“How many Kazzies are in the country?”
“Around twelve hundred.”
I continued watching Garrett. His arm streaked across the paper, like he was taking all of his frustration out in the drawing. I could hardly blame him. Technically, he’d never done anything wrong. His only crime was surviving Makanza, but as a carrier of the virus, he could never be allowed to live on the outside since he could infect others. Therefore, he’d be indefinitely imprisoned unless we discovered a vaccine or cure.
Seeing Garrett reminded me why I was here. We needed a vaccine.
“Has anyone figured out why some people Change and others die?” I asked.
“No. The vast majority of researchers employed by the MRI are trying to determine that. If we could identify why the Kazzie’s DNA Changed to accommodate the virus, we’d know a lot more about Makanza. Unfortunately, that remains a mystery.”
“So that’s not the research we do?”
“No, we never work with those researchers. They’re in a different wing, and I don’t even know who they are. Our group, the Makanza Survivor Research Group, or MSRG, works with the Kazzies, and each sub-group works directly with one Kazzie in particular. You’ll get to know ours pretty well.”
I thought about my parking lot sign. So that’s what MSRG means. “Which Kazzie is the one we work with?”
“You’ll see. Come on.” Amy tugged me away from the window.
Our tapping feet were the only sound in the hallway while Amy explained more about the Kazzies. “There are four males and three females in our Compound. The subject we normally work with, one of the males, is the reason for all of the recent problems.”
Another guard sat at the end of Garrett’s hall, behind a glass window in a concrete structure. Amy called it a watch room, explaining that a guard was stationed in each Kazzie’s watch room twenty-four hours a day. She then explained how one could enter a pressurized containment room attached to the watch room. The containment room had access to the Kazzies’ cells. However, it was used for emergency purposes only.
“In other words, it’s never used.” Amy stopped at Garrett’s watch room so I could get a good look.
A control panel, with too many buttons and levers to count, sat in front of the guard. Amy explained how the panel operated all of the mechanics inside the cell.
The control panel reminded me of the sci-fi movies Jeremy used to watch. It could have been the inside of a spaceship or cockpit in a high-tech commercial jet. So many buttons and switches. Of course, I’d never been inside one of those jets. I’d only seen them on TV shows. Those days of air travel were long gone.
On the ceiling, large humming vents circulated air in from the outside, unlike the air in Garrett’s cell. In training, they’d told us the air circulating throughout the Kazzie’s cells went through an extensive process of purification and filtering, but it never actually left the building. It was forever recycled. The MRI didn’t trust Makanza not to mutate into an airborne virus.
I wondered what it smelled like in Garrett’s cell. Stale, was my guess. Probably worse than the lab. I wondered if it bothered him that he never got to smell fresh air or feel the wind on his face. Was he used to it by now? Or not?
A pang of grief struck me for how unfair all of this was. Garrett was a prisoner in the Compound, yet his only crime was surviving Makanza and now being a carrier. Regardless, the safety of the public came first.
“Ready to keep moving?” Amy asked.
I followed Amy to the next access door. Once we stepped into the second hall, the overhead lights returned to normal. I blinked a few times. The blinding white walls were back.
“These are the Sisters.” Amy stepped in front of the second cell. “Sara and Sophie. They were the first Kazzies to arrive at our Compound, and like Garrett, they’re not from South Dakota. As you probably learned in training, most of the Kazzies in the Midwestern Compounds are not from our states, unlike the west and east coasts. When the coastal Compounds filled up, they moved their Kazzies inland. Since the Midwest wasn’t as harshly affected by Makanza, at least not until the Second Wave, we’ve never filled up. Of course, that could all change if we get a Third Wave.”
I flinched when she said that. Any day, a Third Wave could hit. It’s what made the MRI’s work so important.
I peered into the cell. The Sisters’ cell was similar to Garrett’s. It was simple, with two beds, two desks, a few tables, and a small TV. Again, no windows, but it wasn’t the room that commanded my attention.
It was them.
