by Ann Christy
“But you can get me the original version? Functional?” I ask, trying to pin down an answer.
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out two vials. I can’t see anything inside the vials in the dark, but my heart lurches at the sight of them. He grins again and waves the vials a little. “Right here. Ready to go. You just need to add the stuff from this vial to the other one to activate them. Blue vial goes into the red vial and they’ll be ready to go.”
I reach out and grip Charlie’s shoulder. He covers my hand with his own. He may not love Emily like I do, but he understands love, and would do the same for Savannah in a heartbeat. And I understand something else too. These two are going to help us get out of here.
The woman has been quiet until now. She slides a small backpack off her shoulder and tosses it onto the bed. “Here’s the rest of the stuff from your list and the instructions for the nanites. We need to get you out of here and soon. The watch will change before too much longer and then someone else will be standing at my post.”
Charlie gets up and starts putting on his boots. I never took mine off, so I gather the few things I’ve taken out of my pack and stuff the small backpack into it as well. While we bustle about, Charlie asks, “How many others are prisoner here?”
I hadn’t thought of the others. I know there must be others if there really are more than fifty people here yet so few walking around. The geek looks down and says, “It depends on what you mean by prisoner. If you mean like you, locked in a room, then there are fifteen. If you mean people who started out like you, then there are thirty-two.”
“Jiminy Christmas!” Charlie splutters. “What the hell? How can you be a part of this?”
The woman guard says, “Because I started out just like you and then I decided to stay. We’ve got the best chance of making it in a place like this. We have a system and we’re still kicking. That’s more than most of the world can say at this point. I’m not stupid. I know what it’s like out there. And him? He’d be hopeless out in the world. Wouldn’t you, Princeton?”
“Princeton? That your name?” I ask the geek, zipping up my now overstuffed backpack.
“Nah, I went there and I can’t seem to get away from it.”
I still don’t know the woman guard’s name, and she doesn’t seem to feel like sharing. She moves us along brusquely with her words. “You’ve got two minutes or I’m leaving you here. Listen, it’s all nice and noble of you, but you just have to go. Don’t worry about the others right now. They’re safe, which is more than I can say for them if they leave here in the middle of the night.”
Charlie is ready, his backpack shouldered, and he nods toward the door, urging me to hurry. But, I still have a question or two I really need answered. “Can you reprogram the nanites? Here? Enough for us to test on some subjects?”
“Maybe. It’s not impossible. But it won’t be enough to make a dent in what’s going on out there. For that, we’ll need the place where the cores are printed. Here we just have the supply required for the treatment of those who had that type of cancer, or one of the other cancers we can program them for. But we’re limited. It’s too complicated to try to explain, but making these things is hard. It’s a combination of chemical synthesis and ultra-fine molecular printing. The program that you brought doesn’t actually go into the nanites. They’re too small for that sort of thing. What it does is guide the printing of the nanites. The way they are printed—the actual molecules they are composed of and how they are put together—is what makes nanites do what each one does.”
He nods toward my pack, where I’ve tucked the vials and then shakes his head, looking helpless to explain further. I barely understood what he was just telling me, but what I did fully comprehend is that this is much more complex than I ever imagined it would be. I suppose I always thought of nanites as tiny computers with a processor, but now that he’s said what he has, I realize that couldn’t be true. Nanites are simply too small.
I reach out and squeeze Princeton’s forearm, which seems to surprise him a little, but not in a bad way. “But these nanites, you could program them to eat the nanites that are making the in-betweeners?” I ask.
He nods again, “We have loads of nanite cores, and we can program the functions for a limited number of treatments. Basically, I can make dumb nanites cure anything we’ve got print capability for. But that list is pretty short and there’s no way to introduce substantially different programs on a large scale. Each dose used to be programmed and printed for whatever marker an individual’s cancer had. But that’s it. The core is always the same. We can’t do more than that here. Never could. I’ll work on it, try to figure out how to introduce the new program into our smallest molecular printer, but I can’t guarantee I’ll ever be able to produce enough to make a difference. Once my supply of cores is gone, that will be it. We’ll need one of the bigger manufacturers for more.”
“So, we can’t do anything about the deaders at all, can we?” I can’t seem to help that my voice is shaking. I want so much for the world to be clean again, for this never-ending nightmare to be over. I want to know that I have a chance of dying when I’m old and when I do die, to know that it will be the end and not just the beginning of a new and endless nightmare.
“Not yet,” he says, and holds something out for me to take. It’s the brick I brought with me. “Take it. I made a copy since I have the correct system for pairing it. Keep it safe.”
“Princeton, get to your room. And for the love of all things holy, don’t trip again!” the guard whispers, and pushes the geek who may have just saved Emily’s life toward the door. I feel a little protective of him now that he’s done so much for me, but I resist any urge to interfere. The guard knows what’s going on here. I don’t.
The guard watches the hallway for a moment, then leans back inside the room and waves us forward. “Let’s go. Keep it quiet.”
