* * *
The answer came that evening, when Fox News reported a “tentative link” between the Ohneka Falls Research Facility—a.k.a. the ‘Zombie Lab’—and Emperor Baksmaty. Less than an hour later, the roar of protesters outside almost drowned the news coverage of that same crowd coming from the TV. The white noise of disjointed chants and screams of rage and hatred followed Ani to the bath and continued all night.
By morning, the crowd had swelled to Rockin’ New Year’s Eve proportions. Ani had no windows to look from, and the yard was off-limits, but the TV showed crowds choking the streets well past midtown. A confused mob even picketed the school, despite the lack of zombies there. With nothing better to do, they held classes as normal—though Mr. Foster couldn’t attend due to the sea of humanity outside.
The unrelenting roar carried well through midday but started to die toward sundown. News stations estimated the crowd at over a hundred thousand people, less than the Fall Foliage Festival drew on a good year, but this wasn’t spread out over a weekend, and the spontaneity left no time to prepare. The mass of people were there all at the same time, with no food, no water but muddy snow, and no bathrooms.
The news media gleefully reported the hardships of the protestors. Every hotel booked, sometimes four to a room, and Wegmans, Tops, and Walmart ran out of bread, milk, meat, charcoal, and bottled water. Entrepreneurs emptied nearby towns and sold food and blankets out of the backs of pickup trucks for exorbitant prices. By 7:00 pm the temperature dropped to eight degrees, and the hospital couldn’t keep up with the hypothermia cases.
Wednesday morning brought reports of twenty-six deaths; thirteen from the cold, nine from carbon monoxide poisoning when a group of protesters ran a generator in their camper, three stabbings as-yet-unsolved, and one suicide. The latter had hanged himself from a tree, wearing a clapboard that read, “THE END IS HERE.” The President had ordered in the National Guard; by Friday the crowd had faded to small, disjointed bands of sign-holders, no more than a couple hundred people in all, huddled around fires lit in metal drums.
Saturday at 5:30 am., Ani heard her mom banging around the apartment. She triggered the “open” button, got out of the bath, toweled off, and threw on a nightie. By the time she stepped into the living room, her mom was gone. She reached for her phone to text her and realized for the millionth time that she didn’t have it anymore.
Awesome.
Her appointment was at 9:00 am, so she played the piano for a while, got dressed, and wandered down forty-five minutes early. As she approached the lab, she heard low voices, deep in conversation. She stopped and closed her eyes, shutting out the whine of the air circulation fans and the deep shudder of the generators through the walls.
“Dammit, Rishi, she already suspects.”
Ani knew that voice. Dr. Freeman.
Dr. Banerjee sounded nonplussed, as he always did. “She does, but she can prove nothing, and until she can she has nothing to object to.”
“At some point she’ll balk. Her daughter’s life is only so good a motivational tool.”
“It’s only a matter of time before we don’t need her anymore, and all of this can go away. It’s not my fault you wouldn’t provide the funding—”
“What the hell did you think would happen?”
“I thought that I would receive a billion and a half dollars to continue my research. Done is done, and in the future, if you don’t wish me to pursue my own avenues of funding, give me the funding I need to continue. They don’t have the means to reproduce it, so they are now dependent—”
“I could have you arrested for treason.”
“But you won’t.”
Ani heard the anger in Dr. Freeman’s reply but not the words, and then silence. She waited for them to continue. When they didn’t, she walked toward the lab, taking care to make a little noise. By the time she rounded the corner, they weren’t there.
Her checkup was perfunctory, same questions, same samples, with the note that she’d gone three weeks without an injection, so they gave her one just to be safe.
* * *
The protest had died to near-nothing by Monday, so Mr. Foster came in to teach Mike. The rest of them started on a class project driven by a single question: What would the world look like with immortality for the rich and powerful? They explored the social, economic, and political ramifications, but also discussed how it might influence art, poetry, literature, and even music. They researched other major historical shifts and tried to make intelligent extrapolations based on what had happened before.
