by Ann Christy
His clothes are dirty, but still recognizable. His hair is still brown and unmatted by time and the environment. The rain may have cleaned him up a bit, but the overall impression I get from him is someone recently made into an in-betweener. There are stains on the pale blue over-shirt he’s wearing that cover the arms from wrist to elbow. I’m thinking blood.
He reaches out with dirty hands toward the bars, stretching a little to get past the substantial brick base. I’ve measured it in the past, and the foundation is three feet thick and three feet high. That’s enough to keep a car from crashing through, but not so high as to be unattractive. The ironwork bars of the fence extend upward from that.
At first, he seems a little confused, like he can’t understand why he wants the iron bars and knows he’s forgetting something—probably the sight of me. Eventually he settles, strokes one of the bars a little, and leans forward awkwardly to wrap his lips around it. His eyes don’t close, but I can tell he’s content. That’s how they get, sort of content, when they satisfy an imperative. Obtaining iron is an imperative. The closest thing to a look of happiness I’ve ever seen on them is when they get hold of a cell phone or some other electronic device, especially if it’s busted up. All those rare metals, you know. Still, he looks content now with his iron bar.
He’s young, probably not much older than me. Maybe he was a college student or recently graduated. The way he’s dressed—the jeans and the T-shirt with a button-up shirt over it as a sort of jacket—speaks student to me. Maybe a grad student?
I look him over and finally see what took him from regular human to in-betweener. There’s a neat hole in his T-shirt, right above a beer logo, and the brown of old blood is now visible against the dark green of the cotton. Someone shot him. I wonder why. Was he trying to steal someone’s food? Or woman? Or was he protecting something—or someone—that another person wanted?
I’ll never know, I don’t guess, but it’s good information nonetheless. It tells me that there are sufficient people and resources nearby to provide regular changes of clothes, haircuts, shaving materials—and the time and safety to be concerned with shaving—and weapons. That’s not good.
Unfortunately, in exchange for that information, I’m now stuck where I am. Between me and the buildings is the access road and he will see me clear as day if I try to cross. There’s no other viable way to go unless I try to crawl backward, keeping the ever-decreasing relative size of the truck between me and him. It’s at least a few hundred feet until I get to the curve in the access road that circles the entire complex. Encumbered as I am, that will take a while. And he’s too far away for me to shoot with the kind of accuracy I would need. And that’s not even taking into account the difficulty of trying to aim through the bars of the fence while the target is moving. I’m good, but not that good.
I decide to wait him out a little. In-betweeners are generally fickle. Their attention is easily diverted because their imperatives are so varied. By the time they become deaders, their goals are reduced to spreading to new hosts and finding stationary sources of metals they can use. Deaders don’t really fight at that point, but they do want to get their mouths on you and break the skin. In groups, their individual weakness is overcome by sheer mass and momentum. It’s easy to get overwhelmed if you wind up surrounded. No one can ever say they aren’t persistent when they have prey nearby, only that they’re fickle when there’s no prey to be found. It’s super-inconvenient, that’s for sure.
And once deaders get their mouths on something with a pulse, sometimes they keep going, reverting to the more aggressive in-betweener behavior. I’ve seen it happen. Not as often anymore because there aren’t that many living things available, but I know the drill.
The most recent such attack, at least that I’ve seen, was on a dog that somehow managed to survive out here on the outskirts of town. I was trying to get to the dog as well, but not for food. I wanted him to keep me company. In truth, I’d been desperate for him, but he was wary and wouldn’t come near me. He’d learned that not everything that looked human was human. But I’m patient in all things, including winning over a wary dog that looked like he could really use a good meal of spam.
A deader surprised me by coming out of the woods surrounding this complex and going straight for the dog. I’d yelled from my place behind my fence, told the dog to shoo, eventually screaming and crying, but all that did was confuse the dog and keep his wary eyes on me instead of behind him, where he might have seen the danger.
I don’t want to see any more dogs.
In-betweeners, on the other hand, always crave the material that will rebuild their injuries and keep them going. Their nanites don’t know that their host is really already dead. Nanites aren’t sentient or anything. They just know their program and their program is to repair damage to their hosts and themselves.
And what better source of the rich proteins, amino acids, and other building blocks of animal life is there but another animal? Our iron-rich blood by itself is enough to make them want to attack, but our organs are the real prize. Meat, especially dead meat, is a distant third, but they’ll go for it if it’s around. Except deader meat for some reason. That doesn’t interest them.
It’s a nice day out, which is weird in a way. I sort of feel like beautiful weather is almost an insult when everything else is such a mess, but today it’s on my side. I manage to get myself seated behind the truck without making noise and get comfortable. Then I just watch the in-betweener.
After watching for a good while, I realize that I’m absently fingering the scar that runs almost all the way around the side of my skull, creating a permanent part in my hair that only shows when I pull it back into a ponytail. When my hair is pulled back like that, the streak of white scalp stands out against my black hair like a flag. It used to draw people’s eyes—a look of curious pity almost always rising on their faces—to the line that runs from above my ear to the back of my head. It almost looks as if someone once tried to crack open the top of my head like a can of soup.
