Between Life and Death

by Ann Christy

  “Is that better? Can you open your eyes?” I ask him. I’ve not forgotten what these men are, but I’m so excited that I can barely contain myself.

  Once again his lids flutter open and this time, I see them focus on my face. They’re just human eyes. I see none of that feral in-betweener-ness in his gaze. I want to shout in victory. Instead, I look up at Charlie, who is watching us intently from just outside the enclosure.

  Charlie smiles and I see real joy there. He turns to Emily, barely visible at the edge of the lantern light and says, “Good job, Emily! He’s awake!”

  Her teeth flash white and shiny as she grins back at him. She says, “Strahng. Mine.”

  Strong. Mine.

  That stops us both in our tracks. Mine? What does that mean? Charlie and I look at each other, my dread at those words mirrored in his expression. This is not what either of us expected. And I’m going to make sure it stays between him and me if I can.

  “Never mind that now,” Charlie says, and I want to hug him for being the coolest guy left in this blighted world. “What about him?”

  The man on the table seems confused, like he’s trying to figure out exactly what the heck is going on. He looks a little afraid too. And like the others did before him, he keeps sniffing the air, the muscles high in his cheeks flexing and giving him an animal-like look.

  “Can you speak? Can you tell me your name?” I ask him, leaning over a bit so that he can see my face.

  “Luke,” he says after a beat. His voice, like Carson’s was when he woke, is scratchy and hoarse. And just like Carson, he says, “Water.”

  What comes next seems a bit like deja vu, the loosening of the head strap, the ladle of water, and the questions I ask. But unlike Carson, Luke doesn’t seem sly or like he’s trying to figure out an angle. He’s not particularly nice or mean, but rather simply straightforward with the few words he gives me. Most of all, he seems interested in the area beyond his cage where Emily is humming her little tune.

  While I tend to Luke, Charlie crosses the gap toward Emily’s cage. After a bit, I hear the low tones of his voice and Emily’s garbled responses coming in snatches during pauses in her tune. But each time she stops her humming, Luke gets more agitated. Fear and anxiety come almost the second she stops.

  When Charlie comes back to my enclosure, his lantern held high while he checks that all is still okay in here, I pat Luke on the shoulder and say, “I’ll be right back. You need to rest. Your injuries were severe.”

  Unlike Carson, I feel no temptation to tell Luke what he is. Maybe it’s because I got so little satisfaction from what happened with Carson that I don’t feel it’s worth it. More likely it’s just that I’m unsure as to what’s really going on here. What influence does Emily have over him right now? And what does that mean? Will she keep that influence now that he’s human or will it fade?

  Luke closes his eyes almost immediately, perfectly compliant, and I step over to the cage barrier and lean close to Charlie. He also leans in and then whispers, “She says he’s just right. She says her humming will keep him quiet. Is that what’s going on?”

  I lean my forehead against the chain link, thinking of how the others are going to take this little development. “Yes, I think so. While you were talking with her, he got afraid every time she stopped humming. Immediately. It was like someone flipped a switch in him or something.”

  Charlie looks past me at the man on the table. Luke’s face is in repose and perfectly calm. He might even be asleep, which would be amazing considering his situation.

  “Holy crap,” Charlie says.

  Yeah, that pretty much sums up my thoughts exactly.

  Seven Weeks Ago – Fire and Garden Gnomes

  They’re burning our city. They’re burning everything. And they’re killing everyone they find.

  I’m terrified.

  “We have to do something,” Gregory says, a note of pleading in his voice that is totally out of character for him. I think he’s just as frightened as I am. And it’s worse for him because he’s the one who stumbled on the latest batch of dead people while on patrol.

  Tom extends a placating hand and says, “No, we have to figure out what to do, not just go do something. We’re no match for them with their weapons. They have missiles or rocket launchers or whatever they’re using. Your crossbow isn’t going to do much against that.”

