by Bobby Adair
“No, the programs are working. They’re helping. Projections are that we’ll suffer sixty-five to seventy-five percent.”
Olivia nodded, thankful Barry hadn’t said the word dead to finish his sentence. But it didn’t matter. She was thinking it.
“You want me to drive you home?”
Olivia shook her head. “I’ll walk.” She looked toward a window way down at the end of the hall. “I’m only right over there, close to the PX.”
“Go home,” Barry ordered. “Come back later if you want. Come back tomorrow if that’s better.”
Chapter 23
Nametags?
Why was there now a requirement to wear nametags?
Why not?
Names drape a thin veil of fake friendship between strangers and those who might just as well push the other out of a moving car. Or who might drain a pint of blood and inch someone closer to their death.
Paul stopped fidgeting with his new nametag and sat in his chair, wishing he had a book to read or a television to watch. He wanted a computer with an Internet connection so he could know what was going on in the world. He wanted a cellphone so he could call Olivia. He was worried about her and figured she had to be worried about him. Of course she was.
The question that arose lately, but one repressed every time it came to mind was: Is Olivia still alive?
He’d been officially detained maybe three or four weeks ago with no communication since. That was part of the camp’s policy, to keep its location secret, to keep every detail about its purpose and process secret—at least to keep it out of general knowledge. As one of the Colonel’s officers explained it to Paul on one of the dozens of times he’d begged for the use of a phone to call out, the government needed to keep the camp dark and quiet. If word got out, riots would follow, between the families of people who needed the plasma but didn’t get it, and those who rightfully feared the virus would overrun the camp.
Secrecy was a necessity.
Paul was on his third trio of drainees—the word he used when he thought of them in his internal dialogue. For some reason, it was less repugnant than the word volunteers. It was honest. He’d just eaten his lunch—rice and beans—and was looking at a box of a dozen empty bags that had been left in his clinic by Larry. Paul shook his head as thoughts of Larry blundered through. Larry was a knucklehead. That was the word that prefaced every thought of Larry.
Larry talked slow. He used poor grammar on a limited vocabulary. He fidgeted like a third grader and had poor oral hygiene. He fit a stereotype in Paul’s mind, and Paul had a hard time imagining Larry outside the bounds of that stereotype.
But Larry had a good heart. He wanted to help all those kids. He had been helping those kids while Paul had been bickering and feeling sorry for himself. Somehow, stereotypical Larry was the better man.
And what did that make Paul?
He had no answer.
He stared at the bags some more.
He looked at his charges, all strapped down, all with veins spliced into plastic tubes, joined to plasmapheresis machines. One was nearly done. Paul didn’t know their crimes. One was covered with sloppy tattoos and had scars on his face. That one fit into Paul’s stereotype of a prisoner. He was probably some gangbanger and murderer who’d been in jail his whole adult life and half of his childhood.
The drainee lying in the bed next to the gangbanger was a woman who’d had a hard, hard life. She had mean eyes and an excessively wrinkled face that didn’t match an otherwise youthful physique. More than once she’d offered Paul sex in trade for vague favors she never defined. She was brutally insistent and always offended when Paul chose not to indulge. “But you can do it right here in front of them,” she’d say. “I don’t mind.” She’d finish with a lecherous smile like she hoped maybe Paul might free the other two drainees from their bonds to help with the chore of bringing the witch to pleasure. Wanda The Wench. That was Paul’s name for her. Though he saw her real name twice weekly on his sheet and saw it stenciled on her shirt, he refused to learn it.
Thankfully, today Wanda was quiet and staring at the ceiling.
Paul thought more about the minor atrocity he was committing of draining a pint of life out of each of the underprivileged underclass of untouchables who lived in the squalor of the cages in the silos. But he knew he was saving lives. He knew he wasn’t harming the detainees, not in any permanent way. How many times did he need to sell the argument to himself before he finally bought it?
