Ophelia Immune: A Novel

by Mattson, Beth

  “Are you a Doctor, Jim?” she repeated.

  “N-no,” he stuttered.

  I gasped. The Killer continued.

  “No? What a surprise. I bet you’re a lab assistant and a delivery boy. And are your Doctor pals working on a Cure, Gopher?”

  “Y-y-yes, yes they are.”

  “Ah, a Cure. Excellent.”

  “I told you, you idiot! I told you,” I threatened her, climbing to the top of the dumpster, my face flushed a deep grey, my cheeks heavy with terror and fury, “He is working on a Cure. Leave him alone before I smash you from crown to chin!”

  “Settle down … Ophelia. That’s what he called you, didn’t he? Ophelia, I want to hear about this Cure that Jim is working on. Jim, tell me. What would happen if you gave a zombie this Cure?”

  “It would kill it. It would die a thousand final deaths.”

  My eyes tingled and I fell with a thud as my feet slid off of the metal trash heap in a puddle of someone else’s fluids. I wobbled towards Jim on unsteady legs.

  “What, Jim? Doesn’t it Cure zombies?”

  He looked at me, beyond bewildered, and spoke, reaching for me.

  “Of course. Of course it does. Really, really well. I … I thought you wanted me … us … the Doctors … to end the zombie plague.”

  “I do. I did. But not by …” I moaned and rattled with a long, low gurgle.

  “And Jim,” the radiant Killer pressed him, “what would happen to Ophelia if she took this Cure?”

  He met my eyes, his hand still trying to touch me.

  “Ophelia, I thought you understood. I would have protected you. I will protect you. It doesn’t even matter that you robbed us. You’ll be safe and you won’t have to kill zombies anymore.”

  “But it won’t save … It won’t fix … I can't …”

  My knees and ankles were numb but I could see that my feet were turning around and walking away. I was walking away. I watched my feet walking away, slowly, through the waves and waves of silence.

  The tall, sleek Immune Killer followed me through the heavy tide, as did the sound of Jim standing completely still and not dragging any of the delivery boxes anywhere. My brain spun while my head sat still upon my shoulders. My ears buzzed. My legs continued towards home. I needed to see Juliet.

  The Killer skipped in front of me, prancing backwards, her lips moving. She was talking again. She tackled a ghoul who was stumbling towards us, and I left her behind while she chopped at it. She caught me easily afterward, walked backwards in front of me again with her lips still moving, her fingers pointing, her arms swinging. I shoved her out of my way. There was no Cure. What was I living for? What was I going to do with Juliet? Poor Juliet. Jim had lied to me. Swan was dead. Again. My head spun. Nothing. Nothing I could do. Everything was a waste. Jim was a waste. I was a waste.

  The bats reeling after insects made me dizzy. A flickering street lamp turned the world in slow motion. A Squatter turned to his cohorts when they saw us coming. They all hid their food scraps behind their backs, watching us pass, but I did not hide my face and they didn’t say a thing. They didn’t recognize me. They didn’t follow us. They didn’t care to take care of us one way or another.

  I trudged up my stairs and hung my hammer and ax on the wrong hooks. I lit half of an old candle and let the wax drip down my knuckles. In the glow, Juliet crawled from underneath the table, a large dust bunny wedged between her front teeth.

  The Killer was on top of her in an instant, her lengthy, lethal arms wrapped around Juliet’s neck. The Killer had followed me. I hadn’t stopped her. Maybe I wanted her to follow me. Maybe I wanted her to kill Juliet – Juliet who would never be alive again, not from a Cure. Jim’s Cure would kill her, and I helped him more than I stole from him. I hadn't asked any questions. I hadn't thought. Juliet was already dead, why not let the Killer rip her head off and spread her blood across the floor?

  The Killer raised her sickle above her head, gripping Juliet’s scalp roughly, but before it could fall, before the last barrette from Immogen could clatter onto the floor, before my last sister’s head could roll, I was between them. I kept Juliet from hitting her face on the table with one hand, and with the other I broke The Killer’s nose once, twice, three times. I smeared it sideways across her face. Contorted and bloodied, she retreated to a corner, where she crouched and coddled her nose like it was canning wax.

