“We just call him President Anderson.” The barb was lost on the woman.
It would get dark early. The fresh smell of rain was in the air. It would make for a choice between a damp, miserable night in the woods, or breaking into a house that every once in a while turned out wasn’t abandoned. It wouldn’t matter whether its occupants were cold-blooded Infecteds or desperate, bypassed Uninfecteds—you were in for a fight. Better to get this over with. “People told stories, you know. Maybe some were made up.”
“Lies?” asked the interviewer.
“Very good. Embellished, more likely. Learn that word and you’ll be ready for your SATs.” The infected woman opened her mouth, presumably to correct the record about any impending college boards. “I know. You’re not taking the SATs. It was a joke.”
Apparently, there was a page for jokes. Her finger traced the line as she read. “Please just say what happened.” Page 11, Option 24 or whatever, in the binder.
“Well, in the beginning everything was normal.” She typed. “No guns, Exclusion Zone, yellow lines. Happy people living happy lives. Then, out of fucking nowhere, in four months everything got totally fucking fucked never to be unfucked again. The End.”
She typed it all. Perfect job for an Infected—government make-work. Was she judging? And, if so, whom and what? The events of last night? Or all Uninfecteds on their record since The Outbreak?
The woman paused, fingers poised, ready to type. What she didn’t know was that she was the one being judged. It was her life, and the lives of her fellow Infecteds, that were being decided.
* * * *
Over the hours, the interviewer’s questions grew tedious, so Isabel asked, “How do you people get paid? Do you even have money?”
“No. Everything is free. But you’ve got to have your work card punched.”
“Wow. Sounds like a workers’ paradise. What if you don’t want to work?”
That question agitated her. She looked out the window, or at the window. Her escape hatch. Maybe all wasn’t perfect in paradise, even for Infecteds. The woman again sat on her hands—literally—and took deep breaths. She was either supposed to lie if asked that question by an Uninfected and she didn’t know how to lie, or the answer she concealed by her silence was damning. Regardless, the woman needed calm.
“Okay, I’ll talk some more.” After many long seconds, the interviewer raised her hands to her keyboard. “You remember, we only had weeks to prepare.” Tears welled up in Isabel’s eyes. Goddam tears! The interviewer had lived through the same trauma. But she was infected and didn’t give a shit, about anything, ever again.
Once more, the siren song could almost be heard. It would be so easy to be infected. Like a purgatory for people who couldn’t quite commit to suicide. “To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub, For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come….” The dull gray interviewer looked up when Isabel asked, “You ever read Hamlet?”
Her eyes darted to her ring binder, but it would have nothing in it about Shakespeare. “Hamlet is a play,” she replied from some distant memory, almost childlike.
“Good! So you…? Now when I say you, that makes sense, right?” The infected woman nodded after a short and telling delay. No, you don’t get it ’cause there’s no you in there. She was waiting to type. “Never mind. The Outbreak. We prepared, or thought we did. As best we could. But who coulda known, right? Just how bad the worst-case scenario really was? I mean, you were there. You remember.”
The interviewer looked up, confused by the ever elusive yous, which left holes in otherwise straightforward sentences. She searched for comfort in her binder, calming her…whatever it was that was not herself. Quit fucking with her, a voice urged.
“How many have you killed in total since The Outbreak?” she asked, returning to her script.
“This is just a formality, right? They were in the Exclusion Zone. Plus, they were batshit crazy. Totally black eyes. Just turned. You woulda put ’em down too.”
“Who was the first person you killed in your life?” the robotic woman tried asking.
“The first? Oh, my baby nurse when I was an infant. Tripped her on the stairs. Then a couple or three housekeepers in my toddler years using toys labeled, ‘Choking Hazard.’ Then the youth pastor under a mound of collapsed hymnals. Oh, and my first soccer coach! I almost forgot about that rental van accident! Wait. You’re typing this shit?”
“Was it two or three housekeepers?” the dutiful chronicler asked.
