by Ann Christy
Tom and the rest did a good job of taking down most of the leaders here, as evidenced by the piles of bodies scattered in the yards that I can see, but they didn’t get all of them. I’m sort of expecting someone like Emily, someone that I can relate to, but she’s nothing like that. She’s too far away for me to see details, but her aggressive stance, the covering of brownish blood all over her, and the wild way she jerks her head around distinguishes her from Emily in every way that matters.
Even without details, I can see when she faces our direction by the way her posture tightens. When she starts an awkward run in our direction, I almost lose it and take off for the car. Every nerve in my body is screaming for me to run away. This is stupid and suicidal.
“Emily, keep them away from me!” I hiss, scooting a step closer to her, but remaining out of the reach of her chained hands.
She’s busy stuffing birds into her mouth and I’m not sure she even hears me. To me, she almost looks desperate to eat in a way I haven’t seen since she first woke up. She’s calmer and far more in control when she eats, so I’m hoping this is her way of improving her control. Of course, that assumes she’s aware enough to think that far ahead.
As the girl in-betweener builds up speed toward the double fence, the others close behind her, I look past Emily to Luke. He’s a little less placid, his eyes riveted on the approaching in-betweeners. “Luke! Get her to help me. Keep them away.”
My teeth are chattering I’m so afraid and I hear the sound of a dog clicker from the trees behind me, sharp with warning. At least I know they’re on the problem, that click a warning that each should get ready to fire. If I hear two fast clicks, I need to run to the car without hesitation. My ears are practically tugging off my head, I’m listening so hard for those clicks. I’m sure I’ll miss it in the general cacophony of this many in-betweeners.
“Luke!” I exclaim. There are only a few seconds left before scary-girl reaches the fence.
He starts humming, and Emily almost immediately fixes her gaze on the girl, a bird still half-consumed in her hand. Her face is awash with blood from her lips to her chin.
The growl that comes out of Emily’s throat is unlike anything I’ve heard from her before. There’s a challenge in it, but authority as well. It’s the sound of a predator meeting another predator. The girl stops, her buffer zone forming around her and the other in-betweeners sniffing and wary, seemingly torn between the lure of my presence and the repulsion created by Emily and the girl.
Luke has a loop and section of pipe, one of the ones we use at the warehouse to loop deaders to our fence. He’s been told—and seems to understand—that we’d like to capture any of the girl in-betweeners that seems to be a leader. He’s human, but doltish at times, so I hope he can remember what to do if she comes near him.
From the corner of my eye, I see him pay out the loop and raise his arms a little, resting his hands on the fence. He surprises me when he says, “Send her to me.” It’s plainly spoken, just like I would say it, and very calm.
Emily doesn’t like it though, and she turns her head to snarl and snap at him, not as if to eat him, but as if castigating him for speaking. The girl must sense the break in control, because she lunges at the fence, bumping it with her chest and slamming her arms against the chain link. Surprisingly, it’s not where I’m at, but where Emily is.
Whether it is because of their conflict or because of something else Emily might be doing, the in-betweeners, including the girl, seem to have lost interest in me entirely. It’s almost like they don’t see me anymore. To say that I breathe a sigh of relief is an overstatement, but the terror is at least dialed down one small notch to ninety-nine on a scale of one hundred.
It’s something.
Their battle of wills appears to consist of things I can’t define. There are growls, humming, and much slamming of bodies into the fences between them, but the impact of it is far greater than a conflict without contact should create. The in-betweeners back away and surge forward by turns, a few of them becoming overwhelmed by whatever is going on and seeming to lose their people-eating minds. One of them slams his head into the concrete sidewalk so hard that I can hear the crack of his skull from where I stand. He’s still for a moment and then convulses in that strange way they do when their nanites attempt to fix the largely unfixable.
Another beats her hands on her head and runs away. Yet another one goes stock still and eventually gets knocked over when brushed by another in-betweener, remaining stiff as a board as he falls over onto the street.
Suddenly, the girl backs away from the fence a pace or two, her face bunched in confusion behind her curtain of dirty, red hair. She looks in Luke’s direction, shuffles toward him with reluctant looking steps, and then remains perfectly still while he loops her with the wire and tightens it, pulling the bar almost to her neck and fastening her to the chain link. Once he gets the wire secured, there’s no way she can get out, no matter how high-functioning she might be behind that dirty face. But, I don’t think she’s nearly as high-functioning as Emily.
Whatever the case, she’ll do for the next phase of our testing.
Emily’s hum grows in volume, her gaze riveted toward the closest of the in-betweeners. Her fingers, with their burden of half-consumed bird, poke through the fence. Luke takes it, and turns to do the same for the interior fence. One of the in-betweeners steps forward—or really, sort of lurches—and plucks the bird from his fingers like Luke might burn him if he lingers. But strangely, it’s Emily that the in-betweener keeps watching, not Luke. It’s as if he’s nothing more than Emily’s hand and it’s she that’s pressing the food through the fence.
