A Long, Long Sleep

by Anna Sheehan

  For a few moments I retched alone, and then I felt a warm hand on my shoulder. “Hey,” said Bren. “Should I get you to the nurse?”

  I spat some of the vomit taste out of my mouth. “No,” I said. I pulled back from the pan. “I’m not sick.” I began digging through my pockets, hoping for a tissue.

  Bren pulled one from the necessary dispensers on the wall. I blew my nose with the proffered square and then threw it onto the pan. I pressed the button on the side, and the pan disappeared into the lower con fines of the incinerator, replaced by a fresh one. I could hear the quiet hum that meant the incinerator was destroying all evidence of my weakness.

  Sickness past, all I felt was overwhelming grief. “You want to tell me what that was about?” Bren asked. “Was it lunch? You still suffering stass fatigue?”

  “No. Well, yes, but that wasn’t it.” Another wave of nausea hit, but I suppressed it. “Why didn’t anyone tell me how bad the Dark Times were?”

  “We didn’t?” Bren looked confused. “I thought Reggie told you.”

  “He told me some,” I said. “But I don’t think it registered.” Between the stass residue and the shock, nothing had seemed to touch me at the time.

  The tales this afternoon, of whole towns perishing in agony, of people waking up one morning perfectly healthy and being dead by the afternoon, the loss of infrastructure, which made everything worse . . .

  Bren still looked confused. “What brought all this on?”

  “History class,” I said. “They’re talking about how my parents died. How all my friends died. My boyfriend.”

  Understanding softened Bren’s face. “Oh,” he said. He looked a bit awkward for a moment and then said, “You want to talk about it?”

  I sighed. “No. But I don’t . . .”

  “What?”

  I was embarrassed, but I said it anyway. “I don’t want to be alone.”

  Bren’s brow furrowed. He put his hand on my shoulder, a heated weight to anchor me to the earth. “You’re not alone,” he said, his voice a velvet cushion.

  “Come on, let’s get you some air.”

  “Don’t you need to be in class?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  I wasn’t about to argue with him. With his hand on my shoulder, he led me outside to the quad, where he sat me down on a bench under a weeping cherry tree, the flowers just blooming in the spring air. The gentle scent and the slight chill did wash away my nausea. Bren sat beside me, watching me with those eyes like new leaves. I wanted to bury myself in his chest and weep for a hundred years, but I didn’t.

  “Is there anything I can get you?” he asked. “You need some water or something?”

  “No.”

  There was an awkward silence. “Anything I can do?”

  I hesitated. I knew what he could do, but I wasn’t sure he’d want to do it.

  “Anything,” he prompted, sensing my indecision.

  “Tell me about the Dark Times,” I said.

  66 –

  He frowned. “Arrre . . . you sure?”

  “Yes,” I whispered. “I’d rather hear it from a friend.” Then I realized what I’d said. “You are a friend, aren’t you?”

  “Of course I am,” he said brusquely. “Okay.” He scratched his head. “Where should I start?”

  “She was talking . . . talking about the plague hitting first in New York,”

  Bren nodded. “Apparently some American fashion guru decided that the next great thing in furs was marmot, so he headed off to China to collect as much as he could. His name was Marcus Alexios. He came back from China carrying a septicemic variant of plague. New York being New York, he hopped on the subway, went to the show, and then dropped dead.

  “Apparently marmots carry plague. Who’d comm that? Usually plague is spread only through blood contact, but two little protein shifts had turned. Which meant that everyone Alexios worked with in China, everyone on the plane to America with him, everyone in that crowded subway station, and all the affluent fashion elite who had been at the show were all exposed. His autopsy wasn’t performed until after all of those people were let loose on the public.

  One person got on a plane to LA, one guy went to a homeless shelter in the East Village, one woman went on a train to Vermont, and you can guess how it all spread from there.”

