In the Heart of Babylon

by S G D Singh

  “This whole place has gone to hell, Ayeeyo,” Nadifa told her, switching to English as he brought Adam to the computer. “This disease is infecting everyone in The Resort.”

  “Not everyone,” a voice sang from behind them.

  Nadifa turned to find three men in security uniforms pointing weapons at them.

  “Wait,” Adam said, but before Nadifa could even think, one of the men shot a taser-looking weapon at him. The electric current rendered him completely helpless as he fell to the floor, unable to break his own fall, his vision swimming with Adam twitching next to him.

  A crowd of white shoes marched past him, and Nadifa watched, helpless, as nurses put his grandmother onto the last empty gurney and rolled her away, along with the other three captives. He could barely move his fingers and toes when they turned to him, handcuffing his paralyzed arms and throwing him and Adam into some kind of garbage bin for transport, Adam's metal arm pressed painfully into Nadifa's side, but neither of them could move as the lid came down above their heads, plunging them into darkness.

  By the time the bin was tipped violently out into a fenced-in tennis court, Nadifa could move his limbs again, although his chest felt tight and his entire body tingled as if covered in pins and needles.

  Adam stirred on the ground, groaning. His metal arms looked broken.

  A man who looked like he was part giant removed Nadifa's handcuffs and Nadifa turned to him, hoping for some kind of villain monologue to explain what was happening, but the man said only, “Have a nice stay, asshole.” He shoved Nadifa toward the fence between him and a neighboring tennis court, where four infected men in pajamas lunged forward hungrily.

  Nadifa heard the chain-link gate close behind him, and the recognizable sound of a padlock snapping shut as he flinched back from the infected fingers reaching through the fence like so many wiggling worms. He nearly tripped over a man who sat on the ground in the shadows, gazing up at the false moon overhead with childish wonder.

  “No one fixed the sky.” His accent was southern—Alabama maybe. “Must be day by now, Hank. Still looks like night, though. Something must've gone wrong, I think… ”

  The man looked straight at Nadifa without seeing him. His smile was familiar and bright, directed at the invisible Hank. The infected group on the next court ignored the man, their attention only on Nadifa and Adam, and he felt his stomach drop as he reached for his knives, which of course were gone.

  He turned to Adam. “You all right, man?”

  Adam stared down at his chest, dazed. “Yeah, I think so. I think these just need to be rebooted. Good thing those goons couldn't figure out how to get them off… ”

  He did something with his chin, and the lights turned back on within the metal arms, faint red and blue glowing in the darkness, lighting up his pale and bruised face.

  “You can break through the fence with your Terminator hands, right?”

  Shadows moved slowly, jerkily in the garden surrounding the tennis courts. The smell of decay was becoming more and more overpowering. They had company.

  “Maybe,” Adam said, wiggling his fingers. “Probably. But I'm not sure that's such a good idea under the circumstances.”

  Nadifa walked the perimeter of the fence as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, and he tried to decide what he would do when the infected man in the tennis court with them died and came back ravenous for human flesh.

  His own hunger and thirst distracted him. He tried to remember how many hours a human being can go without food or water before it affects the mind. He could go days without food, he knew.

  But kidneys begin to fail without water, right?

  When was the last time I drank anything? Had it already been days? No. They'd drank their fill of water in Hanna's suite just a few hours before. Was it only a few hours?

  Faintness. Check. Weakness. Check. Abdominal pain. Check. Although, that could be mostly hunger. Slowing heart rate…

  Nadifa put a hand on his chest and tried to decipher whether his heart seemed distressed or not. He'd heard of people—in rare cases—going weeks without water, months without food. The human body adjusts itself. The human body is an astounding thing. Look at the survivors of concentration camps.

  No, best not think about that particular stain on human history right now. All the same. Those people probably weren't surrounded by neo-Nazi zombies.

  Nadifa thought of Dr. Kaiser and shivered in the stuffy air.

  “Well, well, well,” a female voice called out, and Nadifa turned to see Katelyn standing at the fence, her smile smug. She was dressed in The Resort's security uniform, her hair in a tight bun, her hands on her hips. Nadifa noted that her bright red nail polish matched The Resort's logo on her arm perfectly and he imagined her calmly painting her nails after she locked them in that hospital storage room to die. He tried very hard not to want to choke the life out of her.

