Cages (24 page)

I didn’t expect gunfire.

Fire flashed from the darkness
at the end of the hall, muzzle flares at the level of the cement barricades
which
capped
every corridor in the
compound.  We shrieked and fell on our faces, bullets pouring dust from
the sheet rock of the ceiling down on
us like the snow I had just been
wishing for
. 
A
gallon of it
vacuumed
up my nose
, making me wonder
what asbestos tasted like. 
This
tasted like plastic and chalk. 
Remi and I were both shouting, and kept shouting after the gunfire stopped,
pleading that we weren't Beasts or Bitten,  and stop goddamn shooting at
us.

"Get up, kid." 
The guard looming over me was in full armor, blast shield over his face, steel
plating his arms and legs, with a plated jacket on. 
Night vision
LEDs gave the mask a smoky green glow. 
The Black Knight of Dekalb Quarantine #4.  The blunt mouth of his MP5
stared me straight in the eyes. 

I stood shakily, hoping as
much as I could that the man behind that mask was Biff.  If he was, he
wasn't letting on, and he motioned to the guard standing over Remi to get him
up too.  Remi moved too slowly and the guard yanked him to his feet. 
The sword was gone.

"Please," I said
wearily.  "We don't know what to do."

My guard started cackling, the
M
P5
bouncing alarmingly in
his hands.  "Hey Johnson!  They don't know what to do!"

Johnson snorted.  "Must
be that Conyers stopped giving them orders.  Puppets that ain't got no
strings."

My guard pulled his faceplate
up.  My stomach twisted in panic.  It wasn't Biff.  We had been
found by Conyers's personal guards.  "We're in luck!  Who would
have thought out of all the useless little shits in this place we'd run into
two of Conyers's bitches?"

"It is good luck, my
friend."

"Serendipitous, even
.
"

"You," my guard said
harshly, his smug banter broken.  "Get behind those barricades before
I give you another hole to fuck with."

I looked at Remi
. 
His face was pale with blood loss and grit, slack with exhaustion.  He
shrugged.  Not much we could do but obey. 
Behind the cement barriers the guards had set up a
small encampment against the Secure Zone door.  Three extra M
P5
s were stacked in one corner, along with a
small tower of banana clips.  Next to them was a small pile of grenades
and three short samurai swords.  Leaning against the furthermost barricade
was a compact grenade launcher.  A pocked and spiderwebbed window
dominated the right side, its blinds shut closed from the inside.  The
Secure Zone door remained sealed however, though the imposing metal was scarred
with dozens of indentions. 

"You can't get in,"
I realized.

My guard kicked me in the back
of my right knee and I went down hard.  "Oh, we'll get in.  You
bet your ass we'll get in.  Seems like some of your Beast-to-be buddies
got it in their heads to lock themselves in the Secure Zone while the rest of
us were out trying to save their sorry asses.  But that was before you two
cocksuckers came along."  He kicked me so that I fell back on the
floor.  I lay there for a moment, actually appreciating the time off my
feet, no matter what it cost my ribs. 

"Hey, Brian.  This
bitch's been shot."  It was Johnson, looking Remi over. 
The
only real way to tell the guards apart was by one formally addressing the
other. 
"Got a slug in his
leg, looks like."

Brian, my guard, rolled his
eyes.  "Just what we need.  Will he last for what we need him
for?"

"Probably should patch it
up."

"Damn it." 
Brian said, swinging his M
P5
over his shoulder.  "You got a medkit?"

