The Remaining: Allegiance

by D. J. Molles

  Hell, they probably already knew anyways.

  Maybe Lee was popping pills right along with the rest of them.

  Greg kept most of his stash in their proper pill bottles, complete with labels so that if someone needed an upper, he could give them an upper or if they needed some antidepressants, he could give them that, too. But this particular bottle seemed to be the mystery box, filled with the dregs of other pill bottles that he didn’t believe warranted being divided into individual pill bottles. Or maybe he’d become so used to them that he could identify what each pill was by sight.

  She was beginning to feel the effects of the first two pills. For once, her blood felt warm in her veins. It was like she could feel it swishing through her bloodstream, in an odd, but not unpleasant way. Her chest felt light and her thoughts felt quick and sharp and she was beginning to feel overwhelmingly positive. Like she’d just done something wonderful. Like she’d just been declared the Greatest Person in the World.

  Jenny opened the bottle and looked inside. There was a little, round, pinkish orange pill. She decided to try that one, too. She popped it in her mouth and swallowed it dry. Then she replaced the cap and shoved it under her blankets. Three pills is enough, Girly-Girl. Let’s not get carried away.

  Some time passed in her shanty. She began to fidget.

  She wasn’t sure what the third pill had been. She could not feel anything different from what she’d felt before, but it seemed to have intensified. And her thoughts were not quite as clear as they’d been before, or at least the decision-making aspect of them. She found herself “deciding” to do things that suddenly seemed ridiculous.

  I’m going to strip naked and play in the snow.

  Except there was no snow. Just cold gravel. And if she stepped outside her shanty stripped naked, everyone would think she had gone mad.

  The guys would like it, though. Oh, yes, all the men that look at me like that when I do my rounds. I know what they’re thinking. I know what they’re picturing. Maybe they all wanted Greg dead so they could take a crack at me. Well, fuck Greg and fuck them.

  Time passed. It was difficult for her to tell how much, but she knew that it had. Her head was buzzing, her chest was light. She was feeling optimistic, but the fidgeting was increasing and she found her heart rate and her respiration increased. Doctor, you seem to have developed a slight arrhythmia, Doctor. Why, thank you for noticing, Doctor. I’ve also noticed you appear to be displaying some signs of distressed breathing, Doctor. Well, Doctor, do you think this requires treatment? Actually, Doctor, I believe we will just keep you for observation. That sounds like a great idea, Doctor, and might I say you look lovely today. Thank you, Doctor. Remember to get plenty of fresh air and exercise. Say, Doctor, you’re not a real doctor are you? No, Doctor, in fact I am not. Well, what in the hell are you, Doctor, if you’re not a doctor? I’m a third-year nursing student! Ha, ha, ha!

  She rose up from the bed and walked to the tarpaulin door. She flung it open and realized it was rapidly approaching dusk. More time had passed than she’d realized. She was amazed for a moment at the color of the sky, and then wondered if it was a trick of the drugs. The western sky was alight with oranges and purples and pinks. And then suddenly all those colors seemed as dull as concrete to her. It was not that her eyes saw them differently—they were still bright and vibrant as they’d been a moment ago—but the buzzing in her head seemed to make everything gray in a wonderfully inoffensive way.

  She hung in her doorway, hands clutching the tarp. She closed her eyes and breathed deep. Now there was something to set her right. The air was cold and crisp and jarring. But it couldn’t really touch her. It was like the warmth coursing through her skin made a force field of heat around her body that the cold couldn’t get through. But she could still taste the cold on her tongue, smell it in her nose. And she felt excited by it for the first time since she’d been a little girl and the smell of cold was the smell of Christmas and lights and presents.

  She began walking, a half smile on her face. There was a path that went around the interior of the fence line. It hadn’t been there when they’d arrived and taken over Camp Ryder, but hundreds of guard shifts had stomped down a narrow strip of dirt with yellow-brown weeds off to either side. Her shanty was near the end of the row, so all she had to do was hang a quick left and she was on the path, walking with the fence to her left.

  Jenny stopped for a moment and looked behind her, aware that her current mood might be perceived as a little off to other people, and so she didn’t want them to see her. But with dusk coming, everyone seemed consumed with the task of preparing meals or buttoning up for the night. Marie had started cooking the community dinners again, so plenty of them were heading into the Camp Ryder building for a bite to eat and some socialization.

  It seemed very quiet in the camp, and with the western sky so boiling with bright colors, the camp below seemed dark by comparison.

  She looked forward. The Camp Ryder building stood there, hulking over the rest of the camp, just a midnight-blue silhouette against the orange-washed sky. She could see the outline of the guard on top, standing and looking the other direction with his rifle cradled in his arms. Down below, the door to the building opened and inside was bright like a roaring fireplace and the sound of laughter drifted across to her before someone slipped in and closed the door behind them again, shutting off the sound and light.

