The Outside

by Laura Bickle

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  They ignored me. “Go check the man,” Simmonds said.

  I remained standing for a few minutes, because no one had told me that I could sit. Simmonds stood before me, regarding me.

  And he splashed an open canteen of water at me. The cold water hit me like a slap. I sputtered and turned away, wiped my eyes.

  I turned back to him. “What was that?”

  Simmonds watched my face. I felt like a mouse caught in a trap under his steely gaze. “Holy water.”

  “I’m not a vampire,” I repeated. “I have a way to stop the vampires.”

  His eyes narrowed. “What is it?”

  I reached into my pocket. I saw that his thumb reflexively came to rest on the butt of the pistol holstered on his waist.

  I pulled out the plastic jar of algae. “This. It’s a . . . a glowing algae. A scientist at Lake Erie discovered that it repels vampires.”

  I offered him the plastic vessel with clear liquid and grayish culture swishing at the top. He looked hard at it. I could see that he wanted to hope. His fingers flexed, and he snatched it from my palm like a greedy squirrel. He took a flashlight from his belt, shone it through the frosted plastic.

  “How?” he said.

  “It’s injected. Under the skin,” I said. I knew that Alex could explain it better. But I could hear him shouting and some thumping going on in the back. It didn’t sound like rational discourse.

  “Please don’t hurt him,” I begged.

  Simmonds flicked his gaze to me and back to the bottle. He made no promises. “Tell me about this.”

  “It causes flu symptoms. Really bad. For a few days. But at the end . . .” I spread open my hands. “They can still fight against me, but they cannot bite my flesh.”

  His eyes narrowed. His hands closed over the bottle. “We’ll see about that.”

  He gestured to a man with shiny silver handcuffs. The man tore my coat off me and handcuffed me to a rusty piece of rail over my head. I was left standing there in the dark, incandescing, aching.

  And listening to the sound of fists on flesh in the far corner of the barn.

  I closed my eyes and prayed. Something about being home made me feel stiller, more passive. I could hear it in how the volume of my voice lowered, in how I averted my eyes. I wasn’t sure that remembering who I once was would serve me well now.

  After some time, my hands and arms went numb. I tried to flex blood into my fingers by wiggling them, but it just made them hurt more. I noticed that the glow in my fingertips dimmed as the blood drained out.

  “Why are you doing this?” I whispered to the guard. “There’s nothing we wouldn’t tell you. We want to help.”

  He refused to make eye contact. Perhaps he had too many warnings of vampire glamour. He looked to be my age. Young. His hair was cut so short, I could see his scalp through it, including a pink scar above his ear. The name PVT. TOBIAS was embroidered on his jacket.

  “Ma’am, we don’t know what you are. Until proven otherwise, you’re a threat.”

  “But we haven’t done anything!”

  “You could be contagious. You could be a form of vampire we haven’t seen yet. Captain says you stay here.”

  “My family is here,” I said. “In the white house across the meadow. Can you at least tell them I’m here?”

  “Ma’am . . . I’m not in any position to grant any favors to you. We all do as the captain says.”

  “I would too if he would just tell me what he wants.” A tear dripped down my nose. I felt that I had just given the soldiers everything they needed to save the world.

  And they were torturing us for it.

  “Can you at least tell me if there are others out there?” I pleaded. “Other survivors?”

  He hesitated a long time before he answered me. I could see that he was weighing how much to tell. “Our satellite phones haven’t worked for weeks. I honestly don’t know, ma’am.”

  And he turned away, refusing to answer any more of my questions.

  I hung like meat on a hook for hours, on my tiptoes. I heard Alex shouting and then silent, shouting and then silent at the edge of the barn. I caught bits and pieces of what he said, but never anything that Simmonds said. He spoke too low. But Alex I could hear loud and clear:

  “We brought you the damn vaccine on a silver platter.”

  “Where’s Katie?”

  “You fascist pigs! There’s this thing in the law against false imprisonment, you know.”

  But at least I knew that he was still alive. If he was irate, I knew that he was fine.

