by Chris Pasley
Give us some credit; we were master strategists. Conyers thought we were satisfied blowing shit all over Jarivs's office? That was just Phase 1. Patton had nothing on us.
Standard Operating Procedure in a case of a non-Beast-related incident on Quarantine grounds is full Lockdown. All guard and medical personnel are deployed to the scene and since that spreads the guards thin, a lockdown seals all doors not on the action team's route to ensure that the students are confined and cannot spread to other parts of the Quarantine, even if they go Beast.
Unless of course, you're already in another part of Quarantine
As it was relayed to me, Ben poked his head out of the infirmary two minutes after the nurse hustled out the door to deal with the lockdown. The infirmary is rare common ground between the students and the faculty; very few Qurantines have the budget to afford full-time medical assistance to both, so the infirmary is located past the barricades in the Security Wing, where the guard barracks, teacher's quarters and the Control Center are located. Students are only allowed there one at a time.
The Security Wing was empty. The only guard not at the scene of the incident was the Control Center operator, whose eyes never left the dozens of monitors built into the walls. The teachers were all in the Faculty cafeteria, eating their dinner. Ben walked casually through the most forbidden part of the entire Quarantine, taking in how the other half lived in no real hurry. He knew he had time before anyone caught on that the bomb in Jarvis's classroom was a diversion. He did pick up his pace as he darted past the windowed Control Center door, on the chance the guard there might notice the movement.
The Security Wing reminded Ben of a doctor's office, all polyester couches and water coolers, coffee tables and old magazines. Non-offensive, pastoral art hung on the walls. He said it smelled like disinfectant. It wasn't long before he found what he was looking for: the Server Room.
Remi had been in favor of building a sizeable electromagnet and sending that in with Ben to wipe the hard drives, but while we thought we maybe knew how to do that, the chances of Ben making it past the barricade guards into the infirmary with it were slim. So when Ben opened the door, which was really just a large closet housing two desktop-sized machines sitting on the floor like forgotten slabs of marble, he took a simpler approach. He tipped the first one over and began stomping on it.
Biff had given me the idea. His insistance that the Quarantine managed to operate solely because of their adherence to a strict routine. During my time in the Bell, I started thinking about the Quarantine's routines. They were military. Every teacher recieved a printout each morning verifying their class roster and if they had any extra duties that day, like having to be the Bell teacher. They got another after noon. At the end of the day those printouts were checked against the logs and then recycled. Their paper records were strictly a method of portability, not storage. The servers held the only real record of the Quarantine's day to day business. Without them the effeciency Conyers depended on to run the facility would crumble.
Ben quickly found he wasn't nearly strong enough to make stomping effective, so he looked for other avenues of destruction. Luckily, the servers came with an easy set of screws on the back to make an IT manager's job easier when he or she had to dig around in the server's guts, so he simply slid the white metal covers off. Inside the boxes were just wires and circuits. He could see the hard drives, little gray boxes.
He began stomping anew.
Conyers's office lobby was the same as it ever was, the same as it had been the first time we had been in there, when we had taunted Biff. We were smug little bastards, each sitting there with self-satisfied little grins. I was surprised Conyers had put us in his office; I'd have thought he'd just toss us in the Bell and throw away the key first thing.
"Masterful, Sam," Remi said, thumping me hard on the back.
"I wonder who they'll get to teach Chemistry now?" I said, smiling. I was as full of fiero as either of my friends, but I had just gotten out of the Bell, and now that I was face to face with another round of confinement, my self-assurance was dropping.
"Bah, they'll probably just cancel the class," Remi said. "They'll realize in their wisdom that chemistry is too dangerous a subject to teach impressionable, destructive young minds."
"Dave, are you okay?" Dave had been quiet for a while now, and while he seemed as satisfied with himself as we were, his mouth had a tight line to it I hadn't seen before.
"What? Oh, yeah, I'm fine. I've just never been in real trouble before." Dave frowned, a disturbed look on his face. "I'm glad I am; it's what I wanted, you know? But I'm sitting here, thinking about spending a few months or even longer in solitary, missing the playoffs, missing all the practices and the games...and I realize...I really do like baseball."
