Between Life and Death

by Ann Christy

  The scrape of a shovel blade against the concrete shakes me out of my reverie and I turn to see Charlie holding out my shovel, a little smile on his face.

  No more dawdling. The potatoes are waiting for me.

  Today – Second in Command

  The girl—her name is Melody—is a trooper. She’s entirely okay with remaining restrained, only she doesn’t want to be near the other in-betweeners or Luke. She says they smell bad, not in the odiferous sort of way, but in the negative person kind of way. Apparently, they repel her.

  And, apparently, the feeling is mutual. Luke says she confuses him and the other in-betweeners get riled up so much that even Emily can’t calm them. Though, if I’m honest with myself, I don’t think she’s trying. I think she’s doing the opposite. She doesn’t like Melody and I’m pretty sure she’s purposefully making the in-betweeners upset when she’s around.

  I asked Luke about it, but he just started crying. As in actually crying. He says he’s very confused.

  For today, we don’t have to worry about whatever rivalry is going on between Emily and Melody. Melody is going off to see if the in-betweeners that were once her family, friends, and neighbors will ignore her like they do Luke, or if she can in some way still influence their actions.

  Personally, I think it’s cruel to do that. What if she sees her mother or something? But she’s up for it and actually told me to “chill” when I raised objections. This is so weird.

  While they’re gone, I’ve got a duty to perform as well. And I think it’s one Emily is not going to like one bit. I have to convince her not to be mean to Melody and stop riling up the other in-betweeners, if that’s what she’s doing.

  When I enter the warehouse and get close to the cages, Emily is already waiting, her messy braids framing her face and making her look younger than she is. Even as an in-betweener, she’s pretty adorable.

  “Hey, Emily. We need to have a talk,” I say as I get near the cage.

  She plops down on her little nest and lets her shoulders slump a little. I have to stifle a smile when I hear her mutter, “Uh oh.”

  *****

  Waiting for the return of Melody and the rest is made more difficult when our patrol returns with news that the military group is systematically going through every house in a suburban area on the other side of town. The whole city is surrounded by endless suburbs, so it’s not as if they’re next door, but if they’re going to kill everyone they find, then we have to think of any others that may be hidden out there.

  Melody’s group would have been fine if not for the military looking for us and our hard drive.

  I wish I knew what their motivations really were and why they were so intent on it. Are they simply a group that decided that since the worst had happened, they want it to be completed? Or are they in some way involved with the nanite problem from the beginning, forcing this new world on us for reasons of their own? I don’t know and can’t think of any way I could ever find out, but no matter what their reasons, they aren’t stopping. Finding the drive is just too important, I suppose.

  If you’re someone intent on world destruction, I’m guessing a drive with the cure on it would be an issue.

  For now, our patrols aren’t going back out again. They were stuck for over a day before an opportunity to withdraw presented itself, and we can’t risk anyone getting caught by them. No matter how well-intentioned anyone might be, we all know that anyone can be made to give up information with enough pressure. Or torture.

  It’s dark by the time they return, the truck making enough noise for alarm as it rumbles up the drive. Melody hops down on her own, her hands and feet chained, but otherwise unencumbered. In the glare of the headlights, she looks better than she did when she left, the scabs on her gashes already dark brown and her bruises fading to a bluish-green. She may be clear of nanites, but they did enough work on her before we cured her to give her an excellent boost.

  She looks sad and tired, but otherwise normal. Tom takes her by the elbow and actually asks her to walk with him when he returns her to her new cage, a hastily erected structure that isn’t nearly as strong as the others.

  Her red hair is still clean, but enough of it is escaping her ponytail to make it annoying, and she brushes it away from her face with her chained hands.

  “How did it go?” I ask, following along. Almost everyone is here, except for those on watch in various places, but they all seem reluctant to speak.

  Melody turns her head, but keeps walking. She offers a tentative smile and says, “It wasn’t that bad. Bad, but…well…you know.”

