All the Devils Here

by Astor Penn

  His attempt at humor almost lessens my growing anger. I can’t decide if he honestly believes he’s helping the world, or if this is all a scam for money or fame in the future. His company creates a cure and sells it to the highest bidder, or sells it selectively to the countries they want as allies. Forget the third-world countries; they never had a chance. Of all the horrific situations someone could create, this one seems most likely. After all, who plans for international biological crisis? Well, someone should have.

  “I don’t understand. I get better according to your terms, then you’ll let me leave?”

  He nods. “You’ll have to stay in the camp we assign you to, so we can find you if need be.” Find me and torment me more, I think. No one living will have their own lives outside the memories of our old ones. I will not be my own person. I will be a weapon, or a cure. I won’t ever be a teenage girl again.

  “And Raven?”

  “She’s already there, Brie.” There’s a faint hollowness to his words, where they should ring out like triumphant bells.

  “What do you mean? You said she was infected.”

  “And she was, but she was treated with an antidote we’ve been working on and is now much improved, thanks to you and others who have come before you.” He kneels before me as if I am the one with power, and if I let myself believe his words, I would be. But I know I am as powerless as the season, just waiting to be claimed by the following day.

  “Don’t you see”—he grabs my hands—“you’ve already helped people. We’re inoculating men, women, and children with something that you’ve directly influenced with your time here. Your friend Raven, for instance, was treatable when brought in. Her symptoms hadn’t even begun. Now she’s recuperating in the rehabilitation center. She’s no longer infectious, and soon she’ll be as healthy as ever. She’s lucky—not everyone reacts well to the antivirus. She was just as good a match as you were a donor.”

  Shaking my head, I pull my fingers out from under his. “You must think I’m stupid. I know miracles don’t exist, and they certainly don’t exist in medicine. You didn’t just create a vaccine overnight. I wish you would tell me the truth. She’s dead, isn’t she?”

  I know this as certainly as I know now Raven wasn’t infected in the woods; she was infected here. There’s no way they would have been able to treat her so quickly if she had come in infected. They must have held her prisoner the same way as they did me or the others in the halls. Was she one of the screamers I heard? Was there really ever hope?

  “Well, we’ve been working on possible solutions since the beginning, of course, long before the newscasters went off air. Before the public could begin to suspect, even. What you’ve provided us with is the information to speed up the timeline, that’s all. We were getting close, and now we’re almost there.”

  “Almost? Do you, or don’t you, have a cure like you claim to?”

  “A few kinks to work out, side effects and what have you, but they shouldn’t prove too bothersome. We’ll be mass-producing the antivirus in no time.”

  A few kinks could mean anything; their test subjects were most likely far worse before they got better. Many probably died. Most, even. If Raven is alive, there is no way she’ll be the same. Not with an experimental drug separating her from a virus that’s killed the majority of the population.

  “I have no reason to believe anything you’re saying.”

  “No, you don’t. Anyone who’s been on their own for part of this catastrophe would know better than to believe in hope, I’d imagine.” He stands from his crouch next to me and walks toward the panels farther back in the room. Part of the panel has a computer in it, like the control room at NASA, I’d imagine. This room is a high-tech mockery of the other places in this building, which look old and worn, suitable for a horror movie about inmates. Isn’t that what this is, though?

  Wyles does something on the computer; from this angle I can’t see what exactly. Looking for something, clearly. What could be on this computer that’s worthwhile to me? I don’t care about their research or their so-called hard-earned facts. They are bought at the expense of too many others. What he’s looking for isn’t just on the computer. He nods his head behind me. I know there’s nothing behind me but a wall.

  A wall that is more monitor than wall, I realize, and when it first powers on, there’s a jagged line—jumping up and down rather lazily. My vitals from my invisible line. It really is like playing God, I think. He wills me to breathe, and I do. They don’t stay onscreen long, instead replaced by the image of a girl I would gladly give my heart to, and if the screen showed my heart rate next to her, it would pitch upward like a bird in flight.

  It looks like a camera has been placed in a small room much like the one I used to inhabit; there’s a long metal bed with a thin sheet, and in the corner, directly under the camera, is Raven. The top of her head and shoulders are all that’s visible, but there’s no mistaking that it’s her. She must know the camera is there—and has stubbornly refused to give it what it wants. Her face.

  “These images are no longer up-to-date.” Wyles sounds like a bored narrator but excited to relate the news to someone who will care. “This is time-lapsed from the last two days she was here.”

  It takes longer to notice, but the way her body gently quivers on the screen is not from bodily shaking but from a slight sway naturally occurring as she shifts her weight over time. When she walks, she moves at lightning speed across the floor and back. I have no idea how fast the images have been ramped up, but I barely catch glimpses of her face.

  A few things I can see—she’s paler and thinner. There are scratches on her face and arms, shallow ones, like cat scratches. From human nails, though, they must be, and I wonder if she did them herself. From distress or illness. From boredom, even. Raven is not meant to be caged; she soars higher than anyone I’ve ever met before. Moving is living. Moving is life.

  It all gives me a sense of déjà vu so strong that if I wasn’t already sitting, my feet would surely fail me now.

