Positive (24 page)

 

CHAPTER 66

A
short maze of chain-­link fence lay beyond the door, a Y-­shaped passage to allow men and women to head to different parts of the camp. I didn't register the fencing at first, though. At first all I saw were the faces.

Hundreds of them. Hundreds of ­people crammed up against that fence, making it shake and ring. Faces of every race, but they all looked the same: thin faces, sallow faces, faces covered in stubble and dirt, eyes staring, hungrily devouring me, hungry for anything new, and if those eyes had been red, it wouldn't have surprised me, they looked so much like zombies—­mouths, mouths hooting and shouting, begging, screaming, some just making noise, random, animal noise, men and women alike, some children though not very many, their heads all shaved, their hair cut back to black dots on their pale scalps, and then I saw their bodies, dressed in rags, dressed in clothes that had been colorful once, or much patched, or they were half naked, so many ­people. A hundred hands squeezed through the gaps in the chain link, a hundred hands and every one of them had a plus sign tattooed on its back.

I couldn't make out a word they were saying. I couldn't understand what was going on. Overhead something moved and I looked up and saw a sort of open catwalk above, a runway on top of the fencing. Two soldiers were up there, hammering on the fencing and shouting something, something I couldn't make out. The howling noise was everywhere; it bounced off the wall behind me and doubled, redoubled in its intensity and its volume. One of the soldiers was shouting for the ­people to get back, I think. He was warning them, warning them to get back or—­or something bad was going to happen, something they didn't want.

And then it happened, because they ignored the soldier. They didn't care, even though they must have known what was coming. Some of them must have seen it before. There was a sharp buzzing sound, like an insect had flown right into my ear, and then all those ­people, all those positives, shrieked as one and jumped back. I shrank away from the fence because I understood, instantly, that it had been electrified, that the soldiers had cleared it by shocking all those ­people away because that was the only thing that would work. I smelled cooking meat and I wanted to vomit—­the shock must have been near lethal intensity. But then a door opened in front of me, on my left, and a soldier was shouting something at me, shouting for me to move forward, so I ran through the door, thinking nothing except—­

—­Kylie had to go through this. Kylie and the other girls must have seen this same exact thing.

—­but I didn't have long to think about them, because the second I was through the door, it slammed shut behind me, all by remote control, and then the ­people surged in around me; they crammed up so close they were writhing against me, their hands grabbing at my clothes, my hair, my belt, and they were dragging me, dragging me into mud and weeds and gravel that scraped the skin off my hands. There were so many of them I couldn't resist as they shoved their hands in my pockets, as they pulled my shirt over my head. Someone took my knife, someone got my shirt, my pants, my underwear. They took everything. They stole everything they could and shoved my face down in the mud, and I was naked and still they held me down; I didn't know what they would do next, would they kill me? I couldn't fight, not with so many bodies on top of me and I couldn't breathe, my mouth and nose were full of mud and someone was screaming in my ear, screaming that they owned me now, but then someone else grabbed that person and threw him to the side, kicked him in the face, and then—­and then—­

And then it was over. Not all at once, but there was less weight on me, and even less. They'd gotten what they came for, and they walked away, squabbling over my things, not caring enough to stay and insult me more. Someone spat in my hair but that was it; in a few seconds they were all gone, and I lay alone in the mud.

Well, not entirely alone.

When I was able to lift my face off the ground, when I could look up, I saw someone standing right in front of me. He was between me and the sun, so I could only make out his silhouette, but he was big. Not as big as Adare had been but maybe taller. His head was shaved, like all the others, but on him it looked intimidating, not pathetic.

“I'm Fedder. You want to work for me?”

I struggled up on my elbows, looked at him querulously. “I've got no idea what you—­”

Fedder kicked me in the face. I felt my nose slide over to one side. The pain was huge, a big, bright noise inside my head, an eruption of terrible smells. It hurt so much I couldn't figure out what I was feeling.

“I'm Fedder,” he said again. “You want to work for me?”

His foot moved back, getting ready to swing again. I thought—­if I grab it, twist it around and overbalance him, knock him down in the mud and—­

It collided with my face before I could even start that line of thought. He was faster than me, and stronger than me, and I was down, naked, hurt, and he was none of those things.

