by L. A. Cruz
Pinder glanced at Dunning. Then she shrugged. “Free country.”
“For now,” Dunning mumbled.
Helia put down her tray and sat. “I’m sorry I didn’t help you guys last night. I haven’t been feeling well.”
“Obviously,” Dunning muttered.
“Forget about it,” Pinder said. “I got some decent rest this afternoon, so thank you. This guy, on the other hand, is a walking Tower of Pisa. About to fall right over.”
“Actually, the Capital Gate in Abu Dhabi leans further. It might be a better metaphor.”
“What?”
“It’s in the Guinness Book. Look it up.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Nothing. Just a joke,” Helia said. She attempted a smile in Dunning’s direction. “I would have taken your shift too, but I can’t split myself in half.”
Dunning said nothing. In a daze, he stabbed half-heartedly at his spherical mound of mashed potatoes.
Pinder raised an eyebrow and looked at the two of them. Helia kept her eyes on her food and dug a spoonful out of the green orb. The food didn’t appeal, but she forced herself to eat them anyway, trying to find some kind of energy.
“Has there been any intelligence on the arrivals?” she said to fill the awkward silence.
“A new round of infections,” Pinder said.
“Is that what we’re calling them now?”
“Infections, transmissions, possessions, whatever. Based on their red shirts and khakis, I’d say they all came from the same source. A whole bunch of Target employees. All trapped. Spread like holy fire.”
“What happens if we run out of jail cells?”
“We quarter them,” Dunning mumbled.
“We quarter them? What does that mean? Four in each cell?”
“It means quarter the inmates,” Pinder said. “We cut off their limbs and toss them all in the same cell.”
Helia thought of her brother—their boots on his wrists, him writhing on the concrete, as they hacked off his arms—and she swallowed her green beans hard. “Is that protocol?”
“There is no protocol for that sort of thing. It’s never happened before.”
Helia took another bite, chewed the green into mush. She glanced at Dunning, but Dunning didn’t bother to look up.
Pinder glanced between the two of them again and could see the tension. She put her arms out and tested the air between them as if she could weigh it.
“Oh God,” Pinder said, the air so heavy she couldn’t hold it. “I think I know what happened here. Please tell me you didn’t do what I think you did.”
It was Helia’s turn to keep her lips sealed. But Dunning shrugged. Typical man, she thought. He couldn’t resist a chance to show his manhood by confirming a conquest.
Pinder shook her head. “Unbelievable. You pagan morons.”
At the insult, Dunning perked up. Finally a language he understood. “Oh please, Miss Hoochie Cooch. Don’t act like you’ve never done it down here before. Remember the big-chested one? You wouldn’t shut up about her.”
“She’s no longer here, now is she?” Pinder said. “So it ain’t relevant.”
“Awful convenient,” Dunning mumbled.
Pinder turned bright red. “Watch your tongue, you prick. Before I cut it off. And I don’t mean your tongue. What happened to her had nothing to do with me.”
“No, you watch your tongue,” Dunning said. “I’m your commanding NCO down here.”
“Just because the Colonel’s gone, it don’t give you the right to be a dick.”
Helia stood, tray in hand. She was too nauseous, no longer interested in force-feeding herself. Right now, the solitude of a long shift in the day room was more appealing.
“I think I’m gonna go,” she said.
“Please,” Pinder said.
Helia left the mess hall, the two of them still bickering behind her.
SHE HEADED straight for the bathroom. Inside, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She was deeply pale, pale enough to rival the whites of her eyes. Her sockets had sunk deep into her skull and she looked like that squiggly freak in the Munch painting. She had lost so much weight her cheekbones had sharpened. Losing this kind of weight would have been a welcome development for her old high school frenemies (once when she had come back ten pounds thinner after a bout with mono, she had overheard one of the bitches say, “Oh my God, I wish I could get sick like that!”) but weak arms and exposed ribs were a real liability down here where the sun didn’t shine.
