Population: Katie

by Connor, Penelope

  “Derek -” I say, but he cuts me off suddenly.

  “Do you hear that?”

  “What?” I ask, and then stop to listen. There’s a distinct scraping noise coming from the window. Derek and I both turn and peer down to the ground, where, three floors below, the same Aggressor that attacked me is clawing at the wall below the window.

  “It followed us,” he says, more to himself them to me. “How could it? We’ve passed through two buildings.”

  “Maybe the Aggressors are better at tracking?” I suggest.

  Derek looks at me, apparently forming a theory. He reaches over and grabs the bloody piece of fabric that he ripped from my pants, then leans out the window, and throws it as far down the alley as he can.

  The Aggressor, who didn’t even see Derek throw the cloth, so intent was he on scaling the flat wall, jerks around suddenly and charges at the fabric. He picks it up and begins tearing at it with his teeth, then, content for the moment, begins to walk away.

  “It’s following you.”

  “That doesn’t make any...“ A sudden realization dawns on me, the thing that I, somewhere, must have known. It’s already in my journal, plain as day. Two lists, two enemies. And two different sets of clinical tests for the vaccine; one that works, and one that does not.

  I look up at Derek, certain in my realization. “There are two different viruses.”

  Derek accepts this information without question, adding what I don’t dare say aloud: “And you’re only immune to one of them.”

  Chapter 15 – Exodus

  “It’s so obvious,” I berate myself as I climb back down the emergency ladder and through the window into the second floor of our building. “It’s been there all along. Not one virus, that affects people two different ways, but two distinct viruses. That has to be it, right? It’s more than a coincidence - right?”

  Beside me, Derek is quiet and contemplative. While I’ve spun into a litany of mumbling to myself about the obvious signs, I realize that he hasn’t said a word since we concluded that I’m only protected against the virus that creates Passives.

  “It doesn’t add up, though,” Derek says, sitting down on the windowsill, not yet ready to turn in. He’s hunched forward with one hand on his knee, and one curled under his chin, reminding me of The Thinker. It’s an appropriate pose to adopt, considering the amount of information that’s swirling around in our respective heads at the moment. He’s read through the journal, knows just as much as I do about the virus... or possibly viruses... and so I await some sort of answer. Or maybe a theory. Anything at all.

  “But why?” he finally asks. “Did the virus mutate? Or have there always been two viruses?”

  “I don’t know,” I sigh, sitting down on the spot, both of my hands curled under my chin.

  “Why would the Other Side release two different viruses?” Derek asks himself aloud.

  “To be thorough?” I suggest.

  “Okay,” Derek says, standing up suddenly. “Let’s get you cleaned up, then get to bed. Crash the planning meeting tomorrow morning, and bring that journal you have. We’ll figure this out.”

  I stand up slowly, and begin to follow Derek to the room where our medical supplies are stored. Once my leg has been cleaned and bandaged, we walk quietly to the sleeping room.

  “It’s out there,” I whisper. “It’s waiting.”

  Derek’s suddenly beside me again. I suppose he paused to let me catch up and heard me mumbling to myself and so replies, “They’re always out there. The trick is not to think about it.”

  I awake a few hours later without even realizing that I had fallen asleep. I guess my concerns about the Aggressor outside didn’t stack up against my overtired brain once my head actually hit the pillow.

  The room’s mostly empty by now and the stragglers are quickly making their way down to breakfast. It’s supposed to be our big day of rest, so sleeping in is an option, but I don’t think I’ll be able to fall back asleep now. I slowly turn over and let out a little cry of surprise as I find Kimberly looming over me. I assume that she was trying to see if I was awake, but after the night I had, I’m a little jumpier than usual.

  “Good morning, Sunshine,” she says as she plunks down cross-legged on the mattress next to me. “I noticed you and Derek coming to bed rather late... or should I say, early.”

  There is an assuming tone in her voice, like she knows a secret, but wants to hear it from me. Whatever she’s imagining, I doubt it comes anywhere near reality.

