by Josiah Upton
“Just as the procedure was completed, Army Ranger Jorge Ortega led his team into the lab, and took out the restrained Reanimate himself, with three shots to the cranium. Dr. Hubrens drew a revolver, and he too was neutralized by Ortega. The woman was taken into government custody, and the President declared the End War to be over. Can anyone tell me what happened next? What about you, Zaul?”
My veins and muscles constrict. Everyone turns around and looks at me. All their fleshy faces and meaty bodies, pointed my direction. Breathing my direction. For a second, I wonder what would happen if I let go of all restraint. If I gave in to my Prisoner's feral cries, would he finally be silenced, if only for a little while? Would I finally feel what others describe as peace? I suppose I'll never know the answer to that, just like I don't know the answer to Mr. Neal's question. “I don't know, sir.”
His dark eyes squint behind his large glasses. “Really? You don't know?” The students looking at me begin to laugh. I could just rip them all apart... flash. I fall back into my chair, exhausted. He looks over to the blonde girl. “Well, what about your partner in tardiness? Do you know what happened?”
“I do,” she says, finally raising her head up from the desk. “But I'm not going to answer you. I only answer educated teachers, and none of those are employed here. Everything you've said is either improperly skewed, or outright lies.”
“I-I-I...” Mr. Neal's chubby face grows bright red with fury as he stutters. “I beg your pardon, young lady?”
“Where are our textbooks?” the girl asks, standing up from her desk. “Shouldn't students in a classroom have textbooks?”
The eyes behind Mr. Neal's magnified lenses roll, as he exhales sharply. I can smell his breath from all the way back here. He retreats behind his desk and pulls out an old and small booklet that has seen better days. “Here,” he says, marching over and slapping it down on the girl's desk. “Will this satisfy your scholastic skepticism?”
“HRA and HRI, Revised Editions,” she reads out loud. “What is this supposed to be?”
“The Hybrid Reanimate Act and the Hubrens Rights Initiative,” Mr. Neal clarifies. I remember the second one he mentions, from Vicky Womack's conversation with me before the day started. An image of her smooth skin appears in my mind, and I grip the sides of my desk. Even when I'm away from an object of the Lust, my Prisoner still tortures me with it. I push the thought from my mind and resume watching Mr. Neal argue with this girl who is half his size. Humans are so strange.
“So a mandate of oppression written in legal jargon is the reading guide for a high school history class? How does that make any sense?”
“This is the only text approved for this portion of the course,” Mr. Neal stresses. “It's part of the National Curriculum. These facts have been told over and over again for decades, and with the exception of Zaul here, everybody seems to know them. Do you really need a textbook for this subject?”
“I don't care about the National Curriculum,” spits the girl. “What I really want is the truth, not stories spun by those in charge. And I want it printed in something that doesn't seem to exist anymore in this country: a real textbook.”
“I am your textbook!” screams the teacher. I can sense his blood boiling and rushing through his rotund body. My stomach grumbles, then the Mortetine makes me feel sick. “If you want something to read, take notes from what I'm saying, then review it later.”
“Okay... Should I take notes on the way you look at all the girls in the room? That's the only worthwhile thing I've gathered since class started.”
“OUT!” he shrieks, marching over to the door and swinging it wide open. “Go to the principal. NOW!”
She stands for a moment, glaring at Mr. Neal. The two of them look like they are about to maul each other. Or at least, that's what I would be driven to do. After nearly a minute of tense, awkward silence, she grabs the booklet and holds it up, offering a smile that must certainly not be sincere, and tosses it on the floor. Then she storms out the door, slamming it behind her. Mr. Neal continues to stare where she was sitting, his finger still pointed towards the hallway, breathing heavily.
“Don't worry about her,” says a female in the front row. “She was in my History class last year, and she did almost the exact same thing. She was homeschooled by her dad for most of her life, and I think he's one of those conspiracy theory nut jobs. What's her name, again?”
