The interviewer found something. “What does your inner voice say to do?”
Kill you and get the fuck outta here. “Never mind. You asked when I first started thinking about killing Infecteds? It was when I realized you were going to kill every last fucking one of us!” She clearly didn’t know what to make of the rising volume of the reply. “Have you seen a mob attack? Ever been in a mob? You tell me—why the hell do you do that? You ask me about The Killing, like it’s some inexplicable fucking atrocity. But have you seen Infecteds sack a neighborhood? Go door-to-door looking for something to steal or someone to rape and stumbling onto a terrified, cowering Uninfected family? Children! Old people! Do you apologize and back your way out? No. You go into a fucking frenzy and rampage through the house, slaughtering them you evil fucking bitch!”
Calm down. Calm down. Breathe. Sit on your hands. But the interviewer was undisturbed, which itself was offensive. “Can’t you just leave them alone?” Isabel asked. “Do you have some twisted urge to destroy everything healthy? Are you like rabid dogs who have to bite, or hypersexual syphilis victims compelled to corrupt?”
The woman grew wary and stopped typing. What was the trigger? Her hands gripped the tattered armrests of her chair. She sat at its front edge, ready to bolt. Should I let her go? That didn’t seem like such a good idea. She might run straight to some SE guy. It would be safer to put her down.
“That isn’t…done anymore,” she finally said.
“What?” But that was all the infected drone said as she sat there, quivering in a stew of her own adrenaline. “What did you say? Shouldn’t you have said, ‘We don’t do that anymore’?” The interviewer nodded. “And just what the hell does that mean?”
“Violence is….” She didn’t complete, or know how to complete, her statement.
“What? Bad? Wrong? Evil? Immoral? You don’t give a shit about those things.”
“The Board says, ‘Do not breach the peace’.”
“Oh, The Board does, does it? Well why didn’t you say so?”
Satisfied, she returned to her ring binder and found her place quickly. “Did you discuss The Killing, and was there dissent?”
“Why do you give a flying fuck about this shit?” The answer to that question was clear—she didn’t. She was following a script and obeying a Board in order to be fed and avoid being shot—a trusty cog in the infected machine. It was as simple as that. You let me live here, and I follow your Rules. What was her question? Oh, yeah. “You ready to type?” The interviewer seemed to relax.
“So, hell yes there was dissent, and debate, and argument, and moral quandaries. But you know, it’s not just viruses that follow Darwin’s law. Ideas are subject to natural selection too. And people, families, and communities that decided killing Infecteds was immoral—they didn’t last long, did they? When did the last sanctuary city go dark? Santa Fe? Infection Date 80 or so? Either people changed their minds about not killing to defend themselves and their loved ones, or that grand idea died with its last adherent, usually when you and yours ripped their eyeballs out. Nature self corrects for piss-poor memes.”
“What rules,” the methodical woman asked, seemingly uninterested in the substance—or vehemence—of Isabel’s reply, “did you follow about killing Infecteds?”
“Rules? Like on your Board? Well, before SED got here, nobody was thinking about killing anybody. We had laws. And at first the government said no killing, then natural selection, I guess, played a hand in changing governments—your Schism—and the new leaders said kill away. But by then, I don’t know who was still following orders other than the military. People did what it took, or they didn’t survive. Sometimes the same people would kill every last Infected after a fight in the morning, then let other Infecteds go with food and water in the afternoon. There were no rules. It was life or death on a whim. Nobody had time to think through rules because they kept SED secret so long. You wanta talk about crimes!”
The interviewer calmly transcribed Isabel’s condemnation. Isabel knew she shouldn’t expect more out of the woman but her indifference contrasted frustratingly with the outrage Isabel felt at the long-ago government cover-up. “How about you?” Isabel asked, angry and heedless of her pronoun usage. “Did you have enough time to prepare?”
The woman hesitated before finally saying, “The husband got ready.”
“Yeah? And how’d that work out?”
