Half Lives (32 page)

The fires grow and spread – like hatred in the hearts of Forreal. To the east he sees what he believes are Cheerleaders returning to the Mountain. Below he watches and almost
laughs at the Terrorists’ attempts to extinguish his fires.

He plants his torch in a pile of cloth that appears to be someone’s bed. He wants to stay longer, but the Man-Made Mountains are alive now. The fire roars. The Terrorists
scream. His heart swells.

He slithers like a snake among the buildings, hiding in the shadows, and disappears in the black smoke. As he sets a course for his Mountain, he tells himself a story. How he ignited
the fire and slipped through the flames untouched. How he fought bravely. How he walked through their streets with his head held high. How the black beasties bowed as he passed.

W
hen I opened the door, Marissa lurched away from whatever she saw. She grabbed my shirt as she fell backwards, nearly pulling me to the ground
with her. Her gaze was fixed on the gap between the open door and the darkness beyond.

I saw it and screamed.

It
was the only way to describe the thing that appeared in that sliver where light met dark. It was as if an extra from
Night of the Living Dead
had leapt off the screen and
come to life. Dried blood matted its hair. Its skin was wrinkled and peeling like the scales of a snake. It was a patchwork of scars that gaped to the bone below. Its blood-red eyes appeared to
pulse from dark sockets. It reached a hand out towards me with blistered fingertips. The fingernails that remained were black ragged squares. Its pink, fleshy tongue quivered behind its parted,
cracked lips.

‘Help me,’ it whimpered and took one laboured step closer. The beastie became a man. ‘Help me,’ he said again, a little more clearly. His whole body was trembling and he
emitted this sound that was part growl and part moan.

I dragged Marissa away from the door before I realized that low guttural sound wasn’t menacing. He was crying.

Chaske seemed to magically appear at my side. He raised his arms. The gun that had saved me from the snake a lifetime ago was pointed at the man.

‘Move back! Back off!’ Chaske shouted. The man raised both of his arms in surrender. ‘Close the door, Icie.’ Chaske shoved me towards the door. ‘Close it now before
he contaminates us.’

The man looked as if something was devouring him from the inside. Open, seeping sores dotted his dirt-brown skin.

‘Wait,’ the man spoke in a hoarse whisper. ‘Please, you’ve got to help us.’ He sucked in a ragged breath. ‘Help us . . .’ His voice trailed off.

‘Shut the door, Icie,’ Chaske barked. I noticed that the gun was shaking in his hands.

‘Chaske, are you sure?’ I was being torn in two. This was an impossible decision. I understood just how thin the line between living and dying was. If I shut the door, was I
sentencing him to death? If I let him in, would we all die?

‘Icie.’ Chaske grabbed my arm and pulled me to him.

His ragged fingernails drilled into the soft flesh of my upper arm. ‘You’ve got to trust me. If we let this man in, we will die.’

I didn’t want to die. I had to see this man as a murderer. He would kill me as surely as if he held a gun to my head, except by the looks of him, his death would be slow and agonizing. I
couldn’t consider him human. I had to believe it was him or me.

I leaned my shoulder against the door and felt it give little by little under my weight. A breeze blew through the opening and with it the sour stink of rotting flesh and Portaloos. This man was
death walking, a zombie of sorts.

‘Stop,’ Marissa shouted. She scrambled to her feet and stood in front of the open door. She pointed her knife at me and then at Chaske. ‘There are other survivors. Did you hear
what he said? He said “us”. We’ve got to help them.’

‘Get out of the way,’ Chaske yelled at her. ‘Icie, shut the damn door.’

‘Ice?’ Marissa looked at me as if I were the beastie. I threw my weight behind the door.

Marissa wedged herself in the doorway. ‘These are human beings.’

I shook my head. I couldn’t listen to her. I couldn’t think of
that
as human. I didn’t want to believe that what had happened to it was happening to everyone out
there.
It’s a monster
, I told myself.
A zombie.
To think anything else was too confusing. Whatever it was, I couldn’t let it in here. I couldn’t let it infect
us. I had to shut it out.

