Population: Katie

by Connor, Penelope

  The man continues to scrub down my shoulders and back, and then spends extra time on my hands and chest where most of the blood is. A strong chemical smell burns my nose, but thankfully, none of it gets into my eyes. I keep my head down and watch the red streaks swirl around the drain at my feet for a long time until finally he releases me, tosses the sponge into a waste bin, and turns off the water.

  I try to listen for anyone talking, but the only sound I can hear is the chattering of my own teeth. I take a shaky step forward, my clothes heavy with water, and icy cold, making me shiver violently.

  The hazard suit man leads me across the cement room, back over to the man with the nice shoes, who, upon closer inspection, does in fact appear to be some kind of doctor. Above his perfectly pressed pants, he’s wearing a button down white coat, and holds a clipboard with a serial number printed onto the back of it. He has dark hair graying above his ears, giving him a distinguished look that people might have responded well to in a normal doctor-patient situation. Right now, I want to glare at him, but all I can muster is more teeth chattering.

  He nods politely at me, gripping my arm firmly as he calls to the hazard suit man, who is currently removing his suit. The man turns out to be quite a bit younger than the doctor, maybe around Derek’s age, and about his height too. What he lacks, however, is Derek’s sunny disposition, and that’s saying something.

  The surly man, now free of the hazard suit, is joined by another soldier. He walks over to the doctor and me, carrying a plastic bin. The bin has a serial number on it that matches the one on the back of the clipboard. I get the sense that this number refers to me.

  “We’re going to examine you for injuries,” the doctor says, making a few notes on his chart. “Will you tell me your name?”

  I glare at him, teeth still chattering uncontrollably.

  The doctor looks up at me for the first time. An odd expression, something like sympathy, crosses his face. I work hard to maintain my glare, and it’s the doctor who breaks eye contact first. He sets down his clipboard, turns, and leaves the room.

  The soldier drops the bin at my side, then stands behind me, holding my shoulders, while the surly man kneels down and starts to untie my boots.

  I lift my leg to kick him, but he’s fast; very fast, now that the cumbersome suit is gone. “Do that again, and you’ll regret it,” he snarls as he pushes my foot back to the ground.

  Something in his tone tells me that crossing this man would be a very unwise decision. My very brief fight instinct is replaced with flight when he pulls off my boots. “Examine me for injuries,” the doctor said. I think of the sleeve that Glory made for me, covering an injury that I really don’t want them to see.

  My heart’s starting to race, and my hands are twitching, but not from the cold. I need to get away from here, and now. When the surly man turns to drop my socks into the bin, I slam the heel of one foot into his chest and use the force to push myself back against the soldier, simultaneously slamming my head back against his chin, causing him to release my shoulders as he reflexively brings his hands up to his face. It was a move that I had been quite good at in Derek’s class, while we were working on ‘defending yourself when outnumbered.’

  I jump over the startled, surly man and shove my way through the swinging door and back out onto the tile floor. Hands still bound, clothes dripping wet, and now barefoot, I find myself sliding as I bolt through the small room back toward the second hallway. From there it’ll be the noisy room, then a bunch of turns... right, then left... no... left first...

  The door behind me crashes open, the surly man and the soldier bursting through. I grab at the handle with shaky hands, but before I can get purchase, the soldier wraps one arm around my upper body, and uses the other to hold my head back against his shoulder. He drags me backward, kicking and shouting like a lunatic, back through the door and into the cement room, while the surly man tries to grab my legs.

  I try to look down, but the soldier keeps the back of my head pressed firmly into his shoulder so that all I can see is the bright lights of the ceiling and part of his arm.

  The surly man grabs my injured leg with both hands, which makes me freeze on the spot, and shriek in pain.

  “What are you doing?” shouts the doctor, who has just re-entered the cement room, holding a large towel.

  Both men jump back and I drop to the ground with a thud. I shuffle back into the corner of the room, fighting back tears as my leg throbs with fresh pain. It had been doing just fine, but now, under the sopping wet bandages, I’m sure that it’s bleeding again.

  The doctor rudely dismisses the men, who walk out through the main door, the soldier still rubbing his chin. Sighing loudly, the doctor turns to where I huddle in the corner, and crouches down to be nearer my eye level. “I’m sorry about that. I shouldn’t have left you alone.” He looks down at the towel in his hands and holds it out in my direction, but makes no further movement towards me.

  I wipe my eyes roughly with the back of my hand, watching the doctor carefully. He seems sincere enough. In fact, there’s a level of concern in his eyes that I wouldn’t expect to see there. Slowly, I shuffle forward and hold out my hands. The doctor tosses the towel at me. I catch it, then grab hold of a nearby table and use it to pull myself back up to my feet. The towel’s large and fluffy, and smells like fresh laundry, a smell that hasn’t crossed my path in a very long time. I dry my face and run it through my hair, then wrap it over my shoulders and inhale deeply, enjoying the familiar scent.

  “Why don’t we start with a few questions?” the doctor asks, although I doubt he’d skip the questions if I said no. He stands up and grabs his clipboard, as well as the plastic bin that contains my boots and socks, then gestures to the swinging doors.

