“So now they know,” I say. “What next?”
“It will take some time, but I’m hoping once they realize the runners are a growing threat, the two sides will stop the infighting and return to facing the real enemy.”
“The runners?” I ask.
“Of course,” LC Allison says.
At the bottom of the stairs, I finally ask her what’s been on my mind since we arrived. “Is my sister okay?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “I wish I did.”
“How did you know she was here?”
LC Allison looks around. We are the only two outside the apartment. She opens a pocket on her shirt and removes a manila envelope. It isn’t until I am upstairs in my apartment that I open it. Inside is a photo print of me, Jess, and Charlotte celebrating my niece’s fourth birthday. It makes me realize that Charlotte is now five. I flip it over and my heart stops. There’s something written on the back.
“Robbie—if you’re reading this, I’m sorry. Don’t come looking for us.”
What she doesn’t know is, I will.
Sixteen
When it became clear to my mom and dad that I wasn’t going to make it through school the traditional way, they enrolled me in what was being called “the alternative school.” What it boiled down to was, they were sending me to the Island of Misfit Toys. Even the teachers had that feel of being cast-offs.
I met Lane at the RHAE School. The letters stood for Rockford Heights Alternative Education. It was known as Ray. Our mascot was a smiling sun wearing Ray Ban sunglasses. I guess when it first opened, a cereal company tried to sue the district for copyright infringement and the glasses got changed to a pair of aviator glasses, or it had more sunrays jutting off the circle. I don’t know. I never understood why an alternative school needed a mascot. It’s not like we had any sports teams. All we had was a sometimes debate team.
Lane was in four of the five classes I needed to take at Ray. When there’re fewer than 200 kids in the whole building, you’re going to have a lot of repeats in your blocks. Lane was in my math, history, science, and English classes. The only hour we didn’t see each other, he was in some lame woodworking class and I was in a computer class. Lane made horse-head bookends and I practiced making web pages. It was hard to say who was getting the more marketable skills.
Our first date was a study date. Our math teacher had suggested we get together in small groups before a major midterm exam and study our asses off. Jean was like that. She talked shit, but she didn’t take any. One time this girl blurted out in class, “Come on, seriously, Jean. When am I ever going to need to add numbers?”
Jean’s face had flushed. I think she was angry at the girl’s stupidity more than at the girl. “How about when you’re trying to balance your checkbook? Or when you’re counting your money? Oh, wait, never mind. You won’t have any money because you won’t be able to count. Just hire me and I’ll do all your counting for you for the rest of your life.”
Lane was the kind of guy that everyone instantly says, “He’s bad news,” when they see him. He liked to wear a black leather jacket all the time. His clothing was a tad on the metro-sexual side: skinny jeans, wide striped tee-shirts, Chuck Taylor high tops. He sometimes wore a lavender bandana around his neck. On his right arm he had a tat of a pair of cherries with sparks popping off the stems; underneath the fruit was “ch-ch-cherry bomb.” The teachers hated him.
But he made me laugh, and sometimes that’s all I needed.
I met him at a local fast-food restaurant. He had no money, so I bought him a kid’s meal just so he wouldn’t get tossed out for loitering. I don’t think we studied at all. We sat and watched the kids on the plastic playscape. Every so often Lane would yell out, “Bradley. I’m not kidding. We have to go home now.” He’d wait, and when a kid came out of the tube slide he’d ask if the kid saw a little fat boy inside the tunnels.
“He’s wearing a shirt that says ‘I eat monkey poo, do you?’ and he has on orange sneakers.”
The little kids would shake their heads. Lane would act all angry and yell, “Bradley, you get your ass out here now!”
It was stupid and it was obnoxious, but I marveled at how spontaneous Lane was, how smart of a wit he had. It wasn’t like this was taboo. There were shows on TV of people pranking strangers all the time. There were even movies of the same kind of foolishness:
Jackass,
Borat, Punked
. And if that wasn’t enough, you could go on YouTube and see the exact same kind of things done by guys just like Lane.