I wondered too about the things I'd be missing during my time in the Bell. Things I had already missed. Like Kate. In my time in solitary I think I probably exaggerated her in my mind; she was a goddess on a pedestal, a pining love out of Shakespeare. But for all the perfection I had assigned to her she had still turned on me when Conyers released his booklet. For all I know my Homecoming stunt hadn't even impressed her. Maybe she thought it was stupid and juvenile. Maybe she never even liked me that much anyway. And here I was, having bought only a prankster's respect at the cost of several months in a tiny cell. "It's okay," I said to Dave. "Baseball will still be there."
The door flew open and a guard roughly threw Ben inside. "Get in there, you little fucker," he spat, slamming the door behind him. Ben tumbled to the ground clumsily, as if his muscles weren't coordinated together enough to properly catch himself. He looked small and weak again, like he would rather just curl into a ball than stand up. But stand up he did, with a wide smile on his face.
"You did it?" I asked, my eyes open wide.
Ben chuckled, the first real laugh I can remember from him. "You bet your ass I did."
We all cheered again, our self doubt and misery vaporized in a wash of triumph. We nearly knocked the boy out by beating on his back and hugging him, but he took it all in stride as he described what he'd done. By the time the guards found him the servers had been in pieces, his tired feet still stomping as best he could. I beamed at him and he glowed back, a vitality there I had never seen before. He had been helpless, but now he knew he was no longer powerless.
We sat in Conyers's lobby for eight solid hours. Our smugness only lasted so long, and by the third hour we were tired and hungry. We took turns sleeping while one kept watch; we didn't want to be ambushed. Remi was on watch when finally, late into the morning, the Principal of Dekalb Quarantine #4 barged into his office.
The loud bang and Remi's shouted warning made us jump to our feet, even as sleep gummed our eyes. Conyers seemed to ignore us as he shoved the key into the lock of his office and stormed inside. I looked at Dave and he blinked back sleepily, as unsure of anything as I was. Conyers wasn't gone for long; he returned with a purpose, his silver revolver clutched tight in one hand. Aimed directly at me. I looked around quickly; his guards were nowhere to be seen.
"Conyers, I –"
"Shut up," he growled. Sweat beaded on his forehead and his hand shook. "Why do you do these things, Crafty? Why?"
I tightened my lips and looked anywhere but the gun. "You started –"
"Why couldn't you just go with the program?" Conyers continued. "You could have done your time here without a peep. But no. You be a hero. Be a big fucking star and because of that you've dropped my Quarantine into chaos."
I looked Conyers dead in his eyes and found nothing there but hate. I returned the sentiment, sneering, no longer caring if he would really pull the trigger. "You weren't so good at running your precious Quarantine then, were you, if one kid could foul it up?"
"Jesus, Sam!" Remi swore, and he was right, I was an idiot. Conyer's eyes narrowed and he pulled back the hammer.
"You're not going to shoot me, Conyers," I said, unable to keep my voice from shaking.
&nb
sp; "I have to," he breathed. "You're a Beast, do you know that? Just a Beast waiting to happen. It's my job to kill Beasts, Sam."
"Then where are your guards?" I challenged. "If I'm a Beast then have them kill me."
He spat at me. "I had to give them to Jason Turner. Couldn't very well say no with the whole place in chaos, could I? But this is a job I would want to do myself in any case."
He stepped back, lifting the gun back to my forehead. "Goodbye, Sam."
That's when Dave grabbed Conyers's arm. The principal staggered under the unexpected assault; he never expected Dave to be an enemy. Dave was strong, young and athletic and Conyers only had one arm to boot, but desperation drove the middle-aged man to throw off his younger attacker.
And fire three shots.
Dave's face blossomed into a flower of blood. His chest shook under the weight of the second wound and he fell to his knees, still struggling to stay up. The third shot missed, but the two that had struck did their work well. Dave fell to the carpet and I swear to God the earth shook, as if a defeated titan had been toppled. Conyers backed away, staring at Dave's unmoving frame, until his back was to the lobby door. "His eyes were red," he said huskily, too fast.