  I sit up, stretching my arms over my head slowly, and yawn, all the while watching her expression. Kimberly remains politely silent, but her eyes are wide, and she’s biting her bottom lip as she fights back the urge to strangle the information out of me.

  “It’s a secret,” I tell her, knowing full well that this excuse will not fly.

  “Puh-lease!” Kimberly laughs. “I know they’ve been sneaking out. You don’t have to lie for them. Just tell me where you went.”

  I sigh, knowing I can’t escape this conversation. “There’s a microbrewery a few buildings down. Kyle and I followed them, but Derek caught us and sent Kyle back. He let me tag along. We drank and chatted all night.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, and it’s half true. We broached several subjects, and this early, without the advantage of breakfast, it’s hard to pinpoint every word that was exchanged.

  “C’mon!” Kimberly exclaims. “I’m not twenty anymore, let me live vicariously!”

  This attracts the attention of the last remaining person in the sleeping room, one of Kyle’s younger friends. The boy rolls his eyes, recognizing the squeals of girl gossip, and quickly makes his exit, leaving me alone with Kimberly.

  I contemplate chasing after him to escape, but Kimberly continues quickly: “Just one topic, you don’t have to tell me everything. Just... something.”

  “You are so gossip starved,” I say, but can’t suppress the smile.

  “Not for long...” Kimberly trills playfully.

  I roll my eyes and sit cross-legged, mirroring Kimberly on the mattress. “Okay, okay. We talked about... personal stuff. Like, well, a lot of the stuff that you and I have talked about.”

  “Did you tell him about Dale?” Kimberly asks.

  “A little,” I say. “I showed him my scars.”

  “Really?” Kimberly asks, knowing how self-conscious I am about the gnarled tooth marks forever embedded in the crook of my arm.

  “We should get some breakfast,” I suggest. Momentarily forgetting my mangled leg, I throw off the covers and hop to my feet. The leg in question is quick to remind me. “Ow…”

  “Are you okay?” Kimberly asks, jumping to her feet to help stabilize me.

  “Fine,” I lie, straightening myself up. I look down at my leg to see that I’m still wearing the same pants from last night, which are cut off at the knee and reveal my clearly bandaged calf. “Okay, something else might have happened.”

  Kimberly makes me sit back down on the mattress, shaking her head and tut-tutting like a disapproving mother. “Okay, what’s this about?”

  I take in a deep breath, sure that an abundance of air will help force the story out quicker. “Okay, so we were passing between the buildings on these boards that go between the buildings, only one fell, and I wasn’t up to jumping over rooftops like a crazy person, so I went out to the front of the building. Derek was supposed to let me into the next building, but he couldn’t open the door, so he went to the window, and told me to climb up.”

  “Did you fall, trying to climb?”

  “No,” I say, proceeding to tell her the part about the Aggressor chasing me and grabbing at my leg. I try to keep the details factual, but even in point form the gravity of the situation comes across. Kimberly covers her mouth with her hands, her eyes wide as she takes in the story. “But, clearly, I’m okay. He pulled me up onto the board, and out of reach.”

  “Oh, my gosh.” Kimberly
says, her tone conveying almost as much terror as her eyes. “I knew they were going, I saw them three days ago. I never should have kept it to myself! You could have been... I mean, I’ve seen the way they attack... oh, Katie!” Kimberly throws her arms around me, leaning forward onto her knees to pull me into an awkward hug. After a minute, she releases me and sits back down. “I have to talk to Derek… they can’t do that again.”

  “No, no, it was me. I was stupid and careless. I don’t want to get anyone in trouble. I’m sure they won’t go out again after this.”

  “Okay,” Kimberly says with a sigh. ”I won’t tell on them. You’re so lucky that Derek was there with you. What happened after he pulled you up onto the board?”

  Although Kimberly’s question is innocent enough, I immediately feel the need to look down and fumble with the jagged edge of my pants. I’d been meaning to skip over this part of the story. Unfortunately, I got so caught up in telling it in a way that wouldn’t frighten Kimberly any more than necessary that I hadn’t bothered to think past the near-death experience. And I’m sure Kimberly has noticed my face turn a few shades of red.

