All the Devils Here

by Astor Penn

  The generosity of the offer does not escape me, but the hatred in my heart swells. The kinder he is, the more I hate him. There is no more room in my heart to love another. Maybe Wyles is better than me after all—if I only find room to care about a few people, how can I deny him the right to try and save the world? Maybe I am the monster. Maybe that’s all that will survive the future.

  “That’s very kind of you.” My words sound as small as I feel. I’m grateful to be inside with four walls to contain everything—my feelings and me. “But you know there’s someone I have to see at the camp.”

  “Of course.” He smiles at me. “She’s excited to see you too.”

  “She knows I’m here?” He nods. “And that I’m all right?” Another nod. The hatred melts away for the moment; I smile too.

  “Think about it.” He pushes open another set of doors. Already the comfort of the chill of open air and familiarity leaves me, and the dread of being locked inside resurfaces. “You can both be provided for here.”

  What? I want to ask. Would I pull on a hazmat suit and join you? Play God? Mess with people’s lives? Kill them? Create the next supervirus to wipe out the other half of the world’s population? There is a realm of medicine—everything from applying a Band-Aid to surgery, but that doesn’t exist here. Here, they practice only one aspect of medicine.

  “Honestly, it was the first thing I can ever remember wanting to do, but I never thought I’d actually be a doctor.” What I want to say is that it’s the last thing I could ever do now; I don’t ever want to see another syringe or hear a heart monitor again. I’d rather bury myself in the ground than sit on another cold metal table.

  “I know you think we took something away from you by bringing you here,” he says, and all I think is Raven, you took Raven, “but you have to realize that you’re better off where you are now. Protected, with food and shelter. You have a future now.”

  Once more I feel like a child with an adult lecturing me that they’ve given me everything; I have nothing to do with my own outcome. Then both the hatred and the gratitude I feel for him fades, leaving only resolution. I’m going to find Raven and leave. We’ll make our own future; I have no intentions of being a part of anyone else’s.

  “How far is the camp from here? The one we’ll both be at?” I ask, thinking of that road. Is it the same road that leads to the rehabilitation center?

  “Close enough you could transition back here easily.” It’s a vague answer, to be sure, but how vague? He wants me to effectively join their team, but he doesn’t want to divulge any information to me. I can’t blame him—I wouldn’t trust someone like me either. But who do I have left to tell secrets to? How far can I plot on my own?

  “I’m essentially done being a lab rat, aren’t I?” I ask as we approach the massive jaw-like doors to the atrium, then to my little room. Out of all the decrepit hallways and rooms, the straps to hold patients down and the feeding tubes forced down the throats of victims who’d rather die, I am given royal treatment. Real food, a real bed. A room in a time when life is moving backward. It makes me feel sicker, or maybe it’s coming into a heated room after being out in the cold for so long.

  I thought he’d try to deny that I was ever a lab rat. Instead he says, “We’re finished taking blood samples, if that’s what you mean. We have enough now to test. Besides,” he says, turning his back to me and blocking my view of the control panel, “there isn’t the same level of testing happening anymore. We’re just tweaking it now, preparing for different reactions different people might have.”

  “So I’m free to go?” I’m stronger—I just proved that by our walk through the building and my stubborn visit outside—and they have what they need from me. Surely this is the end of our time together.

  “Soon. I promise. You’ve been in here a while now; long enough that things are changing on the roads.”

  “For the better?”

  “Depends on which way we look at it; more people are coming out into the open, which means it’ll be easier to treat them.”

  “But?”

  “But the more time that passes on the road, the harder people become.” The doors finally stretch open. He gestures for me to enter. I do, because I have no choice. “You know that better than anyone.”

  At first I think he means Raven, who anyone could look at and consider mean. She would have sold me out in the beginning, taken my supplies, and run with them. She would have taken from Poppy too, just a little girl, who never had her sympathy. But Wyles doesn’t know Raven; he’s referring to me.

