Authors: Patrick Freivald
Chapter
3
When
they walked into school that Friday, Superintendent Salter pulled Mr. Benson
aside and murmured through his full gray beard. The kids waited in a single
file line while the conversation heated up. After a few minutes of violent
gestures and red faces, Mr. Benson led them into the auditorium.
The stained paint on the former gymnasium walls
was faded beige, the blue upholstery on the seats was torn and ragged and
repaired with gaffers tape—Ani remembered it well. A small, smiling Asian man
in an expensive suit stood near a laptop hooked up to the projector. Mr. Clark—Ani
thought it was Mr. Clark—stood in the back, visor down, pilot light glowing
blue.
Teah led them into the third row, where they sat. Ani
pulled out her cell phone and texted her mom: “WTF?”
The house lights dimmed, and the projector
displayed a logo of a giant K circled by a Chinese dragon. The guy in the suit
spoke; his accent was all New Jersey. “Okay, kids, how you doing? My name’s Jim
Chang, call me Jim, and I’m here to talk to you about some opportunities with
Klinecorps Pharmaceuticals. Have you heard of us?”
Kyle yelled, “NO,” while Ani checked her phone.
The message from her mom read, “?” She was about
to reply when it buzzed again.
“WHERE ARE YOU?”
Ani typed in A-U-D and hit “Send.”
The guy babbled about the history of the company. Ani
put in an ear bud and offered the other to Teah. Teah took it, so Ani swapped
Chopin for Rihanna and cranked the volume.
A few minutes later the door slammed open and Mr. Benson
leaped to his feet. He settled back as Dr. Romero stalked through, face red and
eyes ablaze. She ignored Jim and looked at Superintendent Salter.
“This is unacceptable.”
Ani killed the volume on the iPod.
Mr. Salter raised his hands in what he probably
thought was a calming manner but to Ani looked patronizing. “Now, Sarah, you
don’t—”
She cut him off. “Mr. Benson, shut off the projector.”
She pointed at Jim. “Then escort this man off the property. If he resists, use whatever
force is necessary.” Mr. Benson sauntered forward, unplugged the projector, and
slammed the laptop shut far harder than he had to. “And confiscate that laptop.”
Mr. Salter’s face was red as Dr. Romero’s. “You
don’t have the authority—”
“Shut up,” she said. Joe gasped in astonishment. Lydia
cringed. “I don’t work for you or for this district. I work for the United
States government. There will be no changes in routine or protocol without my
explicit approval and the consent of the board. After I’ve examined the intent
of this representative,” she jerked her head at Jim, “I’ll make a full report
to the board; and advised by the friendly lawyers at the Department of Defense,
they can decide what authority I do and don’t have in this situation. Meantime,
the men with the weapons take orders from me.”
Mr. Salter opened his mouth to reply, then closed
it. Behind Dr. Romero, Dr. Banerjee stepped into the room. His lush tone and faint
Indian accent sounded charming. “Is there a problem?” Ani had never known him
to raise his voice.
Dr. Romero stepped to the side. “Oh, good, Rishi.
I’m sure Superintendent Salter will explain to you what a representative of
Kleincorps Pharmaceutical is doing giving a presentation to our students
without our or their parents’ consent.”
Mr. Benson had stopped Jim mid-march. Dr. Banerjee
nodded, and Mr. Benson shoved Jim—no longer smiling—toward the door. Jim gave Ani's
mom a black look and stalked out. “Mr. Clark,” Dr. Banerjee said without
turning around, “escort the children to their classroom.”
“Yes, Colonel.” He herded them out the door and to
their room.
Mr. Foster looked surprised to see them. Miss
Pulver wasn’t even there. “I thought they had an assembly?” he asked no one in
particular. Mr. Clark shrugged and took his spot at the far end of the room. They
sat down while Mr. Foster rummaged around his desk.
Friday. Awesome.
*
* *
Sarah Romero passed a piece of paper across the
kitchen table. “Can you believe the gall of that man?”
