by Ann Christy
I nod, toying with a thread coming loose from her top quilt. She brought back an absolutely enormous pile of these torn and worn blankets one day. She looked like one of those cartoons of people carrying ridiculous loads, or paintings of peasants carrying bundles of kindling taller than themselves on their backs. They all came from the vet hospital. This one still has dog hair threaded into the seams. I try to compare that grinning, strong girl to the increasingly frail one I see in front of me, and they just don’t marry up. I believe her now, about her cancer. And it’s devastating.
She pulls out a small black square of plastic from under her pillow and hands it to me. It’s heavy. It’s a hard drive. “What’s this for?”
“It’s part of what I want to tell you, but let me get it out my own way. Okay?” she asks, almost like she’s asking for me to forgive her for something I don’t yet know about.
“O-kay,” I answer, drawing out the word.
She takes a deep breath, presses her fingertips to one temple, then touches the hard drive. “I think that might have the cure—or one cure or a method to make a cure—on it. But I’m not sure. It could be nothing.”
At my gasp, my mouth halfway to launching an entirely unstoppable stream of questions at her, she holds up her hand for patience and I snap my jaws closed again. It takes effort to keep it closed and let her talk.
“I’m not sure, but my mom was working on it like a mad woman before she died. I know I told you she was working on computer stuff, but that’s not entirely true. She worked on what’s called Lean Medical Coding. It’s what they do for networking nanites for medical purposes. I don’t know much about it—I hate computer stuff—but she worked for the same people who made my nanites. And they made the nanites out there now, in the deaders and in-betweeners. With me so far?”
Again, I nod. My questions are gone, lost in confusion, but so far I get the drift. I clench the hard drive in my hands. “Go on,” I breathe.
“They did some kind of update. It was meant to help with persistence for people who carried permanent nanite loads for whatever condition, and to help First Responders nanites work better. It linked up the factory nanites and all sorts of stuff. But, clearly, that didn’t work out so well,” she says, her mouth twisted and bitter.
“Your mom did this?” I ask. I know it sounds like blame, and there’s no question there is a hint of accusation in my tone. Emily winces a little at it.
“No, she helped with the coding. She was not the asshat who decided veggie-heads everywhere should get the update. She wasn’t the one who sent the updates on regular airwaves, and she wasn’t one of the people out there that loaded themselves with every nanite they could get their hands on. There’s enough blame for everyone here.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. I mean it.
“It doesn’t matter,” she says, and waves it all away. Her gaze falls to the drive again. “Anyway, my mom worked on something here almost every day while we hid away. I know she meant to go back, try to fix things, but it was too far to go with just the two of us. We waited for the military to come, but we waited too long. And she felt that she was missing something in her coding.”
She stops to sip more tea. I can see the memories of all of this in the flickering of expressions on her face. Her mom. I only knew she died, nothing more. This is something else altogether.
“Then, one day when I had a headache—but just a normal one, because I got dehydrated—she just sort of froze, and said, “Of course!” Then she ran off to her computer and didn’t talk for two days. When I finally got her to speak to me she said, “What’s the best control for a predator? Another predator!” I think that was the answer to it.”
“What the heck does that mean?” I ask. “What, create worse things than in-betweeners or deaders or something?”
“I don’t know. My mom got sick soon after that, but she was still working on the program. Before she…passed…she told me to get this to the lab where they made my nanites or where I got treated, but not to take risks. She said I couldn’t lose the drive, no matter what.”
“Why didn’t you take it?” I ask. How much of all this death could have been avoided? How many people had died since she got this hard drive?
“How?” she asks, holding up her hands. “By myself? I wouldn’t have made it and who would have taken it then? Where would it have wound up? Inside a deader’s stomach? It’s quieter out there now, but then?”
She’s right about that. The deaders are slowing down and the in-betweeners are getting few and far between, but they were thicker on the ground before. And if she’d been gotten, the lure of all this exotic metal would have guaranteed a deader or in-betweener would chew on it or do their best to swallow it whole.
