The In-Betweener (Between Life and Death) (S) (9 page)

As I pack, I remove the block and see for the first time what’s been brewing in the world outside. It’s summer, so I haven’t gone beyond the little pool in our backyard in at least a week. I’m enjoying the break from school and having zero obligations, so I’ve missed all of it while I wallow in my haze of chlorinated water, sunshine, and potato chips. What I see makes me stop in my tracks, my camping pack hanging empty in my hands.

It looks like people are having a riot, only one in which biting is the preferred method of attack. And many of them appear to be wearing hospital gowns, their butts in plain view, a situation they don’t seem to mind at all. Some are even naked. But not all of them. It’s hard to tell who is rioting and who is running from the riots. Even some of the cops seem to be getting in on the fighting on the wrong side. And everywhere I look on the screen there are splashes of red. On the people, on the pavement, on the cars, everywhere there is the gleaming red of spilled blood.

“Emily! Pack!” my mother yells from her room. I hear the sounds of drawers slamming and a closet door banging as it reaches the limits of its sliding rails.

I shake out of my TV trance, open my backpack, and do as my mother said. By the time I have my pack put together, I realize how light it is, how light it will be compared to hers. That’s how we’ve had to be before, but since my second round of nanites, I’m clear of cancer once again. And I’m stronger than ever before.

I take my pack, with its loads of extra space and light contents, to my mother’s room. It looks like she’s tossed the room, like she’s burgling our home.

“Mom, I can take more than this,” I say, holding out the big framed pack.

She bites at her lip, eyes the pack and then me. She says, “Honey, I don’t want you doing more than you can.” Then she shakes her head and corrects herself. “No, forget that. I don’t want you loaded down with more than you can carry and still run. Go get all the freeze-dried meals and pack those. Get some water bottles—not too many—and pack those. That’s enough.”

I turn to leave, then stop and say, “Mom, I’m scared. Please just tell me what’s going on. I’ll do what you say, but please.”

My voice sounds shivery, like I’m suddenly a scared nine-year-old again, and I hate it. I’ve been scared a lot in my life, so I thought I’d become a braver person than this. But my mom is not the kind of person who acts like she has been for the past twenty minutes, and that is shaking the foundation I’ve built my world upon. Her strength is mine and this woman with her jerky movements and wide, nervous eyes is messing with my ability to deal with it.

She sighs and, for a moment, lowers her head over the pack that she’s been stuffing full. Then she takes in a deep breath and walks over to me. I can tell she’s trying to slow down, to pretend that she’s not in a frantic rush, but her too-hard steps and strained face give her away. She strokes my head, pushing my hair back and away from my face, and gives me a shaky smile.

“Sweetie, I don’t have time to explain everything, but something has gone wrong with the broadcast.”

I have no idea what she’s talking about, and she sees it in my face, because she cups her hand around the side of my head and says, “The nanite update broadcast.”

“So,” I say, still not understanding.

“I heard your TV on. You saw?” she asks.

I nod, thinking of the hospital-gowned people. “It’s making people riot? Protesters?”

“Emily, they aren’t rioting and those aren’t protesters. Those are patients and they’ve been updated. Or, at least some of them are patients. It’s gone beyond them already. It didn’t work.” Her hand drops from my head and she lets out a sudden laugh, but not one of humor. “That’s an understatement.”

I shake my head, not at all clear on what she’s saying. She’s been excited for a few weeks about a new project at work, but she’s almost always excited so I haven’t paid much attention.

“We don’t have a lot of time here, Emily. The short version is that this update was supposed to help those who were infused with First Responders after too long without oxygen to the brain. That’s why they are like they are—brain-damage. This was supposed to help that by updating the internal nanite factories to shift production to a form of neural-correction nanite. And allow the First Responders to maintain oxygen levels for longer by stimulating circulation.”

“I saw…I saw them biting, I think,” I offer, hoping for something more complete in terms of explanation.

My mom grimaces and returns her attention to the backpack, at least superficially. Her jaw clenches and she stuffs two boxes of ammunition into the side pockets of her pack. The gun case is sitting on the bed, the black plastic looking ominous atop the bright floral pattern of her comforter. Her military boots are on the bed, a revival of her recent past.

