by Chris Weitz
Finally, we come to a door like a bank vault, with a thick, little webbed-glass window and a circular metal handle. In front of it lies a dead body, pale and bleeding from the nose, face slack from muscles exhausted by agony. A recent victim of the Sickness. But years too young for it.
The child soldiers don’t spare him a glance. One of them knocks on the vault door with the edge of his machete. The tinny sound echoes somewhere beyond.
The round handle of the door spins smoothly and the door floats open.
A girl with blond braids, impossibly innocent-looking and wearing a daisy chain like a crown, is revealed. Below a charm necklace, a medical scrub folded over to fit her, crusted with dried blood.
She smiles, turns around, and guides us past a series of empty pens, cages, and metal doors set in the wall. I can hear a song playing—a pleasant riff with a plaintive voice that jars with the blood and the gray.
The farther we go, the louder the music gets until it is blasting, piercing. I can’t think straight for it. Then, at the end of the corridor, in a big room past a long row of tables cluttered with little machines and racks of test tubes, I see someone bent over a table.
He’s nodding to the music. Encapsulated in a suit of stout blue rubber with a boxy pouch at the back.
Whoever is in the suit stops nodding and looks up from his work as if he has a sense that he’s being watched. The music stops, leaving an electric hush.
I can’t help but back away as, slowly and deliberately, he turns to look at us.
Obscuring his face is a pitted, scratched square glass plate set in the rubber suit. The light from bulbs hanging from twisted wires above glances off it so that I can’t see who’s inside.
He stands and reaches up to unfasten the helmet, fingering a zipper out of a nested rubber seam.
And I am suddenly afraid that whatever is inside that suit will rush out and contaminate us.
With a hiss, he skins his head free of the helmet. And I see him.
Thin yellow hair, straight nose, eyes empty of color. A Galapagos of blotches over thin, almost transparent skin. Spiky bristles unevenly shaved.
An impossible face.
The face of a man forty years old, or more.
The face of the Old Man.
I hear Donna gasp. I reach for her hand. Peter mutters and crosses himself.
The Old Man smiles. An uneven grimace, thin, blotchy lips over yellow teeth.
“Hello,” he says. “You’re just in time.”
His voice is oddly pitched, too high for his frame.
It’s a while before I can speak. In the meanwhile he gulps water from a big plastic bottle.
“Just in time for what?” I ask.
“Did we lose anyone?” says the Old Man to the kid who slapped me.
“Yeah. Kevin,” says the kid, with no particular emphasis. But the Old Man starts in surprise. Shakes his head in confusion. His hands shake.
“They attacked us,” I say. “They attacked our boat. Killed our friend.”
“Never mind,” the Old Man says. “Never mind. He won’t have died in vain.”
“Who are you?” says Donna. “How is this possible?”
“Better living through chemistry. I wish I could say that I’ve cured it. But the truth of it is, I’ve only made an accommodation with it.” He takes another gulp of water.
“Is it you? In the city?”
He shrugs. “I do have to make the occasional visit. Supplies, technical equipment. But… you should settle in.” The Old Man smiles. “Everything in due time.”
Then they take us away, past the infected body at the door.
They put us in a big room penned off with metal bars that only go up to waist height. They must have been designed for sheep or pigs. We’re shackled to the bars with thick chains. The bare walls are scuffed and peeling. There’s a smell of ancient dung. The pigment of tons of animal shit has sunk onto the ground and slopped up against the walls. I notice, scratched into the walls in angular letters but clearly in different hands, one name after another. The walls are covered as high as a human can reach with testimonies. All that’s left of the kids who were here before us.
I try not to show the fear this puts into me, but Donna is looking just where I am.
“We’re going to die,” she says.
“We’re not going to die,” I say.
“The way I see it,” says Brainbox, “this is going as well as could be expected.”
This takes a moment to sink in.
“How do you figure that?” says Donna.