"Remi!" I whispered,
too loud.  "
You okay?
"

He looked
unfocused and
dazed, slumped
against
the nearest barrier.  "I
just
wanted to see you get out of here.
"

Johnson found a medkit among
the armaments scattered on the far wall and threw it to Brian.  It seemed
odd that medkits wouldn't be a standard part of a guard's gear, but when I
thought about it
,
any injury
they were likely to endure was always going to be fatal.  Still, Brian
seemed to know what he was doing.  He cut through Remi's jeans with a
knife pulled from his belt and splashed some alcohol on the wound, which was
still retching blood in jittery spurts.  Remi screamed then, but the two
guards ignored him.  Brian checked the other side of his thigh, where the
bullet and entered and found an exit wound.  Pleased by this, Brian placed
a bandage and wrapped Remi's leg in gauze and bandages, sealing them together
with a metal clip.  "There, good as new.  Maybe a few pints
lighter, but what's blood between friends, eh?"  Brian cackled and
thumped Remi's bandage, making Remi scream again.

I spent Remi's infirmary time
pondering if there was any way to
slip away from the guards
.  Neither Remi nor I stood a chance
at taking either of
them
down,
even if we had been a hundred percent.I had been relegated to the opposite
corner of the encampment, but both Brian and Johnson's attention was on
Remi.  A vague idea of sneaking over to the armament pile and snatching up
an M
P5
to turn on them was
dashed as Brian finished up with the wound quicker than I had thought
possible.  I had wasted all my time plotting.

"What are you going to do
to us?" I asked, rising slowly to my feet.

Johnson grinned. 
"Plan A, first.  Get your asses over to that window."

Remi and I were shoved roughly
against the glass.  I smacked my forehead just hard enough to make me
dizzy.  Brian rapped hard and fast on the window and called "Open up,
you little
shits
!  Got
something to show you."

There was no movement for a
moment, and I knew at that moment that whoever was behind that window didn't
give a shit about us and wasn't about to play the guards' games - which sounded
like a quick way for me to get a bullet in the brain.  But soon one slat
of the blinds bent down and a blue eye could be seen peeking out, widening,
then disappearing as the looker let go.  A full minute passed in silence,
Brian and Johnson looking unconcerned at the lack of response.  Then, so
suddenly as to make me jump, the blinds zipped open.

On the other side of the
bulletproof glass was Guillermo Evans, Casey Cordoza and Kate. 

Guillermo was one of the few
black kids D
ekalb
Quarentine
#4 had enrolled - the Outbreak had not been kind to race relations, especially
in the South, where it was all to
o
easy to make the minority monsterous.  Most blacks had left for the
North to escape lynch mobs that would not have seemed out of place a hundred
years earlier, or fled into the gamble of the Midwest.  Guillermo's mother
was French, though, so he seemed to escape the casual racism that was so easy
to come by now by acting more like his white classmates than the stereotypes
suggested a black boy should.  He had a far easier time of it than his
native counterparts.  I had a class with him, but we had never
talked. 

Casey Cordoza was a short,
dark girl who always bit her nails or teased her hair.  Her hands seemed
forever in search of occupation and they were never still.  Dave had once
confessed to making out with her after a baseball game, but admitted that
things never got much further than kissing.  She was either hot or cold;
at any given moment she might volunteer to help you with your science project
or kick you in the shin for getting too close to her in the cafeteria
line.  She was a year older than me, so I had never had much opportunity
to meet her.

Kate had her Focus Face
on.  It was something I had seen often in Lit class during exams. 
Her eyes went level and cold.  Her mouth tightened into a pink
lozenge.  The muscles in her cheeks often twitched with the strain. 
S
he had an objective and nothing was going
to get in her way.  She and I locked eyes and panic rose high in my
throat.  She wasn't going to open the door.

"You little shits!"
Brian hollered.  "Open the door or I'm going to decorate this fucking
window with the brains of these fine young individuals!"  His M
P5
dug into my temple, its pressure forcing
my right eye closed.

Guillermo said something to
Kate, but she shook her head.  He seemed agitated, gesturing wildly, but
they spoke so low no sound reached us.  Casey put her hand on Guillermo's
arm, looking sad, and said something that shut him up.
  She
threaded her fingers through his.
 
Kate nodded, fished an M
P5
off the floor and pointed it at the window.  Very clearly she shook her
head no.