She zips the pocket closed with a hard motion. I see her fix her gaze on the gun case. She doesn’t look up at me when she says, “Just be glad your nanites are gone.”

Her voice is so dead flat when she says it that I shiver. After that, I hurry.

Today - Blue Slushies

Usually, I try not to look at the car more than I have to. When I come to do maintenance on it, I sort of let my eyes slide over the things that made it ours. The little dent where I hit it with my bike, the stain on the driver’s seat where my mom dropped an entire blue slushie into her lap, the stickers on the back of her and me in cartoonishly simple outlines.

No, I don’t like to look at those things anymore. They bring memories. The way she squealed when the icy mass hit her lap and how she bounced around until we pulled over. The way we laughed when she got out, shedding chunks of blue ice into the gutter as she danced around.

I’m surprised to find that I’m smiling. That’s a first. I can’t remember a single time in the past year when I’ve thought of something like that from a more normal time and not cried. I like this new feeling. It’s not happy so much as not completely sad. It’s a mixture of missing her, loving her, being sad that she’s gone, and being grateful for that day. It’s good. I think that’s how it’s supposed to be.

I really, really hope I get more chances to feel that way.

With that sobering thought, I’m suddenly cognizant of everything I still need to do. I’m burning daylight and will need to be on the road as soon as first light. And I’d sure like to get some sleep so I can be at my most aware when I do leave.

Since I don’t have to worry about gassing anyone to death with the fumes, I set up the little emergency generator in the office furniture warehouse where I keep the car. It’s not a regular generator, but one meant just for our car. It even has a matching paint job, the same silvery-blue as the car. Except the car’s paint is pretty faded now. My mom liked to be prepared for anything and given her love of camping, this thing was a must. It was sort of a big joke between us that we had to pack a gas can when camping just for our electric car.

I’ve been driving the car around the complex just enough to keep the tires supple and the batteries in good working order. I use it to listen for radio transmissions, but there are never any to hear, just endless dead air. I pipe my music-player songs through it very quietly once in a while, but I can usually only handle a song or two before it gets depressing. I can’t help but wonder if whoever sang each song is dead or staggering around gnawing on metal. That train of thought generally makes it a lot harder to enjoy the music.

The car doesn’t let me down. The charge is still good, holding fine and only in need of a top-off. I leave the generator to do its job and go get the next thing on my list.

One of the cars in the lot where employees parked has one of those dog fences installed between the front and back seats. I’d made a note of it before, but since I didn’t need it at the time, I’d left it in place. The doors are locked and that means busting out a window. I prefer not to do things like that unless and until I really need to. And now I do. It’s not the same kind of car as ours, but I’m pretty sure the fence adjusts to different kinds of cars.

It turns out there’s a great deal of swearing involved in installing one of those fences. Without instructions, that is especially true. But in the end, I feel it’s in there so tight that one more turn on the bolts would make them poke right through the floorboard of the car.

I’m less comfortable with the gap around the center where a hump should be. And the proximity of those little open squares of space framed by the thick wires is just plain disturbing. When I poke my fingers through the holes and push as hard as I can, all I do is make my hand hurt, so I think it’s secure.

Sam has shown himself to be cut from slightly different cloth than the other in-betweeners though, so I make sure there’s nothing at all in the back that he could use to poke at me through the holes. I even check down in the gaps between seats when I fold them down to make a bigger holding area for him. There are no tools, but I do find a wild assortment of ancient candy wrappers and french fries. I don’t know what else I might expect from him, so I’m treating this entire situation as if he’s got all the marbles of a regular human.

By the time I’m satisfied with my preparations, I’m starving
and
a bundle of nerves, which makes it hard to actually get down to the process of eating. Instead, I push around the rice in my bowl and stare at it. I stupidly covered the bland rice with some canned tomatoes. The gloopy red color reminds me too much of blood and what might happen tomorrow. Eventually, I close my eyes and just shovel it in, fighting nausea and swallowing each bite only through force of will.

