The Z Chronicles

by Ellen Campbell

  "Were they little?" she asked, "Your kids, I mean."

  Khang shook his head. "No. All grown up. A chef and a police officer."

  Dr. Rider nodded. "I know you’re thinking that nothing can make up for hurting them, that no deed you do will ever erase it." She looked at him for a long moment but he didn't respond. "I've been doing this a little while now. You aren't the first to think it. Not even close. I don't know what you believe about what comes after this world, but it doesn't matter much. What I've seen are people struggling to fix this one. Not to erase what they've done, what they've endured, but to at least make life a little better for whoever comes after. I've also seen a lot of dead people. Dying doesn't erase what you've done either. Dead people don't atone. They don't make the world a better place. They just rot away and leave a stain on history."

  Khang shut his eyes and released a shuddering sigh.

  "Would you like some breakfast?" asked Dr. Rider gently.

  Khang shook his head.

  "Okay," she said, "I'll leave you be." She stood up and gave his hand a gentle squeeze before walking off.

  A flash of Lee's small face hit Khang. They were standing in front of a coffin. Khang's wife lay inside. Lee had been eight, Jia just six. Khang was tired of crying. He was tired of talking about her death as if it were the entirety of her existence. He was tired of people trying clumsily to comfort him. He stood in front of the coffin, staring at its open lid instead of the thing that was no longer her. He didn't know what he was supposed to do, or to say, or to feel. But then Lee gently squeezed his hand. His little face looked up at Khang, calm and without tears. "Let's go home, Dad. Just us and Jia," he'd said.

  Just us and Jia. Time to leave the rest behind. She's wrong, he thought, There's one other thing that dead people do. They forget.

  It wasn't something he'd ever dreamed of doing before. He used to shake his head in disgust when Lee would tell him about a jumper or an overdose. There was nothing so bad it couldn't be turned around or fixed. People were too quick to give up for silly reasons. Money, romantic failure, job loss. So many replaceable things causing people to give up the irreplaceable. But that was Before.

  Khang sat up in his cot. He looked around him for a nursing station, a sterilizing tray, anything.

  "Do you ever actually talk them down?" he'd asked Lee once. He'd shook his head and peeled at the label around his beer bottle.

  "Not usually. Not unless you can physically grab them before they do it." He glanced up at Khang who was sitting across from him in Khang's cramped kitchen. "I'm not bad at it Dad," he'd said, as if Khang could ever doubt him, "it's that any argument I could make, they've already had it in their own head. They've already thought about what they would miss. They've already agonized about how it will make their friends and family feel. They already know whatever their religion says. They've weighed it all and still found it wanting. The pain they are in eclipses all that completely. The just want it to end. They just want to forget there ever was such pain, even if it means forgetting everything else too. Even if it means somebody else has to feel it instead. What am I supposed to say in the face of all that?" He leaned in very close, as if someone else was listening.

  "Sometimes," Lee said in a low voice, "when I hear what they've been through, sometimes I don't want to talk them down. Sometimes I think it's better if they do jump. Sometimes I want to help, give them the final push they’re trying to build up the courage for." He had let go of the beer bottle and covered his face with one hand, ashamed to cry in front of his father. The other hand lay on the table. Khang reached out and gave it a gentle squeeze before getting up to let his son cry in private.

  He had even less to stop him than the people Lee tried to talk down. The world had nothing and no one that he wanted. He had no one to grieve for him. And whatever he had believed in before the Plague had been swept away in the violence he had, himself, been allowed to commit. He wandered to the edge of the tent. The trucks carrying corpses were gone, but the grass had not sprung back yet from where the people had lain in it. Empty graves. He should have stayed in his. He wandered out into the field. A nurse tried to stop him.

  "I just need some air," Khang gasped.

  The nurse nodded and let him go. He stumbled out into the field. The matted grass had dried in long tangles of gold. The sky was covered by low, greasy smoke, but the heat of the day wasn't diminished. It pressed in on his chest, as if the air were trying to wring a few more drops of moisture from his withered, driftwood body.