“Genny Grest,” replies a male next to her.
“That's right. She's kinda weird.”
“Quiet,” snaps Mr. Neal. “We're not discussing Ms. Grest any longer, nor her misguided and misinformed ideas about real history. We're here to learn, and nothing is more worth learning than the things that almost destroyed humanity, and threaten to do so still. I want everyone to pay attention.”
The teacher continues his lesson, no longer asking questions but strictly dictating the information to us. Part of my attention is occupied with what he's saying, another part continues to battle the Prisoner inside. But a third part is devoted to this Genny Grest. Wondering why she's still biologically just a girl, why she dresses the way she dresses.
But above all, what she believes to be the truth, and what part it might play in how something like me came to be.
Chapter 4
I punch in the security code, but the door doesn't unlock. I try it again, but still nothing. I've been locked out. I want to bash my fist into the keypad. I want to pound on the door and rip it off its hinges – though its thickness, its steel bars, make that impossible. But I still want to tear at it. The Rage is rising and the medication is wearing thin. I need to get inside, lock myself away. It would be safer for me, and safer for all the humans outside. But the door won't open.
“Why aren't you in school?” crackles a voice from the little speaker next to the keypad. I've always known it was there, but I think this is the first time I have ever heard it used. I am usually on the other side of the door. I take a step back and look up at the kitchen window. A man, my “uncle”, can barely be seen through the glare of the glass. He of all people should know, that if I think it is necessary to come back in from the outside world, he needs to let me in. I point at the door, hoping he will get the clue that I don't have patience for this. But the locks don't click. “You know how to talk, Zaul.”
“Let me in, Gibbs,” I grunt, straining to omit the growl in my throat. I don't know if this is his real name or not, but it's the only one he provided for me to call him.
“I can't hear you,” says the voice from the box. “Hold down the red button, then talk.”
I grunt again, but this time no comprehensible words come out. I notice the button he's referring to at the bottom of the keypad, and my thumb rushes to press it, but I stop short. The little red square looks delicate and breakable. I'm so agitated I might crush it, and perhaps the entire keypad with it. I leave it be, and looking down I find an old clay pot on the ground, a long dead plant root inside the unusable soil. I pick it up, and smash it on the ground. This makes me feel a little better. I'm ready to hold down the red button. “Let me in, please.”
A moment passes and the door does not unlock. Maybe he won't open it. Maybe he never will. Maybe Gibbs is finally tired of dealing with me, and my condition. The money just isn't worth it for him anymore. But then the locks click, and I lightly place my hand on the handle to open it. What I find behind the door isn't the living room, or a hallway, but dark stairs, going down. Down underneath the house, down to the closest thing I can call home.
The door I entered wasn't on the street side, but in the back, which goes straight to the basement. I'm not allowed through the front door, I'm not allowed upstairs. Gibbs, the human male who lives here, likes to keep his distance from me. He uses concrete and reinforced steel to do that, and I don't blame him. His broken, scarred body is a good enough reason to safeguard himself from things like me. And to be honest, I like my space. I like being locked up, not worrying about what I might do to others. It gives
a sense of security. Maybe even that “peace” thing.
Though there's a constant odor of dirt and mildew in the air, my underground quarters are quite tidy. My bed, which is more like a cot, is always made. My few possessions have their proper place, and are always stored when not in use. Even the things left from the previous owner, probably dead for about a hundred years, are neatly organized in a giant heap along the far wall, as if they'll come back to claim them some day. I sometimes wonder why I'm so particular about the state of my living space. Maybe because it's one of the few things I have control over. My Prisoner doesn't care one way or the other how clean I keep my place.
But he does care about feeding. He growls inside my stomach, insisting that it's lunchtime. He'll never get the meal he truly craves, but I have the next best thing. I hang my backpack on its hook and walk across the basement floor to my own private refrigerator in the corner. A familiar smell greets me as I swing the door open, and a familiar sight joins it: Pig.
