21st Century Dead

by Christopher Golden

  “Bummer,” said Millie, then her eyes brightened. “Hey, I might be getting a new 5.1 for Christmas. If I do, you can have this one.”

  “Thanks,” said Fleur, but she knew that even with the best network deal she could find, she would still never be able to afford to actually use the damn thing.

  That was the only drawback about coming to Millie’s—sometimes her best friend forgot, or simply didn’t realize, how tight money was for Fleur and her family. That was why she hadn’t seen Millie for the whole of the half-term holiday—she couldn’t afford the bus fare and it was too far to walk. Ordinarily Fleur might have cycled around on her rickety old bone shaker, but with Andrew to look after she hadn’t been able to. So she had been stuck at home all week with nothing to do except feed and change the baby, read books, and do household chores for Mum.

  Now, however, it was Friday, which Mum always spent with Dad’s sister, Aunt Valerie. Jacqui passed Millie’s house on the way to Valerie’s, so Fleur had persuaded Mum to drop her off en route and pick her up again on the way home.

  The house Millie lived in was big, with apple trees in the front garden and a huge backyard with a swimming pool. Beyond the yard was a meadow, and beyond that was woodland. If you walked straight through the woods for about four hours, Millie’s fifteen-year-old brother, Will, had told them, you would come to the perimeter. He had been there with his friends several times and said it was “jazz” and that they should do it sometime. However, the girls preferred to stay close to civilization—to the pool and the computer and Millie’s mum’s homemade peanut cookies.

  Today had been the warmest day of the holiday. The girls had been for a swim and were now sitting on the wooden seat that encircled the largest of the ancient fruit trees in the front garden. Their backs were resting against gnarled bark that had been worn smooth by the pressure of many such backs over the years. Sunlight winking through the leaves overhead formed a moving pattern of light and dark on their bare legs.

  “Can’t wait to give the stupid thing back,” Millie said. “Only three days to go now.” She waved her clenched fists in the air and made a muted cheering sound.

  Fleur glanced at Andrew, lying like a dead weight in his portable crib a few meters away. He seemed unaffected by the sunlight shining directly onto his tiny, mottled, blue-gray body.

  “It hasn’t been so bad,” Fleur said. “In fact, it’s been quite easy.”

  “Yeah, but I dread waiting for mine to shit every day,” said Millie. “It stinks like … rotting fish or something. Doesn’t it make you gag?”

  “I’ve gotten used to it,” Fleur said. “I hold my breath.”

  “But it’s the look of it,” said Millie, pulling a face. “It’s green. And slimy.”

  Fleur grinned and was about to reply when a howl of pain from behind the house sliced through the drowsy afternoon air. This was followed by several people shouting at once, their voices shrill with panic.

  “That’s Will,” Millie said, jumping to her feet.

  She ran toward the path that led around the side of the house. Fleur glanced at Andrew, lying motionless in his crib, decided he’d be fine, and went after her.

  The backyard was full of boys in swimming shorts. They were crowding around Will, whose dark-skinned shoulders were gleaming with water or sweat. Will was holding up his right hand, and so shocked was Fleur to see his bottom lip trembling and tears pouring down his face that she didn’t notice the blood at first. Then she saw the cut on the pad of his upraised index finger, from which blood was trickling into his clenched fist. Fleur was confused. It didn’t look bad enough to warrant all this fuss.

  “What happened?” Millie shouted. “What happened?”

  One of the boys glanced behind him and Fleur followed his gaze. On the stone flags a couple of meters from the edge of the pool was the portable crib that she assumed contained the R1 baby assigned to Millie, a girl whom Millie had named Rose.

  “We were playing chicken,” the boy said, his voice tight and high with the knowledge that they had made a terrible decision, a decision from which there was no going back. “It was Ryan’s idea.”

  “It wasn’t my fault!” a boy who must have been Ryan protested.

  “Never mind whose fault it was,” Millie shouted. “What’s chicken? What do you mean?”

  All at once Fleur knew exactly what they meant. Calmly but urgently she said, “They were daring each other to stick their fingers in Rose’s feeding hole. Only Will didn’t pull his finger out quickly enough and he got bit.”