Even now, their mental deficits were surprising. “I was joking. Like I said, I didn’t kill anyone before The Outbreak.” The woman patiently deleted everything, then looked up. Not annoyed. Not expectant. Not anything. She could have sat there like that for hours if things around her remained perfectly still and quiet, with no sense that any time had passed.
“It was a young woman, or a girl, on a bridge, wearing a nightgown and running right at me with a screwdriver in her hand. How about you? I’m sure you killed people before your fine self ended up here, all judge and jury and shit. What’s your story?”
The break in routine registered in the interviewer’s damaged brain, which was forced to plot a novel course on its own—without a manual—one unenlightened step at a time. In her flat monotone, she said, “It was at a refugee shelter. Soldiers started killing patients. One held his finger to his lips and looked out into the hall where the screaming was. The gun was under the pillow. The bullet hit the back of his head under his helmet. Then, there was the woods, the hunger, getting shot at when eating people’s garbage.”
This one had no problem with he, she, or they, any more than she did with the synonymous pronoun it. Like all Infecteds, she only had trouble with the missing I, me, my. Maybe she wasn’t so glib after all. Possibly had a middling score on the tests they reportedly administered to themselves these days.
“Would you say that the first person you killed was a girl, or a woman?”
“How the hell should I know?” Isabel’s reply was a little too loud, too alarming. The interviewer ceased typing. Her fists balled. Her fingernails dug into her palms. Calm the fuck down. Jesus. She’s on edge. Who knew how good she was at self-control?
No weapon was visible at the woman’s dented and scratched desk. She stared at her lap. Her jaw clenched. Cords in her neck and arms stood out. But from the chair across the yellow line to the woman’s desk was only about three running strides. Choking would be the way to go. Avoid the spittle out of habit. Although easily excitable, Infecteds didn’t panic and counterintuitively actually relaxed once death was inevitable.
Or deescalate? “I’m sorry. When your little border guards with those SE patches on their shoulders came to investigate and I agreed to answer a few questions, I thought they would be, you know, about the five dead people at that abandoned motel. Which, FYI, is not very damned abandoned. It’s like a halfway house between your side and ours. But here you are, asking me these questions. Why?”
“To do an accounting of The Killing.” The interviewer turned pages in her ring binder until she found something. “Would you like a cup of coffee or tea before we continue?”
“You have coffee? Seriously?” The interviewer shook her head. “How about tea?” Another no before she resumed her search of the binder. “Why do you even care about the killing, or the missing people? It’s not like you want revenge. That’s so pre-Outbreak. An emotion. Do you need to look up the definition? R-E-V-E-N-G-E? Or E-M-O-T-I-O-N?”
The interviewer found the right page. “The missing people’s jobs need to be filled, and if they’re just displaced,” she read, “they may return and breach the peace.”
Isabel’s snort drew the infected woman’s notice, but she clearly had no sense of the irony—an Infected concerned about violence after what they’d all just gone through. The historian slash stenographer waited. “I’ve been wondering about
this yellow line?” Isabel said. The infected woman looked down. “Maybe it isn’t to keep us from getting infected. It’s to keep you safe from us? If I were to, say, walk up to the line, would that agitate you?”
The mere mention visibly stirred the interviewer. That good old adrenal boost. Not fear, just primitive survival instinct. Her breathing grew shallower. Her muscles unsustainably taut. She wasn’t particularly well suited for a job involving contact with the uninfected. She also wasn’t a fighter. This one would probably dash straight for the open window and dive out, or try to. In fact, the women even glanced at it. Considered it. Measured her steps. Just tackle her and choke. It’d be quick if her windpipe broke.
The curtains drifted in the breeze. The sky was growing grayer. Outside, boys and girls headed into a large brick church. They weren’t boisterous like people should be at their age. They didn’t walk together even though all had the same destination—a side door into the sanctuary of some Protestant denomination.