I knew my mom and dad would never go for him. They both still harbored the idea that I was going through a phase, that I would snap out of it and become some doe-eyed little princess. After my sister Jess graduated from college, she got pregnant from a one-night stand. It tore my folks up. Jess had no intentions of marrying the guy. I think they began looking at me as their last chance to do it right: get me through school, get me married, and settle me down.
There was no way Lane fit that part of the puzzle they named Robin.
And it wasn’t some authority-defiance disorder thing. I genuinely loved Lane. It drove my parents nuts. There was never just one incident that caused their hatred of Lane. He was never a part of their plan for me.
Shortly before the outbreak of Balzini’s Rash, my mom’s great-aunt died. I had never met the woman, but apparently, as a child, my mother had spent her summers at this aunt’s house up on Little Traverse Bay. If you’re at all familiar with the area, you know that it is a place known for being a playground for the rich. The houses are mammoth, and are considered cottages. When people talk about the area, they always add, “Well, that’s all that Chicago money.” I don’t know if my mom’s great-aunt was from Chicago, but apparently she had a lot of money.
There was no way my mother was going to miss the funeral. She and my dad made plans to go up north for it. I told them I couldn’t go because I had a bunch of tests coming up and I had a paper to write. It was probably overkill, but my mom wasn’t going to get into a shouting match with me over it. She did say I would have to go down into the city to stay with Jess while they were gone.
That was fine, I said. I packed a duffle and set it by the door.
“Put it in the car,” my dad said. “We’re dropping you off.”
“Oh, that’s cool,” I said. “But Lane is coming over to take me.”
My dad grabbed the shoulder strap of the bag. “The hell he is,” he said. He had it on his shoulder before I could grab it.
“If you think I’m not going to see Lane while you and Mom are up in Petoskey, you are kidding yourself.”
“I’ve made it clear to your sister—”
“Jon,” my mom said. “Not now.”
Dad stood his ground at the door. My mom finally took the strap off his shoulder and set the bag down. He must have felt emasculated, because the next thing I knew my dad was spewing more swear words than a comedian on a cable special and he was slamming the door. Mom started crying. This is where Jess usually stepped in, but she’s wasn’t there anymore and Dad was out in the car laying his hand on the horn.
So I went to my mom. I didn’t really know what to say. I probably should have just said, “I love you, Mommy,” to let her know she wasn’t alone. I stood in front of her. That’s all I did. I just stood there. I can’t remember the last time my mom held me or I hugged her. Mom laughed and shed more tears. She tried to stop crying, but she laughed and it became tears. Dad kept honking the horn. It was this weird cycle of noise. Finally she just walked out the door. I watched the car roll down the driveway. Dad drove away from the house.
Twenty minutes later, Lane arrived. We never left. We spent the next three days at my parents’ house. We never had sex—I was still reluctant after Jess’s experience. Instead, we did other things. By the second day, we pretty much just watched cable or some of Lane’s DVDs. We sat around in our underwear, smoking some of Lane’s grass, and eating pizza.
The phone rang a lot that first full day. It tapered off. The answering machine was full, so when it picked up, the caller, undoubtedly my mom, just hung up.
On the morning of the third day, my parents came home. It was early in the morning. I could see the sun outside my bedroom window. It was shining practically right into my eyes. Lane was asleep next to me, his back against mine. We weren’t wearing any clothes.
A door closed downstairs.
“Robs?” It was my dad.
I shook Lane. “Lane, get up.” He mumbled. I shook him again, this time harder. “Lane, get up now.”
Lane rolled over. “What the hell, Robbie?”
“My parents are home.”
“Shit.”
