t be right. I’ve already done two years of public service.”
The soldier handed her some papers. “I don’t know anything about that, ma’am.” He grabbed her hand and pressed her thumb to his mobile unit to prove he’d done his duty.
She shuffled through the papers. “Three days! I can’t make arrangements in three days.”
The soldier smirked. “Failure to report is a criminal offense, punishable by fines and imprisonment.”
I wanted to hit him.
After Paula hustled the soldiers out, I asked, “Can they do that? Draft you even after you’ve done your two years?”
“Yes. The ECA has emergency powers to recall civilians.”
My Paula, working at the ECA, the place I hated most in all the world.
My lip started to quiver, but I had to ask. “What about the zoo? I can still be an intern there, can’t I?”
“Oh, Jackie, you don’t understand.” Paula rubbed her forehead. “I won’t have this apartment anymore. I’ll have to live at the facility.”
“You mean, we’ll have to move?”
She laid a hand on my shoulder. “It’s worse than that, I’m afraid. Facility 3352 is the Hamilton Lab, where I worked before. It’s a closed, secure building where they deal with live microbes. They don’t allow children at that kind of posting.” She read off one of the pages: “No facilities for family members. Contact Orphan Services to arrange accommodations for dependents under eighteen.”
I clamped my teeth down on my quivery lip. No Paula, no home, no zoo. No training in lab work. No Henry Orangutan or Jayjay Chimp. No little cubby with a dictionary and a thesaurus. Just a bed in a teen home dorm, scrapping to keep the bullies away. And when I turned eighteen, out on the streets and whatever job anybody offered. If they offered.
Paula tightened her grip on my shoulder. “This is Mendez’s doing. I’ll call him. I’ll explain…”
I stood beside her, my heart thumping, while she called her old boss at the Hamilton Lab. She couldn’t reach Mendez, but she talked to someone named June. From what I could hear of Paula’s side of the conversation, June was only interested in what the ECA needed, not what Paula might need or want.
When Paula hung up, she just rubbed her temples. “I’m sorry, honey. There’s no getting out of it once you’re drafted. I’ll have to go.”
“Maybe Zeke could foster me. I’ll clean cages, as much as he wants, and come to see you on my days off.” Except that Zeke already had three foster kids. “Or maybe somebody else at the zoo.” I sounded desperate even to myself. “I can bunk in the primate house. A blanket on the straw bales…”
It was no good. I ran to my cubby, that might not be mine anymore, and threw myself onto the bed that might not be mine either, and started to blubber.
Paula never lied to me. She sat beside me and rubbed my back, but she didn’t tell me any phony crap like it’ll be all right or we’ll work it out. Instead she said, “I’ll try.”
She began calling people she knew at the zoo to see if someone would be willing to foster me, or even just keep me on as a teen-home intern to clean cages.
No dice. The study center proctor had written up my fight with Ronnie, naming me as the aggressor. If Paula wasn’t going to be there to look after me, no one wanted me around.
“But I won’t fight anymore!” I begged. “I swear. I’ll let Ronnie or anybody else walk all over me if I have to.”
“I’m sorry, honey.”
That was it, then. Two days and I’d be living in a teen home. No more family. No more job. Orphaned all over again.
I sat on my bed, hugging the stuffed orangutan. I wouldn’t be able to keep him when I went to teen home. That was the deal. Orphans weren’t allowed personal possessions—they just caused fights. So, no orangutan, no books, no thesaurus.
The primary orphan home, for kids up to twelve, had been bad enough. New kids had showed up all the time, all of them weak and sad. The bullies zoomed in on them like hyenas on a lost gazelle. I’d learned quick to fight back.
When I’d turned thirteen, they’d sent me to a teen home in an old high school, where the classrooms had been turned into dorms and we all took showers in the old locker rooms. We got a bed and meals in a raging sea of hormones and despair. Boredom, relieved only by snark and mockery and rivalry over the tiniest details of life. Proctors like prison guards, trying to keep the gangs from breaking into turf wars. That’s where I’d learned to fight: daily quarrels just to defend your lunch, your clothes, your place to sleep, your reputation.
I’d been beat up pretty good during my first teen-home year, until a growth spurt made me bigger than the bullies. After that, nobody pushed me around. I even took over a little bit of turf myself, mother-henning a few nerdy little snivelers who weren’t part of anybody’s gang.
Paula had saved me from all that. She’d picked me out like a puppy out of a litter and given me a home, a job, and hope.
The idea of losing Paula, of losing all the animals I’d gotten to know over the past year, of losing my own little space in Paula’s living room, of going back to teen home and fighting the same fights all over again, of giving up my hope of a career doing something useful—it made my stomach hurt.