  Four thick-necked henchmen in matching security uniforms stood at her back, scanning the grassy perimeter like they imagined themselves as some kind of secret agents, their weapons held ready. The zombies sniffing the air in the distance, moving closer.

  “If it isn't my freak cousin, Adam,” Katelyn said, feigning delight. “I heard you were out here, wandering around, and I had to see it for myself. And you.” Her lip curled in disgust as she raised her gaze to Nadifa. “Weren't you with Hanna earlier?” She waved a hand. “You all look the same to me. Though I am curious to know how in the hell you ended up here.”

  Nadifa said nothing, meeting her glare with his own until she looked back to Adam. She laughed as she watched him straighten his clothes, trying to sit with dignity as he attempted to ignore her.

  “If your mother could see you now,” she said through her laughter. “I think she'd—”

  Behind her, Nadifa saw the four henchmen fall to the ground in simultaneous heaps, and Nadifa rushed forward as five figures emerged from the darkness. When he saw Zahi, every Somali curse word entered his head, but he held his tongue, knowing better than to protest her presence.

  Hanna materialized from the shadows and raised a weapon that looked somehow like the pipes on the butcher's wall. She held it to Katelyn's temple. The girl went still, her eyes wide as she raised her hands.

  “Say one more word about my mother, Lotie,” Hanna said. “Go ahead.”

  Katelyn's slow smile sent the feeling of insects crawling down Nadifa's spine, and he reached through the fence to grasp Zahi's hand.

  “Lotie?” Katelyn asked. “What, did you get a passport since I saw you last? No, I'm hardly a Lady of The Invisible Empire. I'll accept the compliment, though.”

  Hanna slammed her weapon into Katelyn's stomach, and she doubled over with a cry, coughing.

  It was as if Hanna grew taller somehow. She towered over Katelyn for five long seconds of silence, her eyes like fire, her pale face skeletal in the moonlight, an aura of destruction and death itself surrounding her. She was terrifying.

  “You can take your outdated systems of fear-fueled oppression, and you can shove them right up your toxic, white-privileged ass. Your American dream is nothing but a nightmare. Look around yourself.”

  Katelyn stood slowly, every bit as dangerous as her cousin. “Oh, I'm looking,” she whispered, meeting Hanna's angry gaze with her own.

  Nadifa looked at his three friends. Their weapons held across their shoulders casually, and wondered what horrors they'd been through to come back for him. What they had seen to drive them to kill four security guards without warning.

  Darnell said, “Hanna has no idea what a Lotie is, does she?”

  “Nope,” Lukango said, but Nadifa noticed he was trying not to smile.

  “She's a fast learner, though,” Zahi finished.

  Hanna's shin still hurt from walking into a damn table in one of the poolside restaurants, and she was beginning to realize what complete and utter bullshit every action movie she'd ever seen was. The human body can take only so much abuse before it starts to fall apart. />
  Hanna held her weapon to Katelyn's head again. “Let them out,” she said. “Now.”

  Katelyn sighed dramatically, but opened the tennis court lock with exaggerated leisure.

  “Techs are still working on opening the helicopter bay doors anyway,” she said with a shrug, “after your little stunt. So you and your new friends can murder all the employees you want while we prepare our… ” she glanced at the zombies in the tennis court, “shipments.”

  Good luck with that, Hanna thought, grimacing. They had seen Level 1. It was nothing but death.

  “Speak one more fucking word to me,” Hanna told her, “and die. Just like Todd.”

  Katelyn giggled and shrugged, and Hanna slammed her weapon into her cousin's shoulder blade, sending her staggering forward with a hiss.

  Nadifa helped Adam onto his back with such familiar care it brought tears to Hanna's eyes. How was it possible for both of them to be this forgiving? This generous? She knew that if she had been made to endure what Nadifa or her brother had, she would've died the day she arrived. And yet here they were, in the presence of the girl who'd left them for dead—or worse—and not putting a bolt through her skull.

  Hanna turned to Zahi, and the other girl nodded knowingly, as if saying See? You don't know Nadifa like I do.

