Kalahari

by Jessica Khoury

  “What is it?” I asked warily.

  Joey opened the door and pointed inside. “There’s food in here!” He whooped joyously and disappeared indoors.

  This building was similar to the first, except that it was divided into rooms by curtains that hung from the ceiling. Miranda and Kase were sitting on two chairs in a small kitchenette, wolfing down a pack of vanilla crème cookies. The food made my stomach growl, but my curiosity was stronger than my hunger, and there was no way I could eat after what I had just seen.

  “So the building with the animals,” I said, “it’s worse than we thought. Remember the lion?”

  “No,” said Miranda flatly. “I’d completely forgotten about the horrible metal beast that tried to eat me. Wait.” She put down her cookie. “Oh, God, you mean . . .”

  I nodded. “Many of them are silver, some covered more than the others. Like it’s a disease or a rash.”

  Miranda looked at her cookie as if it had transformed into a spider and quickly set it down.

  “Do you think we could be affected?” Joey asked softly. Everyone’s eyes turned to me with such horror that I flinched.

  “I doubt it,” I said, more casually than I felt. “We’ve barely been here fifteen minutes.”

  Avani gave me a knowing look, seeing right through my flimsy deflection. I tried to signal her with a small flick of my eyes to go along with it, to soothe their fear.

  Too late. “We’ve been breathing this air for fifteen minutes. If it’s airborne, we’re already infected,” she pointed out.

  “I did not sign up for this freak show!” Kase shouted. He stood abruptly, his chair sliding backward with a spine-chilling shriek. Miranda emitted a pitiful moan and lowered her face into her hands.

  “Stop it!” I ordered. “Just chill, okay? Look, the animals may have been infected, but there’s no reason to believe the—whatever it is—can affect humans. The men I saw back at our camp were just fine—none of them were, um, silver. So let’s just all chill. Please?”

  Miranda whimpered. “I want to go home.”

  “We all do,” Sam said softly. “But Sarah’s right. We need to stay calm and not invent worries that might not come up.”

  “Did anyone find a radio? A phone? Anything?” I asked.

  “No, but we found doughnuts!” Joey said. “They’re a little stale, but hey, I wouldn’t say no to moldy bread at this point.”

  Avani had found a closet stocked with food: crackers, canned vegetables, instant soup, even a box of Twinkies. At the sight of it all, my stomach gurgled. Trying to put the dead and infected animals from my mind, I forced myself to eat some crackers, knowing my body needed nourishment. We ate and packed at the same time, filling plastic bags with bottled water and as much nonperishable food as we could carry. I found a crate of emergency supplies, including candles, matchsticks, and a black flare gun. I tossed some of the stuff in with the food, but turned the flare gun over in my hands thoughtfully before tucking it into the back of my pants.

  Joey opened a large freezer and dug around inside, loudly expressing his disappointment that there was no ice cream. Then he paused and picked up a large plastic container. He studied it for a moment, then said, “Uh . . . Guys? Is this what I think it is?”

  Sam took a look, then gave a low whistle. “Bees?”

  “Sickos,” Joey muttered. “What do they do—sprinkle them on their cereal?”

  “This is a scientific facility, you idiots,” said Avani. “They’re probably just specimens. My biology teacher kept frogs and fetal pigs and stuff in her fridge at home when the power went out at the school one week.”

  “Let me see that,” I said.

  “Prefer bugs over Twinkies, huh?” Joey asked, handing over the container with a shudder. “I should have guessed. Talk about Girl vs. Wild. Do you eat grasshoppers too?”

  I studied the contents of the container. It held a partially intact hive filled with golden honeycombs. Dozens of frozen bees littered the bottom, but I spied more deeper inside the combs. I held the box to my ear and listened, catching a faint buzz. The insects in the combs were still alive, generating enough heat to survive by huddling and vibrating against one another. I’d seen hives like this before, in the cold winter months, when I was out doing fieldwork with my mom. The bees fed off their honey reserves until spring, withstanding temperatures below freezing.

