Authors: Patrick Freivald
Chapter
28
A
week later, Mr. Cummings was in mid-rant about how retirement planning was
impossible if you might live forever, when the phone rang. He stopped, looked
at it, then picked it up. “Hello? I’m in the middle of a lecture.”
He listened for a moment, bobbing his head along
with the voice on the other end, then hung up and looked at Ani. “You’ve got an
appointment with guidance. Apparently it’s more important than my class.”
The living kids tittered, and he waved them down. “Oh,
stop. Where was I? Oh, right. So unlike me, you kids at some point are going to
get too old to work and will maybe want to move to Florida or just sit around
and do nothing, right? So that takes money, and you’re never going to earn
enough unless you invest it.”
A soldier Ani didn’t recognize opened the door,
followed by two more. Mr. Cummings’s sour glare did nothing to dissuade them as
they unlocked the cage, attached a catchpole to Ani’s helmet, and led her out
of the room. The door closed behind her on Mr. Cummings’s next line. “So
assuming you’re not stupid—”
The guards walked down the hall behind her, so she
couldn’t see them. They reached the ramp to the main hall and she turned left,
but her head didn’t twist with her body. “Uh, guidance is that way.” She
pointed to the left.
A pair of hands grabbed her wrist even as she was
shoved into the wall by the helmet.
“Hey, what gives?”
A needle stabbed into her arm, and she watched in
horror as black, thick fluid oozed out into the waiting tube. She froze,
horrified and violated. Coming to her senses, she flexed her arm, crushing the
phial against her bicep. Plastic or something like it, it didn’t break.
“Hurry the fuck up,” one of them said.
“HELP!” Ani screamed as they forced her hand
against the wall, twisting her shoulder in the socket. The phial clattered
behind her on the ground. “MISTER BENSON!” She wanted to fight, to lash out, to
hurt them—and she knew that she could. But they’d shot Kyle for less, and
burned him for not much more. “MOM!”
“Shut that bitch up!”
“With what? She’s already gagged.”
Her head jerked to the left, putting her face to
face with the open barrel of a pistol. The round-faced man behind it had
bloodshot gray eyes that darted between her face and something behind her.
“Be quiet,” he said.
She forced her body to relax, wincing as the
disembodied hands drew a phial, then a second, then a third. In the distance, a
siren wailed.
The man raised the pistol, Charlie’s Angels style,
and disappeared behind her. She tried to turn around and found she couldn’t.
They
must’ve wedged the catchpole on the railing.
She dropped to her knees, put her hands on her
helmet, and waited. A dozen soldiers rounded the corner, ten with assault
rifles, two in silver with flamethrowers. The blue-eyed baby-face from lunch
knelt next to her.
“Where’d they go?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Not toward the
office.”
“How many were there?”
“Three that I saw.”
“How much blood did they take?”
In the distance, she heard popping noises. It took
a moment to realize what it was: gunfire. She looked in his blue eyes and could
see he was as afraid as she was. Maybe more.
“How much?”
“Three samples. NO! Four. They took one, then
three more. Four total.”
He spoke, and it took her a moment to realize it
wasn’t to her. “Subject is unharmed. Three hostiles known; four phials taken.
Please advise.” In the distance, the gunfire stopped.
He patted her shoulder, then rose to his feet and
turned around. “Remand the subject to the main classroom, then report to Mr.
Benson at the security office.” Ani hadn’t realized they had a security office,
but in retrospect it made sense. “Two hostiles neutralized, at least one at
large. Stay alert.”
They manhandled Ani up the stairs to the Special
Dead room. It didn’t seem to occur to any of them to let her steer herself.
Once inside, they didn’t even undo the catchpole before disappearing out into
the hall. Ani stood in the center of the room, unable to turn around, facing
Lydia and Teah.
“Hi,” Mike said. Jeff didn’t even look up.
“What’s going on?” Teah asked. “Is it Bill?”
Ani snorted. “Of course it’s not Bill.” Teah
collapsed backward in relief. “Some soldiers grabbed me, made off with some
blood. The good guys are hunting for the last one.”
“Last one?” Lydia asked, wide-eyed.
“Yeah,” Ani said. “They neutralized two of them.”
“Neutralized?”
“Killed,” Teah said. Lydia squeaked at the word. “Or
maybe just injured.”
“Why would they want your blood?” Mr. Foster
asked.
Ani shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Keys rattled in the lock, then the door burst
open. Hands manipulated her helmet, and the pole came off. She stifled a
relieved sigh and turned around, locking eyes with Mr. Benson.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yeah.” She looked down at his blood-soaked right
thigh. “You?”
“Flesh wound.”
“Ah,” she said. He didn’t volunteer any more
information, so she pressed him. “Did you catch the last guy?”
“We killed four.”
“Then why do you look so worried?”
“We didn’t find the blood.”
Her mom bolted through the door and rushed her.
They hugged, squeezing tighter than two living humans would have, then let go.
Her mom kissed her forehead, her nose, her cheek, then hugged her again. “Are
you okay, sweetie?”