"You
assholes
!" Brian shrieked.  He fired a
round at the glass.  The sound deafened my right ear and sent tiny shards
of glass burning into my cheek.  Luckily the bullet itself bounced in a different
direction, but when Brian replaced the muzzle against my head I screamed, the
barrel blisteringly hot.  "Swear to God, I'll do both of
them!" 
Sotto voce
, he turned to Johnson.  "What do
you think?"

Johnson shrugged, then
grinned.  "Let's make them make out in front of their friends. 
You like that, you little homos?  Maybe I make you suck his cock, what do
you think?  If that ain't torture enough we cut an ear off.  If that
don't work, we try a thumb.  What do you think?"

Brian barked a tight laugh. 
"Sounds like a Plan B to me."  He raised his voice: "One
last chance!  You want these two dead?  Or worse?"

Guillermo looked panicked
again, but this time Kate took action.  She stepped close to the window,
so that our faces were no more than six inches apart. 
All I saw
were her eyes, as dead and uncaring as the courtyard Bitten’s had been,
before she pulled the cord, letting the
blinds fall back down, shielding them from whatever horrors the guards might
concoct.

"Shit!" Brian pulled
the M
P5
away from my
face.  "Your buddies sure are cold."

"Don't know why we
expected anything else," Johnson agreed.  "Clearly Plan A is a
bust, and Plan B's a waste of time with nobody looking.  Plan C?"

"Fuck.  Yeah, Plan
C."

"What's Plan C?" I
croaked.

Brian grimaced.  "We
got keys to the front door.  Plan C is that we pack up our shit and fight
tooth and nail to get there."

I hissed as my fingers touched
the perfectly round burn on my head.  "What about us?"

Johnson laughed. 
"You're bait, chum."

Remi moaned and slid to the
floor under the window, burying his head in his hands.
 "Can you at least give Remi some food?  He's lost a lot of
blood."

Brian raised an eyebrow. 
"You think food will help getting shot?"

"They give you
cookies
at blood drives."

Johnson shrugged. 
"Kid's got a point."

Brian rummaged through a black
backpack by the grenade launcher and tossed Remi some grain bars.  Remi
fumbled at catching them, moving so slowly and awkwardly that if it had been
possible for a teenager I might have pegged him as a Bitten.  Brian said
"You got ten minutes to chow down, then we're heading out."  He
grabbed a few bars for himself and passed two to Johnson.  Remi pressed
one into my hand, but I pushed it back. 

Johnson settled next to Brian,
sitting on the closest concrete barrier.  He took off half a grain bar in
one bite and nodded towards us.  "Look at 'em.  It's a good
thing for you boys that you're Conyers's bitches.  You got strings to pull
to make you dance.  Some of them others...whew, might as well be animals,
you know?  But you two are nice and manageable, ain't you?"
 Remi looked up, his dark eyes stark against his pale face. 
"Conyers killed
m
y
friend.  Next time I see that son of a bitch I'm gonna rip his throat
out."

Brian and Johnson cackled
together, as if Remi were no more than an angry puppy.  "You do
that," Johnson snorted.  "You do that.  Say, Remi? 
You got any more of that meth you cooked up last year?  That was some
quality shit."

"It sold very well,"
Brian said, mocking a businessman's voice.  "We project next year's
returns to grow fifteen percent.  Of course, given the current slaughter
of the consumer base, those projections are only loose estimates."

Remi shook his head and chewed
silently on his food.

"Why are you like
this?" I asked.  "It's supposed to be your job to protect
us."

Brian sneered, kneeling down
to our level.  "You got it wrong, buddy.  Our job is to kill
you.  Kill every last one of you mother fucking animal assholes who ever
got a black thought lodged in your doe-eyed head.  It's a school for
chimps.  One day, without fail, those chimps stop throwing feces and grow
up into eight hundred fucking pound gorillas.  You're each of you little
bombs ticking away.  Don't matter if you go off or not.  What do you
call an unexploded bomb, Johnson?"