“And once you got here, we had Jon. Do we bring him as well?”
I shrink from that idea. She sees it in my face, and nods, “Exactly.”
“And now?” I ask.
“And now we have the others. I could go with one of them, except I’m pretty sure I’m dying here.” She stops there and laughs a bitter laugh. “Ironic, isn’t it?”
“I’ll go. I’ll take one of the others and go,” I offer immediately.
She puts her hand over mine again, and says, “I’m thinking it might be too late, don’t you? There’s no way there’s anyone still there who knows how to do whatever she’s got on that drive. It’s a pipe dream! A predator for a predator, my foot. What we need is some idea of where there’s anything like organization left, not just running off like a random-ass idiot.”
“Why are you so reluctant? Just tell me where it is!” I demand, and move the hard drive out of her reach before she can snatch it.
She doesn’t have the energy to chase me down for it and her hand falls back to her side. “It’s the military hospital, by the base. It’s the same place where my cancer was treated with nanites. You’ll never make it there. Just think how many deaders and in-betweeners there are. Think!”
“I’ll make a copy of the hard drive. We’ve got enough juice from the solar for a computer. We can find one. That way, if I don’t make it nothing will be lost.”
She shakes her head sadly, and says, “Nothing except you. And that won’t work. You don’t think I tried? It’s a proprietary drive with safeguards on it. I can’t even get the files to open and it won’t copy. That’s it. That’s the only one.”
“Then I’ll make it,” I say, confidently. Then my brain finally puts together a few things. Specifically, I marry up what she just said with what I remember her saying long ago as we sat around the fire and she first told me of her childhood bouts with cancer. Her nanites, her cancer, the hospital. “Wait a second! Can you get your nanites at that hospital? Or can I get them there? Is that the same place you were talking about?”
Emily leans back a little against the pillows and sighs, like this is exactly what she didn’t want to discuss. When she doesn’t answer, I shake my head impatiently at her and she says, “Fine. Yes. That’s the place.”
“You said if it ever came back, you would just go get some there from storage. You said those weren’t the kind of things people loot. Why aren’t we going?”
Her voice is impatient now, too. “For the same reasons I didn’t go with the hard drive.”
“I’m going. No if’s, ands, or buts. I’m going,” I say, standing and putting the hard drive behind my back.
She gives me an evaluating look and I expect another argument. Instead, she says, “Not yet. I don’t know these new people well enough. I don’t want you to leave them alone here with Jon.”
“You’re here. He’s not alone,” I respond, then realize what she’s saying. “How long?”
“Not long, I don’t think. I don’t know how much more pain I can take…”
“Don’t say that!”
“Not saying it won’t change anything about the outcome,” she says, and puts her hand to her temple again.
“I’ll stay for a while. For you,” I say.
&nbs
p; Today - Doctor Blue
I’ve read the term “frog-marched” before, but never actually understood it. I always thought it was something that bent people over, or was somehow more frog-like. Now I know what it is because when we enter the hospital through the basement, our hands tied high on our backs by leashes two of the soldiers—or whatever they are—hold, the man who greets us says, “You didn’t have to frog-march them down like that.”
So, now I know. It sucks.
It’s dark inside the hospital, the only light coming from a tiny LED bulb held in the man’s hand and reflecting against tin foil he’s got backing it. It’s sort of like a very new-school lantern. The floor is dirty and drifts of dirt wedge up against the corridor walls where we stand. There’s a smell of leaking plumbing and wet plaster in the air. It’s not a very auspicious start and I’m suddenly very doubtful that these people have anything working in this building.
The two people holding our leashes, a man and a woman, let them go and I can’t suppress a groan as the pressure on my shoulders eases. The man in the blue camis shoots a disapproving look toward the guy who seems to be leading the trio that leashed us, but all that guy does is say, “Sir, I don’t know them. I’m not going to roll out the red carpet.”