“I'm Fedder,” he said. “You want to work for me?”

What could I do but nod and agree and say yes?

“Second shift. Don't be late,” he said.

And then he kicked me a few more times for emphasis, in the neck and the chest and finally, worst of all, in my ribs, and that was a savage pain, a pain that stole my breath and made me piss myself right there in the mud.

He strode away and left me lying there. It took me a long time to get the strength back, the strength I needed to climb to my feet. A long, long time.

 

CHAPTER 67

I
had no idea what to do next—­no idea what working for Fedder meant, no idea where I was supposed to go for clothes or food or anything else. I tried to approach some of the less wild-­looking ­people around me for help, but they just turned their faces away from me or ran off when I got too close.

I was tired, and I hurt. I stayed near the fence, near the entrance to the camp, because at least it meant I could have a wall at my back. So no one could attack me from behind. I crouched down in the mud and tried not to whimper. I covered my face in my hands. I knew this was a terrible idea. I knew I was just signaling to the ­people around me that I was weak, vulnerable, that they could take advantage of me. So eventually I worked up the willpower to force myself to stop, to stand up straight. To keep my emotions off my face.

And then, naked, shivering, bruised and battered, I started to explore my new world.

The camp was maybe a mile square of mud and gray, scrubby vegetation. The mud bred stinging insects that clustered around me in swarms, no matter how many times I brushed them away. After a while I stopped trying.

Every hundred yards or so a tower of yellow brick rose from the mud, topped with windows and cameras and machine-­gun nests. The camp was surrounded on every side by a twenty-­five-­foot-­high wall, which was topped with barbed wire. There were parapets along the top of that wall, and towers with searchlights, and guardhouses. Catwalks crossed overhead, from the walls to the towers, allowing the soldiers up there to look down into the pit of mud. As far as I could tell there was no way up to that level—­it looked like the soldiers never came down to our level, and we certainly weren't invited up to theirs.

The camp was split right down the middle, with a double line of fencing dividing the halves. If I walked right up to the dividing fence and peered through the chain, I could see into the women's camp, which looked exactly like the men's.

Shelters had been constructed along the walls and around the base of every tower. They were little more than lean-­tos, or roofs of corrugated tin supported by planks of wood. None of them stood more than six or seven feet high, and many looked like you would need to stoop to get inside them. They didn't seem to have any utilities. They might keep off the sun or the rain, but that was about it—­no running water, no electricity, no light or heat. I immediately wondered what the camp did in the cold of winter—­especially since I knew I was going to spend at least one winter there. No solution presented itself.

The only other feature of the camp was its population. All the positives.

The camp, when it was originally built, had clearly been meant to hold thousands of us. If you herded us in until we were standing shoulder to shoulder, maybe ten thousand positives would have fit. Now, though, I could see only a few hundred. The vast majority of them were my age or a little younger—­there were a few older adults, and a scattering of children, but they were rare and they kept mostly out of view. The ones my age sat in groups in the mud, or clustered around the shelters, staring at one another, talking, some just sitting hugging their knees. All of them had shaved heads. All of them looked sickly and pale, even if they clearly spent most of their time out in the sun. I didn't see anyone who wasn't thin as a rail.

Some of the positives at least had an occupation to keep them busy. Some of the bigger shacks proved to actually be stores, where a few shoddy goods could be procured. For a while I watched this basic economy at work. It was entirely based on the barter system—­a customer would come forward and offer a deck of cards or a piece of bread or something less tangible, and the shopkeeper would decide whether it was a fair trade. One store was selling clothes—­old T-­shirts with holes in them, drawstring pants that looked like they were made of paper instead of cloth, dirty bandannas. I had to get something to put on, so I ducked under the store's corrugated tin sign and stepped up to the counter.

“You've got nothing I want,” the positive behind the counter told me. He was dressed in a shirt that was almost clean. He didn't even look at me—­he was too busy sorting through a cardboard box of rags. “Fuck off.”

