Cages (17 page)

"We're giving them too
much leeway," Conyers said.  "Maybe Mr. Crafty needs some more
company in the Bell." 

Largo was quiet a
moment.  "Two more Beast attacks in the last two months, Dan. 
Something is wrong here.  We can't keep pretending there isn't."

"There's nothing
wrong.  It's just a busy year.  We just have to do what we can to
keep the situation under control."

"I can't keep doing
this.  I have to take a horse's dose of pills as it is just to sleep at
night.  How are you sleeping?"

"Are you joking,
Largo?  I sleep just fine." 

"I'm sorry, Dan. 
I'm quitting.  I can't just sit here and watch it happen again."

There was a loud bang, like
Conyers had slammed his hand into the desk.  "Well, go then, you
coward.  But if I catch you trying to scaremonger to my other teachers
I'll have you led out in chains."

"I've got to tell people
what's happening!  Washington has to know - "

"You think telling
Washington
is the right thing to do?  Jesus, Largo!  They'll tear the Quarantine
apart, come in here and just take the whole mess away from me.  They'll
screw everything up, everything we worked all these years to achieve!"

Largo opened Conyers's
door.  "I'm sorry.  I can't let you bully me into silence any
more.  We used to be friends, you remember, in the early days?  After
the Outbreak?  Don't you remember what it was like?  How could you
ever chance going through that again?"

"Just go.  I don't
want to see you in my Quarantine again."

"It's their Quarantine,
Dan.  We just run it for them."  Largo paused.  "It
was after you lost your arm, wasn't it, when this stopped being about
them
. 
I swear to God, after all these years...maybe you didn't cut it off fast
enough.  Maybe you're just another one of the walking dead and nobody
noticed it til now."

"Get the fuck out. 
And I swear, if I see a single BPI agent sniffing around this place after you
leave, I'm going to come to your house and take a baseball bat to your
skull."

A long sigh. 
"Goodbye, Dan."

I turned the radio off. 
My ten minutes were up.

James's friend was named Matt
Takahashi.  He was tall and thin, with a mop of stringly black hair that
fell over his eyes.  He wore baggy jeans and a camoflague jacket. He moved
like James did; small steps, eyes constantly flicking back and forth.  He
arrived on a black bicycle and from the sweat that dripped from his forhead, he
had biked a long way.

"Matt was my roommate in
Quarantine," James said, pounding Matt on the back.  "He's only
in town a little while, so I wanted him to come by and meet my little
brother."

Matt shook my hand
solemnly.  "Hello, Sam."

I shook his hand, but only
warily.  I had rarely seen James so enthused to be with someone other than
me.  I didn't trust him.  Still, it was clear that having Matt there
was good for James.
 
He
laughed more and would sometime leap off the couch as they recalled old
stories, more animated than I had seen him in a year.

"I was hiding from John
Greene in the cafeteria - you remember this, Matt?  I don't even remember
what John as so pissed off about..."

Matt wagged his finger. 
"You popped all the footballs Friday afternoon.  John was second
string, and it was gonna be his big chance to quarterback now that Arnold
Gallup was in Solitary, but the game had to be called due to lack of
equipment."

James chortled. 
"That's it, right.  Well, I thought it was only fair, seeing as I was
the one who got Arnold Gallup thrown in Solitary in the first place.  I
giveth and I taketh away."

"Your brother was
fearless!" Matt said, pointing to James.  "Absolutely
fearless.  Screw Beasts, James was in more danger from the jocks than
anything."

"Yeah, yeah," James
waved the compliment away with obvious pride.  "Anyway, I'm hiding
behind the lunch counter and John comes into the cafeteria.  And I'm
thinking that there's no way I'm getting out of this - he's gonna murder me -
and how tragic that would have been, right?  A promising young athlete's
hopes derailed by a tragic case of murder."

Matt grinned.  "You
always did think of others first."