  Gregory seems to deflate at Tom’s words. Charlie and I are sitting on the far side of our little lopsided circle of people and keeping quiet. No one will notice with so many wanting to speak. Everyone is here. Well, at least everyone who is left. Rose, Darren, and Susan are dead. That’s one third of Tom’s group. They made it so far in this nightmare, surviving for more than four years when billions haven’t, only to die while on a patrol.

  What’s even worse is that we’re lucky they died like they did, without being found by the military sweeping our city and burning sections of it for no apparent reason. It’s a terrible state of affairs to think like that, but that’s the situation we’re in. Gregory found the bodies on his patrol, along with the new in-betweeners that made an end to them. He saw at least twenty new in-betweeners—all showing those same tell-tale bullet wounds to the torso like the suburban enclave people. They somehow managed to get the drop on our patrol, or else our patrol accidentally walked right into their area. Not only did they get our people, Gregory says it’s very clear that they were made in-betweeners on purpose.

  And at least half of them were kids. I don’t think he’s ever going to get over that.

  We’re all pretty sure it’s that military group’s way of stacking the deck against us. If they can’t find us and kill us, they’re making plenty of hungry flesh-eaters to find us instead. And it’s working.

  “They’ll run out of munitions eventually,” Savannah says. She grips Gregory’s hand, a worried expression on her face at how traumatized he looks, but she keeps talking. “They’ve got something like two trucks right? That’s all? How much ammo can they carry in those if they’re carrying supplies for their troops as well? Those hummers sure can’t carry a lot. And that truck with the launcher thingie on it doesn’t carry squat. Right?”

  Tom responds, but the same circle of arguments starts one more round. Charlie tugs my hand, so I lean in close. He says, “This is never going to get solved. We just don’t know what they’ve got. For all we know they’ll get a re-supply at some point.”

  I nod, because he’s right. Absolutely right. The pall of smoky air and soot that keeps blowing with the breeze is a constant reminder of what will happen to us if they find us. We’re just lucky that this isn’t a small city and there are loads of places to look. Four Humvees is not a lot of manpower with which to search a city. I’ve never been so grateful for urban sprawl in my life.

  I lean in close and whisper, “At least they seem to be focusing on the city and the suburbs. That’s as far from us as they can get. We just need to hunker down and wait them out. Maybe they’ll think we left.”

  Charlie shrugs his shoulders and we go silent again, watching and listening as everyone argues over what we should do and when.

  *****

  “Get her legs, Charlie!” Matt demands as the deader he’s got looped loses her balance again.

  Every time she falls down, something else falls off of her. It’s so disgusting that I keep gagging. I’ve only refrained from puking through sheer luck and an entirely empty stomach.

  “I can’t! Every time I grab her legs, meat falls off!” Charlie exclaims, flapping the blanket he’s been using to try and get her legs with.

  “Let’s just do this. Right now. Do it!” Matt directs, his voice definitely rising into angry territory. He shifts his grip on the dog catcher to a point very close to her head and then wraps one arm around her from the back, hugging her to his chest with a grimace.

  Charlie makes a rude noise and then lunges for the deader, wrapping her lower legs in his blanket and then lifting her in one move. The deader�
��s hands immediately reach for Charlie’s hair and he lets out a yip—whether out of fear or disgust, I’m not sure—but he doesn’t drop her this time.

  Both of them then shuffle their burden along, carrying her through the tall grass toward the spot where I wait with a rope tied to a stake in the ground. I’ve got the line slaked out so that I’m waiting at the end of what will be her range of movement. That way, we can get out of the way quickly once I’ve got her tied.

  They don’t quite drop her, but the impact is still forceful enough that I get splattered with something very wet and stinky when she hits the ground. Instead of completely freaking out, I just wipe my face on my sleeve and call them both a rude name. At least Matt has the presence of mind to grab the dog catcher handle before the deader has a chance to do more than reach an arm toward me.

  “Crap on a holy stick!” Charlie exclaims, flinging his arms to try to dislodge some of the slime. “I don’t know if I can do that again.”

