Cages

by Chris Pasley

  Later I heard Conyers had demanded the score be reset to pre-Beast levels, but no one else wanted to. They let it be a Panthers victory, 64-62.

  I made sure to listen to the radio than night. Dave had come into the cell and gone straight to bed, not saying a word to either of us. Ben sat quietly in his bunk below mine reading a thick Samuel Delany novel. Remi's bunk was empty, though his presence was never more felt, his smug ghost gloating at me all the way from the Bell. I turned the volume up.

  "It's happening more and more often, Mr. Conyers." That was the Captain of the Guards' gruff voice. "I need more men."

  I heard the shuffling of paper. Clearly Conyers was ignoring him. "You have as many as the budget allows, Jason."

  "All the kids on that court almost died because we didn't have enough guards to go in and watch the ones we led out. We were almost too late."

  "But you weren't, were you? Your men did an outstanding job, and they'll get their bonuses, even though eight men to kill one Beast seems like overkill to me." Conyers's voice held a hint of displeasure.

  "You're suggesting I sent eight men out there so that there would be more bonuses?" Jason's voice was getting higher. "It is happening more often. And quicker. Used to be you had twenty minutes before they got to stage seven, but that was barely ten."

  "What's your point, Jason?"

  "My point is that it's the Outbreak's not over. I think the parasite's adapting and soon they're –”

  "Stop." Conyers's voice was hard, commanding. "I will not entertain such uninformed speculation. The Outbreak is over, and I don't want you causing a panic."

  "It's not uninformed, Mr. Conyers. It. Is happening. More. Often!" A fist slammed on a desk.

  Conyers sighed. "And what do you want me to do? We could just execute all of them but that presents a bit of a problem from the survival of the species point of view..."

  "Quit talking down to me. I just need more men."

  "No."

  "At least let me start hiring female guards. There's a lot of them looking for work and it'll make up for the gaps when we lose one. They're usually cheaper, too."

  "No. You heard what happened in New York? That's not going to happen here."

  "Oh, don't even start that. That was isolated, and it wasn't even a Beast problem. It was just some bad kids."

  Conyers's chair squeaked harshly; he'd stood up. "Listen to me, Jason. They are all bad."

  Silence for a moment. Then Jason, sounding more subdued, said "At least give me back the two guards you got following you around. They'll help fill the patrol roster."

  "No. I need them. Are you done?"

  Jason breathed heavily through his nose, then opened the door. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm done."

  The next day I was on pins and needles. In a way I had never experienced before, I was wary of every single classmate. I refused to talk to them, wouldn't even meet their eyes for fear of seeing red. I understood then why no one talked much at lunch, why everyone was always so quiet, why it was so difficult to get close to anyone. And I knew that once Remi got out of solitary I would have nothing whatsoever to do with him. At that moment I was on Conyers's side. We were all bad.

  The bullet holes meant something else now. They were comforting in a way. I knew that every time I passed one that a Beast had been killed there, and I felt a little safer. The posters on the walls were protective totems, shielding me from whatever external influence might make me go Beast. And they were foreign, these parasites, even if they lived inside of me. Surely there was some way to kill them? I was actually entertaining some way of putting my hand in the school cafeteria microwave as an experiment by the time Mr. Jarvis's class rolled around.

  He was somber that day, with none of his bouncy good mood. Beast incidents were not uncommon, but most people are spared seeing all of them; they're isolated across the Quaratine. But this had been a abomination we all had seen and shared in, and so the pain seemed that much deeper. After the daily roll call and a brief scare where one kid didn’t hear his name, he started to write a poem up on the whiteboard by E.E. Cummings, something about the rain, but he soon stopped as his hand shook too much to continue.

  Jarvis turned to the class. "Nobody wants to talk about it," he said brokenly. "Nobody ever wants to talk about it. It's like bad luck. Even in the teacher's lounge we...we talk as if nothing had happened, though it's clear that something very definitely has. This class is about meaning, finding meaning in stories and events. We should not shy away from it. What did this mean? What did it mean to you?"

