Between Life and Death

by Ann Christy

  Inside the fence, most of the floodlights have been tipped over on their mobile platforms, making the light crazy and disordered. Many have burst in the falls, but others still have bulbs blaring light to the sides or upward. There’s almost no shooting now, just in-betweener growls and screams. A harsh banging sound reaches me and I see a group of in-betweeners around a panel truck, hammering with their fists at the sides. There’s no gunfire, so I’m guessing that whoever made it inside is out of ammunition or never had any.

  Even if the in-betweeners can’t get to them, they’re enclosed and trapped. We can get to them when the time comes. I almost feel sorry for whoever is in there. What must all that noise sound like from inside?

  Emily keeps up her sucking, followed by her pushing the contents of her mouth into the hole in Matt’s body. She reaches in a few more times and grabs more of the body’s contents, but she’s focused on what she’s doing. I finally understand what she’s up to. It makes sense. She’s forcing more nanites directly into his wound. Perhaps it will help. Who knows?

  I can’t see Matt well enough, so I look around once more, then screw the red lens off my flashlight. When I turn it on, the light is bright and harsh. Emily’s eyes slam closed at the light, but I see her and wish that I hadn’t. I can’t unsee all that blood.

  Matt is pale, far too pale. He looks at me in the light and says, “I don’t want to be like that. If I can’t be myself, I don’t want it. Do you understand? You end it. Promise me.”

  His voice is ragged, growing weaker and hoarser, but it’s no less intense for being so. I know what he means. He doesn’t want to be like Luke if we cure him. He would rather die.

  “I promise,” I say and kiss his forehead. “I promise.”

  Emily throws down her latest wad of whatever organ she’s dug out of the dead in-betweener and looks up at Matt, sniffing and blowing the air out of her nose with force to clear the way for more scents. She says, “He dai.”

  He die.

  “Oh, shit,” Matt says, his voice shaking. His hand finds my leg and he whispers, “Tell Gregory he’s not an asshole.”

  Then that’s it. He grunts in pain, his body shaking, then he goes still in swift stages. The stillness travels from his extremities inward until finally, his chest is motionless along with the rest of him. Emily hits me on the chest again, and points to Matt’s face.

  “Brief,” she orders.

  I don’t understand her, so she pushes air in and out of her mouth rapidly and says again, “Brief!”

  Breathe.

  That’s not a good idea. When he wakes, he’ll bite my face off. I push a few breaths into his slack mouth, then back away. Emily is pushing on his chest, but she hits me again, so I lean back in to breathe into Matt’s body once more.

  I’m about to quit, the seconds passing as I breathe and the chances of him coming back and removing my lips increasing with each one that goes by. I don’t have to though, because Emily grabs me by the hair and tosses me backward. I fall onto the messy in-betweener, my hand sinking deep into his body. As I disentangle myself, Emily growls, “Go!”

  Matt twitches, his arms jerking in violent movements. His head pushes back and his neck cords stand out with the strain of it. I scramble backward, rising to my feet and running for the gate as fast as my feet will take me. The last I see of them is Emily lifting Matt’s shoulder and turning his head toward the dead human she dragged out there.

  So that’s what he was for.

  Melody is huddled in a crumpled ball near the gate, but she did wrap the chain around the bars and hang the lock through two links. It’s not locked, but it would take only a quick click to make it so. She may be grief-stricken, but she’s thinking.

  We wait there, listening to the terrible sounds of Matt as he eats. The grunts, squeals, and cracking noises make me want to slam my head into the ground until I pass out just so that I won’t hear it anymore. Between those sounds I hear occasional strains of humming from Emily. She’s certainly not wasting any time making him her own.

  But I’ll remember my promise to him. No matter what.

  Inside, it’s all over except the eating, with the exception of the panel truck. There are no more human screams, no more gunshots, and no more excited in-betweeners keening out their pursuit of a meal. I see double flashes of light from the trees, signals that sign out the “all-clear” from the shooting positions.