The image looking back at her in the mirror was too depressing, so she shuffled past it without further reminiscing. She had only ten minutes before she was supposed to go relieve Lawless in the day room—and he could be a cranky SOB when he overstayed his minutes.
She went into the stall, closed the door behind her, and slid the bolt to lock it—not that any of the other Keepers had ever barged in on her while she was sitting on the toilet, but she wasn’t going to take any chances.
She put the seat down and sat on the cold porcelain. It was cold enough to feel on the back of her legs, right through her trousers, and goosebumps rippled up her neck.
She rolled up her left sleeve. Her forearm was dotted with purple holes. The vein had been tapped so many times that it had become a dark snake crawling up her arm. It had no thickness and hid inside her flesh and looked like a trail of ink. It had collapsed, she feared.
For all she knew, her body was burning extra calories trying to make a new web of little veinlets, ones that would never be large enough for proper circulation. Her fingers might end up permanently tingly, on the verge of numbness. Stupidly, she had tried to tap the vein in different places, hoping that like some kind of prospector, the higher she went the more likely she was to find its source. But it had only resulted in more holes and more pain.
With her thumb, she pinched the inside of her bicep, right beneath her armpit and tried to force the vein to swell. She made a fist and closed her fingers in and out and squeezed as hard as she could, but she could not flush the vein out of hiding in her flesh.
She dreaded the thought of poking a new round of holes into the other arm, her strong arm. In her left arm, she was already walking around all day with a dull ache in every nerve south of her armpit, and she didn't want the same thing to happen to her dominant arm—she might need it one of these days to defend herself.
But the alternative was to watch her brother rot.
“Dammit,” she whispered.
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and rolled up the sleeve on her right arm. She forced the cuff past the elbow, up to the bicep. It was tight enough to restrict the circulation and make her veins pop out. She fished the dirty needle from her pocket, spat on the end, and wiped it against her chest.
She made a fist. The main vein was large and easy to pinch. She exhaled and slid the needle in. She had lots of practice by now and it was a clean shot, right into the head of the snake. The blood rushed filled up the syringe quickly and then flowed into the plastic tube. Once the tube was full to the top, she unrolled her sleeve and threaded the plastic snake up her shoulder. She pulled its red mouth out of her collar and angled it so she had access to the opening with her mouth.
She was just about to get up when the bathroom door opened. She froze. A set of boots clapped across the tile. The trousers were bloused properly, but it was impossible to tell by the feet alone who had entered.
She held her breath and tried not to make a sound. The boots stopped at the sink across from her stall. The water turned on. This morning, the Colonel had disappeared for leave so it couldn’t be him.
Maybe it was Dunning. Maybe he had cut the argument with Pinder short and left dinner early. Maybe he was cleaning up for an early retirement this evening—after all, with the Colonel gone, he controlled the master schedule.
To be safe, she’d have to wait for the boots to leave. But the longer she waited, the closer she risked being late for
her shift. She had no desire to deal with Lawless’s whining.
She counted in her head. One, two, three, four. When she had entered the bathroom, there had been exactly fifteen minutes before she was supposed to go to relieve Lawless in the day room. She estimated that she had already spent a good six minutes of that time in the stall.
She counted to sixty. One minute down. Two minutes. Three minutes. She trusted her counting and knew it was precise.
Still, the boots stood at the sink.
Four minutes passed. Lawless was going to have a conniption.
Screw it. It was time to go. She pulled a long string of toilet paper off the roll, overexaggerated the ripping motion so that the roll made that metallic clink against the holder, and used the paper to dab the excess blood off her palm.
Then she stood from the toilet seat. There were no trousers to pull up. Sketchy as hell. She flushed for good measure. Then she went to open the lock on the stall door, but felt the tube shift inside her right sleeve. She was so used to having the tube in her left arm that she had forgotten to use her other hand.