“They broke into the house. The family hid in the attic. The husband went out to distract the mob, and it worked. They killed him and stole things, but left the rest alone. The son ran out to his father’s body even though he was warned not to. After sneaking across the D.C. cordon to a refugee center in Reston, he threw up and they quarantined him in an adjacent ward.”
“Then you got sick, too?” The interviewer blinked repeatedly. “That was where the nice soldier from before got shot in his head?” She nodded. She understood pronoun free questions. “Ever think, for even one instant, that murdering someone who showed mercy was a fucking horrendous crime?” The interviewer shook her head. Of course not. “What happened to the son?”
“He was in a different ward.”
“So I heard. Next to the ward you were in. And the soldiers started killing Infecteds, and the nice soldier got himself shot, and…then came the woods, right?” She nodded again. “But no check next door on the son? Of course not. Just left him there.” She nodded. “How the hell do you expect to organize a society long-term when people just abandon their children?”
“Parents deliver children to The Community. It’s a Rule on the Board.”
“I see. Part of your 10,000 Commandments or whatever.” The impossible-to-miss Board stood near a gazebo in the median along the road into town. “Too bad you didn’t have that rule about taking care of children at that refugee center.”
She nodded in agreement, then returned to her ring binder. The conclusion Isabel had to draw in her report to General Browner was growing absurdly obvious. How can you not despise them? View them as inherently evil? An abomination? The epitome of everything inhuman?
Chapter 49
NEW ROANOKE, VIRGINIA
Infection Date 122, 2020 GMT (4:20 pm Local)
It was growing dark and a storm was brewing. “Time to wrap this up,” Isabel said.
Throughout the interview, Isabel had quietly dreaded this moment. Several times she had almost convinced herself it was unnecessary and questioned whether she even had the will or the moral right to do it. But the twenty-four hour clock was ticking. She had a mission to accomplish and had been advised repeatedly during her briefing in Houston that speed was essential to her safety. “Try to be done and gone by sunset,” had been the CIA agent’s repeated urging. And the lawyer from the Justice Department had completed the picture by advising, “All punishment of homicides has been suspended so long as the deceased was infected.”
Not suspended, however, was Isabel’s conscience. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and thought—to God or to herself—Please forgive me. When she opened her eyes, her jaws were firmly clenched. As detailed for her interviewer, she had killed Infecteds before. Uninfecteds too. Why was this any different?
Her interviewer grew apprehensive when Isabel rose and closed the door. She trapped her hands under her thighs as she watched Isabel shut each window and lower its blinds. The infected woman pinched her eyelids tight and muttered something like a prayer—more likely a calming mantra—then opened her mouth to say something, but couldn’t get it out. “Shhh. Shhh,” Isabel said. The woman’s breathing was ragged. Better be on guard in case she bolts or calls out. But there was no one else in the building or on the streets.
The woman opened her eyes to find all possible escape routes closed and her executioner—having crossed the yellow line—standing over her. Isabel was five foot four and now probably well under her normal weight of 120 pounds. But her interv
iewer was skin and bones—100 pounds, max—and frail to the point of being sickly. It was hard for Isabel to remember that the woman wasn’t frightened. They don’t feel fear, or sadness, or longing for a life that might have been. That’s projecting human emotions onto them—a fatal flaw long since eliminated from the meme pool of surviving Uninfecteds. All they get is agitated. An urge to live bolstered by secretion of adrenaline.
The woman tried to say something, but was so jittery the words came out jumbled.
“Shhh. Shhh.”
Her neck was slender. She was significantly undernourished. When she tried to speak again, her vocal chords vibrated, giving away the location of her larynx to Isabel’s fingertips. “It’ll be over in a minute, I promise. Stay calm and we’ll do this quickly. Together.”
“Mm-mm know you! Know you!” she said.
Curiosity momentarily delayed the ugly process. Or at least a reluctant Isabel allowed the delay. “What’d you say?”
