Alive! Not Dead! (10 page)

Try to think of something else,
I told myself.
  Anything.  Feefee.  What the hell does that mean? Feefee…I’ve seen it before.  The word…Feefee.  Where?

I was able to go.  I let it go, filling the cup completely.  Doctor Webb pulled the cup away as soon as it was full.  I still had pee left in
me.  I held it, but I didn’t know how long I would be able to.

Mindy was next to me.

Fields smiled at her.  “Your next, sweet cakes.”

“I can’t go” she whispered.

“Sure you can.  Just hunker down and piss like you would in the grass.”

She hunkered down.  Doctor Webb hunkered down with her.  He held a larger specimen cup between her legs.  Mindy started to cry in em
barrassment.

Fields yelled ‘PISS IT OUT, FEEFEE!”

“God damn it, I am trying!” Mindy yelled back.

Fields thumped her on the ba
ck of the head with his fist.  Her head went forward.  Losing her balance, she fell backward onto her butt on the cold floor.  Fields laughed at her.  “Get the fuck up, hottie,” he said.

Mindy rolled into a fetal position.  She start
ed weeping loudly.

Fields walked around her.  He kicked her hard in the back of the ribs.  She screamed.

Ski had enough.  He lunged after Fields.  Fields knew this was going to happen.  He was prepared.  He had seen this many times.  He caught Ski off-guard.  He grabbed Ski by the arm, swung him around, and threw him hard down onto his ass.

“We already ready for step two?” he hollered at Ski.  “It gets rough fast.  You either
get up, piss in this tube, or I will make you piss in pain!”

Crying, Mindy got back in line.  She hunkered down trying to pee.  She was sniffling
but was able to fill the cup.  Some urine got on the doctor’s gloves.  He wiped it off on her shoulder.

Ski filled his specimen cup with no troubles.  He stared Fields right in the eye as he urinated into the cup.

Cindy was next.

“Ok darling, your turn,” Fields said.

Cindy shook her head.

“Piss it out, love.  I don’t
got all fucking day!”

Cindy said quietly “I’m on my period.”

“I don’t give a fuck.  Piss in the cup!!”

Embarrassed, Cindy hunkered down.  She held the string attached to her tampon out of the way so it wouldn’t interfere with her urine stream.  A drop of blood splattered on the floor between her feet.  Doctor Webb
quickly caught her specimen in his cup.

Fields said.  “You’re dirtying up my deck with your blood.”

With a sigh of disgust, Cindy stood up quickly.  She gave Fields a hateful look.  A trickle of blood had run down her leg.

“That wasn’t so bad,” Fields said.  “Smells like shit, but at least it’s over, right baby?”

“Leave her alone,” Ski said.  “She’s humiliated enough, you don’t need to add to it.”

Fields laughed.  He walked over to Marge.  “Ok little lady.  You’re up.”

Marge said “I just went upstairs.  You should have told me you were gonna do this to us.”

“Well you gotta piss again, sweet heart.”

“I won’t be able to pee for a couple hours.  It’s how my body works.  It’s how it’s always worked.”

Fields said “Hunker down.”

She looked at him straight in the face.  “I.  Can.  Not.  Go.”

“Hunker the fuck down, feefee, o
r I will make you hunker down! Let’s get some piss out of those saggy tits!”

Matter-of-factly Marge said “Then
make me
hunker down, asshole.”

The doctor was already hunkered down in front of her.  Fields took the butt of his rifle and slammed i
t down on Marge’s right foot.  She fell forward in pain, leaning on the doctor.  Her bladder let loose. Urine spilled out of her.  The doctor cursed but caught enough for a specimen.

He nodded to Fields acknowledging that the urine test was done.

“There,” Fields said.  “That wasn’t so bad.  We didn’t even get to step three.  I’ve had a lot of step threes lately.”

No one asked what step three was, but I figured that it was probably death.  When you die, your bladder lets go – or they would cut it out of you on the operating table.

Marge was crying, limping badly as the doctor took our blood.  He didn’t use cotton swabs to clean the skin first.  He didn’t bandage our arms after taking the blood.  Again he nodded to Fields, acknowledging that he was done.

Fields went to the door on the other side of the room.  He unlocked it.  Inside, there was a toi
let.  He said to us “Now go piss out the rest of your shit.”

We took turns emptying the rest of our bladders.  There was no toilet paper for the ladies, no place for Cindy to put her feminine napkin, and no sink to wash our hands.

After this we were led, naked still, out into the hallway down to another elevator.  We went up for a while.  The doors opened to another hall.  This one was longer.  The floor glistened with a high polish.  You could see the doors along the hall reflecting on the floor as well as the lights overhead.  There were alternating black and white numbered doors lining the hallway.  Everything else was painted in the dull gray, even the ceiling.

The guards led us into one of the rooms with a white door.  There were a few chairs in a li
ne in the center of the room.  On one wall there was a large one-way see-thru window.  Next to it there was a locked door.  We were told to sit down.  Fields and his two guards left the room.  They locked the door behind them.  Marge sat down grabbing her foot.  The pain must have been unbearable.

I asked her “You gonna be ok?”

“I have no idea, cowboy” she managed.  “I don’t know if any of us are going to be ok.”

Ski asked “
What the hell is going on here? Why are they treating us like this?”

Cindy was sitting next to Ski.  Her face was lined with tears.  Ski was holding her hands.

The locked door by the one-way window opened.

It was Washburn again.  He was still wearing his safety mask.

A nurse came with him.  She had a cart full of towels.

Washburn said “Now it’s time for the three steps of Induction.  We are going to introduce you to your new home.  You will be safe here and be well taken care of…”

“Our
new home
?” Marge asked still holding her foot.  “This isn’t our
home
.”

