The Book of Wanda, Volume Two of the Seventeen Trilogy

by Mark D. Diehl

  6

  Somewhere in the Zone

  Wanda was guided by five people, two of them with fingers digging into her shoulders, shoving her roughly this way and that, through so many convoluted turns she lost track of where she was relative to the intersection of 6th and G.

  She now found herself in an unlikely place: an old strip mall, one with glass still in the windows and bright, fluorescent electric lights inside. Three of her guides stayed outside and two escorted her in through one of the many unbroken glass exterior doors. They spoke at a normal speaking volume but gave the impression of shouting.

  “Judee Bayar!” they called.

  Wanda realized the cavernous room was full of beds. Some people had longneck bottles hanging above them, sealed with plastic and wax, with tubes coming down and connecting to arms.

  A hospital!

  A woman who had been tending a patient in the corner stood up and made a kind of bowing motion with her knees together and her hands on her thighs. The guides brought Wanda toward her and the woman took several quick steps to shorten the trip for them.

  “New arrival,” one of the guides said, speaking in the same creepily quiet voice as had been used by the Horde members who’d challenged her. They released her and turned, exiting the building again without a look back.

  “Hi,” whispered the woman. Her voice seemed slightly less creepy than those of the others who had spoken. “Where did you work?”

  “Amelix,” Wanda said. Her voice betrayed her anxiety.

  The woman nodded. “I’m Judee. Come with me.” She headed toward a door off to the side, almost running.

  Wanda followed as quickly as she could, given her level of astonishment and terror. They went through some swinging doors into what might once have been a storeroom but now contained surgical equipment. “It’s a bit dark in here, but the light can only be used when there’s a surgery. I think we can see each other well enough,” Judee said. Her smile was clearly forced, appearing almost as if she were holding it in place with her fingers. She put a palm on Wanda’s shoulder, too stiffly to be comforting. “I can see you’re feeling confused and stressed.” Wanda nodded. “What’s your name?”

  “Wanda,” she said, proud that she’d managed to speak without vomiting.

  “I’m sure you’ve figured out that names are a big deal around here,” Judee said. “Someone gave you a list when you left Amelix, obviously. I don’t know why they do that, but they always do. Every department in every organization keeps a list of its own Departed.”

  Wanda would never get used to thinking of herself that way, as Departed.

  “Amelix, in the labs, right?” Judee asked. Wanda nodded. “Just like me. Coach V has been taking on women for this role from our labs since the beginning. We get men, too, but Coach is even harder on them and most either leave right away or kill themselves. Of course, some of them just die. That’s a pretty common thing, here, just plain dying.” Judee gestured out toward all the patients, then rubbed her eyes.

  “Coach says our science backgrounds make us better at following her orders.” She shrugged, looking surprisingly defeated. “Good thing someone gave you that list, in any case,” Judee said. “That’s how the Horde screens people who wander up. If you don’t have a connection to at least one person here, we can’t be sure you worked in the CBD, and if you didn’t work in the CBD, you’re not one of us.” Judee’s eyes locked on Wanda’s. “If a name on your list matches someone who is still alive here, that person becomes your mentor, teaching you how to survive. You apprentice under them to learn whatever job they have.”

  Someone who is still alive here. Judee was at the bottom. The entire list is now dead, except for her.

  Wanda couldn’t bring herself to say anything at all.

  “You’ll work here with me,” Judee said. “I’m your mentor and your boss. It’s like a job and marriage. You do everything I tell you, always, without question, right away, just like I did for my mentor when she was still alive. Of course I am required to do the same for our boss, Coach V. You’ll meet her soon, Coach V. She’s… mean. And she’s strong, and incredibly demanding and…well, I guess it’s obvious you’ll have to do everything she says, too. That’ll be a lot. But with you joining us, that makes it easier for everyone. There are five of us: myself, Sula, Chi Sun, and Piyumi, plus you now, Wanda. You’ll get to know us.” She closed her eyes and exhaled sharply, seeming to fake a laugh. “You’ll get to know us more intimately than you can possibly imagine, she’ll make sure of that.” Her eyes opened again. “We’re all women, of course. You’ll know why soon enough.”

