Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Dani

Heat pours over my face,and I tip my head up toward the bright sun. Abel’s laughter mingles with my sister’s, as they play together somewhere, but doesn’t carry over the melodic sound of my mother’s singing. I’m lying in a bed of orange desert poppies, with the scent of a passing rain shower on the air. I smile, concentrating on the warmth that blankets my skin, and I could stay in this place forever.

A man’s voice filters in, and I focus on it. Dad?

It’s deeper. Foreign.

My siblings’ laughter turns to screams. My mother’s singing becomes a high-pitched wail.

I snap my eyes open.

The bright lamp above me casts a blinding light that begs me to shield my face, but mentally willing my arm to do so leaves me panicked when I can’t move. I can’t raise my head. Or fully open my eyes.

The light dulls at the same time that a silhouette moves into my periphery, and I stare up at the dark-haired man, who stands over me with a mask across his face. Not one of the scary masks the soldiers wore. A white mask, like a doctor’s.

“You won’t be able to move for a bit.” He tugs the mask away from his mouth and removes the rubber gloves from his hands.

Sickness twists inside my stomach, spreading across my belly, and I heave. My head is turned just enough to vomit all over the crinkly white paper below me. Clear fluids expel on a cough, and a plastic cup is set beneath my cheek, collecting the next round that hurls past my lips.

The acids burn my throat, and when my head is set forward again, the phantom strings of slime cling to my cheek.

Mask back in place, dark-hair twists a cap onto the plastic cup and sets it off to the side, outside of my view.

“You’re very clever.” He rounds the bed, and stands at a counter. A sound reaches my ear, like a steady stream of water.

It’s then I notice how parched my mouth is, and I swallow a harsh gulp, clearing the sticky saliva at the back of my throat, but cough.

A tube-like object is set to my lips that I recognize as a straw.

“Drink,” he says.

The cool fluids are heaven against the scratchy burn, and I don’t stop sipping, until the fluids arrive too fast to swallow, and I sputter a fountain of water on another cough. Alarms beat inside my head when I can’t take a breath. Again my head is slung to the side, while I hack up the small bit of liquid locking up my lungs. I’ve never had so much water without having to share with my siblings.

It’s while staring at dark hair’s chest that I see the badge, with his picture and name printed in big black lettering. Josef Falkenrath.

“Where am I?” Weakness claims my voice with the woozy sensation that has the room tracking after my eyeballs.

“My laboratory. Tell me, what is your name?” Josef sets the glass of water off to the side.

“Daniel,” I rasp, noticing my throat still carries a scratch.

“Daniel, huh? Odd name for a girl.”

Panic blossoms in my chest, clenching my ribs, and I choke back the urge to throw up again. They only take boys. It’s then I notice the cool cotton sheet that dances over my thighs and breasts.

He’s unclothed me.

“Where are my clothes?”

“When the drug wears off, you will be issued a uniform.” His eyebrow wings up, as he crosses his arms, leaning back into the chair. “There’s never been a girl at this facility in all the time I’ve been here.”

“Please. My mother. She wanted me to look after my brother. To keep him safe.”

“And you’ve already failed her in that.”

His face widens and stretches behind my tears, and a tickle hits my temple as the moisture finally leaks from my eye, sharpening my view again. A childish urge tugs my chest, and I gulp down the sob cocked at the back of my throat. “I want to go home.”

“You no longer have a home.” The cold tone of his words as he lifts my arm, while staring down at my skin, bites at my ability to keep it together. “Everyone you knew from your hive is either assigned in a cell block, or gone. There is no other option. And you will find the line between those two thins quickly here.”

“My brother?”

“Your brother is in another cell block. He will be observed. For a time.”

“What is this place?”

“A research facility.” He releases my arm, allowing it to hit the cold metal beneath me with a thunk. “A bit more time, and you should regain muscle control.”

“Are you a doctor?”

“I’m a scientist.” He seems to move about at my side, but holds up a needle, that has me feeling queasy.

A faint sting on my forearm leaves me squinting. I hate needles. Once, I was really sick, and my mother took me to a woman who pushed a needle into my arm. It was attached to a bag that my mother said would make sure I had enough fluids, and they had to strap me down to keep me from pulling it out.