In a way, something did try to do just that. Medulloblastoma, stage IV. It’s the reason I almost died and the reason I’m still alive. My mother never would have gotten so interested in nanites without medulloblastoma, so it’s a weird relationship I have with my brain.
I pull my hand away from my head and force it into my lap. After more waiting, the warm breeze starts to feel good and the shaded light creates a sort of haven of comfort right where I sit on the hard pavement. It’s possibly stupid, and I know it even as I settle back against the ground with my empty backpacks as a pillow, but I decide that I need the light and the vitamin D. In reality, it’s probably safer to doze here and let him wander off. Besides, dozing isn’t really sleeping, is it?
Six Years Ago - My Medullo and Me
“You know why, Emily,” my mother says.
Her eyes leave mine and she looks at the wrist she’s been stroking with gentle mother touches as she speaks. I look, too. The skin is thin, abnormally so, and the blue lines of my veins are so visible and clear that it seems the stroking alone might be enough to break them wide open. Given the situation, I’d almost favor that happening. My head hurts so bad I want to bang it on something, or stop breathing.
“I don’t want any more treatments. I just want it to end. I want to stop having cancer and if I can’t, then I want to stop cancer from hurting me anymore.” I say it quickly and I hate how weak my voice sounds.
My mother’s hand comes to a stop on my arm, her fingers resting near the latest IV. For what I’m about to do, my port isn’t enough. I need more points of entry into my body, more needles.
“Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that,” she whispers, her voice urgent.
I’ve never said anything like that before and it scares her. I’m agreeable because I’ve always been lost as to what else to say except, “Okay.”
I’m no doctor and I never cared a bit about medical stuff. I’m twelve and most of what I read about me
dulloblastoma scares me half to death. Why would I have cared about that stuff before I got sick? And after my diagnosis I was curious, but my mom screened everything. No blogs by dying kids for me. No playdates with the other terminals. And no medical websites, ever.
She looks around the hospital room, even though there’s no one in here except the two of us. It’s as if she’s afraid that whoever authorized my upcoming treatment will change their mind if they hear me say I’m sick of being sick. I’m sick of dying. But I think anyone who deals with people dying of cancer every day would understand how I feel. Only someone who has been healthy their whole life wouldn’t get it. I’ve had this since I was nine years old. That’s a long time.
“I’m sorry,” I say, relenting at the hurt look on her face.
She nods, her face worried and her lips tight with the fear she won’t admit she carries around inside her. Otherwise, she looks no different than any other day. Her uniform is perfect, as usual, but even that can’t erase the fact that she’s not a Marine right now, she’s a mom in full mom-mode.
She takes a deep breath and then tilts my chin up toward her, so I’ll have to look at her or try really hard not to. As always, she focuses only on my left eye because that’s the one that works. My right eye doesn’t sit correctly in its socket and my sight is all but gone in it. My tumor is big and there’s just no room in my head now. Her eyes flit once toward the giant pink scar on my bald head, but return to my eye again. Her two sighted eyes are filled with love.
“I know you’re tired, baby girl. There’s just one more hurdle to get through. This is going to work. Have I ever made that promise before? I’m making it now. This is going to work and you will get better.”
There’s a light in her eyes that’s almost frightening. It’s fervent and desperate. For a moment, I’m convinced that her life is tied to mine, that she’ll die when I do. And I know I will die. I know it like I know that tonight they’ll give me something to “relax” me and then wake me at least three times to check my vitals while I try to sleep, ensuring that I don’t relax at all. This thing we’re doing is a pipe dream.
We both startle as the door opens abruptly and two doctors stride in. They have white coats, but their camouflaged trousers showing below the hems give them away as military. One is sporting blue camis, while the other is wearing a sort of muddled tan cami pattern similar to my mother’s.
Blue Cami doctor says, “Hello there, Emily. I’m Doctor Reed. We’re here to walk you through the procedure for tomorrow. Is this a good time?”
My mother stands, her posture straight and her hands curled into loose fists at her sides. I know that posture. It’s called standing at attention and my mom doesn’t do that often, I don’t think. She wears silver oak leaves on her dressier uniforms and I thought that was a pretty high rank. It actually makes me nervous that she feels she has to remain at attention for these doctors.
Tan Cami doctor gives her a little downward wave and she sags a bit, her hands once more twisting at her waist and the strain deepening the lines of her face.
“Of course,” she says.
I nod because both doctors look at me, seeming to expect an answer from me as well.
Tan Cami doctor eyes my mother again and then suggests, “Why don’t we all take a seat and get as comfortable as we can.”
Mom squeezes next to me on the bed, her hand finding my wrist again, while the two doctors drag over seats. My room is very big and strangely empty. I think that this room is meant to house a lot of machines based on all the ports and connections all over the walls, but for now, it’s just big and empty feeling.
“Okay, first things first,” Blue Cami says. “This procedure is far more straightforward than anything you’ve been through so far. I’d like to get that out of the way first. The surgical pain will be minimal.”