To my surprise, she takes another from the bucket and another in-betweener comes forward. She empties the bucket, using Luke as her hands. She tears the last few birds in half so that she’ll have enough for all the in-betweeners nearby. They are orderly, or at least as orderly as they can get. Only a few of them make to attack others for their birds, but in almost every case, Emily’s voice rises in a growl and the attack subsides.
Her control is remarkable. And frightening.
She looks at me eventually and it’s only then that I see the sweat that’s dampened her hair and neck. It’s only then that I notice how hard she’s had to work to do what she’s done. She looks tired.
“Thank you, Emily,” I whisper, fearful of getting the in-betweeners riled up again with the sound of my voice.
“Yah. Duhn. Mehme need zleep,” she answers, her voice low and scratchy from all the growling.
Yeah. Done. Emily need sleep.
Yeah, I can agree with that. I think we all need a nap after this.
Today – Sentience
The only words I can use to describe this new in-betweener are hot mess, because that’s what she is. A hot, stinking, steaming, and angry mess. Getting her over the fence was an hour in hell, the thrash music that kept the others on the other side of the enclosure a fitting soundtrack to my mood by the time we had her chained inside the truck.
Now that she’s here in the cage and I can get a proper look at her, I sort of feel sorry for her. She’s skinny and not in the greatest condition. After much argument, we’ve decided to give her a couple of days of food and water before we put the nanites into her, hoping her own nanites will work to heal the many gashes and injuries she has. I didn’t know that in-betweeners could bruise like she has.
There’s only so much I can do to clean her up in the situation we’re in. And, truth be told, I think she’s terrified of Emily. Emily’s humming works to calm the others, but it just seems to scare this one. Her eyes roll so hard in that direction, I’m surprised she doesn’t detach something inside. She’s not verbal, but she sure is vocal, and the gag is all that stands between relative calm and her constant keening screams.
There’s no way to brush her hair, but I do my best to clean her up. There’s not much I can do really. I don’t feel at all comfortable with cutting her clothes off, which is wh
at I did with the other in-betweeners. It’s stupid, I know, but I just don’t want her naked with Luke around. She doesn’t care, I’m sure, but still.
Emily has her head poked up above the barrier across the passageway and is watching me with something like concern. Her brows are drawn together, and every time the girl jerks at her bindings, Emily looks her over from head to foot, as if to make sure that she’s still tied down.
“Kahm, kahm, Fronica,” Emily says, waving her hand and making her chains rattle.
Come, come, Veronica.
“Just a minute. Let me feed her. Okay?” I answer, making sure to let her see me smile.
She grins back at me, but then frowns again. “Naht feed.”
“Why don’t you want me to feed her?” I ask.
In answer, she only shakes her head, but she also looks somehow petulant, as if she’s seeing her friend go over to another friend, grade-school style. It’s almost funny.
Well, it’s funny until I start feeding the in-betweener girl. Then it’s just gross.
*****
She’s quiet now. Her bruises look much better, so the nanites inside her must have done their work. The load of birds we gave her throughout those first two days must have bolstered her load enough for that. She went slack and quiet within an hour of our injecting the nanites and has remained so all night.
Emily is across the hall, finished with her breakfast, and curious about what’s going on over in the other cage. The other two in-betweeners are quiet now as well, Emily barking out a noise and humming when we asked her to calm them down.
“She’s not in the best shape,” Charlie observes, waving his hand over the rail thin arms attached to the desk top.
“No,” I say as I brush out her dark, red hair. Washing it was much easier once she passed out. I certainly wouldn’t want to wake up with a bunch of old guts and blood in my hair.
“What if she’s a puppet like Luke?” he asks.
Luke rolls his head our way at that and says, “I’m not a puppet.”
“Well, you’re not a rampaging, rapist raider anymore either,” Charlie says with some attitude.
He really doesn’t like Luke and hasn’t gotten over the idea that we should have killed him as soon as his test was done. But the fact of the matter is that his tests aren’t over. There’s so much to know and find out. Killing him doesn’t even seem like it would be satisfying to me anymore. It would be like punishing someone after they got their brains scrambled and had no idea why they were being punished.
“I’m not a puppet,” Luke repeats.
This is not going anywhere. They do this all the time, then Emily hums or does whatever it is she does, and Luke proceeds to do whatever she wants. So, yeah, he’s a puppet.
“Luke, if you wanted to ignore Emily, could you?” I ask.
His brow creases and he looks back up at the ceiling far above, not saying anything for a minute. Then he asks, “Why would I want to?”
“Exactly,” Charlie whispers so that only I can hear.
“Anyway,” I say, trying to tie up that useless conversation. “If she is, then we’ll know what the most likely scenario will be for Emily. And I’ll have to see what that really means for her future. For all we know, this effect wears off with time.”
Charlie leans close to my ear and whispers, “You know what that means. We can’t have a puppet running free.”
I nod, because I do know that. I know it well.
*****
“What’s your name?” I ask, smiling at the girl. She’s starting to come out of it, but remains a bit dazed. Her words are slurred, a bit like Emily’s, but she seems fairly aware of what’s going on.
“Why am I chained?” she asks.