She leads us through the hospital like a pro. I don’t know if she was a soldier before, but now she’s quiet and very professional. We don’t go back the way we came, but rather toward a lobby on the first floor. It’s very dark with the windows boarded up, but she uses the red light judiciously so that we get a good idea of where we are before she switches it off again. We see no one on the way.
Inside the lobby, she leads us to a far corner where a wall joins the windows and the smell of sewage is so strong I want to gag. I must make a noise because she turns to me and whispers, “That’s why there’s no one ever near this spot. Be thankful for it.”
She puts down her crossbow and grips one of the boards on the windows. With one deep breath, she lifts up the big piece of plywood and sets it against the wall quietly. I can tell by the clarity that the bottom pane of glass is missing. The top is nothing but smears and dirt, but the filth tells me that that glass is intact there.
I make to duck out of the opening, but she stops me with a hand on my arm. “Your bikes are by the barrier where you came in—or they should be anyway. I’m not the only friendly here. Remember that.”
I nod, then ask her, “What’s your name?”
“Violet,” she says and grins. It’s so not a name that I would guess for her, with her hair scraped back into a no-nonsense ponytail, her muscular arms, or her economic movements.
“Veronica,” I say, and she surprises me by holding out a hand for me to shake. Her palm is dry and rough, a working person’s hand, but her squeeze isn’t overbearing. I decide I like her.
“All hail to the V,” Charlie mutters from beside me.
Violet and I look at each other for a moment, then I remember where I’ve heard that phrase before and put my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing. She must have gotten the joke as well, because she snorts softly.
Charlie ducks out past me. Violet presses a paper into my hand and says, “Don’t lose this. Read it once you’re well away. Now go.”
She doesn't have to tell me twice. I go out and into the night. I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy t
o be outside in this dangerous world before.
Two Months Ago - In Chains We Trust
It takes two days to make it back to the warehouse dragging five in-betweeners behind us like a parody of the way our world is today. And dragging does seem to work best. We just roped the dog catchers to our bike braces and they chased us along so long as we went slowly. We had to constantly stop when one would trip and fall, but at least we got home without further incident.
Deaders and a few in-betweeners had to be dealt with, of course, including one terrible moment when we had to deal with a child in-betweener. Where she came from I have no idea, but she was too far gone for me to want to bring her with us in hopes that any future cure might help her. And we have a policy about child in-betweeners. We never leave them be, never leave them to wander on their own.
At the warehouse, Charlie meets us at the access road, his face scrunched in worry and a little fear as well. He’s trying to mask it, but all it does is make him look like he’s about to hurl. He motions with jerks of his head for me to come to him until he looks like he’s got a twitch.
I climb down off my bike and roll it and my in-betweener toward him. He makes a real face of disgust as the in-betweener nears him and the smell of its bowels reaches his nostrils.
“Cheezus,” he says, waving the air in front of his face. “That one is nasty.”
“They’re all nasty,” I say. “This is an improvement on what he was like alive, I’m sure.”
We both consider my in-betweener for a moment. It’s the little guy and he’s got a perforation in his gut that isn’t quite healed up yet. At least he’s not been going in his pants like many of the in-betweeners that come back quickly do. Who knows why some keep their digestive systems going and others don’t? It’s a mystery.
He’s got a gag in his mouth and a piece of stiff plastic around the lower part of his face so that he can’t bite, but he still makes a go of it, jerking his head like he’s fully capable of ripping a chunk out of us. I untie his dog catcher and hold the handle so he stays out of range while we talk.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, but I already know what it is.
“Emily is much worse,” he says. “She didn’t even know what was going on for a little while. She’s sleeping now, but I’m not sure how much longer it will be. We’ve got to tell the others how bad it’s getting. Otherwise, something really awful might happen. There are other people that deserve consideration here. And the kids.”
His voice is a little pleading and his fingers are twisted together at his waist. This is the first time it hasn’t been me who stayed to tend her and the children, so it’s the first time he’s really been alone with her when it gets bad. I almost never let anyone near when she takes a turn for the worse.
“Okay. I get it. Let’s just get these guys in and caged. Once everyone has had a chance to rest up, then I’ll broach the topic.” The in-betweener is jerking on his noose, making it hard for me to hold him still. I press the end of the rod into Charlie’s hands and ask, “Will you take him in so I can go see her?”
He nods, takes the pole, and we walk back to the warehouses behind the others. It strikes me then what an odd sight we are. A bunch of humans walking a bunch of revived corpses into our home like it’s nothing.
Life has become decidedly weird.
*****
When Emily wakes, it’s all at once, like a switch has been turned on inside her. Her eyes pop open and her face crumples as the pain hits her. Her hands are shaking as they rise toward her head and she keens softly as she rolls to her side, clutching the sides of her skull.
I stroke her back, and say, “Shh, I’m right here,” and other nonsense, but I know it does nothing. It might let her know that she’s not alone, but I can do nothing for the pain at all. We have over-the-counter migraine tablets, but nothing more, and those don’t seem to touch her pain at all anymore. They just make her sick.