  Everyone is supposed to meet up by the gate for a head count when it’s all over, so I know we’ll be having company soon. We all know that the possibility of one of us dying is real and that any death would mean a newly made in-betweener outside the fence, so they’ll realize soon that we didn’t signal. Everyone is supposed to approach carefully, each posted position joining up with the next so that the group is larger as it comes near the gate.

  An in-betweener scream sounds out, then three quick shots, then nothing. It came from the trees. Who else have we lost?

  Our attack was timed for the deepest part of the night. Our plan called for it not just to catch them at their least aware, but also because dawn wouldn’t be far off when the fighting was done. I dig out my pocket-watch and see that it’s been at least two hours since we unloaded the in-betweeners. It’s strange that so much time has passed. It felt like it lasted a few minutes, but also like it lasted an entire lifetime.

  Battle is odd that way. It skews time and perception in ways I don’t think I’ll ever be able to explain to anyone else. I wonder if it’s that way for everyone.

  Melody jars me from my thoughts with a hand on my leg, her grip tight and painful. She’s looking toward the place where Matt and Emily are. She whispers, “They’re coming. Open the gate. Get behind it.”

  Her flat tone sends chills up my spine and my fingers are clumsy on the chain. I see them approaching, Matt a little hunched, as if he’s not himself. Which he isn’t, of course. I pull back the gate and wedge myself tightly between the gate and the fence, as far from the opening as I can get and still be behind the gate.

  As they approach the light, I see Emily is supporting Matt. His steps are faltering and unsure, hers strong even with the weight of him. As they pass through the gate, Emily turns her bloody face toward me and just looks at me. I can only return the look, our eyes on each other. I can’t read what her expression means, but I can tell she’s still in there. This episode of wild in-betweener behavior hasn’t taken her entirely away from me.

  Matt never looks in my direction. His gaze is focused ahead toward the carnage in the camp. He’s not sniffing yet—I think it takes time for that part of the brain to be changed—but you don’t have to have a super-human sense of smell to catch the scent of that much blood. He looks eager.

  I slam the gate closed and wind the chain around the posts as quickly as I can once they’re clear. I don’t even wait to make sure I still have the key when I snap the lock closed. I have to pull Melody up, because she’s huddled so tightly into herself on the ground. But once she’s up, I take off for the trees, waiting for the others to show up and for dawn to reveal exactly what we’ve done.

  Today – The Last Day, The First Day

  We lost Jeremy. Another Jeremy gone. Even though he’s not my Jeremy, I feel his loss hard. It’s like the world has decided that nice boys named Jeremy are not to survive.

  Roger is heart-broken and I can see it. I think he’s aged ten years in the past few hours. They were at their shooting position together, and it was he that fired those shots I heard after the in-betweener scream. It was he who had to hammer Jeremy’s head into mush after those shots. If the worst happened, we were to try and save the person as an in-betweener so we could administer the cure. But not if the damage was too bad, not if it was obvious there was no chance of recovery. Jeremy must have been like that. Poor Roger. How do you get over that?

  Roger felt about Jeremy the same way I feel about Jon. A son who isn’t technically a son. Those sorts of technicalities mean nothing now, though. We take our families as th
ey arrive and become family. There’s no less love for the lack of biological connection.

  We’re all adopted now.

  We huddle at a spot near the place Matt died. The presence of the two torn bodies there masks the blood he shed, and we’re far enough from it that it just looks like bodies. I’m not making a point of explaining exactly what happened there. We’ve got time until dawn, and we’ll wait here for it. Maybe we should spread back out and watch the fences for escapees, but the in-betweeners—those that have survived anyway—are busy with the feast of all feasts inside. They don’t seem interested in escape.

  When I tell Gregory the words his brother left for him, he smiles sadly and says, “I knew he still loved me.”

  I don’t know what makes me do it, but I ask, “Why was he so angry with you?”

