Between Life and Death Read online

  “Mehme naht dead?” she asks.

  I shake my head and say, “No. Emily is not dead. You are alive!”

  Today - Strange Medicine

  Gloria is appalled. That’s the only word for it. The look on her face is one part horror, one part anger, and one part disgust. I think there might be a hint of murderous intention in there too, but I can’t be sure. She scribbles for a second, then flips around her notepad with an angry twist.

  You’re going to cure them? Those assholes!

  On her paper, there are the letters ‘fu’ crossed through with a big angry swipe of ink just before the word ‘assholes’. Even on paper she’s careful not to use the f-bomb.

  Savannah gives me a look and puts an arm around Gloria’s shoulder, half protectively and half to restrain her. Apparently, I’m not the only one that thinks Gloria might slap me across the face.

  “It’s a test! I need subjects before I use it on Emily. And here they are,” I say, trying to remain calm and reasonable.

  Gloria wasn’t at all pleased to find out that we’d been keeping the guys who attacked her, or at least most of them. The one who was watching her in a hidden spot inside the college didn’t meet his end until Gloria managed to escape many weeks later. She eventually got over the idea of them here, particularly after getting a look at them. I get the feeling she thinks what they are going through now is as close to hell as any of us will ever reach, and that satisfies her in some primal way.

  But curing them? No, she’s not cool with that.

  Gregory sees the thunderclouds building, so he nudges me with his elbow to get me to shut up and steps forward a half-step, neatly cutting me out of the conversation. He may be our diplomat, but he’s still a dick sometimes.

  “Gloria. Gloria, will you hear me out?” he asks in his most I’ll-be-running-for-president-someday voice.

  She glares at him because she knows that tone better than any of us. She was traveling with Matt and Gregory for a long time before they happened upon our little slice of light-industrial paradise. When he doesn’t bend under the pressure of her glare, she rolls her eyes, but gives him a curt nod all the same.

  “Right now, as it stands at the moment, those guys are dead. They’ve been punished,” he begins, but then pauses as Gloria’s expression goes mulish and she starts to lift her pad and pen for a rebuttal. He holds up his hands for patience. Gloria’s eyes remain narrowed and suspicious, but she lowers the pad, so he continues, “But, it was a quick punishment, not worthy of what they did. It wasn’t nearly enough.”

  That gets her attention. The pad lowers all the way and she gets an expression that almost reminds me of an in-betweener’s because it’s so feral.

  “Veronica is right. We do need test subjects, but we need fresh ones, or in-betweeners that have fared better than they do out in the world. We need some that are like Emily in terms of their condition. With me so far?” he asks.

  Gloria waits a beat, but then gives him another of her clipped nods. In that single, small movement, she manages to convey that she’s agreeing with him, that she’s reserving judgement, and that Gregory better watch where he takes this conversation. It’s amazing, really, how much information a nod combined with the right facial expression can convey.

  “Right. Okay. So we have test subjects and agree they are exactly what we need. So, the question becomes: What do we do if it works? And I think the answer to that is really very simple,” he says, then very wisely waits for Gloria to supply that answer for him.

  She scribbles for a moment, then holds up her notepad. She’s pressed the pen to the page with so much force that I can see the indentations in the paper her strokes have left from four feet away. That’s a lot of anger, well-deserved anger.

  We kill them. I kill them. My way.

  “Exactly so,” Gregory confirms.

  While I’m glad that he’s winning her over to my cause, namely the cause that lets me use the marauders that tortured her as test subjects, I can’t help but shiver at the total lack of humanity in her expression as she holds up that pad with her angry words.

  It’s all rather unhealthy. Still, it couldn’t happen to better candidates than those guys.

  I can’t wait to get started. That’s probably unhealthy too.

  *****

  We’ve gathered for a strategy meeting. Among the many conditions I had to agree to before performing my experiments, strategy meetings are probably the least onerous. No matter how much bother this may be, I completely understand. We’re talking about a whole other level of danger here, and it’s danger of a type we can’t fully predict. This can’t be my project alone. It has to be the whole group or else there’s no way to be sure it’s both safe and fully observed.

  Dinner is over and we’re all spread out in what we’ve taken to calling the “War Room”, which is to say, the furniture warehouse. Makes sense. It has lots of desks and plenty of awesomely ergonomic chairs. Chairs that roll even, which I can’t get enough of. It always earns me dirty looks when I get bored and start rolling around during these endless meetings, the drone of the wheels loud in the echo-friendly space.

  With every point I agree to, Gregory shoots me an appraising look, as if he doesn’t quite trust my compliance. Without fail, he repeats every point using shorter, more direct phrasing. It’s a little insulting, because this is what he does with the children. And I’m not six years old.

  “Okay, let’s recap,” says Gregory in his most reasonable—and slightly pedantic—tone.

  Gloria is at the home warehouse, watching the kids and trying to avoid the heat as best she can. She’s suffering under it more than the rest of us, wilting like a cut flower within an hour of the sun showing its face. She’s the only one allowed to use lots of water for bathing. One of our rain-catching barrels has been half filled and brought inside to keep it in the shade. She climbs into it and submerges herself several times during the day. But even though she’s not here at the meeting, everything decided here can be vetoed by her single vote. It’s the agreement we’ve made with her and I can’t say I disagree with it, but it does make it harder to formulate a plan.