  I can’t imagine, really. But I nod anyway.

  Tom comes to a halt, keeping a hand around Melody’s arm, but not gripping at all tightly. He’s acting more like an escort than a guard. That’s good.

  “I’ll give everyone a full rundown in a bit, but just to give you the bottom line, so to speak, it did go well. They ignored her, or in the case of those that came near, they showed no aggression. And when asked, she was able to clear a space around her. I think we’re a go.”

  His words are like ice down my back. We’re a go. He says it so casually, but he must feel it too. We’re really going to do this. We’re really going to turn a bunch of in-betweeners loose into the world and hope they can be made to attack a specific target.

  We must be crazy.

  *****

  “She’ll make an excellent second in command for Emily,” Tom says as he wolfs down his food. All of them missed lunch and dinner today, so they’re making up for it by demolishing an entire pot of stew.

  “But can she command?” asks Gregory. Like me, he appears skeptical.

  Tom makes a motion somewhere between a nod and a head-shake, a perfect balance between yes and no.

  Roger scoops out some more stew into his bowl and says, “She can, but she doesn’t really know how to do it. Not like Emily. We’ll have to do a little training, but the key is that she did it without even knowing that she was doing it. I went up to the fence during one of the musical interludes, and she kept them away from me as well. I didn’t tell her to specifically. I just asked her to keep them away.”

  I’m obviously concerned about Emily, but I’m becoming less so and that concerns me, too. I’ve got lots of concern going on. The idea of attacking the military rather than simply waiting for them to find and eliminate us is starting to worm its way inside me.

  But Emily isn’t gone from my thoughts. I ask, “How do we get them to work together? How can we be sure to keep Emily safe? And how is Emily going to get the others to obey when they aren’t locked up?”

  “We test it, just like we test everything,” Tom answers between bites. We look at each other for a moment, him waiting for me to argue and me trying to find some reason to argue.

  I look away first.

  Today – Quiet Before the Storm

  This week has passed simultaneously too rapidly and too slowly. Endless waiting punctuated by moments of frantic fear. Which is sort of just like regular life now, but with a little extra fright thrown in for good measure.

  Emily isn’t here. Nor are Luke or the other in-betweeners or Melody. For the first time in months I’ve got no dangerous human-eater to take care of and keep safe. The warehouse is silent, the squeak of a mouse somewhere in a corner the only sound I can hear.

  As I sit in the warehouse—the light outside so bright it turns the open doors into glowing white squares that are hard to look at—I try to work through my conflicted feelings. I can’t deny that I’m relieved not to have to care for any in-betweeners, even Emily. I’m also fearful for her and worried about her. I’m starting to get used to the idea of her fighting for us and I don’t know if that’s a betrayal.

  Is that selfish? Deep down inside, I’ve had this nagging worry that I’ll either have to care for her like this forever or kill her at some point. Is that secret part of me simply relieved because I won’t have to make the choice?

  I don’t know. I love her, b
ut she’s different. She’s not human and is a predator of humans as things stand now. Am I simply starting to accept that and that’s why I feel relieved that they’re gone?

  “Knock, knock,” Charlie calls from one of the open doors.

  I squint at the light and see his vague outline. “Hey,” I call back.

  He strolls over and watching him do that is like the best TV show ever. He grins that sideways grin at me when he nears, squatting next to me so he can look at me properly.

  “You doing okay, V?” he asks in that soft, husky voice of his.

  I nod, but I’m guessing he knows I’m lying by the way he sighs and pivots to plop down next to me.

  “Okay, I’m not fine, but I am fine-ish,” I admit reluctantly.

  He tucks some of my fly-away hair behind my ear and kisses my cheek. “I know. It sucks, but also doesn’t. Sort of like that?”

  “Yeah. That’s pretty much it,” I sigh.

  We’re silent for a moment, the squeak of the mouse rising in agitation and then falling again as it moves on to something else. Outside, I hear the bang of gear. Boxes hitting metal, Savannah’s directive shouts at whoever she’s bossing around, Maribelle’s quickly cut-off whine.