  “What?” Kimberly asks suspiciously.

  “Um... he sorta... kissed me.”

  “Sorta?”

  “Okay, definitely,” I admit. “He kissed me. He kissed me really, really good.”

  Kimberly’s hands are back over her mouth again, but this time she’s laughing. I want to take offense at the noise, but notice that Kimberly’s looking down at my leg. I follow her gaze to see that I’m bleeding through my bandages.

  “Oh, gross,” I say, starting to stand up.

  “Wait here,” she says, pushing me back down, “I’ll go get something for that; and then,” she points two fingers from her eyes, to me, then back to her eyes again, as though to ensure I am paying attention, “you are giving me details.”

  I’m alone in the sleeping room for about thirty seconds before Kyle bursts in. I pull the sheets up over my bandaged leg, in no mood to explain again how I got my injury, especially to Derek’s little brother.

  “You’re up!” Kyle says, all but crashing into the mattress beside me. “What happened? Where did you guys go? And don’t tell me that it’s just a practice run for the walkway idea. Derek thinks I’m a frikkin’ idiot.”

  I laugh, imagining Derek telling this story to Kyle over breakfast when the boy asked him about where he had taken me the night before. And while I feel bad keeping the secret from Kyle, I can see now why it was such a closely guarded secret to begin with. No one in the group ever consumes any mind-altering substances. Ever. Our minds are considered the only thing that keeps us both separate, and safe from the Passives. Indulgences like alcohol are strictly forbidden. Leaving the group at night is strictly forbidden. In fact, Derek bringing me along at all shows how much he has come to trust me. I’m on his team, and during missions we all trust each other with our lives, but this wasn’t a mission. There was no reason for him to invite me really. He didn’t owe me anything, and he knew that we wouldn’t be able to tattle on him without implicating ourselves in the late night escapades.

  “Katie, you’re all up in your head again,” Kyle says, interrupting my thoughts. “Just tell me. Please?”

  “Okay,” I say, and then quiet down to a whisper, “but you can’t tell anyone, and you can’t try and go there.”

  Kyle nods his head. “I swear.”

  I suddenly feel as though I’m the teenager as I whisper, even more quietly, to Kyle, “We all got drunk, a few buildings away.”

  “My brother led a bunch of people to another building so you guys could drink?” Kyle asks, as though this story is even less likely than the one Derek tried to feed him. “Wait, why did you have to go so far away?”

  “There’s a microbrewery down the street,” I tell him. “Most of the stock’s still there. It just looks like an empty warehouse, so I guess nobody ever bothered raiding it.”

  “That is so cool.” Kyle says, slumping over slightly to prop his cheek onto his upturned palm.

  At that moment, Kimberly returns rolling some bandages, and clearly unaware of the new addition to the room. “Okay, so when you kissed Derek… was it like all slow and romantic like gravity, or did you guys just maul each other? I really can’t picture - oh! Kyle!”

  Kyle turns from me, to Kimberly, then back to me, looking thoroughly disgusted. “You kissed my brother? Ugh... gross.”

  “You weren’t supposed to hear that,” I say, glaring at Kimberly, who has the good grace to look sheepish as she stands in the middle of the room. “But technically, he kissed me.”

  “Still gross,” Kyle says matter-of-factly, shaking his head as though he might be able to dislodge the visual.

  I shoot a pointed look from Kimberly, down to where my leg is hiding under the blankets.

  She perks up, ready to remedy the situation as best she can by at least keeping my injury private. She makes a thoughtful face, debating how best to get Kyle to leave the room without making him suspicious.

  “Well,” Kimberly says casually as she makes her way over to the bed, bandages held behind her back. “Girls really dig that mushy stuff, so we’re gonna be sitting around here talking about the kiss. In detail.”

  Kyle takes in Kimberly’s words with increasing disgust, then finally stands up and starts to walk out of the room.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to stay?” she calls after him playfully. “You might learn a thing or two.”