My eyes widened as I got a better look. On the other side of the glass were two women. Both of the Sisters had pale, blond hair, shiny and straight, like silk from an ear of corn. And their eyes were blue. All of that was normal, except that their eyes were the same color as their skin. I stared in awe at the blue hue of their complexion. It was the same blue as a robin’s egg.
“Sara and Sophie are twins. Two of the dozen survivors from the Manhattan Disaster,” Amy stated.
“You kept them together?”
“Yep. We made an exception for them since they were so young when they came here. They’ve always lived together in this cell.”
“So they’ve been here eight years? If they came right after the Compound was built?”
“Yep. The Sisters, Dorothy, Sage, and Victor all came here eight years ago. Garrett and Davin, our Kazzie, came after the Second Wave, six years ago. All of the Kazzies in our Compound, except for Davin, were originally from other states. Since the government decided each state needed a Compound, it made more sense to move Kazzies from state to state versus building more and more Compounds in a Kazzie’s home state. Better to fill the ones we had versus building more. It’s probably the only decision the government’s ever made that’s financially responsible.”
I smiled at her joke just as one of the Sisters stood and walked toward us. Her movements were slow and incredibly fluid. Tall and slender, her frame was reminiscent of a dancer’s.
The other Sister stayed sitting on the bed and watched us warily. When the first Sister reached the window, she held up her hand and pressed her thin fingers against the glass. Her eyes, large and luminous, stared at me. She cocked her head, a curious glint in her eye. I figured it was because I was a new face.
“Strange,” Amy murmured.
“What’s strange?” I still stared at the twin.
“The Sisters usually ignore everybody. I’m surprised Sara’s showing interest in you.”
Sara glanced over her shoulder at Sophie before turning back to me. In that second, her skin changed, a subtle display of iridescent colors erupting beneath. My eyes widened. The shimmering quality vanished the second she turned back and met my gaze.
“Anyway,” Amy said. “As you can see, their skin is an odd mix of bluish hues. They have Makanza strain 31. It’s the rarest strain. Less than one percent of Kazzies have it. Only eleven cases in the U.S. have been documented. When the Sisters Changed, we think their gene SLC24A5 changed too. It caused a new pigmentation protein in their skin. It also changes when they talk.”
“When they talk?”
“Or at least, that’s what we suspect.”
Sara continued watching me, but every now and then, she’d turn to Sophie. When she did, the blue in her skin changed, iridescent colors shimmered beneath. Sophie’s skin did the same.
“Like right now.” Amy pointed at Sara’s exposed skin. “You see how their skin’s changing? We think they’re talking when they do that.”
“But their lips aren’t moving.”
“Exactly. We think they communicate silently to one another. Telepathically. You should see the EEG readings on these two. It’s pretty amazing.”
“So strain 31 changed their SLC24A5 gene and also gave them telepathic abilities?” My eyebrows rose. I hadn’t fathomed Makanza could do that.
“Yep, we have good reason to believe that gene changed, however, we think it also gave them telepathic abilities. W
e don’t have proof.”
Sara still studied me, her expression growing more excited by the second.
I felt like a bug under a microscope. Her look was so intense. I looked away, and as I did, a slight throb hummed at the base of my skull. I rubbed my neck. A headache this early in the day wasn’t a good sign.
“How can you tell them apart?” I asked, still rubbing my neck.
Amy nodded toward the one staring at me. “Sara’s always been more curious than Sophie, but if you can’t tell them apart, look at their wrists.”
Since Sara still held her hand up to the window, I could easily see the black mark on her skin. A tiny inscription simply stated, Sara.
“We tattooed them,” Amy explained. “They kept pulling off their wristbands and switching them, making it hard to tell them apart. It drove Dr. Roberts crazy. He’d go into one of his fits every time it happened.” Amy rolled her eyes. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say the Sisters did it just to piss him off. In response, Dr. Roberts tattooed them, even though Sophie cried when they held her down.”
“Why not sedate her?”