“Are you going to send me back because I’m not a boy?”

“Sending you back would mean certain death for you.” He holds up a tube filled with what must be my blood, twisting it in front of his eyes, before setting it down somewhere beside him. “No. You read, and you write. You’re useful. You will assist me by taking notes and labeling samples, as you saw me do with the cup.”

Anger gets the best of me as I remember that this is the man who denied my brother. The man who allowed the creepy blond to drag him from me like an infected coyote.

They’re all wolves. Predators. And hell, if I’ll do anything to assist these sadists.

“No. I’m not some slave secretary to a bunch of murderers. Go to hell!” I’d spit in his face, but my mouth is bone dry, even after the water.

His jaw shifts, and I catch the twitch of his eye. With a glance to his side, he lifts a photograph, holding it to my eyes. In it, a teenage boy, maybe sixteen, is stretched out on a table, naked. I’m taken aback by the explicit view of his penis and all four limbs tied at each corner of the bed. His body is marred by cuts and bruises, and scars of all shapes and sizes. Four men in white lab coats stand close to his head, evil smiles on their faces. “Provocation test. It is believed that this boy harbors the second generation Dredge disease. He tested positive for the prion antibody. My colleague, Doctor Ericsson, believes that this disease remains latent in the body. He believes that, through painful stimuli, it can be activated. Would you like to be transferred to his lab?”

The horror of his words settles over me, as I stare at the boy. Every humane bone in my body tells me that I should rebel against these monsters, for the sake of victims like this poor soul. The blond who took my brother is one of the four in the photograph, and the choke at the back of my throat stifles the sob waiting to break free.

“My brother. Will he … will they do these to him?”

His expression is unreadable, as if he’s untouched by the emotion brimming in my tears. “The younger boys are merely studied for aggression. Blood samples, bone structure. Observation. Should he demonstrate the traits of a carrier, he’ll be kept for these sorts of studies, yes.”

His blunt honesty sits heavy in my gut.

“And … if he doesn’t?”

“Then, the study is over for him, and he’s set free.”

Free? A part of me doesn’t trust the word here, but for now, it’s all I have. Just like the old man in the truck told me—you have to believe in something.

“And me?”

“When we no longer need you, you’ll be set free, as well. In the meantime, you are alive because you are of use. Remain that way, and you will survive.”

“The others … will they kill me, if they find out I’m a girl?”

“Yes. They most certainly will. Therefore, you will sleep and bathe here, in the research complex. There is a room where I sometimes sleep, when I’m here late.”

“My brother … I have to sing him to sleep, sometimes. He gets scared—”

“Your brother is no longer your concern. Had your mother known what fate she’d sent you to, I very much doubt she’d have placed the burden of a child on your shoulders. Your only concern, from this day forward, is your own survival. Do as I say, and you can prolong that here.” He stands up from the chair, staring down at me.

I’m ashamed to say there’s some relief in that, but also sadness and anger. So much anger, he must see it on my face.

“What you did earlier was cause for death. Know that no one will save you in this place. I’m not your ally. I’m not your friend. And I will not step in on your behalf again. Should you disrespect an officer of The Legion, you’ll be left to face the consequences. Is that clear?”

I muster a somber nod in what little neck movement has begun to return. “Why did they kill my mother and sister?”

He lifts his chin, staring down his nose at me, and his eye twitches. “Simply because they had no use for them. You’re only alive because you possess a skill that most do not. Remember that.”

* * *

It takesan hour for whatever had left me paralyzed to work its way out of my system. In that time, I’ve thrown up and urinated on more occasions than I care to remember, grateful for the facilities that I’m not accustomed to. In the hive, we defecated in buckets that were used to fertilize the gardens. Once a week, I had the nasty chore of emptying them into what we called the ‘hot pile’, for compost. Doctor Falkenrath, as he’s asked me to call him, calls these toilets, and unlike our buckets, these have a suction system that does it itself. He says they’re only found in the doctor’s quarters. The other boys defecate in buckets that are collected in bags and burned.

Once I’m finished, I kneel down to the clean, white floor and spin what he referred to as the agitator, which works to compost the waste. When I open the lid, the fluids have disappeared.

