by Joe Shine
CHAPTER 7
BACK FROM THE DEAD
A sniffled and shocked, “What?” was all I could muster.
Katie arched an eyebrow. She was actually quite pretty when not confused, terrified, and dead on the floor.
“May I?” she asked and motioned toward my bed.
I nodded and scooted over. She sat next me, and we looked at each other for a moment.
“Those aren’t for me, are they?” she asked, pointing at the tears.
“Not all of them,” I said as I sat up. “I saw you die. Am I imagining this?”
“Ha. No, I’m really here. Never assume you know everything in this place,” she said. “That was part of my final test.”
She pulled down the collar of her own gown to show a strange, hard patch to the right of her heart.
“Show no fear in a situation that could mean death,” she said. Her eyes twinkled. “I passed!”
“Does it hurt?”
“No. Fire acted pretty quickly on me. Been pain-free for about six months now. But feeling no pain and having no fear aren’t quite the same thing. This showed I was capable of both.”
She looked around the room before muttering “I won’t miss this, that’s for sure.” She glanced back at me. “They said you charged Cole after he shot me? Gutsy. Stupid, but gutsy.”
Remember that lie I mentioned earlier? When I nodded, it began right then and there.
“What happens now?” I asked.
“I wait to be linked to my FIP,” she said.
Then in a mocking, highbrow voice she added, “Individuals whose safety and protection are essential to the welfare of the human race is such a mouthful. So we,” she motioned between the two of us, “call them FIPs. It’s easier. We made T-shirts.”
I made a mental note to remember this useful windfall of hip so I could share it with Junie and the others to enhance my rep.
“How long will getting your FIP take?” I asked.
“Could be tomorrow, could be a year,” she said flatly. “No one knows. Hope it’s soon though. I want to get linked and get out of this place.”
“What do you mean by linked?”
“When you get your FIP, you’re linked to them. It’s hard to explain. Their safety becomes more important to you than anything else on the planet. Make sense?”
I shrugged, “Kind of.”
“You don’t really know what it’s like unless you’ve done it, which I haven’t.” She shrugged her shoulders. “How are you feeling?”
She had kind eyes, but you could tell they’d been through a lot and had barely come out the other side.
“Fine,” I lied.
“Riiiight,” she said sarcastically. “Trust me, I’ve been there.”
“I hurt everywhere. Happy?” I said.
“Beyond,” she said with a grin. “Thirsty?”
There was a glass of water on a nightstand to my left. I started to reach for it, but Katie reached across and got it first. Her movement was fast, almost unnaturally so. Curious, I took the glass from her.
“A pleasant side effect of fire,” she said. “Since your body knows it will never feel pain, there’s no hesitation on movements anymore. Makes you faster than you were before.”
I drained the water. When is the last time I’ve eaten or drunk anything? My stomach gave a growl. Katie took the glass and put it back. I really watched her this time. The movement was faster-than-normal enough to be noticeable, but not fast enough to raise suspicion.
Knowing I was watching, she smiled. “Now you keep taking your medicine and you’ll be just like me.”
I gave a light laugh. There was the clang of a tray being dropped nearby. Katie stiffened, alert and ready. There was something about her that sent a shiver down my spine. She was no longer my older confidante. The façade was over, and the look on her face was that of a stone-cold killer. Realizing her mask had fallen away, she quickly joked, “Looks like you’ll probably take my place as the regular here.”
“Let’s hope not.”
She took a deep breath as she absentmindedly touched her wound.
“I thought you said it didn’t hurt?”
“It doesn’t. It itches,” she said. A few seconds of silence passed before she announced, “I better get going.”
“Please don’t go,” I said, fighting fresh tears. I didn’t know this girl; I didn’t trust her. But she gave me hope, like maybe I could actually get through this. I didn’t want to be alone again.
“No. Stop that,” she scolded, as if I were a child. “You can’t do that anymore. Not here. The girl you were can’t survive here. She won’t make it. You need to become someone else.”
“Okay.” I sniffed and wiped my eyes.