  She turned around, deciding to walk with the fence to her right, away from the building and into the less utilized section where a jumble of shipping containers sat, so far unused. As she walked she had trouble feeling her feet hit the ground. She stuffed her hands into her pockets and they felt warm there, like she was holding them to a fire. She felt simultaneously wired and drowsy. It was an interesting sensation. Absently, she considered the possibility of negative physical side effects from combining several medications that were probably past their prime. But in the end she decided that it would be okay. The worry that it took to consider the consequences of her actions seemed intangible. There was nothing to worry about.

  Somewhere around the southernmost point of Camp Ryder, with all the empty and abandoned corrugated steel of the shipping containers to her left, and the fence to her right, and no one around, she got the distinct sensation that she was being watched. Maybe it was paranoia, but it’s not really paranoia if it’s true, right?

  She stopped where she was, standing there and feeling the breath go in and out of her lungs, warm and frigid all at once. The buzzing. The ringing. The floating. The weightlessness. She looked at the fence, squinting at it like it had confused her. She could see all the chain links, but on the other side they had fortified it with all manner of flotsam. But there were gaps, because all these pieces of trash that they’d used to build their fence into a wall, none of it fit together like puzzle pieces. And some gaps were bigger than others.

  There was a man standing in one of the gaps.

  She stared at him, and he stared at her, and she wondered if she knew him, but didn’t think that she did. Somewhere deep down inside her there may have been a little squirm of fear but she felt so far above little things like terror and death that it never really registered with her.

  What did register was the fact that the man had only the barest tatters of clothes clinging to his body. She could see every rib, every muscle. His belly was distended, his face shaggy with a beard, and the beard was clumped and dreadlocked with blood and gristle. His eyes were wide and oddly clear. Very stark in his face. His skin seemed dusky by comparison, and the sunset that loomed behind her must have played a trick and lit up his eyes, making him almost appear cognizant.

  “Hey,” she said. The word just kind of stumbled out of her, like a drunk coming out of a bar.

  The man’s wide eyes blinked, glittered.

  He was pressed up against the fence, his fingers curled around the links. She looked at his overgrown fingernails and could see black crud underneath them. Dirt and blood and
guts, probably. But aside from the single blink, he didn’t stir when she spoke, just kept staring at her.

  Jenny looked behind her to see if anyone else was there. There wasn’t. She was alone.

  She knew what she should have felt, but the sensation of well-being was overpowering. Logically, she knew that chemicals in one of those pills she took were intercepting the stress hormones, or possibly inhibiting them by blocking the receptors. Her body might have been sending out the panic signals, but the brain wasn’t getting them.

  Instead, she looked back to the creature clinging to the fence, and she shuffled to the right, and then to the left. The man’s eyes followed her quickly. He was there, thinking something inside that broken-down brain of his, but what it was remained a mystery.

  “Are you one of the good ones?” she asked, wondering why he wasn’t growling. Why he wasn’t screeching at her and clambering to try to get over the fence at her. She took a step forward, locking eyes with him. “Are you one of the ones that don’t like to eat people? Well… it looks like you’ve been eating something, that’s for damn sure. But hey, I won’t judge. We all gotta live, right?”

  The man was staring right back at her. Right into her eyes.

  What was it about any animal in the kingdom that they all knew what eyes were for? How did they all know to make eye contact? To look back when they were being looked at? How could something insentient have any concept of what the eyes meant?

  She took another step forward and she was close enough that she could hear his breathing now. It was a steady, rhythmic sound. His mouth was closed. He was breathing slowly through his nose. His eyes remained on hers. Her own breathing was elevated, but was that from fear or drugs?

  “Hey, big boy…” Her left hand went to her pants pocket and withdrew the knife. The man on the other side of the fence seemed not to take notice. “I bet you’re one of the nonaggressive ones, aren’t you? Can you understand what I’m saying? Can you nod or something?”

  It remained still.

  “Okay, that answers that.” She smiled. “But you don’t seem so crazy right now, do you. You like it when I talk to you? How long has it been since you heard someone talk to you normal? Most everyone probably just screams and runs away and shoots at you, huh? You know what I wonder? I wonder what you’d do if I touched you. Would that wake you up a bit? All the men seem to like it when I touch their hands. Wouldn’t that be fancy. Just like a fuckin’ fairy tale, huh? I touch your hand and you transform from a hideous beast into a handsome prince.”

  Jenny raised her right hand, and when she did, she watched the man’s eyes jag down to it for just a split second, and then they were back, fixated on her eyes. That was interesting. It was seeing what was going on. It was processing. So if it was nonaggressive, what would it do if she touched it? So far it hadn’t done anything but stand there.

  For some reason she had this image in her head of the men on the nature documentaries, the ones that swam with sharks and walked up to prides of lions and wrangled alligators. She always wondered how they did it. Maybe animals just responded differently to them. Maybe they had some sort of power. Maybe it was more scientific—maybe they gave off nonthreatening.

  She kept picturing that—the guy swimming with sharks, rubbing their bellies—and she wondered if she actually had it in her to reach out and touch one of these infected. And what if she did? And what if it was okay with the physical contact? Hell, what if it liked the physical contact? That was another weird thing about animals—they all seemed to like having a human pet them.

  Well… at least when they got over the desire to maul you.