Once it gets full dark, which is surprisingly late in the summer—something I hadn’t much noticed in my previous, artificially lighted existence—I spare the crankable lanterns and nestle down into my bed. I’ve made a bedroom out of one of the smaller offices up on the observation platform. The metal stairs will give me fair warning of approach and the room is small enough that it never gets ridiculously cold in the winter. Body heat is surprisingly effective when you have a good sleeping bag, an air mattress, and a small space.

This particular office doesn’t have a window to the outside, so it’s the only place I feel comfortable keeping lit after dark, but tonight, I just want to try to sleep and not think about the in-betweener outside. I’ve been keeping half an ear open for noises, but if he’s making any, it’s been quiet enough that it doesn’t travel far on the still night air. If I could have done so, I would have gagged him, but there’s no way I could risk getting that close to his mouth.

Sleep doesn’t come easily, but it finally does. And with it, dreams of blue slushies and my mother, laughing.

Fifteen Months Ago – Programming Futility

We’ve found a warehouse complex that seems like it has barely been looted at all. It’s amazing. After living off whatever food we can scavenge from vending machines and desk drawers, along with the back-of-the-cabinet food we find in the occasional apartment, I feel like we’ve hit the lottery.

Having a full belly is an unbelievable luxury. It’s hard to imagine how I took it so for granted before. But, I did. We all did. I used to say I didn’t like beans of any sort, and lima beans were like poison. If you gave me a pristine can of limas today, I’d do the happy dance and be grateful for the gift.

“Mom, I’m going to do rounds, maybe practice my bow for a while. That okay?” I ask.

She taps a few more times on her tablet, frowns at what she sees there, then looks up at me blankly.

“Rounds. Bow practice. Okay?” I repeat.

She nods, going back to her tablet, then looks back up at me and says, “Stay within the drop-off zone, okay? Don’t get within view of the street or the field. Got it?”

“Sure, no problem,” I assure her, zipping up my coat and tugging on some gloves.

She means the big circle of asphalt in the center of this group of warehouses where trucks were loaded and unloaded. There’s employee parking adjoining it and that’s where I’ve got the targets for my bow practice set up. It’s a good space. Only between the buildings are we visible from beyond the fence. Even then, because of the way the complex is landscaped, there are trees and bushes that provide decent cover between buildings. Best of all, the fence is as far from the drop-off zone as any place in the entire compound, which means anyone passing on the street—dead or alive—can’t see anyone out there.

My mom is still looking at me with her brow furrowed. The lines between her eyebrows are so deep they look black from where I stand. I know she has something to say.

“What?” I ask.

Her mouth opens, then closes again. The lines smooth a little and she puts on a smile so fake it would be funny in a different situation. Finally, she simply says, “I love you, honey.”

“I love you, too,” I say.

She looks small sitting on the concrete floor near the open warehouse door, strangely diminished from the woman who once strode around like she owned the world. And I don’t mean shrunken from the weight loss or the rapid aging brought about by too many sleepless nights and endless days filled with fear. It’s more like she’s shrinking under the weight of all that’s happened.

Especially since she holds at least some responsibility for it happening in the first place.

On impulse, I walk over and bend to kiss her cheek. It’s cool and her skin feels papery thin against my lips. She smiles up at me and this time it’s a real one, though wan and tired. I slide down the wall to sit next to her and rest my head on her shoulder. It’s not like I have a schedule to keep or anything. I’m in no hurry. We did our daily rounds this morning as we always do, so I have no real reason to do them again. Mostly, I just want to go look at the food again and loose a few arrows at the target.

“How’s that going?” I ask, nodding toward the tablet propped up on her legs.

She sighs and I can tell her mind is shifting back to work again. It’s selfish of me, but I’m actually glad of that. When she’s absorbed in this project of hers, no matter how futile I may think it is, I can get a little peace. When she’s not working on that, she’s worrying about me or doing more work than any one person can reasonably be expected to do. She does it because she doesn’t want me exposed to what’s going on outside. It’s only been since we came here and developed a routine that she’s really allowed me to participate in the activities that keep us safe. She even lets me go with her on rounds.