I was at Dave's side in an instant, but there was nothing I could do. This was worse than the Beast turning I had witnessed. Dave's life was over and for all my tricks the blood fountaining from his face was beyond my ability to stop. Remi was next to me almost instantaneously and he started doing all the things he thought you were supposed to do, ripping his shirt, trying to keep pressure on the wounds, perform CPR. But there was no bringing Dave Tinder back. His heart had been torn apart by a twenty-two caliber bullet. Remi was starting to call for all sorts of chemicals that he thought might jumpstart Dave's systems when I stood up and looked directly at Dan Conyers.
I saw the horror in his eyes, but he shook his head anyway. "His eyes were red," the older man gasped, spit leaking from the corners of his mouth. "You all saw that. His eyes were red."
I continued to stare.
"His eyes were red!"
A low growl formed at the back of my throat and I took a step forward.
"What are you doing, Sam?" Remi asked weakly from the floor.
I growled again, louder and more animalistic. I snarled and kept walking towards the cowering principal in the corner.
"What are you doing?" Conyers whispered, a sad repitition of Remi's plea.
"I'm a Beast, aren't I?" I walked more quickly now. "You said so yourself. Look at my eyes! Conyers! Look at my eyes!"
He raised the gun weakly and I snarled, only feet from him. "Do it," I challenged. "Do it."
Conyer's face crumpled and he let the gun clatter to the linoleum floor, burying his face in his only hand. I stood over him a moment more, searching myself for the resolve to bend over, pick up that gun and settle the score.
"Sam." Remi's voice was tense, warning. I turned to find him staring into the opposite corner, his hands still wet with Dave's blood.
"What?" I asked, but then I saw.
Ben was standing face-first in the corner, his arms limp at his sides. He was breathing heavily, like a drowning man struggling for air. He was loosely beating his shoulders against the walls, a gentle rocking. "Ben?" I asked tentatively.
Just as he turned, Conyers's office radio roared to life on the emergency channel. "Multiple contacts! Multiple contacts! Jesus Christ, they're turning so fast –" Screaming. Static.
"Oh Ben," I said, miserably as he completed his turn.
"It should have been me," Remi said, confused. "Why not me?"
Conyers scrambled for his gun as Ben turned towards us, eyes blood red, his mouth gaping wide as his skin and clothes tore under the strain of the new thing he was becoming.
Chapter Nine
A friend of mine sent me a video tape of a fox decomposing midway through my sixth grade year labeled "Fukkin Cool Death." That's how we were then, whatever. All children have a fascination with death, much as parents would like to think they don't, and I watched the video nearly a dozen times. It showed a dead fox lying on its side, the face neatly framed. The video was sped up over a number of days, an explosion of life as the worms and maggots invaded the copper corpse and made it writhe as if resettling for a better night's sleep, its mouth moving and opening slightly as its jaw muscles went, its body expanding with gases and relaxing in one great final sigh of death. I think we were supposed to watch it and marvel at how vividly death leads to new life, but I slowed it down and watched it at less than half speed. Watched that way it was a ghastly, shuffling invasion, an abomination of slick tentacles erupting from the violated body like a twisted hentai dream. I preferred watching it slow. Speed only sugarcoated things. Anything fast has an artificial beauty.
The basketball player had been like that fox deteriorating in awful slow motion.
Ben was fast. And he was beautiful.
His Converse burst under the pressure of ten gnarled talons, claws thumping into the carpet like pitons. Muscles ribbed with rings of cartilage split his tan jeans into tatters, ripping the outer skin bloody until it hung like the lazy strands of two beaded curtains. Long, yellow nails ripped through clenched fists to emerge from the back of his hands, tearing long furrows as the bones elongated. Spines and reptilian quills malformed his blank yellow T-Shirt before piercing the cloth, the barbs hugging back to the swelling chest, capturing the scraps of cloth inside. Wings jutted unevenly from a back that broadened with each new added rib, thin bat wings with delicate butterfly membranes. His neck stretched, collars of bone layering up to a chin now two feet above his shoulders. His jaws ripped into mandibles and his tongue was a long, tumorous monstrosity.Cheeks still padded with baby fat slimmed as bone slivered from the front plane of his face to present wide plates protecting bloody-red eyes. Hair wafted gently to the ground along with long expanses of scalp and unneeded skull.