Brainbox shrugs. “Seems like a working lab.”
“A working lab where they’re experimenting on humans!” says Peter.
Brainbox shrugs, as much as he can, given that one hand is cuffed and hanging above his shoulder.
“Human trials are always the final stage,” he says. “That’s good news.”
“Dude,” says Kath, “you are twisted.”
“We’ve got to get the fuck out of here,” says Captain. “Theo, you good?”
Theo’s face is swollen, his mouth bloody. “I’m strong,” he says.
“How are we supposed to get out of here? Those kids are armed to the teeth,” says Kath. “And they’re all kinds of crazy. Did you see their eyes?”
“Their pupils are dilated,” says Brainbox. “He’s got them on some kind of drug.”
A key rattles in a lock and the blue-eyed kid with the beads appears, flanked by six more Islanders. They’re sporting our stuff. T-shirts, guns, the teddy bear Donna took from the library. One of them has an iPhone, maybe Donna’s, and he’s making a video.
“I’m doing a show,” says Blue-eyes. “It’s called Lab Rats.”
The Islanders titter as this sinks in.
“Who wants to be the first contestant?” says Blue-eyes.
Nobody answers.
“Aw, come on. Don’t make me choose.” He looks pretty happy to do it.
Before I have a chance to rethink it, I say, “Me. I’ll go.” Donna’s head snaps toward me, and I look down.
“Don’t,” she says. “Don’t!”
I manage a smile, though I’m terrified.
“I’ll be fine.”
“No! You can’t go!”
I take her hand.
“I’ll see you soon,” I say.
In the back of my mind is the idea that I’ll be able to speak to the Old Man. Maybe I can explain. Maybe I can win him over.
Because, really, who else is going to go? Who started this?
The Old Man waits for me in a new room, with a new smell that’s more human than the odor of the pen.
Metal tables with chains bolted into them are spaced evenly around the room. Some squat, going-to-college refrigerators against the wall. Piles of filthy little cages.
He’s out of his hazmat suit, dressed in khaki pants and a collared shirt with a tattered tweed jacket, a scarf wrapped around his neck. He shivers even though it’s warm and sticky inside. On the table next to his chair is a big water bottle with the label ripped off.
He coughs, a rich, phlegmy bark.
“How?” I ask.
“How?” he says. Again his voice is strangely high—like it’s been Auto-Tuned.
“How are you alive?”
He fidgets, scratches, coughs. Takes a long drag of water.
“How am I alive? Some days,” he says, “I think I can’t die.” He closes his eyes and intones, “Yea, they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.”
He looks at me hopefully. I don’t say anything, even though I recognize the verse.
“No?” His face falls. “There is no one to talk to. No one.” Then, like a schoolteacher, “The Book of Job. King James Version. Beautiful poetry.”
“How?” I say.
“How did I survive? Well,” he says, “my scientific explanation would have to do with hormones. Specifically, steroid hormone-binding proteins. No?” He looks at me
searchingly again, and I think he is checking to see if any part of my brain has lit up in response.
I shake my head. Brainbox would understand this, I think, but I don’t tell him that. I don’t want to give this strange creature anything to use.
“No one to talk to,” he says again. “No one who understands.”
“Try me,” I say. “Explain it to me.”
He seems intrigued. “I could… but… you’ll probably die like the rest. I find it difficult to detach emotionally—can you understand? I have problems with anxiety. It’s part of my condition.”
“What condition?”
“The human condition?” He snorts. “No. Living with this illness. The bugs in my blood. If I make friends with them, give them the right proteins to keep them company, they will leave me alone. If not, they will eat me up. So I pretend to be friends, until I can kill them.” He grimaces again, one of his smiles. “Don’t worry, the bugs can’t hear us.”
“You’re trying to find a cure.”
“Of course.” He picks at a scab on the side of his nose. “I know this may look very sinister, but I’m one of the good guys.”