  “So…I’m going to be a nurse?” Wanda asked. She recognized the incredulousness in her voice but was powerless to change it. At least the volume was as low as everyone else spoke around here. “In this hospital?”

  Judee’s smile was so sad Wanda felt her own eyes welling up as much as Judee’s. “Don’t ask questions. It’s easier if you just accept. Asking questions here is bad, okay? Don’t ever, ever do it again. But no, dear. You’re a slave. Your choice, now and for the rest of your life, will either be to do what you’re told, or die. She won’t kill you, but if you displease her she’ll kick you out of here.” She sniffed forcefully as if to bolster herself. “No job means you’re out of the Horde, just like it meant you were out of the CBD. But the good news is that while we are part of the Horde, Coach isn’t. We live right on the edge of the territory because Coach insists upon treating everyone who comes in the door. Even so, about eighty percent of our patients come from the Horde. You’ll meet so many people working here. Because our job is medicine, we need to see the body in order to treat it, and we need to talk with people to learn what’s wrong with them. Life in the Horde gets lonely, as you can imagine. Everyone stays silent so the special words can work; it’s like an alarm, and they all have to be ready to hear it and respond. Here, lots of people come in and out, usually thrilled to talk to you…or anyone.” She gave a tight smile that quickly melted into expressionlessness. She blinked, steeled herself, and smiled again.

  “Because we’re outside the regular group and we work together to treat Hordesmen, our rules are looser than theirs,” Judee said. “We can flush waste, for example, instead of carting it to the edge of the territory to scare away those who might wander in except for the smell. Or at least we could flush waste if we didn’t use everything coming out of every patient. Everything can be of use in the labs, like for petri dish media or extracts of various chemicals. Anyway, we can talk to each other, which is wonderful, though it can only be about work, and we still have to use the quietest functional voice.”

  She paused again and her face went blank. Wanda suspected that Judee’s habitual state was expressionless and empty. “Also, we are able to mind our tasks by ourselves without being subject to constant monitoring by everyone around us.” She swallowed. “That’s a big one.” Her head nodded slowly. “And we’re not obligated to swarm.”

  Wanda blinked, and even that action felt like it was in slow motion. “Swarm?”

  “The Horde of the Departed exists for security,” Judee said. “We’re all safer inside than we would have been outside. None of us are the kind who can make it on our own out here, so we have to watch each other’s backs. For that, we pay a price. The way we survive is by using our only resource: human beings who are predisposed to cooperate and acknowledge a hierarchical structure. You saw them use the special words, right? Don’t say them, ever. Using those special words when we’re not being invaded will bring the same fate upon you that they would upon an invader. But you saw what happens, right? I heard it right before you showed up. Did you try to push past your questioner?”

  Wanda nodded.

  “And after the words and finger pointing, you probably stopped and listed names, right? That’s also what most do. If you hadn’t, all those who’d been pointing fingers would have run to you and beaten you to death. Most of the time when that happens it’s just some poor fool who wande
red into the wrong place, but occasionally it’s a group of Fiends with machine guns. When it’s Fiends, two-thirds of that first wave can get cut down. But others do reach the invaders and pummel them, and the ones who pointed fingers from farther back come running up to take the place of anyone who already rushed forward. At the physical center of the Horde are those with the most experience here, and all the weapons the Horde has collected. As swarms occur, weapons are accumulated, and now some of the Horde is armed. For most, the swarm is the most important duty there is here, and failure to participate brings an automatic death by swarm. But we don’t have to do that here at the clinic, because we belong to Coach V.”

  Wanda looked away, facing the floor but focused on nothing. “We belong …”

  Judee’s strong fingers gripped Wanda’s chin, tilting it up again. “We belong to Coach V. Never forget that. Coach V’s will is our will, and that is the way it is. She’ll tell you herself, but you might as well know what she believes: She’s responsible for every life here, and that means she needs complete control. When mistakes are made, people die. It’s better to let her be responsible.”