“Please,” I said. “I can't run around here naked. I'll find some way to pay you back, I—­”

He sighed. “Who's your boss?” he asked. He looked up and must have seen the blank expression on my face. “You're new here, I get it. I saw when you came in. Somebody would have drafted you to their work crew. Who was it?”

“Fedder,” I said, assuming that was what he meant.

“Did he say you should come here? I can give you something on credit, but then he has to pay me back. Fedder's a beast. If it turns out you're lying, he's going to break both our heads. So be clear on this.”

“No, no, it's Fedder,” I stammered. “He said—­he said I worked for him now. And—­and he can't possibly want me running around naked, can he? That'd make him look bad.”

The shopkeeper looked skeptical.

I probably would have walked away empty-­handed if, at that moment, another positive hadn't slouched into the store and stared the shopkeeper down. “It's true, what he says,” the newcomer told him. “You give him something good. Or Fedder's going to come down here and whale on your ass.”

That seemed enough for the shopkeeper. He handed over a hooded sweatshirt and a pair of thin pants without too many holes in the crotch. He didn't have any underwear or shoes, but at least I wasn't naked anymore. By the time I'd finished pulling on the clothes, my benefactor had already ducked out of the shop and started to walk away. I chased after him, intent on at least thanking him.

“I'm Finnegan,” I told him. “You really helped me out back there.”

“Sure.” He looked me up and down. “Luke.” He was tall and thin, but he looked more wiry than sick. His eyes were very narrow, as if he was squinting all the time against the sunlight. He seemed to think about it for a second; then he held out his hand and I shook it. “I'm with Fedder, too. Second shift—­he told you that, right?”

“He did, but I have to admit I have no idea what he was talking about.”

“That's our work shift. You see that factory over there?” He pointed at a row of shacks that looked slightly bigger than the rest of the shelters I'd seen, but just as ramshackle. “That's our place. When the whistle blows, you'd better be there. You get to eat when work is done,” he said. “That's why you want to work for Fedder. If you don't work, you don't eat.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Just be glad you've got a job. Plenty of the ­people here don't. They have to beg for scraps—­or starve.”

“The guards let that happen?”

“The guards only care about one thing: zombies. They're here to watch us and make sure we don't zombie out. Other than that, they don't give a shit.”

“Jesus. This place—­”

“Yeah?”

“It's not exactly what I thought it was going to be.” I didn't know what else to say. I had to express what I was feeling, somehow, but that was the best I could manage.

Luke smirked. “Nobody expected this. Listen, you keep your head down, you do what we tell you to do. Don't ask for anything, don't look at anybody but me and Fedder, and when you look at him, don't try to meet his eye. You'll survive. How long have you got?”

“What?”

He waved insects away from his face. “Until you're cleared.” When I still didn't understand, he nodded patiently. “It can take twenty years for the virus to incubate. You do know that, right?”

“Sure.”

“So how long ago were you exposed?”

“Oh,” I said. I did the math in my head. “I guess I've got eighteen months until I'm, uh, cleared.”

“That's nothing,” he said.

“Doesn't feel like it. What about you?” It was hard to tell under the dirt and stubble, but I guessed Luke was my age, give or take a year.

“You actually want to know, or are you just trying to suck up?”

I frowned. “I don't know. I guess I want to know.”

“I'm in for the full stretch,” he told me. “I'm from Milwaukee—­it's a shit town, but better than this. I spent my whole life being clean. Then one day a whole herd of fucking zombies shows up in our sewer system. Guess who they sent down to take care of it? Second generation, of course. None of the old folks could be bothered. Me and five of my best friends went down there. I was the only one who came back. Not a scratch on me, not a drop of blood anywhere near my mouth. They couldn't take the chance, they said. I had to go away. Just until they were sure. That was a little more than two years ago.”

I could feel my jaw dropping. “You mean . . . ?”

“Seventeen years, nine months, twelve days,” Luke said. “And then I get to go home.”

I could only shake my head in horror and sympathy.

“Fuck it. You show up for work when the whistle goes. You do that, we'll make sure you're okay. You got it?” I had the feeling he was just grateful for somebody new to listen to his tale of woe, though he was too guarded to let it show.

“I—­I do. I'll be there. But there's something I have to do first,” I told him.