The clapping started up during one of her turns, accompanied by cheering. Everyone looked over to the wall and then resettled to a dull somnolence. Having reached almost the end of the book over the hours, Micah read on. “-redesigned. Mordex gasped. He could not believe that they were merely a shadow, an echo of a former human empire, their DNA manipulated to resurrect their species from the grave. He, his family, his friends, his community, every city-state were peopled with children created by the robots left behind when humanity sank into oblivion. The screen waited for Mordex to accept this information, and when he did not press the button for more, went to commercial. An enormously overweight woman stood there, drinking a frothing glass of green Eradi-Fat. As she swallowed one healthy mouthful after another, her extra adipose layers degenerated pixel by pixel until a woman of whisper-slimness was left on the screen. A meal in a cup, Eradi-Fat provides the vitamins and minerals that-”
People applauded in the other room as Austin snatched the book out of Micah’s hands to see if that was truly written there. The others fell apart in giggles and Zaley said, “You totally had me going! Your voice didn’t change a beat. How did you do that?”
“I’m just that good,” Micah said.
“At being an endless fount of shit,” Austin finished.
The door opened, a sudden burst of light spilling over the aisles. Micah leaped to her feet and snatched the gun. A woman was looking uncertainly into the room. Although she wasn’t elderly by any stretch, she had an old lady hairstyle sprayed to an immovable helmet. Her eyes widened with terror at the gun and she raised her hands. “It’s okay. It’s okay! We’re here to help.”
“Did Sombra C News give you a name?” Micah asked.
“They said Micah.”
Micah put the gun away. They gathered their belongings and filed out after the woman to a red minivan waiting there. A man was in the driver’s seat, bald as an egg though he couldn’t be any older than the woman. Both were in jeans and the same style of sweater, although his was blue and hers was red. Micah sat behind them and took in the features of the car. A cross was hanging from the rearview mirror, and a Bible was in the open compartment under the radio controls. If they tried to proselytize . . . Micah was going to sit there and take it. Her earlier annoyance at Sombra Cs who faked being okay with gay Uncle Brad and Aunt Jeanie was shoved back in her face. She was going to fake it now with these people if they turned out to be Jesus freaks.
Once everyone was in, the man drove around the building. The weight loss place was alive with lights in the early evening. People sat in a circle and clapped for a woman turning around at the center of it to show off her body. The minivan went right on the road, and right a second time. They traveled through residential streets, crossed a big road, and returned to residential. The couple looked innocently out the windows, so Micah did the same.
Their destination came up swiftly. The houses butted up to each another on this road, with garages on the first floor and homes on the second. The man turned into the driveway of a white house with blue trim, the garage door opening after he pressed his finger to a clip on the sun visor. They slid inside a completely empty garage. As the door went down behind them, Micah said, “I don’t like this.” She felt trapped.
In a calming voice, the man said, “My name is Roger Chapman, and this is my wife Judith. This is a house we rent out, which is why it’s so barren down here. Please don’t be alarmed. We serve as a catch.”
“Why? So you can convert Sombra Cs? What’s your reason to put yourselves in danger like this?” Micah asked. People’s reasons were important to her.
The woman motioned to the Bible and cross when Roger paused. She answered for him. “We aren’t here to convert, although our reasons are religious. We feel called to this work. Jesus healed the sick. He didn’t shoot them in the head.”
That was all right then. They got out of the car. Judith opened a door to a staircase and looked warily at Bleu Cheese. “Is she a pit bull?”
“Yes,” Corbin said. “She’s friendly, and very well-trained. But I think she might have to go to the bathroom soon. Do you have anywhere she can go?”
“I can take her out back,” Roger said. Corbin stayed downstairs to help as the rest of them went up the flight of stairs.