  Against my better judgment, but unable to think of any practical alternative, I follow the doctor into his office.

  The office is equipped with a large desk, which is set up against the wall so that the chair behind it faces out into the room where another two chairs sit. The other half of the room is taken up by an exam table and a privacy screen, the kind that people usually change behind. The walls are covered in framed certificates and photos of the doctor with various people. It’s the kind of setup you’d find in a real doctor’s office, and in that moment, I realize that it is one. We’re in the North End Hospital. It’s behind the Gov’s territory line, has a backup generator system, and is large with many small rooms. It’s not the kind of place anyone would expect them to be either, considering the state of the South End Hospital.

  The doctor sits down in the chair behind the desk and gestures for me to sit in one of the chairs facing him. I start towards them, catching a glimpse of myself in a mirror that is hanging on the wall. I pause to examine my reflection.

  I look young. Very young. Between crying earlier, my face being scrubbed clean just now, and the pain in my leg, I have this deer-in-the-headlights look about me. I wonder if this is why the doctor is treating me with such caution, and why he was so appalled at the way the other two were treating me. I suppose he didn’t actually see my escape attempt, just two men trying to forcibly restrain a screaming girl who looks no older than sixteen.

  By the time I sit, I’ve made the decision to play the frightened little girl card. It’s about the best option I have at the moment, and seems to be an appropriate choice for this man, who is already sympathetic towards me.

  The doctor picks up his pen, sets the clipboard on his lap, and begins by asking my name, age, where I am from, and various other census type questions. I reply with quiet, shaky answers that are mostly lies.

  I generally consider myself a relatively unskilled liar, but the doctor doesn’t question my responses as he scribbles on his clipboard.

  The doctor hands me the plastic bin and points at the privacy screen. “I’ll have to examine you for injuries now. There are dressing gowns that you can help yourself to. You’ll get your clothes back once they’re checked and cleaned.�
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  I stand up and carry the bin behind the screen and begin to undress, each layer dropping into the bin with a wet thud. No time to make a plan; no reasonable plan to make. The best I can hope for, right now, is to stay on the doctor’s good side and hope that he has enough pull to get me to wherever Derek is. I tuck the chain with Dale’s dog tag into the dressing gown, then step back out into the room and sit up on the exam table.

  The doctor looks down at my leg, which has in fact started bleeding again. “Ooh, that looks nasty.” He gathers up a few supplies, then kneels down in front of me and sets to work cleaning my leg. “How did you get these cuts?”

  I don’t want to tell him that I was attacked by an Aggressor, and I’m sure that the doctor can tell that they did not just happen here when the surly man was grabbing my legs, so I continue to lie. “I fell through some glass.”

  “Well, there isn’t any glass in here,” he says, dabbing at my leg.

  “My friend cleaned it out,” I say, and that part at least is true.

  The doctor nods, and is then silent for a moment. I wince as he pours antiseptic over the largest of the cuts. “What school did you go to?”

  It’s hard to tell if there are more questions that the doctor needs to get through, or if he’s just trying to put me at ease by making small talk. Either way, I don’t have a good answer because I don’t actually attend high school. I told him that I’m from Middleton, which is where I actually did attend high school, but the school that I attended closed down a couple of years ago, so I try to visualize any high school from town. The first one that pops into my head was called North Something High School... North End? North Side? I can’t quite visualize the sign, so I just abbreviate, and hope that the doctor isn’t terribly familiar with the local schools.

  “North High,” I say. “The one near the park.”

  “Oh, my daugh -” He pauses, a pained look crossing his face. He pushes it away quickly with a forced smile. “I know it.”

  A soldier joins us in the office. I assume that he was sent by the two men that the doctor dismissed, because he simply stands in the corner of the room. There’s nothing outwardly menacing about him, but the gun he holds bears the message that escape is not an option and resistance will not be tolerated.

  Why are they even bothering? What’s the point of cleaning and examining me? I’m beginning to feel like a bird caught in an oil spill, and wonder if they’ll release me back to the wild once they’ve finished cleaning the gore from my metaphorical feathers. Not very likely.

  The doctor continues to examine me, standing so that he’s blocking my view of the soldier, and vice versa. Maybe this man isn’t so bad… just a volunteer here to help the little birdies, as opposed to the representatives from the big oil company who caused the spill to begin with.

  I decide to try and get some information from the doctor. “Where did they take my friend?”

  The doctor looks up at me for a moment, and then offers a weak, one-sided smile. “I’m not sure,” he says honestly. “Everyone gets examined upon arrival, but from there I couldn’t say.”

  I nod, and try another question. “Can I see him?”

  “I don’t know yet,” the doctor says. “That depends on how he -”

  The doctor’s cut off by a very loud cough by the soldier. Apparently, I’m not privy to this information. The doctor offers me an apologetic look, and then moves to pick up my left arm.

  I pull it away, and hold it to my chest with my right. It’s irrational to think that I could get away with this, but I can’t let him see my scars. Somehow, I don’t imagine the idea that I’ve been bitten going over well.

