The In-Betweener (Between Life and Death) (S) (7 page)

Yet, somehow, despite all of that, he is still trying to protect some children who aren’t even his. Out of all the things he might remember, that is what he’s holding onto. I figured that some memories might remain, but still, this is heartbreaking. They must have known I was here all this time and simply left me alone because, well, because people are dangerous.

More than likely, they—or he—didn’t want to risk contact with an armed girl who spends her days cutting up deaders so they can’t get up again. I can’t imagine what it must have looked like to a stranger to see me carefully severing the spines of deaders and then smashing their heads over and over before dragging them off to be pecked over by birds.

I shake my head and get back to the problem at hand. Namely, that I don’t know where this address is and this is a big town. It isn’t New York, but it isn’t a little village either. Second, I have very little confidence in my driving ability, particularly through debris-strewn streets. I was learning to drive when all this happened, but I didn’t even have my permit yet. Then again, my mom made sure there were arrangements for that contingency and I’ve continued according to her instructions. I just haven’t actually practiced much open-road driving.

And as if I needed to add more to the pile, I have no idea how I’ll corral five kids and then take care of them. And I don’t know what to do about this Sam fellow, either. Those kids might think he’s safe, but I don’t have any past with him. There’s no history of kindness and companionship between us to blind me to the menacing creature with snapping jaws he devolves into at the least little thing.

No, Sam is not safe to be around. I wish with all my might that I didn’t know his name.

Trying to keep as low as I can in the grass, I make my way back to the sign. I can hide behind it and say what needs saying, do what needs doing if it comes down to that.

Sam has gone still again, looking at the deaders with a blank look on his face and his hands slack at his sides. In-betweeners are rarely still, so even this is odd and outside the expected norms, if that’s even the right word to use.

Once I’m behind the big sign and peering through the narrow gap between its frame and brick base, I call out, “Sam.”

He jerks like I’ve poked him with a stick and swings back toward the fence, his attention on the truck I was behind before. He’s got enough memory-making capability inside him to remember that, so he must have been strong when he died, very healthy. It’s a shame. It feels creepy to think it, but even like he is now, he’s sort of cute.

Of course, that might be just the untrustworthy opinion of a teenaged girl who’s been alone for a year and enjoyed a grand total of one date before the world went to crap. But, yeah, creepy thoughts.

It takes him a moment, but he seems to have regained his focus. No gnashing teeth or hungry eyes. He grips the rails again as if fortifying himself, and says, “Zam. Ya.”

“Do you remember where the children are? Where Veronica is?”

He jerks at that name, his face twisting into something like pain. Then he bounces on his knees again. I’m growing more certain that’s his way of nodding yes.

“Is it far?” I ask, and then realize how difficult it will be for him to answer that question. I amend it, asking, “Did you walk from there today?”

He bounces again, but I can clearly see the confusion on his face. I don’t think he really understands the question. Time and distance are fairly advanced concepts.

“Which way to Veronica, Sam?”

One fist leaves the fence and, with great effort, he extends his fingers and moves his arm until the direction is as he wants it before grunting, “Da.”

It’s no more than I expected really and not nearly enough. I was sort of hoping—okay, really hoping—that he would point the other direction. Back that way lies the rest of the industrial park and some businesses. I’ve traveled that direction and there are no houses, hotels, or anywhere else where people might congregate after the end of the world. There’s a big animal hospital down there, the one I went to in search of medicine for my mom, but that’s about it for interesting destinations.

The direction he indicated leads into the city and the suburbs beyond. Basically,
everything
lies in that direction. Which doesn’t narrow things down for me much. But, if I really think about it, he knew I was here, which means wherever he's from—wherever those kids still are—probably isn't too far away. I guess it's possible he came here because he was aware of the trucking hub and food distribution warehouse, and so has traveled some great distance, but I can’t imagine many people knowing about this place. If that were the case, I would have been overrun at some point, and I haven’t.

