After a pause, Micah shook her head. Austin and Corbin began to protest and Elania threw them a look of warning. She took Micah’s other hand and said, “Why?”
Corbin wanted to force the pill down her throat. It was critical that she take it. He made himself be quiet while Micah struggled to answer. Suddenly, he found that chilling. Maybe she couldn’t find the answer because she literally couldn’t find the words. She was brilliant, all A’s without much effort, and the virus would eradicate that.
The fire crackled and people murmured. At last, Micah said, “I don’t know why.”
“Okay,” Elania agreed. Corbin was angry and baffled that she was just accepting this. Another quick look silenced him, and she said, “Micah, can you tell me how it feels, thinking of not taking it?”
“It doesn’t feel like anything.”
“Does it feel like anything to take it?”
“It feels like a stab.”
For a moment Corbin was lost, and then he understood. The longer she lived, the more people she was going to stab. If she didn’t take the pill, soon she would lose the capability. Micah was unhinged, but not to such an extreme that she could kill these people and not feel anything bad. Clarissa had been an especial favorite of hers among the children, and she had had to kill that pretty little girl to keep from turning her out to the zombies.
Austin whispered something and Micah pulled the switchblade from her pocket. When he put his hand on it, intending to take it away, she could not let go. He forced it away from her and said, “I’ll hold it for now.”
“And if they ask, Aussie?” Micah said.
“Then I’ll take a walk with them.” He sounded very unconvinced.
“Or I will,” Corbin said. It wasn’t right for her to bear this alone. It was too much for one person. Somehow . . . somehow he would have to do it.
“No.” Micah produced the pill, which she swallowed. Corbin relaxed. Leaning on Austin’s shoulder, she said heavily, “If they ask, you’ll give it back to me.”
Micah
There had been four of them.
His name was Glen Byrne, and he was seventy-seven years old. Born and raised in Tucson, he had moved to northern California for a temporary position and ended up staying. He loved the weather. He was married to a woman named Thea, had two sons and three granddaughters, and caught Sombra C at the hospital in a routine procedure for cataracts in January. Something had not been sterilized. Zyllevir worked just fine in him, no side effects whatsoever. He told his wife upon his diagnosis that if she wanted a divorce, he’d sign the papers. She had been offended. They’d always pushed through their rough patches before and they’d push through this one. Together.
He had never hurt anyone in his life. That was why he’d asked Micah to do this horrible act. If he could climb the fence and spare her, he would. But his fingers were too stiff from a combination of arthritis and Sombra C to close on the links. Again he repeated that he’d never hurt anyone in his life. To think of roving around the hill and attacking people . . . pounding on the lodge and frightening everyone, it was anathema to him. He wanted to die with a clean conscience. He had done his best to live as a good man, and now he wanted to die as one. He was worried that she would take on some guilt over this when she was doing him a great kindness. If she didn’t think that she could do it, please say no.
She said yes.
Thank you. Those had been his last words, to Micah for killing him. To be thanked for plunging a knife into a good man’s heart . . . as he was dying, he tried to smile at her. It was okay. Then he stared into the infinite, and left her in limitations. She considered him to be her grandfather.
It was very different, killing kings and killing subjects. The difference walloped her. From that great, awful thing it stirred in her heart, she fled. But there was nowhere to go inside herself that wasn’t swallowed up in darkness.
The kings had gone away. A translucent grandfather walked beside her.
Her name was Daffodil Larkspring. She introduced herself to Micah sheepishly and rushed to explain. Her parents were major hippies, and she’d been born on a commune in California. She’d hated growing up as Daffy. Little Daffy Larkspring. All of the kids in her family had flower names, even the boys. Now she was thirty-one. Crazy. How did that happen? It seemed like yesterday she’d been eighteen. She always figured that she’d be married by this age, but she was still waiting for the right guy. The ones she met through online dating were major fixer-uppers. Everyone had baggage, but these guys were hauling freight. Her last date was with a guy who checked his phone every two minutes through dinner, and he was genuinely surprised when she didn’t want to come home with him afterwards. He thought they had really hit it off. She was certain that he’d check his phone all through sex, too.
