by Josiah Upton
The image of this massive box squishing Gordon fills my thoughts. My Prisoner snarls in a whisper to me, suggesting that once he's dead I could lift the thing off of him and pick portions from his crushed body, then escape out the basement's back door. It would all be very easy. But I remind myself – and the Prisoner as well – that I wouldn't need large items and gravity to kill prey. That's something I could do with my bare hands. But I will never let it happen.
My Prisoner sulks to the back of his cell. “Ready,” I say.
We count to three, and Gordon groans as I help lift the cabinet up and onto the hand truck's balancing wheels. It's supposed to be heavy, but I am hardly aware of its weight, just like I hardly noticed Dalton's. Gibbs said human strength is limited, and that true potential is only unlocked when an intense situation requires extraordinary force. I, however, am in a constant state of extraordinary force. Normally such prolonged use of maximum power would quickly damage muscle tissue, even cause death in humans. But my body isn't exactly of the human variety.
“You okay, Zaul?” Gordon grunts.
“Yes,” I answer back tiredly, trying to fake exhaustion. “Which way do we need to go?”
“I'm going to walk back slowly towards the rear stairs. Come over by me and make sure I don't run into anything. And be ready to help lift if it starts to fall.”
As we move, and Gordon begins to sweat from exertion, his scent becomes stronger. I realize I haven't eaten anything – other than that repulsive mix of sausage and rice – since the small snack of pig's heart I had after school. My attention is so much on him that I don't notice the box he is about to step into. His feet trip up, and he lets out a surprised yelp as he falls backwards. Even though my reflexes are slow, my hand is already on the cabinet and I stop it from falling onto him. I push it forward easily, and it lands on the basement floor with a tremendous thud.
“Zaul,” Gordon manages between heavy breaths as he lays on the floor, legs tangled with the metal bars of the hand truck. “You just saved me a trip to the emergency room, maybe even saved my life. How'd you do that, and with just one hand?”
“I... I...” The lies aren't coming fast enough. There would be no logical excuse for a human accomplishing the feat I just performed.
“You know,” Gordon says as he struggles to get up. “I've heard of episodes of hysterical strength, when the body's fight-or-flight response is triggered by an extreme danger, and massive amounts of adrenaline are released into the system, giving seemingly superhuman strength. Maybe a car falls on top of a child, and the mother is able to lift it long enough for the child to be removed safely.”
“Do you think that's what it was?” I ask, hoping this explanation will cause him to stop thinking about it. “Adrenaline?”
“Maybe,” he says, looking between me and the cabinet. “But I'm amazed at how quickly it kicked in, before that thing even fell on me. And look at you, you're not even breaking a sweat.” Hybrid Reanimates don't perspire, which is good considering the makeup I have to wear. “I can't grasp it. Are you just incredibly strong, son?”
“I don't think so,” I lie. “I'm not in sports or any other athletic activities.”
“And you don't look particularly large, either. Here, see if you can move this again.” I reluctantly place my hand on the cabinet, and pretend like I'm pushing with all my might, feigning grunts and shaking limbs. Since my body won't limit my strength for me, I've learned to do it myself. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to handle small objects like pencils or pill bottles without breaking them.
Once the act has gone long enough, I step back from it and force a heavy breath, shaking my head.
“Hmm,” Gordon says, rubbing his beard. “Well, whatever happened, thank you. You almost had to tell Genny her father was crushed under a giant piece of junk.”
“No problem. Are we still going to move it out of the basement?”
“No,” he sighs heavily. “I think I've had enough of this thing for today. You probably have too. Maybe some other time.” He leans on the hand truck, breathing laboriously.
“Are you alright?” My Prisoner insists that Gordon is weak and ready for me to strike. I ignore him yet again.
“I'm fine, I'm fine. I just need to sit down.” He collapses into the chair by his many screens. “I'm getting too old, I should've known better than to try this. Maybe next time, I'll finally talk Caesar into helping, and you two can move this while I, uh... supervise.” He starts to chuckle, shaking his head. “Zaul, could you do me a favor and get me some water from upstairs?”
