by M. D. Massey
“Now's your cue,” Rose whispers, giving me a nudge.
Just as the door swings open, I pose my hands in front of me while the remainder of the group affects expressions of rapt wonder.
“And I shot it right in the eye!” I declare.
The audience plays their part, gasping and applauding with impressed acceptance.
“Hey, Mom!” Rose chirps as Eva enters the room.
“Time for curfew,” she replies.
“What happens at curfew?” I ask.
“The energy is shut down. We conserve what we can to build up the solar power. You will learn about that once you start school. I'll walk you back and I can tell you more about it. Rose, Thorn, I'll meet you two back at the apartment.”
I glance at Rose. She nods. I scan the room before I step through the door. Thorn watches me from the far side of the room with a hesitant gaze. I turn away and head down the hallway, Eva pacing right behind me.
“Are you finding your way around the compound okay?” she asks.
“I think so.” Being around her makes me feel comfortable, at ease.
“It's good for you to be making friends. I can't imagine what it must have been like for you out there all by yourself.”
“I got by.”
She laughs, a light and delicate sound. “I'm sure you did. What I mean is, I think you have a good chance here. We think it is important you become acclimated to the life in the compound as soon as possible. To fit in.”
We approach the elevator and step inside.
“Did Maggie give you the tour of the place?” Eva says.
“Yes, she did.”
“By chance, did she tell you about the East hallway? The restricted part of the laboratory?”
“No, I don't think so.”
“Hm...” Eva crosses her hands in front of her and stares straight ahead.
“What is the East hallway?” I ask. “Why is it restricted?”
The elevator lurches to a stop and the doors slide open. “I don't think it is my place to tell you. I am sure it will all be explained in time. I guess we'll see you in the morning.”
“Okay. Thank you for dinner.”
“It was my pleasure.”
I step out.
“Ash,” she calls almost as an afterthought.
I turn back to her, thinking perhaps there was something she had forgotten to tell me.
“Be careful,” was her only admonishment. As the doors slide shut, she raises her left arm and just at the last second, her fingers form the shape of a 'V'.
I am alone in the hallway.
The door to my room is around the corner on one end, and the entrance to the laboratory is at the other. There is no question what I should do. Part of me wonders if I would get caught if I go snooping around in there. I can always pretend that I am sleepwalking. My newness and ignorance is one advantage I can claim at least.
Turning my back towards my room, I push through the door into the darkened laboratory.
It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the shadows. She had said the East hallway. I can't find any indication on the walls or doors which might give me a clue where to go. My mind relaxes and reaches out into the emptiness surrounding me.
The lab is cold, all sharp corners and hidden shadows. I find the hallway over the room where they kept me. My eyes trace the location of the dumbwaiter through the wall, the room where I escaped only to come face to face with a much greater foe.
Something is there, further down in the depths of the facility.
I feel it.
Step by step, I pass by doors on either side of me, knowing many of them are locked. Mental calculations indicate there is a level below me. I come to an intersection at the end of the hall, stretching out to the left and right.
East.
I turn to the right. Whatever I feel becomes stronger and I know I am going in the right direction. Red double doors block my way. I press my hand against the plane of the door and push it open, halfway expecting an alarm to go off, alerting the others of my presence. I step through to the other side.
A dim gray light spills from a window along the wall.
Wild dread grows in my stomach. Slowing my pace, feeling the pinpricks in the back of my neck. I think about Rose and her family, never having known the horror of coming face to face with one of them. Never having to question why they rip through the flesh of others but leave me alone, moving past me like river water around an island. Everything within me tells me not to look through that window. I fight the urge to turn back and run back to my room, to accept my placement here and become part of the community.
I step up to the window, placing my palms against the glass.
There are dozens of them, milling around in the room below. At first, I do not quite understand what I am looking at. I have seen zombie clutches before, but this one is different. It takes a few seconds for me to realize they are all female. Some have long hair, tangled and rotted. Some are broad shouldered, but delicate in stature. They wander almost in a circle, ignoring each other, vacant eyes staring forward, same shuffling gate.
“No,” I whisper as realization washes over me, cold panic clutching my heart.
I fall to the floor, sliding against the glass, bile dancing on my tongue. Gasping for breath, I stumble back to my feet, moving forward. I no longer care if I am found. Panic wins this time and I run through the lab, shoving open the door back into the hallway. I don't stop until I make it back to my room. Here at least, I can pretend that I am safe.
They told me I was the first.
Now I know what that means.
Every one of them, the female zombies in that room, are all heavily pregnant.
12
In the following weeks, I keep to myself as much as possible, watching and waiting, tucking away pieces of information, just as I once did supplies and food in the outside world. I tell no one about my discovery in the laboratory, not even Rose. The bits of knowledge I gather slowly begin to fall into a kind of pattern, providing me an insight into the true workings of this place.