“Dammit,” she whispered. She felt a bit of warmness on her palm. She looked at her arm. The tube was leaking. But it didn’t make sense to get more toilet paper, not after she’d stood and flushed, so she put her hand behind her back and opened the door and stepped out of the stall.
In the mirror, the man standing at the sink looked up. A toothbrush dangled from his lips like a cigarette and he was foaming at the mouth.
“Everything come out okay in there?” Dunning said.
“Lady troubles,” Helia said. It was a lame excuse, but she knew it wouldn’t be challenged.
She walked swiftly for the door and went to open it, again with her right arm, but caught herself. She put it back down and kept it rigid at her side and opened the door with her left.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said.
Out in the hallway, she made a beeline for the day room. She had to get there before Dunning asked any more questions.
But behind her, the door opened. She ignored the sound and kept walking.
“Wait up, Corporal,” Dunning said.
Helia didn’t stop. “I’m gonna be late,” she said. “You know how Sergeant Lawless gets.”
The door to the main chamber was only a few yards away.
“Corporal, I need you to stop where you are. Right now.”
Helia closed her eyes. Dammit. He was on a power trip and pulling rank. She didn’t want to have another discussion about her health, nor one about whether or not she was still fit for the job—or worse, one about the awkward tension between them.
But she had no choice. He was the superior NCO right now and ignoring him would be insubordination. Besides, if they were going to keep working together, they would have to settle their tensions eventually—especially now that Dunning was in charge and puffing out his chest and dropping his voice every time he spoke, as if he had eaten the damn Colonel and was speaking from the gut.
“I just want to talk.”
She stopped. If he wanted to stop her from taking her shift, he could do it. But then she'd have to go back to the bathroom and drain the blood from the tube. It would all go to waste. All that plasma for nothing. If she couldn’t feed her brother, it would set him back a day. He was almost fully healed, almost turning the corner, almost looking like himself again.
“I know it’s none of my business,” Dunning said. “And I know what you said in the bathroom, but it seems your lady troubles are about to cause a major problem here.”
What on earth did that mean? “My lady troubles are none of your business,” she said.
“Turn around, Corporal.”
She huffed and obeyed.
Dunning was pointing at the floor. Down the hallway, left like breadcrumbs, was a trail of splattered blood. She looked down at her wrist. Her palm had warmed and filled with blood. The tube was leaking all over the place.
“I was gonna say that we could send for extra hygiene supplies if you needed that sort of thing, but it looks as if this might be a problem of an entirely different sort,” Dunning said. “Am I wrong?”
Helia tried to hide her right arm behind her back.
Dunning took a step forward, avoiding the trail of blood. “Please roll up your sleeve, Corporal. Let me see your arm.”
“I'm okay,” Helia said.
“Whatever is going on there is most definitely not okay. You’re leaking all over the hallway. You can’t go into the cellblock leaving a trail like that. You’ll whip those bastards into a frenzy. What the hell are you thinking?”
“I’m just trying to do my job, Sergeant. On time.”
“Are you depressed or something? Is that why you're losing so much weight? Is that why you’re so pale? Are you cutting yourself?”
She couldn’t help but laugh. “Don't be ridiculous. I’m not cutting. Do I look like a cutter?”
“Are you doing heroin or something?”
“No.”
“Then what the hell is going on?”
Helia stuttered. She was a horrible liar. “It’s that-that spot where I got hit with the bone fragment on my first day. It’s been acting up. I accidentally tore it open. It’s been bleeding.”
“That tiny spot?”
“Yes. It never healed properly.”
Dunning stepped closer. “Interesting story, Corporal. But that was the other arm. I think I know my right from my left.”
The blood kept seeping out of Helia’s sleeve. It was running down her fingers now and streaming steadily. In moving her arm, she must have dislodged the toilet paper stopper. It must have become supersaturated, come loose, and now the whole tube was draining.
