by Ann Christy
Charlie grins and nudges me with his sharp elbow. “You take first watch then.”
*****
Breakfast is just the two of us in our room. A carrot, the last of our rice, and a piece of flatbread. It’s almost a relief to have something to do aside from lay there pretending to sleep. As soon as we heard movement and dawn sent early gray light in past the blinds, we were both up and wide awake. Truthfully, I didn’t sleep much, and what I did get was light and not particularly fulfilling. Charlie’s yawns and tired eyes tell me he was in the same boat last night.
We open the door as a sign that we’re up, and it’s not too much later that a young guy wearing a mish-mash outfit of a scrub top and tan cami bottoms, along with bright orange sneakers to complete his ensemble, knocks and pokes his head in. “Doc says he’ll meet you in the atrium in a few minutes. That okay?”
He actually waits for an answer, looking from me to Charlie and back again, eyebrows raised expectantly and a half-smile on his face.
“Uh, yeah sure. Where’s the atrium?” Charlie asks.
“To the stairs and down. Simple,” he answers, pointing down the hall. He doesn’t introduce himself or ask our names, but his half-smile widens and he taps the door twice before ducking away.
“Well, he was friendly,” I say.
“Yeah,” Charlie answers, his voice still suspicious. We help each other with our packs, then head out to see what’s what in this place. I’m still hopeful there’s help to be found here, but also fearful it won’t be enough.
The hospital looks very different in the light. The dirt is more obvious, but so is the effort that’s gone into keeping it under control. Charlie and I follow the hallway toward a light-filled central stairway. Above us, a huge metal mobile fills the air space above us and beyond that, a pyramid shaped skylight provides a backdrop of bright, post-dawn light. If I don’t look too hard, I can ignore the buildup of dirt around the edges of the glass and just enjoy the light.
On the bottom floor, two people walking away from us carrying baskets stop, turn back, and look at us like we might be some new species of potentially dangerous animal. We consider each other for a moment, then the girl gives us a tentative wave with her free hand. The guy tugs her sleeve and they walk on.
Doctor Reed finally joins us after several minutes of us standing around awkwardly and trying to look like we don’t feel awkward. He smells of oatmeal when he holds out a hand to shake. Oatmeal sounds really good.
“Hey you two. Hope you managed to get at least a few minutes sleep last night.” He says it with a knowing grin that’s friendly and open. I feel less suspicious by the second.
“Yeah, well, you know how it is. When one travels, the beds are never as comfortable as your own,” Charlie quips.
It’s so surprising to hear him joke that I laugh a real laugh. So does the doctor. Alas, that laugh dies an uncomfortable death, leaving us standing there with nothing to say. It is exceptionally weird to meet new people, and to do it like this is even weirder. Social conventions are a part of history now, so this is a bit like falling through the looking glass.
“Uh, so. Shall I give you the grand tour?” he asks, rubbing his hands together as if we’ve got a full schedule for the day and he’s eager to get started.
I’d much rather get down to business, but I’m quite certain that insisting on that won’t actually speed up the process at all.
“Sure,” I answer for both of us.
The hospital is huge, as in freakishly enormous, so we don’t get the full tour by any stretch of the imagination, but we don’t have to see all of it to get the idea I think Doctor Reed is trying to convey. It’s empty. The halls ring with echoes as we cross and the rooms swirl with dust when he opens long-closed doors.
On the lower floor, they’ve done some good work in the tiny courtyards once used as places to grieve, or where visiting family can just get some fresh un-medicated smelling air. Surrounded on all sides by the building but open to the sky, these spaces have been altered to provide garden plots. Benches once arranged neatly beside clipped grass and flower beds lie canted on their sides in the hallways just inside the doors.
Doctor Reed keeps walking and talking for a few steps, but then comes back to the place we stand, looking at their neat garden rows. I can see winter crops just like we’re growing. Carrots, radishes, parsnips, celery root, and more. They’re all things that either grow fast—like radishes—or store well and provide some of the crucial nutrients needed over a long winter of rice and beans.