For the last eight years, she’d worked as a receptionist for an insurance firm in Sacramento. Her nametag said Daffodil, not Daffy, although her family still called her that. Answer the phones, direct visitors, make copies, repeat and repeat and repeat. Then one shift, she’d gone into the warehouse for a box of printer paper and startled a feral in a dark corner. That was how she got set upon this path to the confinement point.
It goaded her unbearably to think of a guard going home and bragging that he’d put a bullet through a crazy zombie chick climbing the fence today. Daffodil hated to give a guard that bit of fun, to be his trophy kill. She was no one’s prize buck and she’d been doing fine on her Zyllevir, thank you very much. The Shepherds weren’t doing the world any favors by taking her down. She wanted to die with dignity and Micah would give her that. Please, if you don’t think you can do it, say no. I totally understand.
Micah said yes.
“You’re an Amazon,” Daffodil said when it was time. “Goddess, here I come.” She closed her teary eyes and waited for the blow.
She walked on Micah’s other side, and Micah asked why Daffodil hadn’t just changed her name. Why choose to introduce herself for the rest of her life sheepishly, rather than simply switch out the Daffodil for the more common Rose or Lily? Daffodil Larkspring was her aunt now, and her aunt knew exactly what it was like to grow up with a stupid hippie name. Daffy and Joob. Their grandfather said their given names of Daffodil and Jubilee were pretty, and they railed that he had no right to an opinion until he spent a decade being called Cloud or Thunder or Smiles. He’d lived his whole life with a normal name. After that, they called him Grandpa Cloud. He laughed.
His name was Justin Rochester, and he had just turned twenty-seven. A St. Patrick’s Day baby. When he was a little boy, he’d let himself out of the locked back door while his mother napped, climbed over two fences, and nearly drowned in his neighbor’s pool. In junior high, he jumped from the roof of a house onto a trampoline below and tried to launch himself onto a branch of a tree on the other side. It had seemed like a wonderful idea at the time. He missed and broke his leg. Somehow he got through high school alive and served in Afghanistan, surviving suicide bombings and shootings. Then he was discharged and went to college to study computer programming. After meeting a woman at a Christmas party, they had unprotected sex. She didn’t know that she was carrying Sombra C. But Zyllevir was great! It gave him some nausea for a day or two, but after that he was A-OK. When the Shepherd goons came to collect him for the confinement point, Justin shot one to death. He was sorry that he hadn’t gotten them all.
Life was done with him, so he was done with life. Could he borrow the switchblade to drive it into his chest? The only thing he hadn’t done yet was get stabbed. Micah said that she didn’t loan it out and he nodded. Would she do the driving then?
Yes.
Since she was doing him a solid, he wanted to kiss the back of her hand. They stood among the trees and she lifted her hand like a royal lady. He bowed gallantly and took it. His lips tickled on her skin. Even in a sober moment, the lilt of his lips had a hint of merriness. The others had gotten down on their backs in the fallen leaves and closed their eyes to wait i
n dread; he stood, his eyes wide open in more interest than trepidation. The last words to come from his throat were in appreciation. Good one.
He was her translucent lover, and he walked behind her to check out her ass. This guy understood being driven by adrenaline. He was sorry that he hadn’t been in the confinement point at the time of the kings. He would have run for them with her. Once in a dream, he appeared behind her and pinned her arms to her chest. She thrashed and kicked and screamed for freedom. He whispered, “I say when you go.” They both loved how the game drove her crazy.
And lastly, her name was Clarissa Delafonte. There was a jerk boy in her third grade class who called her Clarissa Elephant. She was eight-and-a-half, still at an age where the half was important. Her parents checked in her closet and under her bed at night for monsters. The dark was scary. Her teacher’s name was Mrs. Sink and that was funny. Everything but the kitchen sink. When the class went to computers and Mr. Tilburg said, “Is everyone here?” the students all shouted, “Everyone but Mrs. Sink!” Once Mrs. Sink got sick and went home early, and told them to call her Mrs. Sunk while she was out. Get it?