  Kyle waves us off and continues out the door, still shaking his head.

  “Thank you,” I say, as soon as Kyle’s out of the room. “I really don’t want anyone else to find out about this.”

  Kimberly nods as she sets the bandages on the bed, and then promptly sets to work on my leg. “Okay, now the details.”

  “What details?” I ask, genuinely unsure of both the amount of description that Kimberly wants, and the amount that I’m willing to part with.

  “Everything,” she says enthusiastically. She has my bloody bandage off, folding it up into a bit of plastic that she has brought with her. She makes a face at my leg, but must not want to derail the conversation, as she makes no comment about it, instead just getting straight to cleaning it up.

  “Seriously, I just can’t picture it. I mean, don’t get me wrong, he’s cute. I just can’t imagine Derek wrapped up in a moment of genuine passion.” She pauses, thoughtful for a moment. “He wasn’t all bossy or weird or anything, was he?”

  “No,” I say, laughing. “Look, I guess he was just happy that I was okay. It just kinda happened; one minute I’m dangling in the air, having my leg clawed apart, and the next, it’s all hands and tongues and stuff.”

  “Aww,” Kimberly says. “So did you guys run up to the third floor and get it on?”

  “No! Wait... why the third floor?” I ask suspiciously.

  “Oh,” Kimberly says casually, “it’s sorta the hot spot around here, where you go when you want a little private time.”

  “No,” I confirm. “I dunno, I don’t really think about stuff like that.”

  “Oh, okay.” Kimberly says with a shrug.

  I eye her suspiciously, “And you know about the third floor because...”

  Kimberly smiles, finishing up with my leg. “My husband is hot stuff.”

  After breakfast, I find myself standing outside of the planning room door, journal in hand, ready to crash the meeting as Derek had requested.

  I’ve only ever been in the room once, when I had first arrived, and it looks much the same today as it did then. A map is laid out on the large conference table, and the emergency backpack is sitting at the end of the desk.

  Glory, the Ims, Erin, and Derek are all there, actually sitting at the table this time. Derek looks worn out from the previous night, his hair appearing messy somehow, despite how short he keeps it. There are bags under his eyes, and I wonder how early he had to get up today.

  No one looks surprised that I’ve crashed the pa
rty, so I assume that Derek has briefed them on the situation.

  “Hi,” I say with a nervous smile, hoping that Derek’s better at keeping details to himself than I am.

  Tim waves me forward, so I join them, grabbing an open seat and setting the journal on the table in front of me.

  Glory’s the first to speak up. “Derek tells me that you two discovered some new information about the virus.”

  I guess that means I’m talking now. I open up the journal. It’s the first time I’ve looked at it since deciding to stay. I flip to the list I made of the traits of the Passives and Aggressors. It seems like ages ago since I sat on the roof at the MegaMart, scribing this list. “Yes. You’ve all read through this, at least a little. Based on Dr. Ashmore’s notes, and my own observations, I made two lists about the, um, Infected People. I’d noticed that some of them act differently, but I didn’t really know why.”

  Everyone watches me politely; it’s clear that they all know this. I know that they know this, but starting with the old news is easier than jumping into the new theory. “Well, we have a theory about why that is.” I pause, but no one comments, so I continue. “Okay. So, I’ve been immunized against the virus. But based on Dr. Ashmore’s notes, and the different traits of the Passives and Aggressors, it’s possible that there are two separate strains of the virus. One that the immunization works on, and one that it doesn’t. At least, not completely.”

  “What do you mean?” Erin asks.

  “Well, I was attacked by an Aggressor once,” I say, holding my covered arm up. “So, the immunization might work, but we know it doesn’t work the same way with them as it does with the Passives, since last night the Aggressor that we saw was trailing me.”

  “How do you know that it wasn’t trailing Derek?” Kimberly asks, “Wouldn’t that make more sense?”

  “Sure,” Derek finally cuts in, “but it wasn’t. I was too far away for it to decide to target me. It clearly attacked Katie. And then it trailed us back through several buildings.”