Banished

by Sophie Littlefield

  “Where are we going?” I finally asked as she headed north, away from the distant skyline.

  “Not far now.”

  A few minutes later, she exited into a neighborhood of tidy brick bungalows and the occasional church or tavern. There were no signs on the brick building she pulled up to. It had neat white shutters at the windows and tulips pushing their way up from planters out front. Long sloping ramps were the only clue to what kind of place it was.

  “Is this a nursing home?” I asked as we made our way to the front doors, which glided open at our arrival.

  “A convalescent home,” Prairie said. “A very good one, with some of the top doctors in the country on call.”

  “Ms. Gordon,” a woman at a desk called out cheerfully. “Vincent’s having a good day. He’ll be so glad you’re here.”

  Prairie exchanged a few words with the receptionist as she signed in. Looking over her shoulder, I read Susan Gordon in a neat script.

  “And who have you brought with you today?” The woman smiled at me with open curiosity.

  “This is Hailey. Her family just moved to the area and joined the church. She’s interested in doing outreach ministry too.”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful! Hailey, we love our volunteers here. And so do our patients. Especially the ones who don’t have family. Visits just do them a world of good.”

  “What was that all about?” I demanded after Prairie thanked the receptionist and guided me across the lobby. We were buzzed through a set of doors and walked down a hallway with a shiny waxed floor and rooms opening up on either side that held hospital beds, many with patients in them. Some sat, others appeared to be asleep. None looked our way.

  “I visit every week. I use a fake identity, as you saw. They don’t ask a lot of questions when it’s church people visiting. And I’ve been coming to see Vincent for years, so they’re used to me.”

  “Who’s Vincent?”

  She slowed as we reached the end of the hallway and took a deep breath. Then she gestured for me to enter the last room on the right.

  “Vincent was my boyfriend,” she said as she followed me into the room.

  A man sat in the bed, a thin blanket covering his body, his hands folded neatly on its surface. There was something wrong with him. His skin was puffy, with an oily sheen, and his color was off. He had a network of fine scars on his face and also on what I could see of his arms, below the cuffs of his shirt. His dark hair was thin and it hung lank in his face.

  But the worst part was his eyes. They stared straight ahead at nothing, blinking slowly every few seconds. They were the emptiest things I’d ever seen. There was no emotion, no evidence of dreams or hopes or plans or disappointments in their depths. As we entered, they flicked over and looked at us without a trace of interest or curiosity, and I had to fight an urge to run from the room and get as far away from him as I could.

  “I never told you why I left Gypsum,” Prairie said softly. “I never told anyone but Anna. And I lied to you earlier, when I said I never healed someone who died. The truth is that I did. I healed Vincent. I was sixteen and we were in love. We were going to run away together—Alice never knew. We were just waiting until we had enough money to get someplace far enough away that Alice could never find us, and we were going to take Clover with us.”

  She walked to Vincent and put a hand to his face. I couldn’t imagine how she could stand to touch him. He didn’t seem to notice.

  “We had an accident on prom night,” Prairie said, adjusting the collar of Vincent’s shirt before she stepped away from the bed. “He was thrown from the car, and he died. And unlike you, Hailey, I should have known better. I had been warned about what would happen if I ever tried to bring someone back.”

  “How could you …”

  “I loved him. I thought I would die without him. I wished it, I actually wished I was dead too, but I didn’t have the courage to make that happen. So I brought him back instead. I think there was a part of me that believed if I prayed hard enough, if I wanted it badly enough, that just this one time it would work, that God would take pity on me and let him live. A real life, not … this. But of course that didn’t happen. And once I realized what I had done … I left. That part was all true. The only thing I didn’t tell you was that I took Vincent with me.”

  “How did you get him in here?” I asked, horrified.

  “We came to Chicago by bus, on the night of the accident. I had a little money, enough to get a change of clothes and the bus tickets. It was the next day when we finally got there. All night long, all he did was stare ahead, sitting in that bus seat.…”

  “But what about his parents? When he didn’t come home, didn’t they freak?”