  “Who’s taking the notes?” I ask, referring to our agreement with Gloria.

  Savannah holds up a piece of pink paper—the back of an order form—and a pen. “I’ve got it. Just give me the exact text we want.”

  Gregory smiles at Savannah with a little more warmth than the statement warrants and I have to stifle a grin. I once thought Emily and he would have made a nice pair, but I’m getting the feeling that another pairing is starting to take place. I’m ambivalent about it. It’s not that I don’t want others to feel happy, because I do. It’s just that I fear anything that might change the way our group works together. Emotional upheavals would not enhance our current levels of harmony.

  “First off, someone is on watch at the cage at all times,” Matt says, his eyes still moving from Gregory to Savannah, as if he can see the same thing I can and would like to redirect things.

  After we agree with that wording, Savannah writes it down, then reads it back. It’s all very formal, which means they’re taking it as seriously as I am. There are no surprise changes during this finalization of our plans. I’m pleasantly surprised that the others are so willing to add so much to our already heavy workloads with so little complaint.

  Aside from the continuous watches, we’ll have detailed reporting requirements as we track any changes. Then there are the feedings and interactions with the subjects—which is one we all find distasteful, but can’t see any way around—and a host of other stuff that varies from boring to unpleasant to downright nasty.

  We’re probably doing more than we need to, but we only have these five in-betweeners to use as test subjects, and the data isn’t just for us. For me, my main focus is Emily. My goal is very singular in that I want her back. The added incentive that we can use it on ourselves to clear our own bodies, if they are infected, is a strong one as well.

 
; For the others though, it’s far more broad. Of course, they want Emily back, but they’re more focused on the world at large. Perhaps it’s their losses that spur them on, as if helping to finalize a cure will somehow bring them back in a way, or make those losses less painful.

  I’m not so hopeful. I see the world we once enjoyed as a lost place. Lost and gone.

  But so long as we’re together, so long as we stay strong and I get Emily back, I can take the world as it is. And who knows, something better might take the place of the world we lost. If this works, we’ll have the chance to find out.

  Twelve Weeks Ago - Summer on a Roof

  There’s a certain tension in the air that’s making me nervous and jumpy. It’s also making me feel left out. I’m pretty sure the only other person who doesn’t know about whatever is making the air thick enough to cut with a knife is Charlie. And it’s making him grumpy, too.

  I’m on watch on the roof, which is fine with me because it gives me a chance to pout in private, thinking my dour thoughts and telling myself they would miss me if I were gone. I’m not sure why it bothers me so much, except that life at this scale makes harboring any secret almost impossible. From nighttime farts to irritation at another person, it’s all known. It takes real work and effort to leave any person in the group out of some bit of knowledge. It takes work to keep a secret.

  Life is out front, unhidden, utterly dependent on every other person and that requires an equal level of trust. A secret, any secret, is a bad thing. A secret so profound that it makes the whole warehouse tense is a very bad thing. Whether or not they feel it, I don’t know, but to me it feels like we’re split into two groups: those worthy of knowing whatever it is and those who aren’t.

  The clatter of the roof access opening behind me breaks my morose solitude and I turn to see Charlie coming up to join me. He looks glum too.

  “So what’s going on?” I ask before he even has a chance to fully climb up on the roof.

  His expression is so overdone and perfectly reflective of my own annoyance, that it actually makes me feel better. I laugh a real laugh for the first time in days. That makes him laugh in turn and just like that, the stress is cut in half.

  I’m still upset that there’s something going on I don’t know about, but the heaviness of it, the feeling that it’s going to ruin what we have here, is diminished by Charlie’s face when he laughs with me. It just feels good, sort of inclusive, like I’m not on the outside with everyone. It’s almost like we’ve just now formed a group of two. It may be a smaller group, but it’s ours.

  Rather than jump right into it or answer my question, Charlie hands me a bowl of stew. When I lift the lid—we’ve scavenged every single container of this sort for miles around us—the savory-sweet smell of vegetable stew wafts up. It’s even still hot. Just as I’m about to tip up the bowl and take my chances at burning my lips, Charlie whips a spoon out of his shirt pocket with a grin.

  A few of the early summer vegetables are coming in, so we’re flush with things that grow easy and fast, like squash. The late spring harvest is ending, but we’ve still got carrots, Brussel sprouts, and other stew friendly crops straggling in. So, stew is our general daily fare. I actually like it, but some of the others are sick of it. Not me, I’d eat it even if we didn’t have to.

  Charlie plops down onto the roof next to me and sighs a particularly weary sigh. I’ve been watching a deader that’s been making his way down our street for a couple of hours. I’m not sure if it was a male or female because it’s such a mess. I’m only surprised it’s still moving. This is one I would expect to be at its terminal rest point, latched onto a convenient bit of metal somewhere and slowly disintegrating where it lies.

