Project Pallid (14 page)

“Amen
to that,” Nicole replied, and returned to the untouched dinner that grew cold
before her.

“Agreed,”
my dad chimed and returned to the remaining bites of his own.

“But
I think we can all agree,” Catee continued, “that he’d make one hell of a ball
boy.”

At
this, they all erupted into a laughter that rattled the tableware and shook the
water from our glasses, and I joined in suit, at my own, playful expense.

It
was a defining moment for us and for Catee’s establishment within our family.
In that brief back and forth, she immersed herself as just another member of
the table. Her transition-in was flawlessly smooth, and as good-natured as it
was, it marked the silent start of our tragic dismantling.

And
when the laughter subsided, and after mom had blotted the tears from her eyes,
she turned her attention toward me. With hard fought composure, she managed to
choke out, “Okay, Ball Boy, lead us off!” The table rattled again with laughter
from all sides.

I’m
not really sure what I shared that day—it could have been anything. My
sister’s share was equally irrelevant. As was my mom’s, and my dad’s.
Predictably, the one that hangs heaviest in my memory was Catee’s. Though her
contribution was entirely optional during her first visit to Family Dinner, her
delivery came without interruption and without prompting, and just as soon as
we’d finished with ours.

“So,
Low first?” Catee asked rhetorically, having already seen the procedure unfold,
four times before.

“Always
end positive,” Mom reaffirmed.

“So,
I guess my Low for the day was that I had a fight with my dad before school
this morning.” I wondered if she’d continue and hoped she’d go on. My curiosity
was unrestrained.

“I
told him I was done going to
fractured
family therapy with him. That I
was done playing his games and letting him look like some good dad that he
isn’t. He told me I didn’t have a choice. I told him to go to hell. Then he
slapped me. Hard. Across the face.”

Catee’s
share was supposed to have been a goldmine for me. I’d set myself up to learn
more about her when I invited her over that night. I’d opened my doors, hoping
she’d do the same. But I hadn’t properly planned for what I’d learn once she
did. My fists clenched to tight, white-knuckled balls, and my fingernails dug
into the palms of my hands.

The
air quieted to intermittent chomps.

Intermittent
chomps turned to four, successive, distinctive swallows.

The
final one turned to silence that blanketed the table.

And
then Catee continued.

“And
for my High … well, I guess my High would be coming here to meet all of you
tonight. I’m not trying to sound like a brownnoser or anything like that. It’s
just nice to be around family again. My mom was the only one who was ever
really there for me, and even though it was just her, at least there was that
feeling … you know … of being important. Part of something.” There was a pause
before she continued. “I don’t really feel like that anymore. At least, not
until I met Damian. And now you guys.” It was moving. Even for my dad, who was
first to respond.

“Catee,
the door’s always open for you here. You’re welcome back anytime you like.” It
was one of the most thoughtful and sincere things I ever remember him saying.

“Thank
you, Mr. Lawson.”

“You
can call me Darryl.”

“Okay,
Darryl,” she smiled, then turned to my mom. “And thanks for the delicious meal,
Martha.”

My
mom glowed, thrilled that Catee finally felt comfortable enough to call her by
her first name.

“Anytime,
Catee. It’s been great having you here, and I hope Damian brings you by more
often now.” My mom looked to me, and I knew her suggestion was more than just
wishful words.

“Don’t
worry about it, Mom,” I said, and squeezed Catee’s thigh under the table. “It’s
a promise.”

My
understanding of Catee, of me, and of us, changed that day. In hindsight, I
guess it’d been changing all along. No relationship’s ever entirely stagnant.

That
day brought the realization that as different as we might have seemed, Catee
and I were more alike than anything else.

Loneliness
isn’t measured by the people who surround you, and it can’t easily be solved by
any one variable. Still, we’d somehow managed to defy the odds, and we’d found
our cure in each other.

May 10
^th:
Day 9

It’s
impossible to dismiss the frequency with which they’re returning. What had been
multiple, daily, dwindled to a sporadic one or two every couple of days. But
now, nine days into hiding, they’re on the rebound.

It’s
unexplainable.

And
it makes me question my timeframe and my game plan. If I’m going to die, why
delay the inevitable? If they’re not going to die out, why not go up and face
them head-on? Plus, who’s to say I’m not already infected, too?

I
grab a handful of my hair and give it a pull for good measure. I do something
similar with my fingernail, too, and try to pry one back and peel it off. But
I’m successful in neither endeavor, and I breathe a quiet sigh of relief.

I
had to have been exposed to it. There’s no way I couldn’t have been. Why should
my future be any different than anyone else’s?

The
alert of its airborne status came the same day the policeman was shot in his
house. Madison General, on the other side of town and where Mrs. Arnold was
being held, was first to experience it. It happened on the third and fifth
floors, above and below her room.

Four
other patients, three from above and the fourth from below, each being treated
for their own distinctly manageable conditions, began to show symptoms beyond
explanation of their independent ailments. Doctors noted a paling of all four
patients’ skin, then a whitening of their hair. Then came the bleaching of
tongues and a loss of eye coloration, followed by patchy hair loss. Fingernails
and toenails went chalk-white and peeled away all too easily—killed by
the hosts’ own bodies.

The
remembrance of this lineage stirs me back to my feet. I need to check my
reflection again.

Cautious
footsteps carry me across the floor and back to the sliver of mirror on the
wall. Its dark and I can barely make out my own reflection, moreover my
coloration, or lack thereof.