“The yellow line,” the interviewer finally said, “is for Uninfecteds.”
“I don’t see any of your uninfected citizens walking the streets out there.”
“We call them members. They live in a separate part of town. It was their request.”
“I bet it was.” It was like talking to a preschooler. Infecteds understood only the straightforward. Nuance, irony, and sarcasm completely baffled the less sophisticated of them, which was most. “I see you’ve got great attendance at that church down the street.” The interviewer’s chair squeaked. Instead of typing, she sat on her hands, eyes closed, repeating something subvocally. Never seen that before. Oh, wait, I have. Emma’s relaxation classes for her NIH roommates. Finally, she opened her eyes and took deep breaths in through her nose, and out through pursed lips. Mentioning the church had set her off. Better discuss something that won’t evoke any powerful reactions.
“After you murdered the soldier who spared your life, did you kill other people?”
The interviewer didn’t answer, but visibly calmed and reverted to her script. “Did The Killing lead to The Schism, or did The Schism lead to The Killing?”
“I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about,” Isabel replied. “Schism? Killing?”
“The Killing was the Uninfecteds’ mass murder of Infecteds, and—”
“That’s what you call it?” The volume of Isabel’s reply made the interviewer jump. Sit back, lower your voice, chill the fuck out. The woman slowly resumed normal breathing. This must be a high-risk job. The interviewer wasn’t scared, but she certainly perceived some budding issues that might frustrate her urge to continue living. “So,” Isabel summarized, “you call what happened when the infection swept through The Killing, and by that you mean the policy of eradication? The ten-meter rule? Roadblocks and curfews and quarantines?”
The interviewer was too agitated to speak, but she did manage to nod. She needed a few more seconds. A good, long silence ought to do.
On the street outside, orderly Infecteds passed each other without any greetings. There were no anterograde amnesiacs, ten steps this way, eight steps that, staggering toward exhaustion. No paranoid delusionals jerking their heads at each new sight, unable to make eye contact without perceiving homicidal intent. No stroked out obsessives dragging what was left of their dead dog down the street. Those Infecteds were all long dead from self-neglect, from encounters with Uninfecteds, or from Infecteds tidying them up with industrial scale eugenics. These keepers outside were the crème de la crème of Infected society. Maybe their clear skin and loyalty to the regime entitled them to live in the showplace capital like North Korea used to do. High functioning because of superb immune systems, borderline exposure, or good hydration during the acute phase of infection. Or maybe they got their hands on some antivirals to lessen the damage of Pandoravirus.
The interviewer was finally ready, and began typing with the first words Isabel spoke. “I guess you’d say that The Schism, by which I presume you mean the constitutional crisis, was necessary for The Killing to begin. I mean, at its heart, the crisis was about eradication.” The interviewer clacked away. “But it’s really galling that you act like we…!” Stay calm. “What I mean is that it was you who were so wildly off the charts violent. And then, when we decide that we need to protect ourselves from you, you call that The Killing like it was some kind of premeditated holocaust or something.”
“Did you support The Killing? The policy of eradication?”
Were there right and wrong answers? Infecteds routinely murdered each other for scraps of supplies or to cull the breed. They would have no problem offing an Uninfected. “I didn’t support it at first,” came the truth. “Then I saw where things were headed.”
After her transcription caught up, she asked, “Where were things headed?”
“Toward extinction.”
The interviewer didn’t have to ask what that meant. “Did you only kill Infecteds? Or did you kill Uninfecteds too?”
“Both. How about you? You had a gun. Did you kill before you turned and after?”
The interviewer’s chair creaked when she looked up. That could end up being a useful forewarning in case the last page of her checklist read, “Now, kill the interviewee.” But this poor infected woman stared back with what was almost innocence. She was in desperate need of grooming, as worn as the fraying leather cushions of her chair. She gripped its arms. No emotion, but brimming with urges. Quit baiting her! Just talk. Isabel’s stories of killing, both Infected and Uninfected, were plentiful and came pouring out.