Ani took it. The Kleincorps Pharmaceuticals
letterhead framed an agreement between the company and the “signing parties”
for a series of tests and medical product development for ZV carriers in
exchange for ten thousand dollars. “Ten grand? Kyle would sign this in a heartbeat.”
“So would Mike,” her mom said.
“That’s ridiculous. Mike’s not competent to sign
anything right now.”
Her mom snatched the paper back. “It doesn’t
matter. He’s twenty years old, and his dad refuses to have him declared a
mental dependent. He’d sign it just for a smile.” She crumpled the paper and
tossed into the garbage.
“Why was Mr. Salter willing to go along with this?”
Her mom shook her head. “I’m not sure. There’s
nothing on the laptop that indicates he was getting paid or that the school
would be getting anything from Kleincorps. But I’m sure if we dig deep enough,
we’ll find money.”
“What a scumbag.”
“Rishi’s fit to be tied. I’ve never seen him so
angry.”
Yeah, Mom, but he doesn’t actually care about any of us, either. We’re
just research subjects to him.
Her mom took her hand from across the table and
squeezed it. “Is your homework done?”
“Yeah.” She squeezed back. “Except for precalc. I
can’t figure it out, and Mr. Foster’s no help.”
“Well, let’s take a look. It’s been a long time,
but I can probably puzzle through it.”
*
* *
Ani scowled across the coffee table at Devon, who
returned the look with bland disinterest. Ani reached toward the board that sat
between them and Devon slapped her fingers. Ani jerked her hand back. “What?”
Devon sighed. “If you castle now, I’ll move my
bishop to rook four. Then, you’ll have a choice of either losing your rook or
sacrificing two pawns and landing yourself in check.”
“So what should she do?” Sam asked.
“Something smarter,” Devon said.
Kyle spoke up from in front of the TV, where he
was racing cars on the Xbox. “Like playing a game that doesn’t suck.”
Ani moved the pawn in front of her queen up one
square.
Devon surveyed the board, then looked her in the
eyes. “Better. Now let me show you why that was a bad idea....”
Later, as Ani dumped the pieces into the box, Joe
patted her on the back. “You’re getting better.”
Ani stopped biting her lip. “I lost seven games in
a row.”
Joe took the box and put it on the shelf next to
the other games. “Yeah, but she had to think to beat you. Six months ago you
would’ve lost twenty in a row, and she wouldn’t have had to try.” His knuckles brushed
her forearm, but his eyes were locked on the floor. “I like the way you don’t
give up.”
You have no idea.
She took a step back. His
proximity didn’t bother her, but she didn’t want him getting any ideas. “Thanks,
Joe. It’s nice of you to spend your free time helping Mike with his English.”
He gave her a sheepish grin. “I kind of like it,
actually. I think maybe I’ll be a teacher, you know, later.”
“I think you’d make a good one. You have a real
gift.”
“Hey,” Teah said from the couch. “I think I just
threw up in my mouth a little.”
Kyle barked a laugh.
The alarm on the TV stand beeped.
Bedtime.
*
* *
Ani stripped and dropped her clothes on the floor,
then jammed her thumb against the button on the “bed.” The lid slid back with a
hiss as the pressure seal broke. She barely noticed the harsh chemical smell
anymore—her nose just didn’t work that well—but the slimy cold hit her every
time. Why ZV affected some nerves and not others was a nut they hadn’t yet
cracked, but Ani was sure that somewhere amongst the legions of people toiling
away in the lab seven days a week, one of them, somewhere, was working on exactly
that problem at exactly that moment.
She set her iPod to shuffle classical music. It
started with the Boston Pops.
Close enough.
She shut her eyes, slid the
rest of the way under the liquid, and pushed the “close” button.
Whenever Joe was nice to her, all she could think
of was prom.
*
* *
“Put your hands over your head, please,” Dr. Banerjee
said. As usual, the hazmat suit muffled his voice to the point where Ani couldn’t
understand him, but it carried just fine over the speakers on the wall.