  “So what? Whenever I can walk out of here by myself, I can leave?” My eyes are glued to the screen. Raven is clearly aware of the camera in her room; she never looks directly at it, but the way she angles her body and face so the camera won’t clearly see it for long leads me to believe she was scheming. Plotting. She paces back and forth, wings clipped but ready to fly. Not dying. Moving.

  “Essentially, yes—” He’s trying to say more, but without thinking about it, I push myself to my feet and march toward the heavy doors I know will open only with correct identification. Nothing could stop me now—the definite proof that Raven is alive acts as adrenaline in my system. I don’t feel the aches or the fatigue in my bones, and I certainly don’t feel the nausea creeping up on me either.

  In the pathetically small space of walking from my room to the chair and then the chair to the door, I’ve moved more today than in a solid week. I throw up my small forced lunch from earlier. It’s orange and pure liquid; it looks obscene on the polished floors they try to upkeep.

  I pointedly ignore my shaking hand as I wipe my mouth off.

  “There’s no reason to rush.” Wyles gently grips my elbow, helping to balance my wobbling weight. “She’s doing quite well there, and while you both seem to be impervious to the virus, you are still susceptible to common ailments. Best the two of you rest up to full health before reunion, I think.”

  He steers me back toward my room, helps me sit on my bed. I’m not sure if it’s intentional, but it’s a little too paternal, as if I should be expecting a good night kiss too. I flinch away from him as soon as I’m sitting, grounded enough to hold myself up.

  “Things will be all right. You just hang in there.” He straightens and removes something from his pocket. I don’t see it very well, but the next item out gives it away: a needle. A needle with a single tube attached to it, and a rubber tourniquet to put around my arm.

  The good thing is I can barely feel the pricks any
more; the bad news is the sight of the blood bothers me more than usual today. I look away toward the monitor barely visible around the corner of my door; Raven is still there, moving in hyperspeed. I smile.

  Oh yes. Things will be all right. I’m going to get to Raven, and when I do, we’re going to run for it. There will be no staying in the camp or conforming to new society. If he wants me to rest up, so be it. I’ll need every ounce of strength I have. I’m going to make it home. I’m going to see if my family is still alive. I will stand on my front porch and see my old world for the first time through the lens of the new one, because I have made it this far when others haven’t. This isn’t a world for the young or old, for the feeble or weakhearted, but for those who are willing to make it their reality.

  Upon my arrival, I embraced the reality of my imminent death; now I challenge it. Sometimes it takes the strength of another person to push us, and for that, I will always be grateful that I met Raven, and Poppy, Bryant—even Aaron. I couldn’t have been more scared the day I saw them, lying on their backs in the ditch or falling out of trees. Now, life is unimaginable without our shared past. Every day I fear more and more, but my fear of losing Raven is what makes me strong, and I think I was wrong to question if my parents couldn’t be out there, still making it day to day. They have each other.

  I’m going to find them. Or I’m going to make my own family. It starts with Raven. It starts with finding my physical strength to match my emotional strength. Then it ends with researching Invo as much as they’ve researched me.

  Chapter 14

  THIS TIME, I know I’m dreaming.

  It’s Raven, swinging through the air like a loose-limbed child, low branches and a setting sun to give her a black silhouette. Pulling herself up through the branches, still garnished with fresh green leaves, she disappears. When I call for her, there is nothing but rustling.

  “Raven?” Climbing up a tree tickles the back of my mind—of a time and place and heartache.

  “Dollface.” She peeks out from a branch above me, in another tree, growing into my own.

  “I need you to slow down.”

  She climbs through thick green canopy, just a glimpse of a bare knee, then a grasping knuckle, so close to mine. I lunge for it, like a ripe fruit made to taste.

  “Sorry, gotta keep up with me.”

  We swing through branches, long and sturdy, like little beasts in the air. I gain momentum and realize I couldn’t stop if I wanted to. My fingers barely land on one place before I’m on another, Raven all along in front, just out of reach. There’s so much light and air bursting between these moments midair that it’s impossible not to feel incredible.

  Like a stone, a bullet, a life—she drops to the ground. For a while, I had forgotten there was earth beneath us. I thought we might fly.

  The ground is surprisingly golden under all the green. It’s all even dirt, and Raven’s smooth legs look painted on to this palette.

  The trees fade behind us as I reach for her hand. She tugs it.

  “You don’t move as quickly these days, Brie.”

  No, I don’t.

  “It’s about time you could keep up with me,” I say instead. She looks back at me, a wisp of her hair stuck in my mouth.

  “That’s my girl.”

  There’s no road here, but the dirt path is one level plain. Other than the trees, there’s no cover, and my skin itches in the open. Just a dream, I tell myself.

  “This looks like it could be home.”

  “Not mine.”

  “It could be your home. If you make it your home.”

  She glances sideways at me. “We don’t have homes anymore, dollface. There isn’t anywhere safe.”

  “Then what’s the point?” I drop her hand and hike up a small hill. At the top, it plateaus again, a smooth long-shot of miles and miles. There are train tracks laid across the land, and if I concentrate hard enough, I can hear the horn of an oncoming engine.