  I peered down at Juliet, cupped her face in my hands and smiled through bleary eyes, “Hello Little One. I'm here. It's me.”

  She swiped her tongue around her face in a sloppy circle. She brought my hand to her mouth and began to chew. My bones cracked and crumbled as she worked her teeth into them and I hiked up her drooping pants. I patted her belly. It was a little hollow. She could use some fresh water.

  I stood up and straightened out my hand, glaring at the Immune Killer in the corner. When I growled, she closed her powdered lids with a grimace and her hands still on her face, whimpering when her nose drooped against her top lip. I kept my ears trained on the Killer while I filled the water bowl. If there was the slightest moan, threatening step, wobble or creak, I was ready to kill her and never find out who she was, this other Immune zombie. But the bowl filled to the rim with nothing but the sound of splashing water.

  “Who are you?” I rasped, giving my sister her drink.

  “You sure have a lot of pets,” she dabbed her bloody lips on her sleeve.

  “Who are you?” I demanded.

  “Like I told you when we were walking back here. I’m Kite. You’re Ophelia and that’s another one of your pets, of which you apparently have a lot. And you're maybe not the wimp I thought you were.”

  She glared over her fingertips, busily adjusting her nose so that it could heal.

  “Don’t talk about my Family like they’re pets. You’re Immune like me. How long? How long have you been Immune?”

  “You have strange Friends. I’ve been Immune for a while now,” she tossed a thick strand of hair from her shoulders, “Can we catch up in the morning? I’m beat.”

  “Do you know any other Doctors who are working on a real Cure?”

  “You don’t give up, do you? There is no real Cure. Never gonna happen.”

  I slammed her against my faded wallpaper with my mottled forearm, adding broken vertebrae to her smashed nose. I didn’t care if she could heal like me or not. Her head drooped askew above her shoulders.

  “You don’t know that there’s no real Cure,” I hissed and let her fall to her knees, “You don’t know anything.”

  She held her nose with one hand, her head upright with the other. Even broken, she was very pretty.

  “I know that I’m Immune like you,” she burbled from the floor, “I have been since I got bitten, by a fish, in a lab, just like the one your stupid, lying labrat works at. I knew he wasn’t a Doctor. I know that I’m green. I know that I rattle and moan like you, and except for me, you’re alone in this world. All. Alone.”

  “No,” I petted Juliet’s pigtails, “I’m not.”

  “Fine. Is this where we sleep?”

  Kite opened the door to my closet and, in one swift motion, kicked her boots off and tossed her lolling head inside, her body following its momentum. She wiggled and rolled for a few minutes, rearranging her neck, and then she lay still with her arms folded over her chest, waiting to mend. I stared at her. My temples rang. My ears were still buzzing. I stared and stared and stared. She crossed her well muscled legs at the knee and snuggled more deeply into my blankets. After a while, she began to snore.

  Juliet snooped and found the closet wide open. She groped at Kite's boots. Next she would find Kite's feet. With her teeth.

  “No, no,” I chided, forcing my legs to support my weight, stumbling to her, pulling her gently away, “Only grown-ups go in the closet.”

  I urged her out into the living room with her sock doll. She batted at it noncommittally. I whispered her sweet nothings and then I left her alone, shutting myself i
nto my closet with Kite. I shoved the unconscious, confusing figure to the far side of my closet, wrenching anything that had been Swan’s out from underneath her. Those were mine. She didn't get to touch those. But I could touch her. I couldn’t make her sick and she seemed confident that she would heal after my beating.

  She didn’t wake as I rearranged my nest. Her thick eyelashes didn’t flutter. She wasn’t dreaming. She was Infected. She was Immune. Just like me. Her nose and neck would repair where I had broken them. They were already less loose when I poked and stared at them, reattaching.

  I sat silently for a while, listening to the rustles of Juliet playing. Her baby doll bouncing off of the walls and the table legs and the refrigerator. I heard her spill her pot of water and splash in the resulting mess. The Immune stranger’s snores bounced off of the thin closet walls. I groped in the dark for Swan’s last unwashed t-shirt, brought it to my nose, wrapped it tightly around my fists, braced myself with covered eyes and fell asleep.

