The days here follow mostly the same pattern. Morning exercises with Tabitha. The cells lock, the cells open, we prep food, we clean up food. Repeat.
Not once have they let me or any of us outside. Not once during that first week did they bring us in for questioning or testing. I’d welcome getting tested right now. I’m going crazy keeping myself from bursting through those front doors. If I don’t get out soon I might explode.
They take people away sometimes, but everyone comes back and talks about blood being drawn, mental intelligence tests, exercise tests, vitamin injections, more blood drawn.
Nothing like the fairgrounds.
Maybe things are different here. Maybe they really are looking for a cure.
At the beginning of the fourth week in the jail they took Dylan away, but no one noticed at first because the hot water had stopped working. There were shouts and cursing before breakfast from the people who discovered that fact firsthand.
Dylan came back that same day before dinner. The hot water did not. He found Corrina right away and kissed her. He looked relaxed, unharmed. “They only took blood and asked me some questions about how I got infected,” he said at dinner, around what was now our regular table. Others joined us from time to time, to make conversation, check in on us, get to know us. I didn’t really talk to them, not really, but the rest of the group did.
“Was it Sergeant Bennings?” Corrina asked.
“I didn’t see him,” Dylan said. “They’ve got a real lab here, professional equipment. And it’s just like Tabitha said.” He paused to shovel in another bite. Dinner had come in as raw potatoes and cans of gravy, along with barely enough propane to cook it all. The food was mind-numbingly hot and delicious.
“Everyone is working on something, the uninfected I mean, but on their side of the camp.” He paused again for a drink of water and then glanced my way. “And there’s a special cleanup crew. People who’re allowed to go outside the fence and deal with any Vs causing problems.”
Jimmy, Ricker, and Ano swiveled their heads in my direction, all three at the same time, like a comedy act.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I said. “We knew that already. Remember Kern?” I didn’t say Spencer’s name out loud but I didn’t have to.
“Like what?” Ricker asked. “Like this is the perfect job for you and maybe it’ll make you less grumpy if you’re able to kill a few Vs every day?”
“What are you talking about?” I wasn’t in the best moods these days, but considering the circumstances I thought I had been doing a pretty good job of keeping it together. I would never admit it to Tabitha, but the morning exercises were helping.
“You’re a bit scary, Gabbi,” Ricker said. “No offense.” He held up his hands to ward off the mean look I gave him.
“And what do you think, Ano?” I said.
To his credit, he did not immediately answer, but then he said. “It’s a good idea.”
“I want to join,” Maibe said.
“Absolutely not,” Corrina said.
“Don’t act like you can tell her what to do,” I said, my blood rising.
“Don’t ruin this for us!” Jimmy shouted. He had stood up. He was shaking.
I felt stunned. “What are you talking about?”
Corrina put a hand on Jimmy’s shoulder. He shook it off. “I’m going to see if there’s any more gravy.”
“He likes it here,” Corrina said.
“We see how you look at the fences,” Ricker said. “You’re thinking about running away.”
“We’re being held prisoner!” I said. It should have been the most obvious thing in the world to them. “We aren’t supposed to be here. What about Dutch Flat? What about escaping?”
No one answered.
“Dylan said they didn’t even hurt him,” Ricker said. “They’re really looking for a cure this time.”
“You can’t believe that. You can’t. Not after everything. Not after what they did to Leaf. Ano? Maibe? You can’t possibly think—”
“I will go with the group,” Ano said. “Stay here, go there. Die one way or die another.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. A few weeks of calm, of food, of the safety being a prisoner gave us, and they were ready to give up? It made my head spin, how quickly things had changed. I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it. They weren’t stupid enough to think everything was going to be okay now, were they? “Maibe? What do you think?”
She looked uncomfortable with all the attention directed at her. She probably wasn’t used to having her opinion count for much, but it mattered to me what she thought. No matter how many times I might have dismissed her out loud, deep down, I knew she was smarter than me. I knew she was worth listening to.
“I think it’s been okay so far,” she said, but she must have seen the crushed look on my face. “But that doesn’t mean things will stay that way.”
“It’s not like you’re going to get a chance to escape anytime soon,” Dylan said. “They’re not letting anyone out unless they trust them. We’re not exactly high on their trust list.”
“It hasn’t been so bad yet,” Corrina said softly. “That doesn’t mean I’m okay with it, it’s just…I thought Tibby was giving us a line when she did her whole ‘race for the cure’ speech. But it seems like they really are trying.”
“We’re calling her Tibby now?” I said.
“Tabitha, then,” Corrina said. She looked at me like she was worried about me. Like there was something really wrong with me and she wished she could fix it. “We thought maybe if you could get on their V team or whatever they call it—”
“We? You’ve all been talking about me? The problem that is me?”
Their silence was answer enough. My appetite disappeared. They thought I was going to ruin it for them. “They treat us like criminals and you’re okay with that? You’re really okay with that?”
“They need us,” Ano said. “They need us to help find the cure. They need us to fight the Vs for them. It’s too dangerous for them otherwise.”
“It’s different here,” Dylan said. “When I was working with Sergeant Bennings, they treated anyone infected like they were rabid animals, like—”
“—we’ve turned into zombies that deserve to die,” Maibe said it like it was fact.
Jimmy returned with a token amount of gravy. He didn’t look at me.
Corrina pressed her lips together, ready to protest the word zombie like she’d done a million times in the past, but then tilted her head. “We do sort of look the part,” she said with a toothy grimace.
The tension broke. I surveyed our table. I’d gotten so used to how all of us looked. Wrinkled. Sickly transparent skin that, even on the darkest of us, veins and bruises snaked up and around and across. Bloodshot eyes, achy joints. Crippled memories.