  Gregory looks at me and even in the dark, I see the gleam of the tears in his eyes when he says, “I killed our mother. And later, our father.”

  “Oh,” I say. It’s all I can say. I know there has to be a good reason for it. Gregory isn’t a bad person and took on the protection of a woman with a small child, so it can’t be that he wanted to move fast.

  “She had a heart condition. She was dying. And she had plenty of them inside her.”

  He says it in a soft voice, a voice filled with pain and regret. I understand though. I’m sure that too many people that have survived to this point have had to make similar terrible choices. I don’t say anything. I only wrap my free arm around him and squeeze, trying to press comfort into his body from mine.

  As the dawn pushes back the darkness, he raises the binoculars to his face and searches continuously, no doubt looking for his brother. His sharply indrawn breath tells me the moment he does and I squeeze tighter, so he knows that I’m here for him.

  He lowers the glasses and now I can see the tracks of tears through the dirt on his face. But he smiles a tremulous smile at me all the same and says, “Thank you for helping him.”

  I don’t even know what to say to that and I’m very glad I’m spared having to say anything by Tom. He’s says, “Okay, it looks like we’ve got clean up at that panel truck. And we’ve got to corral all of those in-betweeners out there. Veronica, Charlie, you’re on.”

  Adrenaline rushes through me at his final words, flipping my stomach upside-down and making my arm tighten around Gregory. Charlie, who is standing quietly by my other side, lets his arm drop from my waist and takes my hand. “Ready?” he asks.

  I nod and we go to the gate, Tom and Roger just behind us. Tom has the second key for the gate, but I hand my key to Roger. If I have to go inside, I can’t go with it.

  “Emily!” I call out. Charlie does the same, cupping his hands around his mouth to focus the sound.

  Roger looks through his binoculars while we take turns calling, then says, “There!” He points and I see her. She’s sitting up against one of the remaining floodlight platforms, her legs splayed and head bowed.

  “Is she alive?” I ask, my hands gripping the chain link in anxiety. Please, don’t let her have died after all this.

  Even as Roger looks, I see her stand, but she’s too far away to make out details. Roger keeps looking, and eventually he says, “I think she’s okay. It’s hard to tell with all the…uh…all the blood.”

  She walks toward us and she looks weary to me, like she’s carrying a heavy weight. Another in-betweener rises from whatever he was eating and starts running in our direction, a scream ripping from his throat. Her answering cry stops him in his tracks and as she reaches him, she pauses. I can’t hear anything, but I’ll bet she’s humming him back into peacefulness again.

  All I can think is, I wonder if the pee smell has worn off?

  She works her magic and starts toward us again, stopping about ten paces from the gate. I look her over, trying to see if she’s injured, but there’s just no way to tell. She’s absolutely covered in blood and dirt. Her hair is a wild, black tangle and her dark shift weighs heavy on her from being soaked in blood. But she’s standing and she’s listening. She’s certainly fed enough to be calm.

  “Emily, we need to get to the ones hidden in that truck,” I say, pointing to the panel truck with the in-betweeners all around it, still banging on the sides and trying to get to whoever is inside.

  She looks that direction, then back at me.

  “We need them alive. Can you get your people into that other truck and keep them inside?” I point to another panel truck, this one standing wide open, the door at the back rolled up so that some boxes and barrels are visible. If they got inside, it would be a tight fit, but I think it’s doable. If she can manage it, that is.

  She looks, then sort of slumps a little. She says, “Tahred. Zo tahred.”

  Tired. So tired.

  My heart breaks into a million pieces.

  “I know, Emily. I know you’re tired. But we need to get to those people. We have to find out where they came from. We need this,” I say, a note of pleading coming into my voice that I can’t help. I grip the links on the fence so hard my fingers hurt and add, “Please.”

  Charlie puts his hand over mine on the fence and says, “Emily. We have to get inside and get those people, but we don’t want to hurt your people to do it.”