Paula heated up the soup, but, for maybe the first time ever, I wasn’t hungry.
Grief: sorrow, woe, heartbreak, despair.
In the morning, Paula started making calls again. I took our dirty clothes to the basement laundry room. Better to pack clothes when they’re clean, right? Don’t want to smell like a monkey at teen home. While the washers and dryers were going, the
laundry room screen blared with reports of crying, coughing people being dragged out of their homes by white suits, and of looting and rioting in places across the country where Eclipse had emptied whole neighborhoods.
I told myself to suck it up. So what if I had to do time in a teen home? Lots of kids did. I’d had a good year with Paula and Tika and Henry Orangutan and Jayjay Chimp, and that was more than a lot of kids got. Why would I miss shoveling monkey crap? Why would I miss…but I wasn’t ready to think about missing Paula.
When I got back with the clean clothes, Paula sat me down at the table with mugs of coffee for both of us.
“Here’s the deal. I have to go to the ECA. But you can come with me.”
I brightened, but she held up a hand. “As an intern. You’ll have to work.”
“In your lab? And we could be together?” Things were looking up.
“Not in the lab—they work with live pathogens there, so they’re very restrictive about lab procedures. We’ll see each other, but you’ll be housed with the other interns. There are already some teens at the facility, babysitting in their nursery.”
Oh, hell. “Sick kids?” The idea of wearing a white suit and poking at scared, sick kids and talking to them in a robot voice while they cried and coughed and struggled to breathe made me want to puke.
“No, no, just ordinary babies.”
“I thought they didn’t allow staff to bring their kids?”
“Mendez said there were exceptional circumstances.” She flashed a little smile. “That helped me convince him you and I could also be exceptions.”
Babysitting. Crying, spit-up, and dirty diapers.
I spooned sugar into my coffee. It was half milk, anyway. “All right. I can take care of babies.” How hard could it be? They were little primates, after all, and Paula and I would be together.
“Well, you may be asked to help in the nursery or do other routine duties, but there’s something in particular they have in mind for you, if you’re willing.” She raised her eyebrows. “Do you think you could help take care of a chimpanzee?”
My mouth dropped open. “A chimp!”
All serious, she touched my hand. “They have a chimp there, for research.”
Crap. “You mean they experiment on it? On a chimp? But chimps are endangered. Is that even legal?”
Paula sighed. “Legal? I’m afraid so. Emergency regulations allow the Eclipse Control Agency to use any animal for research purposes, and under some conditions, even humans.”
I had to bite my lip. “Do they hurt it? The chimp?”
Paula didn’t lie. “Yes, honey. I expect they do. What’s more, you’d have to help them do it. Not just feed it and clean the cage and provide enrichment, but the researchers take blood and tissue samples, that sort of thing.”
“You take blood samples at the zoo.”
“That’s right, and we’ve trained our animals to cooperate. When we have to, we sedate them with a tranquilizer dart to examine them more closely. They don’t like it, but we do it for their health and care.”
“But at the ECA, it’s not for them, it’s for us.” A helpless animal, drafted into a disease-war it could never understand. If it was a human, they’d call it a hero and give it a medal. Animal heroes got a cage—or worse.
“And what about later?” I asked. “When they’re done using it, what will happen to the chimp? They can’t let it go, it wouldn’t have the skills to survive in the wild. Maybe there’s a zoo or sanctuary or some kindly owner who understands what a chimp needs…”
Paula sighed, her eyes on her coffee. Her spoon went round and round, making a tiny whirlpool in the mug.
When she looked up, her face was sad. “I don’t think we can focus too much on that, Jackie. The lab’s job is to help humans survive.”
Crap. That meant the chimp would be “humanely disposed,” like all the dogs and cats that had belonged to people who got Eclipsed.
“But chimps are our closest relatives. Their genes are almost the same as ours.” Ninety-eight percent the same, according to the sign at the zoo. “Maybe Zeke can…”
Paula shook her head. “The zoo is doing what it can to keep endangered species alive, but that means animals that are healthy and can reproduce, not a neutered lab specimen. Avery asked how far I would go to stop Eclipse. I don’t think it’s right or ethical to use chimps that way, but stopping Eclipse has to be the highest priority.”
“I understand.” I didn’t like it, but I understood.
“Listen, Jackie. At the zoo, our animals live in big, clean enclosures with toys and company. This chimp won’t be like them. It lives in a bare cage. It’s been hurt and neglected and it’s scared of people. And chimps aren’t peaceful conflict avoiders like orangutans. Chimp society is built on dominance and aggression. When chimps are scared, they attack. They’re much stronger than we are, and they can bite with as much damage as a big dog.”