On the other side of the door at the top was a living room with little furniture. The shades on every window were drawn. Judith led them to a narrow hallway and opened two doors. Sleeping bags were piled in the corners of small bedrooms. The bathroom had towels and bath supplies stacked by the sink. “The neighbors believe that we are over here often to remodel this place before we rent it out again. Noise carries with the houses so close to one another. Keep your voices at a normal level but no louder. Our throw is open from four to six, so get what sleep you can tonight. I’ll make dinner.”
“I can help,” Zaley offered. “A little.”
“No, that’s fine. Just get settled in.” It was obvious that she didn’t want them touching anything in the kitchen.
“She doesn’t have Sombra C,” Micah said, trying to keep the snap from her voice.
“You don’t?” Judith said with curiosity to Zaley. “I assumed from what Sombra C News told us that you just didn’t have a stamp.”
“I’m not infected,” Zaley was saying as Micah closed the bathroom door. It definitely had the feel of a rental, the sense of transience. No pictures on the walls, no personal touches save a framed picture of Jesus with his arms out in welcome. Everything was painted white. Doing this for Jesus was as good as any other reason. The important thing was that it was done, whether for a guy crucified two thousand years ago or altruism or pity or in memory of the fallen. All of those reasons moved them closer to Sable Heights.
Micah sat on the toilet and read the news of Sable Heights on her phone. It really was at war, the community against Shepherds. Denied entry at homes they wanted to search, their attempts at braces torn apart, Shepherds had stomped into an elementary school intending to ferry its Sombra C children to an illegal confinement point. They had been marched out at gunpoint by two dozen armed staff, parents of students standing guard, and the principal herself. Gunfire broke out in the parking lot. A teacher had died, but so had every single Shepherd. Other Shepherds howled in the comment thread for the local police station to investigate, but the cops were refusing. It was putting them at odds with the San Francisco Police Department itself. Just today this had happened! While Micah read the robot book, this was going on a handful of miles away. That would have been a rush, being in the group of armed adults protecting the kids.
She played an interview on Sombra C News with an employee of the school. It had installed bulletproof glass for the windows and held recess indoors. An armed parent, grandparent, or other relative was with each class at all times during the day. Morning drop-off and afternoon pick-up were the most dangerous times, so the gymnasium had been converted to a garage of sorts. The entry and exit were heavily guarded, and no one was let in without showing two forms of identification and proof that their children attended the school. Their spring music program and festival had been canceled so no one got any ideas about blowing it up. The employee was teary-eyed, describing the dead sixth-grade teacher Mr. Rasmussen as a hero.
Micah liked Sable Heights. That was what every community should be doing, and if every community had done that in the first place, Shepherds never would have gotten hold of the country so easily. Complacency allowed it, the not-my-problem and maybe-it-will-go-away ostrich attitudes that people sported until it became personal.
Dinner was spaghetti and meatballs on paper plates, which they had on the floor of the living room. Cans of paint rested along the wall, and a toolbox was on the kitchen counter. The sink leaked below into a pot and the original paint was old. This place was in desperate need of a tune-up. Drawers and doors squeaked and the third bedroom had just gotten new carpet. The old rolls were in the living room and had to be dumped still. This was a good cover. If Shep
herds ever got wind of this place, it didn’t look like anything interesting.
“Was she used for fighting?” Judith asked about Bleu Cheese.
“No, I’ve had her since she was a puppy,” Corbin said. “A litter was dumped off at the pound when they were a few weeks old.”
It was Zaley who made Uncle Brad and Aunt Jeanie nervous, but it was Bleu Cheese who made the Chapmans nervous. Roger got over it fast, catching on that the ticker tape of thoughts in the dog’s brain was limited to FOOD-PETS-FOOD-PETS. Judith jumped to see her husband’s hand moving down to supply the petting. Tittering anxiously, she said to distract, “Honey, we should give them the directions for tomorrow.”
Roger tickled the dog’s chin. “We’ll be crossing the brace on Walker Avenue. Keep the gun out of sight. All of us will be given saliva strips. Put them in your mouth. Catch the guard’s eye. Don’t speak. He will recognize our car, and he’ll have prepared clean strips with which to switch them out.”