  No one sniggered, no one snorted. They were entranced by his sincerity.

  "I want us to do some writing, all of us. I want us to write what it was that we saw yesterday. I want to write down how it made me feel, and what it made me feel like." Jarvis held his head in his hands. "So this is what I want all of us to do. You can start now if you want, and turn it in tomorrow. Remember...be honest. That is what the most powerful writing is, you know, honest. True." He pulled out his desk chair and sat down. He uncapped a pen and turned a page on his notebook. "Tomorrow I will share what I wrote and I hope some of you will share yours."

  All I could hear after that was the sound of pencils scratching over notebook paper as the students took to their work. I saw some simply put their paper away and stare off into space. I saw one girl doodling in the margins, but ignoring the writing space altogether. Still, most of the class seemed to relish the chance to vent their feelings, something Quarantine rarely encouraged outside of indulgences like the Blind Hall. I looked down at my paper and felt what I assume Jarvis must have felt. Just a longing to get it all down, so the thing I had experienced wouldn't slip away from me. I began to write.

  I still had joined no real after-school club or intramural, so I was alone when I knocked on Conyers's door. The locks to the outer lobby of his office scraped open laboriously and I was greeted by the MP5 muzzle of one of his pet guards, who curtly asked "What?"

  I explained that I wanted to talk to the Principal.

  The guard's eyes narrowed, but he said "Wait," and shut the door again. Three minutes later it reopened. "Okay. You can come in."

  The graffiti Remi had drawn in the lobby was gone without a trace. Just as Wilson's office had been, the lobby was freshly painted with no signs of anything amiss. The guard gestured to the main office door and I knocked gently.

  "Come in." Conyers's voice.

  I turned the handle and stepped inside. The last time I had been in this office I had been too focused on getting the bug in place to notice much about my surroundings, but now I drank it in. Unlike Wilson’s, this desk was sturdy oak, big and stately. The walls were the same shade of pale white. Bookcases lined the walls and I strained to see the titles on the bindings. I could make out a few: Catcher in the Rye, Brave New World, On the Road. There were a few academic awards for excellence tacked up behind Conyers, but they were crooked, seemingly put up with little care. The desk was piled high with paper, which he was scribbling on even as I closed the door shut behind me. No photos, no calender, nothing to indicate much in the way of personality. I respected a man who kept his inner feelings private, didn't throw them up on his walls.

  "What do you want, Sam? I'm busy."

  I sat down in the chair. "I'm sorry to bother you, Mr. Conyers. I just wanted to ask something...I mean, after what happened yesterday...can you....can you really..."

  Conyers looked up, one eyebrow raised. "Can I really smell the Beast on people?"

  I nodded. "I always heard that was impossible, but...." But maybe I could believe in you, if you say I should.

  Conyers put his pen down and stripped the glasses off his face. "Yes, given enough time."

  "H - how much time?"

  He shook his head. "You want to know if I think you'll go Beast, don't you?"

  I nodded again.

  Conyers smirked. "Not such a tough ass now, are you? Saw your first taste of the real thing - that satisfy your appetite for hanging posters?"<
br />
  I could only swallow and take the recrimination as deserved.

  He glared at me, squinting slightly, as if to read a word inked in tiny print on my forehead. "I don't know about you yet. Maybe."

  I licked my lips. Memories of James warned me off this path, but I ignored them. "What can I do?"

  "What do you mean, what can you do?"

  What I was saying was stupid and childish, and I knew it, but I couldn't get #25's face out of my mind, perched like a mask on that monstrous body. "I mean...if you can see it coming...you must have a way to prevent it right? I mean, if you catch it early."

  Thinking back on the moment, I should have seen the glimmer of satisfaction in his eye as he nodded slowly. "Maybe. It's not easy though, which is why most Quarantines don't bother. And it doesn't always work."