  Millie’s eyes widened in horror. “You idiot!” she screeched at her brother. “You stupid idiot!”

  Will was blubbing like a baby, tears and snot pouring down his face. “I’m gonna get the virus,” he wailed. “I’m gonna become a biter.”

  “No, you’re not,” Fleur said firmly. “If you get treatment within the first ninety minutes they can stop the infection.”

  “Really?” Will said, his teary eyes stretched wide with desperate hope.

  Turning to Millie, Fleur said, “He needs to go to hospital. Is your mum—”

  But Millie was already wheeling toward the house. “Mum!” she screamed. “Mum!”

  * * *

  “He’ll be fine, Mum,” Millie said softly. “You’ll see.”

  Millie’s mum, Clara, had once been a model. To Fleur, her mahogany-colored skin seemed to glow, as if with some inner light. She had thickened a little around the waist since her modeling days, but even now, in her forties, she was a breathtakingly beautiful woman. At this moment, however, she looked wretched, her finely boned face taut with worry, her hands quivering as they twisted a tear-dampened handkerchief into smaller and smaller knots.

  Fleur was sitting on the other side of Clara, in a plastic chair against the wall of the waiting area outside a pair of sealed, gray double doors. Above the doors was a sign that read:

  R1 INFECTION AREA

  RESEARCH AND TREATMENT

  AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY

  “Millie’s right, Mrs. Hawkes,” Fleur said reassuringly. “The man at the Moorlands Facility told us they have these drugs called…” She wrinkled her nose as she struggled to remember. “Antinecrotics, which block and kill off the R1 cells. They’re like virtually a hundred percent effective.”

  Clara Hawkes nodded vaguely, but she shot a venomous glance toward Andrew, who was lying silent and still in his crib on the seat next to Fleur. “I don’t know why they let you girls have those damn things in the first place. I always said this project was a bad idea.”

  Fleur stayed silent. She knew it wasn’t the right time to say that the babies weren’t to blame, and that the situation had occurred purely as a result of Will’s stupidity. Clara had insisted that Millie leave Rose behind at the house, even though she would need feeding again in an hour or so. At first, Fleur had thought Clara was going to tell her that she couldn’t bring Andrew, either, but Millie’s mum had been so preoccupied with her panic-stricken son that she had made no comment when Fleur placed Andrew’s crib on the middle seat in the back of the car.

  They had been at the hospital now for over an hour, waiting for news. The bearded doctor who had spoken to them when they first arrived had told them that Will would be treated immediately, but that they would have to monitor him for a while until they were sure that all traces of the infection had been eradicated.

  “How long will it be before you know for sure?” Clara had asked.

  “It depends entirely on Will’s response to treatment,” the doctor had replied smoothly. “Based on past experience, it could be anything between one and six hours.”

  In the seventy minutes or so since their arrival, a couple of white-coated doctors had entered the Infection area, having first tapped entry codes onto a keypad on the wall, but no one had come out. Fleur looked at her watch. It was almost 3:50 P.M. Her mum wasn’t due to pick her up until six, but if nothing happened within the next hour she’d have to call her and tell her what was
happening. She looked at Andrew lying in his crib. She couldn’t say she felt any particular affection for the boy, but she no longer felt the anxiety and repugnance she had experienced in the presence of the R1 infants a week ago. In that respect, she supposed, the project had been a success, whatever Millie’s mum thought. She looked around as the double doors to the Infection area hummed, clicked, and then began to open as someone pushed them from the other side. The person who emerged was the last one she expected to see.

  “Mum!” she gasped.

  Jacqui froze, a look of horror on her face. It was the expression of someone who has been caught red-handed, someone who has nowhere to hide. As if reading her daughter’s mind, Jacqui blurted out the question that was on Fleur’s lips: “What are you doing here?”

  “We were…” Fleur said, trying to pull her jumbled thoughts together. “I mean … Will got bit … Millie’s brother, I mean.” She frowned. “Why aren’t you at Aunt Valerie’s?”

  For a moment Jacqui looked trapped—then her shoulders slumped. “Oh well, I suppose it had to come out sooner or later,” she said.