  The hunger in my stomach turned to a cold lump as my thoughts strayed inevitably to my mother. Of all the things to have in their freezer, why did the scientists have bees?

  “Sarah?” Sam paused, his hands full of canned Spam. “What is it?”

  I looked up at him, startled out of my reverie, and murmured, “It’s nothing.”

  Hastily putting the bees back into the freezer, I gave Sam a worried look. “We need to scout every building and then get out of here,” I said. “The scientists could be back at any moment, and I don’t think we want to be here for that.”

  Miranda lifted her head and spoke around a mouthful of peanut butter. “You don’t seriously think they’ll just show up and start shooting at us?”

  I gaped at her, wondering if she’d completely forgotten about Theo.

  “I think that’s exactly what they’ll do,” said Sam. “Sarah’s right.”

  Joey snorted. “Aw, dude, you’re just agreeing with her because you want—”

  “I’m just saying,” Sam interjected hurriedly, “that we should play it safe. We’ve already seen people killed in this mess.”

  “Yeah,” said Miranda, “but no offense, Sarah, your dad and your friend did go looking for these guys. They kind of asked for it. And if they hadn’t, none of this would have happened.”

  My eyes nearly bugged out of my head, and I didn’t realize I’d stepped toward her, my fists clenching, until Sam interrupted.

  “She just lost her friend, Miranda,” he said. “Leave her alone.”

  “I don’t need your help here,” I snapped at him, while at the same time, Kase bristled and pointed at Sam.

  “Dude. Don’t talk to my girlfriend like that,” Kase snarled.

  Sam held up his hands defensively. “I’m just saying, we need to work together instead of blaming each other.”

  “Who are you to tell us what to do? You’re nothing but a charity case delinquent.”

  Now Sam’s face flushed and his tone dropped below freezing. “What did you call me?”

  “Yeah,” said Kase, lifting his chin. He had the same look in his eye as I’d seen in a bull elephant squaring off for a fight. “That’s right, Quartermain. You didn’t think I’d come out here without knowing who was going to be around, did you? My lawyer checked up on all of you. I’ve been watching you since day one.”

  Sam’s lips curled inward. “You don’t know anything about me!”

  “Whoa, okay!” Avani held up both hands, palms out. The tension in the room was stifling. “Why don’t we make a plan, huh? Let’s look at this logically. I think what we have here is a communication problem. We need to delineate responsibilities and identify our priorities—”

  “I swear, Avani, you and your SAT mouth make me want to gouge my own eyes out,” growled Miranda.

  From there, we descended into chaos. Everyone was on their feet, hurling accusations, complaints, and insults like a troop of mudslinging baboons. Sam and Kase were nose to nose and seething, and Avani was holding a frying pan, looking dangerously close to whacking someone with it. I grabbed a spoon and a metal teakettle and began clanging them together until everyone fell silent, their hands on their ears.

  “Enough!” I said. “This is ridiculous! We should be focusing on getting out of here, not fighting with each other! If we keep this up, we’ll be dead before the end of the week!”

  At that, they fell reluctantly silent but still exchanged heated looks—many of them directed at me.
/>   Then Miranda’s eyes filled with tears. “Do you really think we’re going to die?”

  I sighed and put down the kettle. “I’m just saying that we need to work together. Please. I’m trying my hardest, I really am, but I need your help. We have food and water now, see? We’re going to be fine. We just have to keep our heads.”

  Avani nodded, looking abashed. “Sorry, guys. I don’t mean to be a know-it-all. I just want to help.”

  “We all do,” I said. I took a deep breath and tried to get us back on track. “What’s back there?” I peered down a corridor between the dark curtains that partitioned off the long building.

  “Looks like dorms,” said Joey. “Beds and stuff. Be my guest.” He waved at the corridor.