The
screws that hold it in place are loose from age, and it’s an easy task for me
to pull them out and remove it from the wall. As thin and delicate as it is
jagged, I have to be careful not to break it as I move to where one of the last
rays of sunlight cast through the crack above, down into my tomb.

With
it face-up in my open palms, I look down to my reflection. My skin pulls
forward and sags downward to add undue age and wear onto what was youthfully
unscathed only a week before. My eyes are still blue. My hair is still brown. I
open my mouth and lift my tongue … still pink.

With
the coast clear, I decide against returning the mirror to the wall, and I add
it to the crate by my bed, alongside my pocketknife. In the process, I nick my
finger on one of its raw edges and draw immediate blood that drips from its
tip, and lands in a white puddle below. It spreads outward and fades to pink
before it dissipates entirely, and I suck on what’s left as I return to my cot,
checking and rechecking for the slow surfacing of red to subside.

According
to the doctors, whitening of the body is stage one. It’s the first sign in
knowing you’re infected; it was the first thing they noticed about all the
other cases. Mrs. Arnold was only there two days when doctors noticed it in the
patients on adjoining floors. But they didn’t put the puzzle together fast
enough. They’d already quarantined the entire wing of the hospital by the time
they attributed its spread to the ventilation systems. The rooms above and
below hers were only the first to be impacted; many others would follow.

And
two days after noting the degenerative pallor of the hospital patients, and on
the same day that Officer Stallon was taken down across town, stage two set in
for the infected—something doctors described then as delirium.

The
infected, almost in synch with each other, became totally consumed by whatever
it was. Weakened by unrelated illnesses, each turned instantly animated.

But
they became something else.

Something
different.

Witnesses
said it sounded like a pack of robotic wolves had been let loose in the
hospital. The metallic screeching began on the fifth floor: first one voice,
then another, and another, and then a piercing fourth. Then a fifth voice rose
up to shrilly join from the third floor.

And
Mrs. Arnold, who’d given up snapping and fighting her restraints two days
before, and who’d been entirely unresponsive to everyone, suddenly jerked back
to life. Head thrown back, her cry made six.

A
horrifying harmony of sheet metal music sounded from the East Wing before her
head kicked back on the pillow and what little remained of her pale body turned
lifeless.

Her
bank mauling was only four days before.

When
I pull my finger from my mouth, it’s still bleeding. Another droplet escapes,
drops to my sheet, and stains it with a small, crimson circle.

The
door to my house hasn’t been closed in days—I’ve heard it banging since
the first group came hunting for me—and the sudden scramble of hands and
feet above is in tandem with the droplet that strikes my cot.

It
stops directly over me.

I
can hear it there, but can see nothing in the darkness of twilight. My hair
nearly lifts off my scalp with the intensity of its inhale. The hair on my arms
rises with the howling screech that follows. And then, for the first time in
over a week, I hear a voice. One that used to sound human, but like its words
are being forced through a throat of scrap metal now.

“DAMIAN!”
My name hisses through the darkness and threads of glistening, white saliva
trail through the crack. They barely miss my face and land on the sheet beside
me. “DOOR!!” The voice is broken and scratchy. Pitchy and grinding. They’re
more like sounds than they are like words. But they’re there. And he’s here.

My
dad finally made it home.

February
9
^th:

Catee
kept true to her word. She didn’t return to therapy after dinner at our place,
and it became a huge ordeal. She fought with her dad about it the next week,
too, then again, the week after that, until finally, Mr. Laverdier admitted
defeat and let her have her way.

It
didn’t seem like he minded all that much, though. As much time as he’d spent at
work before, he’d somehow extended to even longer days, plus sporadic weekends,
in the weeks until then—no one knew on what, and no one offered up any
suspicions until Catee and I tipped them off.

For
the two of us, Mr. Laverdier’s commitment to his job, as ungodly as it was, was
a godsend at the time. It gave us extra time together.
 
And by early February, we’d moved to a
five-day a week schedule instead of four: mostly staying after school in
Madison, except for once or twice a week, when we took the bus to my place for
family dinner.

I
found the courage to go back to her place that month. Sufficient time had
passed that I thought the smoke had finally cleared from my run-in with her
dad. By then, Mr. Laverdier had become so preoccupied with work that even Catee
only saw fleeting moments of him in a week.

Just
to be safe though, we worked out a better cover for ourselves by pulling the
curtains shut and closing and locking whatever doors we could so we’d be more
likely to hear if he came home unexpectedly. And if he did, we’d use one of the
escape routes we’d planned to get me out of her place—even if that meant
the less than desirable, shove-Damian-out-a-window option.

The
only door we didn’t lock that afternoon was the one to his office. It’d been
locked already: once by the knob, and twice by the latch and padlock he’d
installed on its top.

“What’s
that all about?” I asked with a point, as we shot by to pull the blinds of her
house’s street-facing eyes.

“He
added that after he caught me in there last month,” she answered.

“Why?”

“I
was looking for a paperclip, that’s all,” she admitted.

“No,
dough-head,” I played. “Why’d he add a lock at all? What’s he got to hide?”

“I
don’t know. You know him: all secretive and stuff. Probably keeps his porn in
there or something.”

Her
laughter cut short as we pulled the final curtain shut. We stood alone in the
darkened living room and in a second of silence before I spoke again.

“Well,
I want to see inside. Get the key.”

“The
key?”

“Yeah,
get the key and let’s see what’s inside!”

“Damian,
do you honestly think I know where the key is? Do you
really
think he’d
go through all that,” she said, with a motion back to the lock, “just to leave
it laying around for me?”