Between Life and Death Page 2

  At the back of the studio where three doors block our path, the smell of decay is a little stronger, but it still seems like a very old death I’m smelling. Each door is clearly labeled, which is handy. One is to the restroom, one to a changing room, and the last leads to the office. Both of us click on our headlamps.

  Matt nods toward the bathroom and positions his crossbow. I push open the door quickly and he ducks into the doorway.

  “Hey, there’s toilet paper!”

  I duck my head around the door and see a little pyramid of rolls, gone gray with dust, in a basket under the sink. “Sweet!”

  At the changing room, we do the same thing. It’s a larger room, cubbies along one wall for bags and clothes, and two benches in the center for the convenience of those changing. In two cubbies I find a couple of pairs of running shoes—both small enough to break my heart—and in another, I find a hoodie and a pair of flats in a slightly larger size. All three will be of use to us since Mirabelle is growing like a weed and shoes that haven’t been ruined by exposure are getting harder to come by.

  Matt nods toward a saying painted on the wall. Pushing through to excellence!

  “Sounds more like boot camp than dancing,” Matt says.

  “There’s very little difference,” I mutter, remembering the cutthroat, competitive nature of some of the more advanced pupils when I attended classes.

  The source of the smell isn’t in either of these rooms, so that leaves us one more avenue—the office. There have been no sounds since we came in, so neither of us is expecting anything more than an immobile deader, if anything, but we still get ready as if we’ll be facing a few in-betweeners. Better safe than sorry is the motto of anyone who has survived to this point. It’s a very good motto to have.

  Nothing except an increase in the intensity of the aroma greets us at the office. It’s a big room, separated into sections according to use. The front is clearly the office, with three desks, a few extra chairs, and a whole lot of scattered paperwork. Posters of beautifully slender, yet muscular, women cover the walls, each advertising some brand of dance wear or ballet shoe or something of the sort.

  What makes the posters eye-catching isn’t the subjects, but rather the color. Everything out there in the world has faded in the light, or been ruined by water or fire. Here, inside this windowless room not yet breached by the elements, the colors are still vivid and bright. An artificially bright spot in a world of gray and brown.

  Looking at the girls, so clean and sleek, makes me feel self-conscious all the sudden. My skin is never entirely clean and my hair gets washed once a week at best. There’s just not enough water to waste on things like that with the rain coming so sporadically lately. I wash my face as much as I can, but the days of using pretty smelling potions to keep my skin soft and clear are long gone. Most of the stuff we find now has either gone hard, spoiled, or simply dried away. These girls, with their airbrushed complexions, are a thing of the past. I wonder how many of them—if any—are alive.

  Matt snaps his fingers twice in front of my face and I startle out of my reverie. He looks sympathetic and glances at the posters, then back at me. “You’re perfect the way you are. If you were like them, you wouldn’t be here right now.”

  It’s a sweet thing to say and it makes me blush, though I doubt anyone could see that under my heat-flushed skin and sweaty shine. “Yeah, I get it. It’s just…well, you know…”

  “Weird to see stuff like that? So many colors?” He prods.

  “Exactly,” I say. “Sorry, I’m back on task.”

  He nods and steps past the desks. The room is divided by a bank of shelves about as tall as I am. There are lots of interesting things on those shelves that I’ll go through later, but beyond them is only darkness. Our headlamps pierce the gloom, but no sound greets our intrusion, so we step around the shelves.

  There are racks of tiny clothes, their sequins glimmering in the light of our lamps, making them appear almost as if they’re in motion. They make me think of Maribelle. She’d be delighted if I brought her back one of these forgotten costumes meant for a recital that will never take place. I just won’t think about who owned the costume first.

  There’s a walled off section in the corner next to the exit door. Another room and another door. We do our thing and when Matt peeks inside, I can see the gleam of his headlamp jerking around in a way that isn’t normal. Then a low whistle sounds out and I follow him inside.

  “Who would have guessed it?” he asks. “A ballerina with a machine gun.”

  I finally see what he’s seeing. The remains of a girl or woman—she’s so slight it’s hard to tell—sit propped up against the far wall. She has no head, but I can tell it used to be a female by the yoga pants and sweatshirt. The shirt has a pink logo that proclaims, Dance Hard!, in big bold letters. In her hands is a shotgun still vaguely pointed at the place where her head once was. Across her legs is an automatic weapon, the long curved magazine still in place.

  “Oh, man,” Matt says in a low voice.

  I look where his headlamp is pointed and see the crumpled form of what can only be a little girl directly across from the dead woman. She’s still wearing tights and a pink leotard, her little leather dance shoes loose on the bones of her feet and stained by her decay. The top of her head is an open pit and there are bandages on her arms and legs.

  I look from her to the woman and see the whole scenario as if it’s being played out in front of me. The woman—maybe her teacher, maybe her mom—taking care of her bitten child until that child dies and turns. The terrible moment when she has to kill the girl, and the next moment when she realizes she can’t live with what she’s done.

  It’s tragic, but it’s an old tragedy. These corpses have been here for years and there are millions just like them all over this country. Countless more of them are covering our world.