  But is this an animal or a person? And does it even make a difference?

  Her thumb flicked the blade from the folding knife. It made a quiet snick. This time the man on the other side of the fence didn’t notice. And Jenny’s other hand was still hanging in midair, drawing closer to him. She held his eyes for a time, and then she looked at the hand, the filthy hand, that hung with hooked fingers through the chain link fence.

  She could touch it. He would let her. She could feel it. She could sense it like you could sense when an animal was going to strike at you and when it wasn’t. And this one, man or animal, was docile. He would not hurt her and this would be uncharted territory. What do you do with an infected when he’s not aggressive?

  Her index finger brushed his fingers.

  She had expected them to be cold, but they were oddly warm to the touch. The plague, still making the bodies run hot. The man’s finger twitched when she touched it. Then they were still. Jenny’s fingers were still touching his. He was looking at her hand now, but still didn’t move or lunge at her.

  “There you go,” Jenny said softly. “What do you think about that?”

  His fingers extended, but they did it slowly. Then they curled around hers. Maybe if there had not been so many chemicals coursing through her brain, cutting off and preventing the warnings of fear from coming through clearly, she would have felt a sudden tug of apprehension, but she just stared dumbly with a half smile on her lips.

  And then the fingers were wrapped around hers and before it truly registered with her, they had clamped down like iron bands, crushing her fingers into the fence.

  She let out a muffled cry and tried to yank her hand away.

  The man on the other side of the fence had changed. His mouth was yawning open, the teeth bared like fangs, his eyes crunched to squints. His gaping mouth reached for her hand and his hot fingers were trying to claw them through the chain links. She could feel the fingernails breaking through her skin.

  She couldn’t scream because her breath was caught in her chest with the strain of trying to break free. And she couldn’t be heard, couldn’t be seen, no one in the camp knew where she was and what she was doing and she could never let any of them find out because… because…

  No! No!

  She felt the bones of one of her fingers crack but she kept herself from crying out in pain, though, honestly, the pain was muted. She bared her own teeth and lashed out at the fingers that were clutching her, slashing at them with the knife. She dared not scream because what would she say to anyone if they found her? So instead she just groaned with effort, mumbling in a panic, “Let me go! Let me go!”

  The knife kept coming down. Short, quick strokes. The infected was growling now, trying to get its other hand through the fence to grasp her. The knife was opening splits in his skin and bright red blood was pouring out, even hotter on Jenny’s hand’s than the infected’s inflamed skin had been.

  She was striking wildly, not even looking, just pulling away, with one foot up on the fence, trying to yank herself free, and the pain in her fingers was sharp and dull at once and true fear was finally coming through from the drug-induced haze of well-being: What if he bites my fingers off? What if he bites me? I can’t let him bite me!

  And then with one stroke of the blade she felt his fingers loosen, and with the next, she was free and tumbling backward into the dried grass. She scooted away from the fence, breathing heavily, still clutching the bloody knife in her left hand, her broken right hand pulled into her chest.

  The thing on the fence stared at her and gave the fence one last angry shake, and then he was gone. She could hear its footsteps running through the woods.

  She sat breathlessly in the grass for a second. She looked down at her hand and felt elated to see all five fingers still there. Her hand was covered in the thing’s blood. She wiped it hurriedly on her pants, feeling the stickiness between her fingers. Her middle finger throbbed and she could see that it wasn’t sitting right. How would she explain that? She would have to think of something.

  She stood up shakily, deciding that she was done with her walk. She was done with being outside. She needed to clean and set her hand and then she thought she should probably spend the rest of the night in her shanty, thinking of how she was going to explain the broken finger to everyone that asked. It wouldn’t be too hard. There
was plenty of manual labor around the camp that regularly resulted in broken toes and fingers and small injuries of the like. She was trying to hammer up a center beam to reinforce her roof and missed the nail and hit her finger.

  There. That was a perfect excuse.

  She looked down at her hand again.

  Fresh blood was rolling across it.

  She stopped, staring down at her hand.

  Oh, fuck. No. This is bad. This is very bad.

  In the moment she had not felt the cut on the back of her hand—about an inch long but deep. The pain of her broken middle finger had disguised it, but now as she stared at it the pain became a real thing and differentiated itself. One of her rapid and sloppy knife strikes had gone off target and slipped through her own skin. The wound was wide open and all around it was not only her own seeping blood but the stain of the infected’s blood that she’d wiped off.

  This doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean I’m infected.

  Blood to blood is the most likely method of contracting FURY.

  No, I don’t have it. I can’t have it. That’s ridiculous. You’ve made it this far, you’re in a relatively safe place, you’ve survived all kinds of disasters and attacks from people and infected alike. You are not going to catch the plague because… because you were HIGH AND NOT THINKING CLEARLY!

  She was mumbling curses under her breath. She realized that her legs were moving again. She needed to clean it. She needed to stitch it up. What would she say about the cut when people asked? Because the hammering nails story wouldn’t work for that. She would have to come up with something else.

  She needed to clean it. Clean it very good. Maybe that would make a difference.