Cages
CAGES
Chris Pasley
Text Copyright © 2012 Chris Pasley
All Rights Reserved
For Aeryn
Chapter
One
April twelfth was the day they locked me up in the local
Quarantine. The best day of my life.
Of the two chain-link fences that enclosed the Quarantine perimeter only
the interior was electrified, but even waiting behind the white line at the
main gate I could smell the batteries cooking. The building itself was as
faceless and drab as any government facility, before the Outbreak or after,
plunked down roughly in what I’m told was once a park, though the only evidence
of that were the skeletons of wood benches that littered the place, metal Ls
reaching up from the ground in a relentless mission to bruise the shins of
unwary joggers. Paint peeled off red cinder-blocks, as if some heat
welling from inside bubbled away the polymers.
The cheers of my classmates were deafening – literally, as one younger
kid jumped up to shout right in my ear. Bobby Harper, the homeroom
runt. His parents refused to let him go, fed him testosterone blockers
for years, and now he was a year late and a head too short. He’d be the
last of our class to go, poor bastard. No one to see him off into the
cage.
The last kid at the dance.
An added blessing to the day; my parents actually stayed home. They
don’t see you go in, and they don’t see you come out – that was tradition and
for once my folks followed the rules. I was surprised… whatever I had
expected my parents to be that day, merciful wasn’t it. And so my last
memories of them would be stoic (my mom) and prickly (my dad), should I not
make it out. Weeping families clutching at the chain-link was probably
the only reason the outer fence wasn’t electrified.
I mugged it up with my classmates, showing girls my biceps, whooping with
the boys and punching their arms. It felt like a graduation, or no… like
a concert and I was being invited onstage. Until the time I walked
through the flat gray doors I was a superstar. I’d been waiting for this
my whole life.
The doors creaked open and spat out two guards, dark-eyed kid
killers. They carried their MP5s in plain sight, squat little submachine
guns. They held onto the extended banana clips a bit too lovingly for
polite company. Abruptly the fence stopped humming and the giant latch
sealing the outer gate spun open. Taking a side each, the guards pulled
open the gate. The badly sheared chain-link cut into the hard dirt in the
no-man’s-land between fences, rubbing two enormous bat wings in the dirt.
I swaggered through the gate and past the door guards, whacking off
big
deal
behind their backs, much to the joy of the crowd. The adulation
was intoxicating, like the heady feeling you get right when you’re about to do
something stupidly dangerous, but for some reason you just don’t care. I
blew a kiss to Sarah Stevens, a seventh grader who had made moon eyes at me for
months now. Her hand went to her mouth, eyes growing wide. I’d be a
frequent player in her dreams for weeks to come, I was sure. It was
important to me right at that moment that everyone I was leaving behind know
exactly how cool I was. And man, was I cool.
The guards resealed the latch and the fence thrummed back to life.
Their faces were hidden by tinted facemasks, but I doubt it would be a stretch
to read revulsion in the way they walked. They stepped around me, rapping
hard on the massive double doors that seemed twice as big now that I was next
to them. Six locks scarred the otherwise unbroken surface, iron monsters
with awestruck mouths. I heard each one snick open, and the doors lurched
toward me, swinging wide. In the bright April sun, the interior gaped
darkly, impenetrable. I was suddenly not so confident.
The butt of an MP5 nudged me forward and I stepped into Dekalb Quarantine
#4. Within seconds, the doors slammed shut behind me.
Two concrete barricades lifted
from a highway median blocked the hallway, staggered on the left and right
sides
like a still-life sculpture of a giant zipper. I followed
the guards as they threaded their way
between them.
Compared to the sun outside, the
light was clinically bright; every splinter grasping
up from the dark hardwood under the
barriers
was clearly visible, doomed sailors treading away
from a foundering ship. Further down, pale yellow lockers stood in trim
military fashion, tall and sturdy for cheap tin, cold eyes of the combination
wheels black and uncaring. A huge dent scarred a swath of four
whole locker units, standing broken and humble. The hall terminated at a
furnishing that could have gone unnoticed in any other institution of learning
except for the fact that it was made of steel and wire mesh rather than wood
and glass
:
a sizable trophy
case with awards I couldn't make out through the screen.
My hands found my pockets and
I slumped over. My swagger melted into a nervous shuffle. I wasn't
an idiot. I knew what happened when a kid went from middle school to
Quarantine. A big fish in middle school is nothing but a shrimp in
the
Cage
. Don't look too cool,
don't hold your head too high, or some
third or fourth year will
likely beat it off your shoulders.
So I followed the peeling, over-trodden yellow tape that began in worn strips
at the double barricades into the first corridor on the left
, hardwood
giving way to greasy linoleum
.