“And we’ll get through?” Austin asked.
“We have before,” Roger said. “Then we’ll drop you off at the address given to us late last night by the News.”
“Not the normal one?” Micah said.
“This is our first time with people aiming for Sable Heights. So no.” Roger bent over to tussle with the dog, who rolled on her back and kicked her legs in play.
“Do you have children?” Micah asked.
“No,” Judith said after a pained moment. “We were in the process of adopting overseas when Sombra C swept in. The program was suspended and later closed.” Unstated was that there weren’t any children left to adopt. That was sad.
They went to bed early. No sooner had Micah’s eyes closed than they opened to a hand on her shoulder. She dressed fast and they got downstairs to the minivan. The clock between the front seats read five minutes to four. It was pitch black outside as the garage door lifted. No one was on the road. They were silent on the drive through San Francisco, Micah leaning forward to watch the odometer. One mile passed away, going straight north. That was one mile closer to Sable Heights. The metal of the gun was cold on her back. There was no way she was going to tuck it into her backpack out of reach.
In another half-mile, she spotted floodlights ahead. Judith whispered for her to sit back, so she obeyed and mouthed, “Bear spray?” Elania motioned to her pocket.
A concrete divider separated the road. One set of Shepherds was based in the southbound lanes and northbound had another set. Automated arms stood over both lanes, which were situated halfway between traffic lights. A Shepherd was leaning in to a passenger side window of a car idling there in the slow lane. Roger pulled in behind it. A second Shepherd looked over tiredly from an open tent erected on the sidewalk. Within were medical supplies and water bottles.
“Are they both-” Austin whispered.
“They’re ours,” Judith said. “But only northbound. Now be quiet.”
The guard at the car shook two samples in pipettes full of solution rather than take them to the tent to be tested there. He held them up to the floodlights and then chucked both into a trashcan outside the tent. The automated arm lifted and the car was allowed to pass through.
When the red minivan pulled up, Roger unrolled the windows. The guard bent in on Judith’s side. He had a pale, fleshy face, and looked like nothing other than a Shepherd. His collar was lined with American flag pins, three per side.
They sat stiffly as his eyes paused upon the scarves. Then he said, “Pop the trunk.”
“Yes, sir,” Roger said with utmost deference.
The cursory check of the small trunk was finished in seconds, and the guard returned to pass in strips. Micah took one from Judith and slipped it into her mouth. Another car pulled up behind them as the guard lifted a pipette holder from his belt. He uncapped one and held it out to Roger, who placed his sample inside. Repeating the move with Judith, he shook them both and held them up to the light. Once in the trashcan, he gestured for Zaley’s. She passed it out. Then he motioned for Micah’s, but as she extended it to the ampoule, the Shepherd pulled back. A strip was already inside that one. He backed out and held them up to the light. Micah tucked the strip into her pocket.
The same thing happened with Austin and Elania’s, and finally Corbin’s. Why was this Shepherd being so careful when both were on their side? Micah had her answer when one of the southbound Shepherds came over to ask the time. His phone was out of juice and his companion had forgotten hers. The man doing the testing continued his sleight-of-hand with the other one only two meters away.
It was quiet as death in the minivan until the arm lifted. Roger rolled up the windows and drove through. Everyone sighed with relief, although to get caught at the red light only a hundred feet away made them tense. Micah wanted to look back to the Shepherd mole, to imagine who he really was under the costume, yet it would appear suspicious. And that made her furious. She could not turn around. She could not go home. She didn’t particularly want to go home, and have to deal with her mothers’ joyous freak-outs, but that she could not!
The entire world had become a net, a spider web with her trapped like a fly in the threads. She was captive in a game that she had never signed up to play, forced to abide by rules someone else set. This was her life, spent graduating from one noose to another, and each tighter than the one that preceded it.
She was the mouse in the trap, the deer in the crosshairs, the bear with its leg in metal jaws. Left to the mercy of others, every scrap of food, drop of water, and shingle of shelter determined by someone not herself. That made her wild inside, being dependent on the humor of random people.
