Delusions of the Dead Read online

  I sometimes saw Killer skulking in the shadows watching us like he was jealous or something. Then he would kind of melt away into dusky corners and I would wonder if I had really seen him or if it was the dark playing tricks on my eyes. It was weird if I did see him because instead of wanting to scoop him up and pet him I would feel a cold shiver that made me want to get away from him.

  Bu still, even though it felt like Killer was stalking me, things were good. They stayed that way right through the summer; but the good feelings went away as soon as the leaves started to fall.

  HOUSTON

  Damn cat. I knew there was a reason Naked didn’t want Killer around. We thought it was because Killer had taken to biting us once we lived under the dome, but it was because Naked knew something the rest of us didn’t: Killer was a carrier of killers.

  When the Parasites started to invade last year, we noticed something right away; they could infect humans, but they couldn’t infect animals. At first we wondered if it was because it was more trouble than it was worth to learn how to coordinate more than two legs or work a pair of wings. Scientists could never come up with a plausible theory, but after a while we didn’t care. We were just grateful that animals seemed to be immune. We couldn’t imagine trying to survive in a world where every bird in the sky, every mouse in the field, every beloved pet could attack and infect you at any given moment. We knew the death toll would have been so much higher if the animals turned zombie on us. Is there anywhere habitable where you could hide from the animal kingdom?

  But something must have happened to Killer between the refugee center and the dome, something that allowed him to live and carry the Parasites within him. The first few weeks after we were rescued were fine. Killer seemed his usual affectionate self with KC and anyone else who offered a warm lap and a treat. But then the constant low growl that came from Naked every time Killer was around grew into a full-on bark, and then the biting began. It’s like something that had stayed dormant in Killer’s brain was awakened with the warmth of summer and set him on the attack.

  We didn’t know this at first, because nothing seemed to happen to us when we were bitten. Killer took to living outdoors, and he would then bite unsuspecting people who would stop to pet him. This was aggravating, but not serious until the day he bit someone who hadn’t received the rabies vaccine.

  It was a little old lady in our complex known as Francine, and she lived on her own. It would have been nice if she was like our friend from the refugee center Dorothy: we could have used a resident granny for all the orphaned kids around here. But she was crabby and bitter and full of so many petty complaints you didn’t want to start a conversation with her, ever. The residents did their best to ignore her until the day they saw her staggering around outside with dead eyes. It was a big shock; no one had ever seen the Infected dead inside the compound. It really messed with our sense of security. The army guys were good about it though; they made sure all the kids were cleared out of the area before they shot her in the head.

  The town exploded with fear. They blew up the Internet with paranoia and speculation.

  “How could she be infected? It was a sunny day and no rain has ever penetrated the dome!”

  “She couldn’t have been bitten by an RB, nothing can make it past the cameras and guards and walls!”

  “We’re supposed to be safe here! Now I’m too scared to leave my apartment!”

  I didn’t want to admit it, but I was scared too. They found a bite on Francine’s hand, and it was definitely from a cat. There was only one cat in the compound, so it had to be Killer. That stupid cat bit my family and friends, but we were all inoculated. We felt safe at first, thinking that the vaccine protected us from the Parasites, but then that little girl bit an unvaccinated boy and he turned RB in a millisecond. The army found out that Killer had bitten her as well. She told them that “The kitty-cat done bit me, and all I wanted to do was pet him!” So does this mean we now carry sleeping Parasites in our system? It must, because those who rejected the vaccine separated from us like oil from water, and the government soon followed up with Health and Safety policies that turned societal segregation into law. People were moved to create residences that were either filled with the inoculated or the uninoculated, and schools and transport were split down the same lines. Stores began to post notices “Vaccinated May Not Enter,” and more of those signs started popping up all over the place: over restaurants and restrooms, water fountains and gyms, libraries and lounges. I could tell from the Internet and news that it was the same the world over. Although we were the only town who had an infected cat that went around biting everyone, the inoculated across the country were presumed guilty of infection whether they had Parasites or not.

  So instead of a manhunt we have a cat-hunt going on in our town, or operation “Kill the Killer” as it’s known. Problem is, Killer is small and nimble and easily hides within the shadows. This has kept a lot of the vaccine-free trapped in their homes, fearful of the feline that can come out of nowhere and bite the unwary.

  The creepy thing is, Killer still stalks us. I know this because every now and then, Naked lifts her head and starts to growl low in her throat. On the rare occasions we can see him, Naked goes into a barking frenzy. The last time this happened, I saw Killer at our classroom window, looking in on us. Of course, he was gone before the soldiers arrived to take him out, but it left me wondering what he wanted with us. We were already infected. What more could we do for him?

