The Terminals

by Royce Scott Buckingham

  “I’m glad I came,” she said.

  Cam forced a smile. “Me too.”

  She ducked out, and Cam could hear her fingernails clicking on her phone as she fled down corridor 3C.

  The door had hardly closed shut when Cam’s sister shoved it back open. Trish was five years older than him, too old to be his friend and too young to have a mothering instinct. The result was that she found him annoying. She hadn’t gone to college—not the type. She lived on the freeway side of town in one of two hundred apartments that looked exactly the same, and she sold clothes at the Ready-to-Wear store by the mall.

  Trish stood beside Cam’s bed in approximately the same spot Kristi had.

  “Sorry if I was ever bitchy to you,” she said.

  She was not specific—the apology seemed designed to cover all the mean things she’d ever done or said to him in one fell swoop. Despite its brevity, it was clear to Cam she’d been working on her speech. It was just the right mix of noncommittal regret and profane defiance to let him know that their parents had put her up to it. She said it quickly, and then waited for him to accept it.

  “Okay, thanks,” Cam said, though it didn’t seem fair to let her off the hook so easily for a lifetime of resenting him. He knew, however, that she’d immediately complain to their parents if he didn’t, and he wasn’t about to spend an hour of his dwindling life “working out” the issue, with their folks playing emotional referee.

  At least she’s efficient at cutting through the mandatory touchy-feely stuff, Cam thought.

  Having delivered her speech, Trish stood chewing her gum loudly. She blew a small bubble, which popped and left a pink spot on her lip. The spot bounced up and down as she talked.

  “Things have sucked since we found out,” she said.

  “Uh-huh,” Cam agreed.

  “Mom and Dad have been a total mess. They break down crying every time I need to talk to them about something important.”

  “That’s really inconvenient.”

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s not your fault you got sick.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t mean to.”

  “You’re funny. I’m gonna miss you.”

  “I’m not going to die for, like, another twelve months.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ll miss you after that, I mean.”

  There was no hug or even a pat on the shoulder. Cam didn’t take offense. They hadn’t had physical contact with one another since she’d hit puberty and instituted the “no touching” rule, not even when passing the butter at dinner. Cam’s skinny nice-guy persona was still lurking, urging him not to make a big deal out of it. Trish seemed to be waiting for him to say he would miss her too, but he didn’t think he would when he died, and he hated to lie.

  “Thanks for coming to see me,” he said.

  “No problem.” She smiled as softly as was possible for her. “I was on my way to work anyway.”

  * * *

  The visitors kept coming.

  Some guys from the soccer team dropped by with his jersey. Number nineteen. His age. It was neatly folded in a display box, where it would remain for all eternity, unless he broke the glass to get at it due to some sort of soccer emergency. The nickname “Wingman” was scrawled across the purple velvet backing in bright silver. Cam pretended to like it.

  His mom’s aunt and her husband arrived next. They were very old and had somehow known him “since before he was born,” though Cam wasn’t sure how that worked. They talked about other people they knew who were dying from various diseases and touched his face with dry, wrinkly hands like a couple of grim reapers. Cam had grown tired of explaining that he felt fine, for now, and they seemed disappointed that his condition wasn’t more painful or interesting, so he began to make up strange sensations. He told them that he sometimes felt like spiders were burrowing through his hair and mentioned with a straight face that he’d had green stool samples lately. He stopped only when his great-aunt told the nurse and she rushed in to see what was wrong with him.

  Finally, Mason walked through the door. Mason was his age, but lived in the twenty-four-hour quiet dorms and played HeroQuest online instead of soccer. And the odds that Mason would go to the homecoming dance were very low. But Mason had lived three houses down from Cam since elementary school, knocked on the door every Saturday to see if Cam could come out and play, and had been in Boy Scouts with him when they were eleven. Mason had even skipped the end-of-the-year elementary school trip to the water park in fifth grade to play Risk and Stratego with Cam when he’d had his tonsils out. Now that they were in college, they didn’t hang out so much, but Mason didn’t give Cam grief about his sports friends, and he still knocked on the door once in a while on Saturdays.