The zombie’s hand clapped on Marissa’s shoulder. She jerked free. Her shirt ripped as the zombie clawed to keep hold of her. My focus zoomed in on the two red jagged lines it had
drawn on her skin. Chaske flinched and I knew he’d seen it too.

Chaske waved his gun at her. ‘Get out!’

‘What?’ Marissa’s face blanched.

‘You wanted to open the door, but I can’t let whatever is out there in here. That . . . that . . .’ He gestured at the zombie with the barrel of his gun. ‘It’s
scratched you. I can’t let you stay here.’ He aimed the gun at Marissa.

I took a step towards Marissa to get between her and the gun, but then I realized Chaske was right. Marissa was now a threat too. She had switched from
us
to
them
.

‘What are you doing?’ Tate screamed. He was heading for Marissa. I stopped him and held him in a bear hug. This gave Marissa the chance to shove the door open a foot more.

‘No!’ Tate shouted. A black flash distracted me. Midnight was scampering between Chaske and me.

‘You don’t understand . . . you didn’t see . . .’ I was trying to explain this to Tate but my mind wasn’t functioning in complete sentences. I knew this was it. If
I didn’t do something, we could be in for slow and painful deaths. The look in that thing’s eyes told me everything I needed to know about the suffering we’d locked out.

This princess saves herself.

‘If you don’t help me shut this door,’ I whispered to Tate, ‘we are going to die.’

I forced our weight onto the door, but Marissa’s body propped it open.

‘We are going to help these people,’ Marissa said defiantly.

The diseased man looped his arm around Marissa’s neck, pulling her through the door. She screamed and shoved him away, banging her arm into the doorframe and falling at the man’s
feet. He climbed over her. He was coming after us.

Chaske aimed the gun. ‘Stop,’ Chaske said, nearly choked out. I rushed to his side. The creature took another step towards us and stood in the doorway. The gun was vibrating in
Chaske’s trembling hands.

‘I’ve got to shoot him,’ Chaske whispered to me. ‘Right?’

‘We can’t let him in,’ I said, mirroring his stance.

The zombie shuffled forwards.

‘Chaske,’ I shouted. ‘Now. Do it now!’

He nodded but everything else about him froze.

The zombie slowly approached, reaching an arm towards us. I had sacrificed everything and survived. The difference between life and death was the twitch of a finger. I couldn’t stand here
and allow this thing to infect me. I had to protect Chaske and Tate. I had come this far. I’d left others to die. I had to find the courage for one more act of survival.

I supported the gun in Chaske’s hand. I looped my finger in the trigger, dislodging Chaske’s grasp. The weight of the gun settled in my palm. I pointed it at the thing that stood
between me and the ever after.

I choose me.

I pulled the trigger.

The blast jolted my body backwards. The explosion echoed through the tunnels and rang in my ears.

Blood exploded from the zombie’s body and splattered on Marissa and the metal door. The force of the bullet propelled it back. It collapsed on the ground.

This felt like a scene from a movie. A movie that I wanted to switch off. But this was real; he was never getting up again. It was over in the blink of an eye, but one image froze and drilled
itself into my memory: his face as the bullet smashed into him. It was as if my brain zoomed in on his eyes and the zombie morphed back into something human. I’d killed a man. I could see
that but I couldn’t believe it. That was someone’s son, maybe someone’s father or husband or friend. I had never done anything so final, so horrible.

‘Icie, what have you done?’ Marissa crawled to the bloody lump, which was coughing and spluttering.

I couldn’t move. I was watching the scene around me but I was no longer in it. Chaske dived for the door, shoving with all his might. Midnight bolted through the crack and into the
darkness.

‘Chaske, wait!’ I yelled, reaching for Midnight, but it was too late.

He shoved the door shut and twisted the key, which was still in the lock. The metal lock thudded into place. Marissa, Midnight and the zombie were edited out of my story.

I had saved us, but it didn’t feel like that. It felt as though the bullet had killed me too.

