by Seth Fishman
“But they’re growing older by the second,” Rob complains.
“You’re right,” Dad says. It’s weird to see him so zoned in on something that isn’t me. He holds out a hand to help them up. “Odessa,” he ventures, “you going to be okay to walk?”
She nods. “I’m fine, I’m fine. And besides, I got Jimmy here to carry me, right, Jimmy?”
“That’s right. Muscleman me.”
“All right, then,” Dad says. “We’ve got a ways to go, but not too bad.” He keeps his hand on my shoulder, very proprietary, and when Veronica nods approval, we all haul out, with her taking the lead and me and Dad bringing up the rear. We walk uphill, moving fast. Now I feel my foot; it aches with every step.
“Where are we going?” I ask. Rob cranes his neck to hear the answer.
“The infirmary. We have a pretty good facility, all things considered.”
“What about the virus?” Rob asks, but he keeps his voice low, as if it’s a question only he had in mind and doesn’t want to share with the others.
“I don’t think I want to tell the whole story twice, so I’ll just say that we’ll take care of it soon.”
“How?” Rob persists.
“Well,” Dad says, “that man who’s doing this, the fake newspaper reporter?”
“You know him,” I say, though it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
“That’s right.” He nods. “We all do. He used to work here.”
“At Fenton Electronics,” Rob says drily. Dad knows Rob well enough to understand his sense of humor, but he looks a little wounded at this comment.
“Yes, Rob. And I promise you both you’ll get some answers. But for now, let it be enough to know that since he used to work here, we know what motivates him.”
“Did you make the virus?” I ask.
Dad doesn’t stop walking—he doesn’t even pause. He just shakes his head in disgust and mutters, “You think that ill of your father?” The reaction has me feeling equally guilty and angry, bummed to be letting my dad down and annoyed that he wouldn’t think that question had come to mind. I watch him move ahead of me. I let the anger win over the guilt, tired of his deceptions, and sulk after him.
The path is carved out of the rock and entirely mazelike, with a number of twists and turns, and I’ve lost all understanding of where I am. Not that I ever did know. Every once in a while, we suddenly enter a vast room of stalactites and stalagmites still dripping, still growing, big enough to put Carlsbad Caverns to shame. Spotlights are placed to illuminate the view as well as the path, and I’d like to think that was my father’s idea. But then we’ll go for stretches of time in near complete darkness, with only a thin walkway of lights guiding us through a narrow tunnel. The air’s cold, and we don’t talk much. I think we all have this feeling like this walk is finally about to get us some answers. The gravity of the mountain weighs on us, pushing us down, keeping us quiet and respectful and determined. There was a time when this walk would have killed me, something this deep and dark. But now the claustrophobia competes with adrenaline, a spike that pulses like my heart, providing a burning fuel to combat my fears. That’s how I got over water, by diving in. I’ve used swimming my whole life for the rush, a safe place to remember my nightmares, until one day I realized I was good, and I found some sort of karmic balance from my success. Now the cave feels oddly the same; I dive into my fears, and am rewarded with an entirely new world. The darkness around me is gentle, as if it’s only watching, not trying to harm. That doesn’t stop me from imagining some creature leaping from the shadows; I’ve seen enough scary movies to know that they’re lurking nearby, waiting for one of us to fall back. I watch Odessa’s slow shuffle-step and feel better. The monsters would eat her first.
Dad finally gets over his hissy fit and checks in with me from time to time. He knows I don’t like this wall of darkness, and I wonder in passing whether part of the reason he never told me the truth was that he couldn’t bring me here—he was too afraid of my reaction. “Not much longer,” he says for the third time. Thanks, Dad. Keep up the lies.
But in this case, he’s not really wrong. Suddenly, almost out of nowhere, we hit a different style of tunnel, lined in concrete, manmade or at least man-fiddled-with. The lights that run along the floor are brighter and placed in small circular globes.
“If the lights are on your left,” Veronica calls over her shoulder, “they mean you are heading central. On your right, away from center.”
Finally, we hit another hallway, then a door, then a series of doors, all locked by punch code.
