A miracle. The man had liked that word. Corbin did not see the miracle in Micah’s stamp, or the miracle in the letter from the district with a reminder that every student had to be retested in January. Any newly stamped were required to report to the district office before being readmitted to school. Most of the rules for Sombra C students he knew from Welcome Mat with Trevor, Shelly, and Janie (dead, dead, and hiding at home in terror). Students infected with the virus were not allowed to share food, and they had to eat their lunches on a towel placed atop the table. They were not allowed to use the water fountains or regular restrooms. Down in auto shop, the restrooms had been refurbished with red doors. Lunch trash, tissues, and feminine hygiene products had to be placed in a special plastic bag issued by the school and returned at the end of the day to be burned.
They could wear scarves or turtlenecks, but were forbidden to conceal the stamp with cosmetics. They were not allowed to initiate hugs or kisses or high-fives, nor should they encourage others to hug or kiss or high-five them. In fact, they just shouldn’t touch anyone for any reason. Obviously they could not donate blood when the Drops of Life van came in the spring. It depended on the teacher if he or she accepted paperwork from a Sombra C student, and it was the student’s responsibility to inquire. They had to sit at the handicapped table in each classroom, and clean it off with alcohol wipes when the period ended. Used alcohol wipes went into the plastic bag. If they caught a cold and came to school sneezing and coughing, if they spat on someone or started a fight, they would be expelled. Also, sports and P.E. classes were off-limits.
What was the high school going to do with over forty infected students? There was only one handicapped table per classroom. Maybe they’d have to share it, Micah and Zaley crowding about in their shared second period government . . . no. He’d forgotten that Zaley didn’t have Sombra C. One floor beneath him in the Blue Hill hospital and he was not allowed to visit, nor were any of their other friends. Unless the doors were red, the tiles were red, the elevators were red, they were not permitted to be there. It was only through Micah’s moms that they knew Zaley was even alive. She had lost a lot of blood, and her doctor thought it was a miracle that she hadn’t had her arm amputated.
Miracle. That word was going around a lot. Some crazy Shepherd interviewed on television said that it was just a miracle that cullers happened upon a party of high school kids being attacked by zombies. A reporter said it was a miracle that more students hadn’t been hit by the bullets flying all over the room. Some of the students hiding in the restrooms prayed to their various deities for a miracle, and lo, they were blessed and came out unscathed. Everything was just so miraculous, kids kicked out of homes, out of classes, losing their jobs. Corbin no longer stocked shelves at Mr. Foods; the Cool Spoon was short two of its employees in Austin and Micah; even Elania had been let go from her position at the vet’s. There were green ribbons and rosettes up all over the community and on HomeBase, people showing their support of the students caught in the crossfire between zombies and cullers, but a green ribbon didn’t do anything miraculous. It didn’t keep Corbin in P.E. or give him a paycheck. It didn’t fix the impression of Gage’s fingers slipping away, or suck the Sombra C out of Corbin. It did nothing at all, except made those people feel good about feeling bad.
When Brennan was found, Corbin visited his hospital room in the red ward, having to go there anyway to have his hand looked at, and his blood tested to make sure he was stable on Zyllevir. Brennan’s arm was wrapped up in bandages and dirt was packed under his nails. His infection was higher, since he had been knocked out by the fever in the woods for days. His stamp would read 5%. His mother was not allowed to visit, since she didn’t have Sombra C. Corbin was at a loss for words and they just sat together, looking out the window until Brennan said softly, “No girl will ever love me now,” and cried. That made Corbin cry, two teenaged boys weeping like children for the girls they could never have.
He was angry from morning to night, and the calendar on his phone kept flipping closer and closer to December 31st. It was a violation of his civil rights and he felt it keenly. Jonathan Penner’s calm voice wound around him, the same passage over and over from his laptop. We expose them in theory for our public safety, yet we endanger all of us alike in the same breath. And where is privacy in this? We stamp their medical files on their neck when we would scream to have the same done to us with other conditions! But, you say, Sombra C is different. Sombra C is a health concern that a condition like AIDS cannot possibly touch in scope. And yet I say these stamps make it an even bigger concern. It makes them a target for a bullet, for an attack. What foolish measures people take to quell the infection in our communities only spread it further. We strip liberty from our Sombra C sisters and brothers and strip our own with it.