“We have a few of these. Not enough,” he says.
“Doctor Reed, this wouldn’t be enough to last a handful of people all winter. Where are you getting the rest of your food?” Charlie asks.
“Call me Chester,” he says, then laughs when he sees my eyebrows go up. “Blame my parents for that name, I sure didn’t choose it.” That makes him go solemn for a moment, the corners of his mouth dipping down suddenly, perhaps thinking of his parents. He grips the little ledge on the viewing window and pulls himself together. The smile comes back to some extent, and he says, “As to your question, this was already a green building and the roof is like a farm now. And, we did manage to get a share from the military shopping plaza. The base got most of it.”
“So, they were around for a while at least?” I ask.
“Oh, yeah, a good while. But, with that many people, the problem becomes keeping a lid on what goes on inside the walls rather than what might be coming over them. And they started getting people turning on the inside. It didn’t take long once that got started. We got a couple of dozen from there, but after that…”
He stops there and I can guess the rest. “You didn’t want the same thing here. You turned them away?”
He nods, still looking out at his inadequate garden. “We did. Not all, but most.”
There’s really not much more to say about that. We would have done the same thing. Numbers are only good to a point. After that, separation becomes the issue. Everyone has to be able to watch someone else and be watched in their turn. No death can go un-noticed.
When he takes us to the labs, Charlie gets tense again, his trust-meter starting to peg the bottom. We’ve not seen that many people on our tour. Doctor Reed claims that some are on watch, others working in the roof gardens, and yet others doing maintenance, but if there were new people claiming to have a cure at our place, we’d all want to take a peek at least. It unnerves me, but it’s really doing a number on Charlie’s nerves. He’s definitely feeling suspicious. I can tell.
Despite Charlie’s suspicions, the place we go next is just a lab. Without power or windows, it’s a dim place, but Chester—even thinking that name seems preposterous—lights up his little LED lantern and Charlie and I set our flashlights down on lab benches to spread the light around.
“Have a seat,” Chester offers, taking a stool next to a counter.
We do, but Charlie makes sure that both of our seats have their backs to a wall, and he angles himself so that he can see anything coming from out of the darkened interior further back. If Chester notices, he doesn’t say anything.
I jump a little when the doctor slaps his hands on his knees, but we all ignore my little faux pas. He pulls the hard drive out of his pocket and puts it on the lab bench between us.
“You say this has a cure on it.”
I make to clarify that statement but he holds up a hand to stop me.
“I know. Maybe a cure. Whichever it is, you should probably understand some things right off the bat. No one here knows how to make medicine from scratch aside from a few basic things. For most of the meds I do know how to make, I don’t have the ingredients or chemicals I would need to make them. So whatever is on here, it’s probably wasted on us.”
I shake my head with greater insistence until he stops talking. “It’s not for medicine. It’s for nanites. At least I think so.”
“This cure is a nanite design?” he asks, now resting a hand on the hard drive with interest instead o
f dismissing it.
“Not sure about that. Emily thought it was a program rather than a design, but she didn’t know for sure. Someone who understands nanites is going to have to see it to figure that out.”
Chester twirls a finger over the logo imprinted into the drive, his expression unreadable. “So you need a tech to look at this.”
“You can’t do it?” I ask. The idea that we’d had this much good fortune only to find we’re missing the key piece after all makes my stomach churn.
“I’m a doctor, but the medical kind. Neurology, really. I got drafted into this gig because I originally went to college for computer programming, but then switched to medicine. The future—or rather, the future as I saw it then—was in computer enhanced medicine. The military has always been interested in that. Anything that can help soldiers survive the battlefield is of interest to them. So, nanites. That’s how I met Emily. The markers for her type of cancer were unique enough that it was an excellent place to start for nanite based cancer treatments.”