“I know that. No unprotected contact allowed.”
“That’s right. You’ll have to follow all the same safety procedures we do at the zoo, even if it’s just one chimp.”
“I can do that.”
“Are you sure? It’ll be hard—but even a lab chimp can have a better quality of life if there’s someone who cares about it.”
I wasn’t sure. I’d hated being poked and sampled and confined when I was sick, and I was sure a chimp would feel the same.
But if I wanted to make a difference in animals’ lives, maybe that one chimp was the place to start. Paula was right. Even locked in a laboratory cage and probably doomed to die in the effort to cure Eclipse, that chimp deserved as good a life as I could give it.
I took a deep breath. “I’ll do it.”
Consent: agree, concede, acquiesce.
We went one more time to the zoo. In the primate house, Jayjay Chimp sat with his black, hairy back to the visitors and ignored the hooting, pointing children. I waved at little Henry in the orangutan enclosure, then I sat on a bench near the exit for what seemed like hours while Paula said goodbye to all her friends.
Except for Henry, I didn’t say goodbye to anyone.
CHAPTER 5
No running in the hallway
It was drizzling rain on the afternoon we left our home for good. Paula and I loaded her suitcase and our eight boxes of stuff into a driverless taxi. Paula rattled off the address of the ECA facility as if she’d been doing it every day and had never lived with me in our apartment. Somehow that made me feel worse.
The laboratory was just across town, but the taxi drive seemed almost as bad as being hauled away in an ECA van. Under my surgical mask I bit my lip to keep it from quivering. Paula stared out the window.
In the city center, people under umbrellas rushed through the gloom. Every other block had an ECA thrift store, selling off the furniture, clothes, and household goods that Eclipsed families had left behind. We passed building after building of apartments that were more or less abandoned, with cops patrolling to keep looters away. Lights gleamed from the upper windows where squatters had their pick of vacant apartments.
Every doorway had a few hollow-eyed occupants waiting for the rain to pass—or just waiting. Knowing that Eclipse could steal away your life or your loved ones had dampened most people’s enthusiasm for starting a family or pursuing a career or planning for the future. What was the point? Your future might be a short stay in an ECA hospital, followed by a swift cremation.
I didn’t want to be like them. I hated the thought of working for the ECA, but if that was the only way I could stay with Paula, the only way I could make a decent future for myself, I’d do it. At least I’d still be working with animals, even if “animals” meant just one sad chimp in a cage.
The taxi stopped in front of an ugly three-story brick school where the marble plaque over the front door still read Hamilton High School. A newer sign in front read ECA Research Facility 3352. Keep Out by Order of the Eclipse Control Agency. In case that wasn’t enough to discourage v
isitors, the schoolyard was surrounded by a three-meter-high chain-link fence topped with spirals of razor wire. The tall windows were like blank eyes: they’d been painted over in white so no one could see in, with only the top-most panes left clear to let in the light. Black smoke drifted away from a high chimney at the back of the building.
I’d expect people to avoid a place like that, but in front of the closed gate, a few people stood hunched under umbrellas as if the rain had sprouted a patch of giant mushrooms. They held hand-lettered posters: Eclipse is God’s judgment. The Apocalypse is here. Repent now!
As I hauled our boxes out of the cab, one of the poster-holders leaned over me. “Have you made your peace with the Almighty?” He wasn’t wearing a surgical mask, which made me nervous.
“Yeah.” At least, I’d made peace with the almighty ECA. “Just let me by, please.”
A tall, gray-uniformed ECA soldier shooed the man away. “Dr. Bardo? Come in, please.” He opened the gate just enough to let us walk through, stacked our stuff in a puddle, and shut the gate between us and the outside world.
While we stood in the rain, he checked our IDs, then a guard stuck a probe into our ears to take our temperature. I imagined regiments of white suits waiting to grab us and lock us in if we showed any sign of illness.
“No fever,” he said. “You’re cleared, ma’am. We’ll handle your luggage.” He climbed the school steps and ran his badge over a card reader to open the door. As we went in, the people outside the gate yelled, “The end is near! Repent now!”
Soldiers, fences, locked doors, and religious nuts.
Welcome to your new home.
Inside, the school entryway was dim and eerily quiet. A lone guard sat in the principal’s office, gazing at feeds from the security cameras. Breakfast smells oozed from the old cafeteria away to the right, even though it was past lunch time. A glass case still had dust-covered trophies and team photos inside: Hamilton Bulldogs, Mid-Atlantic Volleyball Champions. I wondered if any of the champion players were still alive.