When I breathe in, I can feel the air catching painfully the whole way down and tears fill my eyes. He sees the hitching of my chest and reaches out to touch my blanket-covered foot. He gives it a firm squeeze that is so compassionate I immediately know I’ll go along with whatever comes next without complaint.
He taps his tablet and an image of my head comes up. It’s not pretty. His fingers make patterns on the glass and the image changes from photo to internal views, first my scarred-up skull, then on to the inside where all the bad stuff is—as well as the brain that makes me who I am. Or it did until the tumor got so big I began to lose even that. With my failing memory—people and places I loved are gone, replaced by scary blank spots—and the increasingly frequent seizures, I’m less myself with each passing day.
Soon enough, the mass that is my tumor takes up the bulk of the image, my brain a ghostly shadow around it. The tumor is mushed up, like even it is getting squeezed by the tight confines of my skull, bulging in some areas, stretched and thin in others. And through it all, I see once again why tumors like mine are so hard to simply cut out. It threads through my gray matter like ribbons.
The image begins to move—an animation of some sort—and Blue Cami taps the sharp object now pointed at the bones of my head. “This,” he says, “is where we’re going to drill a small entry hole for insertion.” Another tap on the screen and the pointed object moves back, a small tube replacing it. “And this is the only thing we’ll need to use inside. Here, you can see what it will look like.”
He holds the tablet still so I can really see what happens. Out of the small tube comes a very tiny pointed object. It does look exceedingly small compared to my head, maybe the size of one of those red plastic stirrers used for coffee. At my expression, Tan Cami says, “That’s a small-bore needle in the most basic terms.”
I nod absently and keep watching. The tiny needle pierces the mass that lives inside me and slows down, burrowing farther inside. At the far end of the main mass, it stops and a tiny stream of silver flows out to form a small bubble. After that short pause, it pulls back, leaving a trail of silver that looks like snail slime in sunlight in its wake. Then it does the same thing on the other side of the mass. Then, without ceremony—or taking a bow—the tube withdraws and the animation is over.
“That’s it?” my mother and I ask at the same time.
Both doctors smile at that. Blue Cami puts away the tablet and says, “We’ll put a small plug into the hole to keep your skull from closing for now, but it will be very small. That’s in case we need to insert more of our little friends later. Then a few stitches on your scalp, but nothing like what you’ve had to endure so far.”
I can’t even imagine it. I’ve had three brain surgeries, one of which took out a plate of bone big enough to be troublesome because it wouldn’t heal properly when it was replaced. So yeah, I’d say I’ve been through the wringer already. A tiny hole? I can deal with that.
But will it work? I don’t believe it. Not really.
How many of us died while they were developing this cure? Why should I get so lucky that this treatment gets approved for testing now, right when I’m at the end of the road? Are these “little friends”—these tiny nanomachines called Medulloblastoma Digesting Nanites (MBDNs)—really going to save me or will they eat my brain instead?
The cold hard fact is that no one knows. I’m one of the first patients included in this experimental study, thanks to a compassionate-use exception my mother fought to get me at the risk of her career and our health insurance. But she won and I’m sitting in front of the two men who may save my life. Or, put machines into my head that will devour my brain.
I suppose, either way it goes, I’ll get my wish. It will be over once and for all. Either no cancer or no brain. I’ll take it.
“I’m ready,” I say.
Today - The Speaker
“Garah! Garah da!” I hear as I wake up, sweaty and uncomfortable on the pavement. My head is pounding out a monotonous bang bang in time with my heart. I’ve also moved in my sleep and I can see straight through to the wrought iron fence and the in-betweener standing there.
The voice. Where did that come from? Reality or dream? I reach for the crossbow next to me, but then change my mind and reach for the rifle instead. Voices mean people and I’m not taking chances. If that voice was real, that is.
“Garah!”
The voice is a bit off and reminds me of the way some deaf people speak, forming words based only on the way the mouth and throat move rather than the nuances of sound. I get up and crouch behind the truck, trying to see in every direction at once. I could swear the voice was coming from the direction of the fence, but the deaders are still gumming their way along the iron so there couldn’t be a person there. If there were a person there, they would be focusing on him or her.
“Garah da! Oda ha!”
Then I see it. The voice does belong to the in-betweener, and he’s looking in my direction, his hand wavering between being raised in a wave and shaking downward without direction. He seems to be fighting himself, looking off at other things and then jerking back toward me. It seems like he’s working really hard at it, too.
Which is weird because, well, because he’s a reanimated corpse or something very close to it. Maybe revived corpse would be a better description.
They don’t talk.
“Garah kahm. Garah, garah. Ged garah!” he says, almost yelling the words and jerking his head forward in emphasis with each repetition. His face twists into something that looks so much like human desperation that I get a flash of my mother’s face when I was at my sickest in my head.
A couple of the deaders lift their heads at his latest outburst, heads bouncing unsteadily as they try to work out if there’s something they should be interested in. One of them breaks away from the gate and stumbles along the fence toward the in-betweener. He jerks a little to the side, watching the deader, and his face twists into a new expression. This time I can see what it means without doubt of any kind. It’s disgust.