  Judee’s smile was so sad Wanda began sobbing. “Just remember, Wanda,” she said, patting her gently on the back. “It’s better than what they call life inside the Horde proper.” Judee placed her fingers against her forehead as if trying to massage away a headache, her Golden knuckles whitening as she pressed.

  “You’ll work with patients,” Judee said. “But a lot of what you do initially will be back there, in the lab and storeroom.” She gestured to a small door at the back of the room with a dim light showing underneath it. “We make almost everything we use. There are a dozen strains of modified bacteria we use to produce human antibodies, though by far the one we use most is the syphilis one. We’re the biggest manufacturer of sterilized syphilis antibodies in the Zone. You’ll be turning blood and stool samples into nutrient suspensions for some of the antibody strains, as well as doing everything that’s required to support the drug-producing strains, distilling sterile water from urine and collecting urea from the remaining solids, sterilizing instruments, cataloguing stocks. Pretty much all the behind-the-scenes stuff that keeps this place running, is what you’ll start off with.”

  At least some of those activities sounded like the kinds of work Wanda had been trained for in her long career as an Amelix lab tech. Maybe she could find a way to fit in here, after all.

  “I’m going to introduce you to Coach V now, and to the rest of the team when it’s appropriate,” Judee said.

  “But… I… I don’t understand,” Wanda said. “What about—”

  Judee slapped her so hard Wanda nearly lost her balance. She expected Judee’s eyes to show anger, but instead they were wide in terror. Her body was stiff. “She’ll punish me! You can’t go behaving like that, questioning what you’re told. I’m your mentor and she’ll punish me as well as you.” The shaking in Judee’s hands turned into a full-body shudder, and then she slapped Wanda five more times, fast and hard. “Questions show a deficit of respect for Coach! If Coach wants us to know something, she will tell us. Asking questions is trying to substitute our judgment for hers. Just shut up and do as you’re told, or else run away and hope they don’t think you’ve already seen enough to be dangerous. Don’t ask questions. Do you understand?”

  Both women stood frozen a moment. Wanda’s face stung and throbbed, and her eyes burned, flooded with tears. “Yes. I understand.”

  Judee straightened. “Now. You saw me bow before. Watch again. This is what you’ll do when you meet her.” Judee’s knees came together and she placed her hands on her thighs, curling her head toward the floor. “You try.”

  After a few practice bows Judee led her back out through the doors and across the room to where a wiry woman with shoulder-length gray hair and thin metal-framed glasses was writing with a brush across a rough-hewn piece of stiff plastic. She let them wait a moment as she finished writing and hung the plastic on a hook at the foot of the bed.

  “Coach V,” Judee said. “This is Wanda, my apprentice.”

  Wanda put her knees together and bowed as the woman looked her up and down. “We have little to go around as it is,” Coach V said. “Turn her out. What she would eat would be better spent on my patients.”

  “Coach, ma’am,” Judee said. “She called me by name. It is a Horde rule, Ma’am, one of the most fundamental rules we have, as I’m sure you are aware, Ma’am.”

  The woman, Coach V, came to Wanda, grabbing her by the chin and crotch. “I don’t want you here, but the Horde protects this clinic so I have to let you in,” she said. “Understand this: My girls do what they’re told. I am responsible for every life here and I will tolerate no deviations from perfect obedience. I will have full rights to every part of you: your labor, your body, your mind, your soul. I will watch you, make you watch my other girls for me, and use you in every possible way. I will educate you when education is appropriate to your duties, guide you in the provision of care, teach you how to satisfy me, and correct you when you fail me. I will drug you, interrogate you, inspect you, and analyze the composition of your blood, stool, and urine. You will have weekly confessionals with me where you will inform me under the influence of bactrohypnotic serum about every transgression. You will have no privacy, no rights, and no dignity. If you choose to stay, you admit you are dead without me and agree to exist solely as an extension of my will, as payment for saving your life.

