The plastic serving spoon froze in Jane’s hand. The liquid half-splashed back into the pot.
My arms stopped halfway outstretched over the table. My wrinkled, infected hands held the bowl in front of me like a fool. I smelled the soup—a chicken, rice, and vegetable medley. The taste of ash sat on my tongue.
“What are you doing here,” she hissed.
My brain locked up except for one thought: she must not know I was infected otherwise she would scream instead of whisper. And then another thought: put your damn hands down before she notices. And then a third: but no, Jane wouldn’t betray me. And then a fourth: but she already had, in more ways than I could ever have imagined.
“You left,” I said, because I could not, would not, talk about Dylan with her.
“Shut up,” she said. She looked to my right, to the next person in line, but he was lost in a whispered conversation with the person behind him. She stared at the spoon in her hand, deliberating. Finally, she glanced at the stage, dumped a full spoon of soup into my bowl, and without looking at me again said, “I’ll be done in five minutes. Meet me at the bears.”
I cupped the bowl of soup to my chest and scurried from the table. I retreated to the edge of the crowd and devoured the soup so fast it burned the roof of my mouth. I tongued those burned ridges of skin and a spark of anger surfaced. How dare she run, how dare she act indignant.
Her glance at the stage told me she knew Dylan was here.
She’d found Dylan and neither one had come looking for me. Neither one.
I tempted myself with the thought of not meeting her, of fading away into the fog and leaving Dylan and Jane together. Maybe I would first exact my own bit of revenge by biting her, aging her, wiping that smooth skin off her face. This last thought spurred me into meeting her instead of leaving. Part of me hoped I was a better person than my current thoughts, part of me knew I wasn’t.
We met at the pair of bronzed grizzly bears that stood sentinel a hundred yards or so from the soup line. The statues represented California’s state animal and had served many times as a way to find members of your group otherwise lost in the sea of people that wandered the grounds during state fair season.
I stood on the side of the bear that kept me out of sight of the guards. I leaned against its hip so that all of me fit within the boundaries of the bear’s hind leg.
A string of uniformed guards lounged while watching the exterior parking lot. Soldiers maybe, but they looked unkempt, unwashed, unsure of themselves. They guarded the front gates from above, using a tram’s second-story access to keep lookout.
They were the gates I had been outside of with Spencer and Maibe and the others just a day past. I hoped Spencer and Leaf and the rest were still safe somewhere with Maibe.
Jane walked up, her hair wrapped in a scarf, wearing jeans, boots, and a thick jacket with fake fur that rimmed her pristine skin. “When did you get here?” She avoided my face as if ashamed to look at me.
I felt thankful for that because I had been thinking that as soon as she noticed I was infected with the cure I would slash her arm open with my teeth and watch the horror dawn on her face once she realized what I had done to her. I was a horrible person.
“Last night,” I said, finally.
She looked away from the bear and the gates and the guards— to Stage 1.
“I…Christopher escaped and I thought he was going to infect me and I needed to get to Cal Expo. To someplace safe.”
To Dylan. Before me. “Stop lying.”
She didn’t respond, other than stiffening her back.
“Is this place safe?” I shot at her. “They’re killing old people, or anybody who looks old, not giving them a chance—”
“There’s no way to test for the infection,” Jane said. “They’re not taking any chances. There are two infections running through the city—through the world for all we know. There’s no cure.”
Hopes tumbled into ash. I'd known deep down there must not have been a cure, otherwise why would they be killing infected on sight? It was still tough to hear my fate was sealed out loud. The truth hurt, especially coming from Jane.
“But they're still searching for a cure? They must be.”
She nodded. “But they say they aren't even close.”
“So that's how they can justify killing innocent people,” I said, thinking about the ones I’d seen shot, the ones responding to the radio announcement, the ones seeking help.
“It’s the quarantine. It’s for our protection. If you’d seen what I’ve seen, what the infected can do—”
“I have—”
“Some people are calling them zombies—”
“They’re sick. They need help, not bullets—”
“It’s like nothing we’ve ever seen—”
“No, we’ve seen it. Rabies, Alzheimer’s—”
“Corrina, it makes you disappear. It turns you into something other than human—”
“Which makes it okay to murder ?”