“Dr. Roberts insisted since it wasn’t a medical procedure, there was no need to expose her to an anesthetic. For her own benefit, of course.”
The sarcastic tone of Amy’s reply left me uneasy. Dr. Roberts would never intentionally hurt a Kazzie, surely. Everyone here does what’s best for them at all times. Right?
After all, it wasn’t the Kazzies’ fault they’d survived. They shouldn’t be punished for that. I shook my head. Of course, the MRI does what’s best for the Kazzies. It would be wrong not too.
“How old are they?” I asked to stop my wayward thoughts.
“Twenty-two.”
“Seriously?” That meant they’d Changed when they were twelve. The Manhattan Disaster was one of the greatest disasters in the last ten years. Everyone knew the date of that one. It meant the twins had been Changed for ten years, almost immediately after Makanza struck.
“Young, weren’t they?” Amy added.
“Yeah.” I rubbed my neck again and groaned inwardly. A headache was definitely brewing.
“Come on. I’ll show you the rest.”
The guard in the Sisters’ watch room waved when we passed. At the end of the hall, we crossed through another armed door to the next cell.
“Dorothy, a forty-year-old, is our other female,” Amy said when we reached the third containment cell. “She came over from California after Compound 3 got too full. She was found in Death Valley by the MRRA, wandering around in an area that would have killed most humans in forty-eight hours if they didn’t have any water. We have no idea how long she was there, but we know it was longer than two days. Amazingly, she didn’t die. She was actually very alive and well. She only needs a tablespoon of water a day to function normally. Give her a whole cup and she’s good for two weeks. That’s all thanks to Makanza strain 8.”
Dorothy’s cell was different from the first two. It looked like a hospital room. Monitoring equipment surrounded the Kazzie who lay on a bed with her eyes closed, her arms at her sides. She didn’t stir when we stopped.
“She’s got amazing kidneys,” Amy continued. “They’re incredibly efficient, and it’s not just water her body can conserve. If you starve her for a month, it’s like she goes into hibernation.”
“Hibernation?”
“She developed pounds of brown fat, also thanks to strain 8, so no matter how much she diets, she’ll never be thin.”
I knew brown fat was common in newborns and hibernating animals, but for it to be present in a human adult was unusual at best.
“Her researchers haven’t given her any food or water for two months now.” Amy’s head cocked as she studied the Kazzie. “She hasn’t woken once.”
“Seriously?”
I studied the medical paraphernalia. Dorothy was hooked up to typical ICU monitoring equipment. I stared in awe at the numbers. She had a respiratory rate of four, heart rate of twenty-eight, blood pressure of sixty over twenty, and a temperature of eighty-eight.
Amy leaned closer to the window. “She slows right down when they deprive her, but she never dies. Last year, they starved her for six months, and she was still kickin’.”
I was so appalled, the words slipped out before I could stop them. “That’s cruel.”
Amy nodded, her long, red curls shifting with the movement, but then she shrugged. “Try telling that to Dr. Roberts. He likes to think she’s not conscious and tries to tell everyone there’s nothing wrong with what we’re doing. No one actually knows for sure if Dorothy feels pain or not. She won’t tell us, and when she gets low like this, her whole body is like a tomb.” Amy rested her forehead against the glass. “She’s in there somewhere, and she may feel everything we do, but if she does, she doesn’t let on.” She straightened, pulling me again. “Come on.”
The uneasy feeling returned, even though I tried desperately to shrug it off. At least the headache from earlier had abated. I followed Amy to the next cell, but she walked right past it. It was empty. So was the one after that.
“Sage and Victor are in the Experimental Room,” she explained.
My hand stopped mid-air over the scanner at the last access door. The Experimental Room was the place the Kazzies went when research was actively being done on them. Kind of like the back labs in the old cosmetic companies, where rabbits sat lined up to have hairspray squirted into their eyes. Although I was certain it wasn’t that bad. After all, the Kazzies were still people.