  “Most Hordesmen don’t make it past about four months, while I tend to keep my girls for nearly a year. Without a job you’re out of the Horde, and your life expectancy will be measured in hours. Only out of obligation am I offering you this job opportunity, and it’s the last you’ll ever get. The choice is yours.”

  Wanda surprised herself with her immediate answer. “I want to stay here with you, Ma’am.” She bowed again as she had been taught.

  Coach puffed up to say something but another woman had approached, Golden with auburn hair, bowing in the same way and freezing like that until Coach acknowledged her. “What is it, Chi Sun?”

  “The Directorate, Ma’am,” the woman said. Though her voice was as quiet as anyone’s around here, it shook with a chilling desperation.

  Coach turned abruptly to look at the door but there was nobody there. “How far away?”

  “All seven are on the lot, ma’am.

  Coach cursed, looking out across what had been the strip mall’s parking lot, and then walked toward the door with her hands on her hips. Chi Sun followed her, one step behind.

  “Let’s find you a project,” Judee said, leading Wanda away toward a back corner. She gestured to a patient whose head was wrapped with a bloody red bandage. He was relatively young and his face had a gentle, boyish quality. Sprouting just over the bandage was apparently well-groomed, short brown hair.

  “How many of yours do we have today?” Judee asked the man.

  “Not mine,” he said. His was the most natural smile Wanda had seen in the Zone. “Each of us belongs only to the One.”

  “Wanda, so far we’ve triaged Porter, here, about third in terms of need for immediate attention. It’s a head wound, but he seems able to walk and talk. See what information you can get from him that will be helpful when Coach sees him.”

  Judee shuffled away again. Standing upright among so many who were lying in beds made Wanda feel conspicuous and exposed. She sat on the edge of the bed next to Porter’s, lowering herself gingerly onto the mattress so as not to disturb its unconscious occupant.

  “You’re new here,” he said. He kept looking past her, his eyes darting around the room. She supposed that was common behavior in people of this area, given how traumatic life was here in the Zone.

  “So… you’re Porter,” she said. There was nothing to write on so apparently she was expected to remember all of it. “How did you get hurt?”

  “We were attacked by a small street gang. Just a fight. Hit with a stick. How long ago
did you Depart?”

  She paused, shocked by the question. It seemed so personal, so invasive, to be asked about the moment when her company had decided she was a disgrace and ended her life. It was probably unwise to answer, anyway.

  “Let’s see,” she said. “Head wound.” She tried to think of what might be a good check for brain damage. “Here. Grab my hands and pull them. I want to see whether you’re able to control your limbs on both sides.”

  “No,” he said. He had a hand tucked under a blanket in his lap. She was pretty sure it had the shape of a gun. Most Zone people who had guns probably had a hard time letting go of them.

  “I can’t help you if—”

  “Ask me something else.”

  “Okay. How’s your vision?” His eyes had normal-sized pupils and no apparent broken blood vessels.

  “I see fine. I see that you’re brand new here, for example. I never thought I’d be nostalgic for that time, fresh from the company, but life here has a way of evoking strange feelings.”

  At least he was talking. Perhaps by chatting a bit she could get him to participate a bit better in his own care. “How… ” she started. She couldn’t even make herself talk about his Departure, let alone her own. Her insides clenched at the thought, making it impossible to speak. “How long have you been part of the Horde?” she managed finally.

  “I used to be part of the Horde, but I’m not anymore. Our group is separate. We’re something new.”

  The Federal Administration Building

  “Agent Daiss reporting, Instructor Samuelson, sir,” Daiss said from outside the door.

  “Enter, Brother Daiss,” came the voice.

  “Thank you, sir,” Daiss said. “It is always an honor to see you, sir.” In a world with so much gratuitous ass kissing, Daiss was happy to mean it this time. Instructor Samuelson was the finest Federal Agent ever to have lived, the one who truly justified the layman’s parlance referring to their kind as Federal Angels.