Cages (13 page)

Four gunshots rang out, far
away.  "I wanted to know if you were going to the Homecoming
dance."

She gaped, astonished. 
"Why did you feel like this was a good time to ask me that?"

I grinned, shrugging. 
"Well, if we're going to be stuck here, I thought I should use the time
productively."

Kate's eyes narrowed. 
"The Homecoming dance is mandatory.'

"It is?"

"They don't have enough
guards to
watch
everyone and
the dance."

"Ah," I said,
clearly thrown off.  "Well. Since we're clearly both going, why don't
we go together?"

Kate slid onto her side to
look me square in the face.  "No."

"Has someone already
asked you?"

"No.  I just don't
want to go with you."

"And what's wrong with
me?"

Kate sniffed. 
"You're a rat."

"
God
," I muttered.  "I am not a
rat."

"Yes you are.  You're
a rat, through and through.  And even if I were attracted to rodents, what
did you think our little disagreements here were?  Foreplay?  You're
a stubborn idiot who's read a few books.  What is it in our dialog that
makes you think I'd even be interested?"  Kate shook her head
slowly. 
Idiot
.

I licked my lips. 
"Look.  If I prove I'm not a rat, will you go with me?"

She rolled her eyes. 
"No."

"Well, I'll prove it
anyway."

"How are you going to do
that, then?"

A rapid stream of gunfire,
much closer.  "I'll figure something out."

That night I turned on the
radio for the first time in a
few
week
s
.  It crackled,
and for a moment I thought the bug had failed, but soon I could hear Conyers
talking.  I couldn't place the other voice.

"Can you believe how fast
she turned?  My God, I've never even heard of anything like it."
 "Get ahold of yourself.  They turn.  We've seen it a
million times.  No need to hyperventilate about it."

"But Dan, it was two
minutes.  Two minutes
flat
.  Fastest recorded is what,
ten?  From zero to Beast, all stages?  Jesus Christ, maybe Jason's
right."

Conyers's voice was
tough.  "What has Jason been saying?"

"That the Outbreak's not
over."

The principal sighed. 
"We're in control of the situation.  Every single teenager in the
civilized world is under lock and key.  We know what they do.  We
know how they think.  We know what to do when they go wild.  If more
Beasts pop up, then we kill more Beasts."

"It's a slippery
slope.  What if they all turn?"

"That's not going to
happen."

"I'm sorry, Dan. 
You and I go back, but I can't do this any more.  It used to be
dangerous.  Now it's more like suicide."

"Spit it out,
Largo."

"I'm quitting. 
Right here, right now."

"You can't quit."

"I am."

"You're the only really
qualified chemistry teacher here.  Where am I going to find another?"

A dry laugh.  "Get
that kid Remi to teach it.  He knows about as much as I do."

"I'm going to pretend you
didn't say that."  Conyers stood, his chair rolling back loudly
across the hardwood.  "What if I told you I knew why Sharon Norse
went Beast so quickly?  If I convinced you that it was a condition that
could be controlled?  Would you stay?"

"I'd say you were
lying.  You can't fool me, Dan, not like those gullible kids you string
along.  I've known you too long."

Conyers snorted. 
"Sharon was pregnant."

"What?" 
Largo's voice went up an octave.  "How could you know that?  Her
body was mangled, and the Beast chemistry would override –”

"I knew about it a week
ago.  Look." Conyers opened a drawer and I could hear a file being
pulled out.  "Look at this.  A transfer form to a maternity
Quarantine.  Stamped it myself on Tuesday."

There was quiet a moment as
Largo read the file.  "But...there's never been any study that shows
pregnancy sets off the change."

"I'm not saying it
did.  I'm just saying it accelerated it.  That's what had you
worried, isn't it?  Those studies are not foolproof anyway.  The
sampling is so random, it's entirely possible the conditions that existed in
Sharon's pregnancy to accelerate the change hadn't been observed yet.  I'm
sending all this to Washington tomorrow with all the data I have and the
remains."  I heard a soft thud, as if Conyers had planted his hand on
Largo's back.  "Does this soothe your nerves any?"

"We should cancel the
Homecoming dance.  If we need to start preventing - "

"It's under
control.  The dance isn't going to be a problem.  It's where they go
afterward.  I've reviewed every video in this place and I never saw Sharon
en coitus
.  They've got someplace they can hide from the
cameras."

"I thought you had
cameras hidden in the Blind Hall."

"I do, and believe me,
the things I've seen in there would sell like gangbusters on the outside. 
If I were a less moral man...anyway, point of the matter is that I never saw
Sharon
there.  We need to crack down on the Blind Hall and we need to find the
other secret spots they have.  I'll see what information I can pump out of
my gullible kids."  Conyers sat back down, his chair creaking.

Largo sighed.  "You
swear this information is accurate?"

"On my life, Largo."

"Okay.  Okay, I'll
stay.  What would you do without me anyway?"

"I guess I'd have a
teenaged chemistry teacher with anarchist tendencies.  You'll tell the
other teachers what I told you?"

"Yeah.  We'll all
keep a lookout.
”

"Good.  I'll set up
a bigger policy meeting soon and we can hash out a plan of action."

"All right.  Good
night, Dan."  The door opened.

"Good night, Largo."

The locks to our dorm cell
unlatched that night.  The locks are loud, like the sort of latches you
find on submarine doors, but whoever was opening them didn't care if we woke
up.  I was out of bed in an instant, reaching under Remi's bunk to pull
out a dowel rod like the one he used to create his limp.  I heard Ben
whimpering, burying himself under his blankets, and Dave was only barely awake
when the door swung wide.  The light flickered on.

"Hello Sam," Alan
said, grinning wickedly. 

