Cages (26 page)

"I tried to be
good," I said.

"You have a dog's virtue,
then.  You don't know what good looks like."

"This is better?"
All around me I could feel death dripping physics-free from the walls, like the
blood of the famous astronauts who had killed themselves up in the space
shuttle rather than come back during the Outbreak. 
Every
elementary schooler learned their names: Commander Perry Sullivan and
Lieutenant Debbie Dill. 
"Killing
all the people around us?  Mindless animals?"

Ben shrugged. 
"Maybe there is no universal good.  Maybe the
re's
just good for me, and good for everyone
else."  He plunged his claws, no longer styrofoam, into my gut. 
They sank like a ladle into wet spaghetti. 
His eyes were blazing red.  "This is
very, very good for me."

I tried to say something, but
the claws tore through my insides like earthworms, burrowing.
 
Reaching for my brain.
 

"You were so close,
Sam.  I could smell it on you."

Brian's breath was hot and
fetid on my cheek.  "Wake up, you little shit."

I started, pushing him away,
seeing Ben for a brief flash in his face.  Everything sounded like a towel
was wrapped around my head.  "What.... I thought the Beast killed
you."

Brian's face was bloody and as
he sat up I noticed his left arm hanging limp.  "Claws didn't
penetrate the vest.  Your little stunt with the grenade was what did all
this."

"Grenade?"  I
sat up, pain slamming into my head as blood rushed downward.  "Oh,
shit, is the Beast –”

"It's dead." 
Brian grunted as he worked himself upright and onto his feet.  "You
did that, at least.  I'm damn lucky I was thrown clear.  Of course,
you blew the fuck out of Johnson.  Bet he wishes he hadn't been carrying
the grenade launcher."

I looked down the hall. 
The dripping death I had dreamed of was made real here.  Blood running
yellow with pus trickled from craters in the walls amid the tatters of
motivational posters.  The Beast's head lay flaccid at the end of the shell
of his chest to one side of the hall, like a dropped snakeskin.  There was
a mass of red guts and blood further down I assumed to be Johnson. 
My
favorite water fountain, drenched in blood and turned on its side, spraying
water from ruptured hoses. 
"What
are you going to do with me?"

"It's just not
right."  Brian pulled a pistol from his vest.  "Johnson,
four Beasts kills on his record, done in by a kid who hadn't even turned. 
What fucking idiot gives a hostage a grenade? 
Don't worry, Sammy.  I'm not going to kill you
yet.  Got reports of at least three more of those goddamned things in
here.  Front doors aren't far now, and it looks like you're all the bait I
got left. "

Had Remi gotten away in the fight?  I tried to hide a grin as I
imagined him scrambling away on his one good leg as the grenade blew, full of
revenge for Jeremy Emmett and Ben Willian and Sharon Norse and Trisha Davenport
and the Panthers #25.  The cruelty of Brian and Johnson had rekindled the
old Remi and I nearly chuckled, thinking about what he would do to Brian once
he figured out a way to free me. 

I realized when I saw the body that I had lionized Remi just as much as
he had me.  He had thought me a vengeful hero, here to free his brothers
and sisters from oppression.  I had made of him an irrepressible magician,
confident that his guile and mischief could overcome anything the staid and
age-befuddled guards could devise.  Now I knew what those Bolivian rebels
had felt when Che Guevara died in front of their eyes.  Under the bravado
and the brilliance, Remi was just a boy.  Now he was a dead boy. 

H
is thin body
had been
trampled by one of the Beast's
talons.  His entire chest was flattened, four holes piercing him at his
stomach and neck. 
Except for the viscera pushed out to the sides
of his thin frame, he could have been a cartoon character after an unfortunate
steamroller accident.  L
anguage
eluded me.  I wasn't furious, I wasn't heartbroken.  I wasn't even
sad.  If there's a word for epic unfairness, I could have found a good use
for it then.  I tried to read Remi's last look - relief at an end to his
suffering, maybe, or a futile determination to live, but all I saw was pain.