  “I don’t think anyone would recognize me now.” Not my parents or school friends, teachers or neighbors. They wouldn’t have picked me as the girl to survive, either—I was the soft girl, the quiet girl, the one with no friends or special talents.

  “I hardly recognize myself when I look in the mirror,” he admits.

  “But you still have a mirror to look in,” I reply. “I think what you want to tell me is that it’s more dangerous out there than ever before because the people left know what it takes. It takes continuous movement and an empty belly. It takes guns and knives and any weapon you have. It takes another life sometimes.”

  Wyles is silent for a long time, watching me walk into the room. I head straight for my little space, the door now always left wide open in a cruel mockery of my situation. He tells me I can leave, but I wonder. When. How. If. He’d rather keep me here, close to him. Perhaps I am to replace his lost children—replace a dead one with one that won’t die.

  “The men left on the road.” He pauses, wondering how to phrase something I already know. “They take what they need. More than that, they take what they want.”

  Hungry men are something I’ve encountered—he doesn’t need to tell me about how unsafe it is to be a woman traveling alone. Those are rules I knew in my past life. The rules really haven’t changed, just the situation, and the ones who struggled the most in the last situation will survive the next. Wyles is a would-be king from wealth and circumstance; he wouldn’t last a day out there, whereas the hardworking men who had nothing had nothing to lose are out there, and they will tear men like Wyles apart.

  “They’re attacking your vans,” I say, thinking about what the roads mean for him. They mean fresh batches of people, supplies, transportation. The hungrier people get, the harder they’re forced into a corner—the harder they fight back, and if there are enough of them armed, well. I would think a moving van might make a valuable target.

  Wyles doesn’t answer me, instead asking what I’d like to eat for dinner. Even though I have options, they aren’t extensive. It doesn’t matter. I have more than I could possibly need, and tonight, in honor of those who have nothing, I decline his offer.

  “I’m not hungry.” I sit on my little made bed in my clean room with visible and invisible walls. It’s the last possible place anyone could call home.

  MY SLEEP is different now, the same kind of mindless wandering it used to be while I slept in the room at my parents’ house or the alternating dorm rooms at school. Careful. Almost rested. On the road sleeping meant not-sleep, and that was followed by the first nights I spent in the facility when I would have slept through anything and everything because I had nothing left to care for. Now I have good nights again, still mixed with restless ones. I don’t want to think about how comfortable that means I am here.

  Tonight is not the same. I start off soundly sleeping; then there’s an alarm ringing in my ear. Faintly, out of the corners of my memory, I think of reaching for my clock—let it snooze for a while. Except this isn’t an alarm clock; this is an alarm with red flashing lights, one that echoes so loudly the walls shake. Good thing I never recovered all my hearing, but with reduced sensitivity, I have no idea how long the alarm’s been going off. I jolt upright, glancing around my eerily dark room.

  A single red bulb pulses dimly; other than that, it’s completely dark. It’s chilling—not once since I have been moved to this room have the lig
hts ever gone out. I learned to sleep with every artificial light on—they never turned them off in here like they did in my first room. There I was a short-term visitor. Here I am the preserved specimen under the microscope. I have no idea what exactly this alarm means—but I know it isn’t good.

  Immediately I rush out of my little room, and although the door is shut, I cry with relief when it swings open freely despite their promises it would never be locked again. I push on my soft little sneakers that go with my soft pajamas and run to the giant gates of my prison. I am alone in the atrium. The doors, even in panic mode, don’t budge, of course. I think of the vague motion of hands I’ve seen as they glide over the number lock, but whatever numbers I type in, nothing happens. I don’t even know for sure how many numbers there ought to be.

  Meanwhile, the alarm won’t stop ringing, and no one is coming. There’s almost always someone in the room outside mine working, so now all I can think is that something is seriously wrong, and they’ve forgotten about me, the so-called star lab rat they wanted to claim as one of their own.

