detention really isn’t that significant.”
I laugh, and he turns to me. We’re at the top of my driveway, where he always leaves me, and he slips his fingers around mine. “I wish you were there.” His voice is soft, earnest.
There’s an intensity to his eyes, in the stillness, that makes everything inside me unfurl. “You could go again, you know. Those first few weeks, everyone was just trying to figure it all out. There’s a rhythm to it now—you wouldn’t stand out as much anymore.”
I shouldn’t stand out at all. That’s the thing. According to the government, there’s supposed to be no difference between me and James, except after that law there’s a footnote as long as a football field about how the Infected are to be Recovered and what we must do to prove our ongoing Rehabilitation.
They’re even allowed to kill us under certain circumstances. If they suspect the cure will fail, legally they can do whatever they want to us.
I tilt my head, wishing there were a way to explain to James just how very different we are. “You know, before the pandemic, if you had a male doctor, once you put on the gown, he wasn’t allowed to be in a room alone with you. They always called in a nurse just in case.”
He frowns. “In case of what?”
“I don’t know.” I shrug. “It was just one of those rules I always thought was sort of unnecessary. But either way, they don’t do that anymore with us. The doctor just comes in when he wants. No nurse.”
It’s clear James is confused. “Maybe they’re short-staffed at the center.” And then he smiles as if about to make a joke. “Population isn’t exactly what it used to be.”
I try to mimic his grin, but all I can think about is the desperation in the scientist’s eyes as he gripped his fingers against my pulse, counting out every heartbeat as if it could tell him a secret about the end of the world.
I think it surprised everyone that the cure actually worked. Sure, lab testing seemed positive, but it’s different to load up tens of thousands of cure-tranq rounds and go off hunting monsters. Suddenly they had piles of people on their hands, and they rushed to set up the Sanitation Centers to take us all in.
It kept us in one location in case everything failed. Then they could just firebomb the place and be done with us.
They contained us for as long as they could in those centers, but space became an issue, and finally they opened the gate and let us trickle out into the world.
The world went nuts. Enraged communities prohibited Rehabilitated from settling there, vowed to shoot on sight anyone Infected or suspected of having been Infected.
Every time one of us committed a crime, it was because of what we once were. That we shouldn’t be saved. They didn’t want to see that we were just like them: some of us good, some of us bad.
A few political parties rose up, rumbling about colonizing an island with us, making sterilization part of the cure. Some suggested flat-out murdering us, but of course they never called it that, because we were less than animals. It would be
And then one of the self-governing communities by the capital seat dragged a Rehabilitated down to the town square and charged him with murder. He demanded proof; he’d been a model citizen since being Recovered, he claimed. They pointed to the bar code on the back of his ear. He’d been a monster, and the only way a monster could survive was by killing.
The case made it into what was left of the court system, and he was found guilty. The defense took it to one of the remaining four circuits, and the ruling was overturned. It was headed to the Supreme Court, the defense claiming insanity, when the President stepped in and put an end to it.
We were pardoned for any crime committed before we became rehabilitated.
No one ever tried to bring charges against the survivors for what they did.
Her body floats in the pool. She’s on her back, arms trailing out by her sides. She’d sunk at first, right after giving up the fight for air, but then sometime later, when I was asleep, she bobbed to the surface and has been drifting through the stagnant water ever since.
I am so so lonely that I consider attempting school in the morning.
In the middle of the night I feel something thundering through me, waking me up in the darkness as though I’d been hit. My breath is ragged, dreams of sharp teeth and succulent skin still clinging to the edges of my vision.
My ears ring, and as they clear I hear the clacking sort of howling that’s as familiar to me as my own heartbeat. I push from bed and stumble into the living room, pressing against the cold glass window.
The horizon glows fire, and at first I think it’s the sunrise, but then black clouds billow through the brightness. I watch it for a while, the sky undulating as goose bumps spread over my arms and up my neck.
I’m pretty sure I know exactly what just happened, but even so, I reach around the corner and flick on the television. There are only two channels, one fuzzier than the other, but the news confirms what I expected.
An explosion at the Sanitation Center. Clearly on purpose. A purification group has already claimed credit. The entire place ablaze, likely no survivors. The fire engineered to start tearing through the woods, where the monsters sometimes hole up at night.
I watch the inferno boiling in the distance, knowing how dry the season’s been and how thirsty the trees are for flame. I’m sure the town will find a way to stop it before it reaches the city proper. But I doubt they’ll do much to keep my little mountain unharmed.
Why save a mountain populated by nothing but monsters?
Even though I’d promised James I’d give it another try, I don’t bother with school that next morning. There’s already the taste of smoke in the air and the television chirps with news of the uncontrolled fire. I sit in the sunroom and watch the clouds billow in the distance, hazing out the sun. Below me, the dead girl bobs in the pool, her skin liquid white and loose, sloughing off to drift across the surface.
There’s an uneasiness rippling through me, as if I can sense the distress of the monsters hidden in the woods beyond. Every now and again I’ll hear the report of a gunshot. Today, there are no such things as hunting restrictions.
I used to have hobbies. I must have before the pandemic, but it’s hard to remember now what they were. I pace restlessly through the house, trying to piece together how I once spent my time.
Most of it was dominated by school, class piled upon class. Bags stuffed with bloated books, lockers smelling like week-old bananas and new-binder plastic. I once took piano lessons, but now my nails are so thick that even when I chew them short they still clack against the keys.
Everything is a reminder of what I was.
My eyes drift closed. We were wretched beasts, but still we felt a sense of community. There were only so many buildings that refused the sunlight and were safe to hide inside. Somehow we’d find our way to them, and we’d find each other in the dark.
When we hunted, we were sleek and beautiful in our unity, calling to each other as we ran, no such thing as an obstacle in the night.
In our own sick way, we all meant something to one another. Each one lost, indistinguishable, to the pack.
Smoke chokes back the light, sending the day skittering into evening faster than usual. The sun’s a diffuse ball through the haze, burning the sky a sick orange, when I hear a knock on the door.
I stand in the middle of the living room, listening to the slicing silence that follows. There’s a knock again, urgent and pounding, and then I hear his voice.
James calling out, “Vail? You in there?”
A fleeting sensation of joy passes through me at the sound of him. When I throw open the door, he’s standing with his hands shoved in his pockets, shoulders curved in a bit.
We stare at each other, me awkwardly trying to smile, until he breaks first. “I was worried,” he explains.