For example, I discover that everyone else is just about as fond of Dr. Donovan as I am. The tests ensue, a series of tasks which make little sense to me; running on a treadmill, wires attached to my chest and forehead. Another day, set in a room, prompted to catch little yellow balls hurled at me from a machine. The crew of white-coats, as I have come to call them, watch me put together puzzles, stack blocks, find the next shape in a pattern, and so on.
I start planning my escape almost right away. I know I need a plan. I cannot be hasty. I play the part, jumping through the hoops set before me. Sometimes I catch her watching me, Dr. Donovan, gazing at me with a wistful expression, something akin to fondness. When I see it, I wonder why, if she raised me, why my memories don't return. At the very least I should feel something akin to familiarity towards her. It feels strange that I don't feel it, and I wonder if I ever did.
“You're getting stronger,” she says after I have completed some complex obstacle course. “I think you may be ready.”
“Ready for what?” I ask.
“When we found you, you were half starved out there in the wild. You are finally starting to show some muscle mass. That's good.”
I decline to mention that when they 'found' me I had already been eating well for a number of weeks while working on Eden's farm. But otherwise, she was right. I was getting stronger.
“Come with me,” she says. “I'd like to try something.”
She holds the door open for me, and I cannot help but glance towards the hallway with the restricted red doors hiding the secrets of this place. She spoke to me glancing now and then over her shoulder as she led me down the twisted passages.
“These tests have given us a good indication of what you are capable of,” she says. “I know they seem a bit pedantic, but you are worth so much more than you realize.”
She says this often. I refrain from rolling my eyes.
; “But there is something else, Ash. Something we would have known by now if... well... if we hadn't lost you on the day of the Fall.”
She opens a double door leading out onto a short balcony flush with a courtyard. The walls surround a grassy area and the sky is pale clouds overhead. Dr. Donovan presses a button which lowers the gate. She gestures me to step forward. On the far side of the courtyard is an iron gate closing off some kind of hold. I sense the creatures within the enclosure.
“What is this?” I ask.
“It's alright, Ash. No harm will come to you.” She steps back, reactivating the gate and leaving me alone in the courtyard.
I hear them, just there, gnarling and scrabbling against the walls, against each other, the smell of rotted flesh emanated from the hold, but even this was not as strong as the connection, their minds, tattered scraps of what they once were, connecting with mine.
“What's happening?” I say.
“Just remember, Ash. Remember how you used to do it as a child.”
The iron gates swing open, leaving nothing between me and the flesh-hungry creatures. They move forward, attracted by my presence. A persistent memory taps at the back of my mind. I have done this before. They had forced me to walk through the hallway, closed off except for the doors on either end, filled with flesh eating monsters. She, the woman who claimed I once called her Mother, had pushed me through that door.
“I'll meet you on the other side,” she had whispered with a smile on her face.
Terrified, I had walked through the milling huddle, most of the zombies shuffling past me, unnoticed. For the first time, I realized they would not touch me. I made it to the other side where I collapsed in tears into Maggie's arms. She held me, stroking my hair and cooing soft words as if she herself had not been the very person who had put me in with them moments before. I could not have been older than five.
Within the courtyard, the creatures surround me shuffling back and forth, their dead eyes focused on nothing.
“Ash, I want you to make them walk to the right side of the enclosure.”
“I don't understand.”
“You can do it.”
I take one trembling breath before I begin, an attempt at focusing my thoughts. I make the mental adjustment, feeling the energy draining out of me, leeching into them and forcing their movements towards the right of the grassy area. In slow shuffling motions, they ambulate as one group to the far right side, those leading the pack bumping mindlessly against the wall.
“Good! Wonderful, my dear,” she croons.
“What's this for--?”
“Shh. There's plenty of time for questions later. Right now you need to concentrate.”
Without a moment to consider her words, a squealing fat pig appears, dropped in through a small portal on the left side. The zombies take notice of the fresh meat immediately, some semblance of hunger flashing across their rotted faces. They all throttle against each other crossing towards the frightened piglet in quick sloppy steps, bypassing me like water in a stream.
I stop them immediately, feeling that familiar sensation of tumblers falling into a lock, their will bending to mine. They hover around the piglet, not quite frozen but limbs flailing helplessly unable to reach for their victim. The trembling pig presses its body against the stone wall with no means to escape.
“Good, my dear,” Dr. Donovan croons from behind me. “Now, I want you to let them go. Let them get to it.”
My stomach twists at the thought. “I don't want to,” I say.
“Let them go, Ash. Then we can be done for the day.”
I hold them back for as long as I am able. Seconds feel like an eternity, strength draining from my body. I keep them at bay until everything goes black. As my collapsing body hits the ground I hear the squeals of the dying pig. I try my best not to think about Marcus.