  "What is it?" I asked, leaning forward.

  He exhaled for a long time, looking at me, sizing me up, as if asking himself if I were ready. "Let's take it slow, Sam. Here's what you do. I want you to join an after school activity. Not the Banner Society."

  "No, they've banned me."

  "Did they? Anyway, join a club or a sport, okay? Make some friends, talk to people. And come back here every day, just before dinner and we'll talk about it some more. You're really lucky, you know," Conyers said, sliding his glasses back on. "You're a borderline case. Some people, like your friend Remi –”

  "Remi's not my friend."

  Conyers continued as if he had not been interrupted. "...like your friend Remi are doomed to the Beast. No stopping it. At least you've got a shot. Now go on, get out of here. I'll see you here again before dinner tomorrow. Do what I told you."

  I promised I would, and left Conyers's office with my heart a little lighter.

  Go ahead, you can laugh. I deserve it.

  I joined Mr. Jarvis's Literary Society. He'd been bugging me to join for the week or so that I had been there, but until then I just shrugged it off. They read books and talked about them. Jesus, I had come into Quarantine feeling like a badass, and now I was a member of the book club. They were already halfway through the current book, but I had already read it. The Metamorphosis, by Kafka.

  "Seriously? Metamorphosis?" I blurted.

  Hey, Conyers said I had to join. He didn't say I had to be nice.

  Mr. Jarvis closed the thin volume he was holding, using his finger as a bookmark. "And what's wrong with it, Sam?"

  "I mean, how blatantly obvious can you get? A guy turns into a giant cockroach and his family hates him for it. Oooh, how prescient. Oooh, how like our present situation! Jeez."

  Mr. Jarvis was smiling now, humoring me. "Don't you think we should use literature to examine our own lives?"

  I had a dozen replies Remi would have loved, but none Conyers would have approved of. I chose a middle route. "I think that Kafka's metaphor for transfiguring change gives us nothing we don't already know. And I think literature should be used to cast light on our lives from new angles, not reinforce old ones."

  "Mr. Jarvis?" A black-haired girl in a green sweater and thick black glasses raised her hand.

  "Yes, Kate?"

  She looked right at me. "I think Sam's full of crap."

  Jarvis was beaming now as he tried to scoot himself out of the debate. "How so?"

  Kate chewed on her lip for a moment, looking at me. Just when I thought she wasn't going to answer she spoke up. "Literature isn't about how we can put a happy filter on bad situations. It's not finding ways to look at things that are fundamentally different from how we understand them. It's about finding different ways to express fundamental truths as the author understands them, and in the post-Outbreak era, The Metamorphosis is as exact a metaphor as we're going to find to describe our situation. So it's hopeless. So it's grim. So what? It's our life and we need to learn to deal with it."

  Clapping from around the group, and I had to admit, she was a firecracker. I tried not to smile; I enjoyed a worthy opponent, but so far only the teachers themselves ever had been. This was a new sort of challenge. "But, Kate, at what time does a metaphor stop being a metaphor? At what point does it become not a literary tool of comparison but a undisputed fact? When Kafka's metamorphosis became real, the power the words had to evoke disgust and revulsion disappeared in a new wave of sentimentalism and empathy. It's no longer a metaphor. Our monster metamorphosis is real, and as such, doesn't benefit from a fictional event about the same thing."

  No claps for me - clearly this was Kate's home team - but they could tell a good jab when they saw one.

  Kate rolled her eyes, blown large by her glasses. "Please. The metamorphosis may have closer ties to modern life than it did in Kafka's time, but there's still a message there for anyone holding out hope that things will go back to the way they used to be before they got to Quarantine. You are a burden. They hate you. And in the end they will kill you and leave you to die. That's what we should take away from Kafka and the sooner we all learn that, the better."

  Crap. I really didn't like to lose.

  After club-time was over I stuck my hand out to Kate in the hall. "You got the better of me. Don't expect it to happen too often."