Tenderness lures my fingers to my shaved head, and I probe the source of a raw burn there. It feels like the time I was scratched by a cat while climbing the ruins—itchy and fiery. A scant amount of blood returns on my fingers, and I push to my feet, staring at my reflection in the mirror.

A blackish marking, framed by an angry red swell, peeks out from my nape, and I can just make out the number eight. Tattooed in my skin. Forever. In an awkward twist of my torso, I manage to make out a five tattooed beside it. I probe the wound, to find the tenderness extends across the base of my skull.

I’m guessing it was put there while I was out cold, though I don’t recall even a fleeting moment of it.

A sound reaches my ears through the barrier of the skinny door, and I spin toward it, listening. Screams. Horrific, pain-filled screams that have my heart pattering in my chest.

The screams draw me out of the small toilet closet, and I enter the bright white room where I woke up an hour ago. Across the small space is a window, nearly taking up the width of the wall, with a heavy door beside it and a small white box, on which a tiny light glows green. The room on the other side of the window is much larger, with lights at the end of long, bendy arms that remind me of an insect’s legs, hanging from the ceiling.

Lying on a bed is a grown man, though it’s hard to tell his age from my angle. I can only see the sunspots dotting the top of his bald head. Thick straps hold his body to the bed, upon which he writhes as if in the excruciating kind of pain. Blossoms of blood dot the white sheet covering him, and his wails of agony implore me to open the door for a closer look.

As I take a step inside the room, though, a much louder shout skates down my spine. Freezing in place, I glance over to a figure, who stands at a sink, sliding gloves over his bare hands. I can’t identify him, with his head, body and feet completely covered, and the tube sticking out from his mask looks similar to the one the soldiers wear. With a gloved hand, he points to the door behind me.

“Gloves.” Doctor Falkenrath’s voice is muffled behind the mask, and I breathe a sigh of relief at the recognition. “You never touch anything in here without gloves. Is that clear?”

With a nod, I back myself into the room I stood in moments before. Immediately to the left of me is a shelf carrying stacks of folded suits, about a dozen side-by-side, and below them, two sets of masks with the tubes. Beside those are boxes of gloves, small, medium and large—I opt for the small.

I glance up to the box beside the door that I noticed earlier. A tiny green light still blinks, and when I open the door, it goes solid red.

I quickly slip inside the other room with Doctor Falkenrath, closing the door behind me.

Doctor Falkenrath approaches, and on instinct, I cower, waiting to be struck by him. I’m not even sure why.

“This is a negative pressure room, but you must always consider it contaminated. Never remove objects from this room. All pens, notebooks, everything stays unless I tell you to remove it. You’ll wash your hands whenever you leave, and discard any gloves or gowns inside the room.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It’s going to be a long afternoon. Let’s get started.” He shuffles back toward the gurney, and lifting a corner of the sheet, he points to the opposite side, motioning me to assist.

Crossing the room, I stand beside the bed, choking back the disgust and fear gurgling in my stomach, while I help him peel back the sheet to reveal a scarred and mutilated torso beneath. Raw, bloody flesh glistens in patches, as though his skin was peeled off.

The man’s mouth is propped open by a metal contraption, revealing two rows of rotting teeth. His eyes have a milky-white layer over jet black pupils that take up the width of his irises. Wounds at his neck and chest ooze a yellowish fluid, tinged with red streaks.

Beneath the straps, his hands flex and snap, flex and snap, as if grabbing for something. The screams mingle with growls, and he sounds more beast than man. I’ve seen Ragers on the occasions they broke through our camp, but they were usually killed before any had the chance to bite. Their eyes are milky and leak blood, and their skin breaks out with blotchy patches of red sores. I knew a boy from my hive, Samuel Dade, who poked at one of the sores on a body that’d been dried out from the sun and got sick. They say he breathed in the Dredge.

“Why don’t I need a suit?”

“You’re a carrier. Many second generation are carriers of the protein. Some just express differently than others.”

“I carry the Dredge?”

“If you didn’t, I’d have been surprised, but your blood confirmed it, yes. One of your parents was infected and they passed it to you.”

“But … my parents were normal. They weren’t Ragers. They weren’t bitten at all.”

“Inhalation of the protein takes a bit of time to incubate. A bite is immediate, concentrated inoculation.”