  “What did?” asked Fleur.

  Jacqui gave her a strange look—a sad, resigned look that made Fleur’s stomach clench.

  Then, quietly, she said, “We need to talk.”

  * * *

  Sitting hunched over, as if weighed down by a burden of unspoken revelations, Jacqui reached out and took Fleur’s hands. She drew a long breath into her lungs and slowly expelled it, and then she said, “I lied. Your father’s not dead.”

  The instant Jacqui said the words, Fleur knew she should have been expecting them. Yet, they hit her like a bolt of lightning. She jerked in her seat; her mind reeled; her world flipped upside down. She gripped her mother’s hands hard to stop herself from falling, and from somewhere faraway she heard her own small voice asking, “So why did you say that he was?”

  Jacqui sighed and slumped lower in her seat, as if she had been inflated by nothing but secrets and regret for the past seven years and it was all now leaking out of her.

  “Because he wanted me to. Because he couldn’t bear the thought of you seeing him like … like that.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “But I couldn’t bear to let him go. I knew there was research going on. I knew that scientists and doctors were trying to find a cure for the virus. And if I’d given the order for your dad to … to be dispatched and then they’d found a cure…” She shook her head. “I would never have forgiven myself.”

  Fleur didn’t know how to feel. Didn’t know whether to be angry or happy, horrified or betrayed. “We could have helped you,” she said, “Elliott and me.”

  Jacqui shook her head. “It wouldn’t have been fair on you. You were just a little girl. I thought a clean break…”

  Fleur said quietly, “But you let Elliott think … you let him say all those terrible things to you.”

  “It was the best way,” insisted Jacqui. “The only way.”

  Another short silence, as if the conversation were too big or too painful to be handled in anything other than bite-size chunks.

  Eventually Fleur said, “And what about now? Will you tell Elliott now?”

  “Will you?” countered Jacqui.

  Fleur shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to think.”

  “You don’t have to decide anything yet. Why don’t you just … get used to the idea first?”

  Fleur let her gaze slide past Millie and Clara, sitting a dozen or so meters away, to the gray doors beyond them. “Is Dad in there?”

  Jacqui nodded.

  “So you come here every Friday? You don’t go to Aunt Valerie’s at all?”

  “I see your aunt Valerie in the mornings,” said Jacqui. “We have lunch and then I come here. Valerie used to come with me at first, but she found it too upsetting. Now it’s just me.”

  “What do they do to him in there?” Fleur asked. Anger sparked in her and she welcomed it, grasped it. It was a real emotion, something to anchor herself to. “Do they experiment on him?”

  “No!” Jacqui’s denial was loud enough to make Millie and Clara turn their heads. Controlling herself, she said, “No, I wouldn’t allow that. They try to cure him, that’s all. Anything new they discover, any breakthroughs they make, your dad’s one of the first to benefit from it.”

  “So he’s a test subject,” said Fleur.

  “You make it sound bad. It’s not bad. They’re trying to make him better. They’re not hurting him. I make sure of that. He has a good life … for what it is.”

  Another silence. Fleur felt sick and hollow. She was finding it all hard to digest. Finally she said, “Have they made any progress?”

  Jacqui didn’t answer immediately. And then hesitantly she said, “I think so … yes.”

  “I want to see him,” said Fleur.

  Jacqui looked alarmed. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

  “He’s my dad. I want to see him. You can’t tell me he’s alive and then not let me see him.”

  Now Jacqui looked anguished, torn. “I’m not being mean,” she said. “I just … I don’t want you upset, that’s all.”

  “I can handle it,” said Fleur stubbornly. “I’m old enough.” She paused and then said with quiet conviction, “I want to see my dad.”

  Jacqui stared at her for what seemed to Fleur a long time. She stared at her as if she had never seen Fleur properly before, as if she had not noticed until now how quickly her little girl had grown up.

  Then she gave a short, decisive nod. “Okay,” she said. “Come with me.”

  She stood up and walked back toward the gray doors. Fleur picked up Andrew’s crib and followed her. As they passed Millie and Clara, Millie half reached out. “Hey, you okay?”

