Dawn of the Living-Impaired

by Christine Morgan

  Soon, the water is almost gone. Soon, the food is almost gone.

  Soon, Julia just sits in the Chair by the window. She holds the last pill-bottle, her reserve stash, and a can of warm soda. Baxter cocks his head, perturbed, when he sees her pour all the pills into her palm. She takes them, swallows them with a gulp of the soda. She drops the empty pill-bottle.

  “Baxter … who’s a Good Boy, who’s my Good Boy?”

  He wags his tail, though his head remains cocked.

  “Do you want to go Outside?”

  An eager whine escapes him, despite his uneasy feeling.

  “You’ll have to go by yourself,” she says, rolling the Chair to the door. “But you’re my Good Boy, such a Good Boy, so smart and brave … I know you’ll be okay.”

  She unlocks the door, takes off the chain, opens it. The hallway is quiet beyond. Not even Princess the cat is around.

  “I love you, Baxter.” Her voice slurs, as if suddenly drowsy. “I hate to leave you like this, I’m so sorry, I love you, you took care of me so well.”

  With a sigh, she slumps in the Chair, her cheek on her shoulder. She mumbles. She smiles. Then she is still.

  Outside. She opened the door for him, she asked if he wanted to go Outside, which he does. But he doesn’t. Something is wrong. The way she sleeps isn’t sleep. He remembers his training, his duty.

  The phone, knock the phone from its cradle, step on the big button with his paw. It does not click. Does not buzz.

  He trots to the door and barks. Sharp, loud barks. Come-help-me barks.

  No one comes.

  He trots back to Julia and works his muzzle under her hand, which lies cool and slack on her thigh. She does not pet him, does not stroke his fur, does not scratch the top of his head between his ears.

  Baxter rests his chin in her lap, whining softly.

  Then he trots to the door again, and ventures into the hall. He picks his way down the stairs, through the jumble of junk and furniture that had been dumped there as a barricade. He squeezes through a gap. Finally, he is Outside.

  The air stinks of the dead, moaning as they shuffle aimlessly along the sidewalks and streets. They ignore Baxter. They are oblivious to him.

  He lifts his nose, sniffing carefully for other traces of scent. He smells other animals, other dogs, even the horse with the empty saddle. He smells people, distant but living. Warm and sweaty people.

  Some of the scents are familiar. He follows those, tracking them. Friends and neighbors. Ron. Maybe Angie. He’ll find them. Find them, bring them back, bring them home.

  Because Julia will be hungry, and he is a Good Boy.

  THOUGHT HE WAS A GONER

  “Go on.” Mary Norris gave Sarah a nudge. “Go talk to him.”

  Sarah took a half-step, then hesitated. “Do you really think I ought to?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t.” Rolling her eyes, Mary affected the worldly manner of their teacher, Miss Phelps. “But, since you fancy him, you might as well.”

  “Mary fancies Tommy Lowgate,” Cecily confided to Peg and Meg, without glancing up from the hopscotch she’d almost finished drawing.

  “I do not!” cried Mary, blushing the bright hue of a hothouse rose.

  It might have been becoming on another girl. On sunny-blonde Cecily, perhaps. Or Sarah herself, whose curls were as black and shiny and glossy as fresh ink. On carrot-topped Mary, with her freckly cheese-curd complexion, the effect was fevered and blotchy.

  Peg and Meg, twins, cupped their hands over their mouths and tittered. Mary blushed brighter than ever. She threw a quick look in the direction of the other girls, but the older ones were chatting beside the lunch-room with the older boys, and the younger ones from Mrs. Daunley’s class had a jumping-rope and sang that new song about the man with the cat he couldn’t get rid of, no matter how hard he tried.

  “… but the cat came back … the very next day …”

  Sarah, twirling a ringlet, gazed over at the boy who sat reading in the shade of the big spreading oak.

  “… yes, the cat came back …”

  The new boy.

  Herbie West.

  Beyond him, on a grassy sward, his classmates ran and shouted and kicked a ball back and forth. The smaller boys, armed with sticks, played war.