I can see a name tape on the man in blue’s shirt. Reed. I know that name. “Are you Doctor Reed, as in, Emily Bracken’s, Doctor Reed?”
The man in blue gives a start, then smiles a genuine smile that puts all his teeth on display. “You know Emily? Where is she? Is she alright?”
I hardly know what to say, but it seems I don’t have to say anything. My expression must say it all, because the smile falters and he says, “Oh.”
“I’m here because of her,” I say, pulling at the rope around my wrists that the soldier is trying to untie.
“Cheezus, can you hold still a second?” the soldier asks from behind me.
“Not really,” I snap back.
The rope falls away and I snatch the hard drive from the lead soldier’s hand. None of those three are wearing name-tapes on their uniforms, or even complete uniforms, so I’m still not clear about what they are exactly, but I do know that the doctor is the one I care about finding.
“Emily sent me with this! Her mom worked on something she thought might help and it’s on this drive,” I say.
Doctor Reed accepts the hard drive from my hand, but not with the enthusiasm I expected. I point at it and reiterate, “Don’t you get it? That might have a cure on it.”
He hefts the metal and plastic brick in his hand and looks at it as if he can read what’s on it by how it shifts in his palm. Then he tucks it into his pocket and says, “Oh, I believe you think that. So did the dozen who came before you.”
“But how many of those were created by the people who wrote the code for the nanites in the first place?” I ask, feeling a little sense of victory.
“All of them.”
“Oh,” I say, my sense of victory fleeing and all my hopes deflating.
The soldiers behind us are shifting a little, tired of our little hallway conference is my guess. This place doesn’t seem to be exactly teeming with personnel or bustling with activity.
“What’s going on here?” Charlie asks. He waves a hand at the debris strewn floor. “This place is still manned, so there’s infrastructure. Why haven’t you spread out, brought people in, killed off the deaders?”
I sneak a look at Charlie and see how truly angry he is. What he went through before Emily found them has never been fully shared, but I know it wasn’t great. Like all of us, his life after the nanites included hunger, thirst, fear, and doing things no one ever wants to do. I understand his anger. I feel it down deep somewhere as well, but that’s not why we’re here. We can feel that stuff after we have what we want.
Doctor Reed, wearing his worn blue camis and a weary smile, answers without hesitation, “Because we’re not manned like you think. The base is overrun. All we’ve got is what we’ve got here. That’s it. As of this moment, there are fifty-three people. Plus, you two. That’s it. Out of more than ten-thousand troops from all four services that wound up at the base, we managed to keep only fifty-three people alive and safe here. Think about that for a minute.”
Charlie doesn’t answer. He just looks down, the toe of his boot making swirling patterns in the dirt on the floor. Ten-thousand is a big number. A very big and terrible number.
I’m not sure if he takes pity on us for dropping our hopes down into an endlessly deep chasm, or if he just sees how tired we are. Maybe it’s neither of those things and he just wants information. Whatever the reason, he dismisses the troops behind us with a respectful, “thank you,” then motions for us to follow.
“Come on,” he says, “let’s get you a room for the night. I’d show you around but it’s dark and we’re limited on lights.” He holds up his make-shift LED lantern to drive the point home.
I pull out my LED flashlight and it brightens the hallway we’re walking down so much that Doctor Reed’s light is all but lost in it. The look he gives my light is envious, but resigned. It’s not the look of someone who’s plotting a way to steal it.
“Wow,” he says, as if seeing the hallway anew. “That’s better. Okay, so we’ll put you where the spare rooms are, which is the third floor. Orthopedics. Nice and comfy and off the bottom floors. Plus, not so many infected when stuff went wrong. No one likes to sleep on beds where the infected were. Most of us are on the fourth floor, but the rooms in ortho aren’t too bad.”