Clarissa had two colors in her eyes like Micah had two colors, both having green but Micah’s mixed with blue and Clarissa’s mixed with brown. Micah had scared away the bad people who used to be on the island, so that made her pretty cool.
However the girl had gotten Sombra C, she didn’t say. But she asked Micah, who told her about the party, and Clarissa took her hand in comfort. Clarissa didn’t like to take the Zyllevir pill on Sunday nights. It didn’t make her sick, but it made her feel sick. Her mom said it was very important that Clarissa always take the pill even though she felt fine. On Sunday nights, she got to stay up half an hour later for TV time with Dad to make up for the pill. They watched Spellcasters and her dad wore a Princess Glam hat and veil to be silly.
Not a day went by without a small hand slipping into Micah’s somewhere along the way. A hundred pictures had been drawn in the dirt just for her of animals and rainbows and mermaid princesses with long hair. Whether the kid was gay or just had a youthful crush on a big girl, Micah didn’t know. She only felt the weight of what was coming, the poison of those increasingly clumsy pictures. Clarissa believed that Micah held up the world, which she did. But she had to shake people off it every day.
There were so many bad things in the darkness here. Real monsters. At night, the girl slept by Micah’s sofa. Then she felt safe. When she asked if it hurt to die, her eyes on the pocket where Micah kept the switchblade, it was clear what she was really asking.
The blade or the dark. Micah had only one choice.
She smiled at the girl. No, it didn’t hurt. Micah did it so fast! Then those lucky people did not have to go out into the darkness. They went up to heaven where it was always sunny and angels were waiting to welcome them in. Do you know the best part, Clarissa? The angels don’t let Sombra C into heaven. Not allowed! So the angels were going to touch Clarissa’s stamp to make it vanish along with the virus. She would be healthy again. An angel would return Kitty to Clarissa, and Kitty was going to be so happy to see her. Kitty had missed her friend.
Of course it hurt.
When it was over, Micah clutched the girl’s body to her and sobbed in apology for lying. There weren’t angels. She wasn’t going to see Kitty. Micah had sent the girl to a different kind of darkness for all of eternity. In that moment, Micah was very close to driving the blade still wet from Clarissa’s blood into her own heart. She deserved to be in that darkness, too. All that stopped her was the certainty of someone claiming her blade. It could be a man who used it to make himself king. The blade was Micah’s. When she was gone, it belonged to Austin, Elania, and Corbin. No one else.
That spot on the floor by the sofa was empty, and now she had a little sister. Clarissa walked along with Micah through the confinement point and swung their linked hands in wide parabolas. Grandpa Cloud and Daffodil discussed the injustice of fruity names; Justin slapped Micah’s ass as Clarissa skipped and sang. Sometimes this translucent family was more real to her than anything else in existence. She wanted to join them in nothingness. Last night’s Zyllevir sliding down her throat meant she couldn’t.
Control. The confinement point was not a game like the ones she preferred, her challenges to the night with herself as a potential and singular victim. Slinking through the dark, the world in bed and almost no one around to notice her passage, righting small wrongs and no one the wiser for it . . . Everywhere she went upon the hill, eyes and expectations were upon her. They were depending on her, and there were so many reasons she said yes to the few who came to request the blade.
It wasn’t possible to say no to a person who wanted to die without hurting others, to one who wanted dignity or just an end to pain, to a scared child. And she only maintained control among the living by showing that she would do anything to maintain it. Yes, she would murder an eight-year-old (and a half, Clarissa corrected) a kind old man who everyone adored (it wasn’t murder, honey) an American hero (are you serious? I’m just a dude). She would kick out the mentally ill from the lodge, carve R’s onto foreheads, gauge risk factor and not be swayed by the young or the pleading or the sadness of their stories. Everyone had a sad story. Everyone had once been young. Boo-fucking-hoo.
She never second-guessed herself. That weakened her, made her look human to the other captives. Their relationship within the confinement point was not a negotiation. Until they had a bigger blade or she fell to her Sombra C, she ruled.
It made her want to go walking around the hill at night.