"Then this guy right here
–” James grabbed Matt by the shoulder, "this guy comes running into the
cafeteria yelling 'Hey John, your girlfriend's making out with Nelson Stewart
behind the gym!'"

Matt clapped his hands. 
"Jeez, that's right, I did.  Did he really buy that?"

"I dunno.  All I
know is he took off out of there like a bat out of hell and you saved my
life."  James shook his head, smiling at the memory. 
"God!  I can't believe that was, what?  Six years ago now?"

I just watched them,
enthralled.  This was a side of James I hadn't seen.  I saw then
where the old James had come from, how he had bucked our parents' authority,
how he had managed to inspire me in spite of his inability to leave the
house.  I was listening to old soldiers tell battle stories.

"I have to tell you, Sam,
there was another reason I asked Matt over," James said, looking hard into
my eyes.  "In no time at all, you're gonna be the one in
Quarantine.  I want to make sure you don't make the same mistakes we did. 
I want to make sure you can own that place, not spend five years in a box
scared of your own shadow like everyone else in there.  We're gonna teach
you how to make it.  Are you with me, Sam?"

The door to the Bell creaked
open exactly three months after my incarceration.  I had taken to ignoring
the Solitary Teacher when he or she came to lecture - what further punishment
could they level at me? - but this time, the door was opening
off-schedule.  Life in the Bell was even more about routine than the open
Quarantine, and this had broken it.  I leaped to my feet, ignoring the
stiffness in my joints that had grown from being able to move only a few feet
for the last quarter of a year, and looked out my porthole.  Was there a
new student being locked up?

In walked Conyers.

I have to admit, I had stopped
expecting him.  In the early days I felt sure he would come into the Bell
regularly just to gloat at me, but I had not seen nor heard a thing from him
since the day of the dance.  Seeing him now, unnacompanied by his guards,
was a shock.  He had the same white shirt, same red tie that he had the
first day I met him.

"What do you want?"
I called to him.

Conyers looked puzzled. 
"I just came to figure out why you haven't left yet.
”
 

I lifted my hands up. "I
don't have a clue what you're talking about."

Conyers gestured towards
me.  "Your door - and the main Bell door - has been unlocked for two
weeks.  You've been free to go all this time.  Why did you stick
around?"

"That's bullshit," I
yelled.  "Those doors have been locked the entire time."

"Really?" 
Conyers shrugged.  "You mean you stopped trying to get out?  Two
weeks
’
time and you never
even tried?  Seems that little Sam likes it in his box." 

I slammed my hand against the
hatch handle and the metal door swung open smoothly.  I stood there,
exposed to the main Bell air for the first time in three months, glaring at
Conyers.  "If I had known they were open I would have left."

"Play tough all you want,
kid.  I can't blame you.  I'd be scared to come out too." 
Conyers laughed and turned, walking to the door.  "Hope you had a
pleasant stay."

I fumed, staring at the Bell
door, which remained cracked.  Would he slam it shut as I neared it? 
Was this just another way for him to humiliate me?  Well, if it was, so be
it.  I wasn't about to pass up a chance to get out of this hellhole. 
I shoved everything I owned into my bag, torn from its dusty resting place
under the futon, and stepped out of my cell.  I thought about walking over
to Susan's cell, telling her that everything would be all right and that I
wouldn't forget abut her, but I had a feeling neither was true, so instead I
just walked past and pushed open the Bell door. 

The Social Studies hall hit me
like a brick.  Too much noise, too much light! 
There were no
windows facing outward, but t
he
afternoon burned in through the barred
glass on the courtyard side
and my eyes couldn't dilate fast enough,
filling the hall with little more than grainy shadows.  Suddenly some one
shoved me, hard, and I went down, my bag spilling off my shoulder, my legs weak
with disuse. 

A shadow leaned over me. 
"Better get to your after school group, Sam.  Mr. Jarvis has been
missing you."