She whirled and faced me. “Yes. Yes!” She yanked her scarf off and waved it around. “Yes! Anything not to catch it, not to turn into—” She froze. “What’s wrong with your face?”
Panic fluttered in my stomach. “I was busy surviving out there. No thanks to you.” I turned so my hair better obscured my profile. “Have you talked to Dylan? Is he okay?” I asked, desperate to change her focus, and desperate to know what had happened. “Why didn’t he come after me?” That last question sounded petulant even to my own ears, but it was too late to take it back.
“Answer my question,” she said.
“No, Jane. You answer mine,” I said. Suddenly Jane’s seventh-grade self materialized next to adult Jane. Yes, we’d had this childish argument before.
“I told him you were dead.”
Her words punched me in the gut. “What?” I asked in a strangled voice.
Seventh-grade Jane stood next to adult Jane, stiff-legged, pouty, arms crossed on her chest, hair flipped over her shoulder. I leaned my forehead against the bear, felt its slippery surface, its coldness, smelled a hint of the metal underneath the bronze-colored paint.
A couple of guards yelled at the gate. Several shots were fired. Silence returned. I used the sounds to distance myself from this conversation and bring me back to reality, back to survival. None of it mattered, these details that came before, these petty decisions about loyalty and desire and betrayal. None of it mattered in the foggy, cold light of this new world.
I couldn’t stand still a moment longer. My heels dug into the ground and I pivoted away from the bear, away from the front gates, back to the soup line, back to Stage 1.
“Hey!” Jane yelled, but there were no following steps.
I quickened my pace until a building hid me from sight. The handicap rail bit into my stomach as I leaned over it and gulped quick, panicked breaths. I didn’t know who’s version to believe. Jane’s, or the one I’d lived through, the one where Dylan and I made up and forgave each other and it had nothing to do with guilt, but instead because we belonged to each other. I wanted a memory-rush or ghost-memory or some damn something to wash away Jane’s words.
But none came.
Instead, another thought teased me.
I was one of the infected, aged, sick. I had never belonged with Dylan, and I didn’t belong here. If I hadn’t been worth anything to Dylan before, now it was doubly true. And if I loved him—and in spite of everything, I knew I did by the wrenching emptiness I felt at thinking I might never see his smile again or touch his shoulder or feel his kiss on my neck—how could I make him take care of someone like me now?
Something pink caught the periphery of my vision. I blinked and focused. Not Maibe, but it reminded me of her and reminded me that I wasn’t completely alone. Others needed taking care of. Like the woman I’d left in the hay. Like Gabbi and the pup-boys.
The pink caught my eye again, along with a flash of movement. And even though I knew it couldn’t be Maibe, I felt compelled to follow. The pink disappeared around a corner. I hurried after it, thinking I would discover who it belonged to, and then I would track Maibe down and I would leave Jane and Dylan and everyone else here to their moat of false safety.
Better that Dylan think me dead than see the new, old me with cracked skin, deep wrinkles, demented thoughts.
Clanging, like from a bell, tripped my feet. People shouted and the pink disappeared in a crowd that had re-formed near the soup table. I slowed down and repositioned my clothing. It wouldn’t do to get caught now.
People edged the moat, staring across the green water to the stage. A shaved ice cart with pastel-colored lettering appeared. The woman manning it sprayed dark blue syrup on a cone and handed it to a toddler in a blue and white striped shirt, but this ghost-memory was easy to ignore. I pushed my way through people with thick coats that smelled of musty cloth, unwashed bodies covered in filth, incoherent rumblings of distress and anger and fear. I burst out the front of the crowd and almost fell in the moat.
I squinted to better see. My stomach sunk.
The old woman had escaped the hay nest.
She stumbled, trance-like, across Stage 1, arms out as if she was going to hug someone. Dylan stood in front of her. There was no doubt in my mind now that it was Dylan between her and the guns pointed now at his chest.
“Move away,” one of the soldiers said, his voice echoing across the water.