  Bren was watching me, and I knew my face had gone white. “I’ll skip the details,” Bren told me, and I was grateful. “Now, they had medicine that could cure this plague, though it was resistant and stockpiles were low. But the transportation needed to ship them was out of commission. With a third of the population sick, nothing worked. By the time medicine got to any given community, most of the people were already dead.” He gazed at me. “It was usually pretty quick, they say,” he said, trying to reassure me. “Scary, apparently, but they didn’t have time to suffer.”

  I covered my eyes, trying to compose myself. “Right.”

  He took a deep breath. This must have been ancient history to Bren, but telling me about it seemed awkward for him. “The plague swept through one summer, then it kept resurfacing. Later outbreaks were less widespread, but it could still be transmitted by human to human contact and by fleas. Meanwhile, tuberculosis was still spreading. You knew about the TB?”

  “Yes,” I said. “They had control clinics for it when . . . before.”

  Bren grimaced. “Yeah, those mandatory collections of people from all walks of life didn’t help when it came to containing the plague. People would show up to get tested for TB, and come home half- exed from plague. It was strange.

  Everyone was so shocked that the problem hadn’t come from some new disease but from the old diseases that everyone had neglected to prepare for.” He sighed. “Then came the final blow.”

  I started, horrified. “There’s more?” How could there be more?

  “Yeah,” Bren said. “Infertility. They tell you about the Global Food Initiative?”

  “Yes, that was before I was stassed. The mass distribution of high- yield seeds to countries suffering food shortages. Daddy was involved in that.”

  When the century- long ban on genetically modified foods was lifted, my parents had taken me to a ceremonial banquet in their honor. UniCorp had developed many of those GM seeds. Mom and Daddy were thrilled to be included in the Global Food Initiative and lobbied extensively for its instigation.

  “Biggest lawsuit UniCorp ever had to deal with,” said Bren. “Nearly sank the company, Granddad says. Apparently one of the seeds, a type of corn, was genetically modified as what is known as a ‘terminator seed,’ which means the crops won’t produce viable seed next year.”

  “I know,” I said. “It’s good for business. It means the farmers have to keep coming back for fresh seed from the company. Daddy restructured the patents after they rescinded the ban of 2087.”

  “And everyone wishes he hadn’t.”

  “Was it too hard to transport fresh seed after the population decreased?”

  “Well . . . that didn’t help, but no, the problem was in an unexpected mutation.

  That’s the real reason they banned genetic modification, you know. In the end, the risk outweighed the rewards. It was just too dangerous. The terminator gene passed into the bloodstream and affected humans. Particularly males. It resulted in short- lived sperm, like, one or two hours’ life span. Which meant that unless a guy was getting it off pretty regularly, the sperm would die and he’d be shooting blanks. And even if he wasn’t, if a woman’s egg wasn’t ready and waiting, panting at the edge of the cervix, the sperm didn’t have a prayer of reaching it before it sang the final dirge and exed.”

  It was so gruesome and macabre that I was surprised I laughed, but I did. I’d been right: hearing about this from a friend did make it all easier to process.

  Bren shrugged. “No one commed before the plague. People had been postponing pregnancy, and it wasn’t that surprising that women from the a
ge of thirty- eight to forty- five were somehow unable to conceive during the brief window they allowed themselves. But after so much death, everyone felt justified in having children, and it turned out that most people couldn’t. We had lost so many, and we couldn’t build the population back up. The killer corn had gone into the general food supply, and it mixed with everything, which meant it was everywhere. It was fed to livestock, which meant the livestock wouldn’t reproduce either. That resulted in more food shortages.”

  Bren shook his head. “Everything spiraled downhill. There were riots, resource wars, technology wars. TB was still raging, and the plague kept coming back.

  Nothing really started coming together for about twenty years.”

  “Is that all of it?”

  “Yeah, pretty much. War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death showed up, got on their horses, played a little polo, and then headed back into the ether to wait for the next apocalypse.” He held his arms wide. “And we’re all still here.”

  “How?” I asked. “How could the human race survive all that?”