  “I’m sure they were upset, Hailey, but unlike Alice, they knew about me and Vincent. They knew he loved me, and he’d told them if they didn’t give their blessing he was leaving with me anyway, as soon as we graduated. They’d argued about it; they wanted him to go to college, not to spend all his time with me, but he wouldn’t listen. I think they—everyone who knew us—just assumed we’d run away together. And I’m sure they looked for us, for a while. But Vincent was eighteen. Legally, there wasn’t anything they could do.”

  “They must have been heartbroken,” I said, imagining how his parents must have worried—after all this time, if they were even still alive, they had no idea what had happened to their son. From the misery in Prairie’s eyes I knew it was a thought that haunted her as well. “Where did you go when you got to Chicago?”

  “I took him to a hospital, the best in the city. I made sure of that. I spent almost the last of the money for a cab and took him to the emergency room. There was no one there, so I sat him in a chair. I pretended to be there for myself, which wasn’t hard, since I’d been in the accident too, and unlike Vincent, my cuts and bruises weren’t healed. I told them my parents were undocumented and they treated me as an indigent. I stayed around long enough to eavesdrop on what they were doing with Vincent.”

  “Wait, so they didn’t know you were together?”

  “No, and he couldn’t tell them. He didn’t even look at me once. After that, I kept track of him, which wasn’t easy, since I was trying to find a room and a job, but I found ways. I … learned to be creative. And convincing. One of the doctors on ER rotation was a young resident who studied immune disorders. That’s what they think he has, by the way … after all this time they still think Vincent has some rare immune problem, and they’ve got him on all these clinical trials.”

  “They can do that? Just experiment on him like that?”

  “Technically, it’s not allowed, since no one ever claimed him, and they never made contact with his family. He’s a John Doe, but he had an ID bracelet with his name engraved on it, so they’ve always called him Vincent. I used to find that … a comfort. Anyway, as you’ll learn yourself someday, when money’s involved, lots of things are possible. The doctor I mentioned—the one who studied immune diseases—had plenty of funding, and arrangements were made.” She shrugged. “They’ve found ways to keep his skin and organs functioning all this time.”

  “But how … ?”

  “The miracles of modern science.” Prairie’s voice was heavy with regret. “It’s ironic. I’ve often wondered what would happen if the doctors here got together with Bryce, what they might be able to accomplish. But I could never tell them about each other. They work at cross-purposes, I guess you could say.”

  “What do the doctors here do to him?” I asked, my throat dry.

  “They’re doing research into cell regeneration,” she said. “His systems have responded well. I guess I should thank them.”

  She didn’t look all that thankful. I didn’t blame her. What must it be like to see someone she loved here, kept alive artificially? I tried to imagine him at Kaz’s age, full of life, laughing, but all I saw was an empty shell made of skin.

  “What does he … do?” I asked.

  “He’s very good at simple tas
ks, like sorting beads and solving shape puzzles. But he’s completely nonverbal. They keep hoping. I … don’t know if that’s worse. Here, watch this.”

  She stood in front of the bed, in Vincent’s line of vision. “Vincent, clap three times.”

  Without any change to his blank expression, the man raised his hands and slowly slapped them together. Once, twice, three times. Then he let his hands fall back on the covers. His eyes never focused.

  Watching him sent a chill through me, but I didn’t want Prairie to know how horrified I was. “You can’t blame yourself. You couldn’t have known.”

  Prairie shook her head miserably. “I did understand. And I did it anyway. I have to make sure this doesn’t happen again, and that means I have to stop Bryce, no matter what.”

  I couldn’t stand to see her this upset. “Don’t worry. If people know what happens when you heal a dead person, they would never do it, not on purpose. Even if Bryce manages to make more Healers, he wouldn’t make—”

  “Hailey,” Prairie cut in sharply. “You don’t understand. This is exactly what Bryce wants to make … things like this. He wants to sell them, to the highest bidder. The Healers are just a tool, like an assembly line.”