  “Nice gown,” Mason said.

  Cam laughed for the first time all day. “You like it? I think they have your size, if you’re jealous.”

  Mason laughed too. He gave Cam a mind reader’s salute, holding two fingers to each temple and humming. Then he grew quiet, studying the heart-rate monitor and the chart hanging from the bed. “You get a second opinion?”

  “This guy’s a specialist. It’s all he does.”

  “So what’s your strategy now?”

  “What do you mean?” Cam said. “I do treatment, obviously.”

  “I heard treatment can’t save you.”

  “True. It’s very unlikely.”

  “Hoping for something unlikely isn’t necessarily the obvious thing to do.”

  “Then what do you suggest?”

  “Sympathy hookup?”

  “Tried it. Didn’t work.”

  “Kristi?”

  “Yep.”

  “Wow. I admire the attempt.” Mason tapped his narrow chin. “You know, you’ve always been a ‘doer,’ Cam. I remember when we were in high school and you volunteered our crappy little band to play the end-of-the-year party just to scare us into practicing more.”

  “Yeah. You were so mad.”

  “It made us good, though,” Mason said. “Best thing I was ever forced to do against my will.”

  Cam watched his friend’s face, but there was no sarcasm.

  “It seems weird to think of a doer like you lying here in a bed not doing anything,” Mason continued.

  “Feels weird too.”

  “So … do something.”

  Just then, Dr. Singh walked in. The specialist. The tumor doc.

  “I hope you’re not giving my favorite patient advice contrary to mine,” the grinning doctor said.

  Mason gave Cam another salute. “I shall return as soon as I have a plan to vanquish the evil doctor who has condemned you to death.” He winked at Dr. Singh, and then exited with a flourish.

  Dr. Singh stepped to the edge of the bed. He was Indian. India Indian, not Native American. He hadn’t told Cam he was dying at first. In fact, the perpetually chipper doc had come in smiling to talk about the results of the first set of tests. Smiling! He had the air of an expert and the credibility of a specialist. He flew in just for Cam’s case, knew the disease like the back of his hand, and the local doctors gave him a wide berth.

  “You are a remarkable specimen,” he’d said in his thick accent. He apparently traveled all over the United States to find cases like Cam’s. Confident guy. Friendly too. But “remarkable,” in Cam’s case, wasn’t good, and the smiles didn’t keep the traveling doc from eventually delivering the news. Death. A year or less. Ninety-some percent sure, which easily rounded up to one hundred in Cam’s mind.

  “I’d like to run some more tests,” Dr. Singh said. “We’re hoping that…”

  Cam pretended to listen, but he’d already seen the vague image of the killer tumor in his head in the exact spot where the books said a kidney bean–shaped shadow meant you were doomed. It looked more like a pear to Cam, but he was pretty sure any silhouette of a food item in your primary somatic sensory cortex was bad news. The rest of it didn’t matter—the name of the disease, how it worked, why it chose his life to mess up. D
idn’t know. Didn’t care. Didn’t listen. All he knew was that he sure as heck wasn’t going to see the world now.

  CAM’S PLAYLIST

  2. ROADKILL

  by Suicide Squirrel

  3. SOUL ON A STICK

  by Dog Breath

  4. WELCOME TO THE ZOO

  by The Way Chunky Monkeys

  “Gotta have fleet feet to

  play in the street.”

  The sun abandoned Cam, escaping over the western horizon, but he didn’t fall asleep. Instead, he wandered through a half-waking dream in which he could feel something coming, but couldn’t quite see or stop it. He moved slowly, like he was running through sand, and a strange guy was sitting next to …

  Cam’s eyes popped open. A strange guy dressed in a tan jumpsuit and leather gloves was sitting next to his bed. He was obviously not a doctor or nurse, and visiting hours had ended two playlists ago. He appeared to be around thirty and reasonably fit—neither fat nor skinny. His ears were an irritated red color, and his hair was sticking up. Like he’s been wearing a headset, Cam thought. The man loomed over Cam’s bed, as though inspecting him.