Tuesday afternoon, Mike approached Devon and gave her a white envelope. While she opened it, he shuffled over to Ani and handed her an identical one. She thanked him and opened it with a little trepidation.
Inside, red construction paper framed a pink heart. BE MINE in thick block letters crossed the heart. She opened the card and found a handwritten note, nothing like Mike’s pre-prom handwriting; “I love you ani.” She smiled up at him.
“Thank you, Mike. I’m sorry I forgot.”
“It’s okay,” he said.
Devon plopped down next to her. They traded cards—identical except for the name, even down to the lack of punctuation and capitalization; “I love you devon.” And maybe he did.
“Typical man,” Devon said, her smirk a small indication that at least for this moment she’d forgotten to hate Ani.
“Yup,” Ani said. Not as bad as last time. Despite herself, she couldn’t let it go. She nudged Devon in the ribs. “Did you forget you’re supposed to hate me?”
“Anyone Mike loves can’t be all bad.” Her face darkened. “But I still can’t forgive you.”
Ani nodded, a matter-of-fact answer to a matter-of-fact statement. “Neither can I.”
Her scowl deepened. “How can you even live with yourself?”
Ani didn’t know what to say. She tried anyway. “As opposed to what? Not living with myself?”
I killed a guy twelve days ago and have to stop to even think about it.
Devon shared a black look with Sam from across the room. “Always an option.”
“And that would solve what, exactly?”
Devon shrugged. “Nothing, I guess.”
“Would you do it, in my shoes?”
“I don’t know,” Devon said. “I can barely cope with what I did, and I didn’t have a choice.”
“No,” Ani said. “You didn’t. I sometimes wonder how much of a choice I had in most of this. More than you, sure. But how much more? What else was I supposed to do?”
Devon rolled her eyes and grinned at the same time. “Blame your mom?”
Ani grinned back. “Works for most kids, I’ve heard.”
A shadow loomed over them. They looked up. Mike smiled down at them. “Hi.” Before they could respond, he turned and sat, squishing them both to the side and wrapping each of them with a massive arm. “I love you.”
Ani snuggled into him, and after a moment so did Devon.
“It’s weird,” Devon said.
“What’s that?”
“Hate’s so hard to hold on to when you’re being snuggled.”
“I’ve found it hard to hold on to at all. So much of life just doesn’t matter, and it’s not worth hating for.”
Mrs. Weller’s voice reminded them that they weren’t alone. “Hatred is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated.”
“Who’s that?” Sam asked, still glowering from across the room.
“Coretta Scott King. She was talking about the man who murdered her husband.”
“Really?” Devon asked.
“Look it up.”
* * *
That night, Ani sat at the piano, using it as a writing bench. Six pages of handwriting comprised her write-up for history class, and hidden amidst them a note for her mother, underlined.
Mom, Banerjee sold the serum to Africa. Freeman knows. They’re going to get rid of you.
She kept the
papers together and practiced Stravinsky until her mom got home. Sarah walked in the door, kicked off her shoes, set down her purse, and smiled at the cold ham and potatoes on the table.
“Sorry, sweetie, I already ate.”
Ani shrugged.
“No problem. Can you look at this for me?” She handed her the stack of papers. “It’s due tomorrow.”
Her mom read the title aloud. “‘Term Limits in the Age of Immortality,’ by Ani Romero.” She looked around the untidy apartment and sighed. “Sure, why not.”
She read the paper, and Ani had to admire how she didn’t react when she read through the fourth page. Once done, she gave constructive feedback on her ideas and on what could be said better...and didn’t say anything at all about the note.
Ani rewrote the paper and shredded the originals, anticipating a stealthy conversation that didn’t come.
Chapter
33
Ani snapped her eyes open when bath’s “open” tone dinged. Her ears popped as the seal opened, as always, and she scrunched her brow in confusion as the lid slid back. The lights weren’t on, and her alarm clock read 3:22 am. The red glow wasn’t enough to pick out anything in the pitch-black room.