* * *
When I wake, hours later based on the slant of the sun, I am back in my own room, the room they provided for me. Dr. Donovan sits at the side of my bed, watching me with that same wistful expression. She sees me stir and smiles, stroking the hair off my forehead.
“There you are, my dear,” she says in a soothing voice.
“I would prefer you not call me that,” I say.
“Call you what?”
“'My dear'. Despite what you think, I am not your long-lost daughter. It's clear I am nothing more to you than a guinea pig.”
I turn my back and pretend to be asleep once more until she finally stands and leaves the room.
* * *
Eva had taken to having me come for dinner at least once a week. It became a bit of a routine for us. Dr. Donovan had been right about one thing. The access to food and rest have strengthened my system. I felt stronger than I had in ages.
“What does it mean?” I ask Eva one night as Thorn and their father clear the table.”The V, what does it mean?”
“The V?” Eva replies.
“This.” I hold up the signal with my right hand. “What is it?”
The others pause, Rose returning to the dining room from the kitchen. Eva exchanges an extended glance with her husband.
“Might as well,” he says. “Especially considering...”
Eva breaks his gaze and gestures me over to the living room area. “How much do you remember?” she says. “From before I mean?”
“Not much,” I reply. “It comes back here and there.” The shift of the mood has me on edge. Rose enters the room, drying her hands with a dishtowel and sits down in the chair across from us.
“I have a difficult question to ask you,” Eva says. “If that's okay...”
“It's alright. Go on.”
“Did you find the creatures in the East hallway?” She speaks with kindness behind her voice.
“Yes. I did.”
“Do you understand what it means?”
I don't want to hear it, but I have to. I need her to say the words. “Tell me.”
“Your mother, Ash. Your mother was Patient Zero. Do you know what that means?”
My mouth goes dry.
Eva continues.“That means she was the first one... of them.”
“Tell me everything. I need to know.”
She takes a breath. “The official documents say no one knows how she got it, but there is some evidence that the government created the virus. That they infected her on purpose as part of a biochemical weapons test. Your mother was part of a paid volunteer program. She hid the pregnancy from them. Apparently, she needed the money.”
“Oh my god,” I whisper. I glance at Rose who watches me with nervous eyes.
“She had already changed over completely by the time you were born.”
Tendrils of cold horror snake up my spine.
“They kept her in a containment unit. She was put down soon after you were delivered.”
She falls silent, both of them watching me. All of my emotions began to float away from me, one by one and I am left feeling empty with this truth. My fingertips feel numb.
Eva continues. “At first, you seemed like an ordinary child, but as you grew up it became evident that you were different. You were stronger, smarter, somehow more than human. They started to test your abilities around the age of three. That small part of you in your DNA is something they could not isolate. That small part is what they need to replicate.”
“For the antidote,” I say.
“No,” she replies. “They want to make more of you.”
“Make...more...”
“In you, they found the perfect super soldier. They cannot understand what makes you special, but they have never been able to replicate the same outcome..”
The tone in her voice is dark, ominous. She exchanges a glance with Rose.
“Tell her,” Thorn's voice interrupts from the entry way He leans against the wall, arms crossed. “Go on. Tell her the rest of it.”
“This has been going on since before the Fall. They have kept this whole process well hidden. It did not take
long before we realized what was going on. That it wouldn't stop. And that they have the gall to call it scientific research.
“There was a small faction of us who started an underground rebellion within their circles. We had to be careful though. The organization was quite powerful. That's what this means.” She extends her fingers into the shape of a V. “It was one of our codes to help identify ourselves to each other. At least, that's how it started. Over time, it became a rallying symbol, a sign of encouragement to each other.”
“What was the goal, of the faction I mean?”
“Several goals,” Eva continues. “On the one hand, you had been a prisoner for your whole life. Dr. Donovan raised you as well as she could, giving you her name and a place to live. But the only life you ever knew was that of a lab rat really. For starters, we wanted to get you out, find a way for you to have a normal life.”
“But then the Fall happened,” I say, “and it was too late.”
“That's exactly right.”
“Mom,” Thorn says, still hovering at the doorway. “I think we should tell her... about the plan.”
“I think so too,” Eva says. “Maggie continues to feed everyone the idea that the outside is crawling with zombies, that the only safe place is to stay within these walls.”
“Yes,” I say. “But it's not true anymore. It's not like it's used to be.”
“That's what we've suspected. There are many of us in the community who want to get out, to try and make a go of it out there, away from all this. We've made a contact on the radio, one of the unused channels, people who can help us once we get out. The only problem is, this place was built for security. And every potential exit is crawling with them. If we can get past the outer perimeter there might be a chance.”
“I think I have an idea.”
“What is it?” Thorn asks.
My gaze jumps from him to Rose and back to Eva. The plan for my own escape falls into place, as well as theirs. “Can you find me a map of the compound?”