“She’s such a bitch.” The epithet was always hurled when Micah was nearby to overhear. Lorna Crandall was a twenty-year-old, second-year junior college student and someone Micah would have found insufferable had they been acquainted outside the fence. Was there still a world out there? Had there ever been? Austin had showed her from a tree, and to Micah the city street appeared to be the backdrop of a movie. That world had just been a dream.
Lorna intended to be a nurse. She took a biology class just last autumn and read a lot of articles about Sombra C, so many that she considered herself to be a specialist on the virus and its progression within the hosts. She had also taken no less than four classes in psychology and worked as a peer mentor, so she was an expert on the mind as well. Through every sorting at the lodge, she jabbered behind Micah’s back. It infuriated Lorna that her opinion was never solicited. How many articles had Micah read? Was the rumor that Micah was still in high school true? Are you kidding me? She was just a kid. Who died and made her God?
The kings had died.
That was before Lorna’s time, and relegated to ancient history in her mind. There was only now and who the hell was a high school kid to give a thumb’s-up or thumb’s-down to people wanting shelter? What were her criteria for making that decision? Degree of lurch, sensitivity to light and noise, loss of language and sense of humor, animal-like vocalizations, everyone had a right to know how he or she was being judged. If Micah gave a thumb’s-down, the matter should be referred to a committee of people who had a little more experience with Sombra C. Then they could make a final decision.
Lorna tried to be this committee just once, telling a man who had received the thumb’s-down to come over so she could examine him and give a second opinion. Micah punched the girl in the nose. No, they weren’t going to engage in debate as the sun slipped down the sky. No, Lorna wasn’t a co-president of the hill. Shut the fuck up.
The next morning, Lorna and her black eye tried to make peace upon the bridge by diagnosing Micah with post-traumatic stress disorder. It was really important that she let out her feelings. These were exceedingly stressful times. Micah must really miss her mom and dad. Which high school did she attend? Lorna had gone to a high school only ten miles from here. She had been a cheerleader. Go Cats!
It was just another way of trying to destabilize Micah’s position. Get her talking and laughing and crying, make her appear
less of an enigma. If she were seen as nothing but a girl, she’d lose control of the hill. All it took was a particular constellation of new arrivals to form a conjunction with disillusioned captives already here, and it was over. Currently, she had enough people behind her to be safe. Yet they would pass away, falling one by one, and she was without the ability to foresee who was next to come over the South Bridge.
Power was a web, not a single figure. The strands radiated out from her, but they held her up. Some were thicker and more important than others. To Casper and Elania, maintaining visible, strong ties was imperative. Everyone loved them. Those were load-bearing strands. The moms and dads were also thick strands, so she held to those and was friendly to the children. The parents trusted with her thumb’s-down that she was keeping their kids safe for another night. It wasn’t arbitrary, and she wasn’t enjoying it. There wasn’t a mutter of discontent from any parent when she shut out the fighting gang members, nor when she carved the R. She was protecting their children. She was protecting them. When they were worn out from another day on this nightmarish hill, sitting on the floor of the great room, it was Micah who braced the door and checked the windows. She wasn’t sitting on her ass upon the sofa and ordering them to do it.
When Sombra C ridden stragglers lurched to the end of the food line, or an elderly person was having trouble, she got off the railing and helped them walk the length of the bridge to the bucket. When a child cried that he was still hungry, she gave over some of her food. It was important that people saw that, too. There was no power trip. She was just the strongest, and this was what the strongest did.
It could change in a heartbeat.
So no, she wasn’t going to have a therapy session or gab about schools with Lorna Crandall on the bridge. People respected what they didn’t understand, so Micah couldn’t be understandable. She stared at Lorna until she went away, mad that she wasn’t being recognized as the hill’s medical specialist or its psychiatrist either. For fuck’s sake, they had real medical specialists and psychiatrists among the captives. They were older people with a host of degrees from excellent universities and decades of experience. No one needed Lorna, her junior college classes and articles. The girl had also made a million suggestions to Casper about sermon topics, twice during sermons themselves. People shushed her angrily. Wherever she saw power, she was compelled to thrust herself forward and take some of it away. He didn’t punch her though.
The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set Page 97