by Chris Pasley
“You found out we were just as useless.”
“Yes!” For a moment his eyes glowed and I almost saw the old Remi. “I even enjoyed Quarantine at first. All the social interactions, the grades, the science… there were new goals for me! But I didn’t know how it all really worked and I blew it. Got busted for dope. Indulged in the Blind Hall too much, got Solitary to get clean. So I was sitting there in my chemistry class, stone sober for the first time in years, miserable as fuck. All the tests, the dances, the sports – it’s all just bullshit they spread on things to hide the truth. The same pointlessness I saw in the Midwest followed me here. But then… Trisha Davenport changed.”
Remi closed his eyes, remembering. “It was like nothing I had ever seen. She stood up in class, walked over and hugged Ivan Workley. He sat there, trapped in his desk, as she gripped tighter and tighter. It was so gentle no one realized what was happening until it was too late. Ivan was trapped as the spikes started to emerge, tearing through both their bodies at once. He screamed so loud… killed by a girl who had been too shy to tell him she loved him. Ivan was meat by the time she stood up straight, full stage seven. And she looked at me.”
He motioned me closer and his voice fell soft into a whisper. “There was purpose in those eyes, Sam. No doubt. No uncertainty. She knew what she was there to do and she did it. Killed six kids before the guards moved in. I should have been scared, but I was just… envious.”
I backed away. Remi was starting to disturb me very deeply. “We can talk about this later. We’ve got to get to the other Security Wing door. Maybe we can find a way through it, if this one’s impassible.”
Remi scowled, and it was obvious I had shrugged off a point that had been very important to him. “If we circle around through the main lobby we’re bound to hit a Beast.”
“I know. We’re going through the courtyard.”
The Quarantine was built like a castle. Bordered with a frame of hallways and classrooms, the center of the entire structure was an open field almost one hundred yards long. It had started life as an interior football field, but after one season the entire area was repurposed and the teams disbanded – I guess ninety minutes of watching teenagers behaving violently was too much for some people after the Outbreak. Strange to think that at one point, at least according to my dad’s stories about his adventures as a high school quarterback, people used to actually celebrate their children’s capacity for violence against one another.
Now the courtyard was dominated primarily by a rubber-cork track, where the track and field team trained (far more track than field, of course, considering there was no way any of these runners was going to see a field before they were nineteen) and where every gym class had to beat certain Presidential benchmarks for health in the form of cruelly short lap times. “I’d love to see the President do this,” the guy next to me at the starting line complained during my short tenure in gym. Inside the track were two tennis courts. I often would watch the matches through the window during Geometry, bouncy girls in tight shorts flinging themselves every which way, chasing after a fuzzy yellow sphere that, given their lack of skill, never survived more than one exchange per rally. The cafeteria jutted out harshly into the field, creating an odd bend in the track, guarded by the hulking steel gravestones of the humming refrigerator cooling units. Beside the tennis courts were, oddly, a set of monkey bars.
I loved the monkey bars. In the few times I had been allowed out into the courtyard on my own I dominated those bars. It was nice to feel like a kid again, looking at the pale blue carpet of the sky while dangling upside down by my feet, or seeing how many bars I could skip in one grab. You could almost imagine that the Quarantine had been a bad dream, that I was back in middle school, the only worries on my mind being my parents and their idiocy. I guess that’s why the monkey bars were there in the first place. That was the one sanctuary the older kids allowed the freshmen.
As Remi and I forced open the door beside the Algebra classroom, the courtyard looked anything but comforting. The streetlights were on, but only the ones on the Math Hall side; the far side of the courtyard was shrouded in darkness. There was a chill in the air and any other day my eye would have been searching the gray clouds churning above for a hope of snow – rare for Georgia, but not unheard of – but that night I had tunnel vision. Had any Beasts found their way outside? The edges of the buildings had spiked awnings placed at sharp angles all around the field to prevent any such occurrence from escalating into an escape, but even though they had been the death of dozens of tennis balls over the years, still skewered like lemon kabobs near the courts, I had little hope that they would stop a Beast the likes of which Ben had become.
