I wished I had a knife right then to carve his name into my flesh, to at least give him the tribute of knowing he would never be forgotten.
The bars banged shut. The sound of it shocked me. It was dark. There was sniffling, a couple of sobs. No one spoke. No one talked about what had happened.
Minutes or hours later, there was no way to tell, the bars unlocked again and swung out. Tabitha came with a candle in her hand. The light bounced off her face and made her features ghoulish. “I am so sorry.” She paused, stared at the candle. “They’ve given us fifteen minutes to use the bathrooms and return to our cells for the night.”
We forced ourselves outside. I leaned against the plywood walls and stared at the guards in their towers and the lights they moved around, checking for Vs, and Feebs like us. I waited out the fifteen minutes. The stream of people tromping back and forth stopped. I waited for trouble to come my way for being late. Let them shoot me down like they did Spencer.
Instead, Corrina came out with a candle. The light made her frizzy curls glow orange. “Gabbi?”
I did not answer.
“We are going to try and sleep now. I…I’m sorry. It would help the rest of us if you came back. They’re afraid without you.”
She turned back and went inside.
I picked myself off the ground. I brushed my hand across the cold concrete to guide my way down the hallway and into the main part of the jail. The smells of washing soap and food waste hit me. Someone in one of the upper cells sang a lullaby in hushed tones that echoed.
A bright point of light appeared as if out of nowhere, but once my eyes adjusted I saw that it was a candle held by a man at the foot of the stairs I needed to climb. His body must have blocked the candle until he turned. I tensed my muscles, wondering if the night terrors would begin now and how hard I would have to fight to keep my body intact.
In another few seconds my eyes adjusted to this new point of light and I realized it was Kern. This did not make me feel any better.
I kept my fists balled and walked up to his candle. He held it to my face for a moment, casting his own face into long, ominous shadows.
“Gabbi, I’m sorry—”
“Stop,” I whispered.
He moved the candle closer to his own face and the light made his eyes glint. “We can’t do much tonight. Maybe not for a few days. But as soon as they let us out, we’ll give him a proper burial tomorrow—”
“—Is he still…”
“No, he’s in a different part of the building. It was the medical room. It still is, really, we have a few medicines and…” He glanced up the stairs and then back at me. “Not that any of that matters right now. Try to get some sleep if you can. There’s another one of us at the top of the stairs. They’re going to lock us all in tonight.”
He moved away from the bottom step and I began to climb. My feet felt like lead blocks and my heart ached, but I was so exhausted, I knew that even the nightmares I was sure to have would not keep me from sleep.
“Goodnight, Gabbi,” Kern said from below me.
The guard at the top step was an unfamiliar woman who I remembered laughing a belly laugh at someone’s joke at dinner. Now she was somber. “I am sorry for your loss,” she said simply.
I counted the cells and held back when I reached ours. I wasn’t good with small spaces. Closets and me didn’t get along. It was so dark and small in there and my breath hiccuped in my chest. Tears began to stream down my face. Please. I didn’t want that memory right now, not after Spencer. Not right now.
“Here, Gabbi, we saved you a place.” A hand grabbed mine and pulled me through a tangle of limbs and bodies to a warm spot on the floor. They’d thrown down a cot cushion and some blankets. Ano, Ricker, Jimmy, and Maibe surrounded me and patted my arms and head and legs. The memory-rush faded. It was pitch black and there was no way to see, but I could touch and smell everyone I still loved in the world.
I wish I could say I fell asleep right away, but I stayed awake for a long time listening to everyone breathe, listening to the silence, listening to the beating of my heart as if it held a secret message that could fix all of this if I only learned the code.
I awoke first, even though I had fallen asleep last.
There was light now. It streamed from the cell door since there were no windows in the cells. Someone’s knee pressed into my neck. I moved it away and also repositioned a heavy leg that Ano had thrown across me. A swatch of Maibe’s pink sweatshirt, looking decidedly grimy in the morning light, showed up between Jimmy and Ricker. Corrina and Dylan were tangled together on a single cot. Her hair dangled across both their faces. Even in sleep, he held onto her as if she might evaporate at any moment. We had piled into the cell together like a colony of rats, a pack of dogs, a group of humans who needed to belong to somebody.
An ache started in my throat as I surveyed the room full of people I dared not care about and yet had fallen into that trap no matter how many times I’d raged against it.
A click-clack of metal against metal drew my attention to the cell door. Tabitha stood framed by the bars. She looked over my group of hapless runaways and throwaways. She did not say anything.
“Are you in charge somehow?” I sat up and pushed at Ano to wake up.
“In a way.” Tabitha tilted her head. “I’m the spokesperson for us. I relay instructions, problems, decisions. It’s easier, and safer for them, to go through one person they trust than to send in uninfected all the time.” Something hard sparked in her eye at that moment, some harsh truth that told me her supposed complacency during her speech yesterday wasn’t all there was to know about her.
“What happens next?” Ano said.
“There will be no breakfast today. Chores have been suspended. There will be a bathroom break at lunch.”
“Is this because of Spencer?” Corrina asked softly.
