by Ann Christy
So, instead of smart-mouthing, I reach out for her hand and squeeze it in mine. “I know this is hard,” I say gently.
Her face crumples and tears fill her eyes immediately. It takes only the smallest tug of her hand to pull her into a hug, her face pressed into my shoulder. I stroke her hair and then Charlie joins our hug. The temperature goes from unpleasant to steaming quickly with this much body heat, but sometimes people just need hugs. She’s been here on watch for six hours or so and probably only had Matt here for the watering because we still require two people to open the cage. Even gagged, they make near constant noise and in the dark, it would have been more than stressful.
And, well, two of them are people now. That makes it very different, because they know what’s going on, or at least Tiny Carson does. Holding a human captive is hard to do, no matter how much they deserve it.
After a few minutes in which sweat builds up and starts trickling down the back of my neck in an unpleasant trail, her sobs decrease and she pulls away, wiping her nose with the back of her hand.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I don’t know what happened there.”
“The same thing that happens to all of us now and then,” I say.
Savannah smooths down all the flyaway hairs that have escaped from her ponytail and breathes deeply for a moment, banishing the last remnants of her emotional outburst. Then she gives us a shaky smile and says, “This is a lot harder than I thought it would be.”
I nod, understanding completely. “It is. No one expects them to be people. But they are.”
A rapid tapping comes from the cage interior and she glances over her shoulder. Not looking at us, she says, “And rapists. Can’t forget that part.”
“No, I won’t forget that,” I confirm and she turns back to me, examining my face.
After a long look, she says, “No. I don’t suppose you will.” She brushes back the hair from my face where it got messed up during our hug.
Charlie clears his throat, perhaps sensing that the time is finally right to get the watch turnover. He had the watch before Savannah—how he functions on such broken sleep, I’ll never know—but a lot can happen in six hours. And usually does.
He doesn’t have to say anything more. Savannah swallows back whatever else she has going on inside and says, “Right. Okay. Progress update. Carson has a fever and it’s getting higher. His stomach is swelling up worse and now that’s hot too. As in, it actually feels hot when I touch it. He’s in a lot of pain.” She looks away at that, and I know how torn she is. It’s hard to see a human suffering for that long.
“And, uh, nothing has happened with, uh…”
She shakes her head in the negative at my inelegant question.
It’s a conundrum I now think I have an answer to. Emily once told me that before all this happened, back when monsters only existed in movies and on TV, that she used to love some show that came on about the undead, but that she’d always wondered how they could eat so much and never have to go to the bathroom. They should be blown up like balloons or something if they didn’t go.
While our in-betweeners and deaders are very different from those depicted in the shows of before—as in totally different—the same problem bugged her. Why did some have nasty pants and others not? We’d conjectured about it, as gross as the topic was, but never really came up with anything other than the obvious. Maybe those who got gut wounds or got their organs gnawed on simply didn’t get repaired properly. I mean, the nanites can’t rebuild organs that are completely missing as far as I know. Repair, yes. Create new from scratch, no.
Now that we have a possible cure, I can very clearly see at least one dividing line between those who might survive the process and those who won’t. Carson wasn’t an eliminator—that’s the clean term that Charlie came up with because Savannah kept smacking him when he said shitter—and now that he’s cured, he’s being poisoned from the inside out because he still can’t process food.
Tanner, the big dude, is the opposite. His mental activity hasn’t returned, but his body seems to be working just fine.
“Well?” Charlie prompts. I’ve wandered off into my own thoughts and left them both standing there in the heat.
“Oh, yeah, sorry. That’s good data. Carson may be a bad guy, but he’s giving us information that will help all the other non-bad people in this world. Don’t you think?” I ask, looking from one to the other.
Savannah gives a small smile, not a real one and it doesn’t reach her eyes, but it’s progress. She says, “Yes, it’s good. I just have to keep remembering that while this is going on.”