Our feet start to echo. I realize I have no idea how many people work here, and now that I know that I’m clueless about what goes on in the Cave, every door holds some sort of secret. Where is everybody? Surely a place this big can’t be entirely empty?
Suddenly, up ahead, Veronica stops. We crowd around her at a door while she enters a code. I can hear Rob muttering the numbers to himself under his breath, and I elbow him in the ribs. The door beeps, then unseals with a release of air, and Veronica pulls it open. Judging by the strain in her arms, it’s pretty heavy.
“After you,” she says.
Inside there’s a room, a dormitory more like it, small, steel and compact. There are only three sets of bunk beds, allowing six to sleep. I see a small door marked LAVATORY, a shower stall and four lockers. There are also a few machines, like the ones you see in a hospital, an IV stand and heart monitor and such, but not much in the way of an infirmary. It’s strange, being here, imagining my father working nearby. The place appears safe and sturdy, like a small bomb shelter. Why is it that the people who build the bomb shelters are the crazy ones?
Dad claps his hands together. “Okay, so, here’s our infirmary.”
“Infirmary?” Odessa repeats, her voice shifting in inflection the way it might back at school, hard to do now that she’s aged so much. “This isn’t much of a doctor’s office.”
“At least there’s a light switch,” Brayden jokes.
“At least there’s a protein bar!” says Jimmy from inside a locker he’s taken the liberty of rooting around in. “Who wants one?”
I look questioningly at Dad, and he waves us on. Jimmy tosses the bars to everyone, and we rip in, starving. The bar is cold and tastes awful—I got oatmeal raisin—and is hard to chew and won’t fill me up but it’s something. It feels like the most important thing in the world, and considering that it’s healthy, maybe this protein bar really is the most important thing in the world at the moment.
Odessa takes a seat on a lower bunk and peers up at Veronica. “Really, I thought you said it was a good facility.”
“It is,” she says. “We just don’t need the standard equipment.” They don’t need? Did she mean they don’t have?
Rob’s found a power outlet and has his huge clunky OtterBox plugged in already, looking sheepish. And rightfully so—we all took our phones by reflex, but he had the presence of mind to bring his power cord.
“Rob, can I call my mom from that thing?” Odessa asks from her seat.
“You won’t get any reception in here,” Dad replies with a shrug. “We only use landlines, and those were cut at the same time as the quarantine went into effect.”
“So there’s no way to call for help?” Jo asks.
Dad and Veronica both seem to flinch, but neither says a thing.
“Come on, Mr. Kish, we already know all about Sutton,” Jo says, and she uses a tone I’ve heard before, a conspiratorial voice she’d pull out in class to get us dismissed early, or into the quad for a lesson in the sun. Rob catches it too, because he has to stifle a smile with his hand. I almost laugh too, and it’s a weird thing, because it’s like she’s messing with our teacher, except in this case the teacher’s my father.
Dad appears to mull things over, but he’s already given in. In some ways, that makes me feel
safer. He wouldn’t say a thing if he thought we were in immediate danger. “Our cameras still work just fine. Since Blake knows where they are, he probably left them up on purpose.”
“He wants us to watch him,” Veronica says, her voice tight.
“Maybe,” Dad says. “But the doors we have here are virtually indestructible. He’s just trying to scare us, that’s all. To force us to make a play.”
“So what’s the play?” Brayden asks, his arms crossed over his chest, looking, for some reason, unimpressed. “He knows this place, right? You said he used to work here. Don’t you think he’d know what he’d need to do to get in?”
“A little much, Brayden,” I say, feeling overwhelmed by the bleakness of his tone and defensive of Dad.
“He’s not wrong,” Veronica replies, and it’s clear that she’s more worried about Blake Sutton than my dad is. It’s as if she’s using the moment to bring up an argument that has been going on between her and Dad for a while now. She looks afraid, solemn. Like she knows more than Dad does about Sutton. “Our cameras have picked up his troops, and they’re already in position around us. We’re just waiting for his move.”
“Maybe he’s already made it,” Brayden says aggressively.