  Heart pumping furiously in my ears, I look around me. There are no windows or doors—only one route out of this room, and it’s impenetrable to anyone without the right ID. Could it be a fire? There’s no smoke in here, but the doors are so heavy that I doubt I breathe the same air as the hallway. What else could it be? An outbreak? Of a patient, or patients, or the virus? I suppose it’s the same either way.

  Pressing my ear to the door, I hear nothing, but I might not even if someone were screaming directly outside. It’d be impossible to hear anything over the wailing anyway, and it’s so loud in the room around me I can’t be sure if it’s in the hallway outside too. I can’t imagine that it would only be in this room—after all, I was only sleeping, and there appears to be no dire situation present here. So the alarm had to have been tripped elsewhere.

  I back away from the door and kick it in frustration, to no avail except a throbbing foot. In these situations, I need to take stock—literally. I need to think about what will happen in these next moments if there is a crisis to the extent that I won’t be able to return to this room. Even if it’s a prison and possibly a tomb, it’s been a safety net for me too. I haven’t forgotten what it’s like outside; the memories are just a little numb.

  Around me there are few things to grab. Back in my room, I tear the blanket off my bed and pocket the apple left from my dinner—fresh fruit being a luxury I want to savor. I push my way through the bathroom doors. There’s not much here to gain—still no windows or other exits—but there is one valuable item I can take from here. Wrapping my fist in the thick wool blanket they so kindly bestowed upon me, I punch in the glass of the single mirror they hung for me over the sink later in my stay. It shatters, but in the split second before, I see a girl rendered once more unrecognizable. Even without mirrors, I grew used to the image of a skeleton in my head. I saw it when they brought me here. Now, for that split second, I notice that I almost look like the girl of privilege with full cheeks and bright eyes, a girl I barely remember. In context, I am a girl of privilege once more. Or I was. This could be it. These may be my final moments in this building. But I have to think smart. I have to gather, prepare.

  The image doesn’t last; it shatters, and only the shards remain. I pick up two pieces—the smoothest ones I can find—and wrap them in part of the blanket, then knot it into a makeshift bag, the kind I’ve become so adept at making. As I exit the bathroom, I glance around for anything else I can use. I approach the metal medical cart that stays in the room with the blood pressure cuff, charts, stethoscope, reflex block. There are two syringes; one is empty, the other is new, with a plastic cover still on the needle and something inside. It’s clear, could be almost anything, but my guess is morphine, even if it’s been a long time since I’ve needed it.

  I add both to my pack carefully. Around me, there is nothing else to grab. I approach the computers on the control panel, which are almost always locked and in archaic codes when they aren’t because they barely function at all, but now they’re completely black and dead. No amount of jamming on keys brings them to life, and it’s unlikely it would do me any good if it did.

  “No!” I cry, my knees giving out. I grip the desk with desperate fingers, my ears about to bleed. In the pulsing redness, for the first time, the room is anything but white. It grows from dim to well exposed, and in the dark I remember what it was like before, and like a shock, the lights remind me what I’ve given to be here. I’ve given everything—and they took it all. I let them lull me into complacency, and now it may be too late. If things are bad out there, they may not come for me. They will run and save themselves. I’ll die alone, in an artificial dome.

  The desk slips from my fingers. One hand moves straight to the syringes wrapped close to my chest. How much morphine would be enough, I wonder? If it really came to that. Or maybe it’s not morphine at all. Whatever it is—if taken in a large enough dose—could it be enough?

  It doesn’t come to that. It’s been at least twenty minutes since the alarm woke me up, and I’m pacing and alternately beating the door, when it opens. There’s just one person standing outside it, and he isn’t in a hazmat suit this time.

  Jackson.

  Chapter 15

  JACKSON IS almost unrecognizable in street clothes; I see too much of him, his skin, his face. There are no physical obstacles between us, and now in the reality of the situation, I am dwarfed by his massive stature that is unhindered by a baggy suit. While lean, he is broad and all-around large. He’s got thick arms and a bald head with one earring. Underneath the edge of his T-shirt sleeve, thick black lines intersect in an elaborate design of some kind of tribal tattoo.