Ani smiled at the awkward, worried expressions of
her classmates. “I’m good, mom. They just took some blood, that’s all.”
They separated, and her mom looked at her arm.
After a moment’s scrutiny, she looked in Ani’s eyes. “Are you sure they didn’t
inject anything?”
Ani nodded. “I’m sure.”
Sarah leaned against the desk and sighed. “Okay,
well, that’s good.”
“What?” Sam asked.
Her mom waved her off.
“No, seriously,” Sam said. “What were you worried
about?”
“She’s my daughter, Sam. Isn’t that enough?”
Sam smiled around her bite guard. “Sure,
Sarah
.”
The name held a bite of sarcasm. “But that’s not what had you so worried.”
They stared at each other. “True. If at some point
I feel that you need to know what I’m thinking, I’ll let you know.”
Sam looked from her mom to Ani to Devon. “Well,
that’s clear enough.” She sat at her desk and stared straight forward, arms
crossed.
“Come on,” Ani’s mom said to her. “We’re going to
get you back to the lab, do some tests just in case.” She grabbed her hand and
led her out the door.
“Don’t forget your econ homework!” Mr. Foster
said.
“E-mail it!” her mom snapped.
Twenty rifle-toting soldiers crowded the hallway,
led by Mr. Benson. He took the lead, limping down the hall, while Ani and her
mom were swallowed into the middle of the group. They left off of the loading
dock, where snow fell in huge, fluffy clumps, and climbed into the back of an
armored troop transport. Ani sat alone with her mom.
“So, what gives?”
Her mom took a deep breath, blew it out, then took
another. With a suspicious glance at the driver, she kept her voice almost too
low to hear. “The Chinese are the only country in the world with stockpiles of
ZV. Intelligence tells us that they have no cure and that they aren’t very
happy with our attempts to create one.”
The transport pulled out, the enormous diesel
engine vibrating right through her. She peeked out one of the slots and saw six
jeeps in escort, each jammed with armed soldiers in snow-and-city camouflage.
“Okay,” Ani whispered. “How’s that new?”
“The question is, why did they target you, as
opposed to, well, anybody else?”
Ani leaned into her mom as they took a sharp turn.
“Coincidence?” She tried to sound hopeful.
Her mom’s thin-lipped grimace told her she failed.
“I very much doubt it.” She didn’t continue, so Ani waited. Eventually, Sarah licked
her lips and spoke. “Look, the only thing that makes sense to me is that the Chinese
know you’re the cure.”
She opened her mouth in shock, drooling around the
bite guard. “I’m the—what do you mean, I’m the cure?” They braked, then took a
hard left.
“Everything we’ve developed, cure-wise, has come
straight from your body chemistry. You’re the best-kept secret of the
Department of Homeland Security.”
Holy shit.
“That’s impossible. They’ve been working on a cure—”
“—since before you were born. To no avail, until I
rejoined the project.”
“No, wait, who else knows about this?”
She ticked them off on her fingers. “You, me,
Rishi. That’s it. You just found out, and they didn’t learn it from me.”
“So Rishi’s a spy?”
She shook her head. “No, of course not. Rishi’s a
patriot, maybe too much a patriot, but he might not have kept his notes as
secure as he should have.”
Ani thought of Dr. Freeman, smug and composed in a
room full of zombie children. “Or maybe he traded the secret for more research
funding.”
Sarah hesitated. “I don’t think he’d do that.”
Ani rolled her eyes. “If it was somebody else’s
kid, and you were going to be closed down otherwise, you would.” Her mom
recoiled as if struck, but Ani didn’t back down. “Seriously. You totally would.”
She sighed. “Yeah. Maybe I would.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. To infiltrate the school, the plan
had to be in place for a long time. Months, maybe years. Rishi and I have to
talk about this anyway, so we’ll talk. If it comes up, I didn’t tell you
anything.”
“Sure, Mom.”
Chapter
29
By
Friday they still hadn’t found the blood or any other spies. They were kept on
lockdown Friday through the long weekend, while every employee was re-vetted,
polygraphed, probed, prodded, and whatever else they felt the need to do. The
impression Ani’s mom gave her was that everyone else seemed to be on the
up-and-up. As to the soldiers who’d turned traitor, she refused to say anything
on security grounds.
The world turned white with snow on Martin Luther
King Jr. Day, a meteorological irony not lost on Ani. Halfway through a game of
Scrabble with Devon and Sam, the door to the lounge opened, admitting a burn
team. The pair of silver-clad soldiers stepped to either side of the door, and
between them walked Tiffany Daniels in a bulky, navy blue sweater and jeans.
They smiled at each other, and she waved to the
room. “Hey, everyone. How’s it going?”
They exchanged small talk for a minute before Teah
snapped.
“What the fuck? I can’t see Bill but Fey can just
walk in?”
Tiff scowled at the discarded nickname and put her
hands on her hips. “Not for nothing, but your boyfriend can sign in and visit
just like me or anybody else.” Teah opened her mouth to reply and Tiffany cut
her off. “And a billion pages of paperwork, a background check that takes
months and months, a strip search and an x-ray ain’t exactly just walking in.
