Walking Ghost Phase (10 page)

Still, everything fit perfectly. Too perfectly. Emily wrapped her arms around her chest and shuddered. Once the doctors finished the procedure that saved her life, a little man with a crooked nose and devious grin probably ran out of a dark closet and took her measurements. He laughed maniacally as he
placed the sizing tape around her vulnerable body.

“
Eat, then come back and sleep,” Margaret said.

“
Excuse me?”

“
Sleep all you can.” Margaret rolled over, sliding the cover off her face.

Emily cringed. Chocolate-colored bruises stained the thin girl
's left eye and bony cheeks. “Oh my God, what happened?”

“
Sim training. Sleep all you can.” She pulled the cover over her head again.

Emily, dazed by the sight of the girl
's damaged face, backed through the door and into the hall. There, she touched her own cheeks, feeling the warmth of flesh against her fingers. A few doors down, two girls stepped out of a room. Both were crying, and both fiddled with their long hair. Emily sighed, remembering her next destination.

She followed the signs for about ten minutes until she approached a familiar but depressing sight. A line. At the front of it, soldiers fed through one door
, while a second door spit out something barely resembling those who had entered a few minutes earlier. The guys who exited teased one another and slid their fingers across fresh stubble. The girls, however, kept their pasty heads lowered, scurrying past the soldiers who waited their turn to make the same humble march. As Emily waited, her fidgeting hands worked their way up to her blond hair, and other girls down the line did the same with their own hair. It was if they were saying goodbye to part of themselves.

Then a
strange hand dug into Emily's arm, and her heart slapped against her chest. “Hey, you,” the person said.

Emily looked at the girl who no longer displayed waist-length hair or a sarcastic smile.
“Sarah.” Emily hugged her.

Sarah rubbed
her scalp, which scratched like a sheet of sandpaper smoothing down a piece of wood. “It only took me eight years to grow. Maybe I can join a monastery when I get out.”

“
I'm so sorry.”

“
I see why they put their shampoo budget into soap. My roommate built the Pyramids of Egypt with hers.”

“
How is she?”

“
My roommate? She wasn't there. Yours?”

“
Yeah.” Emily leaned close to Sarah's ear. “I don't think we need to worry about our hair too much. She had bruises all over her face.”

“
Did the MPs catch the sicko who did it?”

“
She said the Sim training caused it.”

The blood in Sarah
's cheeks drained into her neck. “If we get in the same group, promise we'll stick together.”

Someone nudged Emily forward.
“Promise,” she shouted back.

Emily entered the mirrorless room, where more than fifty barbers waded in knee-high piles of brown, black, blond and red hair. As they circled their victims, the sound of faint sobs managed to overcome the unending buzz of electric clippers. Near the back, a tattooed man waved at her, and she approached him, his smile friendly but impersonal. Emily sat
, and the barber spun the chair. A bald-headed girl across from her cried while staring at the chunk of red hair in her cupped hands.

“
Now, little lady,” the barber said, “what can I do for you?” The shears roared to life in a spine-tingling hum.

“
Take care of my split ends?”
Sarah would be proud.

“
Not a problem.” The barber pressed the blade against Emily's scalp. His shears gurgled and sputtered, digging a clean path across her head as he sifted the waterfall of hair between his fingers and let it float before her eyes. Hundreds if not thousands of dollars spent on shampoos and conditioners, visits to her favorite stylist, years of patience, but a single man wiped away any trace of that aspect of her life in a span of thirty seconds. “Split ends taken care of,” the barber said. “That'll be forty dollars.” He laughed, shoved her in the back and ejected her from his chair. “Next.”

Emily took the walk of shame past the dreadful eyes of waiting soldiers. Once she managed to stop scratching her scalp, she found a sign to the mess hall and fell in behind a group of baldheads. After arriving, she stopped near the door. Rectangular tables and benches covered almost every inch of space in the stadium-sized mess hall. MPs patrolled the outer walls while a group of officers kept a watchful eye from a distant, lonely table. Emily scanned the crowd for any of the four people she knew.
Bald head
, she thought.
Bald head. Another bald head. Another bald head. Wait! Never mind, it's just a bald head.

“
Stop standing around,” a deep voice behind her said. Someone bumped her forward, and she stumbled into the line of waiting-to-be-fed soldiers.

Emily grabbed silverware and a plastic cup, placed them on the metal tray and slid it across the rails. The server, a hunched over, wrinkled woman whose hairnet
held the strands of gray flat against her head, jabbed an oversized spoon into the only entrée on the menu—white goo. Emily's stomach growled, begging for anything to end the pain of a three-day fast, until she examined the pile of mush on her tray. The goo spread out from the effects of gravity, and the stench of vomit crawled up her nostrils. “Enjoy,” the woman said, and cackled.

Emily slouched as she
moved past full tables of bruised soldiers, their swollen eyes focusing only on their plates. They whispered amongst one another, discussing things Emily didn't understand: command turns, insertion, the darkness. She tried to listen, but the farther she walked, the more their voices faded beneath a growing laughter. She didn't notice she had left their territory until the sound became too much to ignore. Sitting at the tables around her now, raucous soldiers, who could have been models with their impeccable skin, hooted, yelled and pointed at the bruise-faced soldiers. She walked faster.