Dylan held his hands up, palm-faced and open, and shook his head. Another soldier came running. He held a different kind of gun in his hands. He charged Dylan and tackled him to the ground.
The first soldier raised his gun. A sharp crack snapped across the moat.
I looked away and then forced myself to look back, to be a witness. The old woman had fallen to the floor in a heap, but there was no blood.
A few cheers sounded behind me. Another person screamed “That’s right! That’s right! That’s right!”
A man next to me hunched his shoulders and shook his head as if in disapproval.
The stage filled with people in uniform. They dragged both Dylan and the old woman away. They used a dog-catcher stick on the woman so they wouldn't have to touch her. They handled Dylan roughly, slapping him around the head, kicking his shins when he didn’t move fast enough. I felt the acidic remnants of the chicken soup return to burn the back of my throat.
“What are they doing?” I dared to ask the man with the grim lips. I tried to swallow away the acid and my fear for Dylan’s safety.
“You don’t help the sick. He’ll get a hearing and she’ll go to the experiments. Those are Sergeant Bennings’ rules. Don’t you know that?”
I felt his eyes rake my face. I pretended to shiver and closed my hood closer. “I got here last night,” I said. “I forgot.”
“After they’re done with him, you won’t want to remember. But you will.”
I melted into the crowd, skirted the soup table, failed to see Jane, and then there she stood, off to one side of the moat, arguing with a guard. She tossed her blonde hair back over her shoulder, fiddled with the scarf she’d repositioned on her head and let tears stream down her face.
The soldier shrugged. He seemed young, grim, annoyed. “Probably to…” I couldn’t make out his last words and then he walked away.
Jane looked across the moat, at where the guards had disappeared with Dylan. I crept up behind her, and when I was within a few feet, I whispered, “Jane.” Her back stiffened. She dropped her hands from the scarf down to her sides.
“Jane, where are they taking him? Tell me, and I’ll help any way I can.”
“He thinks you’re dead,” she said, without turning around. A slight shift in the breeze brought the smell of algae to me. Two men dressed as lumberjacks did the log roll on a large rough redwood trunk in the moat. I ignored the illusion of their plaid-covered contest and waited for Jane to realize keeping Dylan alive was more important than keeping her lie alive.
“There are holding cells in Building B for problems. For their experiments.”
“I thought they killed anyone sick.”
“We’re not animals, you know. She was only tranquilized.”
“No, I don’t know that. They were killing people at the gates for looking old.”
She shook her head. “No, that’s not how we do things. He said he always checks first, just in case.”
“You believe that?”
“They tranquilized that woman, didn’t you see? They didn’t kill her.”
What I had seen was Dylan stepping in to hold back bullets until the tranquilizer gun arrived, but I bit back my words. There was no point in trying to reason with Jane. Plus, one of the men had fallen off the log and splashed into the moat, causing the winner to do a quick tap dance to stay afloat.
“We’ve got a better chance of helping him if we work together,” I said, even though I thought maybe my help might get me killed. But I couldn’t leave. I accepted that now. I cared too much, even if the same wasn’t true for him.
“All right,” Jane said.
The men and their log disappeared, leaving only the empty stage someone had forgotten to draw the curtains on. I suddenly wanted water, anything to wash away the taste of the chicken soup that burned my throat.
However large a part of me hated her now, at least I knew she cared about Dylan. And maybe they belonged together. Neither sick, neither—I shook my head and told myself to stop. My plan hadn’t changed, only taken a detour. I could feel despair later, but I would never live with myself if I didn’t help Dylan now, no matter what he thought of me or of Jane. I wasn’t that kind of person.
“People who break the rules always get a hearing, but—”
“But what?” I examined the skin on the back of my hands. I was disease-ridden, Jane-betrayed, falling apart physically and mentally. It didn’t matter whether Dylan had meant it when he said he loved me and wanted to work things out. That was before this new world. That was in the past now. Before I became old and decrepit and ugly and infected.
“Then they’re executed,” Jane said. “Sergeant Bennings says it's the only way to make sure people follow the rules. He says it's the only way we can last long enough to find a cure.”