For a minute I didn’t know if they were guards or gynecologists.”
Ew.
Teah sulked back down onto the couch. Everybody
but Tiff knew that Bill was forbidden from the premises, for the same reason
none of them had phones.
At least she’s not looking for
a fight.
Ani excused herself from the game and stepped
outside with Tiffany. Nobody seemed to mind, but nobody seemed to much like
Tiff, either. Her years as queen of the emos did her no favors outside high
school.
They took the long way around the labs, the outer
ring that always reminded Ani of a hospital. The burn team followed them as they
talked about nothing—Tiff’s mom, Ani’s mom, the drudgeries of school and work.
It occurred to Ani that with regular injections of her mother’s serum she was
no danger, which meant the burn team was for Tiff in case she became infected.
Fun thought.
The prattle continued until Ani couldn’t take it
anymore. Tiffany Daniels was her friend, but people fit into Tiff’s life, not
the other way around. If she took the trouble to visit, it was because she
needed to talk.
“So, how’s your little package?”
Tiffany stopped dead. “Twins.” Her curt reply held
no joy, and she looked downright terrified. “I’m having twins.”
Ani forced a smile. “Congratulations! That’s
awesome!”
She didn’t smile back. “Not for nothing, but every
mom I know is miserable until her kids are, like, thirty. I don’t know what the
hell I was going to do with one kid, much less two.”
“How’d Chuck take the news?”
She hesitated, then kept walking. “Chuck’s...going
away for a while.”
Ani pulled back. “I thought he got off?”
“He did, on the dealing.” She didn’t elaborate, so
they kept walking. “So I told him we’re having girls. Plural. And what does he
do?”
Ani had no idea, so she said as much.
“He goes out for smokes. I get a call six hours
later, he’s in county. They pinched him rolling Sharon’s.”
“The liquor store?”
Tiff rolled her eyes. “No, some other Sharon’s. Of
course the liquor store.”
“He was stealing booze.”
Tiff’s sigh was long, loud, and intended to be
obnoxious. “You’re such a goody-goody. Stealing booze is
crashing
the
liquor store.
Rolling
the store means taking money. With a gun.”
Wow.
Ani didn’t trust herself to say anything that
wouldn’t send Tiff on a rampage, so she didn’t. All she could think was,
the
longer Chuck stays in, the better for Tiffany and her kids.
“It wasn’t a real gun, neither. It shot pellets,
and it didn’t even work.”
Ani raised her eyebrows in an interest she didn’t
feel. “But?”
“But he’s still on probation and that means no
nothing as far as guns. Even pellet guns.”
“So what’s he looking at?”
“They think he can plea down to, like, eight to ten.
Then good behavior cuts that maybe in half?”
If it was a question, Ani didn’t know the answer.
“So, figure the girls will be fourish by the time
he’s out.”
“That’s a long time.”
“Yeah, too long. But could have been worse. He
didn’t hurt nobody or nothing, and he’ll be there for his girls before they’re
too old.”
“That’s good.” They’d made a full circuit back to
the lounge door, but Tiff didn’t seem done. “Another lap?”
“Sure, why not.”
Halfway around, Tiff stopped and grabbed her
hands.
“Hey, I got something real serious to ask you.”
Ani steeled herself. “Okay.”
“If we do the thing here, will you be my maid of
honor?”
I should have expected that.
“Um... ”
But I didn’t.
“Uh....
”
Do you have no friends, Tiffany?
“Don’t you look at me like that. I’m totally
serious.”
“Tiff, if you can’t even say the thing you shouldn’t
even be thinking about doing the thing, much less planning the thing.”
Her eyes flashed. “
Married
, all right? We’re
getting fucking married before he goes in, and I’m fucking asking you to be my
fucking maid of fucking honor. Yes or no?”
Ani couldn’t help but smile. “Well if you put it
like that, why not?”
Tiff leapt into her arms, wrapping her in a
four-limbed hug. Ani stumbled into the wall, steadied herself, and tried not to
think about what she’d just agreed to. She hugged back, then disentangled
herself with a nervous look at the burn team.
“In the future, if you’re going to do that, don’t.
I prefer room temperature to ten thousand degrees.”
Tiff took a step back, with a nervous look for the
silver-clad men, and shrugged. “Sorry. Just got excited, you know?”
“Well, I’m happy for you,” Ani lied. “When’s the
big day?”
She shrugged again. “We’re putting it off until we
know his court date. Probably summer sometime.” She looked at her watch. “Look,
I got to go. They only gave me a half hour. Be in touch, yeah?”
“I can’t,” Ani said. “Except by letter.”
Tiffany stopped mid-stride. “Oh, right. I’ll be in
touch.” She walked off toward the main entrance, the burn team in tow.
*
* *
The rest of the week rolled by without incident.
Her lesson with Dr. Herley went much as before, only this time focused on
classical compositions. Twenty minutes in, her mom left to get work done at the
lab. Either she forgot or didn’t care that any zombie was never to be alone
with a living human, ever.
Whatever.
When the lesson ended, he left, and Ani practiced
until her mom got home at midnight.