  That gets her attention and her head snaps upward, her gaze locking on Charlie’s. “Mahn. Mine!”

  It’s the perfect approach and I say, “Yes, they’re yours. Keep them safe! Get them into that truck and then pull the door down. We’ll let you back out. I promise.”

  I can only hope she understands all that. She seems to be considering it, so maybe she does.

  She turns to go and then stops, looking back over her shoulder. There’s a clear warning in her voice when she says, “Mine!”

  “Yes. Yours,” I say.

  *****

  It takes almost two hours, if my pocket watch is keeping time properly, for her to get them all gathered and into the truck. At first, every time she leads one there and then goes to get another, the one inside comes back out. Eventually, she seems to tire of that game, because she doesn’t bother putting them in the truck. She merely gathers each one and it follows her and she moves to the next. They follow her like ducklings and it’s creepy as hell.

  Only one in-betweener gives her any trouble, screaming in her face when she lifts him away from the body he’s feasting on. She screams back and he cowers a little, but he doesn’t follow until she starts striking him on the head, her arms swings reminding me of the way apes pound the ground, hard, heavy, and graceless. I can’t hear anything less than a yell, but after she’s done hitting him, she leans close and I feel certain she’s humming at him, urging him with gentleness now that he’s been cowed.

  At the truck, she gets them all up in a more or less orderly manner, pushing the last few in further as they surge back toward the opening. Then she climbs up herself. She pauses for a moment, one arm lifted to the strap used to lower the door. Through my binoculars, I see her looking in my direction.

  That gaze and her motionless stance say a lot to me. I take it to mean, “Keep your promise.”

  I yell out as loud as I can, “I will let you out!”

  At that, she yanks the strap down and the door rolls closed with a bang.

  The moment that happens, Tom turns the key in the lock and unwinds the chain as fast as he can. Even before the gate is all the way open, we’re off and running. Gregory and a few others station themselves at the gate, ready in case there are escapees from either panel truck.

  Charlie is, by far, the fastest of us. He heads for the truck where Emily and her in-betweeners are. I’m half convinced the door will come up and spill in-betweeners out before he can get to it, but it doesn’t. The door shimmies a little as the in-betweeners inside grow restless, but he gets to the door and slams the lever that locks the door closed before anything more happens.

  I see him search around on the ground for a minute, then he stands up with a rifle and stuffs the barrel of it
into the lever, locking it closed even more securely. Everyone else has their head’s on a swivel, searching as they run for any stray in-betweeners or humans. We all watched through binoculars and saw none, but that doesn’t mean there couldn’t be one that’s injured and hidden from our sight by the tents or debris.

  At the panel truck where the in-betweeners were clustered, Tom stops and puts his fingers to his lips as the rest of us roll up. I know what we’re going to do, but he’s just making sure. We split into two groups and stand to the sides of the truck, where no one inside will be able to see us when the door opens.

  I see Tom take a deep breath. Then he calls out, “Any survivors inside? The area is clear!”

  There’s nothing but silence for a moment, then a muffled voice replies, “Are the Revived down?”

  “All down or secured! I can’t find any other survivors. Who’s in there?” Tom says, sounding very military to me.

  There are some clumping sounds inside the truck as whoever is in there moves about. A clank sounds and then the door rolls up quickly.

  “Who the hell are you?” I hear a gruff voice ask.

  Tom points his gun up at whoever is standing there and says, “The guy in charge, that’s who.”

  Today – Herding Cats

  I’d rather not hear what’s going on with the questioning. While the man who was in the truck calls himself a Colonel, I’m pretty sure real military colonels aren’t that fat or that arrogant. He seems more like a politician to me, the way he keeps trying to manipulate anyone who questions him.

  So, since that didn’t work, they’re going for more direct methods of getting information. He’s been screaming off and on since they started. Shockingly, it’s Lizzy who’s doing the questioning with Roger. She’s so slight and shy that I wouldn’t have expected her to be the one to do that sort of questioning.