  “Are you going to come out and say goodbye?” Charlie asks. “They’re supposed to leave soon. Jon is still sleeping, but it should be you that wakes him.”

  “Actually, they said they were leaving at first light,” I say and smirk.

  He laughs quietly and says, “As if you don’t know what it’s like to try and get Maribelle to do what you want.”

  I laugh too, thinking of how obstinate she is when she doesn’t like what’s going on. She’s a pistol. And now she’s leaving, along with my Jon. My boy who isn’t my boy. When I rose to come here and think, Charlie and he were still sleeping, Jon tucked up into Charlie’s chest on our pallet. I’d wanted to get back in bed, to cuddle with them and sleep all day.

  But today is the day it seems I get to lose the last of those I love. Except Charlie. Thank goodness for Charlie.

  “He’ll be back,” Charlie says, wrapping me in his arms as I break down. “It will be safer for them to go. They can hide there and wait for all this to be over.”

  “And if it doesn’t end? If we don’t win?” I ask between sobs.

  “Then he’ll get a chance to be safe far away from here. To live a life,” he whispers in my ear.

  They’re going to a small enclave we found outside of town a long time ago, but never secured because it’s not big enough for all of us. It’s an old property, the kind with brick garden walls spiked with broken bottle glass that’s been worn away into shards. The house isn’t in great shape, but the garden walls and fences more than make up for it, and the hurricane shutters on the lower floor seal the deal. They can hide there for a while in safety. It’s a remote place and perfect.

  But it’s not with me. And they’ll have three kids with just five adults to protect them. And Gloria is one of those five, with her growing belly and constant need to pee. If we don’t come for them after a while, they’ll move on, trying to find a place far from this city where they can survive and distance themselves from anything to do with us and our hard drive. They’ve got two dozen doses of the cure with them but after they use them, no one will be the wiser.

  “If he survives at all,” I say, my fears overloading me.

  “He will,” Charlie says, hugging me tight. “Let’s go wake him up. Let him see you smile.”

  *****

  Without the children, the next two days drag on, tense and far too quiet. Everyone who is left is busy working, including me. We’re harvesting everything that can be harvested, packing plastic crates with goods and laying them out in a warehouse, so that they can be quickly tossed up onto the back of the truck if the need arises. Cleaning weapons, checking and packing ammunition, and binding up crossbow bolts into neat bundles are just a few of the tasks.

  Charlie and I are making pokers. Lots and lots of pokers. We may actually run out of good kitchen knives, we’re making so many of them. But really, can a person have too many sharp, pokey things when dealing with a world like this? I think not.

  Princeton comes in, the squealing wheels of his overloaded cart announcing his presence. “Do we actually need this much water ready to go? It does rain around here, you know,” he says, struggling to get the cart to a stop before offloading his many water containers to the floor where our stuff is laid out.

  Charlie snorts and says, “Yes, we do. Be glad you missed this summer. The stink around here was worse than a barrel full of in-betweeners. I want water.”

  I kick at Charlie and laugh.

  “Right. Got it,” Princeton says, emptying his cart. When he puts the last two containers on the ground he says, “No stink is good.” He stretches his back out with a groan, then waves and takes his squealing cart back out of the warehouse.

  “We’ll need more water than that,” I say. Here at the warehouse, we’ve had barrels and more barrels for catching water from downspouts. They don’t know what it’s like when all you’ve got is buckets laid out on a roof. Water is much harder to come by than people think it is.

  Then again, Charlie was on the move with Savannah for months on end. He probably does know.

  He tosses down a finished poker and grabs another broom handle to start a new one before answering. When he does, he looks up and winks, “Yeah, lots more. Especially for you to brush your teeth with in the mornings.”

  Aww. Only someone who truly loved me would tease me about morning breath.