All parts of the pig. The skin, the fat, the muscles. Heart, stomach, intestines, lungs, feet. And, the most delicious of all, pork brains. My Prisoner cries out at what he sees and smells – first out of protest, furious that his desire for human flesh is yet again denied, and then in desperation. He is so, so hungry. Right now he'll take anything. And so will I.
My arms can barely hold the feast I am about to prepare for myself, containers of pig remains stacked high and leaning as I bring them over to a clean table. I line them up and remove the lids, my initial urge being to grab everything I can and shove it all in my mouth. But that would be “uncivilized”. I reflexively look up at a handwritten note, taped on the wall next to the table. The letters form words, together begging a simple question: Who are you?
“I am Zaul Jarreux, a normal human,” I say out loud. This same question is placed throughout the basement: on my bathroom mirror, by the door, on the ceiling over my bed. And every time I read it, I answer it. It's a routine I've had for as long as I've relearned how to speak, a constant aspect of my training. According to Gibbs, if I do this diligently, I will start to believe it, and therefore begin to act and live like it. The Prisoner within me gives a feral growl at the thought, mixed with a mocking cackle, altogether sounding very un-human. He'll never let me forget that he's there. Before he takes control and I dive into this food, I quickly place all the items on two large plates and walk back across the room.
Next to the stairs I came down is another set, reaching further up, which leads to the first floor of the house. I climb this, stopping at the top where a small table and single chair wait for me on the landing. This is as close to the rest of the house as I will get, since a heavy steel gate, closely resembling a jail cell door, blocks me from entering the kitchen.
As I place my plates on the table I hear a high-pitched whirring approach me from the other side of the gate, and smell a well-known odor. A motorized wheelchair comes into view, carrying my so-called uncle and all of his severe deformities. A hand and half a leg are gone, but the most devastating features are on his head: missing nose and right eye. bald patches here and there across his scalp, a mutilated ear and long claw marks on his cheek and neck. The aftermath of a Hybrid Reanimate attack.
Gibbs tries to cover it all up by keeping the curtains closed and the kitchen light off. He wears sunglasses and a variety of hats, today's is the one embroidered with the phrase “Walkin' On Sunshine!”. Over the past four years I've seen each of his deformities at different times, and have long since gotten used to them. I've even gotten used to his smell, and my Prisoner has grown to ignore it. He is a strange but familiar housemate.
But one thing that does bother me is how silent he is. The only time he speaks is when giving direct instruction, or asking simple questions that don't require a lot of feedback. And when he does talk, he barely even looks my way. I can only assume that he hates me, hates things like me, which would make sense, being attacked by a Hybrid Reanimate. And when I've asked about that, he changes the subject, brings it back to training. All I know is that it happened, long before I met him, and it's scarred him in more ways than just physical. But he's the only one in my life who actually knows what I am.
“Why aren't you in school?” he asks again, voice strained and raspy. “Did something go wrong?”
In other words, he's wondering if I lost control on the first day. If I ate a classmate, or a teacher. These are very real possibilities, reinforcing the notion that something like me being around humans is simply unreasonable, if not completely wrong. I left Mr. Neal's class nearly strangled by my Prisoner's vicious pleas for release, only to be met by that river of flesh in the hallway again. I didn't lose control, I just couldn't take it anymore.
“Everything went fine,” I answer, absently pushing a plate of food over a few inches, trying to think up an acceptable excuse. “I came home for lunch.”
He looks up, at a clock that I presume is hung over his side of the steel gate, then uses his only hand to rifle through some items in a satchel attached to his chair. He pulls out a sheet of paper, and holds it close to his disfigured face. “It's not time for lunch. It's only 10 AM. You should be in English class right now. Why are you here?” His tone is calm and objective, but his questioning and his facts are unrelenting. This is the way Gibbs always talks, but it still frustrates me.
“I got hungry.”