  “… they thought he was a goner …”

  At lunch, Herbie West never threw crusts or spat cherry pips. During study-hour, he didn’t draw rude sketches, pull girls’ pigtails, make faces, or whisper when the headmaster stepped into the hall for a nip of what he called ‘the revivifying’ from the flask he kept in his coat.

  “… but the cat came back …”

  No, Herbie West sat just as he sat now, by himself. Sat by himself and read.

  “… he just wouldn’t stay away!”

  Quiet. Polite and soft-spoken, as Sarah’s mother would have said.

  And smart, too. Sarah had overheard Mr. Pym telling Miss Phelps that the West boy was “sharp as a tack, smart as a whip, cleverest student I’ve ever had … but insolent … you wouldn’t know it to look at him, meek as he is, but twice now he’s corrected me in front of the entire class.”

  Sarah thought this was especially brave. Much braver and much cleverer than most boys, whose idea of wit was to make fake flatulence-noises and blame them on each other.

  “But she’s right,” Cecily said. “Recess won’t last much longer. Go talk to him. Don’t be a ninny.”

  “Do I look nice?” Sarah asked.

  “Yes,” grumbled Mary.

  The twins vigorously agreed.

  She considered skipping, but decided against it and went at an idle-seeming stroll, instead, as if she were simply going for a walk around the schoolyard that happened to bring her course near the big spreading oak.

  As she approached, she let herself steal several peeks at him, though always ready to quickly pretend not to be, just in case he noticed.

  Herbie West wasn’t a tall boy. He was thin, and quite pale, with fine hair the color of buttermilk. His eyes, behind spectacles, were a very light blue. They remained fixed intently on his book, a great heavy thick thing, unlike their school readers and primers. Sarah saw that the pages were covered with dense printing, big words in small letters, blocks of it broken only by diagrams and illustrations.

  Feeling suddenly both giddy and shy, she stopped just within the patch of cool shade. She twisted her toe against the grass, turning her ankle this way and that.

  “Hello, Herbie,” she said.

  He twitched as if she’d startled him, and shut the book with a musty kind of thump. His light blue eyes were wide through the lenses.

  “Hello,” she said again, smiling.

  “I prefer to be addressed as Herbert,” he said. He had such a soft voice, she had to lean forward to hear. “Or West, if you rather.”

  “Oh … sorry … Herbert.” She bolstered her smile, which tried to falter, and resumed twirling the long black ringlet that dangled beside her cheek. “I’m Sarah. Sarah Grantham.”

  Herbert West nodded. There followed a slight, awkward pause.

  “What are you reading?” Sarah asked brightly.

  “Nothing of interest to you.” He placed a hand on the cover. “A medical book.”

  “Medical? You mean, doctoring?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Sort of? How so?”

  “It’s to do with …” Herbert took a breath. “It’s to do with anatomy and dissections.”

  “With what and what?” She frowned, but made sure it was her pretty frown, not the sulky one her mother said made her look like a bulldog deprived its bone.

  “Anatomy is the study of human physiology. Dissection is the more practical method of determining form and function through surgical exploration --”

  Sarah tilted her head. “Cutting up dead people?”

  He winced ever-so-slightly, one eye narrowing and the corner of his mouth on that side tucking into a tight line. “Dissecting cadavers.”

&nb
sp; “Have you done that?”

  “No.” The wince deepened into a brief scowl, then smoothed. “But I will, one day. I’m going to attend the medical school at Miskatonic University. Soon. Headmaster Abelton says I’ll be an excellent candidate for early admission.”

  Most of that made scant sense to Sarah, but she didn’t let on. She skipped up next to him and sat down, smoothing her skirt over her knees. “My grandfather died last winter,” she said.

  This, she reasoned, would give them something in common – rumor had it that his parents had both recently died, which was why he’d been sent here to live with his two maiden aunties.

  Herbert West, however, did not seem inclined to commiserate over shared losses. “Did you see him?”

  “No! He died in the hospital.”

  “I meant, after that. For a funeral.”

  “Oh,” said Sarah. “Oh, yes. We had him laid out in the parlor for a few days, so that everyone could pay their respects while waiting for my uncle and his family to come from Chicago.”

  “So, you did see him. What was it like?”