  Cam sat up suddenly. “Whoa! Dude! What the hell?”

  “How are you feeling, Cam?” the man asked, unfazed.

  “Are you a doc?”

  “Do I look like a doc?”

  “No. So who are you?”

  “I’m someone with an opportunity for you.”

  “Maybe you didn’t get the memo,” Cam said, settling back into his pillow, “but I’m sorta fresh out of opportunities.”

  The man grinned. “Oh, but I did get the memo. And your medical chart. And your transcripts, your standardized test scores, your application for volunteer service opportunities. I’ve been a busy guy for the last few days. I even have your soccer stats—no goals last year, but six assists. You’re a team player. Your report cards say you also listen carefully and follow directions well.”

  Cam was fully awake now, all of the cobwebs of sleep suddenly gone. He cocked an eyebrow. “Impressive. So you’re a counselor?”

  The man nodded. “In a sense, but I’m more than that.”

  Cam didn’t want to be counseled, but he didn’t want to be rude either. He let the man keep talking.

  “The way I see it, you can spend the last year of your life slowly deteriorating and coming here once a week for uncomfortable, futile treatments until you climb into this comfy adjustable bed one last time like a cat crawling under a porch to die—”

  “Wow,” Cam interrupted. “Not here to paint a cheery picture, are ya?” He eyed the man, suspicious. “But it sounds like there’s an ‘or’ coming.”

  “Perceptive.” The man grinned. “Or you can join our organization and help save your fellow man.”

  Cam shook his head. “I thought so. Sorry, I’m not interested in joining some religious cult just because I’m dying.”

  “Ah, but the special young men and women we recruit travel to exotic locations, drive insanely fast cars, and jump out of planes. Does that sound a bit more interesting?”

  Cam couldn’t help but perk up. “A bit. Yeah.”

  “What do you want from the last year of your life, Cam?”

  “I dunno. Soccer, girls, maybe all that cool stuff you mentioned?”

  His visitor chuckled. “Besides all of that.”

  “What else is there?”

  “Anything else. Name it.”

  “Money, maybe? Or at least the stuff it buys.”

  “Okay.”

  “Awesome food? Great workouts?”

  “Sure. But those are just things. What do you want to do and be?”

  “Well, as long as we’re dreaming big, I guess I’d like to be a leading man. You know, win the fight and get the girl, cheesy stuff like that.”

  “You want to be a hero?”

  “I guess you could put it that way.”

  The man nodded. “Ahh. Well, that’s the interesting part, because we recruit an elite group of youth. You and nine others just like you. All with glioblastomas. All terminals. All with superior talents. We train you and send you on clandestine operations—secret missions, if you will. It’s ferociously dangerous. But then, nothing’s more dangerous than what you’re facing here, right?” When Cam didn’t answer, the man continued. “I’m not promising you your life back, Cam. You’ll still die. But we give you the chance to be special, and to live your last year to the fullest.”

  Cam felt his pulse quicken. He glanced at his heart-rate monitor. Elevated. Over one hundred. Higher even than Kristi Banks had sent it. “What is this?” he said. “The Make-a-Wish Foundation for spy kids?”

  “If that simplistic description helps you process what I’m telling you, sure. It’s a commitment to do something meaningful with your time here on earth, and the length of that commitment is—”

  “Let me guess. One year.”

  “Right. Or until you die, whichever comes first.”

  “This sounds crazy.” Cam puzzled over the man. He was strangely honest. Blunt even. No sugarcoating. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

  “Your family got a letter yesterday that said if you die they might be eligible to receive two hundred and fifty thousand dollars through a credit card insurance policy you didn’t know you had, correct?”

  Cam nodded, wondering how the man knew what they received in the mail.

  “We sent that. Your credit card company doesn’t have such a policy. If you decline to join, the letter becomes junk mail. But if you sign on, the money will arrive within two to three weeks.”