  All together, the image makes me wonder exactly what Jackson did before working for Wyles. He looks like more of a bouncer, but how many enforcement types can also draw blood? Maybe he was a police officer, or a firefighter. An EMT. Something like Bryant.

  Now’s not the time to ask.

  We’re running down the hallways, zigzagging and recrossing areas I know we’ve just come from. The alarm rings just as loudly out here, but there are no flashing red lights. Here it is pitch-dark, and it’s near impossible to see Jackson’s receding back. It’s difficult to keep up with him when I’m winded and we’ve been running for at least ten minutes, but every so often Jackson stops right before we turn a corner, and I, with my limited eyesight, crash into his back. It feels like running straight into a concrete wall.

  “What are we avoiding?” I whisper. Then I yell and repeat myself, because my words are lost in the wail of the alarm.

  Perhaps the question is what, or who, are we running from? I’m afraid to ask that one; the idea of being on the run is almost lost to me, and its reemergence brings fresh fear, the likes of which I haven’t felt in a long time. How long have I been kept here? I don’t know. I don’t remember. Who’s to say they told me the truth? It could have only been days, and all this time I’ve simply been lost in my mind.

  It’s strange—for the mad panic that alarms usually create, we haven’t come across a single person yet, which leads me to believe that Jackson is avoiding a certain someone. Or maybe everyone. There’s a fleeting thought, an old memory, of what it can mean when you’re alone with someone you don’t really know. I try to peer through the darkness to read Jackson’s face. It’s impossible. I see no weapons on his body either.

  We move forward around the corner, at first cautiously, then we pick up a jog again. I have no idea where we’re going, nor do I have any reason to trust the man leading me. There are too many questions—where has Jackson been for the last several weeks? He drops a bomb in my lap and runs? Leaving me with Wyles and his cool, slippery tongue?

  Jackson once felt like the closest thing I had to an ally; he was the first one to really speak to me. He told me exactly what I was—a lab rat, or a means to an end. He didn’t call me the cure—that was all Wyles. For Jackson, the world had moved on, shif
ted past its axis. There was no cure, only the end, and for that reason, I meant little to him. That’s why I trust him now. He’s freed me when he didn’t have to, when he doesn’t believe in salvation for the future or the past. He just sees me as some little girl—too precious to care for herself.

  My eyes have only just adjusted to the dark, but I can tell now I’m in a maze of hallways I don’t think I’d ever been through before. The walls, the doors in them—they don’t look quite as sickly as the green ones elsewhere. These walls are solid, without the crumbling of paint or plaster, and the doors are fewer and a cold metal instead of pliable wood.

  Jackson skids to a stop again, my face colliding with his elbow. Massaging my nose, I glance around his shoulder; we haven’t stopped before a new hall this time, but in front of a large door. One similar to what guarded my room. The hairs on my neck stand up even before Jackson pulls out a handgun from beneath his baggy shirt. Briefly, I think about trying to take it from him. What a joke that would be.

  “We’re going through a tunnel to the loading bay,” he says, loud enough I can hear that his voice is so even, so calm. Jackson is that kind of man—the kind who can command attention without demanding it.

  “Loading bay?” I ask. All my mind supplies are images of planes, a little airfield maybe, but since leaving New York, I’ve only ever seen one plane in the sky. It must have been only two weeks out, but I saw a private jet in the air. It was strange—at that time, the quiet began to settle, people breaking off into groups, no longer sheltered together under pretense of security. Already on my own, it’d been a while since I’d heard much from the other travelers in the area, although I was aware of them. Then the plane passed overhead, and like a tidal wave threatening to sweep me up with it, the cries pierced upward. From seemingly every side, I heard the protest of the people on foot around me, ranging from close-by to greater distances, seemingly from miles around. It was like we’d all just descended—into madness, or hell. We knew there was no escape, not on foot or in the air—and the cries were near deafening.