  She tilted her head the other way. “Not like he was sleeping. That’s what they all said, how peaceful he looked, like he was sleeping, but I didn’t think so.”

  “What did you think?”

  “He looked … dead,” she said. “He was all grey, his lips blue. Sunken-looking. Stiff and cold. His skin felt --” She caught herself with a guilty squirm.

  But Herbert hadn’t missed her slip. “You touched him?”

  “My cousins and I, we dared each other,” Sarah admitted. “I touched his hand. Where it was, you know, folded like this on his chest.”

  His nod this time was encouraging. “How did it feel?”

  “Stiff and cold, like I said, but also … I don’t really know.”

  “Waxy? Like a candle, or a cake of soap?”

  “Yes! Yes, just like that! Not quite greasy, but somehow kind of …”

  “Clammy and slick?”

  “Yes!” she cried again, and clapped with delight. “You are the smartest boy in school, aren’t you?”

  “At this school, there’s hardly much competition,” he muttered.

  “Well, I think you’re the most smart and clever boy ever!” She attempted a winsome fluttering of her eyelashes. “And the handsomest.”

  He seemed not to know at all what to make of that, and certainly didn’t rally back with a compliment for her beauty. Boys were so hopeless sometimes, honestly they were. Not that grown men were much different; Sarah often witnessed her own father needing pointed prompts to remark on Mother’s new dress or hair style.

  Before Herbert could decide what – if anything – to say, a giggling whirlwind of girls rushed to surround them. Not only her friends, but the younger girls from Mrs. Daunley’s class – the ones who’d been jumping-rope while singing the cat song – and a few of the older ones as well.

  Mary, of course, led the chant. “Herbie and Sarah, sittin’ in a tree --”

  “K-I-S-S-I-N-G!” the rest joined in.

  “Stop!” squealed Sarah, giggling herself. And, she suspected, blushing her own shade of hothouse pink.

  “First comes love,” the girls chanted on, undaunted, “then comes marriage … then comes Herbie with the baby carriage!”

  “I prefer,” he repeated, “to be addressed as Herbert.”

  The other boys, distracted from their game, had turned to look. Among them was Sebastian Crewe, who’d made no secret of fancying Sarah, while she in turn made no secret of not fancying him. Seeing her there with Herbert West, as the silly-chanting girls capered, he glowered. He threw down the ball with such a hard bounce that it soared over Tommy’s head and rolled all the way to the schoolyard fence. Sebastian stomped after it with his face like a thundercloud.

  At the main door, Miss Phelps rang the bell. Everyone began dispersing, gathering their things, getting ready to go back in. Herbert got to his feet, clutching his medical book.

  “May I sit and talk with you again at recess tomorrow?” she asked, also rising, demurely brushing grass from her skirt.

  He shrugged in a fitful, fidgety manner. “I suppose.” His gaze strayed impatiently toward the school, where some of their classmates were already headed up the steps.

  “Herbert?”

  He looked at her, light blue eyes quizzical through his spectacles.

  “You could, you know,” she said. “If you like.”

  “Could what?”

  She clasped her hands at the small of her back, bent forward, lifted her chin, and puckered her lips. Closed her eyes, too … mostly … peeking the teensiest bit to see his reaction …

  Recoiling with a look of alarm was not what she’d been hoping for.

  “The bell,” Herbert said. “Mr. Pym doesn’t approve of tardiness.”

  With that, he was off, not at a run, but at a pace almost brisk enough to be insulting. Sarah blew out a breath in an exasperated sigh.

  Boys. They honestly were hopeless, weren’t they?

  *

  Sarah could hardly wait until recess the next day. It was difficult going, too, what with a packet of licorice candy in her possession. But if she so much as ate one piece, the other girls would see and want to share, and she had to save them for later.

  “You oughtn’t go about with him,” Sebastian Crewe told her at lunch-time, lagging behind the other boys while the girls helped clean up. “With West. He’s peculiar.”

  “I think he’s nice,” said Sarah.

  “Peculiar,” Sebastian insisted. “Too smart for his own good, that’s what Mr. Pym says. Always going on about dead things and brains and such. He told our whole class that if you stuck a wire into a frog’s head, you could make it kick its legs.”