  Matt moves over to a pile of things in the corner and lifts the edge of a cloth. “She must have been a prepper. Look,” he says, flipping back the dusty cover.

  There’s a camp stove, a few bottles of propane, and the unmistakable accoutrements of a go-bag. Wow. A ballerina prepper. That’s definitely a new one on me.

  “It’s hot in here, Matt. Let’s open the back door to let in some air and sit in the shade,” I say, wiping the runnels of sweat off my neck.

  It is boiling hot and I feel like my blood is about to vaporize into red steam. The shade is nice, but even that only goes so far. If only there was something more than this insipid breeze it might be tolerable. As it is, every single breath of wind feels incredible and just makes me feel worse afterward because it never lasts.

  “Yeah, and you’ve got some reading to do,” he says.

  I do. I definitely do.

  Four Months Ago - Your Other Right

  “Emily, can you squeeze my right hand?” I ask, watching her carefully.

  I’m at the very limit of her chains, so if she decides to go rabid on me, I can get out of her reach fairly quickly simply by snatching back my hands. Charlie is standing by, the dog catcher handle in his hands and the loop around her neck. It may seem cruel, but Emily appears to understand and never protests when we slip the loop around her neck. At least now we’ve padded the wire loop so that it’s more comfortable when she has to wear it.

  She squeezes my left hand rather than my right, so I say, “That’s your right hand, Emily. Try to squeeze my right hand.”

  Emily screws up her face, her eyes moving from one hand to the other, her thoughts almost comically visible on her face. This is very advanced stuff we’re doing. She has to re-learn a lot of the basic stuff as her tumor shrinks, but every day she does a little better. What I’m trying to figure out is how much of the in-betweener behavior she’ll keep. Will the brevity of the period she was without oxygenated blood give her a greater advantage over those who went longer without blood pumping through their veins?

  Her lips purse in concentration and she focuses on my right hand. I try not
to smile, which would give away that she has the right answer, and just wait for the squeeze. It’s a strong squeeze when it comes and that’s encouraging as well. She’s regaining control over the side of her body most affected by the tumor, which means it’s easing up and getting digested by the nanites we put inside her body.

  “Great! Good job, Emily,” I say in a high cheery tone.

  She grins in response, her perfect teeth gleaming white behind her chapped lips. It’s a sort of foolish grin that’s also half-feral and a bit frightening in its intensity. I’m reminded of what she is when I see that smile.

  “Raht!” she exclaims and lets go of my hand to bounce a fist in the air like an excited baby would. She loses focus very easily.

  “Right. Can you say that again?” I ask.

  “Raight!” she yells. Her speech needs a lot of work, but sometimes it’s hard to tell what is caused by her southern accent and how much of it is an in-betweener problem.

  “Very good,” I say and reach for her bouncing fist.

  As my hand touches hers, she lets out a little growl and her mouth jerks toward my hand. Charlie is on the job though and her head stops short as the dog catcher halts her progress.

  “Emily! No!” I order her in a sharp tone.

  Her eyes dart toward mine and her face lowers a bit, again very like a child who’s been caught doing something wrong. But it works, because her attention is back on me and that snapping, hungry look is gone.

  “It’s about an hour until dinner. She’s just going to get worse until after she eats. Maybe we should stop for a while,” Charlie says. He says it almost like he’s embarrassed for Emily.

  Emily turns at the sound of his voice, her overdone facial expressions showing her surprise. She has some difficulty remembering, and often forgets that others are in the cage if they’re quiet for a while or she has something else to focus on.

  “Darlie!” she exclaims, a huge and delighted grin cracking across her face. She turns toward him, still at the limit of her chains and one arm now twisted behind her back, though she doesn’t appear to notice the inconvenience. Her other hand opens and closes in the “Give me” motions of a toddler.

  Charlie holds onto the dog catcher, keeping her at a distance, and says, “Hey Em. You’re doing great today.”

  “Emily, can you keep on practicing with me for a minute?” I ask. She jerks back around toward me, clearly surprised to hear my voice. It’s close to feeding time and she gets worse the closer it gets. I think we’re pretty much done for now if she’s already forgotten I’m here.

  Still, it’s only been a few weeks since she opened her eyes. Just a few weeks since the nanites went into her spine and here she is, standing and grinning. This is progress and I’m grateful for it. I just have to remember that I’m grateful for it when she takes three big steps backward for every step forward in her progress.

  “Fronica!” she squeals, surprised to see me and clearly delighted by my presence.

  “Yes, Emily. It’s me, Veronica.”

  *****

  The hour after Emily eats is just for me. The others think I should focus on her learning during that golden hour of near-perfect lucidity, but her learning is still hampered by the slowly dissolving—yet still present—brain tumor. There’s only so much progress she can possibly make with that mass in there. I see no need to frustrate her, or even worse, remove all sense of security by not treating her like a beloved friend when she’s aware enough to appreciate it.

  She slides the tray across the cage toward me, her movements smooth and coordinated, even if one side of her body remains a little weaker than the other.

  “Wass goot,” she says, smiling her lop-sided smile.