I do not have the right to know if the woman I pass in the street has the virus. We are not asked in our day-to-day life if we have AIDS or herpes, et cetera, and we do not ask others. It is none of our business, unless we are in an intimate relationship. This bears repeating: I do not have the RIGHT to know. Until I am transgressed against, I have no rights to another’s personal medical information. It is hard to give up the illusion of control, that I can shut Sombra C out of my life and be safe by avoiding the stamped. But this world will never be safe again, and my wanting of control is trumped by their need for personal liberty.
But Penner’s opinion was in the minority. Corbin could not run away. If he did not show up for the appointment, a warrant would be issued for his arrest. As he was a minor, his parents’ bank accounts would be frozen, their passports revoked, his picture sent to law enforcement around the country and he’d live on the run.
Yet having a stamp was living on the run in a different way. Right now he could take Bleu Cheese out for a walk and not think about who was looking at him. God, he loved his dog, every stupid blue cell of her. She was the only thing in his life that hadn’t changed, just as thrilled to see him with Sombra C as she had been when he was without it. In the afternoons they sat together on the sofa, Corbin watching television and Bleu Cheese snuggled up beside him for a fart-filled nap. He wasn’t in the mood to update The Daily Cheese. He wasn’t in the mood to do anything this vacation, save sit there and dully take in information from Lynx. Lynx wasn’t his usual channel for news, not when it reported with all the finesse of Mr. Dayze’s class.
A plane had gone down. An actress was pregnant. There was a fifty-car pile-up on some foggy highway in Texas. Inigo, the first all-Sombra C community in the world, was opening its doors in Winnetuck, Oregon. It accepted only people with the virus and their immediate family. He glared at the perturbed reporter and her equally perturbed cohorts at the crescent moon of the table. Behind them was a picture of a square, with pleasant blue and white three-story buildings with stores on the first floor and apartments above. Within the square was a garden and playground. People were visible in a tiny Mr. Foods, a pizza joint, and a clothing outlet. Blue and white poles blocked the area from traffic.
The first reporter said that it was the brainchild of famed businessman Alastair Bide, who lost his only son Inigo to cullers last autumn. A legal fight was brewing since he hadn’t gotten the right permits to do this and made misleading statements to city officials about the intended residents. The screen split to show a picture of a defiant old man in a fine suit. Three-quarters of the two hundred units at Inigo were already occupied, and fifty applications had been received for each spot. They were being determined by lottery.
Corbin rubbed Bleu Cheese’s head while the television showed the interior of an uninhabited unit. Everything was brand spanking new, the carpet and kitchen tiles, the paint, the windows, and a big television mounted on the wall in the living room. In an inhabited unit, a middle-aged woman in a frumpy sweatshirt sat on her sofa and answered a reporter’s question heatedly. “Is it discriminatory? I don’t care if it’s discriminatory! I’ve got a right to protect my kids, and I can’t do it out there. You wan
t me to feel guilty about a community the size of a postage stamp being off-limits to the uninfected? Well, boo-hoo! I don’t want to worry about my boys getting shot for walking to Mr. Foods to buy a bag of chips! Don’t blame my kids for getting Sombra C-” She had no stamp, but the embarrassed preteen boy sitting at her side did.
If Corbin had gone to the Welcome Mat party first, and driven over to South Haven for the second half of their party, he would not have been caught up in the attack. He turned that over sourly. If only he had done the parties in a different order! Then it would only be through his friends that he knew about those red tiles and doors, what it felt like to have doctors and nurses treat you in haz-mat suits and masks. It wouldn’t be Corbin sitting here contaminating everything he touched.
“I understand your low-cost unit came with many amenities,” the reporter was responding to the woman in a friendly voice.