Savannah and Charlie share a look, as if to say, “Here we go,” but she nods when I give her a questioning look. I take a deep breath and put my hand the girl’s arm.
“Do you remember what happened to you?” I ask.
Her face scrunches up, confusion and fear warring for dominance. Her eyes move over some scene only she can see. Eventually, she says, “Someone shot me. They shot everybody. We thought they were there to help.”
“Military?” I ask.
She nods as much as she can in her head restraint and that seems to remind her again that she can’t move. “Why am I tied down?”
“I have something to tell you that’s going to be hard to hear. You need to be strong.”
Fear rises on her face again. I think she already knows, but doesn’t want to accept it.
“You were killed and became what we call an in-betweener, one of the newly revived.”
The alarm on her face and the tightening of every muscle in her body conveys her understanding. I squeeze her arm where it’s trapped on the table and lean closer, trying to keep a reassuring look on my face and an optimistic tone to my voice. “But you’re not anymore. You’re not. I promise. You’ve been cured and you’re as human as anyone. I promise.”
That definitely confuses her, and her terror wars with that confusion for a moment. Tears start to roll down the sides of her face, and she says, “You can’t cure death.”
I smile at her and say, “No. Your nanites cured your death. We just cured your nanites. You don’t have them anymore.”
Outside the cage, our group is waiting in silence for this first part to be over. Armed in case it goes wrong, they are watching carefully in hopes that it will go right. The tension behind me from that corridor is palpable. I turn to them and give them a nod, letting them know I’m pleased with the results.
Emily is scowling in my direction from her cage across the hall. When I catch her eye, she waves a hand in disgust and says, “No gud. Gant uze.”
No good. Can’t use.
Now, that’s interesting. Does that mean she can’t control her like she controls Luke? And why not? What’s the difference?
“What’s that smell?” the girl asks. “Do you have screamers in here?”
She uses the same word that Carson and Luke used to describe in-betweeners. That’s interesting, but probably nothing significant. I suppose I might have called them screamers if I’d been around someone else. It’s an apt name for them. Sam called them dead cannibals. My parents called them fast zombies. Screamers is probably a better descriptor.
“We do, but they’ll be cured soon, too,” Savannah says, coming into the girl’s range of view. Savannah takes the girl’s other hand and holds it gently, like a good nurse might. She’s way better at this than I am. “How about I clean you up and get you some food?”
“Oh, yes!” the girl whispers, licking at her dry lips.
Violet comes in and hustles Charlie and me out of the cage. Gregory is going to stand watch outside the cage while they work, but they don’t want all of us gawking at the girl while they do the necessary business at hand.
Princeton puts a hand on my shoulder as we pass, turning to walk with us as we get ready for our daily duties. “Wait up,” he says.
“What’s up?” Charlie asks as Princeton falls into step next to us.
“That’s good, there. Very good,” he says.
That’s sort of a duh statement. I say, “Of course it’s good. She’s alive. She seems to have most of her marbles, too.”
“No. I mean, yes, that part is good, but that’s not all that’s good,” he says.
Okay. Now I’m confused.
Charlie must be as well, because he says, “You are making zero sense. What are you talking about?”
“Sorry, sorry. What I mean to say is that she’s verbal. She can talk. At the hospital we had a good deal of information from the beginning of this, and it was theorized that the nanites suppress higher functions in favor of individual survival traits, things more animal-like. But did they destroy the higher functions? That was the question no one knew the answer to. Now, we know that answer.”
I think about it for a minute. I put a hand on Princeton’s arm to stop him and ask, “You mean, like drugs for men
tal illness suppressed the symptoms, but didn’t make the disease go away. This is like that? When we get rid of the nanites, it’s like a pill wearing off?”
“Exactly!” he says enthusiastically. I think he might be so smart that it surprises him when one of us can keep up with him.
It makes sense. And it does fit with all the behavior we see. They do act more like solitary predators, only with less reason for their behavior than real animals have. It’s sort of like their humanity is gone, but the information from earlier in our evolution isn’t complete enough to make them into truly functional animals.
I say, “Okay. I buy that. But I don’t think we can make that same assumption for all of them. She wasn’t an in-betweener for that long. I doubt everyone is going to be that lucky. I mean, we told you about Tanner. And then there’s Carson.”
Princeton nods, looking at the ground ahead of him as he does. He’s seen all our notes and we’ve told him more to fill in the gaps, so he’s aware of our failures to date.
The scattered remnants of our garden are waiting for me and as we reach the back field, Charlie sighs. Today we’re digging for potatoes and onions out in the field. Just finding the little markers where the plants are is going to be a pain. He bends to get our gloves and tools out of the box we keep outside for just this purpose.
Princeton isn’t on duty here, so I turn to him and say, “Unless you want to help me dig, we’ll have to talk later. Try to look at the positives, but don’t expect everything to turn out that way. That’s just looking for disappointment.”
As he walks away and I tug on my gloves, I wonder about what he said and how Emily might change after the cure. Considering how well she can talk now, even with nanites inside her, shouldn’t she be perfectly normal once they’re gone? It’s good news and I have a hard time taking my own advice.