“Yes Sir.”
Just as I walk away, he grabs my sleeve. “And please, stop with the 'Sir' business. It makes me feel older than I already am. You can call me Gordon.”
“Yes Sir... I mean, Gordon.”
I turn and start down the path along the wall. But before I reach the stairs something catches my eye that I missed on the way in: a door cracked open, with light escaping from it. I feel the need to look inside, though there's no reason I should be snooping around down here. Maybe I'm beckoned towards it because of the paper that covers the door's wooden surface, all of them filled with colorful yet crude drawings, and Genny's name scrawled at the bottom of them.
Instead of the grotesque figures and morose faces from the drawings in her room, I see flowers and houses and trains and monkeys. One is a juvenile family portrait of a man, woman and small child. Another is a person with wings floating up into the air, the word “Mommy” scribbled under it. What is in this room? My curiosity gets the best of me, causing me to grasp the door handle. I shouldn't go inside, but I can't stop myself. I look over my shoulder to make sure Gordon isn't behind me, then enter.
Once inside I expect to see a storage room full of Genny's old things, maybe some toys or baby clothes that she has long outgrown. But I only find more miscellaneous lab equipment. And unlike the large biosafety cabinet, these objects are plugged in and working. In fact, this small room is much tidier than the main basement area I came from. Whatever its purpose, it's actively being used. I walk along the work areas and machines that hum quietly, not having a clue as to what they do or how they serve Gordon's research.
On the far wall is a large chalkboard filled with numbers and formulas and equations that are hardly legible. One thing that does stand out, however, is the name Genny. What does she have to do with all of this? I look at some charts on a table behind me, and see her name again. It's written on a piece of tape wrapped around an empty test tube, and on a graph glowing from a computer screen. In the corner there is a refrigerator – I open it and find more vials labeled “GENNY”, with dark liquid inside them. I smell it and know that it is blood. Gordon is doing research on his daughter.
“What are you doing in here, Zaul?”
I whip around to see Gordon standing at the door, mouth open with disbelief. “I-I-I... I was... looking for water... in this fridge...”
“No you weren't,” he sneers, face turning bright red. “Don't lie to me, son. You were going through my private things without permission. Did I say you could go in here?” I open my mouth to answer, not sure how to respond. This is a Gordon I have never seen before. “No, I didn't. I think maybe it's best if you leave.”
“But...”
“Now.”
“No!” I shout, feeling Rage pulsing through me. There's something going on in here and it has to do with my friend, and I won't leave until I find out what. I pick up the empty test tube, almost crushing it, and march over to him, bringing it inches away from his face. “What's this? Why is Genny's name on it?”
“I don't have to answer to you. This is my house, my things, and she is my daughter.”
“Is there something wrong with her? Is she sick?”
Gordon looks at me discerningly, biting his lip. It appears his eyes have grown slightly moist. “This is none of your business. You had no right to see any of this. Now leave, before I call the police.” I stand still, anger and frustration boiling inside. The
re's definitely something wrong with Genny, but it looks like her father is unwilling to divulge. I storm past him and out the door.
Just before I exit up the stairs, he calls out to me. “And stay away from my daughter!”
Chapter 22
I don't know why I'm climbing back on the bus going to Pueblo. After all, what's the point? I had convinced myself that living this deceptive life was futile, if I didn't have that chance at light and warmth in it. That chance was in my new friend Genny, and just as I was leaving that basement her father screamed at me to stay away from her. I didn't even say good bye to her, I just grabbed my backpack and left as she looked on with a confused expression. All I have now is the long dark corridor, and the whirring of Gibbs's wheelchair as I follow him down it. What's the point?
Just before the bus rolls forward, a shabbily dressed woman climbs aboard, and I can smell her from my seat at the back. It is an offensive odor, and I wonder if she is one of the homeless I've read about. She walks all the way to the back, stops next to where I am, and points at the seat by the window. “I sit?”