She was not mollified. “Oh, I’m sick of hearing that! You drive us into exile and then complain about our big TVs and low rent? Don’t you think we’d rather be at home in Michigan-”
The screen split again to show a man who was just as angry. “This isn’t about TVs, this is about special treatment! I’ve lived in Winnetuck all of my life, working ten-hour days at the factory for twenty years and where’s my low-income housing? But because my wife and I don’t have Sombra C, we don’t qualify! No one ever approved this place being filled up with zombie people and we don’t want it here, changing the face of our town, scaring off tourism and attracting the wrong sort-”
By the afternoon of December thirtieth, Corbin was in a dark space. In twenty-four hours, he’d no longer be able to hope that this hadn’t happened. Just a bad dream to put aside, his life waiting to be picked up where he’d left off. He couldn’t refuse the stamp, couldn’t run, could only submit and he did not know what to do. Sending out a text to his infected friends, he asked if it hurt to get the stamp put on.
Not really, Elania wrote. You’re given a strong anesthetic, so you just lay there mostly out of it. The pigment is adjusted for skin tone, to make sure it stands out. DeAngelo had some peeling, but it was minor.
Then Zaley called on a new cell phone, her voice tiny and tired. Even though he was relieved, he was so relieved that she was alive, he struggled to keep a lid on his anger. Keen to his mood, she said, “Is this not a good time? We can talk later.”
“I’m getting my stamp tomorrow.”
After a long silence, Zaley said, “I wish I could go with you.”
Corbin erupted. “Why the hell would you say that? No, you don’t! You don’t want this, your life turned upside down just because your friends’ lives have been-”
“That’s not what I meant. I’d just go and wait with you, so you’re not alone.”
He was furious at her for being one of those girls, the ones to only ever see the huge stamp on his neck. Once he had had her in his bed, her hands sliding up his back, her lips eager and trembling under his. Their legs tangled together, his fingers in the delicate, beautiful strands of her hair, she had wanted to be in his bed, wanted him, and now she was just one more girl who couldn’t touch him without risking death. One more girl who wouldn’t give him the time of day, who would scream and run away. It made him furious to not be good enough for Zaley when once he had been. “Well, I don’t want you there. You can’t be there. Disgusting people like me would get you sick. Anyway, I’ve got to go. My PT appointment is at three.”
“Maybe we could work out in the gym together, once I start PT.”
“Zaley, what planet are you on?” It was the first time in six years he had ever yelled at her. “We can’t be in the same place any longer because I’m diseased, get it? Are you deaf or something? I’m sick and you’re not, so we live in totally different worlds from now on and forever. So go and sling a green ribbon around a tree, if you still can with one arm.” He hung up in a fit, hating his life and what it was making him become.
His phone buzzed with a text within the minute, the voice app reading out loud in a monotone: Fuck you, Corbin Li. Maybe when they’re done sticking a stamp on your neck, they can add I’M AN ASSHOLE to your forehead.
He stared in astonishment at the cell phone, never having been on the receiving end of her anger any more than she had ever been on his. Fighting to keep his words clear, he spoke into his phone to send a text back. What is your problem? Would it kill you to show some sympathy?
You shot me down when I tried.
He had. I’m fucking freaked out about tomorrow.
I’m freaked out for you.
Anger ebbing, Corbin recorded another message. They hadn’t really spoken in a long time, not with Sally around. How’s it going over there? Honestly? Just lay it all out from start to finish.
Lay it all out? It sucks. It always does. For starters, my pain medication makes me nauseous and stupid.
So does mine. Well, not nauseous, but it makes my brain dull. What else?
He waited patiently for an answer, petting the dog and grabbing his phone when it buzzed. Santa got me a new digital reader and made sure the setting is at nothing above G. G, Corbin. I am seventeen years old.
Her family was weird. He didn’t know what to answer to that, or even where to file it in his brain. Thinking about it for a long minute, he sent a message. Do you need help changing it? I can do that for you. He didn’t have a digital reader, but he could figure it out somehow. There were probably tutorials online that he could learn from.
