Positive: A Novel

by David Wellington

  “She wasn’t looking for me. She said she was headed west, to find some warlord out there named Anubis. We just happened to bump into each other on the road.”

  “She’s still here. Still looking for you.”

  “It was the second time I got away from her. Today makes the third, I guess. She really doesn’t like me now.”

  Caxton nodded. “She didn’t make her play because she thought no matter how quick her ­people were, I would kill at least one of them.” She went on, “But for somebody like that, there’s always a next time. She’ll wait until she catches us asleep. Then she’ll kill me and take you.” She sounded as if she were discussing which road we should take next. This sort of thinking was old hat to her. I wondered what that time of warlords she’d described must have been like. What death throes the world must have gone through.

  “Okay,” Caxton said. “Okay.” It sounded final. Like she’d reached a decision.

  “Okay?” I asked.

  “Okay,” she agreed. “I know what to do now. I’ve been wrestling with it, but I guess I always knew. I’m driving you to Ohio. To Akron.”

  My eyes went wide. I’d given up all hope of ever reaching the medical camp. Of having a safe life. I could barely accept this was real. “But—­but—­your work,” I said.

  “It’s going to set me back a ­couple of days, sure,” Caxton replied. “And I don’t like it. But this is the right thing to do. And anyway,” she added, “if I keep you here, make you my intern—­she’s just going to keep harassing us, isn’t she?”

  I could hardly deny it.

  PART 3

  Camp

  CHAPTER 64

  It took most of a day to reach Akron, but with each of us taking turns driving we ate up the road. A little after dawn I saw a sign by the side of the road welcoming us to the state of Ohio, and it was like a great weight was released from my chest, and I could breathe. Red Kate couldn’t touch me while I was in the medical camp—­she would never dare go up against the government. I would be safe from zombies, safe from reprisal from the various looters and road pirates I’d pissed off. I would spend two years in camp and then be shipped back home. I was going to have a chance at a real, meaningful life, back in New York.

  New York City.

  It was funny. When I thought about the city, the place I’d grown up, it was like I was seeing it in a film, an old film that had sat around so long the colors had drained out. I thought of all the ­people I’d known there. All the first-­generation ­people, tending their gardens. Waiting for . . . what? Waiting for nothing. I thought of plundering high-­rises for canned food, and fishing in the subways, and though it seemed . . . nice, even pleasant enough, it was just so drab.

  As dangerous as the wilderness might have been, the ­people there weren’t just waiting to die.

  I shook off such thoughts when we neared Akron and saw the helicopters.

  They hung in the air over Ohio as if they were pinned there, mounted in the sky as permanent sentinels. The noise of their rotors shivered the air, and their shadows lay draped across the sunlit road like blankets of darkness. As I watched, one of them broke away from its position and swung toward the southwest. The helicopters were the most potent sign I could imagine that this was a place the government still controlled, a place that was protected. Safe.

  Caxton didn’t seem to find them as encouraging. She ducked her head and chewed on her lip as if she was worried they were spying on her. I chalked it up to first-­generation paranoia—­in New York my parents had always talked about the government as if they couldn’t trust it, as if it were some nefarious regime with no interest in their well-­being. Despite what they heard on the radio. It had always seemed to me that the government was the only force in the world actually trying to fix things.

  Green road signs appeared on either side of the highway, warning us that we were entering a Blue Zone, whatever that meant. Up ahead I saw a chain-­link fence stretched around acres of ground and thought it must be the camp, but then I realized there was nothing inside the fence but a few old construction machines, their paint giving way to rust and the probing tendrils of green weeds. A big sign had been posted on the fence, and I made out HEARTLAND RECLAMATION PROJECT #34, but we passed by too quickly for me to see what else it read.

  A few minutes later we saw the real camp. Or at least, its wall.

  The wall stood twenty-­five feet high, and its entire length was lined with barbed wire. Lamps on high poles stood up from its top every hundred feet or so. It stretched away as far as I could see on either side of the road. A single gate pierced it, right where the road passed through. On either side of the gate was a small guardhouse. Machine guns were mounted above the gate as well as a number of cameras in armored housings.

  A soldier stood in the middle of the road, flagging us down. He shouted for Caxton to stop a good hundred feet clear of the gate.

  “Looks like this is the place,” Caxton told me.

  I swallowed—­my throat was thick with emotion—­and I nodded.

  “Do not exit the vehicle at this time,” the soldier shouted. “Display your left hands outside the vehicle windows.”

  We did as we were told. I held mine up so the soldier could see my tattoo—­my ticket to entry.

  “There are no scheduled intake times today,” the soldier said, not shouting as much now. He came closer and studied Caxton’s face. “Ma’am, I don’t recognize that uniform.”

  “I’m law enforcement. From Pennsylvania,” Caxton told him.

  He looked confused, but he let it go. Coming around to my side of the truck, he peered in through the window and looked me up and down.

  “I’m from New York—­” I said, but he interrupted me.