“I’ll bring you back here when they return, but to give you the rundown, Sage came from Canada. He’s the only Canadian that I know of in any U.S. Compound. After he became infected, he fled the country, in a panic from what I’ve gathered. I’m sure if he’d been thinking, he wouldn’t have come here.”
Canada had also established Compounds for their Kazzies, similar to the ones in the U.S. Unlike our country, though, Canada didn’t do research on them. They just kept them confined.
Other countries that had survived the First Wave had taken similar precautions with their Kazzies – all of them were quarantined. However, not all nations had survived the First Wave. Some had ceased to exist completely. The entire continent of India was now a wasteland of decaying human flesh. I still shuddered every time I thought about it.
For over ten years all surviving countries had shut their borders. Importing and exporting had ceased to exist. As a result, Canada didn’t have the means to produce enough food for their people. At the moment, all of Canada was slowly starving, and so were their Kazzies.
Amy continued, “Sage probably would have survived if he’d gone up to the Yukon’s wild and isolated himself. But since he didn’t, it wasn’t long before we guessed what happened. All of Washington’s border towns got hit with Makanza, one after the other. The MRRA had him in no time.”
“What strain does he have?”
“Strain 27. He can generate electricity along his skin. Sometimes, when he flicks his fingers, sparks shoot in the air.”
Amy chuckled, seeming to find my expression funny. “You haven’t seen the half of it. As for Victor, he has strain 40, so his skin’s bright red, and he’s incredibly durable. His body can withstand temperatures of three hundred and twenty degrees Fahrenheit, and slightly hotter if he’s angry.”
“Wow.”
Amy nodded. “He’ll burn eventually. At three-fifty, he starts to cook.”
I shuddered, wondering how that number was discovered.
“And here’s the last Kazzie.” We passed through the last access door. The windows to the sixth cell appeared. “Meghan, meet Davin. He’s the Kazzie our group normally works with.”
If I’d been more alert, I would have been prepared for what happened next. An object hurled at me, traveling at unbelievable speed. It hit the glass wall with enough force to shatter it. And a shattered glass wall linked directly to a Kazzie’s cell only meant one thing.
Death.
; 4 – DAVIN
I instinctively crouched to the floor, covering my eyes, nose and mouth, and immediately stopped breathing. Blood pounded in my ears.
I sat there. Waiting. Waiting for the sound of shattering glass. Waiting for shards to shower over me. As soon as I came into contact with air from Davin’s cell, I’d be exposed. Most certain death.
But the sound I expected to hear, the sickening sound of glass creaking and shattering after the thud, never came. I looked at the window. The intact window.
A broken chair sat upside down inside Davin’s cell. The glass was completely unmarked. As soon as I realized that, my breath came out in a whoosh.
“And now you can see what our setback is.” Amy stood casually beside me.
I slowly straightened.
Amy didn’t seem the least bit perturbed, or surprised, by my panicked reaction. She just grinned when I straightened my suit. “Scared ya, didn’t it?”
“Yes,” I breathed. How embarrassing.
“Don’t worry. It would take a lot more than that to break this window, even with all the force Davin can generate. All of the glass in the Compound is four inches thick, shatterproof, and bulletproof.”
I wanted to kick myself. I knew that, from training, but a self-preservation instinct had taken control of me. The chair Davin threw came so fast. And the sound it made when it had hit… My palms still trembled.
“He’s pretty pissed off right now, more so than usual.” Amy crossed her arms as another piece of furniture flew into the wall. This time it was his bed frame. A second later, his desk flew blindingly fast in the opposite direction. It hit the glass shield over the guard’s watch room.
I darted a glance at the guard.
He held a phone to his ear. His mouth moved feverishly as Davin continued throwing things.
Davin’s entire cell was a disaster. Not one piece of furniture or object had gone unscathed. The mattress lay in tatters on the floor, the TV, smashed to pieces. Even his clothes were a wreck, or at least they looked shred when he stood still long enough for me to catch a glimpse of him.
Compound 26: Book #1 in The Makanza Series Page 3