“Anything else?” Charlie asks, neatly averting any further deep emotional stuff.
“Well, I’m not sure if this is important or not, but that other guy is sleeping more and more. I actually had a hard time getting him to wake up for a drink this morning. Even with all the noise, he sleeps.”
“Hmm, not sure what to make of that,” I say.
We wrap it up quickly from there. Savannah is as anxious to leave the warehouse as I am to get into the cage and evaluate our prisoner-patients. And Emily needs a visit as well. I miss her in the mornings when I have watch.
Savannah must notice my glance over at Emily’s cage, because she says, “She ate well this morning and she was great afterwards. We played cards for a bit and she beat me twice at Go Fish. She had fun.”
I smile, because that’s great news, but also because I like the idea of her having fun. She’s aware enough that she realizes she’s in the cage and that something is going on in the other cage. Sometimes she understands that we’re working on the cure, but other times I think she’s just afraid of the noises.
Savannah goes off to start laundry, Charlie goes to get the supplies for this morning’s feeding, and I spend some time with Emily. We’re breaking the rules by having just me in there, but she has her chains.
“Hey, Emily!” I say as I unwrap the chain from her cage door.
“Fronica!” she exclaims and pushes aside her toys.
“What have you been up to?” I ask brightly. She has a colorful array of magic marker lines all over the bottom of her face and hands. “You know you're not supposed to eat your markers, Emily.”
She pushes a few of the markers under her legs as if to hide them and grins, “Naht eat!”
“Uh huh, I see. Did you draw something?”
At that she pulls some scattered papers from her stack of inventory forms and tosses them over to me. They flutter everywhere, but a few of them make it outside the range of her chains and I bend to gather them. On most of them are the standard scribbles and badly drawn people, but on a few I’m thrilled to see letters and words that make actual sense.
“Emily! This is wonderful!” I cheer and hold up a paper. On it are the words Emily, Veronica, and Jon. “What does this say?”
She cocks her head to the side, as if to put her good eye forward, and screws up her face as she looks at the paper, “Mehme, Fronica. Ummmm. Zahn?”
“Yes! That’s exactly right.” I’m so excited that I want to get up and hug her. It takes effort not to, but I have to remember that she’s still what she is. At least for now.
That rapid clicking noise comes from the other cage again, as if my thoughts spurred Carson to start tapping the desktop with his fingernails. Emily’s head jerks as she tries to see beyond the barrier into the other cage. A frown creases her colorful face.
“Shad up!” she yells suddenly, giving me a start. It’s such a normal sounding thing that I can’t help but smile hugely at her. She sees me, returns the grin and says, “Noiz. Piz may off.”
“Yeah, it pisses me off, too,” I agree. “Want me to go make them be quiet?”
“Yah, mehg shad up. Mehme nade a nap,” Emily says, fishing a marker from under her thigh and pulling an inventory form close to start on another picture.
Emily needs a nap.
I almost laugh at that because she still doesn’t sleep at all. But, she’s develo
ping the habit of resting at night and going still during the heat of the day. I think it functions as sleep, but her eyes are often open and moving over the girders and braces under the ceiling far above. When I’m here at night, I often watch her and wonder what she’s thinking when she does that. Or if she thinks at all during those times.
She makes a mark that is clearly an S on the paper, then pauses, looks up at me from under her brow, and waves her hand to shoo me away. “Go, megh shad up.”
Go, make shut up.
“Okay, okay. No need to push. Your wish is my command and all that,” I say, regaining my feet. She grins at my words, as if they’re terribly amusing, before lowering her head over her paper again.
As I wind the chain around her cage door, I watch her and wonder. She’s like a kid, easily amused and functioning at about the same level as Jon. Will she stay like this? Is this because of the brain tumor or is it because she’s still an in-betweener? What will she be like when she’s cured? And the final question, the one that turns my guts to water and makes my heart thud in fear whenever I consider it: Will she survive?