  “The positive will step out of the vehicle,” he said. “The positive will move ten feet clear of the vehicle and stand with hands visible at all times.” He didn’t even look at my face. To Caxton, he said, “Ma’am, if you’re dropping off, you have to go back the way you came. If you want to remain in the area for more than ten minutes, I need to issue you a pass, and that means getting my CO down here.”

  “No need,” Caxton told him. “Just let me say good-­bye.”

  The soldier had nothing to say about that. He ran back toward the guardhouse as if he was afraid I was going to jump out of the truck and bite him.

  “You sure about this? This is where you want to be?” Caxton asked me.

  “Yeah. Absolutely,” I told her. Kylie and the other girls were in there somewhere. My future was in there.

  “Good luck, then.” She sighed. “Finn—­it was nice having some company. Do me a favor and be okay, huh?”

  “I will,” I said. Then I leaned across and hugged her. I’d never met anyone like her before, and I doubted I ever would again. “You be okay, too.”

  Then I stepped out of the car and hurried to get clear—­ten feet, or as close as I could estimate—­and watched as Caxton backed up and turned the truck around. When it was gone, a loud squawk from behind me made me jump in place.

  “Enter the gate when it opens. Follow the green line to the processing waiting area. If you do not follow all instructions and announcements, you will be shot.” The words echoed off the wall like the voice of God.

  Slowly the gate swung open, and I saw a green line painted right down the middle of the road. I headed forward, staying far away from the guardhouses. Ahead I couldn’t see a single human being, just a little courtyard between low buildings.

  I hurried inside as if the gate would clang shut any second and seal me out forever.

  CHAPTER 65

  The green line led me across the courtyard and to the door of a building on the far side. Beyond the door lay a cavernous room, maybe a hundred feet wide and twice that long. Electric lights burned high overhead—­there were no windows, though I did see a ­couple of camera
lenses mounted between the lights. Benches were set up against the walls, and the green line on the floor snaked and doubled back on itself over and over again, so that if I followed it I would end up walking across most of that vast floor. I think the room was meant for processing large numbers of positives at a time—­maybe hundreds—­and the snaking line was meant to force the processees into single file.

  The room was empty. Cavernous. I walked across it feeling like a thief moving through a house while the occupants were away, like my every footfall was likely to set off an alarm. At the far side of the room, I found a door and I stepped through.

  The next hallway ran for several hundred feet. A recorded voice spoke from the ceiling—­a calm, friendly woman’s voice, her words backed up by calm and peaceful music.

  “—­you. We promise,” she said as I entered the corridor. I got the sense the recording was on a loop and if I listened long enough, I would hear the whole thing over and over again. “Welcome to the Akron Medical Monitoring Station. Please keep moving forward to avoid congestion in the line.”

  “Oh, okay,” I said, even though I knew the woman couldn’t hear me. I started walking forward.

  “When you reach the door ahead, please, men and boys head to the left; women and girls head to the right. If you are here with your family, please understand that for hygiene reasons we must split up the genders.”

  “There were some girls,” I said, in case anyone was listening. “They came in a while ago, maybe a week, and—­”

  But the woman was still talking.

  “Please comply with all orders given by station staff and our military guards. Please do not approach or make contact with the guard dogs. Everything we do here is for your safety and well-­being. We’re going to take care of you. We promise. Welcome to the Akron Medical Monitoring Station . . .”

  I headed forward until I came to a door at the far end of the hallway, a regular door with a knob and everything. I opened it and sunlight poured into the hallway, dazzling me for a second. Then my eyes adjusted, and I saw my new home.

  CHAPTER 66

  A short maze of chain-­link fence lay beyond the door, a Y-­shaped passage to allow men and women to head to different parts of the camp. I didn’t register the fencing at first, though. At first all I saw were the faces.

  Hundreds of them. Hundreds of ­people crammed up against that fence, making it shake and ring. Faces of every race, but they all looked the same: thin faces, sallow faces, faces covered in stubble and dirt, eyes staring, hungrily devouring me, hungry for anything new, and if those eyes had been red, it wouldn’t have surprised me, they looked so much like zombies—­mouths, mouths hooting and shouting, begging, screaming, some just making noise, random, animal noise, men and women alike, some children though not very many, their heads all shaved, their hair cut back to black dots on their pale scalps, and then I saw their bodies, dressed in rags, dressed in clothes that had been colorful once, or much patched, or they were half naked, so many ­people. A hundred hands squeezed through the gaps in the chain link, a hundred hands and every one of them had a plus sign tattooed on its back.

  I couldn’t make out a word they were saying. I couldn’t understand what was going on. Overhead something moved and I looked up and saw a sort of open catwalk above, a runway on top of the fencing. Two soldiers were up there, hammering on the fencing and shouting something, something I couldn’t make out. The howling noise was everywhere; it bounced off the wall behind me and doubled, redoubled in its intensity and its volume. One of the soldiers was shouting for the ­people to get back, I think. He was warning them, warning them to get back or—­or something bad was going to happen, something they didn’t want.