"Sorry you never got to
be a Beast," I told him as I stood up on shaky legs.  I had a piece
of shrapnel burned into my right forearm, but it felt numb.  Prodding it
with my finger did nothing but well up more blood.  Probably in shock, I
thought, thinking back to my mother's anatomy lessons.  All anyone had
ever done in my life had been to prepare me for th
is
moment, and
it
had done me no good.

"Get a move on,"
Brian said, panting, presumably from the pain of his shattered arm. 
"The blast might bring them."  

The hallways seemed even darker now, the flash from the grenade having
overpowered my eyes.  They refused to adjust.  The only thing I could
pick out was the hungry red eyes of the security cameras as I walked, Brian
crouched down behind me for cover.  Conyers was watching, I was certain of
that.  Would he just let Brian kill me?  Well, why not?  He
himself had already tried.  He’d killed Dave trying.  He’d obviously
set the Beasts loose on the student body by opening all the doors, cutting most
of the power.  A feast for his fallen children.  I was embarrassed to
realize that I still expected to hear his unsteady voice crackle from Brian’s
radio, telling him to set me free.  If he did that, I would obey
him.  I would go back to my cell and wait, all alone, until they told me
class was in session again.  I’d figure out a way to rationalize all the
death, all the murder, as necessary evils.  Done, somehow, to protect me.

We passed the Bell without incident, now only a slab a tad bit darker
than the rest of the wall.  I nearly threw up as I kicked what remained of
Susan in the dark.  Brian had no sympathy, punching me roughly in the back
as I dry heaved.  It was an eternity walking in darkness.  I was
starting to think I was really blind, that the grenade had done some permanent
damage, when Brian yanked hard on my collar.

“What the hell?”  He whispered, breathing hard into my ear. 
“What in the hell could have done that?”

“Done what?” I said, panic in my throat.  Was there a Beast near?

To my surprise Brian wrenched off the night vision glasses and jammed
them on my head, stabbing me roughly in the ears.  The world exploded into
a brilliant pulse of green.  No longer blind, I still wasn’t sure what I
was seeing.  “Isn’t that where the stairs should be?”

“Yeah.” Brian took the glasses back.  “Something tripped the
containment.”

Tripped it… and ripped right through it.  While I’d had the glasses
the enormity of what Brian found had been clear.  The stairwells were
choked with anti-Beast and containment devices.  They could be activated
to seal the stairs in lethal sections, with automated killing devices at the
ready, machine guns hidden in spring-loaded murder holes, flamethrowers,
pneumatic spikes.  Dave had told us a harrowing story about when he and
his girlfriend at the time, Jane Sonne, had accidentally been trapped in a
containment cell during the four pm class intermission.  He said the walls
had zipped closed like the wings of a hummingbird.  Jane had her ponytail
caught in the wall behind them, just shy of taking her head off.  It had
taken a watchful guard in the Security Office sprinting to hit the abort button
to stop the flamethrower that had already been deployed from the right
wall.  The tip had already been lit, yellow and pulsing with anticipation
of the upcoming roast.  Dave blamed Jane’s decision to break up with him
on that incident. 

The containment walls were torn like paper all the way up the
stairs.  Three inches of solid steel, five times over.  There was
char on the walls, shattered spikes, dozens of shell casings…but no Beast.

"Good God," Brian
gasped.  "What in hell are these things?  No...no Beast could do
that."
 I had no answer for him.
  “Conyers knew this was coming, you
know.”

“Shut up.”

“He knew something was happening.  Beasts turning at accelerated
rates.  Faster, more often.  The head of the guards even said it. 
But he did nothing.”

“I’m not… not like that shithead Biff,” Brian snarled.  “I’m not
going to be your buddy.  And I’m not…going to put up with your
bullshit.”  He pressed the pistol against my back and barked an order to
move. 

“Have you thought about what’s happening here?”

Brian was quiet for about five steps, then answered: “Yes.”

“Well, shouldn’t you be trying to put down some more Beasts instead of
getting out?”

"
Fuck no. 
I could take being ripped apart, you
know," Brian said, talking nervously.  "Or blown up, like
Johnson.  Over quick.  But that's not what you do to us, is it? 
You suck the life out of us and just leave a vicious
, withered
husk.
  A man should be able
to live… with more dignity at the end.
" 

I looked at him.
 
