After: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia (7 page)

I close my eyes. “A monster. Creature of the night.”

“Have you ever thought,” he asks, teeth scraping lightly against skin, “that you’re
the lucky one? You can live out on the edge, past the compound, in the darkness. You’re
free.”

“Hunted,” I tell him. “Alone. Shunned. Hated.”

“I can’t sleep in the darkness.” His hand has been resting on my hip, and now his
fingers curl around the bone, pulling me against him until there’s nothing separating
us. Above, I hear the crash of the monsters, my blood spiking.

Tears begin to edge my eyes. James holding me makes me remember what it was like to
mean something to someone else. “I belonged to something before.” My voice quavers
as I tell him the lie that I wish were truth. “They’ve been searching for me. Asking
me back. No one else has done that. No one from before ever cared.”

His hand slips up along my ribs, skimming the edge of my bra until he cups my throat,
nails trailing lightly over my jaw. “I came looking for you, Vail.”

There’s this moment as they pour down the stairs when I think about calling out to
them that I am here. That they have come for me at last and that I’ve been waiting.

Except they’ve known where I am for weeks. Months. And they have never cared.

I stare at the gun in my hand and the two boxes on the table shoved against the door.
Bullets or cure-tranqs. That’s the question. Death or salvation.

Except that I can’t figure out which is which. It seems worse to damn them to this
life, of loneliness and exile. It’s taking a part of who they are from them, even
if that part is the monster.

But to kill them, the finality of it, seems to make my fingers tremble. All the times
I’ve taken lives without a thought other than hunger and now such cold ambivalence
fails me.

I’ve always wondered if the one who cured me felt righteous. If he left his compound
on a Tuesday morning with his pack full of cure-tranqs and thought, Today I will save
the world, and instead he found me.

If he could see me now, hesitating, would he think it was worth it? All the monsters’
dens he waded into, all the risks he took, just to preserve us.

Thinking he was saving the world when really he was just giving us greater access
to destruction. Letting us loose to be despised and cast aside in a manner that absolves
humanity of its guilt.

As monsters we were pitiable—it was beyond our control. As Rehabilitated we are just
like everyone else except in every way that matters, which means we could be discarded
without a second thought. Alive but only allowed to live among the fringes.

I stare at how James trembles, his chin dimpled with terror, and I wonder if that’s
what’s left of us. We uphold the weak and push down the survivors. He was right: the
living sequester themselves in compounds while the rest of us roam the world.

One day, we could own the world if we devised it to be so.

There’s a moment when I think about opening the door and letting them have him. Making
him one of us. Giving him the ultimate freedom.

The most perfect kind of love.

And then the first creature strips the wood from the frame and they are upon us, and
all I can do is shoot, over and over again, as the bodes pile around me. For a moment
there is screaming, a painful kind of rage that goes beyond the normal wails in the
night. The air fills with the smell of terror and regret, and eventually silence wraps
around us both.

They had names once, before, the creatures spread around me. Then they were pack,
which meant names became useless. And now we are nothing, lesser than. How many of
the bodies lying still at my feet would have chosen this? If they’d had the choice,
what would they have wanted?

Will any of them stand in the darkness of a Sanitation Center and listen to the howls
of those still out there and feel the tug of their blood, calling them to a home that
can never be theirs again?

There were reports shortly after the cure was first administered, of Rehabilitated
trying to reinfect themselves. They wanted to go back, they explained; though it didn’t
take long for them to realize there’s no such thing. Once you’re cured, you’re cured
forever.

The scientists locked them in cells deep in their research labs to study their brain
patterns, to subject them to endless rounds of therapy, trying to understand why anyone
would choose to become a monster.

None of those scientists ever understood what it was to exist in the between of something,
and none of us could ever explain it, so we gave up trying. We learned to keep our
dreams to ourselves, to swallow back the way our mouths watered when we heard the
wail of monsters in the darkness.

We learned to survive alone, with a wanting deeper than hunger.

“I’m sorry.” James kneels behind me, vomit pooling around his knees. “I didn’t know
how fast the darkness would fall under the smoke tonight.”

Absently, I shake my head. One glance of sunlight kills the monsters. We knew the
turning of the earth in a way more intimate than our own blood. It’s what kept us
alive, and it’s unfathomable that the Pure can’t do the same. As if they can’t understand
true fear and mortality.

“Will they be okay?” he asks, eyes trained on the body of a girl wedged in the door
frame, her breath coming in short pants and eyes wavering behind lids.