“Could we get back there today?” I ask him, not hoping for much because, you know, time is hard.

Sam shakes his legs in a sort of half-bounce, half-shuffle that is neither a yes or a no but says, “Ya. Kahm.”

I may be a little too eager for company, but I’ve not lost all my senses. I can’t just run off and follow an in-betweener who could turn on me at any time. He has bloodstains on him and those aren’t from his wound. That means he’s been eating. Maybe those kids are feeding him birds or something, but I don’t know that and I doubt he’ll be able to communicate that in a way I’d believe anyway. So, no, that’s not going to happen right now.

“Are they safe? In a building? With food and water?”

“Ya,” he answers. “Pardnad.” Then his face twists again and I can see an agony of some deep sort in that twisted expression.

What a
pardnad
is I have no idea, so I think about his other words, the way he puts them together. Clearly, he meant that word to describe the situation the kids are in or the place they’re at. That narrows it down some, but not enough.

“Is that where they are? Pardnad?” I ask.

He bangs his head against the rails of the fence again. The movement is so sudden and sharp that I almost stand, which would be a mistake. He grips the fence hard, his bloody and dirt-encrusted fingers paling with the force of it, and says, “Ah-pard-nad.” He draws the word out, clearly trying to make it as intelligible as possible. It’s amazing to me that a three-minutes-dead person can get out that much. But it works, because I understand him.

“They’re in an apartment!” I call out.

He bounces, seeming to want me to go on. And I do want more information. An apartment rules out most of the suburbs, except perhaps at their edges. Downtown and the older parts of town are covered with them. And, of course, near the university there are endless blocks of them.

“Apartment complex or just a building?” I’m not sure he’ll be able to get that one, so I try something different and say, “Wait. I’m going to say some things. You let me know when I’m right. Okay?”

He bobs and says, “Ya.”

For a second, just before his face moves back into that strange expression that flits between fear, hunger, anger, and combinations of those too complex to really understand, I think I see him smile. It’s weird and crooked, but I think that’s what it was and for some reason, it makes me feel good. Humans were simply meant to be smiled at, I think. Without the smiles of others, we lose our idea of what happiness looks like.

“Apartment complex. Lots of buildings,” I offer. He stands still, or rather, as still as he can.

“One building.”

At that, he bobs his knees and says, “Ya!”

That’s actually not good. That means it isn’t in some out-of-the-way place where there are few roads in or out. It might mean downtown.

“Downtown,” I say, almost crossing my fingers in hope that he stands still. He does, but he’s twitchier, like that was too vague or not quite right, but close. There’s another possibility.

“College area?”

He bobs again and almost screeches, “Ya!”

“Are there other people around there?”

That question seems to bother him for some reason and he hangs his head, his fists working around the rails. But he doesn’t bounce.

“No more people are there. Only people like you?” I ask. It’s unlikely he calls in-betweeners by the same name that I do. It wasn’t like I had anyone aside from my mother to share terminology with.

He bobs at that one, but more slowly, his head still hanging.

“And more like the ones at the gate?”

His bobbing continues, but he looks up and I see no smiles now, only anger and sadness. Overwhelming sadness.

That’s another thing about in-betweeners. I’ve not had the chance to see many expressions on their faces other than needy hunger or blind rage, but their expressions are somehow more raw, unfiltered by social contract or fear of embarrassment. This must have been what humans were like long before we developed civilization.

Now, seeing all these emotions cross Sam’s face with such absolute purity makes me understand how it was that humans first came together. If this is how we were with each other, then hiding our feelings and intentions would have been impossible. Honesty would have been the default mode for human interactions.

I’ve been alone too long and these mental tangents are not productive. My mind is turning a million miles a second, so fast it’s almost nauseating. Just thinking about any one of the several options I’m considering is enough to make me want to hurl. Put all of it together, with no long-considered plan and no one to watch my back except an in-betweener who is really my biggest threat, and it’s too much for my system.