I think about that series of events for a moment, the sheer luck of it. Well, it would be lucky except for what happened later. Emily would have died long ago and never experienced any of this. And by extension, I would have died as well. It’s odd.
Finally, I shake my head to push back my wandering thoughts. “You have power for computers?” I ask, waving at the darkened room around me.
“We’ve cobbled together a bit of solar power. It’s not enough for lighting the way it’s done in this building, but we probably wouldn’t do that anyway. It’s enough for everyone to take a turn charging their music players or tablets for whatever movies they’ve got on them. We share the power to keep up morale, but this would take precedence.”
“And you have a tech?” Charlie asks.
Chester nods. “We do. One. But not a top tier guy. More of an intern for specific types of programs. He tried to work on the broadcast, but without decent broadcast ability, it was of limited use.”
Charlie squirms on his seat a little. I can tell he’s got questions and apparently, the doctor can see it as well. “Go on. Ask whatever you like. You won’t hurt my feelings.”
“Why didn’t you people just reverse the broadcast when this happened? Or transmit a kill program or something?”
Ah, the endless topic of all humans in this world. Well, at least any human that knows our end was brought about because of nanites. If this question hasn’t been asked by every single person left on this planet at least a hundred times, then it’s because they’re too young to talk. Emily had more information than anyone else I’ve ever met and she didn’t know those answers. I look at the doctor for an answer, too.
“We did.”
“But…well, how is it still like it is outside?” Charlie asks, his voice rising a little. His jaw clenches when he shuts his mouth again, the muscles fluttering in his cheeks.
“I don’t know,” Chester answers, his voice resigned. “On the base, before they were lost, there was a lot of talk about someone doing it on purpose. Breaking down the broadcast after the first one was sent. There’s no other explanation that fits.”
“Then just broadcast it again!” Charlie’s almost yelling his voice is rising so much. I put a hand on his forearm, urging him with the pressure to keep his seat and his calm. “Sorry,” he says.
“Everyone tried before communications ceased. There were even mobile units out sending a signal on the ground. Nothing worked. Nanites are too small for electro-magnetic pulse to be effective, too small for even direct voltage, too embedded into the body’s individual systems for a taser to do much unless it kills the host. Still, I know they tried all of those things on the base as well. They even tried cleaning the blood of infected patients, sort of like dialysis, but that didn’t work because nothing could get to the nanites inside tissues. Everyone tried everything. You don’t get it. Whatever made this happen locked us out. And too many people had too many different kinds of nanites in them to stop it once it started.”
He pauses, swallows hard, and taps the drive with a finger. “So you can understand why I’m not jumping up and down thinking there’s a cure inside this brick.”
I watch his hand on the drive, dismissive yet possessive, and I understand something in that conflicted gesture. Despite his less than hopeful words, he does have hope. He’s just afraid to let it in or show it. He’s had his hopes trampled underfoot too often. How frustrating and heartbreaking it must be to watch all that death outside and know how much of that was caused, at least in part, by the work he did. How much worse that must be when he has no way to fix it.
“Just look,” I say. “Really look at what’s on the drive.”
He nods, but not with any excitement. “We will. Of course.”
We fall silent then, but it’s not awkward at all. It’s more like a thoughtful silence. Then Chester asks, “What happened to Emily?”
This is a question I’m not really prepared to answer. I never once considered that eighty miles from where we’ve been hiding like mice in a cupboard, I’d find a hospital that somehow, miraculously, had someone inside that knew Emily. I mean, what are the odds? Then again, considering how much time she spent here, maybe it’s not so miraculous. But, how do I answer that question?
“That’s the other reason I’m here,” I begin and clear my throat. I sound nervous even to myself. “Her cancer came back. I’m here to see if there are any of her nanites left. We didn’t think anyone would be here to be honest, so we were going to look through storage.”