Hell, on the outside, people sold their plasma for a few bucks to apply to purposes so much less noble. The donation centers sat along the highways and advertised on billboards. It was big business. Donating plasma for a twenty wasn’t new to any of the drainees. Paul was sure of that.
Still, Paul was stealing for the state with no regard for their health beyond regularly injecting them with something to keep the cattle producing.
It was a confusing mess of confliction that never settled.
And Paul had a box of Larry’s bags, waiting to be filled.
Would filling those bags make any difference to Paul? If what he was doing was already a sin, would another dozen bags of plasma to save innocent lives also be a sin?
Or would they be a down payment on forgiveness?
Or was Paul wallowing in guilt and grief over his losses and letting that permeate all he did, turning every action into second-guessed, manufactured transgressions?
“Mister Cooper?”
Paul looked up. The quiet kid with the brown skin and the black hair was looking at him with his empty eyes.
Empty eyes?
Where did that even come from? The kid stared a lot. He’d never said anything before. Not one word that Paul could remember. Now he wanted something.
The kid’s words had kickstarted Wanda’s mouth. “I got something for you today, Paul. You’ll like it too. I’ve been playing with it all morning. It’s slippery.”
Paul stared at the box and pretended not to hear.
Wanda said a few more things and then went quiet.
The machine next to the gangbanger chirped. His plasma bag was full. The machine chirped again, the second of a series that would end only when Paul turned it off and pulled out the bag.
Still, Paul stared.
“Mister Cooper.”
Chirp.
Paul didn’t have to start now. Hell, he didn’t have to start today, not if he didn’t want to, not if he wasn’t ready. But he’d told Larry he would fill the bags as soon as Larry was able to provide them. Paul wanted to help Larry save those kids.
Chirp.
But something wasn’t right.
“Mister Cooper.”
Chirp.
Given all that he’d done. What were a few bags of plasma?
Nothing.
Chirp.
“Holmes, I’m done.” Everything the gangbanger said sounded like an insult.
And Paul took it that way.
Chirp.
Paul snatched a bag out of Larry’s box and walked over to the gangbanger’s machine. He pushed a button to turn off the chirping. He removed the full plasma bag and attached the empty bag as he reset the machine.
“What are you doing, Holmes?”
Paul didn’t answer. He finished his work, picked up a bottle of water, and put it in the gangbanger’s hand. “You’ll need to drink this.”
The gangbanger glared at Paul. His hands were strapped down. He couldn’t drink from the bottle if he’d wanted to.
“Suit yourself.” Paul took the plastic bottle back sat it on a shelf. “If you get too dehydrated it’ll take longer.”
Wanda’s machine started chirping, and Paul grabbed one of Larry’s black-market bags and repeated the process of hooking up the second bag. When he was done and the kid’s machine was chirping, he held the bottle of water up to Wanda’s mouth. She plugged it with her tongue and then opened her mouth wide and simulated fellatio on the bottle.
“Drink.”
&n
bsp; Wanda’s mean eyes looked at Paul and she moaned.
Paul yanked the bottle out of her mouth, spilling water on her shirt as he pulled it away.
Her temper flared. “Why the second bag, Paul?”
“New policy.” Paul didn’t give her another look. He pushed a button on the machine to start draining another helping of her plasma and he walked over to the brown-skinned boy.
He went to work on the machine.
“Mister Cooper.”
Paul froze. He looked at the kid. “How do you know my last name?”
Chapter 24
Paul glanced at his nametag. He looked at the kid reclined on the dirty sheets with an unspoken question on his face. Paul snorted and went back to his work. Of course, the kid guessed his last name. Paul’s face had been all over the news, part of the price for his mistakes.
“You’re Austin’s dad.”
Paul connected the bag and reset the machine.
“I’m Salim Pitafi. Do you remember me?”
The name was familiar. The kid looked familiar but then again, he looked like any of the unshaven faces in the cages in silo K3. No, that wasn’t accurate. Many of the men wore full beards. Some like Salim wore little more than peach fuzz.