Ani did as she was told, and her mom reached
around from behind her and lifted her shirt to expose her torso, the thick
rubber gloves making the task more of a chore than it should have been.
“This will hurt,” Dr. Banerjee said. It always
did, but he always warned her. The thing he used was kind of like a syringe,
but bigger and uglier, and instead of drawing blood or other fluids it took a
tiny cylinder of flesh that Sam called a “core sample.” Dr. Banerjee placed it
between two of her ribs and pressed, punching it straight through her torso and
out her back. She gritted her teeth and tried to smile at her mom in the mirror
at the same time. It looked like a sneer.
A sunken depression, almost gone, was all that
remained from the grease burn she had gotten at the Fall Foliage Festival a
lifetime ago. The treatments that Dr. Banerjee had at his disposal made some of
what her mom had been doing look like child’s play. Then again, her mom’s work
on an actual cure had outstripped anything Dr. Banerjee and his team had done
in the previous decade.
It hurt more when he pulled the thing out. He
placed the red, drippy, nasty thing in a biohazard tray, slid the tray into the
wall, and resealed the room. The precautions they once used to prevent possible
infection or escape of the zombie virus now served only to make sure that their
samples were pure. Her mom’s ZV suppressors had advanced to the point that as
long as the dead had regular injections, there was zero risk of infection.
As if on cue, her mom stabbed a syringe into the
back of her skull. She didn’t feel it except as a vague prick.
It’s weird
that the brain doesn’t have any nerves.
She used to need injections every
two to three days, but with the new formula, it was down to once a week.
Her mom pulled out the needle, dropped it into a
biohazard bag, and stepped to the side. Dr. Banerjee paced and recited his
observations into the microphone as he did every week. No physiological
changes, no psychological changes, virology results pending—but of course they
would be no different—and no other changes of note. Same as last week, and the
eighteen weeks previous.
After a long wait Ani was released and allowed to
go back home. She straightened her clothes, put on her wig, and walked out of
the airlock. She glanced into the next observation room on her way and stopped
in surprise. Dr. Banerjee pressed the plunger on a syringe filled with some
kind of green liquid, injecting it into Mike’s arm. Her mom was nowhere to be
seen.
Dr. Banerjee’s soft, brown eyes rested on hers. After
a long moment, he dropped the syringe into a biohazard bag and turned away from
the door. Ani frowned.
*
* *
“I miss church,” Lydia whispered. She fiddled with
the silver cross at her neck and looked at the clock. Ani followed her gaze.
11:00
am Sunday. It’s got to be hard to be a Baptist zombie. Especially when your
preacher organized marches encouraging the government to send you to hell where
you belong.
“Shush,” Ani said, patting Lydia’s knee and
returning her eyes to the performance. Kyle’s riff wasn’t anything special, but
he wasn’t murdering the bass like he had last month. Joe’s lead guitar was
sloppy and enthusiastic, reminiscent of his idols, The Ramones, and was about
all he could pull off with the lost dexterity that came with some ZV infection.
Sam’s vocals were a growling, indecipherable mess that had their own kind of
charm. Without a drummer, the tempo wandered.
The last chord hung in the air. The audience, all
eight of them, clapped politely—even Mr. Clark, who had shouldered the flamethrower
and lifted his visor, exposing a rugged, handsome face under a graying goatee.
Lydia grabbed Ani’s hand and squeezed hard.
Ani patted her arm. “You’re up.”
Lydia stood, ran her hands down her spring dress,
and picked up the paper from the floor. She stumbled on her way to the
microphone, cleared her throat, and opened her mouth. “Um....” With wide eyes
and trembling hands, she adjusted the mike. She exhaled, shook out her nerves,
and tried again.
Her confident voice erupted in a staccato sestina,
a poem that recycled words according to a predetermined pattern. Ani smirked,
surprised.
I didn’t know you had it in you.
The meaning was hard to follow,
something about love and loss and deliberate callousness, but the rhythm had a
harsh beauty to it. Ani had encouraged her to try poetry because she was a
talentless mess when it came to music.