If she is not homeless then she is at least uneducated or mentally slow, as shown by her broken English. I suppose she could be foreign, but that would be unlikely considering this country's distaste for anyone or anything coming from beyond its borders. And it is my own distaste for her, induced by her foul stench, that convinces me it is safe for her to take the seat next to mine. If anyone is going to sit by me it's best that they stink, so I feel less overcome to eat them. I slide over to the window to make room. “Yes ma'am, you can sit here.”
The bus rolls forward, my body creaking and groaning as this large vehicle rocks it back and forth. I pass the time, consciously ignoring the scents and visuals of the other riders, and thinking about Genny. Wondering what's wrong with her, and why Gordon was so defensive when I asked about it. Is he not working on a cure for the Hubrens Virus at all, but instead devoting all his research to whatever plagues his daughter? Does he even work for the APA anymore?
Suddenly, the bus comes to a halt, but we're nowhere near Pueblo. We haven't even officially left Cañon City's limits. I rise from my seat and look out the bus's front window, seeing an obstruction in the road made of vehicles, none of which are buses or trucks. They are smaller vehicles, all uniform and black, and on their sides I notice something I saw in Gordon's basement: The APA seal.
Yes, Gordon most definitely still works for the government agency. He must have pieced together my secret after I left, probably guessing from my display of superhuman strength that I am no ordinary human. He notified the Collars of me leaving the city by bus, and are now here to round me up.
Out of a primal sense of survival, I scan the bus for an escape. Agents in gray suits are approaching the bus's front door, which leaves only the back exit. Even if I manage to climb over the stinky woman and burst through that door, how long until they chase me down? At that point my only options will be getting shot or lifelong containment at Colorado Territorial, under the care of Caesar Ortega. I think I'd rather take the bullet.
Whether this was from Gordon's sense of duty to alert authorities of an unregistered Hybrid Reanimate, or out of revenge for snooping around in that basement room, I do not know. But either way, it's all over now.
The agents climb aboard, looking out over the bus passengers. “This will only take a moment,” they say, and I hope they're right. Each slow step they take down the aisle is another agonizing second my Prisoner screams at me. He knows he will be going to a place, whether to containment or to a second and final death, where the flesh of the living will be out of his reach. He pleads with me to feed, as this will be his last chance. For a moment I consider attacking the filthy homeless woman, but I can't bring myself to do it. This is the end, and I will meet it with whatever small amount of human decency a creature like me is capable of. I close my eyes and wait.
The two agents come at last to the final seat on the bus. I can smell them, hear their footfalls. “Come with us, please,” a man orders. I breathe in and out deeply, and just before I rise, the seat next to me shifts in weight. I look up and notice the homeless woman is standing to meet them. They turn her around, secure her wrists with metal cuffs, and escort her down the aisle between the two of them, leaving me to sit in relief and confusion.
Her? Why her? What did she do? Is she a Phase II Negative, a human carrier of the Hybrid Reanimate virus, but unregistered with the APA? I don't understand. I'd been among the living for a month, attending class with teenage children, making drug deals with a psychotic Containment Captain and befriending an APA employee and his daughter. I'm surprised I've gotten away with it for this long. It was me those agents were supposed to nab, me that deserved to be taken away, not some poor human who is unfortunate enough to carry a disease.
As she and the agents are exiting, I can feel the tension from within the bus, the glaring eyes upon her. A passenger near the front calls out, “Sick freak!” Other passengers erupt with similar comments, all of them clearly coming to the same conclusion I did, that she is a Phase II Negative. I now understand why Vicky spoke so sympathetically to me in regards to my falsified medical record, because even a human who is only the carrier of the Hybrid disease is still hated in society.