  As I tie her ankle, I have to wonder if this will really hold her or if her foot might not just fall off and leave her to roam. This thing we’re doing is smart, but it also presents a new danger. Letting deaders inside our fence is an event we’ve been fighting against for years, and now we’re actually bringing them inside.

  But the one thing that all our patrols report back consistently is that the military, or whoever they are inside those military trucks, leave places alone that are overrun with deaders. That seems to be enough for them to decide that the location doesn’t have people inside. So, we’re making sure they see deaders if they come this way. And eventually, they will.

  “Okay, got her,” I say, backing away from the deader and joining the other two outside the range of her rope. We all stand there and watch her get laboriously to her feet. She trips over her rope almost immediately, spilling herself back into the tall grass. Eventually, she rises again and strains at the edge of her rope, her arms lifted toward us as if beseeching us to come to her. Or maybe just to kill her and put her out of her misery.

  Either way, I hate the idea of this. It feels like we’re decorating our home with some sort of bizarre garden gnomes. Only, you know, the kind that will eat us if they can.

  “You sure this is going to work? What if they see her rope?” Charlie asks, watching the deader surge at the end of her line.

  Matt reaches for one of the wet cloths I’ve got waiting for us in a bucket of water and starts wiping himself down. When he makes to dip the cloth in the bucket to rinse it, I say, “No double dipping! There’s enough cloth for all of us. Keep the water clean.”

  He tosses his cloth aside and reaches for another dripping square cut from sheets and towels too worn to use for their original purpose. I hope it’s not me on laundry duty when we’re done with this job.

  While we wipe down, Matt says, “Once we get out of sight, she’ll find one of those pieces of metal and latch on. And the grass is too tall for anyone to see the rope or stake unless she wanders so much that she knocks it down. And she won’t once she finds the metal.”

  Charlie sighs, tosses his rag onto the growing pile near the bucket and says, “Only ten more to go.”

  “Ten for now,” I add.

  “Better get it over with,” Matt says, lifting the dog catcher once more. He sighs as he looks across the road toward the mini-storage where we’re getting our deaders from. There are an inexplicably high number of them inside the various storage units, along with a whole lot of empty food and water containers. Almost all of them have knife wounds. I’m guessing someone came through early on and decided they wanted all the food for themselves.

  I guess I know not to try to hide in a storage facility next time the world ends. For sure.

  *****

  I’m glad it’s not me on watch when they come. I’m not sure I would have held it together. But Charlie does well. Luckily, I’m inside the warehouse with the cages and well out of sight when Savannah runs in and says, “They’re coming.”

  I have just enough time to get into the designated hiding spot for this warehouse. I’m just unlucky that this one happens to be a ventilation room. It reminds me too much of where I hid during those long days after Sam got back into our apartment and killed all the kids except Jon and I. Even though it’s hot as hades in here, most of my sweat is from the remembered fear of that day. I can’t stand small spaces anymore and this one is both tight and familiar in a bad way.

  Even inside this room, I can hear the trucks when they come. Or maybe I feel it. It’s a rumble I can hear in the ground under my feet. It’s low and steady, somehow ominous sounding. When the noise stops, my heart almost follows suit.

  “Please, please move on,” I whisper. Sweat drips into one of my eyes and I wipe the sting away, too fearful to do much more in the way of movement.

  Tom is pretty sure they’re using infrared or some other remote sensing device from the trucks, so staying still is paramount. Between me and the road are the walls, of course, but also a big pane of glass we’ve got leaned up against the wall, plus one of those space blankets draped on a frame. I have to stay hunkered down behind it if I can. We’ve done as much as we can for Emily and the other in-betweeners, shortening her chains so that she can’t roam beyond the row of sliding glass doors we’ve propped up on frames between her cage and the exterior wall.

  But it’s all guess work. If they have something more advanced, we’re screwed. I feel bad for the kids most of all. They’re trapped in that upstairs office and have been for days. At least that office faces the interior courtyard so they can open the window, but that’s precious little in the way of consolation. They understand though. It’s terrible that they do, but I’m grateful for it.