I’m a person of careful habits and that is why I’m still breathing and thinking instead of like Sam. I’m about to toss that entire box of habits aside with both hands.

Before I can think too much more about it and regain my senses, I call out, “I can go tomorrow. I have to find a map, arrange transportation. I’m not just going to walk out there with you.”

At the sound of my voice, I’m pretty sure he’s going to go all in-betweener on me, but he doesn’t. Instead, he jams his hands through the rails of the fence and puts his wrists together in the unmistakable sign for being handcuffed or tied. Then he presses his face to the bars, reminding me of a horror movie I once saw, and says, “Mehg sday.”

I know what that means without asking. He knows he can’t be trusted not to wander. He wants me to tie him to the rails of the fence and make him stay. His face makes me want to cry.

Three Years Ago - Mix and Match

My mother is worried. She won’t tell me that, but I know she is. The way she tugs at her lips with her teeth and looks at me with those greedy, never-leave-me eyes, tells me she’s girding herself for another frightening fight for my life.

I’ve been getting headaches again and, even though it should be a simple matter of getting another scan and verifying that it’s just a headache and not my cancer returning, there are steps that must be followed.

Nanite treatment is no guarantee against a cancer coming back, at least not in my case. Newer nanites for first aid, infection reduction, or even plaque control continue working, replacing themselves and maintaining a healthy population number inside their host. These new ones are replicated within the host by specialized factory nanites.

Mine were the first of their kind, really, and it makes no sense to keep a bunch of machines in your head after the cancer is gone. So all of these new and more complicated nanites didn’t exist during my treatment and that left my body to its own devices once my cancer was cured. But, like the doctor said, even one cancer cell left in my head has the chance to start the whole process over again. Probably not, but it
is
possible.

Yet, the headaches. My doctor has scheduled the scan but he’s told us that the more likely explanation is the growth of my skull around the scarred parts and my brain filling the space once taken up by cancer as I grow. That makes sense to me because I’m in a growth spurt the likes of which I never expected. The doctor says that’s just because my body had a few years of falling behind, with messed-up hormones and all of that. I’m getting tall. I like tall.

I could also be in denial. It’s an option.

Besides, I hate to say it, but if it is my cancer again, it’s not like they don’t know how to treat it. And they can do it better and with less pain than when I had it done the first time. They don’t even drill into a patient’s head anymore. For my second treatment, the nanites were simply shot into my spinal fluid and they did their thing. It’s almost an out-patient procedure nowadays. Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but not a huge exaggeration.

“What’s going on?” I ask, as our car nears the military hospital. The access road ahead is blocked and police vehicles crowd the intersection that leads off to the military shopping complex and gas station. Beyond a row of blockades, a crowd fills the road for as far as I can see.

My mother sits up higher in the seat, as if that added inch of height will somehow let her understand what’s going on. “I don’t know. I mean, I knew there were some demonstrations planned, but I didn’t realize it was going to be here. Or like this!”

I check the clock on the car’s dash and say, “I’ve only got an hour before my scan, Mom.”

This is important information. These machines are in high demand, now more than ever, and I don’t want to wait another week or two for another slot. I don’t want my mom to have to wait another week or two.

A cop at the roadblock gestures with a bored wave of his hand for my mom to turn right, but she stops and lowers the window instead. The cop almost rolls his eyes as he takes a couple of steps forward at my mom’s polite, “Excuse me, officer.”

“Ma’am, you need to turn right. No, I won’t let you go past. The road is blocked.”

“Of course, officer,” my mother says, the level of politeness undiminished as if she didn’t hear the rudeness in his words. “I only want to ask where patients at the hospital are supposed to go. My daughter is a patient.”

He leans down, eyes me, and asks, “Can she walk?”

I nod and say, “Sure.”

“Then the officer at the end of the block will let you into the parking lot. If she can’t walk that far, ask him for a chair and an attendant will come get her.” He seems to realize then that we aren’t the people turning his day into a pain in the butt, so he adds, “Sorry about this, ma’am.”