She held my hand and whispered, “I’m trying to give you advice I wish someone had given me.” She gently let go before continuing, “But I gotta get going. They’re moving me to new quarters while I wait to be linked.” Her eyes twinkled again. “I get to have a TV and a radio. Man, I miss TV.”
When she reached the edge of the curtain she turned. “They’ll try everything they can to break you. They’ll hurt you. Threaten you. Threaten your friends. The worst of anything and everything you can imagine. Don’t let them win. If you believe you can get through it, you will. Good luck. Maybe we’ll bump into each other in the world.”
And with that she turned and slipped past the curtain.
I WAS TO STAY in the hospital wing that night for observation. I didn’t argue. For dinner I was given some kind of mush that “had everything I needed in it.” It tasted like grits, which means it tasted like dirt. Halfway through the bowl one of the nurses snuck a pinch of cinnamon on it which helped immensely. It was a small gesture, but I appreciated it. From then on the search for and barter of spices for our breakfasts and dinners of mush would become a fun distraction from our other everyday activities. The nurses always had the best stuff.
As I was dozing off, Not-Beth returned for my nightly dose of fire. I thought being in the hospital would get me a night off. Silly me.
I WAS AWAKENED THE next morning by a nurse and told to get dressed. Sitting up proved difficult. I was sore from the fire, and from Cole’s abuse. Finally vertical, I found a nicely washed pile of yellow sitting on the stool next to the bed. Stupid yellow. This place sucked.
Since I’d spent the night in the hospital, I got to eat my breakfast there instead of my room. Today’s mush was seasoned with rosemary. When the nurse came to take my clean bowl she dropped a twisted-up baggie full of rosemary on my bed and winked as she left. Big fan of that one.
Fully dressed and fed, I was instructed to return to training. On my way out I saw others like me. Most were nursing minor injuries, cuts and bruises, that sort of thing. Others weren’t so lucky. One kid had his lower body in a cast. I passed one girl who was missing what looked like half of her face. What little skin remained was charred black. She stared at her hands, lost and alone.
I couldn’t place the location, but somewhere I could hear wailing. At the time I had no clue what it was, but later found out that behind the hospital wing was where you went if you broke and completely lost it. The wails were the animal cries from those whose minds were gone. If you went in, you never came back out. A lot of people I would come to know and call friends never did. I still want to believe that they eventually recovered and got to lead normal lives. But why believe a lie?
I hurried the rest of the way out. The door slid open. I was at the end of a hall with nowhere to go but straight. As I approached my first intersection I got nervous. I had no clue where I was, or where the room I was supposed to be in was either. How would I know where to go? If I got lost, would they think I was trying to escape and punish me? Or would I become some hallway hobo, begging for help? The image of myself in tattered yellow rags popped into my head and made me laugh. But to my very pleasant surprise, when I reached the intersection a green light softly pulsated on the hallway wall, leading left with a pleasant ding.
Left it is. At the next intersection my good friend the green light and his trusty companion ding told me to keep going straight. Four left turns, two rights, one elevator ride, and who knows how many keep-on-truckin’ straights later brought me to a door with no windows. I knew I had to go inside, but the idea was like a punch in the gut. My eyes began to tear up, but then I remembered Katie. Not here. Not anymore.
I triggered the sensor on the door and it slid open in front of me.
Cole was holding some boy down with a move that looked way too familiar. The bruises on my arm and throat tingled. But there was no malice in Cole. It looked like he was instructing. My appearance was met with a grin; it was not comforting.
“Welcome back, Ren,” he said. “Come inside.”
My eyes immediately found Junie and we shared a smile, both happy to see the other was okay. Four long nail marks were visible across his neck but otherwise he looked fine, especially when compared to the others. They looked like the bruised and battered survivors of the zombie apocalypse. The shooting of Katie and my quick dispatch had worked. Nothing like the threat of a bullet to motivate you. Everyone had fought when told to and fought hard.
I started to take my place with the others, Junie was scooting over, but I stopped when Cole said, “No, no. Stay where you are, Ren.” That grin again. “How are you feeling today? No lingering injuries?”