From behind me Charlie says in a low voice, “She’s doing fine. This is progress. Remember that.”
How does he always seem to know what I’m thinking? Great boyfriend or low population number making us too familiar with everyone’s body language? Now, that’s a real mystery.
“Let’s do this,” I say, turning to the chain on the other cage door. I’m anxious to get started.
Eleven Weeks Ago - New, Old Friends
It’s my turn to sleep when they come, which just figures. Instead of meeting them while sharp and awake, I’ve got bedhead and creases on my face from my cardboard and packing paper bed. Nice.
“Up! Incoming…maybe,” Charlie hisses quietly, kicking at me with the toe of his boot.
Gregory is on his feet by the time I’ve rolled over and groaned. My body is sore from the bottom of my feet to the roots of my hair. And my wrist actually feels worse than the day I dislocated it. Savannah says that too much adrenaline causes soreness to be worse the next day, because it keeps a body from feeling the pain when it’s doing too much. I believe her. I just don’t think it’s fair that Charlie and Gregory can hop up like they don’t feel crappy.
A sudden shaft of light pierces the utter blackness of the post office interior, then it goes out again. Three quick, but regular, flashes of someone’s flashlight outside. Then a smaller beam of light plays against the window where I posted our own sign. It was a risk to post that sign, but we figured it was very unlikely that any other humans would wander past the post office during our short time in residence.
I’m finally awake and on my feet, crossbow at the ready, but I feel like I’ve gotten no sleep and yawn hugely.
“That’s comforting,” Gregory says sardonically at the sound of my yawn.
“What is?” I ask.
“That you’ve got my back,” he replies.
I know he’s being sarcastic, but I just say, “You know it.”
There’s the sound of someone messing around with their crossbow, a click and then our light joins the other. Three flashes in return. After that I get my real surprise of the night. Someone knocks on the door. It’s exactly as I would have knocked on a friend’s front door in the world before this one. It’s actually a little freaky.
Wanna go ride bikes? Want to play videos? We’re having tuna casserole. Can I eat here tonight?
It’s weird what runs through my mind sometimes.
“Uh, come in,” Gregory calls out, but not too loudly.
The man who comes in is instantly recognizable. From the sharply indrawn breath Charlie takes, I’m assuming he recognizes him as well. He was one of the guards at the hospital. And the girl that follows is the girl who was carrying the basket down the hallway at the hospital, the one who waved so shyly.
Seven people in total come in and suddenly, the post office box room seems much smaller than it did. Flashlights bounce around as people look at each other and check the corners, but eventually the guard I recognize says, “Settle down people. Lizzy, put some flashlights on the ground so we can get some light. Everyone take a seat. All this milling about is starting to get creepy.”
Charlie and I share a little smile at the words. They’re just right. Almost like a Goldilocks thing, not too serious, not too flippant. The basket girl must be Lizzy, because it’s her that plucks the flashlights from the man in charge’s hand. She grabs another and sets them down outside the little space where we’re clustered and awkwardly taking seats. The light shines up at the ceiling and reflects, making it sort of homey and nice in our little space.
Gregory is clearly a bit overwhelmed and unsure. He bends his knees as if to sit, but aborts the action when someone else sits. To me it looks like he’s trying to get a spot with some space around him. I can understand, I suppose, but it’s making us look bad.
“Sit next to me, Gregory,” I say, and pat the cardboard and paper that was my bed and is now my seat.
He sits, watching everyone as they say hello and check each other out. It’s almost funny. We humans have no idea how to meet strangers anymore. Of course, they aren’t entirely strangers.
“I remember you from the hospital,” I say to the big man. A few people start at the normal volume of my voice after so much whispering, and everyone now has their eyes trained on the two of us.
He nods gravely and says, “I remember you too. And you.” This last he directs toward Charlie.
I wave back toward the customer service area, now cloaked in darkness, and the sign they hung there. “You’ve been looking for us? Charlie and me? You’ve found us.”