Chaske took the gun out of my hand and gathered me into his arms. ‘You did the right thing,’ he whispered into my ear. ‘I couldn’t do it.’

I could. What had I become? Was I a murderer or a hero? Or both? But how could you be both?

‘What have you done?’ Tate asked, his face pale, his body slack. He was afraid of me now. I could see it in his eyes.

‘We had to do it, Tate,’ Chaske explained. ‘You didn’t see the man. He was sick. He scratched Marissa, infected her . . . It was her own fault. She opened the door. If
we’d let them in, we would have died.’ He sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as Tate.

‘You remember those people in the cars,’ I said to Tate. ‘We don’t want to end up like them, do we? I did it to protect you.’

The pounding started again. Muffled screams. Marissa was right there on the other side of the door. She was only a few feet away and probably dying. We stared at the door as if it were a window.
I could picture her clearly – but it wasn’t the girl who we’d just locked out. The twitchy nervous girl with the yellow-grey skin and the dull eyes. In my mind’s eye, she
was the bald girl I’d met on the plane with the cheerleader smile.

Everything stopped. The pounding. My brain. Any thoughts or feelings evaporated from my body.

‘There could be other survivors,’ Tate said, eyes glued to the door. ‘Marissa and Midnight could survive, you never know. They could.’

‘You never know,’ Chaske agreed.

More pounding. Tate burst into tears. I covered my ears and shut my eyes. I started singing Tate’s favourite tune to drown out the noise: ‘“Wha Eva. Wha Eva. The bad, the good.
Wha Eva. I put my faith in Wha Eva. Wha Eva alone”.’

Tate sprinted down the tunnel, pumping arms and legs as if he were being chased by a beastie. An earthquake erupted within me, and my body gyrated with a force that caused my teeth to chatter. I
was suddenly cold, as if I’d been plunged into the icy Potomac river. Chaske carried me to his room. He laid me down on his cot and tucked his sleeping bag around me.

I thought I could still hear banging and shouting, even though it was impossible this far away. He left me there for minutes or hours, I couldn’t say. I expected Midnight to jump up like
she always did, but she would never do that again. She was gone. Midnight could survive. Marissa . . . I was falling into a deep hole. I’d thought I couldn’t fall any farther but now I
realized the pit was bottomless.

Chaske came back with two bottles of hand sanitizer – one from my purse and the one from Marissa’s. He also had a jug of water and the cloth I used for my weekly spit baths. He
doused his exposed skin with the sanitizer and did the same to me. He handed me a blue pill and a white pill. ‘Take these,’ he prodded. I opened my mouth and he placed them on my
tongue. He handed me the jug of water.

‘What are they?’ I asked after I’d washed them down. I didn’t care if they were cyanide. If we were infected, I’d prefer to go quickly.

‘They were in the medical kit your parents sent . . .’ He kept talking, explaining what they were and why he’d given some to each of us, but my mind grew fuzzy. My body had
decided to engage auto shut-down. Chaske slipped into bed behind me. As my world faded to black, I was conscious of two things: the warmth of Chaske pressed against my back and distant pounding,
like the rumble of an impending thunderstorm.

From that day forwards, it was as if Marissa had never existed. Chaske divided her stuff among the three of us. Tate used her Cheer Captain shirt as his pillow. Chaske washed
the clothes she had borrowed from me and folded them neatly in my backpack. I forced myself to forget the image of her in my
This Princess Saves Herself
T-shirt. I wanted to miss her, to
feel something. I kept reminding myself: she tried to kill me. She would have killed Chaske. If it had ended any other way, we would be dead. I had to believe that. Every time my thoughts flashed
to Marissa, my mind short-circuited and switched off. And then there was the phantom pounding. In the quiet before I fell asleep, I’d swear I’d hear a dull thudding. The only thing that
helped was to distract myself with song. Tate’s tune was lodged in my brain. I’d sing it, sort of mumble it over and over until I gave in to sleep. ‘“Wha Eva. Wha Eva. The
bad, the good. Wha Eva”.’