I shook my head and said as nonchalantly as I could, “I’m fine. Tip-top.” I didn’t want him to think he could hurt me. Big mistake.
Cole smiled wider. “Excellent to hear. I was afraid you’d be unable to complete your assignment from yesterday. But since you’re ‘tip-top’ … you still owe me a fight.”
He helped the other boy up; a hulking kid who, unlike the others, looked completely unscathed from the previous day’s battles. “Young Tom here will fight again, right?”
The boy looked down at Cole—yeah that’s right, looked down on him because he was freaking huge—and shrugged as he said, “Sure.” He kind of sounded like Voldemort. I could have fit into one of his pant legs. I looked around for the tank I would need to beat this kid.
Katie’s voice was in my head again: You need to become someone else. So I unzipped my tracksuit jacket and tossed it to the side, pretending to be unafraid. That was definitely ‘someone else.’ Do I make fists? Karate-chop hands? My hands were visibly shaking.
Tom looked disinterested in the whole process.
“Whenever you’re ready,” Cole said from his customary fight seat.
Tom took one step forward before Cole interrupted him by saying, “Remember, bow to each other.”
Tom stopped and bowed to me which lowered him to my height. My bow put me eye to eye with his kneecaps.
To say I was about to get my ass handed to me would be selling ass-handing short.
Now it was on. He took a big step forward and raised his fist. I failed to do anything except scrunch my face up and raise my hands. His knuckles felt like a boulder as they smashed into my cheek and sent me flying across the room onto the floor. His foot slammed into my stomach before those two massive hands hurled me into the padded wall. Love ya, whoever padded those up.
My head spun. I landed in a sitting position to see Tom striding forward for more. I knew I didn’t have much more time in this fight and wanted to do something on the offensive before it was over, so as Tom reached down to grab me I kicked up. My foot caught him square in the face. I think it surprised me almost as much as him. He backpedaled, grabbing his nose. “Damn it,” he hissed.
I rose to me feet and put all of my strength behind what I knew would be the finishing blow. Unfortunately, my accuracy was off and I wound up hitting him directly in the right tit. But it was a vicious tit shot; I knew it. Totally left a bruise.
I heard Cole snort with laughter. Tom didn’t find it funny though. He grabbed me by the throat and picked me up in the air. My would-have-killed-a-normal-man tit shot had really pissed him off. My feet dangled helplessly two feet off the ground before he slammed me down onto the ground onto my back. It knocked the wind out of me. Tom’s grip around my neck didn’t falter; it only tightened as he crouched on top of me. I couldn’t breathe. The only things I could see were Tom’s snarling face and his crotch, which was way too close.
My eyes rolled and the lights were going out again. I only had one move left in my arsenal. Call it dirty, call it cheap, it’s all I had left. I reached up and grabbed his junk like a fistful of cash. I gripped and twisted with all my might. There was a scream of pain, and the grip on my throat weakened as I kept on squeezing and twisting. But it was too late. The lights were still going out, and everything went black. Again.
GUESS WHAT? I WOKE up in the hospital. This time it was not of my own choosing but by a nurse with some vile smelling salts.
“Good,” she said as I woke up, trying to brush the smell from my nose.
I looked around and realized that I was in the same bed as this morning. Had they even had time to change the sheets?
She tossed the smelling salts in a trash can, checked her watch, and said, “You can either go eat lunch with everyone else or you can have it here. Which’ll it be?”
Maybe the magic word was “everyone,” but I wanted to be with my group. I didn’t want to miss out. I was getting a little tired of only seeing them for three minutes at a time punctuated by hours of unconsciousness.
“I’ll go,” I said.
“Good choice. Food’s a lot better in the cafeteria.”
“Cafeteria? Food?”
“Well yeah. What, did you think you were going to have to eat that mush all the time?”
My jaw dropped. Yes, I had. How was I supposed to know better?! Real food?! I hopped to my feet, wobbled a bit, and then made a beeline for the exit.