“We are all of us responsible for the choices that others make. Whether we wish it to be that way or not. Until they can check over the defenses and we draw away the Vs attracted by the noise—”
“We?” I said. “What do you mean we draw away the Vs?”
“Not you,” Tabitha said. Her gray hair lay in long strands around her shoulders like a cape. “It’ll be Kern and a few others the council trusts to go outside and do the work. It’s not safe for the uninfected to get so close to the Vs.”
“Last night at dinner, I’d almost forgotten we were prisoners in here,” Corrina said.
“I do not ever forget.” There was a heavy note of bitterness in Tabitha’s voice.
Tabitha held her arms out to the sides and in one fluid motion raised them above her head until her hands touched palm to palm.
“Breathe out on a count of five and bring your palms down the center of your body, pausing at the heart, and continuing until you touch the floor with a flat back. ”
It was three days after Spencer had died. Yesterday, Kern and his team had returned—dirty, bloody, exhausted, two of them bitten and in the fevers. This was the first morning we weren’t on lockdown. This was the first morning of the exercises.
All of us Feebs were out of the cells and had formed three staggered rows on the greenhouse floor. The cement was icy, our breaths came out in trails of mist. The skylights built into the ceiling three stories above us could make you forget the dungeon-like feel of the cells.
Air traveled in and out of my lungs like a river. My heartbeat remained steady. For brief moments, my mind became blank. The wound on my ankle burned with a brightness that warmed my body in spite of the cold.
The stillness in the air matched the stillness from those stretching around me. I didn’t know any of them. Yet when Tabitha asked us to go down on hands and feet and arch our backs toward the sun, we did it as if one body. When she moved us back to our feet and we stretched out our arms and positioned our legs as if we were an army ready to throw a volley of spears at our enemy, we did this as if we had always practiced this together. When we moved into a sh
oulder stand and our dozens of pairs of legs stood straight into the air like trees, I felt part of the room, part of those around me. It was like we were turning ourselves into Faints. Everything outside this stillness began not to matter.
We matched our movements and our breathing like it was a choreographed dance, like it was the march of an army. The silence in the jail was interrupted only by the low beat of blood flowing through our bodies and the air moving in and out of our lungs and Tabitha’s soft, firm voice.
We were exercising to beat back the memories.
It didn’t keep away the knowledge that Spencer had practically killed himself. It didn’t keep away the bone-deep sadness that Leaf had been killed, and before him, we’d lost Mary, and ahead of us, there was more death. All of that settled deep into my DNA. It would never separate from who I was now.
The different exercises held the mind so still, it chipped at the walls I’d erected to protect myself from feeling anything. This was all we had now—each other, this cold cement room, this disease that both protected and imprisoned us. Our lives were bright dots in a dark night that blinked out for so many sad reasons.
Tears leaked down my cheeks in the last position. It spread us out on the cold floor, breathing in and out, slower each time, deeper each time. Sometimes I paused and wondered what it would feel like to stop, just stop it all. My arms and legs melted into the ground and became a part of the soil somewhere deep beneath this tomb. Under there it was dark, protected, lonely, and yet the peace of it called to me. I didn’t want to understand what Spencer did. I did understand it.
The bell buzzed and broke conversations like someone had shattered a vase. We returned to our cells. To the tomb within a tomb. I tried to shake off feeling trapped, but it hovered at the edge of my brain like the memories we all still fought back. The exercises helped a little but not completely.
As Tabitha promised, the cells locked for a few minutes. Enough time for them to check everyone was inside somehow. Cameras, binoculars, I had no idea what they used. The water pipes rumbled and Tabitha pushed in the cart of food alongside several guards. As soon as the uninfected left, the cells unlocked. A group of people went straight for the cart. My heart rate sped up as I wondered if it was first come, first serve, and whether there would be any food left by the time we made it down.
Instead, Feebs I sort of recognized from our first dinner unloaded the cart and began separating, chopping, and cooking breakfast for everyone. There was oatmeal, and a sort of spicy sausage, and cans and cans of beans. Hot coffee. It would have felt like a feast if not for Spencer’s missing spot at the table. Everyone else talked quietly about what they could have done, had he really done it on purpose, why did he try to escape, if only they could have stopped him. There was nothing we could have done. He had decided.
Near the end of breakfast, Kern joined us. His shoulders were stooped in exhaustion and circles deepened the intensity of his dark eyes. Since our group was so new, he said, we would be assigned jobs within the jail. Outside chores were for those who had proved they could follow the rules.
I spent the day with Maibe, washing and scrubbing dishes under Tabitha’s watchful eyes. Jimmy, Ricker, and Ano were sent to clean out the bathrooms. Dylan had once done some construction work so they set him on a few maintenance projects around the greenhouse with Kern. Corrina was sent to help with the laundry. I planned for how we might all sneak away to memorialize Spencer properly. They didn’t seem to be afraid of us having knives, there was no shortage of utensils for meals—as we discovered while washing all of them after breakfast, lunch, and dinner that day.
I tucked a steak knife in between my jeans and skin. It would do the job I needed it for when the time came.