Lane jumped up just as my dad threw open my door. There was no, “Oops, sorry!” look on my dad’s face; his expression went from concerned to pissed just that quick. He reached for Lane with one hand and was getting ready to deck him with the other. Lane ducked, but my dad managed to get him into a headlock. He started jerking Lane around the room.
“I ought to beat the shit out of you,” he kept saying. “I ought to beat the living shit out of you.” I’m not sure if he meant me or Lane.
“Come on, man, I’m naked,” Lane yelled. “This is weirding me out.”
“Daddy, stop,” I said. My voice cracked. I was crying, and I never cried. At least not around my parents.
This went on for another few minutes until we all heard my mom. “Put your clothes on,” she said above all of us. We all three looked at her. I had never seen such remorse, such disgust, such anger on her face before.
“When you get dressed, young man, you will leave this house. You will never set foot in here again.” My mom turned and left. My dad practically growled at Lane as he shoved him out of the way.
“Shit,” Lane said. “That was assault, man. You assaulted me.”
“Go ahead and call the cops. While you’re telling them I assaulted you, you can also explain the weed that’s inside your bag downstairs. Get your clothes on,” my dad said.
I dressed under my blankets.
It was the last time I was ever in my house. Their house. Before the day was done, Jess had picked me up and moved me to her apartment in the city.
Lane eventually made his way into the city. We had been tweeting to keep in touch. He came into the sub shop where I had just started working. I shared my break meal with him while we sat outside so we could eat and smoke.
“Did you hear what happened down in the Everglades?” he asked.
He tells me about some swampers that were out gator hunting when they found what they thought was a dead body floating face down in the water. They got their boat over to it and shined their spotlights on it. One guy reached in to roll it over and the body—thing grabbed his arm. They couldn’t get the attacker off of the guy. It tried to drag him into the swamp. The one hunter who wasn’t being held fired a pistol at the attacker. The bullets, he said, went right through the attacker’s body, and the attacker kept holding the other guy, eventually sinking its teeth into the arm of the guy. The guy holding the gun started clubbing the zombie, but it was too late. He tossed the gun away and picked up a machete they used to cut their way through denser spots. He said he had two choices: chop off the zombie’s head or his buddy’s arm. He had a better chance with his buddy’s arm, so he hacked it off. The creature receded into the swamp, the arm still in its teeth.
I couldn’t believe Lane at the time. I mean, it sounded like something made for late night cable back in the ’80s. Lane was always finding a vintage DVD for us to watch. I told him he should write the screenplay for the Sci-Fi channel.
When he showed it to me on his phone, I still thought it was faked. It got so that it was easy for people to make low-budget movies. I just figured this was another Paranormal Activity rip-off.
But not long after that night, more and more videos started appearing on pages. Everyone was plussing them or liking them or pinning them. The videos went viral. The CDC quarantined the Everglades, calling it Ground Zero for the outbreak, but by then it was too late. Balzini’s Rash had become a pandemic.
I saw Lane one more time after that, and it wasn’t even in person. It was over my sister’s computer. We did a video link. He told me he was going with some of his friends to the Safety Zone. He offered to come to the city first to get me. I told him I was waiting for Jess and I asked him to email me or tweet when he got out west. I didn’t know then all means of communication were going to be cut off—except, I guess, for the people in charge.
“Maybe we’ll see one another again when this is all over,” he said.
At this point, I don’t think it ever will be over.
Seventeen
A few days later, I finally see Aubrey; it’s still kind of odd to call him by his first name of Nick. I don’t know why. Maybe because I knew a couple of Nicks in the old life and one was a real jerk.
I’m finally allowed to go outside of the headquarters’ compound. I’ve done well on the gun range and the obstacle course. LC Allison waves my survivalist training. “I’ve done well on my own,” she says. She gives me a smile that tells me she is impressed by me. On some level I begin to think I am her equal.
I’m still not certain why I had to wait. LC Allison kept telling me to be patient. I think I finally wore her down. She warns me, though, not to say anything about my videoconference with the Superiors.