“I…I know you.” The woman looked up at Isabel. She didn’t even bother to raise her hands defensively. Isabel’s grip left her neck and settled onto her shoulders as if for a friendly massage. “We…we’ve met. At the NIH. On your first day. You were late for Dr. Nielsen’s staff meeting. I…I was there. The head of the Tumor Cell Biology Lab. You winked. At…at me.”
“You had a tan. And a wilting red flower tucked in your ear.” The woman nodded. Isabel winced, unseen by her intended victim. “Why the flower?”
The interviewer shrugged under Isabel’s hands, which she removed. “I…I don’t know. My husband and…and I,” she bobbed her head each time she correctly used a self-reference, “were on a second honeymoon, on Bora Bora, when the call came about SED.”
“Hm. You must have kept the flower, ya know, to hang on to the moment. You must have really loved him. And your son.”
The interviewer shrugged again. All those human experiences were receding from her memory. “Your sister thought you’d be less likely to kill the interviewer if you knew her from before.”
That made sense. “She was right, I guess. Plus, I thought you and I had become friends here.” The poor woman nodded. “I didn’t really want to, ya know, kill you. It just seemed…less complicated that way.” She nodded again. Strangely, she understood what many Uninfecteds might not. Isabel shared that, at least, with the woman. “Tell you what. I propose a contract. Between you and me.” The interviewer waited. “You do trust me, right?” The woman shook her head. Her honesty elicited an amused snort. “Well, regardless, here’s the offer. I won’t kill you if you answer my question honestly. Okay?” The interviewer nodded. She might even actually tell the truth because it was a contract. Isabel standing over her clearly made her extremely uneasy, so Isabel remained right there. “What’s going on in that church up the street?”
“Meditation,” the interviewer responded without hesitation. “Relaxation training. Everyone goes through it before they take their test, but young people need extra training. They’re more excitable. One part of the test measures anxiety levels. Meditation helps them stay under control and not breach the peace.”
“I don’t believe you,” Isabel said. “Show me.”
The tops of the trees outside were dancing in the freshening wind. They fell in alongside a small group of teenagers headed for the door into the church. The interviewer could have bolted, but she didn’t. In fact, she acted no differently toward Isabel than she had before her near-death experience. When they reached the church, the teens waited their turn in several loose and untalkative groups, sufficiently dispersed, Isabel decided, that they wouldn’t trigger any crowd reaction from excessive density. Isabel and the interviewer climbed the few steps to the church’s side door.
The SE policeman there asked no questions when he saw Isabel. He must have assumed she was Emma. Inside, it took a few seconds for Isabel’s eyes to adjust to the dim light. The sanctuary had a movie screen in front, but no seating. She made out a dozen groups of ten teenagers each sitting in circles around an adult who led them through breathing exercises. Lips moved in barely uttered chants and pursed for measured breathing.
On the screen were projected images and short videos. A sneering soldier in combat gear staring through the sights of a rifle pointed straight at the viewer. A newly arrived line of Infecteds standing in front of a pit half filled with dead bodies as a belt of ammunition was loaded into a smoking machine gun. A tank gruesomely crushing members of a crowd under its treads as it “mowed the lawn,” she had heard tank drivers call it. A string of bombs ripping through a line of houses in a suburban neighborhood. A mob of uninfected vigilantes running toward the camera.
All the while, speakers spewed jarring audio from fighting and riots. Explosions. Screams. Gunfire. Shouts of, “Halt! Halt!” and “Disperse! Disperse!” The show was clearly meant to agitate the teenagers. Some rose to their feet and had to be coaxed back into place by SE men the size of bouncers who patrolled the spaces between the circles. One teen was being held down by two men until they finally nodded to each other and led the quivering girl, who was on the verge of losing it, out a door by both elbows.
Soon after the door closed, there was a single, sharp gunshot. Numerous people around the room jumped at the sound. Isabel felt lightheaded. She hadn’t imagined there was an even more callous rung on the descending ladder of heartlessness.
But they weren’t raising an army, Isabel realized. They were trying to put a stop to the violence. They were culling the breed of Infecteds easily roused by committing murder in service of peace. “Okay. I’ve seen enough. Take me to my sister,” Isabel said.