At the junction on the third floor, left leads to Maternity—which makes me sad—while to the right is Orthopedics. There are plenty of signs of life here. Posters, whether hand-drawn or commercial, are stuck to some of the doors. Small bags of laundry wait outside a few of the doors and a single LED light mounted on the wall about halfway down provides a sort of dim night-light for the space that holds the gloomy dark at bay.
He takes us to the end of the hall where there’s a closed door, no posters and no laundry bags by it, and pushes open the door for us. “Here you go. I, uh, saw you having your dinner so I hope you won’t think me rude if I don’t invite you to join us for tonight’s meal. We, uh, ration fairly strictly.” He motions to his thin frame and I finally notice how big his uniform is on him. He’s lost considerable weight if those uniforms used to fit him correctly.
Charlie looks into the room a bit suspiciously, not trusting how nice these people are. I don’t trust it either. They wouldn’t still be here if they were nice. The only way the nice survive is by having the ability to become decidedly un-nice at the drop of a hat.
I look in as well, not sure what to expect, but all the room contains is two basic hospital beds stripped of linens and two of those rolling carts that function as bedside tables.
Doctor Reed must sense our unease, because he walks in past us and over to the window. He pulls up the blinds and opens the window. The view outside is only of other rooms, so this must be over one of the interior courtyards we caught glimpses of on the way up to this floor. He pats the screen, and says, “You could pop this out if you want to. There’s a ledge.” He turns and points at the door. “That bar next to the door fits in the brackets on each door jamb. It will prevent anyone from coming in.”
We stand there silently. I’m not sure how Charlie feels, but I feel kind of like a heel. Emily would say shit-heel. Yeah, that’s me right about now.
Before Charlie or I can think of anything nice to say that will make us seem less like untrusting savages, the doctor says, “We only use the rooms facing the interior of the hospital after dark to keep the light from showing. So, if you decide to look around, do be sure to keep doors on the other side of the hallway closed and don’t shine your lights inside them. Hope that’s okay.”
“Sure, of course,” I say. “Thank you…for the room and, uh, for not shooting us out there.”
Doctor Reed laughs and gives a little shake of his head. He walks back to the door and makes to leave, but
stops at the threshold and looks back. His face is almost tragic the way it combines pleasant politeness and sadness when he says, “It’s good to see young people again. Good to know there are still some out there. We’ll talk tomorrow. About the hard drive and everything else. Okay?”
We both nod and he goes, just like that.
“Well, that was weird,” Charlie says, immediately going to the door and fitting the bar into the brackets, then testing the door by jerking it. The rattle it makes is really loud so I shh him. The doctor must have heard that. It’s bad enough that he knows we don’t trust him without rubbing it in. Charlie pays not the slightest bit of attention to me and rattles it again, fiddling with the top of the bracket to be sure no one could lift it from the outside or by cracking the door open.
“I think we’re fine, Charlie,” I say, tossing my pack onto one of the beds.
“Famous last words,” he mutters in response.
“True, but in this case, I think we really are fine. I doubt they’re a bunch of crazy cannibals. I just don’t get the whole cannibal vibe.”
He turns from the door, hand on one hip, and says, “And where do you think all those deader legs went to? They could have eaten them. We don’t know.”
“Oh, that’s just so disgusting. You didn’t catch the smell of parsnips? I did. I’m thinking we should trade seeds with these guys if they really can’t do anything with the hard drive.”
Charlie plops down on the bed next to me, making the plastic cover on the mattress crackle and me bounce upward. “I’m not getting the cannibal vibe either, but I’m not taking any chances. You don’t find it odd that they just escorted us in here like they get visitors all the time?”
I shrug a shoulder because, frankly, it is odd. The only people we’ve seen other than our group are bad people who want what others have or want the body of another for whatever nasty purpose they have in mind. Like Gloria.
“Let’s just see what happens,” I say, then think better of that notion. “And keep watch.”