“I went to high school with Austin.”
“Austin’s dead.” Paul crossed the room toward his waiting chair.
“He’s not.”
Paul froze. His fists clenched, though he made a conscious choice to relax them. He wasn’t going to beat a kid who was strapped to a bed, but he would take his temper for a spin. He turned on Salim and marched the few paces back. “Be quiet.”
Salim flinched but kept Paul’s eye.
Paul did nothing while he stood over Salim, trying to straighten out the thoughts and emotions competing for primacy in his choice of what to do next.
He didn’t like it when his rational brain clicked off and he followed his emotions to all the bad places they had to lead him. He’d been too far down that road too many times.
Paul walked back to his chair and sat down. He tuned out the gangbanger’s insults, Wanda’s suggestions, and Salim’s stories. Paul stared at the floor, lost himself in his regrets, and felt sad when a memory came to him he hadn’t gone looking for.
Paul was taking Austin to school on his first day of kindergarten all those years ago. Austin wore baggy shorts and a striped shirt that was nearly big enough to be a dress. He carried a backpack and a colorful little lunch box. Paul kissed that little boy and watched him walk toward the school doors, as his son turned every few steps to look back and grin. But that little boy grew up, went to Uganda, and suffered alone in a grass hut surrounded by incompetent doctors and people who didn’t have the time in their shitty third-world lives to befriend a dying boy.
And that’s where Paul’s thoughts always led, to anger that made him hate people he’d never met for things he’d imagined they’d done.
It was all wrong.
He wished he could have been at Austin’s side when he died. He wished he could have done at least that much.
He thought of Heidi and how he’d found her body on their dining room floor and he wished he could have been there, too, though his fantasy involved death of a different sort. Paul wanted to kill the men who’d murdered Heidi. It was his favorite daydream. Every time it came to mind, he imagined the different way he’d come into the house to catch those bastard, rat-brained shits. Sometimes, he’d have his AR-15 in hand and he’d shoot them until his thirty-round magazine was empty and they’d danced like marionettes as the rounds propped their dying bodies up. Just like in the movies. Sometimes he’d have a kitchen knife and he’d stab and slice while they cried for mercy. Other times, his fists would pound the life out of them.
All those daydreams ended in regret. Heidi was dead and Paul was alive with the guilt of his mistakes.
The chirping started again.
Paul robotically stood up, waded through the gangbanger’s insults, and detached the drainee from the machine. He wiped away the blood at the crook of the gangbanger’s elbow and put on a wad of cotton and a bandage. Paul repeated the activity with Wanda.
When Paul went to work beside the last bed, Salim said, “I saw him in Kapchorwa.”
Paul turned on the brown-skinned boy. He leaned down close and growled, “If you say one more word about my son, I’ll keep you in here all day and drain you dry. Your body will be burning in the pile by the fence by sunset. So shut the fuck up.”
Chapter 25
Larry giggled when he saw the pile of bags bulging with yellowish plasma, a big harvest from Paul’s clinic.
Paul tried to understand the giggle. He knew Larry had to be happy with the results of Paul’s efforts to save all those children. Still, giggling? Paul wrote it off to Larry’s quirky backwoods personality. Not everyone could be sophisticated.
With so much plasma to haul, Larry was going to have to make a few trips. Paul, being finished for the day, decided to violate protocol and help Larry out. He’d come to learn that the guards mostly didn’t care what happened as long as the volunteers were secure and Sergeant Marazzi didn’t yell. Besides, the guards were used to seeing Paul head up the ladder at the end of the day to watch the stars. They, of course, were used to seeing Larry coming up and down the ladder all day long schlepping plasma.
So, Paul hauled a backpack through the tunnel and then up the ladder behind Larry.
No questions were asked. No suspicions were raised.
Once at the surface, Larry didn’t linger. He hurried toward the warehouse carrying both bags.