  He ignored his discomfort and sat down where the grass met the road. His gaze followed the stem of the smoke, twisting and narrowing to a faraway bonfire where they were burning the corpses from the day before.

  How he envied them! They never realized what they'd done. If only Lee had shot him that first day. Khang shook his head. No, he couldn't wish his guilt onto Lee. His son had been a good man. Khang had believed himself to be a good man too. It had been his one constant comfort in the worst parts of his life. No matter what went wrong, how poor he was, how badly people treated him, he knew he had remained a good man.

  And now when he most needed to believe that he was good, when it would have been his greatest consolation, he couldn't. Regardless of what he did, or how much longer he had to live, he knew he'd never be able to convince himself he was a good person again.

  "Mr. Yeo, the staff tell me you haven't eaten this morning."

  Khang looked around, squinting at the bright shards of unclouded sky behind him. Dr. Taylor stood there, frowning down at him. Khang shrugged.

  "I'm not hungry," he said.

  "I assure you, your body needs food. Your lack of hunger is just a symptom of long term deprivation—"

  "I'm not hungry. My body doesn't need food because I don't need it to keep going."

  Dr. Taylor shook his head. "If you refuse to eat, I'll have to force the issue."

  "I forgive you for bringing me back. There's no way you could understand—"

  "You forgive me?" sputtered Dr. Taylor, "You should be thanking me and my staff and the City for expending precious resources on your behalf. You should be falling over yourself trying to repay a massive debt to humanity—"

  Khang stood up. "I forgive you, Dr. Taylor." His voice was calm but firm. "And I forgive your staff and I forgive the City. You cannot possibly understand the misery you create every time the Cure works. I wish your soldiers had shot me instead. But if you force more medicine upon me, knowing my wishes, then you, Dr. Taylor, will be responsible for my life and the misery it causes. You won't ever again be able to tell the Cured that you didn't know that the Cure would bring so much heartbreak. I will haunt you for the remainder of our lives, until a portion of my guilt and grief and horror has passed on to you."

  "You ungrateful—" Dr. Taylor stopped and took a deep breath. "Mr. Yeo," he began calmly, "We can no longer afford to be selfish. We're at the very edge of extinction. We need every member of humanity to contribute, to help rebuild. Don't you feel some sense of obligation to help us survive? Don't you feel even a little of what you owe to the people whose lives you stole? To your children's lost potential?"

  Khang shook his head. "Don't speak to me of my debts. You have no idea of their enormity. They can never be repaid, never even be lessened in the slightest. This debt you think that I owe? It was not my choice. I gained nothing from the devastation that I've caused. I didn't ask to become ill and I didn't ask for you to cure me. There is only one service you can do for me that would make me grateful. One thing that would prove you are good because you choose to be and not just by luck." Khang's fists knotted by his sides and his chest ached as his flesh stretched over his heaving ribs. His pale rage and the smoke from the corpse fires made him seem half-wraith to Dr. Taylor. The psychologist shook it off as nonsense.

  "I suppose you’re going to tell me you want me to let you die," he snapped.

  "No. I was going to ask you to help me die," said Khang. "I don't need your permission.
Everything has a right to die, doctor."

  "Mr. Yeo, you've made clear what you want, but a physician has to consider more than just a patient's wants. I have to consider what is best for you and what is best for the society you live in. I cannot believe you or any of the Cured are so irredeemable that the only improvement is death." He waved an arm and a pair of large male nurses emerged from the tent. Khang tried to bolt away, but he was weak and slow and they soon caught him. He struggled and shouted but the men seemed oblivious or simply used to it. They calmly strapped him onto a gurney and started a nutrient IV under Dr. Taylor's orders. Then they left him alone in a mostly deserted corner of the camp.