Remi grabbed my shoulder painfully. “A guard. Look.”
I looked. At first I didn’t see him, but as my eyes sharpened to the light I could make out the humanlike shadows around his black clothes. He was leaning sadly against the monkey bars, his MP5 dangling from one hand by the strap. I remember thinking he seemed defeated, homesick even. An emotion I myself had been all too familiar with.
“How do we sneak past him?”
I shrugged. “Why sneak past him? He might be our best bet for surviving this.”
Remi gaped. “And just like that you go back to your old ways, huh?”
“No. I’m saying that we use him to keep us safe, then we ditch him.”
In the end it was the guard himself who made the decision for us. His head perked up at the sound of our voices and he began to shuffle towards us.
“Oh,” Remi said, relief clear in his voice. “He’s Bitten.”
Young Bitten were not too dangerous on their own. The parasite was still spreading inside the body, the muscles and nerves not yet completely in its control. The result is a slack, milky-eyed drone with a mind for slaughter, but without much physical ability to match. The guard inching towards us was certainly young; the gash across his chest – sliced right through his armor – was still seeping blood. As he stepped into range of the street lights his open mouth and white eyes confirmed our suspicion.
“Well, he shouldn’t be too hard to avoid,” I said, though I was disappointed not to be able to count on the guard’s protection.
“Avoid? We need to kill him. Or more accurately, you do. My leg’s about to give out on me, and I’m feeling a bit too lightheaded for it.”
“Kill him? What for?”
“Don’t you get it, Sam? He solves our problems! He’s got a key ring that will open most of the doors in this place. Plus he’s got that gun. I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on that gun,” Remi said darkly.
I considered. Remi was right, but I wasn’t sure I could go through with it. There was a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that I would be in serious Trouble if I killed a guard, even a Bitten one. Still…I wouldn’t mind holding that gun either. “Ok…how do I do it? We don’t have any weapons.”
Remi pointed. “Steal the sword off his back. It’ll be easy.”
“Easy, huh?” I approached the Bitten guard slowly. He was baring his teeth and biting his own lips, so blood trickled down his chin, sluggish, like gravy. Nothing in his eyes suggested this was anything other than a walking corpse. Suddenly I realized that this was the closest I was likely to get to an embodiment of the parasite that made all our lives such a living hell. Thank God it wasn’t Biff. “Come here, mother fucker. Come on.”
I ran around the guard. He turned to follow, but he was too slow. I put my hand on the rubber grip of the short samurai sword strapped to his back and tugged. The Bitten stumbled back as the blade refused to leave its sheath, hissing like a wounded balloon animal. I looked at Remi in a panic.
“Unhook the safety strap!” he called.
Oh. Right. I struggled with the little metal toggle for just a moment then the sword pulled free, nearly depositing me on my ass. The Bitten did tumble down and it lay prostrate, looking confused about what had happened. I closed my eyes and swung the sword at its neck.
&nb
sp; “Good job,” Remi said, and I opened my eyes. The Bitten was clearly dead; I hadn’t decapitated it, but its head lolled on a few strips of meat. The spinal cord had been severed. The blade itself had relatively little blood on it. Some trickled into the grass, but for the most part it seemed as if the blood from the Bitten had congealed instantly. I thought that once I had opened my eyes I would be sick at what I had done, but I wasn’t. I felt like my dad and, for the first time, felt proud of it. I had gotten the job done.
Remi hopped closer and scooped the MP5 off the ground with a grunt of pain. He tried to eject the clip in that cool action hero way they do in the movies, but it took him a few minutes to figure out how to do it. “Fuck!” he yelled, throwing the weapon down. “Empty. Oh, he doesn’t have any spare clips on him, does he?”
The dead guard’s backpack was missing, so I searched his belt. “Nothing.”