“What is … inoculation?”

“When the disease takes root inside your body.”

“Won’t I … infect you, if I leave this room?”

“Only if you’re bitten, or the organism has been activated. Otherwise, second generation do not generally transmit the organism airborne. Still, you’ll undergo daily blood tests to affirm that you’re not in a state of active infection. Can you spell decently?” he asks, wheeling a table alongside the bed, upon which a silver tray of instruments is laid out.

Beside the man on the bed is a second table, with a notebook and marker pen already set out. A second object sits beside them, with a red button and the words REC.

I give an emphatic nod, testing the mobility of my fingers inside the gloves, and take a seat at the table, pen at the ready. My mother taught a small group of us from the complex where I lived. Grammar, reading and writing. Although most didn’t bother to show every week, I was expected to complete lessons, regardless.

“Good. Press the red button on the recorder, and be sure to press it again when we’re finished. Let’s begin.” Behind him is a metal contraption, with a switch that he turns to flip.

“Doctor, is that why we’re here? Because we’re carriers?” I press the red button on the recorder in front of me, as he instructed, and wait for what’s next.

“Yes.”

He bends forward, examining a set of dials and numbers on the separate steel box that connects to tubing. Fluids slide down the long clear tubes embedded in the patient’s forearms, and within a minute, the man stops moving. His jaw goes slack, his black pupils suddenly vacant. The growling from before silences in what I think might be his death.

“Subject is a forty-year-old man. Comorbidities include heart disease, type-one diabetes, and Dredge infection. Subject had progressed quickly to stage four infection, with large plaques and significant damage to the frontal lobe. Photographs have been collected, demonstrating bilateral necrotic changes in his skin, dentition and eyes. Doctor Ericsson tells me that he received multiple injections and was subjected to …” He pauses, bracing his hand on the bed while the patient lies still, and clears his throat. “Thermotesting, nerve transplantation, and immunization experiments. Blood and cerebrospinal fluid have been collected. Potassium chloride and pancuronium bromide administered for organ harvesting.”

I don’t know the meaning of most of what he says, but within seconds, I’ve already begun to view the man differently, when only moments ago, I saw him as a monster. After hearing the summary of his illnesses, I come to understand, he was a victim like the rest of us.

For the next two hours, I sit in horror, as Doctor Falkenrath cuts the man open, removing a bloody, gelatinous organ that he hands to me on a tray, instructing me to place it in a jar with some solution. I stare down at the red glob of meat that once served a vital purpose for the man laid out on the gurney. My chest tickles, and I breathe hard through my nose, desperate not to throw up all over the table. Squinting my eyes, I convince myself to hold it together, and nabbing the pen beside me, I label it with the patient’s number and organ type, date and time, as the doctor asks. By the time we’re done, I know the man as 4368756. It’s a number I don’t think I’ll ever forget.

His body is covered with a sheet, while I stare down at various-sized jars and trays that hold parts of his insides, including his brain. I’ve never seen a human brain up close like this. Blood and some kind of mucus cling to the slabs of meat, some of them streaked in black and green, as if rotted.

“I want you to wheel him down to the morgue. You’ll take that elevator.” He nods toward the silver doors across from us. “Push the button on the outside. Then once inside, push the M button. It will open to the morgue, and you will leave him beside the others there. You’ll return by pressing the top button outside the elevator and the number two inside. The samples are to be refrigerated. You’ll find the refrigerators on the west wing. Try not to mix them with Doctor Ericsson’s. Please transcribe the notes we’ve recorded into the journal by day’s end.”

I offer an uncertain nod and clear my throat. “Doctor, some of the words you described … I’m not sure I can spell them right.”

“Do your best,” he says, walking past me toward a barrel set in the corner of the room. There, he discards his suit and mask, pressing a button that makes a suction sound, before exiting. And like a tornado has swept through the room, I’m left in the aftermath of mutilation.

I stare down at the man, whose eyes are closed. The dead man. One I watched the doctor inject and cut apart.

Swallowing back the urge to upchuck, I stand up from the table and make my way to the bed. With shaky hands, I grip the bars above the patient’s now-empty skull and push him toward the silver doors, as instructed. Within seconds of pressing the button, the doors open, and I haul the bed inside. The box closes in around me, and when the doors shut, sealing me in, a moment of panic steals my breath. I lurch toward the door and pound on the silver panels, but they don’t budge.