  Leaving the others to cool down, I went into the first little room and found a sturdy cot topped with an air mattress. A plastic drawer set yielded an assortment of men’s clothing and toiletries. On top of it sat a framed photograph. My stomach twisted when I recognized the young man in the photo as the same one Sam and I had found in the menagerie. In the photo, he was hugging an older Indian woman who may have been his mother.

  A quick survey of the rest of the rooms settled my suspicion that the scientists were still currently in residence of this place, even though they were nowhere to be found. They’d left behind clothes, shoes, shampoo bottles, contact lens cases, even a pair of expensive-looking earrings. Were they the ones out searching for us, then? From the contents of each room, I gathered that there had been three men and two women working here. There had been more people than that at our camp, so if any of them had been the scientists, they had backup. Any notebooks, computers, or other sources of information had either been taken or destroyed with the stuff in the lab. Besides the one photograph, there were no clues as to the identities of the researchers.

  At the far end of the building, I found a door to the outside. A beaten track led to a small trailer nearby, and I noticed with a chill up my spine that the footprints on the track were very fresh, made as recently as that morning. I waited, still in the doorway, watching and listening for any sign of people, but it seemed clear. I didn’t see any prints from our group, so no one had explored the trailer yet. It was the last place a radio or phone could be, so I had to check it out. I walked slowly toward it, alert for any sign of trouble.

  The door to the trailer opened with a creak, and I froze for a long moment in dread, my hand wrapping around the flare gun in the back of my waistband, but nothing happened. Cautiously, I stepped inside and pulled the door shut.

  Another lab. Unlike the others, this one seemed to be currently in use. A long counter held liquid in beakers, computer screens running streams of data, vials dripping substances into other vials. I tensed, listening carefully for any sound that might signal someone was here, but the only noise came from the experiments percolating, bubbling, and beeping. I’d have to get Avani in here to interpret the scene. The chemistry equipment made about as much sense to me as Joey’s pop culture references.

  I went to the computer and tried to find some means of communication, but I got only a flurry of windows streaming numbers and formulas. A dead end. So I yanked open the drawers below the counter, one by one, finding nothing of use—until I was interrupted by a loud thump.

  I whirled to face a door that led to another room in the trailer, but it stayed shut. Certain that was where the noise had come from, I armed myself with a scalpel snatched off the counter and slowly crept to the door, the hair on my arms standing on end. When I tried the knob, I found it locked.

  “Hello?” I said, tentatively. “Is someone in there?”

  No reply.

  I debated whether or not to leave it alone, but what if there was a radio inside? Putting down the scalpel in favor of a slender metal pick and a safety pin out of one of the drawers, I tried picking the lock. When it clicked, I held my breath and eased open the door—only to have it violently thrown open from the other side, as a metallic silver hand lunged out of the dark interior, reaching for my throat.

  TWELVE

  I yelled and threw my weight against the door, staying clear of those silver fingers’ reach. The door shut, but barely. The person on the other side began to groan and push back. He or she was stronger than me, and the door eased open a few inches. Still pressing myself against it, I stabbed the reaching hand with the pick. It swiftly withdrew as its owner wailed in pain, and I took the chance to peer around the door.

  There were three of them, two women and a man. They still wore their lab coats over dusty cargo pants and boots. Every bared part of their bodies—skin, eyes, hair, nails—was silver. They looked like the animals in the menagerie, like the lion that had chased us, but seeing people like this was worse, so much worse. The moment they saw me, they lunged at me savagely, fingers outstretched and ready to claw me like animals. Only the cracked open door kept them from touching me—for the moment. There was something both feral and pathetic in their movements, almost as if they were desperate for someone to save them, but in the way that an animal caught in a trap will react with snarls and snaps. Yet for all their desperation, they seemed weakened and unbalanced, like starved animals.

  I looked into the eyes of the closest one, a woman with shoulder-length hair that shimmered like tinsel. It was her hand that I’d stabbed.

  “Don’t!” I cried. “You’re sick! You need help!”