“Damn it. I really wanted that gun.”
“Found some keys, though.” I pocketed the set of twenty keys on a bland metal key ring and stood, looking at the sword in my hand. “And a sword isn’t a bad find.”
“Fat lot of good it’s gonna do you against a Beast.”
The cafeteria door was standing open, leaning on one hinge, the lock mangled. A Beast had come out here, clearly. It must have abandoned the courtyard after it found no more prey. Or, worse, it had actually managed to escape over the roof. I helped Remi through the door into the cafeteria. In darkness the giant room felt like a cave, every footstep echoing. I nearly skewered myself with the sword the first time I stumbled into a row of the orange plastic chairs at the industrial picnic tables. Thinking better of it, I threaded the naked blade into my belt, slicing a neat gash into my thumb for my trouble.
The darkness scared the hell out of me. No streetlight glow here, nothing but the odd ray of moonlight escaping from the clouds outside. The hallways, windowless, would be even darker. There could be dozens of Bitten waiting for us at every step. I kept my hand on the sword. Midway across the room I slipped and landed painfully on one knee, my other leg slid out awkwardly in front of me.
“Applesauce?” Remi asked hopefully.
I smelled my hand where it had touched the substance on the floor. “Nope. Blood.”
From that point on we inched across the floor, barely able to see anything, moving hand to hand from chair to table. When I ran shoulder-first into a wall it was startling, until I realized we had made it across. The door was only a few feet away. From there it was only another forty or fifty feet to the other Security Wing door. I drew the sword, preparing myself to do battle with any Beast or Bitten that might be lurking around the corner.
I didn’t expect gunfire.
Fire flashed from the darkness at the end of the hall, muzzle flares at the level of the cement barricades which capped every corridor in the compound. We shrieked and fell on our faces, bullets pouring dust from the sheet rock of the ceiling down on us like the snow I had just been wishing for. A gallon of it vacuumed up my nose, making me wonder what asbestos tasted like. This tasted like plastic and chalk. Remi and I were both shouting, and kept shouting after the gunfire stopped, pleading that we weren't Beasts or Bitten, and stop goddamn shooting at us.
"Get up, kid." The guard looming over me was in full armor, blast shield over his face, steel plating his arms and legs, with a plated jacket on. Night vision LEDs gave the mask a smoky green glow. The Black Knight of Dekalb Quarantine #4. The blunt mouth of his MP5 stared me straight in the eyes.
I stood shakily, hoping as much as I could that the man behind that mask was Biff. If he was, he wasn't letting on, and he motioned to the guard standing over Remi to get him up too. Remi moved too slowly and the guard yanked him to his feet. The sword was gone.
"Please," I said wearily. "We don't know what to do."
My guard started cackling, the MP5 bouncing alarmingly in his hands. "Hey Johnson! They don't know what to do!"
Johnson snorted. "Must be that Conyers stopped giving them orders. Puppets that ain't got no strings."
My guard pulled his faceplate up. My stomach twisted in panic. It wasn't Biff. We had been found by Conyers's personal guards. "We're in luck! Who would have thought out of all the useless little shits in this place we'd run into two of Conyers's bitches?"
"It is good luck, my friend."
"Serendipitous, even."
"You," my guard said harshly, his smug banter broken. "Get behind those barricades before I give you another hole to fuck with."
I looked at Remi. His face was pale with blood loss and grit, slack with exhaustion. He shrugged. Not much we could do but obey. Behind the cement barriers the guards had set up a small encampment against the Secure Zone door. Three extra MP5s were stacked in one corner, along with a small tower of banana clips. Next to them was a small pile of grenades and three short samurai swords. Leaning against the furthermost barricade was a compact grenade launcher. A pocked and spiderwebbed window dominated the right side, its blinds shut closed from the inside. The Secure Zone door remained sealed however, though the imposing metal was scarred with dozens of indentions.
"You can't get in," I realized.
