by J. B. Beatty
I interrupt. “Excuse me. Janice? This is Jamie. She’s—what are you, 10?”
“11,” she says, with her eyes closed, flinching as Carrie tries to brush through a knot in her hair.
“When Jamie hits puberty,” I say to Janice. “She will transform into a zombie. We will have to kill her, hopefully before she kills anyone else.” I turn to Jamie: “Can I tell her about Roxanne?”
Jamie nods.
“Yesterday, Jamie had to kill her friend Roxanne. Roxanne hit puberty; she turned. She was going to kill Jamie otherwise. While you were thrashing around blindfolded, we were cleaning up blood. The blood of a little girl who had done nothing wrong except try to survive.”
As pale as Janice’s skin already was, it finds a whiter shade as her eyes open wider.
“The only thing that can save Jamie’s life now is the vaccine that we stole from your people, the vaccine that they are not making available to the thousands of children who have been orphaned by this virus and who are fighting off zombies and abuse that’s probably worse than zombies. So the question to you, Janice, is this. Does a child get a full dose of the vaccine, or a smaller amount based on weight?”
I hold the syringe up to the light, and test the needle slowly. A drop forms on the tip.
“It’s based on weight,” Janice stammers. “She would get a half-dose.”
I hand the syringe to Justin. Carrie has already lowered the bathrobe off Jamie’s shoulder. She has a cotton ball and is washing the area with rubbing alcohol. I step back and look at Janice.
“We’re not in Great America anymore, right?” she asks.
“No,” I say. “We’re about 100 miles from your wall.”
“But everyone on this side has succumbed to the virus,” she says. “Everyone has turned to a monster, they said.” Her eyes are wild and panicked, darting from Justin’s to mine.
“I’m not a monster,” says Jamie, flinching as the needle goes in.
Janice focus on Jamie and says haltingly, “They said that everyone who could be saved was already taken to a refuge. They said they saved everyone they could.”
“And the people they saved,” I say, “Let me guess. They were incredibly grateful to escape the end of the world. They are simply the nicest people on earth, right? An absolute joy to work with, right?”
Janice nods.
“And I bet one more thing. I bet they all were very wealthy before all hell broke loose.”
She stares back at me.
I continue, “And they could afford to be safe behind the wall and the army of Great America. And everyone who couldn’t afford it, or was the wrong color or simply lived in the wrong part of town, was left behind to die in this world, a world destroyed by this terrible contagion.”
Janice turns her eyes from Jamie’s to mine. She moves her head slowly as if she can’t decide whether to nod or to shake her head no. She starts to speak but can’t decide which words to use.
“Let me ask you, Janice. How did all those people—your coworkers, your friends, your patients, even you—get the vaccine before the flu even broke out?”
She lowers her head, closes her eyes. She shakes her head.
Jamie doesn’t even wince from the shot. Now she’s got her whole life to look forward to. And all she says is, “What now?”
Every eye in the room is on her as we struggle with the weight of the question.
I get a band-aid, right?”
The Author
J.B. Beatty disappeared without a trace in the early 1890s. This book has been penned by one of his offspring, oft noted for reclusiveness and unrequited bloodlust.
The Artist
Erik Reichenbach is a comic artist, illustrator, and former CBS Survivor Fan Favorite. Since the mid 2000's he has been creating colorful illustrations for books, comics, and advertising; his art has been featured in Entertainment Weekly, People.com, and various podcasts and blogs. Currently he is working on Starving for Attention 2: The Hungering, and a mobile app strategy game, Islands of Chaos.