  The Kite

  Kite the Killer made me coffee. She didn’t make me coffee out of my stale, red tin. She made me coffee that smelled like heaven on earth, from freshly roasted beans that drifted into my open closet door, pinched my nose, and woke me from the sleep of the dead. The morning air was fresh on my face, humid and sweet. The living room window was wide open, the curtains flapping free of their nails. Daylight poured in. I was awake during the day. Juliet could have escaped through the open window, snagging and ripping every inch of her thin skin on her tumble down the brick wall to the hard concrete below, where she would bumble about in the mud until somebody bashed her brains out.

  I screamed and hurled myself out of my closet looking for her. I banged my heels and toes on the floor, rushing to find her. It wasn’t until I had the entire top half of my body out the window, searching the alleyway below, that I saw her tied to the refrigerator, a fresh ribbon added to her leash. I burned my knees skidding to kneel beside her, checking her shoulders and back for new strains or dislocations, moving my fingers along her ribs. She had no new lumps, bumps, or gaping holes.

  Kite the Killer had wedged herself against the far corner of the kitchen, her feet pigeon toeing, green skin and red painted nails contrasting with the cracked black and white tiles, waiting for me to look at her and remember the horror of what she had done. My large water pot was sitting up on the stove, dry and holding a small handful of coffee beans, toasted to a deep dark, umber. They sat cooling above the open stove door. Inside the stove was a small Propane burner, tinier than mine, venting the last of its hot air into the kitchen. Next to the beans, on top of a leather backpack with silver buckles, was a small package of tattered plastic wrap. The ends were tied securely about a wad of more fresh coffee. I gurgle moaned and reached for them.

  Kite leaned forward and handed me a steaming mug. Her thin shirt shifted over her chest. She could have filled out a bra, but she wasn't wearing one. She guided me away from her fragile coffee-stained mortar and pestle and asked me, with her tentative fingertips, to sit in my chair by the open window. My mouth was bone-parched and I became jealous of Juliet’s well-hydrated drool dangling from her freshly refilled bowl of water. I let my nervous muscles relax into my chair. I struggled to bring the mug to my sandy lips, spilling onto my legs as I drank until I could speak. I turned to Kite, but she spoke first.

  “I made some coffee for you. I think you and I could really get along. It used to be your sister?”

  “She is my Sister, yes. And if you touch her I will kill you.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” she snatched my empty cup.

  I sat and shook, still dehydrated, wondering if she was making a zombie joke about dreaming. She refilled my mug, filtering the grounds through a scrap of perfectly-shaped cheesecloth. She wasn't wearing any pants, leaving her long, black hair to dangle over the band of her underwear. Her red fingernails and toenails shone and clicked against all of the things that she touched – the faucet, the open spoon drawer, my steaming mug held up to her soft, wide lips as she blew across it.

  With a slight plop, she sat down next to me at the window, in a rickety, paint-splattered chair that I had never seen before. I hoped that she hadn’t been up to the dangerous upper floors. She could get us all killed. She could kill all of us. I took a sip from my second cup of ground-free miracle coffee.

  “When are you leaving?” I asked her.

  “We slept a long time,” she said, “A whole day and night. Guess we really needed some rest.”

  “When will you be leaving?”

  She slouched closer to me, draping her dimpled, graceful elbow against her knee. She reached out with her grey and green palm and placed it on my thigh. I shivered. She was Warm. She was Infected but breathing. She was Immune. I couldn’t kill her. I couldn’t make her sick. She could touch me. She could speak.

  “Well,” she shaped her words slowly, “I thought that perhaps we would go take care of your … Friend, and then maybe we could try to find a radio to listen to.”

  “She wasn’t my pet.”

  “I know. I am sorry. I said Friend.”

  “You killed her,” I lied to Kite about who had caused Swan’s death, I knew that it had been me and my carelessness, “There still could be a Cure … even if Jim isn’t a Doctor.”

  “He lied to you.”

  “No. Well, I mean, I never really asked if he was a Scientist … I just gave him my blood. I assumed. I never asked if … Maybe he’s not a liar.”