I have no idea how to answer that question. There are a million definitions of
okay
, and none of them seem to fit this moment. “They’ll send someone from the Sanitation
Center.” And then I remember the fire, and add, “If there’s anyone left. They’ll all
become Rehabilitated. Like me.”

James pushes to his feet and skirts the puddle of spreading vomit. Already the cure’s
finding its way into their systems, fighting against the monster and turning them
back to the closest thing to normal we can decipher.

“Did you know them?” he asks.

I shake my head. As human beings, we were as diverse as the days, but as pack, we
were one. The moment I was shot with the cure, they became strangers.

He must sense the despair threading through me, because he slips his fingers around
my own and holds them tight. “Why did you save me? You could have let them in. Let
them take me and then released them back out to the darkness.”

For a long time I think about his question: whether I’d have loaded the last cure-tranq
into the gun and leveled it at his back as he ran. What it would have been like to
lose him to the pack. At night he’d have streamed past my house with the others, and
just like them, he’d maybe pause to sniff the air at something passing familiar before
pounding on until dawn.

As a human, he knows me in a way he’d never remember as a monster.

“Because you came for me when none of them did.”

T
HERE ARE THREE THINGS
Z
INHLE DECIDES, WHEN SHE IS OLD
enough to understand. The first is that she will never, ever give less than her best
to anything she tries to do. The second is that she will not live in fear. The third,
which is perhaps meaningless, given the first two, and yet comes to define her existence
most powerfully, is this: she will be herself. No matter what.

For however brief a time.

“Have you considered getting pregnant?” her mother blurts one morning, over breakfast.

Zinhle’s father drops his fork, but he recovers and picks it up again quickly. This
is how Zinhle knows that what her mother has said is not a spontaneous burst of insanity.
They have discussed the matter, her parents. They are in agreement. Her father was
just caught off guard by the timing.

But Zinhle, too, has considered the matter in depth. Do they really think she wouldn’t
have? “No,” she says.

Zinhle’s mother is stubborn. This is where Zinhle herself gets the trait. “The Sandersens’
boy—you used to play with him when you were little, remember?—he’s decent. Discreet.
He got three girls pregnant last year, and doesn’t charge much. The babies aren’t
bad-looking. And we’d help you with the raising, of course.” She hesitates, then adds,
with obvious discomfort, “A friend of mine at work—Charlotte, you’ve met her—she says
he’s, ah, he’s not rough or anything, doesn’t try to hurt girls—”

“No,” Zinhle says again, more firmly. She does not raise her voice. Her parents taught
her to be respectful of her elders. She believes respect includes being very, very
clear about some things.

Zinhle’s mother looks at her father, seeking an ally. Her father is a gentle, soft-spoken
man in a family of strong-willed women. Stupid people think he is weak; he isn’t.
He just knows when a battle isn’t worth fighting. So he looks at Zinhle now, and after
a moment he shakes his head. “Let it go,” he says to her mother, and her mother subsides.

They resume breakfast in silence.

Zinhle earns top marks in all her classes. The teachers exclaim over this, her parents
fawn, the school officials nod their heads sagely and try not to too-obviously bask
in her reflected glory. There are articles about her in the papers and on Securenet.
She wins awards.

She hates this. It’s easy to perform well; all she has to do is try. What she wants
is to be
the best
, and this is difficult when she has no real competition. Beating the others doesn’t
mean anything, because they’re not really trying. This leaves Zinhle with no choice
but to compete against herself. Each paper she writes must be more brilliant than
the last. She tries to finish every test faster than she did before. It isn’t the
victory she craves, not exactly; the satisfaction she gains from success is minimal.
Barely worth it. But it’s all she has.

The only times she ever gets in trouble are when she argues with her teachers, because
they’re so often wrong. Infuriatingly, frustratingly
wrong
. In the smallest part of her heart, she concedes that there is a reason for this:
a youth spent striving for mediocrity does not a brilliant adult make. Old habits
are hard to break, old fears are hard to shed, all that. Still—arguing with them,
looking up information and showing it to them to prove their wrongness, becomes her
favorite pastime. She is polite, always, because they expect her to be uncivilized,
and because they are also her elders. But it’s hard. They’re old enough that they
don’t have to worry, damn it; why can’t they at least
try
to be worthy of her effort? She would kill for one good teacher. She is dying for
one good teacher.

In the end, the power struggle, too, is barely worth it. But it is all she has.

“Why do you do it?” asks Mitra, the closest thing she has to a best friend.