She couldn’t stand here and debate it. She had to get back to Manny before the blood was all gone. He needed his daily dose.
“I really have to relieve Sergeant Lawless,” she said. “I’m late.”
But before she could turn and swipe into the main chamber, Dunning grabbed her arm. “You are not going in there. That's an order, Corporal.”
“Let go. Please.”
“I am in charge in the Colonel’s stead. Either you listen to me, or I will bring it up with the Colonel when he returns. Insubordination. Discipline. Possible dismissal.”
“You’d like that wouldn’t you?”
“No, I would not. It is my job.”
“Prove it,” Helia said. “Prove this isn’t personal.”
She wrestled to get her left arm loose, but Dunning tightened his grip. The arm itself was dead and too weak to fight him off. The movement followed through to the rest of her body and the tube in her right sleeve dislodged even farther and there was a gush of blood out her sleeve.
Dunning let go and hopped back.
“Jesus Christmas,” he said. “That’s as bad as a severed artery. How are you still standing?”
“I’m fine,” Helia said. “Really.”
She felt lightheaded though, her eyelids fluttering. Maybe if she fainted, if she collapsed in a heap, he would believe that she was depressed and cutting. Maybe that was the best way to go. Faint, get back to the living quarters, and find something sharp to slice up her arm as a cover up.
But no. If she did that, she’d be deemed no longer fit for her post. She’d be transferred out immediately and her brother would rot. Or worse. Quartered.
Dunning was staring at her right cuff. “What the hell is that?”
She looked down. The head of the tube was poking out.
“Do you have something up your sleeve, Corporal?”
CHAPTER 35
Dunning grabbed her right wrist.
She looked straight into his eyes. Despite the dark circles, they looked soft, concerned.
“You sure you don’t want gloves or something?” she said.
“I think we’ve shared much worse,” he said. He pinched the head of the tube and pulled on it. It came out her sleeve, a long red string, and then it dum
ped the rest of the blood into a puddle on the floor.
She stared at it as if a day’s wages had gone up in flames.
Dunning eyebrows furrowed into anger. “Explain yourself, Corporal. If not, I am going to very quickly leap to conclusions.”
Helia had no words. The draining had left her truly lightheaded, on the verge of truly fainting. Maybe she could play up their relationship now. Maybe she could do that sexy thing, bat her eyelashes, touch his neck, and divert his brainpower. To make a man melt, there was nothing quite like a walking corpse whispering sweet nothings in your ear.
She stepped toward him, an awkward smile, half flirting, half-whoozy. She glanced past his shoulder. The hallway was still empty.
“Why don’t we go back to the shower?”
But Dunning wasn't as weak as he looked at the moment. He pushed her back, in full control of his brain, his morals, and his other parts.
“What the hell are you doing, Helia?”
She bit her bottom lip. It was less an awkward attempt at sensuality than a quick infusion of pain to keep from passing out.
“I just—I just thought that since there was no one here, we could rekindle the flame that had snuffed out so dispassionately.”
“What’s the matter with you? There are cameras at both ends of this hallway. The control room is always watching.”
“Right. The cameras,” Helia said. At this point, she was out of options. She stepped into him again and with her dead arm, reached to unbutton his fly. “Maybe we’ll give them a little show.”
“No, seriously, Corporal. What the hell are you doing?”
“Sexy times.”
“You look like Nosferatu.”
“I prefer Elvira.”
“Knock it off. Answer my question. What’s the tube for?”
Helia’s knees went weak. For real. Her eyes rolled back and she teetered toward him.
Dunning stepped up like a man and caught her before she fell on the floor. “Knock if off. I don't buy this one bit. Explain yourself.”
If seduction wasn't going to work and if playing the helpless victim wasn’t going to work, then may be she could play on their relationship. After all, it was a godsend that it had been Dunning who had caught her in the act and not the Colonel. Her brain was hazy, her thinking slow, and she was tired of hiding secrets.