  But Hanna was not Nadifa. Her wrath built with each second, and the moment Nadifa carried her brother out of the chain link gate, she shoved her cousin past them into the tennis court and slammed the door closed. She'd already noted the obviously infected man sitting in a stupor in one corner.

  “Hanna,” Adam said softly. “Don't. She's not worth it.”

  Hanna looked over her shoulder at him. “Is there a cure?”

  “Not yet, no.” Adam shook his head. “Kaiser's just getting started. He's lost his mind completely over this. I don't think he's even looking for a cure yet.”

  Hanna watched the infected man on the court in silence. Zombies moved in the shadows behind them, and out of the corner of her eye she saw three men in ragged tuxedos staggering forward, attracted by their blood—their life. The caged infected in the next tennis court grasped the chain link fence and shook it with broken hands, their sounds pleading and pathetic as they craned toward the group.

  Hanna thought she might've felt sorry for them if only she didn't know what they had been like before, what they'd turned a blind eye to, what they supported and taught their children—herself included.

  “Apparently it's some kind of fast-multiplying bacteria,” Adam said, glancing nervously at the approaching zombies. “It can take over a semblance of bodily function, simultaneously halting and speeding up decomposition? I don't know… ”

  Kevin strode forward and shot a zombie closing in on him. “Can we discuss hypothetical scientific theories once we get the fuck out of here?”

  “Lock her in, don't lock her in,” Lukango said. “We gotta go.”

  Hanna looked back at Katelyn, her cousin meeting her gaze without fear. She's so sure of her superiority, of her survival. Hanna reached out to hold the padlock.

  “Don't,” Zahi said. “She's not worth it. Let no one pull you so low that you begin to hate, Hanna.”

  “Too late for that,” Hanna snarled. But still, she turned away from Katelyn, leaving the gate unlocked.

  Nadifa said something in rapid Somali to Zahi, and she led the group back toward the elevators hidden behind a wall covered in vines. Adam's metal arms wrapped around Nadifa's shoulders in a familiar way, Zahi scanning the shadows for danger, her weapon held ready.

  Hanna glanced at Lukango and found him watching Katelyn warily, as if he expected her to pull a machine gun out of her shirt and kill them all. Her cousin ignored his gaze as she stood still within the tennis court, her lips curled in a grimace of disgust. It was impossible to imagine this Katelyn was the same person who two days ago had spent her hours happily complaining about her makeup and giggling about fuckboys.

  “You had everything,” Katelyn whispered. “All of us wanted your life.”

  “Everything?” Hanna laughed. “Is that what you call that? What was my future? Marry Connor, produce the obligatory four pigment-challenged spawn, and raise them on hate while I kept my mouth shut like a properly obedient woman?”

  “Don't sneer,” Katelyn snapped, furious. “You never understood the big picture, that's what your problem was. That's why your father kept you in the dark about his work. His vision—”

  “His vision was genocide!”

  “Purity. Progress.”

  “Goodbye Katelyn,” Hanna said, turning away. “I hope I see you again never.”

  Katelyn rushed forward with a snarl, but Lukango leveled his weapon at her face and she stopped.

  “C'mon, man,” Kevin said. “Forget this crazy ass bitch.”

  “What did you just call me?” Katelyn was suddenly screaming, hysterical with rage. “You don't have permission to speak to me, you fucking ni—”

  Then, from the darkness of the tennis court, there was movement behind her. Darnell shot his weapon, narrowly missing the turned zombie. He lunged at Katelyn, tackling her like a lineman. She was knocked off her feet, and into Lukango, his weapon falling from his hands as three bodies hit the ground, Lukango beneath the feeding zombie and his prey. Katelyn's throat was gone within seconds, her screams cut off abruptly as blood poured from her neck, dyeing Lukango's white shirt red.

  “Fucking do something!” he bellowed. Hanna stood staring like a person frozen in time, and Darnell fumbled to reassemble his weapon. It was Kevin who finally managed to shoot the zombie in the head, the momentum of the bolt propelling it off Lukango, Katelyn's body still in its grip.

  “Hanna?” Kevin said, his weapon leveled at Katelyn's head.