  *****

  The truck rolls up right on time. I look inside the cab, perhaps hoping I’ll see Jon inside, but of course he’s not there. The truck dropped them off and then went right back to the suburban enclave to pick up everyone doing the latest round of testing. Hopefully, the final tests.

  Instead of Jon, I see tired and dirty faces. But they also look satisfied, like a job has been well done. That’s good. I hold open the truck door so that Matt can jump down, and when he does, he claps me on the back and says, “This is going to work.” With another slap on my back and a grin, he runs toward the warehouses.

  In the back of the truck, Emily is tied but her eyes are closed and she has the relaxed posture of someone sleeping. Melody and Luke are just gazing off, her looking a little sad and him as vacant as ever.

  “Hey Emily. You awake?” I call out and knock on the bed of the truck. She may not sleep, but she’s making a good show of it now.

  Her eyes open and she grins at me, but she does look tired. That’s confirmed when she yawns hugely, something I’ve rarely seen her do since becoming an in-betweener. After giving me a nice long look at her back teeth, she smacks her lips and says, “Nize day. Gut tahm out dere.”

  Nice day. Good time out there.

  I’ll just bet it was.

  “I’ll bet you’re tired. Ready for some food and a nap?”

  Melody gives me a look, like she’s not quite getting why I’m talking like this with Emily, but I ignore her. I shuffle aside so that Gregory, Tom, and Roger can start getting them down. Luke and Melody come without complaint, though it’s only then that I notice that we’re missing one of our in-betweeners.

  “Where’s the other one?” I ask.

  Tom shakes his head ruefully and almost laughs when he says, “He’s running around half-naked in the enclave. We decided to leave him and see what happens.”

  I sort of feel like they borrowed something of mine and then lost it, which is stupid, but there it is. I only grunt in response, but there must be something in my grunt because Tom turns around and asks, “Do you still need him?”

  He knows I don’t, so I just roll my eyes and he chuckles at me. While he goes through the tedious process of unchaining and re-chaining the in-betweener and Emily, he says, “I thought of Gloria, but honestly, I think she’s satisfied as things stand. Their punishment just keeps going and going.”

  “Yeah,” I say. That makes me w
onder how they are in their new place.

  Does Jon miss me already or does he simply accept it because that’s how things are? Is Maribelle giving her mom hell? There’s one thing that Maribelle doesn’t like and that’s change without her input. Is Laura wondering if she’s been left again or is she looking at this as yet another continuation of her long sleep-over game with Maribelle and Jon?

  I sigh and Emily lets out a soothing noise in response. When I look up at her, now standing as her chains are re-arranged, she has a sympathetic look on her face. It’s odd to see it, but I know it’s in response to scent. We humans really do radiate our misery, our concerns, and our happiness. And the in-betweeners can tell what it is, even as other humans remain oblivious to it. That doesn’t seem quite fair.

  I move back as Emily clanks her way to the edge and jumps down with the easy confidence of an in-betweener. “I ready. Ungry,” she says.

  We start walking toward the warehouse, her dog catcher held tightly in Tom’s hand, while Gregory takes the other. Roger follows with his weapon at the ready. It’s such a bizarre stroll to make.

  “I’ll bet you are. I’ve got a bunch of birds waiting for you. You want to try to eat some tomato soup today?” I know it’s probably useless to ask, but I have to do it. I worry she’s suffering from malnutrition with all that meat and no veggies.

  “Gah,” she says, making a face.

  “Yeah, blech,” I say and she laughs.

  Today – Last Look

  The dawn is bright and beautiful, full of puffy clouds and a certain something in the air that tells me that fall is really coming, just around the corner. It’s gorgeous and it might be the last day of our lives. Is that the trade-off? I get one last glorious day and then…what?

  “You should get some sleep. We’ve got a long night ahead,” Charlie says from behind me. I didn’t even hear him open the roof access. Some watch I am. I must be more tired than I thought.

  “I will,” I say, patting the roof next to me. “Come and watch.”