  “Fine,” said Fleur, giving Millie no more than a glance. She could see that her best friend was brimming with questions, but she averted her gaze, unwilling to give Millie any encouragement to ask them right now. Instead, Fleur watched Jacqui stab a code number into the keypad on the wall, and then she followed her through the gray doors.

  * * *

  Dr. Beesley had hair growing out of his nose. Fleur couldn’t stop staring at it. She felt not quite real. She felt as if this were a dream, or as if her thoughts were floating like balloons a few meters above her head. She shifted her gaze to Dr. Beesley’s plump, wet lips in the hope that if she saw the shape of the words he was forming, she would find it easier to concentrate on them.

  “We think there has been some definite progress,” he was saying to Jacqui. “Thanks to the new drug treatment, Andy’s aggression levels are considerably reduced, and he seems far more responsive to his surroundings and to both auditory and visual stimuli. Dr. Craig informs me that you were there when they played the music this morning?”

  Jacqui nodded. “Yes. It seemed to me as if Andy was listening to it. Aware of it, at least.”

  Dr. Beesley nodded. “And he’s the same with voices. He no longer automatically identifies a human voice as simply the location of a potential food source. When we talk to him he appears to listen. Sometimes I swear he understands every word I’m saying.” He chuckled at his own joke, then asked, “Did he establish eye contact with you this morning?”

  “No, I … no,” Jacqui said.

  “Well, hopefully that will come. There have been brief indications of it already. Nothing conclusive, but we remain cautiously optimistic—as ever.” Finally, Dr. Beesley turned his attention to Fleur. “So you’ve come to see your father, little lady?”

  Fleur frowned and for a fleeting moment considered telling the doctor that she was thirteen, not six. Instead, she nodded.

  “Very good. First contact with an infected loved one is never anything less than an emotional experience, but if you’re prepared for that, I’m sure Andy will benefit from your visit.”

  “He might not,” muttered Jacqui.

  Dr. Beesley frowned. “I’m sorry?”

  �
��Fleur found out about Andy by accident. Until twenty minutes ago she thought he was dead.” Jacqui took a deep breath. “Now she insists on seeing him, though personally I’m worried how Andy might react. He never wanted his children to see him … well, you know.…”

  “I see,” said Dr. Beesley slowly. “Well, the decision is yours to make. I would offer advice, but such encounters are entirely unpredictable. All I can recommend is that if Andy does start to show signs of distress, it might be best to beat a hasty retreat.”

  “We will,” said Jacqui decisively.

  “Could I see my dad now, please?” said Fleur.

  A little taken aback at her directness, Dr. Beesley said, “Er … yes, of course. This way.”

  He led Fleur and Jacqui along several corridors until they came to one that had a gate stretching from wall to wall and floor to ceiling. A six-digit code punched into yet another wall-mounted keypad opened the gate. Beyond were closed, numbered doors not unlike the ones at the Moorlands Facility. Dr. Beesley led them around the corner and halted outside door number 5.13. Another keypad, another entry code, and the door clicked open.

  With a sweep of his arm, Dr. Beesley invited Jacqui and Fleur to precede him into the room. Not knowing quite what to expect, Fleur allowed Jacqui to go first, and then followed, moving with a lopsided lurch because Andrew’s crib, which she was carrying by the handles, kept bumping against her thigh.

  She found herself in what amounted to a smaller version of the Crèche at the Moorlands Facility. The anteroom was narrow, rectangular. A nurses’ monitoring station, currently unoccupied, was tucked up against the left-hand wall. Directly before them, opposite the door through which they had entered, was another wall made of what appeared to be thick, transparent Perspex. The white-walled room beyond that was twice the size of this one, simply furnished with a bed and a chair, both of which were bolted to the floor. There was a man lying on the bed, arms by his sides, unmoving. Fleur could see him only in profile, but she gasped in recognition.

  “Dad!”

  He was thinner than she remembered him, and his skin had the same mottled, blue-gray hue of all R1 sufferers. Dr. Beesley appeared from behind her and indicated a small metal grille on the wall above a pair of buttons. “You can speak to him if you like. Just press this button here.”