  Khang waited until shift change. He told the night nurse he knew he'd been irrational before, that he was calmer, that he just wanted to use the restroom. By himself. Like a grown human being with some dignity. She pitied him and unstrapped the restraints. He tottered meekly to the bathroom, gently rolling the IV stand over the uneven dirt floor. As soon as the door closed behind him, Khang carefully pulled the plastic tube from the casing on the back of his hand. The bag dribbled fluid onto the floor. He yanked the other end of the tube from the mouth of the bag and cool liquid splattered over everything. Khang ignored it, wrapping the tube around his hand, pulling at it to see how far it would stretch. He was looking around for a high fixture when the nurses began knocking. The showerhead might work. But he was out of time. He wrapped the plastic tube around his bony waist and covered it with his shirt. The door opened with a jingle as the spare key unlocked it.

  "I'm sorry," muttered Khang while holding his hands out to indicate the mess. "My line came out. I was trying to clean up. I don't know what happened."

  The nurse didn't buy it, but she also didn't notice the missing tube. She had him strapped down again and a new IV bag soon hung over his shoulder dripping life back into his shriveled veins. This time, she gave him a sedative and then ignored him. He lay there, staring at the flapping canvas above him, wriggling his hands desperately trying to get loose. He almost laughed as a violent twist of his wrist tore the needle from the back of his hand. The sheet was soaked in a mix of warm blood and saline by the time anyone noticed. Khang had become lightheaded and hopeful that he'd be able to bleed out before they found him. But the wound was too small and Dr. Taylor made his rounds too soon.

  "If you force me to put a line in your foot, it will be quite painful," he said as he bandaged Khang's hand.

  "Let me go," begged Khang, "It can't really matter to you what one man does. Pretend I died before. Pretend the Cure didn't work. Just let me go."

  "Don't you understand? There are people out there who hate the Cure. My own subordinates question me every day whether it would be best to keep you ill and institutionalize you so you couldn't harm anyone. Some have even suggested rounding you all up and euthanizing you. All of you. Every suicide makes those options seem less and less insane.

  "But some of you want to live. Some of you fight to prove yourselves equal to the faith we placed in the Cure. And some of us have been through hell to give you that chance. To see loved ones return to us. I have to consider all of these things. I can't allow you to die."

  They added more straps to stop him from wiggling free. The nurse leaned over to adjust the strap across Khang's head.

  "I'm sorry," the nurse whispered, "But you'll be released much faster if you just play along. And who knows? Maybe the world isn't as bad as you expect. Maybe you'll change your mind. And if not— well, you'll be free then, gone from here. You can do what you want."

  "How long?" asked Khang.

  The nurse shrugged. "A few weeks if you stop pulling stunts like the last one." The nurse stood up and walked away.

  A few weeks. When every moment the memory of his daughter's skin prickled on his tongue. And his son's cries rattled around inside Khang's chest. They wanted him to wait weeks. He was starting to remember others now, other terrified faces, other friends running as he chased them down. They advanced on him in anger or grief when he was awake or retreated as he dozed, but they were never fully gone.

  The nurses wheeled him into group therapy sessions where he watched the other Cured try to remember. As if the memories were a rotten tooth and they couldn't help poking it to see how rotten. He watched as what they began to remember was worse than even their imaginations had suggested, watched as they crumbled and collapsed, inconsolable, one after another. He and Dr. Taylor both watched. One was like some malevolent spirit of Christmas past, silent and judging, the other an increasingly nervous Ebenezer trying to deny the agony all around him. Khang could see enough of what the others remembered to know that he didn't want to. Still, the faces leaked in uninvited. And in his lonely corner of the camp, he wept himself to sleep night after night.

  The woman whose hair he had brushed visited him every morning. Every morning he begged her to untie him. Every morning she cried and refused. Until at last, she showed up beside his bed one night, her face a mirror of his misery. She unstrapped him without speaking and he knew she'd remembered something awful that day.

  "Thank you," Khang whispered.

  "Hurry," was all she said.