Washburn nodded to the nurse.  She handed lightly colored jump-suits from the cart to each of us.  We all quickly put the jumpsuits on.  They were light and felt good covering our naked bodies.

I noticed that the jumpsuits were numbered.  Mine was Gray 20-15.

The whole group was numbered from 20-15 through 20-20.

Washburn said “You are in the Gray Unit. The numbers and color will correlate with everything you do here on the base.  You are safe here.”

“Is this some kind of sick joke?” Ski asked.  “What the hell is going on here?”

Washburn pointed up.  “When we were topside, I told all of you that all of your questions would be answered.  I am here now to answer your questions.”

Ski asked “What is going on here?”

Washburn said “This is a safe zone.  The zone topside is safe within the boundaries of the base.  Outside the base is what we are calling the unsafe zone.  There is nothing safe outside the confines of this base.”

Ski said “Yeah
, no shit.”

Washburn continued.  “You all are classified as Flesh Eating Enemies or FEEs or
FEE-FEES as some of the guards call it.  You all are infected with the MCON virus.”

It was in the store where Tara peed herself – on the shelf!
My mind shouted. 
Someone had written Fee-Fee with squeeze cheese!

“The fuck you talking about?”
Ski hollered.  “We’re alive, not dead! We’re not flesh eating
anything
.  We don’t eat people.  We’re living!”

“Anyone outside the safe zone - or anyone who has breathed the air outside the safe zone - is a FEE,” Washburn said.  “You may think that you don’t have the sickness, but you
do.
  Your blood tests have all come up positive with the MCON virus.”

“Horseshit!”
Ski yelled.  “Complete horseshit.  I’m not buying this!”

I was trying to remain calm.  I asked
“How did this happen?”

“There was a low-yield nuclear blast.  It detonated 20 miles under the surface of the earth.  It was a missile, launched from this base.  The missile was intended to strike the South Pacific.  Tragically, there was an unforeseen error in the flight guidance system.  The missile had a near miss with a passenger jet as the plane took off out of Seattle, Washington.  The passenger jet crashed in the mountains, killing all on board.  The missile continued on its off-course trajectory.  It injected into the mountains.  It dug to a depth of 20 miles, detonated, causing massive damage to most of the upper west coast of the United States.  The magnetic pulse put off by the explosion caused a reversal of the earth’s magnetic poles.  There was a swap, if you will.  There was also an
unknown side-effect of the swap, and that is, the brain stem of anyone who had died within the radius of the swap was also inverted.  Not physically, but at a cellular level.  I realize this may be too much information for you to understand, but when the low-yield nuclear bomb exploded, it caused any dead brain to live again.”

I said “Not everyone died on that passenger plane.  I survived it.”

He looked at me, dumbfounded.  His jaw dropped.  “You were on USAir flight 3044?”

“Yes I was,” I said.

Washburn was shocked.  He was completely perplexed.  We all could see in his eyes that this information was not expected.  He leaned down to me as I sat in the chair and asked very intensely:  “Did anyone else survive the crash?”

“I didn’t really stay around checking on people,” I said, angrily.  “There were fucking deads surrounding me so I got out of there in a hurry.”

“Did you know anyone else on the plane?” he asked, sternly.

“No.”

He asked again “And there were no other survivors?”

I said smartly “I thought you didn’t like to double-speak.”

He gave me a very rude look.  I didn’t know why he was so interested in other survivors.  What did he want me to tell him:  that I knew someone else lived? Were we all supposed to die or something? I didn’t get it.

He leaned down to the nurse and whispered something in her ear.  She left the room.

“What do mean when you said the nuke caused brains to live again?” Cindy asked, pulling both of us out of our intense conversation.  “Are you saying that everyone in the world is brain dead?”

Gathering his composure, Washburn cleared his throat and continued:  “It is difficult for anyone to understand this.”  He bent over the nurse’s cart and wrote something on a pad of paper.  “Picture the human brain.  Now picture the brain
stem
.  This structure is responsible for basic vital life functions such as breathing, heartbeat and blood pressure.  Inside the brain stem is the midbrain or the
Mesencephalon
.  In the Mesencephalon you can find fibers which are important for voluntary motor function.  Basically what happened is, when the nuclear bomb exploded, it caused a reversal of the brain stem at the cellular level.  In other words, voluntary motor function
killed
the basic life function.”

I asked “So why do deads want to eat us?”

“This information is unknown.”  Washburn said.  “More studies are needed on this subject.”

“You mean more
steps
?” Marge asked, sneering.

“I must apologize for the way you were treated down below, Miss Simpson,” Washburn said with no sympathy in his voice.  “Sometimes the guards get out of hand down there.”

“We were stripped naked.  Our lives were threatened.  We had to piss in front of them and in front of each other.  We were marched through this place nude, and you only offer an apology?” Marge was steaming mad, and rightfully so.

“Miss Simpson,” he said, “you and your group are now safe.  Sometimes it takes people time to realize that they are safe.  Sometimes people need to be put in their place so they understand the gravity of a situation.”

“I think it’s a bunch of horseshit!” Ski hollered.  “It was safe out
there!
Sure we might have had a run in with some zombies, but we were doing
fine.”

Suddenly the door that the nurse had left through banged open.  Fields stood in the door.

“Fields, take Gray 20-15 to Interrogation room 6.  I will be there shortly.”

“You can’t take him!” Ski shouted.  “He’s with us!”

Fields grabbed me roughly and led me out of the room.  He led me down the hallway.  A few doors later he pushed me into a brightly lit room with one chair in it.  He shoved me down into the chair.  He didn’t bind me, just stood over me with a pistol at my head.