  “Tres drole, il est un bete. Je le sais!”

  “What?”

  She repeated herself, but I still didn’t understand.

  “You don’t speak French?” she was aghast, “You live this far North and you don’t speak French? Everybody up here speaks French!”

  “What’s French? Is that what a lot of my Neighbors speak when I can’t hear them?”

  “That calendar,” she sat up, “That sappy kitten calendar you were reading on the roof – it was in French. You can read in French. I saw you.”

  “Oh. That. Jim is … was also … teaching us … me … how to read.”

  “Really nice boyfriend you have there, Ophelia. He lies about everything. Compulsively.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend, and … what are you talking about?”

  “How do you spell August,” she quizzed me.

  “A-o-u-t.”

  “That’s French. Ophelia, he wasn’t teaching you how to read. And he wasn’t teaching you French. He was just bribing you with bad memorization lessons. You need to learn the letter sounds and languages from a real teacher. He was only some lame-ass guy who wanted to get into your pants and to keep you coming back to give him the blood that his Bosses needed.”

  I stuttered.

  “No, no I am sure he was just … I needed to learn how to read. I can’t speak French. We were just trying to … he would die if he got into my pants.”

  “Ah ha ha! True, true. You are a funny one, Ophelia. That jerk doesn’t deserve you. Let’s go take care of your Friend, then we can get us a radio, and I can really teach you how to read. The right way.”

  Right in the middle of the living room, she stripped off her t-shirt and underwear, showing me her ribs and kinkiest hair. I lowered my eyes while she rummaged through her pack for clean, lacy clothes and I thought about Jim, who had used my blood to make a zombie poison that would kill me. It would take care of me. I had taken care of him. I had stolen from the Clinic. Was he worse than me? Was I worse than him?

  She talked to me while she rubbed lavender oil on her armpits and re-colored her nails with a fumey marker, but I couldn’t hear her. All I could hear was the static of a not-Doctor, a not-Friend, a not-Family, a not-to-be-Cured zombie that I had trained to get herself killed. All my dead Big and Little Sisters.

  When Kite’s boots were strapped up her calves, and she said she was ready to storm the castle, she followed me back to the Clinic rooftop. Swan was where we had left her, her head flattened and separated
from her body, roasting in the afternoon sun. Tears flooded down my cheeks and drained out of my nose. Kite held my hand. I let her. There was no risk.

  She rolled out the tarp that we had carried and stood behind me as I cut Swan’s body into sections, slowly, using my ax like a knife, careful not to make any jagged edges, only smooth, quiet slices. I handed the crisped, bloated pieces to Kite, one by one. She took them solemnly, perfectly silent. We packed the parts neatly and rolled them up tight, lashing it securely closed. My fingers fumbled with the strings. I checked the knots thrice.

  Kite hummed softly on our way back down the stairs with Swan in our arms. She helped me lift the package into an Official Burn Collection dumpster on a street not filled with thugs and passersby, then she bowed her head. She said that Swan had been an excellent companion, that she was sorry not to have gotten the chance to known her, and then sang a prayer about the dead flying up to join the sun, which I hid from, still skittish in the light. She asked if I would like to say a few words. I shook my head no, slowly back and forth, back and forth. I shook my head from side to side as we stepped away from Swan. I was still shaking my head when Kite patted me lightly on the pocket. I hadn’t noticed that we had arrived at my door.

  “Oh,” I looked up, “I’m home.”

  “We don’t have to go in yet. We could go get a radio.”

  “A radio?”

  “To listen to programs and shows while we are in our apartment.”

  “Our apartment? A radio? I don't know.”

  She lead me by the hand, past the dinner time sounds of Families lighting their cooking fires and babies crying to be left in their cribs while their parents stirred the pots and their siblings played with the best toys, past the hammerings of end-of-the-day repairs, past the closed up cash-making shops, and the broken down bicycle remnants left to rust. She pointed at objects and made me repeat their French names. Too tired to resist being in the palm of her hand, I spoke with very little regard for who could hear my gurgles.

  “Râteau, râteau, râteau.”