"I
’
ll break your head
open
, Alan."

"Don't think
so."  Alan stepped back and his two cronies swarmed in.  I pulled
the dowel rod back to swing but Lee was faster than me and wrestled it out of
my hand. 
Crap
.  I am well and truly
screwed
.
  Someone punched me in the stomach and I went down, sucking
air.  Someone's sneaker rammed me in the ribs. 

Alan stepped in, laughing. 
Dave was on his feet now, but Alan paid him no attention.  He was a
basketball player.  On Alan's side.  "You think you can play me
and just walk away?  Not so tough now."  He kicked me again in
the stomach.  Tears poured like rivers out of my eyes.  He
chuckled.  "Get his legs, fellas.  This little
jerk
's gonna get what's coming to him."

I could feel hands on my feet
as they wrenched my legs apart, just wider than I could really spread
them.  Alan cackled, his eyes wide and righteous.  "Eye for an
eye, Sammie boy."  He made a show of aiming his foot right at my
groin, and doing some fake practice kicks.  "One!  Two!
Three!"

I clenched my teeth together,
but no impact came. 

"Let him go."

I managed to crane my head and
look up.  Alan had gone white.  Dave was standing behind him, one arm
casually draped around Alan's neck.  If I'd had any air left I would have
gasped; in Dave's right hand was a chrome straight razor. 

Alan could feel the blade at
his throat.  "What the
hell
are you doing, Dave?"

"You don't barge into
somebody's room at
crap
o'clock in the morning and do something like this.  Especially when it's
my room, you got me?"  Dave's usually jovial face was slack, his eyes
serious. 

Alan swallowed. 
"Yeah, yeah, I gotcha."

Lee and Abe released my
legs.  They flopped like fish to the floor. 

Dave sighed.  "Look,
man, I'll look and see what Remi's got lying around.  If I can't find
anything I'll get Remi to whip you up some stuff when he gets out of the
clink.  But I'm only gonna do that if you leave Sam alone. 
Deal?"

Greed flashed over Alan's
face, naked, hungry
want
.  "Deal."

"Fine."  Dave
pulled his arm away but didn't close the razor.  "Now get out of my
room."

Lee and Abe practically bolted
out, but Alan lingered.  "What's the matter with you?  Why are
you taking up for that rat?"

Dave grinned warningly. 
"My roommate's no rat.
”

Alan snorted and tried to
slammed the heavy iron door on his way out, but it just squeaked lazily
closed. 

Dave shook his head and
offered me his hand.  "What a
n idiot
.  You okay, Sam?"

"Yeah," I
coughed.  Air was flowing into my lungs again.  "Jesus. 
How did they get past the guards?"

Dave shrugged. 
"They probably just told the right ones what they were planning to
do."

I laughed.  "Maybe
so.  Ben, you okay?"

Ben's voice drifted up from
under the covers.  "I'm fine."

I breathed in deeply, savoring
the return of oxygen, but winced at my bruised ribs.  "Where did you
get a razor?"

Dave snapped the razor closed
and palmed it.  "You're not the only one around here with some
tricks."

I laughed.  "Well,
thank you.  Seriously, thank you.  You might have saved my life just
now.  My balls, at least."

"No problem." 
Dave slid back into his bunk.

"I thought you said I was
a rat.  What made you change your mind?"

Dave brushed the question
away.  "I just didn't buy you as the rodent type."

"Well, I got a way to
prove I'm no rat.  Kill two birds with one stone."  I grinned,
hopping painfully up to my bunk.  "Gonna need your help,
though." 

Dave snaked his foot out and
snapped off the light.  "Good to know my faith has been
rewarded."

Middle school dances were
small, awkward affairs.  Cleared-out lunchrooms and adjoining classrooms
served as soulless social halls where a hollow-eyed DJ played songs from the
fifties - songs so old that the teachers themselves had probably danced to them
at their middle school dances.  It was if at some point society had said
"Stop!  This is as far as officialy acceptable social events are allowed
to evolve.  No further!"  Spectacle was low.  There were
some thin paper banners declaring the dance's theme, but they were tawdry, most
often colored with stilted permanent marker, the final letters crunched from a
miscalculation of space.

I only ever went to middle school
dances to try to disrupt the quiet social harmony, but rarely was anyone paying
enough attention for anything I did to have any effect.  No one ever
danced and the boys and the girls segregated each other to opposite sides of
the room, the dance floor a stained no-man's-land between.  I remember
each side glaring at the teachers, as if resentful of this attempt to force
them to interact. 

The anticipation for
Homecoming in Quarantine, however, was electric.  It was student-run, for
one thing, which removed much of the resentment we all felt towards teachers
and staff for trying to fake
pop
culture.  The people running it were not much better; carbon copies
of their older counterparts, intent on creating a dance the way it was
supposed
to be, but at least we weren't expected to dance to "Let's Go to the
Hop."  It also helped that it was a chance to put death out of mind
for a night and just try to be teenagers, with all its own terror and triumph.

The theme was "There Will
Be Another Sun," the title of a very popular early-post-Outbreak tune,
which had turned into a soothing, sophomoric phrase people said to each other
in times of stress.  Cherubic yellow suns adorned every wall. 
Banners and streamers transformed the basketball court from a sports arena (and
recent killing zone) into a dreamy world of extremely flammable tissue paper
and cardboard.  The Banner Society had, quite literally, outdone
themselves.  I didn't regret my ban; that all looked like a lot of
work.  But luckily, shorthanded as they were, they embraced Dave in a
heartbeat.

After all, everyone loved
Dave.

It doesn't make sense to cut
out three hundred eight-inch
cardboard
suns and give one to every attendee, they said.