Everyone returned from their various outside chores, dirty, exhausted, but talking, and even laughing sometimes. The groups went their separate ways, some into the showers on shifts, others into their cells to change and wait their turn. The dinner ritual repeated itself: Tabitha reminding us to stay inside, the clang of the locking bars, the noises as the food was wheeled in, the release.
After dinner, Tabitha called all the Feebs out to the yard.
Spencer’s body had been taken outside and rested next to a pile of dirt and a hole dug a few dozen feet away from the fence. Several other graves were marked. A sheet covered him from head to toe.
Two uninfected guards watched from the other side of the fence while two Feebs lowered him in with ropes. Tabitha said a few words on our side of the fence. I declined when Tabitha asked if I would like to say something on his behalf.
We returned to our cells and I waited until we would barely be able to make out our work before calling over Maibe and the boys. I figured by the time we were done everyone else in the building would know what we’d been up to, but I would deal with that later.
We whispered quietly to each other as the boys each raised a bare arm for my knife. I did Maibe last and then I handed the knife to Ano to do me.
Corrina walked into the cell and stilled when she saw our bloodied arms. I waited for her rebuke, but all she said was, “I’ll do it for you.”
Her voice shocked the knife out of Ano’s hand. It clattered to the cement floor.
“I’ll do it if you’ll let me,” she said.
“What are you doing?” Dylan said, walking in behind Corrina.
“Shh,” Corrina said. “I’ll explain later.”
“We are remembering Leaf and Spencer,” Jimmy said.
I picked up the knife and held it out, to Corrina, handle first.
The pain burst into my skin at her first cut and then turned into a burning glow that radiated all the way to my fingertips.
Spencer had a lot of letters in his name.
When Corrina was done she wiped the blade on her jumpsuit and then contemplated my arm. “You’re running out of room.”
A ball seemed lodged in my throat.
Ano let out a howl, drawn out, full of experience and pain. The rest of us joined in, though Dylan and Corrina did not. But at Dylan’s bewildered look, Corrina grabbed his hand and squeezed it.
We let out another group howl, long and agonizing and loud. When our noise stopped bouncing back at us from across the jail, when the howls had died to whispers and then died altogether, when we opened our eyes, not realizing we had closed them, I said, “Now go to sleep, cockroaches. We’ve got early morning exercises tomorrow.”
***
February
***
Chapter 21
The days here follow mostly the same pattern. Morning exercises with Tabitha. The cells lock, the cells open, we prep food, we clean up food. Repeat.
Not once have they let me or any of us outside. Not once during that first week did they bring us in for questioning or testing. I’d welcome getting tested right now. I’m going crazy keeping myself from bursting through those front doors. If I don’t get out soon I might explode.
They take people away sometimes, but everyone comes back and talks about blood being drawn, mental intelligence tests, exercise tests, vitamin injections, more blood drawn.
Nothing like the fairgrounds.
Maybe things are different here. Maybe they really are looking for a cure.
At the beginning of the fourth week in the jail they took Dylan away, but no one noticed at first because the hot water had stopped working. There were shouts and cursing before breakfast from the people who discovered that fact firsthand.
Dylan came back that same day before dinner. The hot water did not. He found Corrina right away and kissed her. He looked relaxed, unharmed. “They only took blood and asked me some questions about how I got infected,” he said at dinner, around what was now our regular table. Others joined us from time to time, to make conversation, check in on us, get to know us. I didn’t really talk to them, not really, but the rest of the group did.
“Was it Sergeant Bennings?” Corrina asked.
“I didn’t see him,” Dylan said. “They’ve
got a real lab here, professional equipment. And it’s just like Tabitha said.” He paused to shovel in another bite. Dinner had come in as raw potatoes and cans of gravy, along with barely enough propane to cook it all. The food was mind-numbingly hot and delicious.
“Everyone is working on something, the uninfected I mean, but on their side of the camp.” He paused again for a drink of water and then glanced my way. “And there’s a special cleanup crew. People who’re allowed to go outside the fence and deal with any Vs causing problems.”
Jimmy, Ricker, and Ano swiveled their heads in my direction, all three at the same time, like a comedy act.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I said. “We knew that already. Remember Kern?” I didn’t say Spencer’s name out loud but I didn’t have to.
“Like what?” Ricker asked. “Like this is the perfect job for you and maybe it’ll make you less grumpy if you’re able to kill a few Vs every day?”
“What are you talking about?” I wasn’t in the best moods these days, but considering the circumstances I thought I had been doing a pretty good job of keeping it together. I would never admit it to Tabitha, but the morning exercises were helping.
“You’re a bit scary, Gabbi,” Ricker said. “No offense.” He held up his hands to ward off the mean look I gave him.
“And what do you think, Ano?” I said.
To his credit, he did not immediately answer, but then he said. “It’s a good idea.”
“I want to join,” Maibe said.
“Absolutely not,” Corrina said.
“Don’t act like you can tell her what to do,” I said, my blood rising.
“Don’t ruin this for us!” Jimmy shouted. He had stood up. He was shaking.
I felt stunned. “What are you talking about?”
Corrina put a hand on Jimmy’s shoulder. He shook it off. “I’m going to see if there’s any more gravy.”
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