Just as well. Paul was in no mood to talk. His run-in with Salim Pitafi had eaten at his mood since, leaving prickly crumbs of tormenting doubts that wouldn’t leave him alone.
Kapchorwa.
How did Salim know the name of that place? Did Paul ever mention it in an interview? No. Paul knew the name of the little village when he heard it, but it was such an odd word to say in English. It always left him with an open mouth trying to recall how the syllables fit together. Had Heidi revealed the name of the town where Austin had been teaching? What if she had? How did this Salim Pitafi kid know? What was his game?
Silo K3 was full of prison volunteers. They were burglars and murderers, pedophiles and embezzlers. Not one of those child beaters and prostitutes had chosen to become infected simply to turn a new leaf as good citizens. They were all guinea pigs bullied into their new life by a government showing a ruthless face in its struggle to survive. Unrepentant livestock.
So what was Salim? A con man?
Could he be who he said he was?
It didn’t make sense. How would a punk kid like him find his way back from Africa in the middle of a pandemic when every country with a measure of sense had shut down their borders?
Still, Kapchorwa.
The word demanded an explanation.
Paul worried over that explanation. He knew if he listened to Salim’s bullshit, he might believe it. And it had to be bullshit.
He cut short his communion with the stars and returned through the complex’s entrance. He hurried down the ladder leading to the main level, barely acknowledged the guards, and hustled through the warren of wide, curved hallways until he came to the steel door at the base of the silo containing the strain type K drainees.
“I need to go inside.”
The two guards at the door shared a look. “I thought you were done for the night.”
“I am,” answered Paul. “I need to talk to one of them.”
“Can’t wait ‘til tomorrow? I don’t want to open the door and let the stink out again.”
Paul shook his head. “Tonight. Tomorrow. What does it matter? We’ve got nothing to do down in this hole either way.”
“It doesn’t matter to you. You’ll be down in your clinic. You won’t smell it all night long like we will.” The guard shared a look of silent discussion with his comrade, stood up, heaved the heavy door open, and looked at Paul. “Don’t let an
y of them out of their cages.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Why would you go inside to talk with one in the middle of the night? You spend all day in your lab with these bastards. Don’t you hear enough of their shit?”
“I ignore them and read most of the time. I just need to go inside and talk.”
“Suit yourself.”
The guard pushed the steel door open wide enough for Paul to pass inside.
“I’ll leave it open until you come back down but if you don’t hurry I’m shutting it, and you can sleep in there.”
“Thanks.” Paul started up a rickety steel ladder welded into the framework of stacked cages and catwalks, careful to keep his hands close to his pockets even though he did have gloves on.
Most of the detainees on the first two levels of cages were quiet, keeping to themselves or talking softly with those in the adjacent cages. It was late. Many were already sleeping.
At the third level, the gangbanger with the scarred face chided Paul as he passed. “What’s a matter Count Dracula? You still hungry?”
Paul ignored him by looking in the other direction. He saw Wanda reaching through a gap between her cage and the next to pleasure a man who seemed perfectly proud that everyone in the cages around would hear the nuances of his satisfaction.
Paul climbed up.
One prisoner was scratching his skin into a quiltwork of open sores and scabs. One was talking emotionally to a person who wasn’t there.
Paul stepped onto the catwalk that serviced all the cages on level seven and took a moment to look down through the monkey-bar gridwork of steel supports, platforms, cages, and ladders, crisscrossing the space all the way to the floor.
One of the detainees, a man with shifting eyes and a long beard jumped off the floor of his cage, grabbed the chain-link mesh and started screaming while he rocked his body in violent jerks. His cage creaked with each thrust of his weight. Paul felt the jerks through the metal catwalk under his feet.
Other men joined in the call and similarly mounted the walls of their cages.
In a matter of seconds, most of the volunteers were swaying in their cages and metal was straining all around. Salim didn’t participate. He remained sitting, motionless.