Dad, though, seems unbothered. He pops his heavy eyebrows up and absentmindedly scratches his hairy arm. “He hasn’t. We’re safe in here. And that’s the last I want to hear about it, okay? You didn’t risk your necks escaping Westbrook to come to a place that couldn’t protect you, right? Now relax, kids, and believe we know what we’re doing.”
No one says a thing. I try to smile encouragingly at him, but it feels like I’m posing for a picture I’d rather not take. He’s clueless, and says, “Okay, now, boys, time to step outside for a moment. The girls need to clean up.”
I’d expect Jimmy to grin and make a joke, but he’s the first to rise, tossing his head to the boys to get moving. I guess he’s really changed from his frat-boyness of Westbrook. Jimmy squats at Odessa’s side, his newly adultlike face puppy-dog sad, and he asks if she needs help. She’s the one who grins, barely, an expression that eventually turns into a grimace, and then she pushes him away. “Get out of here, Jimmy!”
As Dad leads them out, Brayden glances back at me and mouths, See ya soon. I smile warmly, feel the heat spread from my lips and down my body as I imagine seeing him again and soon. Now that we’ve made it, I find my thoughts slipping into visions of him more often, as if I’m allowed to relax and enjoy the feeling.
“Mia, a hand, will you?” Veronica says.
I snap my mind back into place and move to Odessa, but the ache in my foot swells to a sharp pain, and I almost fall over.
Jo stares at me, confused at first, then with dawning recognition. “Oh, crap, your foot.”
I shake my head. “No, it’s fine. Let’s deal with Odessa.”
Veronica’s puzzled, but she takes it in stride and points to the bed next to Odessa. I limp over. “Shoe off, now.”
I start to untie, but I’m not fast enough for her, so she takes over. I put my hands on the cold bars and stretch my back. Now that I’m sitting, I realize how tired I am. If I were to just lie down, I’d be asleep instantly. I try to focus on Veronica’s pinched face.
“So . . . what’s your story?” I ask her while she’s working, really wanting to know what she and my dad were arguing about.
She glances up. She has the shoe untied now and takes it off slowly. My foot throbs relentlessly. Like I can feel my heart beating in my foot.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what do you do here? How come I’ve never met you? What’s the big secret about Fenton Electronics? And why are you so scared about Sutton and Dad isn’t?”
“You ask a lot of questions. Does this hurt?” She’s got my thick ski sock and is slipping it off.
I shake my head. “Can you answer any of them?”
There’s my foot, which shades from normal to splotchy to completely dark purple and black, like a blueberry Greek yogurt before you mix it up.
“Fuck me,” Odessa says. “I thought I was the one in trouble.” I don’t feel the need to remind her that she looks like a thirty-year-old. I try to wiggle my toes, but can’t. They look bloated, the skin tight like a hot dog’s. There’s a huge blister on my big toe, and I don’t know how it hasn’t burst yet.
“I don’t feel much pain,” I say.
Veronica digs around the small backpack she’s been carrying. She pulls out a vial, one with an eyedropper, near empty, carrying a clear liquid of some sort.
“You don’t feel anything because your nerves are shot.” She puts the dropper down and lifts my foot to look underneath, at my heel. “Okay, this is totally doable.” Satisfied by something, she moves on to Odessa. “Pants off.”
“But what about Mia? What’s doable?” Jo asks, confused. What is doable? I wonder. Does that mean it’s doable to fix me up, or doable to cut off my toes?
“She’ll be fine. So will Odessa. It’s clear the virus is accelerating the healing in her leg, but that’s merely her body aging and her cells in rapid reproduction. Soon she’ll head over the hump and start moving toward old age, which will, conversely, accelerate any infection. We have to get at the wound now, expose it and take care of it.” So Rob was right, the virus is healing before it begins to kill. Sort of like the “tipping point” that Sutton had brought up back at Furbish: the moment before things start getting bad, the body gets stronger. Veronica experimentally tries to pull apart what’s left of Odessa’s pant leg. “Despite the fact that you’re feeling better, this is going to hurt. I just want to prepare you.”