She grabbed the rim of the tub and lifted herself out of the water. A hand on her chest stopped her. A fan roared in the background, chilling the skin on her face and neck.
“Shh,” Sarah said, her voice almost too quiet to hear over the fan. “Just listen. I need to go away for a week or so. They’re going to ask where I went. That’s why I’m not telling you. Do you understand?”
“Only kind of.”
“That’s good enough. I need you to memorize a few things for me, and not tell them, no matter what. Can you do that?”
She nodded.
“Bank of Castile, box 217148. Say it.”
“Bank of Castile, box 217148,” Ani murmured.
“Good. Canandaigua National Bank, Investment Management Group. Account number 3951 111 340. Say it.”
“Canandaigua National, Investment Management. 3951 111 340.”
“Good. Don’t tell them. Bye, sweetie.”
By feel, Ani grabbed her wrist as she turned to leave. “Wait! What are the numbers for?”
“If I don’t come back.”
“What do you mean?”
She felt the lips on her forehead, then cold breath. “Say them again.”
“Castile, 217148. Canandaigua, 3951 111 340. I got them.”
“Good. I love you.”
“I love—” The door closed.
Shit.
* * *
She opened her eyes when the bell chimed and hit the button to release the lid on the bath. Dr. Banerjee, Dr. Freeman, and a half-dozen armed men stood above her, the latter with their weapons raised. She knew faking surprise wouldn’t work—if they knew something was up, they’d have watched the security feeds, and the infrared cameras would have picked up that Ani and Sarah had had a conversation, even if the fan obscured the content.
She sat up, the slimy liquid sluicing off of her naked body. “Good morning,” she said, for lack of a better greeting.
“Where did she go?” Dr. Banerjee asked.
“She didn’t tell me.”
Dr. Banerjee raised a hand, and the soldiers choked up their weapons. Her heart caught in her throat.
“Really,” she said. “She said she couldn’t tell me, because you’d make me talk.”
“You talked about something.” He turned to the sergeant. “Take her to the bite tank and hold her until I’m ready to speak to her. No meds.”
“Yes, sir.”
He turned back to her. “You can cooperate, and things will be hard; or you can fight, and things will be much worse. Decide now.”
“I have nothing to hide,” she lied.
They gave her no privacy as she toweled off and got dressed. She walked out and turned toward the lab, the sergeant at her side. Five soldiers marched behind them, weapons at the ready. He led her through the lab, swiping his card and scanning his thumb at each checkpoint, down four flights of stairs she’d never seen before, and into a long corridor.
The sergeant wrinkled his nose, but she couldn’t smell anything. As they stepped out into the hall, the moans started. Corpses, dozens of them to a cell, slammed up against the bars, reaching for her escorts in blind, mindless hunger.
Ani put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, my God. Who are these people?”
“They aren’t people,” the sergeant said. “They’re like you.”
That ended the conversation. He led them through a long corridor lined with cells, and then another, and another. There must be hundreds of them. Thousands. They went down another two flights of stairs, arriving at a thick metal door with bars on its windows. He punched in a code on the keypad. The door popped open.
A rifle butt propelled her forward. She caught herself before her head hit the concrete floor. She rolled over and sat up just in time for the door to slam. She looked around.
A steel grate protected two fluorescent bulbs in the gray concrete ceiling, and another, this one padlocked, protected a keypad on the concrete wall next to the door. A lone security camera, also in a metal cage, covered everything from above the door. The otherwise-featureless room held nothing but her.
She waited for Dr. Banerjee to come. And she waited some more. Minutes passed. Hours. Days. She had no idea how long she’d been waiting, standing in the center of the room. And yet, no one came.
She spent the time composing a four-part, wordless a capella, a moaning, dark tribute to the thousands of victims she’d passed on the way to this cell. One bass, two baritones, one soprano, it had no use for the middling half-measures of tenor or alto.