The big man surprises me by extending a hand, clearly meaning for me to shake it like a normal person would. In the light of the reflecting flashlights, I see how grimy my hand is and wipe it on my jeans, which makes the man’s lips twitch up in amusement. Then we shake hands and it feels wonderful to do something so human.
“It’s nice to meet you again. I’m Tom Sharpe,” he says.
“It’s nice to meet you too. Depending on what you have to tell us, that is,” I say, earning a nudge from Charlie at my qualifying statement.
Tom’s not offended if the laugh is any indication. It’s a good laugh, very genuine, and it sets everyone at ease. Even Gregory’s shoulders lose a little of that tight, anxious posture.
Tom waves at two of the others, a youngish looking guy and a middle-aged woman with skin the color of honey, and says, “Might as well make breakfast now. Jeremy, Karen, would you mind?”
At that name, my heart seizes in my chest. Jeremy. My Jeremy died back in the apartment when Sam turned in-betweener. He was only twelve. This guy looks nothing like him, and is older, but still. Charlie knows more about my feelings regarding those lost children than anyone except Emily, and I feel his hand sneak over to press mine. In the dark, no one notices and I’m glad of that. This is no time for bringing up the bad parts of the past.
Except for the hospital. That we do need to talk about, and soon.
“I don’t know if I’m breaking the rules of hospitality or anything, but I’m dying to know. Did you bring me anything from Princeton? A message, anything? And how did you escape? Why did you escape?” I stop there, because really, I could go on with questions for an hour or more.
Tom smiles at me, a big and very wide smile. He says, “Yep. You’re Veronica, alright.” He slaps his hands onto the tops of his thighs and huffs out a tired breath.
It’s only after I hear that weary sound that I get over the idea of people enough to really look at their faces in the reflected light. Maybe it’s only the shadows, but it looks to me like there are deep, dark circles under Tom’s eyes. I see the same on the few faces highlighted enough to see clearly. The lines on their faces are etched deep from weariness and soot, shadowing the planes of their faces even more than the inadequate lighting.
“If you’re tired, we can wait,” I offer, before he c
an get started. “Maybe everyone should rest first.”
A few faces look decidedly hopeful as they turn for Tom’s answer, and even he swallows hard and looks down for a moment, but then he shakes his head. “No, it’s almost morning. A good breakfast will do us all good. Then, maybe we can sleep a little. Full bellies make for better sleep.”
Almost as if on cue, I hear the hiss of gas and turn my head to see the faint blue, light of a portable stove lighting up the dark interior of the post office. Pans clatter and I turn back to Tom. “Alright. As long as you’re sure.”
Again, he slaps his hands on his legs, but more softly. “First things, first. I don’t have anything from Princeton.”
The disappointed sound I make is loud and comes out before I can stop it. But Tom holds up a placating hand and says, “I do have a message from him, but our story goes with it. Can I ask your indulgence?”
I’ve never been asked for my indulgence in my life. It sounds so adult and I like it. I look to Gregory and Charlie and get only a tiny shrug from one and a raised eyebrow from the other. I’m calling that agreement.
“Sure. I’ll do my best to keep my questions inside,” I answer.
“Right! So, we are from the hospital. You’ve got that much. Except for Darren and me, everyone here was either prisoner or still on a limited access program—that’s what the Doc calls it right after someone decides to stay. Lizzy was limited access. She saw you in the hallway with her monitor.”
Lizzy breaks in and adds, “He tells everyone they’re in quarantine until they get used to the place and decide to stay. Most don’t know they’re prisoners, I don’t think. I didn’t.”
I nod in her direction and Tom picks up the story again. “That’s pretty much how it is. But when you came and then broke out, the attitude around the place began to change. Everyone—even the ones in quarantine—knew we’d gotten visitors and that it hadn’t gone well. Doc covered pretty well, tried to make it seem like you left normally, but no one leaves in secret by night if everything is normal. It got tense.”