“That’s a relief,” I say.
“Don’t take that tone with me. You don’t have the right. It wasn’t my fault,” he says. “You probably think it is.”
“I don’t really know what happened,” I say. “I need you to tell me.” I feel sick to my stomach. “So many people…”
“You think I don’t know that? Nobody understands as much as I do!” He’s suddenly angry. Spit flies from his thin, cracked lips. He takes another sip of water. “Do you think it’s easy knowing how many people have died? Don’t blame me. Blame the Chinese.”
“What do the Chinese have to do with it?”
“We would never have made this bug if AFIT hadn’t known for a certainty someone else was developing it. And who would think of such a thing? The Chinese, you see. They’re social engineers.”
“It’s a weapon,” I say.
“Of course it’s a weapon. What else would it be? Nature couldn’t manage something like this.” He actually looks proud.
“But why?” I ask. “Why just the adults and the children? If you’re making some kind of plague… why not kill everyone?”
“ ‘He alone who owns the youth gains the future.’ Somebody has to work in the factories once you’ve taken over.”
The Islanders at my side laugh. “Word,” says Blue-eyes.
“So this was like… a neutron bomb or something? Get rid of the grown-ups and the little kids, leave the rest standing?” It’s starting to make sense.
“Bingo. Oh, I know that young people like to think they’re rebellious. In practice, this emotional impetus can easily be channeled.” He turns to the children. “You’re happy, aren’t you? With your stuff—your music and your video games and your pornography and your clothes? Don’t I make sure you’re fed? Don’t I make sure you’re having fun?”
“That’s right,” says Blue-eyes. “Just give us everything we fucking want, and we’re cool.”
The Old Man goes on.
“Anyway. It was the storm. They thought we were safe here, with Block Island to the east, Montauk to the south. But the storm… well, you saw the news. Hundreds of thousands of people without electricity. The coastline flooded. Our containment systems were horribly outdated. Not enough funding. Blame the government. Blame global warming.” He seems lost in his head, pursuing an old argument.
“It escaped?”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “It happens every once in a while. Like the foot-and-mouth outbreak in ’78. Can’t be helped.”
“Wexelblatt Effects,” I say.
“Exactly!” he says, pleased. “Look at you. Gold star.”
“And you didn’t have an antidote?” I shout.
“Of course not!” he says, as though it were a ridiculous suggestion. “How could we have an antidote to a disease we had just invented? No, you reverse engineer that. Of course you do. There’s no danger if…”
He trails off. Shakes his head. Looks at the floor.
“You can keep it at bay… steroids… of course… can’t process sodium… all my cortisol is bound up… you have no idea how much stress…” He coughs. “Sometimes I wish I were dead,” he mutters. Then he seems to shake it off. Fetches something from the metal tray at his side.
A syringe.
“Let’s begin,” he says.
I jump at him, hands grabbing for his throat.
He’s much stronger than he looks. Stronger than I could have conceived. He grabs my face and holds me there, his grip like a vise, and I see the muscles bulge out of his neck. It feels as though he’ll tear my face off with his bare fingers.
“I used to be weak—would you believe it?” he says. “Steroids have their beneficial side effects.”
The Islanders take my arms, and he lets go of my face.
“I’ll try to save you,” he says. “I will save you. Won’t I? All of you.” He looks at the Islanders, who gaze back at him adoringly. “Daddy will give you life. But before you can get well, you have to get sick.”
They hold me and hit me until I stop struggling, and he slips the needle into my vein.
CHAPTER 36
SO, NO MUTANT COCKROACHES. That’s a plus.
Otherwise it’s pretty much all awful all the time. After they take Jefferson away, they leave us in the pen for hours. And—it’s so boring to be scared? Like, you can be in a panic for only so long, and then it just turns into depression or despair or whatever. So after a while, everybody finds the most comfortable position they can and just hangs out, being miserable.