At some point the window on the door opened, revealing the top half of Dr. Banerjee’s impassive, brown face. “Are you ready to talk yet?”
She looked up at him and said nothing.
He closed the window, and she went back to her composition, filling in the gaps with other melodies. Four parts became eight, and then sixteen. She played the symphony again and again in her mind, feeding the crushing solitude with music.
He came back six more times, but even as her hunger grew she fed it into the music, increasing the intricacy, adding parts, intertwining harmonies and melodies into a baroque flurry, the chaos of a winter blizzard more than the ordered destruction of a hurricane.
The seventh time the door opened, a little girl stumbled inside before it slammed closed. No more than ten years old, in a blue dress that didn’t quite meet her knees, the brunette stared at Ani in stark terror.
“Hi,” Ani said. “I’m Ani.” Her gut twisted in response, and she forced it down.
The girl shrieked and recoiled into the corner, cowering in a fetal position. Ani shifted back until she occupied the opposite corner.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
The girl sniffed and lashed out with accusing brown eyes. “That’s what they said you’d say. But they said it wouldn’t take long.”
Ani didn’t know how to respond. “I’m Ani. Nice to meet you.”
“Shaylah.” Her face softened the slightest bit, but her eyes still held terror.
“What do you like to do, Shaylah?”
She cried, for minutes or hours Ani wasn’t sure. When she finally stopped, Ani realized she was asleep, curled into a ball in the corner. Ani felt a twinge of need as she looked at the tiny, sleeping form, so she closed her eyes. The girl interrupted her composition.
“I have to pee.”
Ani opened her eyes but had nothing to offer. “Pick a corner, I guess.”
The girl cried again, hiked up her dress, and squatted in the corner. Ani couldn’t smell it and was glad for it. As the girl—no, Shaylah—crawled back to her corner, she locked eyes with Ani.
“Why am I here?”
Ani shrugged.
Her face twisted into a mask of anguish, and she bawled. “You...you have to know. Why? Why me?”
Ani thought she knew the first answer. You’re here because they think I’ll break before I eat you. She wasn’t sure if they were right, but she had nothing to tell them anyway. As to the second, she had no idea who this little girl was or why she’d been chosen for such a grisly fate.
She shrugged again. The girl, apparently out of tears, huddled in the corner and stared at the floor.
“I’m hungry.”
“I’m sorry.”
The girl shivered in the corner—it must have been cold—for a long time. At some point she fell asleep again, then woke and peed and fell asleep again. Tracking each movement with her ears against her own will, Ani kept her eyes closed, trying not to think about the growing hunger in her gut. She drowned it with music, but the girl intruded.
“You have any food?”
Ani kept her eyes closed. “No.”
The scent of her invaded Ani’s nostrils, sweat and meat and marrow and brains. She didn’t breathe and somehow it didn’t matter. The heat of Shaylah’s tiny, innocent body, impossible to feel, called to her.
Her eyes snapped open as the window on the door slid aside. Dr. Banerjee ignored Shaylah as she beat on the door, begging to be let out, crying for food, for water. Fists bloody, she collapsed to the floor, and he turned his gaze to Ani.
“It’s been six days. Thirteen since your last injection. At some point you will succumb, and Shaylah will die. Or, if you tell us where your mother went, we will free her, and you can go back to your friends.”
Ani refused to look at the girl. “I don’t know. She didn’t tell me.”
A slot opened in the bottom of the door, and a water bottle rolled in. Shaylah grabbed it, tore off the cap, and chugged it down.
“Yes, you do.” The window closed.
He came back twice more, with water for Shaylah. Each time, Ani gave him nothing. She had nothing to give.
* * *
Drool pattered her blouse. The warm thing across the room sang to her without sound or words, the music of blood and warmth and hunger. She knew nothing but that she wanted it and that she couldn’t take it.
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