“Wait!” came the nurse’s voice behind me. “Take this and keep it on your face.” She handed me one of those disposable ice packs. I had completely forgotten about the damage I had taken from Tom. I looked around for a mirror to see for myself, but I couldn’t find one. All I could find was a blurred and fun-house worthy reflection in a stainless steel medical fridge. Worthless.
“How bad is it?” I asked.
“Keep the ice on it and you’ll be fine,” she said warmly.
Whew, still have a shot at Hollywood. I almost said the words aloud. Instead I mumbled, “Thanks for the ice.”
She nodded and said, “See you later.”
“Probably a good bet,” I yelled over my shoulder as I jog-walked out of there. The thought of food had pushed all thoughts of pain from my mind.
I followed the trail of lights until I reached the cafeteria.
It felt like Christmas morning as I entered what looked like a normal, old-school cafeteria. Except that everyone in it was yellow. I saw kids eating sandwiches and scarfing down pastas. My stomach growled.
I went to the first counter I could find. It was full of pre-wrapped sandwiches. I grabbed one, didn’t care what was in it. The next counter was pasta. Got a big bowl of that too. The last counter was a salad bar. Skip-a-roonie.
I grabbed a glass of apple juice and looked out into the cafeteria for Junie. I saw him waving his hand and rushed over to the table. Our whole group was there, and they welcomed me with a loud “Hey!” Even Tom, who was sitting on a donut cushion.
“No hard feelings?” he said.
“I think I should be the one asking you that,” I said, smiling. He grinned and patted the seat between him and Junie. I thunked down and tore into my pasta.
Junie pushed a bowl of untouched cereal in front of me and said, “I’m stuffed. You want this?”
“Sure,” I was able to blurt out.
But that gesture had instantly flashed me back to my brother and how he would always have a bowl of cereal ready for me on Saturday mornings. At that moment I wanted to go home so badly it hurt. I shoveled more pasta in my mouth to hide my sudden lapse. If anyone had noticed, they didn’t say.
&nbs
p; We all ate in silence. Maybe like me, they were all content to be doing something normal after the craziness of the past forty-eight hours. Kidnapped from home? Check. Crap beaten out of us? Check. Witnessed a murder? Check, or check for the others, I knew the truth of it. So forgive us if we didn’t really want to chat.
Junie had other ideas though.
“Okay, I can’t take this anymore,” he blurted out, tossing his fork onto his plate for good measure. It clanged loudly. “It’s like a morgue in here. Doesn’t anyone have anything fun to talk about?” He looked around at the table and was met by blank stares. He turned to me last. I shook my head.
“Come on. Ren, you literally tried to castrate Tom as you passed out. And now you’re eating lunch with him and he’s sitting on a donut. That’s kinda funny.” He laughed when he said it. My face went red. I couldn’t help but smile. Even Tom smirked. “Come on people. We can do this.”
Some of the other tables were now looking our way. Junie fed off the attention. “Okay, game time,” he said. Everyone listened to our de facto leader. “It’s called ‘Looks Like Who?’ I used to play it with my brother all the time at the mall. Here, I’ll go first.”
He scanned the room and then said, “Easy one. Goth Justin Timberlake.”
We all exchanged looks, silently trying to figure out if we were actually going to play. That answer came in the voice of Stacy, an Asian girl at the end of the table as she quietly said, “Three tables over.” She pointed for good measure.
We followed her gesture and found him. He had black hair, was paper white, but totally looked like JT. The resemblance was uncanny.
“Yes! Nice,” Junie yelled excitedly. “Now your turn.” His enthusiasm was rubbing off on us.
The girl stood up and looked around biting her lip as she thought. When she sat back down she said, to suddenly eager players, “Fat Ryan Reynolds.”
I laughed at the thought of it and joined the others as we craned our heads to find him. Mauricio, our Brazilian classmate, found him sitting on the other side of the room. It was totally a fat Ryan Reynolds. Spitting image only, you know, heavy. We all laughed and when I heard Tom’s deep ho-ho-hoing I laughed even harder.