  “Eew.”

  “Eew’s right, and that’s not the half of it! So, you oughtn’t go about with him.”

  “Who I go about with or not isn’t your concern.”

  “Sure it is. You’re my girl.”

  “Says who and since when?”

  “Everyone knows!”

  “I didn’t!”

  “Well, now you do.”

  “Fancy that!” Sarah cried, flinging her hands in the air. “You don’t get to be telling me whose girl I am!”

  “I only meant --”

  Miss Phelps came in then, ending the conversation with a stern look that sent Sebastian hurrying on his way as Sarah busied herself dutifully with cleaning.

  The nerve of him … saying she was his girl, telling her who she could talk to! Hmf!

  When the recess bell finally rang, Sarah made no secret of her destination. She went bold-as-brass right over to the oak tree, and sat there with the packet of candies in her lap, waiting for Herbert West.

  He arrived a bit late, clothes rumpled and spectacles askew, a cigar box tucked under one arm.

  “What happened to you?” Sarah asked, though she already half had an idea, as if she couldn’t guess.

  “Nothing. Someone bumped me in the hallway, almost knocked me down.”

  “Sebastian?”

  Herbert sat on the shady grass, straightening his spectacles. “He swears it was an accident.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “But he also tried to trip me, so pardon me if I have my doubts.”

  “Herbert, I’m so sorry.”

  “Why? You weren’t there. The other boys often pull pranks. They don’t like that I’m good at lessons, and they make fun of me for living with my aunts.”

  She decided there was no need to explain. Why waste their recess on that? Besides, she noticed the cigar box and couldn’t help but wonder what was in it. She’d brought licorice candies, after all … perhaps he’d brought cookies or toffees or some other sweets.

  “No book today?” she inquired, twirling her ringlet.

  “I didn’t want to leave this in my desk.”

  “What’s in it?” She started to reach for the lid and Herbert drew the box toward his knee.
r />   “Mice,” he said.

  “Mice?” Sarah snatched her hand back. “Why do you have mice in a box?”

  “Aunt Gertrude keeps them as pets. Aunt Ludmilla keeps budgies, but the mice are better. Not as good as rabbits, but, better.”

  “Mice?” she said again.

  “Not ordinary mice,” he said. “Not common field mice. These are fancy mice. They’re becoming quite popular in London. Aunt Gertrude has a friend there, Mr. Maxey, who raises them. Breeds them.”

  “May I see?”

  “I don’t think you want to.”

  “Herbert West, I am not some kind of silly, skittish girl who cries eek at the sight of a mouse!”

  “Well --”

  “Show me!”

  He sighed and opened the box. Sarah steeled herself to look. She wasn’t sure how a ‘fancy’ mouse might differ from the ordinary kind, but –

  But she certainly had never seen mice like these before. Not … not tacked out on a board with all four little pink paws pinned and the furry belly sliced open … not bobbing in a jam-jar of murky liquid with the top of the head missing …

  That the mice were also, in fact, fluffy and cream-colored with pretty markings … was rather of far secondary importance.

  “They’re dead,” she said.

  “Of course. I brought them to show the class, for my report on biological studies.”

  “Why are they cut up that way?”

  “I’m interested in the mechanics of life. It is my belief and theory that, somewhere, perhaps in the brain or central nervous system, is the key to what animates us, what makes us live. And that if those secrets can be unlocked, we’ll have mastered the mystery of immortality.”

  She gazed at him with admiration as he made this fervent speech, the most she’d ever heard him say at once, and by far the most impassioned. His light blue eyes fair to shone with excitement.

  He, however, must have mistaken her expression for confusion, because he sagged somewhat. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “No, I do. You want to bring them back to life. Like my cousin’s goldie-fishies, or the cat in the song.”

  “What?”

  “My cousin,” said Sarah, lowering the lid to conceal the sad sight of the splayed-open mouse, “has a goldie-fishie that she keeps in a bowl on her dresser. One day, she found it there … you know … floating. She was terribly sad, cried and cried. So, her father, my uncle, told her to say extra prayers that night at bedtime, and perhaps God would bring it back. When she woke in the morning, there the fishie was, swimming around, good as new.”