Zinhle is sitting on a park bench as Mitra asks this. She is bleeding: a cut on her
forehead, a scrape on one elbow, her lip where she split it on her own teeth. There
is a bruise on her ribs shaped like a shoe print. Mitra dabs at the cut on her forehead
with an antiseptic pad. Zinhle only allows this because she can’t see that one herself.
If she misses any of the blood, and her parents see it, they’ll be upset. Hopefully
the bruises won’t swell.

“I’m not doing anything,” she snaps in reply. “
They
did this, remember?” Samantha and the others, six of them. The last time, there were
only three. She’d managed to fight back then, but not today.

Crazy ugly bitch
, Zinhle remembers Sam ranting. She does not remember the words with complete clarity;
her head had been ringing from a blow at the time.
My dad says we should’ve shoved your family through the Wall with the rest of the
cockroaches. I’m gonna laugh when they take you away.

Six is better than three, at least.

“They wouldn’t if you weren’t…” Mitra trails off, looking anxious. Zinhle has a reputation
at school. Everyone thinks she’s angry all the time, whether she is or not (the fact
that she often
is
, notwithstanding). Mitra knows better, or she should. They’ve known each other for
years. But this is why Zinhle qualifies it whenever she explains their friendship
to others. Mitra is
like
her best friend. A real best friend, she feels certain, would not fear her.

“What?” Zinhle asks. She’s not angry now either, partly because she has come to expect
no better from Mitra, and partly because she hurts too much. “If I wasn’t what, Mit?”

Mitra lowers the pad and looks at her for a long, silent moment. “If you weren’t stupid
as hell.” She seems to be growing angry herself. Zinhle cannot find the strength to
appreciate the irony. “I know you don’t care whether you make valedictorian. But do
you have to make the rest of us look so
bad
?”

One of Zinhle’s teeth is loose. If she can resist the urge to tongue it, it will probably
heal and not die in the socket. Probably. She challenges herself to keep the tooth
without having to visit a dentist.

“Yeah,” she says wearily. “I guess I do.”

When Zinhle earns the highest possible score on the post-graduation placement exam,
Ms. Threnody pulls her aside after class. Zinhle expects the usual praise. The teachers
know their duty, even if they do a half-assed job of it. But Threnody pulls the shade
on the door, and Zinhle realizes something else is in the offing.

“There’s a representative coming to school tomorrow,” Threnody says. “From beyond
the Firewall. I thought you should know.”

For just a moment, Zinhle’s breath catches. Then she remembers Rule 2—she will not
live in fear—and pushes this aside. “What does the representative want?” she asks,
thinking she knows. There can be only one reason for this visit.

“You know what they want.” Threnody looks hard at her. “They
say
they just want to meet you.”

“How do they know about me?” Like most students, she has always assumed that those
beyond the Firewall are notified about each new class only at the point of graduation.
The valedictorian is named then, after all.

“They’ve had full access to the school’s networks since the war.” Threnody grimaces
with a bitterness that Zinhle has never seen in a teacher’s face before. Teachers
are always supposed to be positive about the war and its outcome. “Everyone brags
about the treaty, the treaty. The treaty made sure we kept
critical
networks private, but gave up the noncritical ones. Like a bunch of computers would
give a damn about our money or government memos! Shortsighted fucking bastards.”

Teachers are not supposed to curse, either.

Zinhle decides to test these new open waters between herself and Ms. Threnody. “Why
are you telling me this?”

Threnody looks at her for so long a moment that Zinhle grows uneasy. “I know why you
try so hard,” she says at last. “I’ve heard what people say about you, about, about…people
like you. It’s so stupid. There’s nothing of us left,
nothing
. We’re lying to ourselves every day just to keep it together, and some people want
to keep playing the same games that destroyed us in the first place.…” She falls silent,
and Zinhle is amazed to see that Threnody is shaking. The woman’s fists are even clenched.
She is furious, and it is glorious. For a moment, Zinhle wants to smile and feel warm
at the knowledge that she is not alone.

Then she remembers. The teachers never seem to notice her bruises. They encourage
her because her success protects their favorites, and she is no one’s favorite. If
Ms. Threnody has felt this way all along, why is she only now saying it to Zinhle?
Why has she not done anything, taken some public stand to try and change the situation?

It is so easy to have principles. Far, far harder to live by them.

So Zinhle nods, and does not allow herself to be seduced. “Thanks for telling me.”

Threnody frowns a little at her nonreaction. “What will you do?” she asks.

Zinhle shrugs. As if she would tell, even if she knew.

“I’ll talk to this representative, I guess,” she says, because it’s not as if she
can refuse anyway. They are all slaves these days. The only difference is that Zinhle
refuses to pretend otherwise.