  I looked at Vincent, who was staring at nothing, a faint, shiny bit of drool pooling at the corner of his mouth. I didn’t understand. “What could he possibly want with …”

  Prairie’s face darkened. She grabbed my wrist and pulled me to the bedside, until I was standing only a few inches away from Vincent.

  “Vincent, hit yourself,” she whispered, and he immediately started to smack himself on one side of his face and then the other, his palms flat and hard, the sounds of flesh on flesh sharp.

  Prairie turned to make sure I was watching, and the pain in her eyes was staggering. “Harder,” she whispered, and the thing that used to be Vincent curled his fingers into fists and now each blow caused his head to jerk and roll, but still he kept at it—

  “Stop!” I cried. “Please, Vincent, stop, don’t, don’t hurt yourself.” And just like that, the Vincent creature, the zombie that lived in the ruins of his body, put his hands back in his lap. His face bore fresh bruising and a few cuts; his lip was beginning to swell. But there was no sign at all that he noticed, much less cared.

  Prairie backed away from him, her eyes shining with unshed tears.

  “Why?”

  “Because you can send them into battle, Hailey,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion. “You can load them up with explosives and tell them to blow themselves up, tell them to walk into shopping malls or schools, and they’ll never think twice, never blink an eye.”

  “No,” I whispered, horrified. “No one would—”

  “Yes. A dozen of them, deployed the right way, could bring a major city to its knees.”

  “But Bryce couldn’t … he wouldn’t …”

  “I saw it. I saw the list. On Bryce’s desk. Unstable governments overseas … there were half a dozen or more. And he doesn’t care who he sells to, as long as they show him the money first.”

  “But where would he get the …” I stopped, unable to come up with the right word. Raw material? Bryce would need the newly dead, and a lot of them, if he was going to manufacture enough zombies to sell.

  Prairie laughed bitterly. “He’s smart, Hailey. He’ll find people that won’t be missed. There are so many more of those than you’d ever imagine … the homeless, and mental patients, people abandoned by their families. And that doesn’t even scratch the surface. If he’s getting help from inside our government, and I have strong reasons to believe he is, he could go to veterans’ hospitals. Soldiers killed overseas—the remains shipped home could be faked, while the real corpses were taken.”

  “You can’t think our own government would be involved in something like this!”

  “No, of course not, not officially. But there’s corruption at every level. Hailey, Bryce used to get visits from men who looked official. I never paid much attention, since I assumed it had to do with our funding. But thinking about it now, you could totally tell they had once been in the military. They had that air about them. There was someone he just called the General, and we used to joke about that in private—but now I’m thinking that was his principal contact.”

  “But why would they let him sell to enemies of the United States?”

  “The governments on the list, their battles are on their own soil. They’re extremists, terrorists, at war with each other—or with their own people. I’ve wondered if that wasn’t part of the plan, that some rogue branch of the military might want them to exterminate each other.”

  Zombies.

  Terrorists.

  Shadowy operators, working outside the control of our own government, funding this study in horror.

  It was too much. Especially when I thought about the fact that, without even knowing it, I was one of the keys to its success.

  A day ago I would never have believed that there could be something worse than being hunted by killers.

  But now I knew different. There was something much worse, and it was in me.

  CHAPTER 22

  WHEN WE GOT HOME, Kaz was in the backyard with Chub, teaching him to throw a lacrosse ball.

  “Hailey, watch me, watch me!” Chub shouted, waving the stick around, his voice clear and distinct, the improvements in his speech growing every day. Kaz waved, grinning. But I raced past them with nothing more than a mumbled hello.

  Anna had been cooking, as promised, and the house smelled wonderful, but I couldn’t bear to talk to her. I went straight to Kaz’s room, closed the door and lay down on the bed and pulled the pillow over my face, trying to block out the images in my mind.

  Vincent in the hospital bed, staring without seeing.