  “Intervention, preparation, those handful of people in any population who are immune to some disease or other. Once the worst of it had calmed down, people were able to focus on how to repair the damage. My grandmother had to be externally fertilized to have my mom and her brother, and it was apparently, like, the fourth time my grandma tried before the embryos took. Glad they did, or I wouldn’t be here. But with enough persistence, anything can start to grow again.”

  “I guess all you have to do is survive,” I said quietly. My parents hadn’t. Åsa hadn’t. My Xavier hadn’t. “I don’t think I can go back into that class, though,” I said. “Today was just the overview. She’s going to go into each mistake and tragedy in depth, and I just can’t take it.”

  “Well . . .” Bren thought for a moment. “What if I were to get you transferred into my history class? We just finished the Dark Times. We’re starting now on the Reconstruction. It won’t make much sense if you don’t comm all the details of how bad it was, but it’s less . . . depressing than the Dark Times themselves.

  Learning how we put the world back together again and all.”

  I looked up at him. His eyes were completely earnest. “Could you do that?”

  “Sure I could. I’ll ask my granddad. He can do anything in this school.”

  “You’d really do that for me?”

  “Of course.”

  I couldn’t help it. I flung my arms around him and buried my nose in his neck.

  He smelled of sandalwood soap. “Thank you!”

  He held me briefly, then put me back. “Don’t mench,” he said. “It’s no big deal.”

  “It is,” I said.

  He shook his head. “No, this obviously really bothers you. It’s sky. I’ll see to it tonight.”

  I hoped it really was sky. I couldn’t bear another dose of Apocalypse Then.

  Knowing I might soon be able to transfer out of my history class had no bearing on my nightmares. They were even worse that night. I was walking through corridors, but they were corridors of human corpses, bloated and red and sickly, images of the horrors my history teacher had informed me about. This time, to my own horror, I knew what I was looking for. I was looking for something, or someone, in the walls, one of the thousands upon thousands of dead. And I wasn’t sure, when I found the corpse, if it would truly be dead, or wake up and try to . . . I didn’t know. It didn’t matter. Whatever it tried to do would be horrifying.

  I thought at first that every face would be the face of Mom, of Dad, of Xavier, but it wasn’t the case. I made myself stare into the faces of the anguished, dripping corpses, and the smell was terrible, and I started to run through them, looking for somewhere to throw up, but there were only the halls of the dead. I knew Xavier was among them, and I knew I’d never find him.

  This time when I woke up, I was crying. Zavier looked up from the foot of the bed and whimpered, his eyes worried. “It’s okay, Zavy,” I told him, patting him on the head. “Good dog.”

  I took a deep breath and got up. Zavier groaned but followed docilely at my heels. It was always pointless trying to sleep again once the nightmares started. They always came back. I missed my stass dreams. They never turned dark.

  I slipped out the door and across the hall to my studio. The fish tank cast a quiet glow throughout the room. I turned on the lamp above the drafting table and uncovered the chalk drawing I had started that evening. It was a sketch of Bren. I stared at Bren’s green chalk eyes and smiled. Xavier’s eyes had been green. Maybe that was what really drew me to Bren. Bren and Xavier didn’t otherwise look anything alike —from the shape of their eyes to the texture of their hair and the tint of their skin, everything was different. But those eyes of Bren’s reminded me of my Xavier.

  I was busy drawing Bren a green shirt that matched his eyes when I heard the noise behind me. I assumed it was Patty or Barry, though I was a little surprised they’d even bothered to come in. It was strange, going from my parents, who scheduled my every move, watched my every action, prevented my every mistake, to Patty and Barry, who barely spoke to me unless I went to them first.

  The footsteps behind me were slow and precise. I was about to turn around when a harsh, creaking male voice said, “You are Rosalinda Samantha Fitzroy.

  Please turn around for retinal identi fication.”

  There was no way that voice was Barry’s.

  – chapter 7—

  My hand slipped, marring Bren’s portrait. I whirled, startled, and spilled half a dozen squares of chalk. They shattered on the wooden floor.