“I vant to eat vour vraaaaaiiinns,” Ricker said suddenly. He lifted up his hands like two cat claws and swiped at Jimmy’s head.
“Zombies don’t talk like that, idiot,” Jimmy said. “That’s a vampire. And vampires don’t eat brains.”
“I vant to eat vour vraaaaaiiinns,” Ricker said louder, moaning it out and grabbing Jimmy’s head with both hands.
“Get off!” Jimmy said.
Maibe started giggling. Ricker turned to her in appreciation and did his little comic relief act for a third time while Jimmy fought him off.
“Not funny!” The look of horror on Jimmy’s face sent Ano into laughter.
“You know I hate vampires…zombies…whatever you’re supposed to be!” Jimmy said.
That sent the rest of us laughing, even me, until Jimmy swiped Ricker’s bowl and licked it clean.
“Hey!” Ricker said, dropping his arms and his zombie/vampire expression.
“Yum,” Jimmy said. “If this is what brains taste like, I could be down for this.”
“That was the last of it!” Ricker said.
“Sorry, not sorry,” Jimmy said.
“You will be.” Ricker pushed Jimmy onto the floor, but Jimmy grabbed Ricker’s shirt and took him down too, and then they wrestled. Ano laughed again and pushed Ricker in the back to unbalance him just as he was about to pin Jimmy.
I left them that way, laughing and fooling around and forgetting for a moment this new world we all lived in.
Tabitha walked by. I followed her outside to the pit toilets. I thought about Jimmy’s outburst. I thought about what Maibe said. I thought about how they looked—full of food, well-rested, and ready to stop running. “I want to join the team that goes outside. The ones that go after the Vs.”
She stopped in mid-stride and turned to face me with the same care she used to lead us through morning exercises. Even though she was older, there was a power in the way she carried herself. She hid her strength, but you could see it when she moved in the mornings. She scared me a little bit.
I forced myself not to squirm under her gaze, but it was a close thing. She had those eyes that seemed to pierce into you, to probe for weakness or for faintness of heart or for some sort of darkness. A smile curled at her lips. She brushed away a loose strand of hair. “Why should they trust you?”
That was the question she asked, those were the words she spoke, but I knew what she was really asking was why SHE should trust me.
“You probably shouldn’t,” I said. “I’m a runaway. I don’t follow the rules. I mess simple things up. I get really angry and lose my temper a lot.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“But I don’t mind taking chances. When I care about something, I can be pretty loyal.” Even as I spoke the words to convince her, I knew how dumb they must sound, but I couldn’t force out any promises about dying for her cause or fighting to the death or standing up for what was right no matter what. They would be lies and she would know it.
“Why would I want a runaway on the team?”
And even as she said ‘the team’ I knew somehow she meant HER team and my curiosity soared into the atmosphere. “I probably know better than a lot of other people on the team about how to move around without being seen, how to hide, how to run, how to fight.”
She inclined her head in tacit agreement. “Yes, well, this might be true. For one reason or another, those of us infected and brought here have very little military background, if any. Father’s father, that sort of thing.”
“I don’t have any code of honor,” though even as I said the words, I realized I clearly did, it just wasn’t what many other people counted as honorable. “I’d be willing to take jobs no one else wanted as long as I knew why, as long as it made sense to me. I know what it’s like to live on barely any food and to sleep anywhere I can and to still take care of business.”
“How many Vs have you killed?”
“A dozen—at least,” I said. “With my own hands or a crossbow or bat. I don’t mind getting my hands dirty.”
She nodded.
“I would kill uninfect—”
“—Hush,” Tabitha said.
I stopped and pressed my lips together. I looked up at the guard towers. Surely they were too far away to hear any part of our conversation. But then I remembered the locked cells. How did they know everyone was inside if they didn’t have a way to monitor us? Tabitha’s face was like stone and my shoulders sagged. I had almost convinced her and then I misstepped and I would be stuck inside washing dishes and following the rules for the rest of my life.
A couple with their kid in tow passed us on the way to the bathrooms. They greeted us with warm hellos and she nodded pleasantly in their direction. Once they had disappeared behind the bathroom’s plywood walls, she stepped closer to me and I flinched.
“Kern is team leader,” she said in a low voice.
“Okay.”
“You will have to work with him. Follow his rules.”
A sour taste filled my mouth, like I’d just bit into a slice of lemon. It was hard not to look at him during dinners. It seemed like I kept catching his eye no matter where I was or what I was doing and I hated that I kept looking. I hated how an electric shock went through me every time he looked back. He was a traitor, he was a liar. He was a lot like me.
“This is nonnegotiable,” Tabitha said.
“Done,” I said and tried to say it like I meant it.
“If he says your actions put other team members in danger, if you jeopardize your missions, I’ll throw you off the team.”
“How is it that you are the one who gets to decide such things?”
She looked at me as if I were stupid.
Instead of getting angry I felt embarrassed. “Forget it,” I muttered. I paused, took a deep breath, and then locked eyes with Tabitha and said, “I will work with the team. I will follow directions.”
If Spencer or Leaf could hear me now, they would have been rolling on the floor, holding their bellies, laughing so hard. It was good Ano wasn’t around to hear me. Tabitha didn’t know how ridiculous the promises I just made were—for me. She might guess, but she didn’t know. Maybe it wouldn’t be that hard once we were outside the tomb that the jail had become.
Tabitha nodded and said, “I’ll see what I can do.”
I could do it. I could follow Kern’s directions.
I could probably do it.
Shit.