  He pulled the plastic tube from his new IV and balled it up in his hand. He crept to the edge of the tent and looked out. A tree hovered over the long grass, its lower branches thick with leaves. He glanced around, but only the woman was watching. He sprinted to the tree and scrambled up it, the rough bark bruising him as he struggled out onto a heavy branch. He carefully unwound the long plastic tube he'd hidden under his shirt days before. It left a greasy red mark on his stomach. Knotting the two tubes together, he tied one end around the branch. The other he looped around his neck. He looked back at the tent and the woman stood in the doorway, watching him. He raised a hand in thanks. Then he jumped.

  The branch bounced, the tube caught him up short but then stretched and slipped. He didn't notice. The world grew gray, then black. He let himself drain away into the dark. But the plastic tube gave out and snapped. He thudded to the ground. He was still coughing when the staff found him.

  He was back on the gurney. No one visited him now. He didn't try to reason or beg any more. Just counted the hours down. The camp slowly emptied, became silent, as more and more of the Cured found relatives or were taken to the City. It was Dr. Rider who released him in the end. He let her tell him what to expect in the City, automatically lied when she went through her discharge questions, even accepted the small backpack of spare clothes she handed him, gently tucking Jia's button into a zippered pocket of the bag.

  The soldiers were packing up the camp, moving it farther out, getting ready to devastate a whole new group of Infected by waking them up. Khang couldn't let it happen. He didn't care about the world. Didn't want to wake up inside it ever again. But the idea that there were hundreds like him, that Dr. Taylor would continue to make more people like him, disturbed Khang. It was as if those people would be him, that he'd be reincarnated every time. Never resting. Never released.

  He followed the dull green trucks that headed farther and farther from the City. The trucks moved slowly, lumbering down the shattered tar of long abandoned roads. Khang was slower. He didn't find Dr. Taylor's new tent until evening. It faced the dusty track, its flaps gaping open. Dr. Taylor wasn't in it. He was setting up for the next batch of Infected.

  Khang sat on his knees in front of the tent and waited. When Dr. Taylor saw him, he ordered the soldiers to remove him.

  "I'm not your patient anymore," said Khang.

  The doctor scowled, but the soldiers let Khang be. Dr. Taylor closed the tent flaps so he could no longer see the man dying outside. Khang just waited. Trucks full of soldiers armed with dart guns drove around him. Khang sat. A thunderstorm drenched him, but he didn't move.

  In the morning, Dr. Taylor emerged from his tent and saw Khang still there, staring at him. He shook his head and walked away. Khang waited. The sun blazed on his head and shoulders. He was dizzy with thirst and heat. Hi
s lips cracked and his skin began to rise and bubble. Dr. Taylor came back and offered him a glass of cool water.

  Khang gave him a pitying smile and shook his head. Dr. Taylor shrugged and placed it on the grass beside Khang's knee. The sun sank at last and the trucks returned, their rumble tipping the glass of water into the ground around Khang. He didn't move.

  The camp grew loud and bright with electric light as the sleeping Infected were carried in to the tents, Cure darts still poking out of them. The doctors and nurses scuttled from patient to patient trying to stabilize those that needed it or putting in IV lines to keep them hydrated and fed while the Infected slept the disease away. The night chilled Khang's burned skin. He dozed anyway. It was early morning when he woke, still kneeling. His legs, which had pierced his calm with cramps the day before, were now completely numb. As if his death were creeping, toe upwards, to devour him. He smiled at the thought.

  By the time the sun had fully risen and Dr. Taylor emerged from his tent, Khang had lost the feeling in his arms as well. His chest and throat still blazed with thirst. Again, Dr. Taylor set a full glass of water at Khang's side without speaking. Again, Khang ignored it. Dr. Taylor made his rounds, but the day was slow. All of the Infected still slept. The soldiers removed those who hadn't lasted through the night. Again the trucks rolled past Khang, this time filled with bodies, and again, he didn't turn to look.

  Dr. Taylor returned to his tent. He stopped to stand over Khang for a moment. "What do you want?" he asked at last.

  "You owe me my death. I'm waiting for you to give it to me," said Khang.