  And then it happened, because they ignored the soldier. They didn’t care, even though they must have known what was coming. Some of them must have seen it before. There was a sharp buzzing sound, like an insect had flown right into my ear, and then all those ­people, all those positives, shrieked as one and jumped back. I shrank away from the fence because I understood, instantly, that it had been electrified, that the soldiers had cleared it by shocking all those ­people away because that was the only thing that would work. I smelled cooking meat and I wanted to vomit—­the shock must have been near lethal intensity. But then a door opened in front of me, on my left, and a soldier was shouting something at me, shouting for me to move forward, so I ran through the door, thinking nothing except—­

  —­Kylie had to go through this. Kylie and the other girls must have seen this same exact thing.

  —­but I didn’t have long to think about them, because the second I was through the door, it slammed shut behind me, all by remote control, and then the ­people surged in around me; they crammed up so close they were writhing against me, their hands grabbing at my clothes, my hair, my belt, and they were dragging me, dragging me into mud and weeds and gravel that scraped the skin off my hands. There were so many of them I couldn’t resist as they shoved their hands in my pockets, as they pulled my shirt over my head. Someone took my knife, someone got my shirt, my pants, my underwear. They took everything. They stole everything they could and shoved my face down in the mud, and I was naked and still they held me down; I didn’t know what they would do next, would they kill me? I couldn’t fight, not with so many bodies on top of me and I couldn’t breathe, my mouth and nose were full of mud and someone was screaming in my ear, screaming that they owned me now, but then someone else grabbed that person and threw him to the side, kicked him in the face, and then—­and then—­

  And then it was over. Not all at once, but there was less weight on me, and even less. They’d gotten what they came for, and they walked away, squabbling over my things, not caring enough to stay and insult me more. Someone spat in my hair but that was it; in a few seconds they were all gone, and I lay alone in the mud.

  Well, not entirely alone.

  When I was able to lift my face off the ground, when I could look up, I saw someone standing right in front of me. He was between me and the sun, so I could only make out his silhouette, but he was big. Not as big as Adare had been but maybe taller. His head was shaved, like all the others, but on him it looked intimidating, not pathetic.

  “I’m Fedder. You want to work for me?”

  I struggled up on my elbows, looked at him querulously. “I’ve got no idea what you—­”

  Fedder kicked me in the face. I felt my nose slide over to one side. The pain was huge, a big, bright noise inside my head, an eruption of terrible smells. It hurt so much I couldn’t figure out what I was feeling.

  “I’m Fedder,” he said again. “You want to work for me?”

  His foot moved back, getting ready to swing again. I thought—­if I grab it, twist it around and overbalance him, knock him down in the mud and—­

  It collided with my face before I could even start that line of thought. He was faster than me, and stronger than me, and I was down, naked, hurt, and he was none of those things.

  “I’m Fedder,” he said. “You want to work for me?”

  What could I do but nod and agree and say yes?

  “Second shift. Don’t be late,” he said.

  And then he kicked me a few more times for emphasis, in the neck and the chest and finally, worst of all, in my ribs, and that was a savage pain, a pain that stole my breath and made me piss myself right there in the mud.

  He strode away and left me lying there. It took me a long time to get the strength back, the strength I needed to climb to my feet. A long, long time.

  CHAPTER 67

  I had no idea what to do next—­no idea what working for Fedder meant, no idea where I was supposed to go for clothes or food or anything else. I tried to approach some of the less wild-­looking ­people around me for help, but they just turned their faces away from me or ran off when I got too close.

  I was tired, and I hurt. I stayed near the fence, nea
r the entrance to the camp, because at least it meant I could have a wall at my back. So no one could attack me from behind. I crouched down in the mud and tried not to whimper. I covered my face in my hands. I knew this was a terrible idea. I knew I was just signaling to the ­people around me that I was weak, vulnerable, that they could take advantage of me. So eventually I worked up the willpower to force myself to stop, to stand up straight. To keep my emotions off my face.

  And then, naked, shivering, bruised and battered, I started to explore my new world.

  The camp was maybe a mile square of mud and gray, scrubby vegetation. The mud bred stinging insects that clustered around me in swarms, no matter how many times I brushed them away. After a while I stopped trying.

  Every hundred yards or so a tower of yellow brick rose from the mud, topped with windows and cameras and machine-­gun nests. The camp was surrounded on every side by a twenty-­five-­foot-­high wall, which was topped with barbed wire. There were parapets along the top of that wall, and towers with searchlights, and guardhouses. Catwalks crossed overhead, from the walls to the towers, allowing the soldiers up there to look down into the pit of mud. As far as I could tell there was no way up to that level—­it looked like the soldiers never came down to our level, and we certainly weren’t invited up to theirs.

  The camp was split right down the middle, with a double line of fencing dividing the halves. If I walked right up to the dividing fence and peered through the chain, I could see into the women’s camp, which looked exactly like the men’s.

  Shelters had been constructed along the walls and around the base of every tower. They were little more than lean-­tos, or roofs of corrugated tin supported by planks of wood. None of them stood more than six or seven feet high, and many looked like you would need to stoop to get inside them. They didn’t seem to have any utilities. They might keep off the sun or the rain, but that was about it—­no running water, no electricity, no light or heat. I immediately wondered what the camp did in the cold of winter—­especially since I knew I was going to spend at least one winter there. No solution presented itself.