  Rascal, after I found the bullet wounds and pushed him to the floor, unhurt and uncaring.

  Zombies walking straight into battle, unfazed by the sights and sounds of war.

  Public squares full of people, erupting into explosions and flames.

  I didn’t know how long I lay there trying not to think. There was a gentle tap at the door. I pulled the pillow off my face but didn’t answer.

  “May I come in?”

  I couldn’t very well keep Kaz out of his own room, so I sat up and pushed my fingers through my hair, hoping I didn’t look too messed up. “Come on in.”

  He opened the door hesitantly and gestured at the bean-bag on the floor. “Mind if I …”

  “It’s your room,” I said, blushing. “I mean, I should be asking if you mind.”

  He sat, strong forearms draped loosely over his knees, and looked at me. I mean, really looked at me, in a way I wasn’t used to.

  “Prairie told me about Vincent and everything. Wow, that’s a lot, you know, to find out. I’m sorry.”

  I shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. At least the healing … well, I was kind of getting used to that part.”

  “But the rest?”

  “It. Um. I can’t …” I tried to think of a way to describe how I felt—almost like I was guilty of something, because if Bryce did manage to find me, I was pretty sure he could force me to go along with his plan. “The zombie thing. Just, I don’t get how anyone could do that on purpose.”

  “Yeah …”

  “Did you know? About Rascal?”

  “No. I mean, I thought there was something wrong with him, and I was kind of surprised. I knew Prairie could heal animals, because she fixed our cat’s leg once when it fell out of a window, a long time ago. And when I met you I could tell you were a Healer too. So I thought it was strange that you weren’t able to fix your dog. But I never knew about the … reanimated dead thing until Prairie told me just now.”

  “Reanimated dead?” I grimaced.

  “Well … that’s what Prairie said. I think she has a hard time saying ‘zombie.’ ”

  “But Kaz, if you’d seen him—”

  “Hey, it’s okay with me, you can call them whatever you want. I
mean … decomposing flesh walking around, that’s kind of the definition of a zombie.” He flashed me a tentative smile and I felt a little bit better. “Besides, other than that little issue, I think it’s cool, what you can do. Your gift.”

  That surprised me, but then I remembered that he’d grown up knowing he was Banished. “What about you?” I asked. “Do you … you know, have visions?”

  “Sometimes. Usually only when something really bad’s going to happen. Like when I was a kid I had this vision of our garage burning down. I made Mom go look, and some paint rags had caught fire in the corner. Or when our downstairs neighbor had a heart attack, I saw it a few days earlier, how she was lying on the floor of her apartment, dead. Stuff like that.”

  “Can you make yourself have a vision of something you want to see?” Like whether a crazed one-eyed redneck is coming after you.

  Kaz shook his head. “No, it doesn’t work that way. You can’t, you know, summon it or whatever. It just happens sometimes … I get a dizzy feeling and then there’s a sort of extra layer on top of my vision that fades in and out. If I close my eyes, I just see the vision. Otherwise it makes me feel like I’m going to hurl, like motion sickness.”

  “So you don’t want to have it while driving or something.”

  “Yeah. That would be bad.” Kaz grinned at me and I realized he’d done the nearly impossible: he’d lifted my spirits.

  “Thanks,” I said. “For taking care of … burying Rascal.”

  “Oh, that was no big deal. No problem.” For a minute I thought he was going to say something else about it, but then he just stood, offered me his hand and pulled me up off the bed. “You missed lunch. I saved you some.”

  After all that, unbelievably, it was a good afternoon.

  Prairie and Anna were having a serious conversation when we came out of the room, and Chub had managed to corner Anna’s cat and was trying to pick it up and hug it, an experiment that ended with him getting a couple of scratches on his forearms, which made him cry. I thought about healing them, but then I decided that healing should be reserved for when it was really necessary. Chub still needed to experience the little hurts and challenges of childhood so he would grow up strong and self-sufficient.