The skies looked like they would break open as they traversed empty streets through the infected town. The only vehicle they passed was a garbage truck from which arms and legs protruded. The few people they passed exchanged no nods of acknowledgement, no greetings, no glances of curiosity. As advised by the CIA man, Isabel tried to make herself inconspicuous. No smiles. She didn’t swivel her head to take in the sights like an uninfected tourist in the capital of the Infecteds. She stifled every question she longed to ask her guide.
They crossed the street to a nondescript four story brick building—a former branch bank, judging by the drive-through teller window. As they headed up the steps, Isabel was shocked to pass former President Stoddard, who looked her right in the eye on his way down.
“President Stoddard?”
He turned. “Hello, Isabel.”
She felt momentary surprise at his lack of interest in seeing her again. But of course he wasn’t the least bit curious. A black SUV pulled up. Former First Lady Angela Stoddard emerged wearing a stylish pants suit. “I’m going to guess,” she said, “by how well fed you are that you’re the other Dr. Miller!” Mrs. Stoddard removed her movie star sunglasses—a new custom upon meeting—but did not approach Isabel for a handshake. No one did that anymore, even if vaccinated. “Hello, Isabel.” Angela Stoddard wore shiny black high heels, a broach, a necklace, a diamond bracelet.
“Mrs. Stoddard? How are you doing?”
“We have our good days and our bad days. I take it you’re here to see your sister.” She stepped up close to Isabel, but eyed the interviewer. “You can go,” she said to the woman, who departed without even a glance at her would-be executioner. So, Isabel thought, you got to live after all. A small part of her felt happy for the poor interviewer even though the woman herself would never feel happiness again.
Mrs. Stoddard glanced up at the threatening sky. “Why don’t you come to dinner at our house? Stay the night, for that matter. It looks like it’s gonna pour. The kids would love to see you, and I can’t imagine you’d wanta stay in their part of town overnight. We’ve had a little get-together planned. That’s why I’m picking him up, although of course no one will sit down at the table with an Infected. But the people coming to dinner tonight would love to talk to you. You’ll be my star guest, and w
e have a lot to talk about. Dinner’s at seven. We’ll count on you at least by six so, you know, you can get showered and a quick wash of your clothes.”
President Stoddard got into the car. “Tell your sister,” Mrs. Stoddard said, “that we need our rations increased. I know we already get more caloric intake than the infected side. Blah, blah, blah. But a lot of the food is tasteless crap and uninfected people just won’t eat it. We don’t want anybody going hungry. Hungry people breach the peace. Make sure you tell her that. ‘Breach the peace.’ Oh, and I’ll send the car back for you.” She took a step toward it before turning to Isabel. “Would you like me to scrounge up some clothes for you?”
Isabel looked down at her baggy camouflage blouse and trousers. “I’ve kinda grown accustomed to this.” Plus, you never knew when camo will come in handy.
“Well bless your heart. You’ll find Uninfecteds here like to dress up. Anything to distinguish ourselves from them.” The former President sat just inside the SUV’s door. “Scoot. Scoot over!” He undid his seatbelt and slid to the other side. Angela Stoddard smiled and waved at Isabel. “See you soon! It’s sorghum night!” She rolled her eyes.
Isabel climbed the steps to the glass double doors in a daze. Everything about this place felt alien. A fading, hand-printed sign read, “Community Headquarters.” Not exactly a monument to Infecteds’ achievement. But it was early days. Their beginning is our end.
She entered, passing zero security along the way. It was so unlike Houston. The lobby was filled with desks—empty at that hour—but no partitions. Who needed privacy? Infecteds didn’t watch porn on their laptops or have telephonic fights with their spouses.
On the far side, Emma caught Isabel’s eye before she pressed a button on a photocopier. Isabel’s face lit up on seeing her sister, but the only light on Emma’s came from the copier. Isabel had to hurry to catch up to her departing sister. “Emma. Emma!”
Resistance: Pandora, Book 3 Page 32