Oh no, I changed it. It was easy. I adjusted it to mature only and I’m reading the sickest shit I can find. Just to make a quiet point. My parents are nuts.
Tell me what else sucks.
Showering with a bag on my arm sucks. My hand is really, really messed up. I can’t even pinch my thumb and index finger. I miss you guys. I can’t believe Shelly and Trevor won’t be at school in January, I feel terrible for missing their funerals, and I don’t even remember most of what happened at the party. So that’s how I am, I’m ashamed to have even written this out, and you’re sorry you asked.
It was one of the rare times she was blunt, he wished that she was always this way, and he wasn’t sorry to have asked. Tell me about this sick shit you’re reading?
I found fan fiction cartoon erotica starring Prince Fab and Princess Glam and their unicorns. It’s disgusting. And then I was reminded of you at Halloween.
He almost smiled. I was a beautiful princess.
Yes, you were. Did anyone from Welcome Mat go to the funerals?
Both were private, just for family.
And here’s my mother needing attention, right on cue. Bye.
On the last day of the year, he got out of bed without having slept a wink. Neither of his parents looked any better. His reflection kept catching his eye, in the mirror and the glass of the microwave, the tanned skin of his neck most of all. He could not imagine a stamp there. He should pack his bag and run, drive away fast, toss his phone and his bankcard to leave no electronic trail . . . but his parents would be punished, and what was he to do for money? And Zyllevir wasn’t just handed out to people with clear necks. If they didn’t have proof that it was for a child or elderly person, or someone infirm, the police were called to investigate. So then he’d end up with a stamp anyway, as well as a huge fine for avoiding it in the first place.
“You don’t have to come. I can drive myself to the hospital for the shuttle,” he said to his parents. They insisted on driving him, Corbin giving up on the argument quickly enough since he wanted them to come as far as they were allowed. Mom packed a cooler, she and Dad planning to camp out in the parking lot with Bleu Cheese and wait for the shuttle to bring him back.
Once on the shuttle, he looked out the back window to his weeping mother, his distressed father, and his dog until they were out of sight. There was only one other person in the shuttle besides the driver, a man in a business suit. He was holding a briefcase. They looked at one another and away without speaking, both ashamed. The drive
to San Francisco was silent, Corbin thinking about the costume of that suit and briefcase. There was no need to dress like that for this procedure, unless it was a message. That man wanted the people doing the stamp to know he was a professional, and not let them dehumanize him to a zombie.
Once outside the building, they followed the red tiles. It was second nature now, dismissing any floor or doors not that color. The waiting room was spacious, and he wondered where his friends had sat when they were here. A woman held a baby in one seat, tears rolling down her face into its hair. She glanced at Corbin and the well-dressed man and averted her gaze. They spread out in the room, which had tables stacked with magazines, a bin full of toys, the glass cage with the receptionist, and two armed guards posted at the doors.
He didn’t have it in him, Micah’s because fuck you. Scarves, turtlenecks, jackets with high necks . . . Corbin could not walk around with a fat red stamp on display for all the world to see, judging his worth by that mark. The crying woman with the baby was called in, followed by the professional man, and Corbin sat alone in the sea of chairs. No more visits to the Cool Spoon. Now he’d have to shop with gloves on at Mr. Foods, when he used to stock the shelves. At the junior college next year in Penger, P.E. would not be on his schedule. He wasn’t even allowed on the field. What he was going to do for a job after that, he had no idea. Everything he was as a person was about to get swallowed by a stamp. He wouldn’t be himself any longer.
His phone received two texts, and he pressed it to his ear to listen. The first was from Zaley, the simple message: I’m with you. Oh God, did he wish that she were actually here. Zaley would never have announced his diagnosis on HomeBase had they been dating still. She understood discretion and privacy, and a little too well. He thought of her sitting beside him, and how he would touch her hair for the last time. Like it was the stamp that created the divide, and not the virus already doing it.
The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set Page 33