I struggled to my feet as the
shadows started to focus into clearer shapes, students on their way to
intramurals or after-school activities.  I walked away from Conyers, too
weak and disoriented to try to engage him now.  I couldn't walk ten feet
without someone running into me, slamming me against the wall with a rough shoulder,
or stepping on my foot.  I didn't protest; maybe I was walking too slowly,
or veering onto the wrong side of the hall, or maybe they were just
assholes.  I just wanted to get to Mr. Jarvis's class and sit down.

I stumbled into the classroom
just as the bell rang that sealed all the doors, the metal snapping closed
behind me.  For a moment I panicked - it was just like being in the Bell
again, locked in!  But after taking a second to breathe I found an empty
desk and slid into it, shedding my bag with a greatful sigh. 

"You look like shit,
Crafty." 

I turned my head.  Ah,
Kate!  After my performance at Homecoming and my time as a POW, I thought
I might have a shot at her.  "Hey Kate."

Kate glared at me and slid her
desk six inches away from mine.  "Smell like shit, too."

I pawed at my shirt, still
bleary.  It was probably true; we had been allowed no showers in the Bell
,
just a bucket, a bar of soap and a towel you had to figure out a way to use in
the copper sink
.  I realized it
was probably a mistake to not just go back to my dorm cell; I should have
emerged clean and triumphant, untouched by the worst Conyers could throw at
me.  But I hadn't, and I had to work with that.  "Sorry.  I
came here straight from the Bell.  So...wait, where's Jarvis?  What
are we reading?"

"He's out today,"
one of the other kids volunteered.  "And we're not reading a goddamn
thing."

I looked around.  Seven
kids in the Literary Society, at they were all staring at me, lips curled,
glaring.  Naked hate.  "What?  What's going on here?  I
get out of the Bell after pulling one over on Conyers and you all turn on
me?"

Yet another kid snorted. 
"Jeez, he doesn't know."

"What don't I know?"
I demanded.  The kids just laughed harder.  I pounded my fist on the
desk, trying to drown out their laughter.  "Tell me!"

Kate stood, rummaged through
her bag, and slammed a thin bound booklet on my desk.  "Here's what
you don't know.  You're pathetic."

I picked up the booklet
numbly.  The cover featured my registration photo, with the title
emblazoned large above it: 
The Tao of Sam Crafty.

Ben Willian was not a
natural-born wallflower.

Some kids are just shy. 
They hide their eyes from others' stares, shut themselves in their bedrooms, or
find a way to shuffle out of a class if their name is called - whether in
praise or anger, it doesn't matter.  Ben Willian had not begun life like
this.  When he was much younger, Ben had been a very outgoing kid. 
He played Little League; maybe in the same league as Dave, neither could
remember for sure.  He got invited to parties.  He got straight As
and was proud of it.  All that changed in the summer of his seventh
birthday.

The car that killed his
parents was going seventy-two miles an hour when it struck their old
Toyota.  It sheared the top of the little import and sliced both his mom
and dad apart at the waist.  They had been on the way to pick him up after
Little League, but they had few friends and no one who knew what their schedule
was, so little Ben Willian sat on the tin bleachers by the practice field alone
until dawn, when a concerned state trooper asked him his name and phoned it
in. 

Ben had met his uncle Raymond
only twice, both of these occasions on very unpleasant Christmases, but they stood
together as the caksets were lowered into the ground as if they were really
family.  He was a thin man who wore an ugly tweed jacket on chilly days
and never combed his mousy brown hair.  That Christmas awkwardness
followed them as they walked to Raymond's large SUV, Ben dying to say something
but Raymond's blank slate face impossible to address.  Raymond turned to
Ben with a withering look.  "You're going to live with me now. 
I'll be honest with you.  I don't know anything about raising
children.  You and I will probably not like each other.  But your
mother was my sister and I have at least some fond memories of our childhood,
so I'll do my best.  Understand?"