The only sounds were the keyboard and the slamming side door into the church down the street. Were they exterminating people in there who failed their exam? “Will the following please report to the loading dock?” Or were they raising an army? Young Infecteds milled about outside until the door opened to admit handfuls at a time. More Infecteds streamed up the sidewalk toward the building. Others appeared as they exited via an unseen door on the far side. Dear God, why did I agree to come here?
The interviewer searched her ring binder for her next question. A truck drove up to the brick church and disgorged young people at its door. “Those guys who showed up at the motel,” Isabel said, “after the shooting—the ones with those SE patches—who were they? What does ‘SE’ stand for?”
“Selective Eradication,” the interviewer replied. “They’re necessary for the proper functioning of society.”
“Wow. Not very…euphemistic. Kind of lays it right out there. What do they do?”
“Some Infecteds are too damaged,” the woman explained. “Dangerous, or useless. Feeding, housing, clothing, and confining them would be an unnecessary drain on resources.”
“So, you test them to see who’s high and who’s low functioning?” The woman nodded but looked as if she wasn’t certain she should have. “And the SE police kill the latter?”
She perused her book. She definitely wasn’t supposed to answer that question.
“Did you take the test?” The interviewer was confused. “There was a test, and that test was passed?” A tentative nod. “Congrats. No wonder you believe in the system. But those whacked-out crazy Infecteds in the Zone wouldn’t pass, would they? They’d just turned. Black pupils all.”
“Mydriasis,” the interviewer supplied without looking in her binder.
“You know that word?”
The interviewer began composing a reply, regrouped, and finally said, in a stilted and careful manner, “I…am a scientist. I am a biologist.”
“Reeeally? And now you’re a stenographer. You don’t seem too fucked up. Did you get your hands on some antivirals?” The woman nodded. “Hm. Where’d you get ’em?”
“From the old job,” the interviewer explained. “They were the last of them.”
“Makes sense then that you aced your test. You were healthy when exposed and got prompt antivirals. The
damage was more limited.”
She nodded. “Yes, I’m high functioning.”
“It’s all relative, I guess.”
“During the exam,” she began before faltering. “When the exam, the one that….” Another failed attempt at composing a sentence. Those pesky pronouns.
“During your exam? The one that you took?”
She nodded again, but uncertainly. “Seven ran and were shot.” Her matter-of-fact tone was the shocking part of that personal anecdote.
“They bolted when they figured out they’d flunk?” The interviewer nodded. “And they shot them right there in the exam room?” She nodded again. “But it obviously didn’t bother you too much ’cause you passed.” A final nod confirmed the gist of the story.
The interviewer said, “The Selective Eradication police provide security at the exams, do the executions, and also patrol the Exclusion Zone.”
“I bet you don’t want a knock on the door from them!” The interviewer shook her head. “So, you fail a test and it’s off to the crematorium?”
“No, they shoot you. No crematoria. There used to be gunshots day and night. Now it’s usually only on test days. The executions of Rule breakers are done outside of town.”
“So, no jail; you just kill them?”
“The Infecteds, yes. Imprisoning people is a huge drain on—”
“Sure, I get it. Don’t get me wrong. I’m with you all the way on this one. Keep on keepin’ on. It just seems, I dunno, a tad harsh? Litter or jaywalk, and off with your head?”
“No beheading. They use guns. And did you check the Board today? Are there new Rules against littering and jaywalking?”
What a stupid fucking question.
“Do you remember,” Isabel asked, “what it was like to have a soul?” Her interviewer’s gaze was blank and hinted at total incomprehension. “Or a conscience, or sense of self?” The woman searched her ring binder. “There used to be a you in there, but it’s gone now. That’s why the word you can be so confusing. I know, I know. You can think it through; connect the dots and kind of get that I’m talking about the biological organism that encompasses your body. But what I’m really talking about is the person inside you.”
Resistance: Pandora, Book 3 Page 31