He had lost his helmet and for the first time I got a clear look in the
phosphorescence of the glasses.
 
He was in his
early forties
,
but the years had worn him hard, his b
rown
hair streaked with
a light
gray. 
His face was lined in cruel
webs from his nose. 
Brian had
the look of a man who had just now noticed that he wasn't as spry as he had
been the day before.

"You don't see any
difference, do you?  Between us and the Beasts?"

"No...difference,"
Brian breathed.

 “I killed a guard you know.  In the courtyard.  He was
Bitten.”

 “There but for the grace of God.  Tell me when you bag a Beast
without a grenade and I’ll be impressed.”
 

Finally we reached the
iron-clad trophy case
that marked the end of the Social Studies hall and
the beginning of the main corridor, where I had first entered the
Quarantine.  We had passed several staircases, but no more tripped
containment cells
. 
Light
was streaming in from the barred windows above the case.  The moon must
have finally parted the clouds.  The ability to see, however dimly, was an
enormous relief. 
I wondered if
Dave had any trophies in th
at case, or had show dogs like Alan stolen
all the glory?
  For the first
time I wondered what happened to Alan, and all the other people I had known in
the Quarantine.
  Alan I hoped had been taken out early, on the
theory that perhaps the Beasts had an appetite for stupidity.  Maybe Kenny
Stoppard was old enough to be walking around brainless from a bite by
now.  The thought was almost cheering.
  I tried not to think how the scales of fairness would
tumble
if Alan had lived and Dave died.

"God," Brian said
numbly, looking down the barricaded corridor to the front double doors. 
They were swung wide open, wind rattling the chains that still hung from one
door handle.  It was night outside.  We could feel the co
ld
air dust in the dirt from the
no-man's-land between the brick and the fence.  "Someone let them
out.  Jesus Christ."

"Conyers," I spat,
unsure how I should feel.  Had he done it to save the rest of the
students?  No way, I thought.  He did it to save his own ass, so he
could sneak out later once the building was clear.
  That was lower
than I thought even Conyers would go. For all I knew, maybe he was already
gone.

Brian wheezed, clutching his
chest with the hand that held the pistol
, as if willing the bullets into
his heart
. 
"Impossible.... Conyers....can't open the front doors.... only the
S
ecurity
O
ffice, or the master key.  Johnson stole a
copy from the state...supervisor.... he made me one....only me...only me...."

I stepped away from him, to
the other side of one of the concrete barricades
corrugating the hall
. 
Brian tried to follow but
he walked straight into the barrier.  He couldn’t see it.  His one
good arm hugged the concrete desperately. 
"You're Bitten."

"Didn't get me. 
Didn't make it through."

"You're Bitten," I
repeated.

He sank down to one
knee.  "Fuck," he said wearily.  Then he looked up, his
eyes intense with hate.  His hair was already beginning to fall out. 
White flooding his eyes.  S
allowness sinking his cheeks
like two windless sails
.  "Don't think that means you get
away.  You don't fucking get away."

"Why not?"

"
You’re worse than
them…. you’re a Beast…every inch a Beast…. can’t let you go…just cause you look
like…any other kid.  Capping you… is what I do…
"

I reached across the barrier
and grabbed at Brian's gun.  He was too slow, the life leaving his joints
faster and faster now, but he wouldn't let go.  The rest of his body went
limp, but he kept hold of the pistol, squeezing off two rounds past my
face.  I heaved as much as I could, nearly as weak as he, and
levered
him over the barricade.
  The
shrapnel in my arm ripped out as one of his buckles caught it and I
screamed.  My vision telescoped, but I kept pulling until his face slammed
into the wooden floor.
  Blood
frothed from his mouth as his jaw ground teeth deep into his gums.  I felt
sure his plan had been to shoot himself after taking care of me, but at some
point he must have decided that I needed to die more than he did, because he
used his last concious breath trying to kill me.
His wrist bent at
impossible angles as he tried to get just one good shot, his pistol a harpoon
and I his smug white whale.