I stop there and pull out the small sheaf of papers that detail everything Emily could remember about the nanites, where they were, how they were energized, and everything else. Along with that is a list of all the things I’ll need. Suspension fluid, needles for spinal insertion, any books or diagrams I can find on how the spine is put together. The list is long.
Chester reaches out a hand for the list, but he’s staring at me in shock and not really paying attention. He takes it. Seeing the words on the papers seems to wake him back up. “I thought Emily was dead. She’s not? She’s okay? I mean, except for the cancer.”
Charlie shoots me a warning glance. Our group has discussed this and it’s been our agreed upon policy that should we meet any people—or if people should happen upon us at the warehouse—that we would not discuss the cages or the in-betweeners. Charlie and I also agreed that if we actually found the hospital manned, we wouldn’t let on about Emily’s true condition. We’d leave it at medulloblastoma and say nothing more. We’re keeping her as a caged in-betweener, hoping to cure the illness that killed her and see what might be left of her inside. We’re hoping for something more than we’re likely to get.
All that resolve is falling away. This was her doctor. He walked her through two bouts of this disease. While I might be able to simply relay her condition of a few months ago as if that were her condition today, I know I’m equally likely to screw up and say something that would give away what we’ve gone through in the last month. Those two weeks of her breaths hitching and her heart losing rhythm, and then the days in the cage while she lay almost insensate, hardly speaking or even seeming to understand that others were nearby. Then the day when Charlie and I went in and chained her. That final day when her heart stuttered to a stop for a full thirty-three seconds.
And then after. All that has come after.
Charlie reads my thoughts on my face, as if I had spoken aloud. He purses his lips but gives me a tiny nod, too. Chester sees it as well.
“Just tell me,” he says quietly.
“She died two weeks ago,” I say, before I can lose my nerve.
Chester clearly understands there’s more to that and the look on his face is one part horror and one part compassion. “But she’s alive again.” It’s not a question.
I nod, but I also feel the need to justify what I’ve done considering the way he’s looking at me. “She asked for it. I mean, as in specifically asked to be kept. She—we�
�have been testing in-betweeners for a while. She’s getting lots of food, mostly birds, and is being cared for.”
“In-betweeners? Is that what you call First Stage Revived? You keep them somehow?” he breaks in.
“Yes, but you don’t understand. The man who took care of me—and four other kids—for the first two years of this mess died, but when he came back, he had control over himself to some extent. He could talk. It wasn’t perfect, but it was there. He was inside there. Emily thought that if the time without oxygen was short enough and the thing that killed a person cured, that they might be able to come back. We’ve been trying, but so far, every in-betweener we find has either been that way for a while or is in bad shape. Until recently, that is. Plus Emily.” I stop talking then as Chester’s expression changes from disbelief to interest and then back to disgusted again.
“You’re keeping test subjects?” he half-whispers.
“We need enough of the nanites that cured Emily before to cure her again,” Charlie says, perhaps sensing that our conversation is taking a bad turn.
Chester swings his stool around so that he’s facing the work-bench and puts his head in his hands, elbows braced on the surface as if he might sink into the ground without the support it provides.
“Just stop,” he says, his voice a little muffled by his hands. “Let me take this in.”
Charlie and I share a look. For some reason, I’m feeling stronger, more resolute now that it’s out in the open. I do understand this is a lot to take in, but I’ve got a goal and a time limit for completing it.
“Do you have more of those nanites?” I ask.
Chester lifts his head and looks at me with his disbelieving eyes, like I’m some sort of new species he’s found. One that’s interesting to look at, but slightly repugnant at the same time.
He takes a deep breath and says, “I do.”
Two Months Ago - Gloria Days
I’ve stayed behind to tend to Emily and take care of the kids while the others go out on a run. There’s so little to find now, but we still have to look. It’s strange how empty it feels here in our home warehouse without them. With two kids, Emily and me, there’s still one more person here than we had for a long time, and it never felt empty then. It’s sort of amazing how quickly a person can get used to more bodies taking up space.