  My binoculars are between us and Charlie plucks them up to look in the direction of the slow deader. “Wow, that one’s nasty,” he observes. “Aren’t you going to take care of it? Call one of the others to take it out, maybe?”

  I shake my head, licking at bits of vegetable that escaped my spoon in my enthusiasm to land on my hand. “Nah. It has been weaving like that for hours. It’ll get to the gate and latch on, I’m betting.”

  He nods at this, understanding my game. It takes time away from chores to go take care of a deader like that one, which is really no danger to anyone that can move with any speed. It couldn’t catch any of us. Heck, I could probably take a nap in the road and still wake up before it got to me. It’s in the end stages, like so many of them out there now. This summer has been good for one thing at least, and that’s putting the last nail into the coffins of a whole lot of deaders that have hung on so far. I’m okay with that.

  “I’ll take that bet,” Charlie says, putting down the binoculars and stretching his arms above his head extravagantly. “Dang, it’s hot already. How can you stand it up here without any shade?”

  I shrug. “I like it. At least right now, I do. It matches my mood.”

  Charlie harrumphs his agreement and we sit a while, watching the deader get another two steps forward and then four backward or to the side. It really is a mess and it’s twitching on top of it.

  “See anything else?” he asks. Apparently, he’s not ready to talk about what’s bothering both of us yet.

  I point to a spot in the distance, in the general direction of downtown, and say, “I saw smoke over that direction this morning again. It died out shortly after sunrise.”

  “A new group?” he asks, but grabs the binoculars again and looks as if he could somehow see some faint, lingering evidence of smoke. Of course, he can’t. It’s a dozen miles from here and it stopped a few hours ago.

  He’s right to be worried, though. We’ve been seeing more evidence of people lately. And more people means more humans to become in-betweeners. It’s selfish to think that way perhaps, but I do. I’ve started to think that the only way people can survive is to stay put somewhere safe and stop always looking for more people or a better town or something else that they don’t have.

  And yet, I only recently went on a long and stupidly dangerous trek of more than one hundred-sixty miles myself. It’s easier to put such restrictions—at least mentally—on others than it is to apply the same policy to oneself.

  “Has to be. The smoke isn’t in the same place as it was yesterday, though,” I say, and then check to be sure he’s not paying attention before I start licking out my bowl.

  “That’s three mornings out of the last five, right?” he asks.

  I pause in my licking long enough to mumble in the affirmative. The binoculars lower from his eyes and he grins that amazing grin at me when he catches me mid-swipe. Then he reaches over and dabs a finger quickly at the side of my chin. He holds up the finger, with its glistening spot of stew, and licks it off.

  I have to admit that I get a flutter in my belly like I just ate live tadpoles when he does that. Only, you know, more pleasant than actual tadpoles. After what happened to Gloria, all my feelings of that sort shriveled up and went away for a while, but it only lasted for so long. Emily had the talk with me—a far more useful talk than the one my mother had with me before the end of the world—so I know feeling like this is normal, but still, why does it have to be so complicated?

  Charlie is back to looking for invisible smoke again, so maybe the fact that he isn’t looking at me is what gives me some strange courage—or mental illness—because I say, “Charlie, can I do something real quick?”

  He turns back to me, his brows drawn together at my cryptic words, but his lips are still curved into a smile. “Okay. What?”

  The word barely gets out of his mouth before I lean over and plant my lips on his. Except that I’m nervous, we’re a foot apart, and I meet his lips with too much force, making our teeth clack together. It’s really jarring, that banging of teeth, and we both jerk back, hands going to our mouths.

  “Oh, crap! I’m so sorry,” I say, my face going beet red and my humiliation complete. This is my first kiss? Really?

  He looks at me like he can’t quite
figure out what just happened, but that he’s scarred by the experience. “Did you just try to kiss me or was that meant to knock my teeth out?”

  I start to scramble to my feet, intending to run back downstairs and hide somewhere, as if I didn’t live with him and that would in any way work. All I can do is repeat my apology. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”

  He grabs my arm as I leave the ledge, his fingers tight, but not in a bad way. It’s enough to stop me and I don’t have the heart to jerk away, so I just stand there, not looking at him and hoping he doesn’t hate me. I may not have the experience, but I know the rules. Never take from another person what they didn’t tell you that you could have.

  That includes awkward and—in all honesty, painful—kisses.

  “V, wait. Don’t go,” he says, his voice holding a touch of humor, but also something else.

  It’s that something else that makes me turn my head to look at him. And again, I don’t have the experience, but I know an expression that’s asking for a kiss when I see one.

  “Really?” I ask.

  Today - Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Moe

  “Flipping Fallujah, can you not shut him up?” Gregory asks, his patience absolutely at an end. The littlest of the in-betweener guys is making a droning noise that only ends when he gnashes his teeth and takes a breath. Then the drone starts up again.

  I’ll admit. It is very annoying.

  “Once we get out of his face, he’ll settle down. He’s always like this,” I say, trying to pretend that it doesn’t bother me, so that Gregory will try harder not to let it bother him. He doesn’t like to be shown up like that, so I know it will work.

  He yanks the strap on the little guy’s waist again, making sure it’s as tight as he can get it, and grumbles, “Yeah, whatever.”