  If my words registered at all to her, she didn’t show it. She emitted a high-pitched squeal that was altogether inhuman and slipped her foot in the door, jamming it open. The hairs on my arms stood up again. Hers was the cry of a rabbit snapped up by a jackal, the death scream of an impala brought down by a lion. I slammed the door against her foot, and she shrieked again. The others took up her cry, until it sounded like a chorus of keening ghosts.

  I felt like a monster as I stamped my boot on hers, crushing her toes. She drew her foot back into the darkness of the room, giving me a chance to slam the door. Even then, the handle started to jiggle as she worked it from the inside. I gathered they had retained a rudimentary knowledge of how doors worked, though they’d been stymied by the lock. I gripped the knob with a sweaty hand, my heart hammering and my mouth dry as I plunged the pick back into the lock. My hand was shaking so violently that I lost my grip, and the pick slipped out again.

  Suddenly, Sam was there, throwing open the door of the trailer. “Sarah! What happened?”

  “Help me!” I shouted. “It’s the other scientists. They’re infected!”

  He grabbed the door handle so that I could focus on locking it again. It took longer than opening the door had, but I finally heard a click and when he turned the handle, it held in place.

  I dropped the pick and sank to my knees, shaking enough to set my teeth chattering. Sam was saying something, but in my haze of horror and adrenaline I barely heard him. He kneeled in front of me, repeating his question.

  “Are you okay?”

  “N-no.” Impulsively, I threw myself at him, grabbing him in an embrace. It was meant only to help me steady myself, the way you might grab a table or the wall in a spell of dizziness. He froze, surprised, and then his arms curled around me, firm and safe. I buried my face in his shoulder and we sat like that for several moments, before my trembling finally subsided. Even then, I didn’t want to let go. I hadn’t realized how starved I was for this kind of closeness to another human being after days of living on the edge of life and death. I lifted my face and met his eyes, half embarrassed, half curious.

  “Sorry,” I whispered.

  He replied with a somewhat strangled, “No, no, it’s fine,” as his eyes fixed on mine, his expression a strange blend of astonishment and concern.

  My arm was still around his neck; I could feel his pulse thundering. Slowly, hesitantly, Sam slid his hand over my wrist, my elbow, up to my shoulder, his grip gentle but firm.

  “You sure you’re okay
?” he said, his voice a bit hoarse.

  I am now, I almost said, but instead I just nodded.

  At that moment, the door from the outside opened again, and Sam and I jerked apart as if electrified, expecting Avani or Kase or one of the others.

  But the person who stepped through the door was a stranger, a man in a dusty, filthy lab coat. He turned to stone when he saw us, his eyes springing wide behind wire-rimmed glasses. His hair, a receding cap of tight gray fuzz that puffed out over his ears, gave him the look of a startled koala bear. He had been holding a clipboard and a handful of glass vials, and when he saw us, they dropped to the floor, the vials shattering.

  “Who are you?” Sam demanded, leaping to his feet. I clumsily followed, my neck still warm from our close encounter.

  “Who are you?” the man stammered in a strong Scottish accent.

  My eyes darted from his hands to his pockets, searching for any sign of a gun, but he appeared to be unarmed and just as surprised to see us as we were to see him. Instead of answering Sam’s question, the man looked from us to the door behind us.

  “Did you open it?” he cried.

  I frowned. “Yes, but—”

  “Did they touch you?” His voice came out in a thin squeal, like air let from a balloon.

  “No. I don’t think so. Who are you?”

  He muttered something unintelligible, then looked over his shoulder, through the open door. While his head was turned, I grabbed the scalpel, just in case.

  “Why are you—” he started to say, then stopped when he saw me holding out the scalpel. “What are you going to do with that? Scratch me?”

  “Your name,” I said.

  He frowned, swallowing nervously, and scratched his ear. “I’m—”

  At that moment, a loud clang resounded through the room. With a startled grunt, the man collapsed to the floor, unconscious, as behind him Avani stood in the doorway with her frying pan still held high. She gaped down at the scientist, her mouth hanging open.