  Simmonds eventually returned. I saw that his knuckle was cut and bloodied. He looked me full in the face.

  “I’m sorry to have to do this,” he said. “But we need to know if what you’re telling us is the truth. And I’m not about to sacrifice any of my men to find out.”

  I looked at him levelly. “I am not lying to you.”

  “I hope not.” I could see despair clouding the circles under his eyes. “I really hope to hell that you’re not.”

  I heard hissing and snarling. The hair stood up beneath the edge of my bonnet, and I struggled against the cuffs.

  I knew that sound. It was a vampire.

  Five men dragged a creature in through the dust. It was a man in Amish dress, girdled in heavy chicken fence and barbed wire. I saw thin ribbons of something shinier—maybe silver—surrounding him. Simple wooden crucifixes rattled against the metal. Black blood oozed through his white shirt.

  I sucked in my breath. I knew him. He was a deacon. One of the Elders.

  And here he was, chalky, snarling, trussed up like a ham. He was emaciated, writhing against the wire with bony wrists and fingers.

  The soldiers dragged him into my stall. They pulled the crucifixes away, as if they were removing garland from a Christmas tree.

  I twisted to face Simmonds. “What are you doing?”

  His mouth was a grim slash. “Feeding you to the vampire.”

  I struggled against the metal cuffs, writhing and kicking as the vampire tore through the chicken wire. The Deacon lurched toward me, his red eyes inhuman and ravenous, his hands clawing the air. The paddock door was slammed behind me, and I was trapped with this hollow shell of evil.

  I cried out and turned away. I felt hot breath on my face. It smelled like blood that had been drained out of a slaughtered pig and forgotten in a bucket.

  And it receded.

  I opened my slitted eyes. The vampire was fixated on me, slavering, his clawlike hands twitching under his filthy shirt cuffs.

  We stared at each other, a strange stalemate of faith and science. I knew this man. I had even feared him. He had turned me out of our land, to certain death. He had denied the truth that Darkness had befallen our community. And now he had fallen victim to it.

  I felt a stab of pity. I wondered for a moment if he would go to hell. Or if he would live forever in this unloving state.

  But I knew that he could not touch me.

  He turned and lunged at the soldiers. His body slammed against the door of the stall, shaking silt from the rafters and splintering the wood. The old door rattled on its hinges, split.

  The soldiers were ready for him. I saw a sharpened stake thrusting through the gap between the door and the jamb.

  But the Deacon had not lost all his intelligence in his hunger. He leaped up and gripped the supports that held the walls of the barn. Like a spider fleeing a child’s flyswatter, he scrambled up into a rafter, where he hissed at us, bobbing, with red eyes.

  A shot rang out, then another.

  I shielded my eyes. Dirt and splinters rained down on me. I heard the barn creak and sag, this wonderful building that had been the refuge of my dreams since I was a little girl. I prayed under my breath to God that they wouldn’t burn it like they had the other barn. Not with me and Alex inside it.

  A volley of shots echoed. Men shouted and screamed. Something heavy fell from the rafte
rs and landed with a crash on the dirt floor.

  I opened my eyes, my ears ringing.

  Men circled the vampire, kicking it. A sharp stake was driven through its chest, leaking black ooze. A soldier was on the ground, cradling an arm turned at an unnatural angle. Another had a bloodied shoulder. He was the same one who had been my guard. Tobias. He looked younger and more frightened, swimming in his gear.

  Simmonds advanced on me. I flinched, thinking he meant to strike me. But instead, he reached up and unlocked my handcuffs. I fell, wobbly, to the floor in a puddle. Feeling came roaring back into my arms, but I couldn’t stop staring at the body of what had been the Deacon.

  The captain crouched down beside me, and his gaze pierced me. “I’m sorry. But I had to know that you were telling the truth.”

  I nodded. It was hard to accept his apology. But I had a choice to make. I could decide to be angry and small. Or I could choose to be more than that. To be human.

  I swallowed twice before I could say it: “I forgive you.”