  “It’s okay,” the doctor says, misreading my reaction. “I won’t hurt you.” He touches my arm, but doesn’t pull it towards him, rather waiting for me to offer it freely.

  I slowly hold it out, waiting for the doctor’s reaction, and I get one, only it’s not the one I expect. At first, he turns over my arm and regards the series of scars with curiosity, tracing one gloved hand over the crescent shape. His eyes widen as he realizes what they are.

  “Immune?” the doctor mouths.

  I nod my head in reply.

  He quickly pulls the sleeve of my gown back down to hide my arm, then continues his exam with shaky hands, peering over his shoulder every so often to see if the soldier’s looking at us or not.

  I’m not sure what his reaction means, but if I had to venture a guess, it would be that he doesn’t want the other man to know that I’ve been immunized. I wonder if they do testing here, too.

  I jump as a loud crackling sound precedes scratchy voices, coming from the corner of the room where the soldier’s standing. He grabs some sort of communicator from his belt, while stepping out of the room to respond to it.

  As soon as the door closes, the doctor closes his hands over mine and looks me in the eyes. “Don’t let them know that you’ve been immunized,” he whispers. “As long as you’re healthy, they’ll just put you with the others. You’ll be safe there.”

  I nod my head, and suddenly realize what an important opportunity I’ve been presented with. My eyes dart to the door, and then back to the doctor. “There was a man stationed here a while back, Colonel Bennett. Is he alive? Did he go back to San Angeles?”

  “How do you -”

  “I knew his son,” I cut in, knowing our time is limited and hoping to cut straight to an answer.

  The doctor surprises me by jumping right back in. “You knew Dale?”

  “Yes. He and I...” I falter, touching the chain around my neck. “He meant a lot to me.”

  The doctor seems to understand. “I’m so sorry. He was a good man.”

  Before we can exchange any more words, the door reopens, the soldier stepping back into the room, communicator in his belt. “There’s been a change of plans. I’m taking her to B Block, right away.”

  “Why?” the doctor asks. “She’s fine. You can put her with the others.”

  The soldier looks down at my bandaged leg.

  “It’s nothing,” the doctor insists. “Just a bit of broken glass. I cleaned it out myself.”

  The doctor just... lied for me. I don’t know why yet, but he seems determined to keep my secret safe.

  “You can take her down to A Block for integration,” the doctor says, holding tightly to the chart.

  The soldier does not respond, instead simply grabbing the chart from the doctor’s hands. He motions with his gun for me to leave the room with him.

  The doctor sits back against the desk, his hands gripping the edges and his shoulders slumped. He looks up at me, and his expression is genuinely sorrowful. He mouths, “I’m sorry,” then turns and sits in his chair.

  I notice a framed picture on the desk as I slide off of the exam table. The picture shows the doctor with a young girl. She’s about the age that I’m claiming to be, with roughly cropped brown hair and deep dimples, like me. The resemblance between the girl in the photo and the doctor is subtle, but clear. I don’t know where the doctor’s daughter is now, but in that moment, I know why he took such a personal risk to help me.

  The soldier leads me down several hallways, in a totally different direction from the way I came in. At this point, I’m quite certain that even if I could get away from the soldier, I wouldn’t be able to find my way outside. I might be lucky enough to find a nice air vent to crawl up into and make myself at home, but that doesn’t seem enticing enough to make me want to risk getting shot at the moment.

  We arrive in front of a hall labeled “B Block.” A guard and another doctor sit there, the doctor jumping to his feet as we approach. He quickly makes his way over to me, holding a small medical kit. I quickly hold out my right arm, keeping my left arm at my side and my scars out of view. This doctor cleans my arm and takes a vial of blood, then heads immediately away down the hall, I assume to deliver it to wherever testing takes place.

  The scenery changes drastically as we step through the door that leads into
B Block. While the rest of the hospital is relatively clean, although very dated, B Block is decidedly unkempt and very eerie. The floor is a pale blue that is chipped and cracked, and the paint on the walls is peeling around the edges of the doors, forming little flaky clusters on the floor. The hall is filled with a collection of rooms on both sides. Each door is complete with a large round window around head height, and two narrow slots; one in the middle of the door, the other near the floor. As we walk, I begin to realize that there are people in the rooms, and they don’t sound in good shape. Strange noises emanate from them, and the further down the hall we travel, the louder and more mournful they seem to get. I can hear scraping and scratching as the windows fill with the sickly faces of the clearly infected individuals that are held within.

  Finally, the soldier stops in front of one of the doors. He unlocks it, and then prods the center of my back with the tip of the gun until I step into the room. He slams the door behind me without another word.

  The room is small and the same off-white as the hall, with paint that’s just as dated and chipped, and a floor that has not been cleaned in some time. The space is open and mostly empty save for - “Derek!”

  I dive down at the man, who’s dressed in a hospital gown similar to the one I’m wearing, and sitting with his back against the wall.

  Derek looks up, wraps his arms around me in surprise, and holds on tightly. “Are you okay?” he asks shakily.

  His hair’s wet, and I can hear his teeth chattering loudly. I doubt anyone bothered to bring him a towel, and I wish I still had mine to give him.