  “The point is we can go anywhere, do anything, for as long as we can.”

  “That won’t be long.”

  “No.” She stops moving all at once. “It most likely won’t be.”

  When I glance in either direction, I see the exact same space. It’s all flat terrain for as far as the eye can see, but that doesn’t mean it’s an easy road, and there’s no indication of one direction being right or wrong.

  “So which way now?” I ask, toeing a spike in the tracks. There’s a long moment where nothing happens other than wind knocking my hair back. When I turn to face Raven, she’s giving me that grin.

  “Doesn’t matter which way, but you better run fast.”

  The train’s horn blows, and it’s not my imagination—it’s right behind me. I glance toward it, speeding down the rails where there was nothing before. I take one lunging step forward, reaching for Raven’s hand, but—

  It’s too late. I wake up. I always wake up, and it’s only a room with four walls and another room with four more walls outside it. Just one life to live, they say, and I’ve got nothing but time.

  I prepare myself.

  Whenever presented with an option, I ask my captors for foods high in protein and fat content. I know what I look like—a skeleton, no fat left for my body to break down. Sometimes I even feel bad about asking for the rich foods I do; they must not be easy to come by, and they do try to accommodate me. I wonder if I eat better than the scientists, sometimes.

  My stomach adjusts to larger meals, richer foods. It’ll be difficult to go back to days spent running on half a protein bar and water, but for now I need all the stored energy I can get. When I ask for a scale, Ringley indulges me. No doubt they know exactly why I’m cooperating now, so eager to pack on weight and rest up.

  “They tell me the girl you asked me about so long ago is still alive,” Barlett says casually. We’re sitting across from each other at a little card table by the control panel. I’m outside of my room. I walked here myself, put myself in the chair. I feel stronger already. I feel in control again.

  “Her name is Raven.” I’ve always treated these men and women as prison keepers, but also as executioners; I try to tell them personal details so they’ll stop seeing me as the lab rat or loose end and see me as a person instead. It’s important because I cannot be disposable to them.

  Barlett nods. We’re eating together today, except I eat and she watches because she won’t take off her mask. There’s a deck of playing cards peeking out of her breast pocket, as if hazmat suits need breast pockets. This was a failed experiment Jackson and I tried earlier. It’s too hard for them to maneuver playing cards with their heavy gloves, and although she was the one who first touched me without a suit, she hasn’t ventured to take off her suit skin in any capacity since. In fact, they all still wear hazmat suits around me despite Wyles’s absence of one.

  “I’m sorry I led you to believe she was dead. I thought both of those girls were dead, to be honest with you. I just didn’t check the facts.” There’s something unspoken in her words—I think perhaps I used to be just another person in those halls. Now I’m someone she’s seen every day for weeks and weeks, the same as her colleagues. Her words ring with a sincerity not heard before. She honestly wants to apologize.

  “You never saw her, then?” I have no idea how many so-called patients are here or how many doctors there are. It’s possible they crossed paths.

  “I don’t think so. We usually don’t get the names of people brought in, though. Most people don’t carry identification anymore, of course, and sometimes they’re in too bad a way to tell us anything about themselves.”

  “You don’t ID them by prints or something?”

  Barlett smiles, maybe even chuckles. I can’t hear her well through the suit sometimes. “We don’t have those kind of resources anymore. We’d have to be hooked up to police files, and the police aren’t in commission like they used to be.”

  “I don’t understand how you can have so much here while there’s nothing out t
here.” They have food and electricity. Running water. They have state-of-the-art equipment still running. Yes, they have a decrepit old building too, but any roof over your head is enough to be grateful for.

  “You’re young.” Her voice is only half full of contempt. “And dramatic. You think that civilization isn’t out there anymore but it is. Just in patches and pieces. There are whole cities and islands that were never affected or successfully took measures against it. It’s true that the vast majority of the world is infected, but not all.”

  She slides my empty plate away from me. Only empty space between us now.

  “You’ll see. Things won’t be the way they were for a long time, but they will be someday. And that should be enough for you. That you were a part of the solution. Both you and your friends.”

  She stands, taking the tray with her. It’s a Tuesday by our old calendars, not that they matter much despite what she says. Tuesday means I’ll be alone the rest of the night.

  “Just one more question,” I ask. She pauses, back to me. “What happened to Jackson? I haven’t seen him in a while.” Since he opened his mouth. Is that what prompted Wyles to speak to me himself?

  “What do you want me to say? That he’s hanging by his thumbs in the dungeon?” She sounds cruel again—her normal tone. “He’s working with other patients. You no longer require our constant attention.”

  When she leaves me, I don’t see her or anyone else for a while. Ringley comes in next with food and water. I haven’t seen Ripper or Goliath in a long time either. Ringley does a lessened form of checks, now always weighing me at my request. I’ve put on a couple of pounds already, probably mostly from the water that I’ve been forcing myself to constantly drink. No sign of Wyles. I’m not really sure what he does around here when not babysitting.

  “There are rehabilitation facilities in the camp you’ll be sent to,” Ringley mentions. “With exercise regimes from a physical therapist there. I wish we had something here for you to do besides walk in circles.”