Right then, I’m thinking that Veronica’s a cold woman, what with her hair pulled back so tight I can almost feel her scalp screaming, but she surprises me by gently putting her palm on Odessa’s forehead. Her tight lips curl into a reassuring smile. “You’ll be fine. Okay?”
Odessa bites her lip and nods.
Jo and Veronica carefully pull off Odessa’s still-wet layers of clothes and strip her as best they can while I watch uselessly from my spot. But when they get to the bandage, every time they pull at the adhesive corner, she gasps painfully. Veronica’s eyes go steely, and she heads to a cabinet along the wall. She comes back carrying a scalpel, the blade shining in the overhead surgical lights. I get involved now, clear that they’ll need me, and hold Odessa by the shoulders. “This isn’t going to hurt at all, Odessa. Don’t worry,” I tell her.
“I don’t believe you,” she says. “I believe her.” Her being Veronica. “Do you have something for me to bite?” she whispers to me.
“What?”
“Like, to handle the pain?”
I glance at Veronica, who stares pointedly at the snow cap I had tossed on the floor when I first got inside. I go pick it up, ball it into a cylinder and place it between Odessa’s open jaws. She looks at me gratefully, then slowly closes her eyes. Veronica starts cutting at the gauze wrapped around her stitches with expertise, almost surgeon-like. Odessa doesn’t even make a noise. There’s the wound, high up on her thigh, an angry red line of stitches, puffy and gross and flaked with silky pus.
And the smell. The wound smells like a garbage bag with a very meaty leftover in it. I purse my lips together so hard they hurt. Jo and I eye each other grimly. The bandage is a rusty red, superwet, and I can’t bring myself to keep looking at it.
“I thought you said the virus was speeding up the healing,” Jo demands of Veronica.
“It is, see?” She points to the stitches. They still look bad to me.
“Odessa must have had a serious infection, and that smell and that pus and that blood are all appropriately indicative of that. The virus helped the muscle regenerate, the wound close. It didn’t kill the infection, though. It just sealed it up inside.”
“But,” I say, trying to understand, “that means she’s stil
l infected?”
“That’s exactly what that means,” Veronica says. “This will hurt, Odessa. But it won’t take long.”
And with a flick of her wrist she slices the wound open, splitting the stitches. Odessa’s eyes roll back, and she screams through the cap’s fabric. It’s like Veronica popped a soft-boiled egg, and the sight of the pus oozing out of the newly reopened wound has me dizzy.
“Okay,” Veronica says. “You can take the cap out of your mouth.” She moves back to the eyedropper and takes it up and then shoos me to my perch on the bed.
“What’s that? Some type of antibiotic? Will it even work in time?” Odessa asks, her voice shaky. She’s breathing hard, and soon she coughs, a deep hacking cough, spraying blood on the ground.
Veronica eyes the blood; she appears fascinated, as if she’s going to touch it, which I find creepy as hell. Then she turns back to Odessa and says, “This works fast enough, believe me.” She uncaps the bottle carefully, like she’s defusing a bomb or something, and then squeezes one drop onto the wound. Odessa grits her eyes closed, but then she opens them and looks up in disbelief.
“That’s it?”
Veronica nods her head. “Open your mouth. You too, Mia.” She glances back at the blood. “Jo, you too.”
One drop each. There might only be a dozen drops left. It tastes like nothing, and I can’t even tell it’s in my mouth. Veronica looks satisfied, though. She stoppers the bottle and puts it away, then gets up and goes to one of the lockers and pulls out some scrubs. “Here,” she says, tossing a pair to each of us, and a towel. “Get showered and changed and then we’ll grab the boys.”
“Wait,” Jo says, wrapping the towel behind her neck. “You never answered Mia’s questions. What do you do here? Can you tell us more about what’s going on?”
Veronica looks around, and it’s clear that she doesn’t normally speak about this place freely. In the moment, she hesitates; I wonder if my dad gave her specific orders not to speak more to us about the Cave. I wonder if she’ll get in trouble.
“I’m a biologist,” she says finally. “But we all sort of do some of everything here.”