  She brushed past me, ignoring my hand. "Screw you."

  I grinned. "I think you're taking Kafka a little too much to heart, Kate."

  After club time I went to see Conyers. He asked me about my day, and I told him. He asked about Kate, and I told him about our encounter. Then he told me to stay away from her.

  "But...why?" I asked, disappointed.

  Conyers just tapped the side of his nose.

  Chapter Five

  Dave Tinder looked like an All-American boy. He was the ideal, the good-natured athelete, the straight-A student, the grinning volunteer. He was a basketball star, and a baseball star, and a solid soccer player. He could do basic calculus. Before Quarantine he went to secret parties and got casually drunk and gave everyone around him thumbs-ups. He wanted to be a lawyer when he grew up, maybe a District Attorney like on TV. Or a baseball player, but let's not get ahead of ourselves - he was good, but was he that good? Maybe. Dave Tinder played by the rules and the world patted him on the back for it.

  Dave Tinder was a lie.

  He first realized there was something wrong with the world, he said, when he was six years old, sitting in the pews at his family's church. His father was a minister but not the head preacher, so Dave was spared hearing his father pontificate on the evil of sin every week after seeing the things he did on the other six days, but church attendance was clearly mandatory. This was a church that had grown uncomfortable with the Resurrection, and when Jesus appeared on the third day it was as the Holy Ghost, not the flesh-and-blood rebirth of the Son. Dave was listening to the sermon, a moral that even at six he had heard before, when it suddenly struck him to look at Reverend Chalmers's face. No one ever did; they all looked obediently down at their books and their hymnals when he spoke, but Dave took a good hard look.

  He was lying. Dave didn't understand why, but he could tell the reverend didn't believe a word he said. His eyes would flutter back and forth off he page. He would lose his place and sometimes babble contradictory statements before he found his place in the scriptures once more. And sometimes, only sometimes, Dave could see him grimace in pain. He didn't mention this observation to his parents, of course. He kept quiet for two more years, but every Sunday, when everyone else was reading the Bible, Dave read Reverend Chalmer's face. Finally Dave decided to get an answer.

  He stayed behind one day, after the congregation let out, as his parents hobnobbed with the other churchgoers in a hierarchical dance every bit as complex as any found in Quarantine. The reverend usually shook a few hands, blessed a few unfortunates and retired to his office even before the church was empty. That day he found Dave sitting in his seat.

  Dave asked why Chalmers was lying. At first Chalmers was all bluster and Authority but Dave kept simply asking the same question. Why are you lying?

  Perhaps he saw
something divine in the driving questions of an innocent eight-year old. Maybe he was just finally glad to have someone to talk to. For whatever reason, Chalmers decided to spill his guts out to this insistent kid who had stared accusingly at him every Sunday for two years.

  Because, the reverend said. I don’t believe there is a God.

  Dave considered this. But you always said you did.

  That's because I was lying.

  Dave had a minor worldview paradox as two separate realities - the one everyone he'd ever trusted told him existed and the one deep down he was afraid actually did - fought for the same belief-space in his head. In spite of a short lifetime of forced piety, he found the idea ridiculously easy to accept. It explained so many things. Still, there were a few things Dave didn't understand. Why continue to lie?

  The reverend had sighed deeply then, the sound of a man who has rationalized his life for far too long to enjoy picking it apart. Finally he said that even though the Outbreak had proven to him that there was no divine spirit, no watchful eye looking down on him with benevolent concern, it had not had the same effect on the other survivors. They were heartbroken and lovelorn, terrified - and aching for someone to tell them it would be all right. Reverend Chalmers knew how to do this. He had been trained for it and even though the words he spoke were hollow he took solace in the comfort they brought to those who had been forced through an ordeal unlike any in human history. At least he soothed their spirit, he reasoned, even if he could do nothing for their soul.

  Dave said thank you very much and left the Reverend's office.