Conyers cradled the gun to his chest, hugging it like a lifeline. Remi stood unaffected, staring with hate and jealousy plain on his face at the monstrosity Ben had become. I had slipped down to my knees at some point, so I had a level view as I saw Ben's penis thicken and elongate before grafting itself into his bloody upper thighs. Tharn with horror I could do nothing but wonder why Conyers hadn't fired, why he wouldn't just shoot that goddamned gun, but I suddenly realized he wasn't hugging it to his chest. He was pointing it at his heart. He didn't want to be a Bitten, but he didn't have the balls to pull the trigger.
The Beast That Was Ben turned slowly toward Conyers. The mandibles clacked hungrily and its right talon dug deep into the concrete floor as it pushed its weight back, preparing to leap. Conyers must have realized before I did that for once the lingering desire in a turned kid's brain gelled perfectly with the Beast's lust for blood, because he dropped the gun and started scrambling at the door locks. There was a beating on the other side of the door as well, guards calling in that they had heard the shots. The Beast stepped forward, thrumming with muscle and malice, forgoing its leap for a purposeful, menacing stride that tore wide gashes into the floor. Conyers shouted for the guards to bust down the door.
They refused. They told him to step back from the door and the rectangular plate of a murder hole slid open, sprouting the stubby nose of an MP5. Three things happened at once: Conyers threw himself to the right. The Beast charged. The guards opened fire.
The Beast That Was Ben shrugged off the bullets and barreled into the door, which buckled so far that the guard firing on the other side must have been thrown into the hallway, because I heard the bullets continue to fire and a painful screech. Maybe a stray shot had caught another guard. The Beast hammered at the door with its fists, gouging metal and leaving smears of rheumy blood. This was nothing like the basketball player. This was nothing like I had ever heard, a Beast that shrugged off bullets and had nearly ripped a solid steel door off its hinges with brute force. With a freight-train roar the Beast barreled all its considerable weight into the door again an
d this time it tore to tatters, bent chunks bursting out on three terrified guards who immediately opened fire and started backpedaling down the hall.
Will all the action going on in front of me I never noticed Conyers' absence until his office door closed with a smug snick. I gaped, bewildered. Remi and I were left alone in the now broken lobby with Dave's body.
Remi looked at me, then at the shattered lobby door. "We don't deserve to survive," he said, his voice reverent. "What are any of us compared to that?"
To say that nobody saw the Outbreak coming would be to ignore the decades of movies and books that prognosticated the contrary. The zeitgeist of popular culture was almost willing it to happen. Still, it wasn't quite what they expected. They were promised shuffling drones, easily survived except in packs. No one anticipated anything like the Beasts, or the traitor that lived in their children's blood. A normal zombie attack they could have weathered with determination, but the Outbreak seemed to drain the world of its spirit.
People used to remember where they were when Kennedy was assassinated. Few people old enough to really recall had survived the Outbreak, but even if they had, a single man's death would pale in comparison to the birth of hordes of the shuffling dead and their monster masters. My father was in a jail cell just outside of Raleigh, North Carolina. The last thing he admitted to remembering before the news became nothing but grainy video of Outbreak horrors was seeing a video of President Clinton denying his affair with Monica Lewinski - something he remembered only for how ridiculous it all was in hindsight. After the Outbreak, no one could imagine even being slightly troubled at the idea of the leader of the free world giving it to an intern. If nothing else, the horror of the event had given the country a little perspective. Clinton went on to serve two more terms, additional time granted by a blood-weary Congress who were so busy trying to rebuild their districts that no one could be bothered to hold an election. Not that there were Republicans and Democrats anymore. Taxation and the size of government weren't even concerns, especially with so many Congressmen mourning the empty seats once filled by their Midwestern brethren, politicians either killed in the first wave or orphaned by the Clinton Act of '99, which formally abandoned the middle states.