Brainbox is the exception. The hard drive is definitely whirring in there. He stares at the wall in this creepy, absent way and occasionally asks a weird question like, “Did you see how much water the Old Man was drinking?”
This gets on Captain’s nerves, and he starts cussing him out, blaming him for everything that’s gone wrong. And I think for the hundredth time about my phone, whether I’ll ever get it back and see Charlie’s face again.
We hear music and video game gunfire from down the corridor. Tittering laughter from the tween soldiers.
They’re definitely not right in the head. The Old Man has them under some kind of spell. Their eyes are dull, their mouths slack. They sway like there’s some slow music going on that I can’t hear. When they come in to throw stale granola on the floor or hose out the pen, they hardly give us a glance, no matter what we say.
I think I know what it was like to be some cow unlucky enough to find its way here. I’d rather end up as hamburger.
Which is to say, it’s worse than being eaten, I guess. And strangely enough, I have the, like, analogy of the cannibals at the library to go on. To think that, objectively, it might have been better to end up as brunch is kind of a major bummer.
Well, at least I got to see the world a bit.
I think about how much better things might have been if we’d just stayed back in the Square. A little scavenging, a little shivering, warm beer, the occasional DVD. Would that have been so bad?
And then I think of the parallel me, in the universe where the Sickness never happened. Parties, SATs, four years at, like, Wesleyan? A semester abroad in Rome, losing it to some cute Italian guy I meet in a club who never calls back. Graduating to a crowded walk-up in Brooklyn, maybe a shitty job at a magazine or some Web design crap, nights out, abortive relationships with baffling dudes. Semi-ironic wedding, a kid in my late thirties, divorce, Pilates, Sunday New York Times, too much wine in front of the TV at night, the kids don’t call, assisted living. Somewhere in the mix, I run into Jefferson; we’re Christmas shopping in SoHo. There’s a feeling there, something missing that we could give each other, but it’s too late.
Then Jefferson’s version of the future. We cure the Sickness; we save humanity. The world gets a second chance, and we begin a new era of low-carbon emissions, financial equality, and universal niceness.
Now the truth. Jefferson is probably dead. And we’re next.
Around nightfall—I can’t tell exactly because there’re no windows—Peter budges me awake. The Islanders have come back, and they’re going to throw us into separate cells. They must not have enough rooms to spare, because Kath and I end up together in a filthy little rectangle with no furniture and a thick metal door. In the corner there’s a bunch of notches where somebody was counting the days they were stuck here. It ends at eight.
We sit in opposite corners, like boxers. Every once in a while, we’ll find that we’re looking at each other, but neither of us knows what to say. Then, after about an hour, she says, “So you must be pretty proud of yourself.”
Me: “Excuse me?”
Her: “I mean, you got the guy.”
I look around.
Me: “I don’t have anybody.”
Her: “Whatever. You won.”
Me: “Yeah, I’m just winning all over.” I let it rankle for a while, then: “That’s all it is to girls like you, right? Winning. You don’t care about him at all. He was just something you could use to, like, show yourself you could get him.”
Her: “Girls like me?” She looks almost hurt. “You don’t know anything about me.”
Me: “I know you’re a freaking psychopath. I know you murdered that dude.”
She shrugs, then her face clenches up, like she’s going to cry. She composes herself.
Her: “You’d have done the same thing. You’re just lucky, that’s all.”
Me: “Whatever.” Which is all I can think of saying. But then I think about what she said as she tries to control her expression.
Me: “You’re right. I don’t know anything about you. Seems like things were… better for us. Down at the Square.”
Now she’s the one to go silent. Then, quietly—
Kath: “I would have liked it down there.”
She flashes me a look for about a nanosecond, like she regrets that she just said something that wasn’t totally pissy and is worried I’ll jump on her for it. I shrug.
Me: “Maybe we’ll make it back.”
Kath: “Doesn’t look like it.”
Me: “I can’t disagree.”