After a while, she quiets and eventually, she reaches behind her to search for my hand. I put my hand in hers and she whispers, “Come where I can see you. It’s a little better like this so I don’t want to move.” Her words are slurred and I can only understand them because I’m so used to the way her speech has changed.
I move around to her other side and bend low so that she can see me. “I’m right here,” I say, and give her a smile that feels like it’s going to shake off my face. Her bad eye is so red it’s almost like it’s bleeding inside, which it may well be, and the pupil looks cloudy to me. While the pupil of her good eye contracts as the light changes from my motion, the other stays wide and black in the center.
“Did you get Gloria back?” she asks, but it sounds more like she says “blory”.
I shake my head and her face crumples on one side, the other side remaining still and slack. “We found nothing of her. But we got the ones who did it. They’ll never hurt anyone again. And we brought them back. Subjects, just like you said.”
A tear falls from her good eye and she squeezes my hand, “That’s good. You do just like I said, exactly. Can you do that?”
I nod, the tears I’ve had balanced on my lids falling onto her hands. She squeezes my fingers again and whispers, “I think it’s time to start thinking about the cage.”
Today - Into the Dark
I’m pedaling like my life depends on it and I suppose it does. We just came this way a couple of days ago, but once isn’t enough to render a path familiar and now it’s dark on top of it. The moon is up and about half-full, which gives us enough light to see big things, but everything on the ground has faded to become a similar shade of indistinct gray. The pervasive leaves and litter clumps make the ground so uneven in the silver light that we mostly figure out if there is a solid mass beneath when one of our wheels hits it.
We can’t go on like this for too long. Our noise isn’t much, all things considered, but there’s almost no competition for it during the night. Even the wind that rattles the leaves is gone. As we pass various clumps, I hear the hiss of deaders stirring in our wake. It’s only a matter of time before we come across an in-betweener or a more mobile deader.
I pedal harder until I’m even with Charlie, then whisper, “We have to find a good place to stop.” It sounds terribly loud to my ears and from just behind me, I hear the slide of something taking a long limping step before I’m out of range. The smell tells me deader, but next time I might not be so lucky.
Charlie swerves and hisses, “Watch out!”
The figure looming out of the darkness is just a lighter shade of the same gray that everything else is, but it moves fast. I feel the brush of fingers on my back as I stand on the pedals, increasing my speed. That wasn’t a deader.
Night time is dangerous for more reasons than the obvious one of not being able to see. It’s a matter of instinct. The in-betweeners don’t appear to be able to see any better than we can, but they follow a much baser set of instructions, something that comes from much deeper and further back in our evolution. And the animals that have managed to survive are often ones comfortable in the dark, like raccoons or cats. That means the in-betweeners are active in the dark as well. Prey determines the predator’s behavior just as much as the other way around.
Once we’re around the long curving road that leads to the hospital complex and the vague shapes of the shopping plaza are a darker shadow in the distance, Charlie whispers, “I’m hitting the light.”
“No!” I hiss back. “They’ll see.” He knows who I mean. I mean the people at the hospital. Even with the low numbers of free people there, they’ll have someone on watch on the roof. They’d be stupid not to. And that’s the tallest building around here. Light will be a beacon they can’t help but see. Even the reflection of light or the glow of the sky above it will be noticeable in a world where the darkness is so complete.
He doesn’t answer me for a moment, but he doesn’t turn the light on either. Charlie edges his bike closer to me and whispers, “Then we’ve got to find a place t
o hole up until its light. The gas station?”
“Too close. They’ll look for us at nearby buildings for sure when morning comes,” I say, then consider that again. “Unless they don’t leave the hospital area at all.”
I risk a peek at him. His face is washed clean of color in the moonlight, his hair almost gray looking. Still, in the shadows cast by his features I can see the grim expression on his face and the slight nod as he considers it.
“Chester was very focused on his new population being free of nanites. I’d bet he doesn’t let anyone who doesn’t have them out of the building. I’m pretty sure both of us are infected—me anyway, no doubt—so I’m betting the infected are the ones that come out, like the soldiers who came to get us,” he says. His voice is pitched so low I can barely catch it over the rubbery hum of our tires.
“Assuming he keeps the infected at all,” I say.
“There’s that,” he says and shoots a quick grin my way.
We’re in a clearer area, where the fence line and the runways separate the shopping plaza and all the deaders are legless. I see the dark and moving shapes of a few in-betweeners in the field beyond the fence, but they’re far away, probably chasing rabbits or other wildlife. A couple of times the faint sound of an in-betweener grunt or roar reaches us from the field.
This is the best spot for stopping on this whole stretch and we do need to figure out what we’re doing instead of just blundering on in the dark. I can feel the two vials like a weight in my pack. In my pocket, the paper that Violet gave me is making me impatient. Impatience often equates to stupidity in this world, so I try to push my desire to read it out of my mind and focus entirely on getting out of this area alive.
“Stop for a second,” I whisper. Charlie only grunts, but we both roll to a stop, easing up on the brakes to avoid squeals. We look around out of instinct, but the fence is clear and there’s good buffer of space between us and anything that would hinder our sightlines.