  “Leave her,” Hanna and Lukango said in unison. She's not worth the mercy.

  Hanna kept her gaze raised, refusing to look at what remained of her cousin as she turned to follow the others to the elevator that would take the seven of them deeper into the earth once again.

  Level 10 looked nothing like the stark, utilitarian Level 9. Nadifa grimaced as the elevators opened onto an opulent scene of potted plants, antique chairs, gilded mirrors, and colorful rugs over shining marble. There were two hallways leading from this lobby, behind a massive desk and since Adam had never taken that particular elevator or seen that room before, they decided to search for Ayeeyo and the others down the hallway on the left first.

  Pushing through frosted glass doors that led to a luxurious hallway, Nadifa quickly realized they'd chosen the wrong path—the wrong fucking elevator—as the smell of human feces and piss filled his nose and they stumbled into what was obviously The Resort's childcare facilities. Playgrounds with swings and climbing equipment spread across an expanse of fake grass under a rainbow and cloud-filled sky that Nadifa felt sure was always set for daytime. Craft tables lay in neat rows under gazebo-like structures, and bouncy houses, ball pits, and picnic tables in bright reds, yellows, and blues filled every corner.

  And it was all filled with children. Infected beyond recognition.

  Hanna had gone so pale she was practically light green as she stumbled backward, shaking her head. Zahi moved to physically block her view of the scene as one toddler, his blood-soaked arm hanging limply at his side, turned at the sound of the door closing, half his face missing.

  “What have we done?” Hanna gasped, bending over as if she couldn't breathe.

  A few more infected kids turned their rotting heads at the sound of Hanna's voice. Nadifa saw two girls in matching pink dresses and pigtails, their tongues hanging loose within rotting jaws, the hems of their dresses splattered with gore. A boy with blood dripping from his chin trailed close behind the girls, his nose and ear gone, giving his face the appearance of a skull. Their destroyed eyes seemed to search the room as their tiny limbs jerked with urgency, pulling them forward, their little feet tripping over toys in their path. One of the girls fell into the ball pit without a sound, and nausea
washed over Nadifa as he saw that beneath the sea of plastic orbs at least ten others struggled to rise.

  “Not sure what you mean by that we, Mausebär,” Kevin's voice trailed off as he raised his weapon, then lowered it.

  Darnell asked what they were all thinking. “Should we… ”

  “No,” Luk said. “We should not.”

  Zahi grasped Hanna's shoulder and turned her around. “We came the wrong way. Wallahi, Nadifa. Just go.”

  Nadifa turned his head, addressing Adam. “You okay?”

  “No.” Adam's voice cracked for the first time Nadifa had known him. “No, I'm not.”

  The sound of her brother's grief seemed to wake Hanna from her shocked stupor and she stepped to Nadifa's side, grasping Adam's shoulder. “Listen to me,” she said. “This—disease, whatever it is, it ends. We saw it in the subway tunnel. If they don't feed, the infected die for good and decompose fast, like they've been consumed from the inside out. This all ends, okay? We just wait it out, and it's over.”

  Luk's weapon discharged with a hiss, and they all jumped back as an infected woman fell to the blood-smeared floor by Zahi's feet, a bolt driven through her pale forehead, then out again, leaving a gaping hole to match her destroyed eyes. She wore a bloody and torn Resort uniform of light pink and blue with tiny yellow stars. Her name tag read: Patricia Watts.

  “This is over once we all survive,” Luk said.

  A toddler crawled toward them on torn hands and knees. It was frantic, moving fast, faster than the adult infected ever moved. “Fuck,” Kevin groaned as he stepped forward, lowering his weapon toward the tiny bared teeth.

  Nadifa turned away at the sound of the bolt going through what was left of the kid's skull filled the room.

  “Don't forget Jamal.” Kevin grimaced as he slung his weapon back over one shoulder. “These little fuckers spread infection as well as anyone else.”

  Without a word, Luk turned and led them back to the lobby. Nadifa looked back as they left the room of infected children and regretted it immediately. The image of bleeding toddlers struggling, their mouths opened in silent screams, seared itself into his mind, creating a memory he was sure a lifetime of prayer wouldn't heal.