Then a sting ripped across the back of her thigh, and a deafening pop echoed through the mess hall. She thrust her hips forward, squealing loud enough to grab the attention of everyone near her. The pile of slop slid
from one side of the tray to the other as she tried to keep it from splattering on the floor. “Yeah, you shake it, girl,” someone shouted. Soldiers cawed with laughter.

She steadied the plate, lowered her head and continued toward the backmost table. This place was obviously meant for her, the soldiers neither bruised nor standing out with obnoxious behavior. The new recruits had a little kids
' table.

Before she sat,
a tray clanged down beside her. “Ma'am,” Damon said.

She pressed her arms against her body, fighting the urge to hug him.
“Hey, Damon.”

“
Looks good, doesn't it?” He sat and shoved a forkful of mush into his mouth.

“
Maybe I
could
throw up,” she whispered to herself.

“
What's that?”

“
Nothing.” Emily claimed the seat beside him and scooped up a chunk of the goo. She dangled it in front of her face. A thin strand of the slime crept off the side of her fork as if it tried to slither for safety. She wouldn't have been surprised if it did.

“
It's good,” Damon said.

When she put the fork to her mouth, t
he substance oozed over her lips and wrapped around her tongue. Soon the oatmeal-textured paste absorbed every drop of moisture in her mouth. She grabbed her cup of water, slamming it against her mouth and almost breaking her teeth. Half the cup later, the aftertaste of pure salt faded. An MP near the back of the mess hall was watching her. He tapped the baton hanging from his belt and then made a scooping motion toward his smiling mouth. Emily forced down three more bites.

Meanwhile, a few soldiers
at her table whispered to one another and stole glances of the ass-slapping group. As they shared their information, a grapevine of turning heads made its way toward her. The whispers reached to Damon, but he simply nodded before continuing to slurp at the goo.

“
What did he say?” Emily asked.

Damon swallowed a mouthful without chewing. His throat bulged.
“Nothing important. Most of it was wrong anyway.”

“
Can you at least fill me in?”

“
He told me why the soldiers on the other side of the room don't have bruises.”

“
And?”

“
He said they were officers, but he's wrong.” Damon glanced over his shoulder. “They're the defenders.”

“
So why don't they have bruises like everyone else?”

Damon stared at Emily
's half-eaten plate. “Defenders are trained soldiers. They also get the higher ground and better weapons.”

“
Yeah, so?”

“
Did you ever read anything about military tactics?”

“
I must have missed that class in
high school
. Shit, Damon, I can't even remember high school. Explain it to me like I'm a child.”

“
We are children to them.”

Emily glared at him.

“Okay,” he said. “Like a child.” Four soldiers leaned over the table, obviously wanting to hear for themselves. “We're the mice. We want cheese. The cheese is on the top of a mountain that's nearly impossible to climb. The defenders—they're a rabid cat. Not only is the cat on top of the mountain, it's also sitting on the cheese.”

“
So we don't stand a chance?”

“
Nope.”

A bruised guy limped by the table with an obvious grimace of pain on his face. Emily
's grip on the fork seemed nonexistent, and it slipped through her fingers, clanged against the tray and bounced into the pile of mush.

Damon eyed her leftovers again.
“Do you mind?”

“
Go ahead. I'm not feeling so hot. Think the MPs will mind if I go back to my room?”

“
Take your tray,” Damon said as he scooped off the last pile of slop. “Never let them see you leave without it.”

“
Oh, thanks.” Emily did just what he said.

During the walk to her room, Emily passed more bleak and damaged faces. Not a single higher-up patrolled the hallways, and no one made sure she entered the correct, unlocked door. Margaret was lying in bed, awake now, as she read a stack of letters under the desk lamp light. Two deep cheek bruises, chocolate in color, mirrored the brown of her eyes, and her lips were swollen from her nostrils to chin. Emily bit her own lip, holding in the gasp.

Margaret dropped the letters into her lap. “Hi.”

Emily extended her hand.
“You must be Margaret. I'm Emily.”

She shook Emily
's hand with an almost unnoticeable grip. “It's Maggie.”

“
Oh. My friends call me Em.” Emily glanced at her bag of old clothes.
Who calls me Em?

“
Nice to finally meet you, Em.”

Emily
's thoughts broke, and she turned back to the girl. “You aren't sleeping?”

Maggie looked at
the digital wall clock—18:47. “My Sim starts soon. But don't worry. You'll get used to a few hours of sleep. After orientation, that's all you get.”

“
They work us that hard?”

She shook her head.
“We lose that bad.”

“
Yeah, I heard about our horrid chances.”

“
You might go a week before you actually see who kills you. I know I did.”

“
How long have you been here?” Emily asked.

“
Twenty days.” Maggie's eyes shifted to the ceiling. “Or is it twenty-one? Yeah, it must be twenty-one. Not all of us got a three-month reprieve in our deals like your group. I guess they wanted to space out the arrivals.” When she smiled, a white crack in her lips began trickling with blood.

“
Anything you can tell me about the Sim? Any pointers?”
Is there anything that will keep me from looking like you?

“
Stay with your group, and you might live longer than five minutes.” She tucked her letters inside a drawer below her bed. “You'd better get some sleep. Five A.M. is wake up. At least you have orientation. That's a vacation compared to what comes after.” She turned off the light and vanished into the hallway.

Emily slipped off the boots and, still wearing the fatigues, lay in her bed. She stared at the dark ceiling, afraid of the approaching sleep. A stuffed bear could no longer tell her the nightmares weren
't real.