  I forgave him not only because it was my true nature to do so, but because it was part of the Ordnung that I still believed in. And I was home. That knowledge seeped deep within me, like sunshine warming cold grass.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Home felt so very close but was so infuriatingly far away. It was an alteration not only of distance, but of time. Things had changed since I’d been exiled. I wondered if the people I’d always known and loved had changed too. I wanted to see for myself, run into the house at the far side of the field . . .

  But we were still prisoners. Alex had been placed in my stall, and I went to him, pressing my numb hands over the cuts and bruises swelling on his face and chest. He sat on the straw floor, leaned back with his head resting against the rough wood wall. A spider drawled down and began to investigate a fleck of blood on his shirt that looked suspiciously like a fly. I brushed it away.

  “How badly are you hurt?” My fingers traced over every laceration.

  He shook his head. “Mostly, just my pride.” He stared down at a cut on his knuckle, rubbed it as if he could wipe it away. I didn’t ask him who’d thrown the first blow. It didn’t matter.

  He reached for my hands, and his thumbs massaged the raw marks the handcuffs had dug into my wrists.

  “They hurt you,” he said, and his eyes were as still and dark as cold black glass.

  I shook my head. “No. I’m all right.”

  The door to the stall opened and a man came in carrying a plastic box and a gas lantern. He was dressed as the other soldiers were, in blotches of green and brown, but he bore a white band with a red cross on his sleeve.

  “I’m Corporal Jasper,” he said. He knelt down at a respectful distance from us, and set down the box and the lantern. I could see that his hands were soft, unstained by gunpowder. “You must be the survivors from Outside.”

  I didn’t feel like an Outsider. I’d grown up here my entire life. But I nodded. “Ja.”

  He rested his hands on the box. He spoke to us softly, gently, as if we were feral animals who could shy away at any moment. I’m not sure where we could have run to, but I appreciated his respectful demeanor. “I’m not here to hurt you. I’m a medic. I usually just treat injuries until we can get people to hospitals, but . . .” I saw a bit of frustration in the downturn of his mouth. “I’m all we have. Myself and Frau Gerlach.”

  My heart lifted, and a dark shadow slipped into the stall, carrying a bundle. An elderly Plain woman with ramrod-straight posture broke into an uncharacteristically broad smile when she saw me.

  I flung myself into her arms. She stroked my head and muttered soothingly at me, tucking my hair away from my cheek and into my bonnet.

  “Herr Stoltz said you were alive.” Her eyes shone, and I could feel the tenderness in her rough fingers. These were fingers that helped birth babies and gathered up the dead in our community. Frau Gerlach had always told me that “God smiles upon those who do his dirty work.” And she always did so, with silence and humility. “I came as soon as I could.”

  I nodded. “Ja. We survived. And we found a vaccine.”

  Her eyes slid back to the entrance, where I could see the Deacon’s black shoes, unmoving in the straw. “Too late for him,” she said firmly.

  “Ja.” I ducked my head.

  “I will need to run some tests. Well, as many as we can do here in the field,” Jasper said, opening his box. I could see the shiny steel of instruments inside, and clean gauze and bandages. He pulled on some latex gloves.

  “Then can I see my family?” I asked.

  “I will ask,” the medic said. “Please understand, that’s all I can do.”

  Alex grunted in displeasure. I glanced at Frau Gerlach. She nodded, placed a calming hand on my shoulder. She seemed resigned to this occupation of soldiers. But it appeared that she had been working closely with Jasper. He handed her a pair of gloves and she wordlessly began to open plastic packages containing instruments.

  “What do you intend to do?” Alex asked. “Not that we have any say in it, but just out of idle curiosity.”

  “Fair enough,” Jasper said. “We want to do a physical exam. Check for bite marks. Measure your pulse and respiration. Take blood, skin, and hair samples.”

  “We’re not contagious,” Alex said. “The bioluminescence is generated by a DNA mutation. An injection of the serum that we gave to your captain.”

  “We just want to be sure,” he said.