He lowers the paper and stares at me silently for a moment, then looks away. “Of course you're hungry. You're always hungry. Even after you eat all of that – you'll be hungry. Do I need to remind you again, what the point of eating is?”
“No,” I say as I clench my hands and look down at my plates. I start to sneer, wishing he would just shut-up so I could eat my food. It's just right there...
“Well? What is it?”
“To stay in control!” I snap, contradicting the words by how I say them. I glare at him, but he still won't look at me. The Rage billows inside.
“That's right – to stay in control. Because humans are in control. And who are you?”
“I am Zaul Jarreux,” I sigh, unclenching my hands and dropping them to my side, “a normal human.”
“And normal humans have meals at certain times,” he says, almost cutting me off. “Normal humans your age are in school this time of the day. They don't skip class to come home and eat. And they don't gorge themselves on two fully loaded plates.”
“But...” I begin to protest.
“Don't argue. Your parents aren't paying me to let you do whatever you want.”
I wince at the mention of them. I haven't seen my mother or father since my transformation, so I remember nothing about them. I can't even picture their faces. I'm not allowed to speak with them over the phone, and I've looked at an old map down in the basement – there's over 1,000 miles between Pueblo and Lake Charles. All I know is that they're paying this man to house me and train me, and to keep my condition a secret.
“Do you want me to tell them you're wasting their money and efforts with such behavior?”
“No, sir.”
“Then do as I say,” he says sternly, wheeling his motorized chair away from the gate. “Take half of that pig back down to the refrigerator. And just be happy that you have the restraint to do so.”
I've heard him say things like that, suggesting I have more intelligence and control than the average Hybrid Reanimate. Before I wasn't sure what he meant, but today I figured out what he was talking about. After Genny Grest had been sent to the principal, Mr. Neal continued his lecture, and I learned more about myself and my condition in one class than I could ever get out of Gibbs in four years.
Chapter 5
Almost a century ago, a few months after that artificially inseminated woman was taken into government custody, they discovered she was pregnant. As a former lab assistant to Dr. Hubrens, she claimed that she was romantically involved with him, and assumed that conception had occurred just prior to the November 1st experiment. Medical staff kept a clo
se watch on her pregnancy and, noticing no abnormalities, helped deliver a healthy baby boy seven months later.
By all appearances, she and her son seemed unaffected by the splicing of human and Reanimate material placed inside of her. The deceased Dr. Gerald Hubrens was ruled as the child's father, and his radical procedure deemed a failure. The nation celebrated as the Reanimate affliction had come to a close.
But that wasn't the end. The child, Joseph, carried a genetic mutation, one that the government's top researchers were unable to detect. With his father dead before his birth, and his mother rotting in a psychiatric ward, Joseph was raised in perpetual foster care. No one wanted to adopt the bastard child of the deranged Gerald Hubrens or that woman. With no friends or family, and the twisted legacy he was forced to bear, Joseph Hubrens lived a reckless youth. Any drug available, he would try. Any woman willing to sleep with him, he would. Completely unaware, he sexually transmitted his genetic mutation to hundreds, perhaps thousands of people across the country. And as he grew older, the consequences of his actions finally came to light.
Women that Joseph slept with moved on to lead normal lives, taking the genetic mutation with them. They met other men, got married and had children, all of which appearing just as normal as Joseph when he was born. But one day one of those children hit puberty, then grew sick, then died. This happened more and more, all of the parents able to trace sexual ties back to Hubrens.
And of all the children that died, approximately 1/3 of them stayed dead.
A new breed of Reanimate was born, the Hybrid Reanimate. Those born with the Hubrens virus appear normal during childhood, but then undergo a drastic change at puberty, their genetic mutation triggered by all the hormones that bring the acne and hyperactive libido of any other teenager. Only a small fraction, Phase II Negatives, go through puberty without any abnormal changes. These are also called carriers – Joseph Hubrens was one, and I am pretending to be one. The rest get sick, and die.