  As always, her bowl is licked completely clean. Her water bowl is empty as well, much of it having gone down the front of her smock. The cloth she uses to clean up with is wadded up and stained crimson with blood. Changing Emily’s clothes is a drama, but we did it just this morning so she’s only minimally filthy.

  The best sign of progress so far is that she told me she smelled bad this morning. That’s huge. Her subsequent bathing and changing was an episode of mixed hilarity and soul-crushing pity. She couldn’t even figure out how to get her underwear on and, without her legs chained, I kept bouncing away from her with every sudden movement she made. It was a drama.

  “Would you like to try some bread?” I ask. So far, she’s shown no interest in anything other than flesh and blood, but I never stop trying.

  “Blark,” she says, which is her way of saying no with feeling. It’s like she’s trying to convey to me that the idea of bread sounds disgusting. She gives a little grossed-out shiver for emphasis. Bread grosses her out, but a bowl of raw bird carcasses and blood is yummy, apparently.

  “Would you like me to tell you a story?” I ask.

  As usual, she bounces a little where she sits at that suggestion. She reminds me of Jon when she does that and I can’t help but smile.

  “Yah, yah, yah!” she exclaims. “Ozpidal!”

  That means she wants me to tell her about the hospital again, about the trip Charlie and I made there to get the nanites we saved her with. She can’t remember much, but she remembers that. Of course, what I’ve told her is a lie. I can’t tell her that the doctor she gushed over and who saved her life when the world was an ordered place of stoplights, fast food, and homes with electric lights is now a lunatic. So, I’ve made up a story that works for her.

  “Well, Charlie and I rode through the streets and the countryside to find the brilliant doctor with the magic machines that would save their friend’s life,” I begin.

  “Yah, yah, Mehme!” Emily breaks in, just as she always does at that point in the story, poking herself in the chest hard enough that it should hurt.

  “Yes, Emily. You are my friend.”

  Today - Good News, Bad News

  By the time I finish reading the thick sheaf of papers, my shirt is soaked with sweat and my pants feel like they’ve been glued to me. Matt doesn’t look any better. Even his baseball cap is dark with sweat for at least an inch along the bottom. When I look out the open back door toward the field and streets beyond, I can see a heat shimmer rising from the ground. I’m just waiting for a mirage to appear and cap off this blistering day.

  Matt tips his hat back long enough to wipe his forehead, then asks, “Good news?”

  I’m not entirely sure how to answer that. It might be very good news for us, but for the rest of the world? That, I’m not so sure of.

  “It’s sort of a good news, bad news situation,” I answer.

  “Great,” he says, sighing heavily. “Spill it.”

  The papers in my hand are limp when I hand them over to him. He barely glances at the closely spaced, block writing filling each sheet. Instead, he looks to me to fill him in. I think it’s too hot for him to feel like reading.

  “Well, those vials have the re-programmed nanites in them. That’s the good news. Red lids are charging medium, blue lids are nanites. Same deal as before, put the charging medium into the nanites and then inject them within an hour. They will, supposedly, eat any and all nanites other than those like themselves,” I say, nodding toward the pack that holds the precious bubble-wrapped package.

  “That’s good! There’s nothing bad about that, is there?”

  “That depends on your idea of good and bad,” I answer.

  He winces at that, knowing there’s a lot more to the story he isn’t going to like. “Great. Let’s hear it.”

  “Okay, well, they didn’t tell the doctor about their project, which we already expected. Princeton did it in secret, so they could only test when Violet—she’s that guard we were telling you about when we got back—was on watch outside. That means they only used it on deaders in the wild. Plus two in-betweeners she ran across on patrol,” I begin.

  “Fine, small sample size. Got it. That makes it riskier, but we’ve got test subjects of our own,” he says.

  “Right,
but all the deaders died when they were given the nanites. And to add another downside; it took time, much longer than just killing them. So, it’s not particularly useful for clearing up the millions of dead people that must still be hanging around the country.”

  “You guys said that much when you came back. That’s not a surprise,” Matt says.

  He takes a big swig from a water bottle and then hands it to me. I’m so thirsty my spit feels gummy in my mouth, so I take it eagerly. The water bottle actually feels warm when I touch it, and drinking it feels somewhat like drinking bath water, but the relief inside is worth it.

  “Thanks, better,” I say, wiping my mouth and handing back the bottle. “Well, the two in-betweeners they tested were also from the wild, and they both died as well, but one of them lasted several days before dying.”

  When I pause, not quite sure how I feel about the next part, Matt reaches out and taps my outstretched leg.

  “It’s okay, Veronica. No one is going to do anything to Emily if the news is bad. No one will do anything without your consent.”

  It’s a wonderful sentiment, but not one he can be sure anyone else will abide by. What if I don’t think the risk is worth it just yet? What if I want to wait for more data from the hospital, a more certain solution? Exactly how long will they put up with two cages of in-betweeners?

  “Matt, the others…” I begin, then trail off.

  “You let me worry about the others,” he says. He touches the stack of limp papers on the floor next to him and nods toward the pack. “This is the most real hope for a solution we’ve had since all this started. No one is going to jump the gun. There’s been enough dying.”

  I nod, reassured, but not entirely so.