  The black- haired man who stood behind me seemed unreal. His skin shone in the light of my lamp as if he were made of glass. He stood as straight as a rod.

  One hand held a strange circular device with little flashing lights on it. In the other he held a black stick with a red- and- yellow warning beacon on the tip.

  He positively terrified me, but I managed to find my voice. “What do you want?”

  The man’s head twitched, which did not move his hair at all. “Voice match confirmed,” he said. He looked Asian, but he spoke with a distinct German accent. He sounded monotone, as if he were uttering a prerecorded amalgamation of syllables rather than actual speech. “Please remain still for retinal identification.”

  Zavier began to growl behind me. The shiny man had no reaction. Instead he stared into my face and said, “Retinal match confirmed. Target confirmed.”

  At the sound of his voice, Zavier lunged, grabbing the man’s leg with a fearsome snarl. I shrieked. I expected the man to kick Zavier away, but he completely ignored the snarling Afghan.

  “Rosalinda Samantha Fitzroy. My orders are to retain and return you to the principal. If return proves impossible, my orders are to terminate. Remain still.”

  Terminate? I scrambled backward, painfully knocking my hip against the corner of my drafting table. He tried to come at me, but Zavier tore and snapped and snarled. I was surprised at the depth of Zavier’s training. I’d heard that Afghans could be rather meek. Zavier’s teeth had no effect on the man’s skin, but his trouser leg was torn to ribbons.

  The man looked down at Zavier. “You are impeding my retrieval. Cease and desist, or you will be eliminated.”

  “Zavier! Down!” I cried. But clearly my poor dog hadn’t yet gotten used to his new call name. It had no effect.

  “You have been warned,” the man said, and touched Zavier with his stick.

  Zavier yelped and stiffened, falling to the ground as lifeless as if he’d been stuffed. “You killed my dog!” I screamed, horri fied. At the sound of my voice, Zavier began to whine faintly, much to my relief, though he still seemed incapable of movement.

  My attacker came at me, stepping casually over Zavier. The circular thing in his hand opened, so that it seemed ready to snap shut like a clam. Two nasty-looking electrodes protruded from the back end of it. Suddenly I recognized it. />
  That was a control collar. The collar disconnected the wearer’s lower brain functions and made all movement subservient to an external force, usually a computer. They were invented for use in medicine, physical rehabilitation, and certain procedures for which the patient’s compliance was imperative. If he got that thing around my neck, I would be forced to go with him, no question about it. So whatever I did, I had to avoid that collar.

  My parents had been worried about kidnappers, so they had me drilled in self-defense. It had been a very real danger; they were powerful, highly visible people, and their daughter would have been a prime target. I had never been very good at it —no superhero rescues from me —but I’d picked up the basics.

  Run, they’d told me. Fight. Make as much noise as possible. Do everything you can to keep from being put into their power. Once they have you, they can do anything they want with you.

  So I ran. Or tried to. My drafting table caught on my waist. I lost my balance and fell, dropping most of my weight on the back end of my table. The table tilted upward, like a seesaw, flinging my entire box of chalks against the wall and knocking down the clock. The clock fell into my fish tank, sending up a streaming flash of water. I went down, cracking my head against my easel, collapsing it under my weight.

  Half- dazed from the blow, I reached behind me, scrambling in a drawer. I hoped to come up with an X-Acto blade or a paint knife, but what met my hand was a huge tube of oil paint. It was a start.

  I squeezed it at the man’s face, and a splurt of sticky green oil paint splatted into his eyes. He hesitated only a second, reorienting himself. To my horror, he seemed to have no reaction of pain, despite the fact that his open eyes were entirely covered. He didn’t even move to wipe it off. Who was this guy? Or what was he? He seemed entirely inhuman, and I was utterly out of my depth.

  And also incredibly lucky. The oil paint mixed with the water on the floor, creating slippery patches of oil over water. Unhurt but blind, my attacker skidded in the oil slick as he reached for me with his stick weapon. He flipped backward and landed with a clatter onto the wooden floor.