Just as they come to the front of the bus, someone spits on her, and that's when everything falls apart. The woman lets out a feral shriek, and jumps on the agent in front of her, causing both of them to tumble down the bus stairs and onto the side of the road. Everyone rises in their seats to look out their windows, myself included, and we witness the woman sinking her teeth into the agent's neck and tearing out a considerable chunk of bloody flesh as she whips her head up. Her wig flies off to reveal a bald and gray head, blue veins mapped out over its slick surface. Everybody screams in horror.
The other agent responds to the incident, rushing down the bus stairs and drawing his weapon on the Hybrid Reanimate, yelling at her to stop. I don't understand why she hasn't been shot yet. Still handcuffed, she struggles to her feet. Blood is running down her chin, and one of her contact lenses has fallen out, revealing the dead white eye. This is what a Prisoner unleashed looks like.
She hesitates for a moment, then turns and runs in the opposite direction, over a barren stretch of land towards a low mountain range in the distance. She covers about ten yards, the agent still shouting at her to stop running, before a shot is heard. The Hybrid woman stumbles forward and collapses, blood splattering on the dry grass around her. She hits face-first into the dirt with a bullet hole pocked into the back of her gray, veiny head, dark liquid oozing out of it.
In my undead life I have never encountered another of my kind, until just now. She sat right next to me and I wasn't even aware. She was doing what I was doing, using makeup and contacts and a wig to disguise who she was. Had I known, I might have asked her about her life. Asked if her parents loved her, or if she had ever found that light and warmth that seems so elusive to me. The image of her lifeless body in the bloody grass seems to answer that question for me, though. Her existence must have been just as miserable and hopeless as mine.
* * *
Once again, I return from another utterly dreadful day in Cañon City as the bus rolls into Pueblo. I've learned that my invisible parents don't want me, that something is wrong with Genny, and that other Hybrid Reanimates are disguising themselves like I am, and the APA is tracking them down. The only consolation is that Gordon still doesn't know what I am. Or, he at least hasn't said anything to his employers about it. But even that doesn't change the fact that I am forbidden to see his daughter. And once again I walk up to the back door of Gibbs's house, feeling that once inside the basement I don't think I will ever want to leave it again.
The ordeal on the bus has made me late, but this time Gibbs doesn't give me the usual speaker box interrogation that I hate so much. The lock clicks instantly, and I descend down the stairs.
The last thing I ate was that jambalaya, and I can s
till taste it. I throw my backpack on my bed and make a bee line for the fridge, unloading containers of swine meat and arranging the parts on a plate. Just when I think Gibbs will leave me alone for the night, he calls my name. I reluctantly march up the stairs with my food and see him in his usual spot, sitting a few feet away from the steel barrier. “Are you alright?”
“What do you mean?” I ask, sitting down at my small table and picking up my fork.
“I heard what happened with the bus, it was on the news. Are you alright?”
I'm not used to the amount of concern that's in his voice right now. I have a hard time knowing what to respond with. “I'm fine. I don't think I will ever ride the bus again, though.”
“And why not?” he asks, taking a sip from his coffee.
“Why do you think?” I snarl, dropping the fork on my plate. “A Hybrid was shot in the head tonight, and she was sitting right next to me before it happened! And now what? Am I next?”
“What are you talking about?”
“She was doing what I'm doing. She had makeup on, and a wig. She was trying to blend in, but they came looking for her! How long until they come looking for me?”
“No one is looking for you, Zaul. Like I said, I heard about it on the news. This Hybrid was actually registered and had gone missing. Somebody must have spotted her, informed the APA about it. That won't happen to you unless a report is filed, and no one around here knows about your condition except me.”
“Wait, she was registered? How did she escape from the Facility?”
“She was never there,” Gibbs explains. “She was registered with a guardian living up in the mountains, got away somehow and tried to take the bus out of Cañon City.”
The word “guardian” feels like a knife in my chest. Whoever this undead woman was, she apparently did have someone who cared for her, unlike me. I look at Gibbs now, hating him. How dare he casually mention another Hybrid and their guardian, when he never even told me about the guardianship program in the first place? I had to learn about it from Caesar and his wall of hatred.