  Cam’s eyebrows rose again. So much for my poker face. The money sounded like the sales pitch part, but he had to admit it was a pretty good offer. His parents would be able to retire, or maybe help his evil sister get a house and a real life.

  “So you just send my folks a quarter-million-dollar check for my shortened life?”

  “We prefer ‘condensed’ life.”

  Cam didn’t know if he should believe the guy, but the whole thing seemed too outrageous not to be true. It was a lot to consider. I’ll need time, he thought.

  The man was nodding, gauging his reaction. “Take some time,” he said, as though reading Cam’s mind. “Think it over. I’ll be back at five in the morning before visiting hours. You’ll have one chance to join.”

  “I have to talk to my friends and family.”

  The man shook his head. “No, you don’t. In fact, if you tell anyone, I won’t return.”

  “But I have questions.”

  “And we are the answer. Good night.” With that, he rose and walked out.

  Cam struggled to untangle himself from the monitors and bedding. Moments later, he was in cavernous corridor 3C. The nurse was just returning from her break.

  “Where’d he go?”

  “Where did who go?” she said.

  The hallway was empty. The man had disappeared like a whisper.

  “Right.…” Cam walked back to his room, lay down, and stared at the ceiling. Time for some thinkin’ music, he decided. He hit PLAY and pushed his earbuds deep into his head.

  * * *

  Cam drifted in and out, glancing at the clock. Soon it was 4:55, and still no visitor. Dude’s not coming back, he thought. It was all part of a stupid dream, he decided. A figment of his emotional distress. Cam refused to beat himself up for having weird dreams, though. He’d just found out he was dying, and that had to mess with a guy’s head. In fact, he figured bad dreams were pretty standard in this wing of the building.

  Then he heard the knocking. It came from the window. Not the door, the window. It might not have seemed so incredibly odd, except that the window was forty feet in the air.

  The clock read 4:59 A.M.

  Cam abandoned the comfort of Numo, scrambling onto a chair so he could see outside. There was a face in the glass. Bigger than life. Four floors high. Upside down. It was the man in the jumpsuit. He pointed at his watch. Cam opened the window.

&nbs
p; “Decision time,” the man said. “Yes or no?”

  Cam had been thinking all night, but hadn’t decided. His mind was going in too many directions. Now his recruiter was here, dangling four stories up like Spider-Man, which he had to admit was kind of cool. And the organization he represented wanted Cameron Cody. Kristi didn’t want him. His soccer team wouldn’t be working him into their future plans. No potential employers would invite him to a second interview if he was going to be too dead to work by the time he graduated. In fact, nobody else was going to be picking him for much of anything anymore.

  Cam nodded, and the man nodded back. And that was it.

  His recruiter rotated right side up, produced a miniature blowtorch from one of the many pockets of his jumpsuit, and went to work removing the safety screen. He chattered as he cut through a rivet, producing an acrid, burning smell.

  “You’re coming out this way. I’ll tie you on. Don’t look down if you’re queasy.”

  He slid the screen loose and pulled Cam through. Cam clung to him like a panicked monkey while the man strapped him to his own body with a nylon rope. Then he nonchalantly welded the screen back into place.

  “We’ll fake your death,” he was saying. “You were rushed off in the middle of the night for emergency treatment. Medics heli-ported you across the country. You expired on the way. Quite sad. I saw that your parents signed a form donating your body to science. Very progressive of them. We’ll use that. Your remains will have to be shipped out for preservation and dissection, and no one will try to see them. I’m sorry you won’t get to say good-bye. We can arrange for your family to find a note among your belongings, which you wrote to them before you ‘died.’ What would you like it to say?”

  Cam imagined his mother finding his empty bed. She would have wanted to say good-bye. His dad might have understood. It was not the best way to go and not what they deserved, but it was better than the dying-cat-under-the-porch option.

  “You were great parents,” Cam said at length.

  His recruiter nodded. “That’s nice, Cam. Best one I’ve ever heard. Sheesh, I wish I’d told my own mom and dad that. Anything else?”