My two guards matched pace
next to me like stone golems, their eyes never once leaving the yellow tape,
but I knew they
watched me
from their peripherals. One hint of the
change
and I'd be drilled to the floor with
thirty
rounds each, the most an MP5 could carry.
Bits of me would be rotting in the concrete slab underneath the
floors for years. Once I reached the registrar's office and signed in
they would be relieved to wander again on patrol. The halls were empty,
but through the metal grates in the classroom doors I could see the idle
movement of kids fighting off sleep and hear the bored drones of teachers
reading line-by-line from their textbooks. The hallways of Dekalb Quarantine #4
weren't too much different than middle school
. S
ame stupid motivational posters, same homemade
banners and signs advertising the Homecoming dance, Photoshop on wax
paper. The biggest difference was the
presence of
bullet holes, most of which were hidden behind
posters or notices, but sometimes air would pipe through from the classroom
behind the wall and there
they
would be, like hotel door peep-hole
s
. I counted eight.
In this place I was in more
danger than I had ever been in my life - more danger than I was ever likely to
be in again after graduation. But there, locked behind the iron doors and
under the watch of the
stone-faced
guards, I finally felt free. I could be myself in here. And
lucky me, I was pretty sure I was gonna be a badass
. There was a
quick energy running through my limbs. I wanted to dance on my toes like
Bruce Lee, reborn into who I was finally meant to be. A
s long as I didn't get my head blown off
by
the guards
or my guts torn out by a
Beast. Either would
diminish
my d
reams
of grandeur
quickly enough
, but even the threat of such a gruesome end couldn’t
dampen my spirits.
The Registrar's office was
barred inside and out. The guards wrestled with massive padlocks
the
size of grapefruit
while an interior
rattle
suggested
just as many
latched on the other side of the iron door. When the locks all
sagged
loose
I shuffled forward into the
office and offered myself up to be registered. The cream-white room was
barren except for a
flimsy particleboard
desk
of the Scandinavian variety
, the man in the chair behind it and what smelled like fresh paint.
No motivational posters, no family pictures.
"Sam Crafty?"
The registrar raised an eyebrow at me. He was a skinny, graying man who
had let himself get
both
a
jutting
potbelly and a bright red
tie two inches t
o
o
short. Thick glasses and shiny head. The only thing eye-catching
about the man was that his right elbow ended in an ugly stump, which he took no
pains to hide.
I shrugged.
"After the Outbreak nobody had any old records so my dad decided to change
his name."
The registrar, whose nameplate
sitting burnished on the desk read "Mr. Wilson," snorted.
“
So your dad was a criminal."
I stiffened. "I
never said that, Mr. Wilson."
The registrar looked
confused for a moment, then craned his neck around to see his own
nameplate. "Oh. No, I'm not Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson was
our registrar."
"But I thought –”
"Mr Wilson's dead,
Sam. Last week. I'm registering new students until we can find and
train a willing replacement." The man reached his only remaining
hand out to me. "I'm Principal Conyers."
I shook his hand solemnly, his
fingers dry and indifferent under mine.
Shake a man's hand solid and
he'll respect you, even if he don't know you from Adam
, my dad always said.
He
rarely said anything terribly coherent, so when he did I made it a point to
listen.
Conyers
’s
smile faded as he let go of my hand.
"That's the last time you'll touch me or any of the staff, do you
understand?"
I nodded.
"I know you want to ask
about it, so go ahead. Ask."
"What happened to your
arm?"
Conyers leaned back in his
chair, took off his glasses and chewed on one end. "Still bothers me
to talk about, to tell you the truth. I was bitten."
I couldn't stifle a gasp of
surprise.
No one
had
ever heard of a Bitten who survived. I had seen one of them in the
early
stages of the change once, shuffling
along the side of the road in a bloody tweed jacket, moaning and creaking, but
his face still flush with blood. Where he had come from I never knew, but
I'll never forget what my dad did, pulling the car over and
fishing
the baseball bat from the back seat
with as much urgency as a man stopping to change a flat
. My dad never shied away from
responsibility
. He had done his share of Bitten slaughter during
the Outbreak
.
More than
his fair share, he would probably have said. One more was nothing.
Conyers saw the doubt on my
face and grimaced. "It was seven years ago, at Dahlonega Quarantine
#2. I was just a physics teacher then, but I volunteered to teach
woodshop after...well, that's another story there. But I was locking up
one day after the class had left when I noticed someone screwed up the
count. There was a boy still in the room, hugging his knees in the corner
where we swept up the woodchips. I was young then...naive. I
thought he was scared, or lost, or heartbroken. So I reached my hand out
to him.
"He lifted his head up,
and instantly I
knew
him. Jacob Gussock, quiet kid, good learner. But that was my
mistake. I looked at his face. I didn't look at his eyes. He
threw himself at me, so fast, so goddamned fast....latched his teeth right
there," he waved just beyond his stump "and began just gnashing and
tearing."