My guard kicked me in the back of my right knee and I went down hard. "Oh, we'll get in. You bet your ass we'll get in. Seems like some of your Beast-to-be buddies got it in their heads to lock themselves in the Secure Zone while the rest of us were out trying to save their sorry asses. But that was before you two cocksuckers came along." He kicked me so that I fell back on the floor. I lay there for a moment, actually appreciating the time off my feet, no matter what it cost my ribs.
"Hey, Brian. This bitch's been shot." It was Johnson, looking Remi over. The only real way to tell the guards apart was by one formally addressing the other. "Got a slug in his leg, looks like."
Brian, my guard, rolled his eyes. "Just what we need. Will he last for what we need him for?"
"Probably should patch it up."
"Damn it." Brian said, swinging his MP5 over his shoulder. "You got a medkit?"
"Remi!" I whispered, too loud. "You okay?"
He looked unfocused and dazed, slumped against the nearest barrier. "I just wanted to see you get out of here."
Johnson found a medkit among the armaments scattered on the far wall and threw it to Brian. It seemed odd that medkits wouldn't be a standard part of a guard's gear, but when I thought about it, any injury they were likely to endure was always going to be fatal. Still, Brian seemed to know what he was doing. He cut through Remi's jeans with a knife pulled from his belt and splashed some alcohol on the wound, which was still retching blood in jittery spurts. Remi screamed then, but the two guards ignored him. Brian checked the other side of his thigh, where the bullet and entered and found an exit wound. Pleased by this, Brian placed a bandage and wrapped Remi's leg in gauze and bandages, sealing them together with a metal clip. "There, good as new. Maybe a few pints lighter, but what's blood between friends, eh?" Brian cackled and thumped Remi's bandage, making Remi scream again.
I spent Remi's infirmary time pondering if there was any way to slip away from the guards. Neither Remi nor I stood a chance at taking either of them down, even if we had been a hundred percent.I had been relegated to the opposite corner of the encampment, but both Brian and Johnson's attention was on Remi. A vague idea of sneaking over to the armament pile and snatching up an MP5 to turn on them was dashed as Brian finished up with the wound quicker than I had thought possible. I had wasted all my time plotting.
"What are you going to do to us?" I asked, rising slowly to my feet.
Johnson grinned. "Plan A, first. Get your asses over to that window."
Remi and I were shoved roughly against the glass. I smacked my forehead just hard enough to make me dizzy. Brian rapped hard and fast on the window and called "Open up, you little shits! Got something to show you."
There was no movement for a moment, and I knew at that moment that whoever was behind that window didn't give a shit about us and wasn't abo
ut to play the guards' games - which sounded like a quick way for me to get a bullet in the brain. But soon one slat of the blinds bent down and a blue eye could be seen peeking out, widening, then disappearing as the looker let go. A full minute passed in silence, Brian and Johnson looking unconcerned at the lack of response. Then, so suddenly as to make me jump, the blinds zipped open.
On the other side of the bulletproof glass was Guillermo Evans, Casey Cordoza and Kate.
Guillermo was one of the few black kids Dekalb Quarentine #4 had enrolled - the Outbreak had not been kind to race relations, especially in the South, where it was all too easy to make the minority monsterous. Most blacks had left for the North to escape lynch mobs that would not have seemed out of place a hundred years earlier, or fled into the gamble of the Midwest. Guillermo's mother was French, though, so he seemed to escape the casual racism that was so easy to come by now by acting more like his white classmates than the stereotypes suggested a black boy should. He had a far easier time of it than his native counterparts. I had a class with him, but we had never talked.
Casey Cordoza was a short, dark girl who always bit her nails or teased her hair. Her hands seemed forever in search of occupation and they were never still. Dave had once confessed to making out with her after a baseball game, but admitted that things never got much further than kissing. She was either hot or cold; at any given moment she might volunteer to help you with your science project or kick you in the shin for getting too close to her in the cafeteria line. She was a year older than me, so I had never had much opportunity to meet her.