  I don’t know how long I crouch there, but it’s long enough that my knees are screaming at me to sit down. I don’t dare do it though. I’m afraid to breathe, let alone move. Tom says movement is easier to see through IR than something that remains still. Eventually, I hear the rumbles rise and the vibration in the ground returns. They’re moving!

  I wait and wait, and when I hear footsteps approaching my hiding place, my grip on my gun tightens because I don’t know who it is. This feeling is one I’m familiar with. I’ve been through it before. All I can do is wait and see. If it’s a bad guy, I’ll shoot. If not, I won’t. I hope that’s how it goes anyway.

  Savannah taps the door and says, “It’s me. They’re gone, but they’ll have to come back this way to leave the area since it’s a dead end. Just get comfortable and stay put.”

  “Okay,” I say through the door and settle down for the wait.

  Today – Marshal the Troops

  “We have to try, Veronica. We have to,” Charlie says. “She’s our only shot.”

  Even he is betraying me, it seems. I look around at the others, all of them with their eyes intent upon me. I know none of them likes that they’ve come to this decision, but I don’t see doubt in any of their faces. And now Charlie is agreeing with them.

  “Why can’t I just give her the treatment? Make her human again?” I ask. Really, I’m almost pleading with them.

  Tom touches Charlie’s arm to hold him back so that he can speak. “Because those trucks have been sighted again. They’ve been gone for six weeks, but they’re back. And this time, there are more of them. Matt and Roger reported what looked like some sort of engineering set-up. This time they’re going to be more thorough and this time they’ll find us.”

  “But why? Why come back and look for us specifically?” I ask.

  I don’t know why I asked that, because I already know the answer. They must know we have the original drive with the nanite design on it. And now we know it works. They must know it too. If they are somehow a part of why the world got destroyed, the last thing they’ll want is for the cure to be loose somewhere.

  And that also means Princeton and Violet got found out more than likely. How else could they have figured out that we have the original drive?

  Tom doesn’t ans
wer me. He can tell I already know. He just shakes his head in sympathy. He knows Violet far better than I do, since he was with her for a long time at that hospital. And he respects her as well as likes her.

  “I’m sorry,” I say to him and he looks away.

  Matt, still dirty from his patrol and looking like he’s about to fall down from lack of sleep, breaks in and says, “I think they’ve got a demolition crew or something. I saw a whole lot of explosives in the back of one of the trucks. And they’ve got it parked far away from their camp, which makes me sure of it. And they aren’t acting like they’ve got an urgent mission or anything like that. They seem like they’re bunking in for a while. They’ve even got a fence around their camp. You don’t erect a fence like that unless you mean to stay a while.”

  I look down at my hands where they’re twisting together in my lap. I feel so helpless against all of this. If what they’re reporting is true, then we’re screwed. Eventually, they’ll find us. Our deaders out front aren’t a defense against a true building-by-building search.

  But using Emily like this. I just can’t.

  “Before I agree with anything, I want you to hear me out,” I say, looking up at the assembled group again.

  Savannah gives Gregory a look that tells me she feels like they’ve won the argument and it pisses me off, so I snap, “And no, I’m not agreeing and you haven’t won anything yet, Savannah. If I have to, I’ll get Emily and we’ll leave. She saved your life, you ungrateful bitch.”

  The gasps at my harsh words make me shut my mouth, tears coming up in my eyes. I have to look away from her hurt expression. Charlie releases my hand and I think that maybe he’s going to back away from me now too, but he shifts himself to put his arm around my waist, pulling me closer. I’m so grateful for it that I turn my head into his shoulder.

  Charlie’s voice sounds deeper and rumbly in his chest where I have my face pressed. He says, “There are a lot of ways around our situation and using Emily to try to control in-betweeners as some sort of fighting unit is not the only solution. We can run. We can leave. Even if they are starting to go through the cities, what are the odds that they’ll know who any of us are a few years from now? We could live out our entire lives if we go to the countryside and never be found. You don’t get to make decisions like this. You don’t get to decide whose life is worth something and whose isn’t.”