She could have gone to that stupid language school in Italy, paid the assignments lip service to pass and had time to do what she wanted. What exactly she wanted to do with that time . . . well, she had never figured that out. But she knew what she didn’t want, and that was boundaries. Walls and fences, nets and braces, stamps and limits. One day she would be the hunter, and that day had better come fast. She was tired of being patient.
“Thank you,” she whispered to the Chapmans. These people were her family now, just like the gay dudes. They all belonged in her biography, and the Chapmans should have a child to adopt. They’d raise it right, to honor their Jesus by showing mercy to the sick. Judith reached back to pat her knee, mistaking Micah’s rage for fright.
But Shepherds weren’t the only ones who could play dirty. The dildos on the locker, the shoplifting, the creeping around houses at night, these were trifles of what Micah was capable of doing. She could toss aside every lesson of niceness and decency that her mothers had taught her over seventeen years. This wasn’t a nice or decent world, and she’d stoop to Hell to go lower than it did.
If the faux president were walking down the sidewalk by the minivan right this moment, Micah would shoot him without a second thought. She wanted to double back and shoot the southbound Shepherds after etching fuck you into the bullets. And shoot their families for creating them from great-grandparents down to kids. Those genes didn’t need to keep passing on. It was a service she’d be performing. (Honey, you’re so angry! You don’t really want to hurt their children!)
Yes, she did.
Her peace-and-light mothers had no idea who she really was. There was an ugly streak in their younger daughter that they weren’t capable of comprehending. When Micah had threatened the cashier at the minimart with the gun, she’d felt no less than righteous. (Honey! You scared that poor man so much!)
Who cared?
She shouldn’t feel righteous. That was wrong. But it was her mothers who instilled their beliefs of how she should feel and act, and Micah operated under different rules. It didn’t feel wrong, so it wasn’t wrong. Tuma clamored in her head so loudly that it almost became audible. Honey!
No one else in the minivan heard the commotion in Micah’s head. She fought her mother fiercely until the protests subsided. She’d shoot a Shepherd’s family without any more guilt than she ha
d felt while holding a gun on the cashier or robbing the shoe store. Her loyalty was only to her friends and herself, and by tooth, by fist, by bullet, by point, she would set them free.
Set Nine
Zaley
It was half-past four when the car pulled up to the curb before a green two-story house. The floors were separate homes, and the one they wanted was the second. A staircase with a white banister curled around the house to a door above, and the blinds were drawn in the windows. The neighborhood was sleeping. Only a dog barked in the distance.
She offered a polite whisper of gratitude while getting out of the car, liking Roger and not caring for Judith, but thankful for the help from both. While making dinner the evening before, the woman had said that Zaley should not be on the underground with her friends. She had options as a healthy girl, and was putting herself in terrible danger by her choice of company. And weren’t her mother and father horribly worried? They must be! When Zaley explained that her parents had mental problems, Judith was visibly uncomfortable. “But they still love you!”
Did they? What was Zaley to her father except the daughter he didn’t want in the first place? What was Zaley to her mother except the daughter who refused to stay a child? Judith offered to call the Mattazollo home and broker a peace treaty between daughter and parents. Her day job was as a mediator for sticky court cases in family law. There was a better solution to be found in this situation than running away and cutting off all contact!
Yet it wasn’t a frivolous decision, Zaley being out here. Not one borne of regular teenage rebellion, a fight over a curfew, bad grades at school, an unacceptable boyfriend. She didn’t like to be reduced to that. Nor did she want to answer the probing questions about exactly what was wrong. No, she wasn’t getting her arms broken, punched in the face three times a week, or molested. It was much more insidious what went on, harder to explain, and easy for someone unfamiliar to dismiss. She didn’t need to hear Judith Chapman defending her mother, and complaining about childish bedroom furniture was going to come across as petty and weird.
The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set Page 80