  I lowered my head. This would be the least of the indignities I’d suffered today. The medic led Alex out of the paddock for privacy while I got undressed for Frau Gerlach. The midwife had seen more nudity than any other person in my community, but I still felt blisteringly exposed under her gaze. She hung the gas lantern from the same spot in the ceiling where I had dangled for the vampire like a piece of meat. As Judy had at Water’s Edge, she combed through my hair, ran her fingers over my face and neck, had me lift my arms. The silence was heavy as she worked, reminding me of what I might yet face.

  “Do you think that my parents will speak to me?” I asked.

  I heard her breath come out in an exhalation. “You’re under the Bann und Meidung still, for certain.”

  “But you’re talking to me.” I crossed my arms over my chest and shivered.

  I heard a thin smile in her voice. “No one Plain can see me talking to you, dear.”

  I frowned. Frau Gerlach had always obeyed the Ordnung assiduously. I didn’t know what bothered me more: that she was breaking the rules, or that she wouldn’t admit to breaking them. “The Ordnung is still being followed?”

  She snorted as she made me pick up my feet to look at the soles, as if I were a horse that had thrown a shoe. “There is much picking and choosing, that is certain. Some of the young men have been off playing soldier with the military men. Neighbors are turning against neighbor, accusing each other of harboring Darkness and summoning the soldiers to ransack their homes for petty grudges. This is a bad time for faith.”

  My heart sank to hear it.

  “This vaccine you bring . . . what does it do?” I heard the curiosity in her voice.

  “It changes people. It makes us . . . inedible to the Darkness. It changes our biology.”

  I reached for the lantern, shuttered it. Only a thin crack of light trickled around the seams. Perhaps Frau Gerlach thought that I was only preserving my modesty. But my naked skin glowed, glowed like foxfire in the semidark. Without the clothes, I was brighter than I had been before. My hands twitched to cover myself, but I stilled them to face Frau Gerlach’s judgment.

  The midwife looked at me, unafraid. I knew that she had seen many more terrible things than this, especially since the Darkness had entered our community. She was always the one called in at the beginnings of life, to bring babies into the world, and at deaths, to prepare the dead. She had seen everything in between.

  “Hnh. The Elders will not like that,” she said. She said it in such a matter-of-fa
ct way that it brought a smile to my face. It was as if I stood before her with a full face of makeup, holding a cell phone, not a genetically altered woman who might no longer be considered human under their rules.

  “They did not listen to the Hexenmeister when he told them how to stop the Darkness,” I reminded her. “Why would they listen to me now?”

  “What is done is done,” she said with her quiet pragmatism. “We must look to the future.”

  She uncovered the lantern, looked me over from head to toe. Her fingers were cool and did not tremble. She nodded. “Get dressed.”

  I reached for my clothes.

  “No. Take these.” She handed me the bundle she’d brought with her.

  Tied in an apron were Plain clothes, like the kind I’d left the village in: a simple black cotton dress, apron, bonnet, underclothes, and shoes. They weren’t mine.

  “They should fit you, though the shoes might be a bit large,” Frau Gerlach said. “My feet are bigger than yours.”

  “Thank you,” I said, stepping into the dress. I fastened it with a clutch of straight pins that had been tucked into the seams. After the luxury of buttons as fasteners, my fingers were clumsy on the pins. I stabbed myself once and popped my finger into my mouth.

  “Your parents have not seen you yet,” Frau Gerlach said, tying the apron behind me. “Better that they see you exactly as they remember you.”

  My eyes welled with tears. “Did you tell them that I’ve come back?”

  She shook her head. “No. And Herr Stoltz won’t either.”

  There was a knock at the paddock, and Frau Gerlach told the medic to come in. He was holding some plastic vials.

  She held my hands, and there was a ghost of sadness on her face. “You will have to tell them yourself. Tell them, and the Elders, and hope for the best.”

  ***

  The medic was kind to us, as kind as he could be. He listened to my heart and looked at my tonsils. He asked me to take deep breaths while pressing a metal stethoscope against my back. He took my temperature and plucked out a strand of my hair to put in a vial. He scraped a bit of skin from my arm and clipped a piece of my nail. He swabbed the inside of my mouth and took blood from the crease of my arm with a syringe.