“Doctor Falkenrath! Doctor Falkenrath!” The air inside the box thickens, invading my chest with a suffocating fear.

Beside the door is a series of buttons, one labeled M as he said. I press it, and the box jerks, knocking me back into the wall. Hands plastered to the panels at either side of me, I crouch low, my stomach sinking to my knees, until the box finally slows to a stop and the doors open.

Rising slowly, I peer through the opening at the beds propped against the wall. The line extends down the hallway, and I step outside of the silver box to see that it ends before a large door, with big red letters that read INCINERATOR.

Large blue barrels sit in a row beside the door. They’re too far away to read what they hold, but the oversized skull and crossbones, alongside what I’ve come to learn as a biohazard symbol, across the front of each one tells me to stay away.

The sound of grinding gears startles me enough to spin around, and I gasp to see the silver doors have closed. With a frantic push of the button on the wall, they open again, to the man still lying on the bed. I wheel him out and park him beside the others. On the cart in front of his lies a large mound covered in a white sheet. I peel it back, to the mangled face of a boy not much older than me.

My stomach lurches at the sight of him.

His skin is dirty, but shows no signs of sores. Bones protrude from his skin, telling me he starved. A gash across his forehead spills flesh from inside the wound, and I tug the sheet back over him, breathing deeply. I do the same to the man I wheeled down, offering a small bit of dignity.

A thunderous boom echoes from up ahead, jerking my muscles.

The doors at the end of the hall open to two men dressed in dirty white aprons that carry red splotches of what I guess is blood. One holds the door open, as the other wheels in the cart at the front of the line, before they return for the next. The door holder waves at me, but I don’t wave back. I can’t. Behind him are enormous iron fixtures that flicker orange. My attention flits from the room with the huge oven-like structures, to the boy lying on the bed, and suddenly I can’t breathe.

The smell when we arrived.

Ovens.

Smoke.

Burning flesh.

The darker haired one steps around the line of carts, hobbling toward me.

I stumble into a cart behind me, and twist to shuffle back toward the silver doors. Finger hammering the button, I will myself not to panic, but the doors don’t open. Oh, God. I don’t want be stuck down here. I don’t want to talk to these devils. Demons who burn the bodies of innocent people.

I push it again. And again. A half dozen times, until it lights up and the silver doors open. When the man reaches me, I tumble into the box and straighten to a stand, pressing myself flat against the wall.

His face is scarred, and a stretch of skin on his cheek is all puffy and shiny, like a patch has been sewn there.

“Everything all right?” His muffled voice carries a rasp, like a smoker’s.

I nod, watching him through the narrowing crack of the door, until he finally disappears. It’s then that the anxiety washes over me, and I crumple to the floor to cry.

* * *

An agonized screamechoes down the hallway, tearing me from the drowsy fall into sleep. There’s an animalistic quality to the sound that carries the unmistakable pitch of true human suffering. My eyes scan the vast darkness that surrounds me, and when I close and open them again, there is no distinction, aside from the flapping of my lashes against the tops of my cheekbones.

Pitch blackness is a frightening thing to begin, but here, it’s worse. A nightmare that doesn’t cease when the eyes are open.

The room I’ve been given is a box with no windows. At night, all of the electricity shuts down in this place, and we’re left adrift in this void. My father once told me that space was a vacuous darkness, silent and cold and devoid of life. At the time, I remember thinking how frightening and lonely such a thing would be.

Yet, here I am.

A second scream joins the first, and I cover my ears, tucking my head closer to my body, as I lay upon the cot. The tremble in my breaths is louder this way, and I focus on the pace of every inhalation, desperate not to think about my brother.

He’s always been afraid of the dark.

After all, darkness is when the monsters come out.

We’d hear them, sometimes, roaming the streets, their moans and the pounding on the doors. My father would keep watch by the window until morning, with his gun lying across his lap. As frightening as the moments were, those were the times I felt most safe. When he sat nearby. Always watching.

I pray my mother is right, that my father still watches me, because I think bad things happen here.

And by the sound of those screams, these nightmares are more terrifying than the monsters.