  KC

  I really missed Ghost.

  I wish I hadn’t gone flying off the handle the last time we fought. He made me so mad when he tried to get us to leave the safety of the dome. I mean seriously, after all we had to go through to get there? Now I know how Nadia felt when I asked her to leave the sanctuary of the Refugee Center and camp out on the cold roof. I was just as stubborn as she was when Ghost first suggested we leave.

  “Why can’t you see what’s happening here? Can’t you see the writing on the wall?” he said, exasperated.

  “I can see that we’re safe and dry and haven’t had to run from a corpse for months. We have clean water and all the food we need. And I can see that we’re together.”

  “But we’re living under a law of segregation! We can’t even drink out of the same drinking fountains as the others! Don’t you find this offensive?”

  I did find it offensive, but I wasn’t going to admit that to Ghost. He would have used those feelings to strengthen his argument of why we had to leave, so I shot back with, “It’s a health and safety thing! If there are Parasites in our saliva, we’ll infect the next person who drinks from that fountain!”

  “Are you trying to tell me you put your mouth right over the spout when you drink out of a water fountain?” Ghost’s right eyebrow was raised at me while he said this.

  “No, of course not! But you know little kids like Jenny do. C’mon, you’ve seen it for yourself.”

  Ghost sighed because he was defeated on this one point, but he pushed on. “Haven’t you seen how the others look at us? We’re the same people we were before we were inoculated, but now they treat us like we’re diseased.”

  “They’ll get over it,” I said with the confidence that I lacked inside. “They just need time to realize we’re not dangerous. That biting incident at the Kindergarten was a fluke.”

  “I don’t think so. There’s fear in their eyes, and fear makes people go to extremes.”

  “This is America!” I said with more force than I intended. Ghost was scaring me with this kind of talk. “They’re not going to lynch us! We got over that mentality decades ago!”

  “I think Mr. Cromwell would disagree with you on that point,” Ghost said softly. “And this is not the America you knew before the invasion.”

  I couldn’t deny he was right, but I was prepared to put up with this version of the US of A as long as I could have a comfortable life with those I loved. It’s something I learned those two months in the Mclean High School Refugee Center; there’s a price to pay for security, and I was willing to pay it if it meant I could be with my friends and family without dealing with the dead. I pushed back with, “Don’t you remember how bad things were out there? Do you not remember living with the constant threat of danger? Don’t you remember that body-numbing experience of extreme cold? Do you not remember the gnawing stab of hunger, the burning pain of thirst? Oh wait, you don’t, because when you left the refugee center we still had electricity and food and water and heat! You had what, two days of travel with a soldier’s seventy-two-hour kit on your back? By the time you ran out of food and water, you were here being fawned over by your adoring public.” I immediately regretted my words as Ghost winced at my biting accusation.

  “You know I didn’t want to leave you. They tried to kill me when they locked me out on that rooftop and they would have killed me the moment I found a way back inside. Look at what they did to my look-alike!”

  Now it was my turn to wince as I remembered the soldiers shooting the face off the thing we thought was Ghost. Ghost’s tone climbed in intensity when he reminded me, “I ran to the roof because they said you were there. I just want to get us—all of us—to a safe place, but all you can think about are your creature comforts!” I felt a sharp pang of guilt at this, and then Ghost delivered this humiliating dig at my conscience: “You’re being very immature and selfish about this.”

  That really hurt. I didn’t stop to think that it hurt because it was true, I just let my anger wash over me and lashed out. “No, it’s you who’s being selfish! You just don’t like living under the watchful eye of a small town! You said yourself it’s like being on exhibit in a zoo. Well guess what, if we’re in a zoo, it’s because we’re an endangered species. It’s not ideal, but it’s the only way the threatened can thrive. But hey, if you want to go and live out your Grizzly Adams fantasy, then do it! Just don’t drag my family into your deranged survival game. We got along without you before, and we can survive without you again.”

  Ghost mumbled, “Sorry I contaminated your perfect world with my reality.”

  And that is how most of our arguments went until the day I looked up and Ghost was gone.

  HOUSTON

  Summer ended and we reluctantly went back to school. It beat living in a school, but it was still school. I couldn’t help but wish my celebrity status got me a free pass from institutionalized education. Didn’t they used to give honorary doctorates to people who were famous enough?

  Online school was reserved for those who were not inoculated; the ones who stayed home out of fear of running into Killer….or us. It was also for those kids who couldn’t afford to live under the dome and were still holed up in their fortified homes. There were also people who were scattered all over the country who chose not to live in a covered community. America had turned into isolated outposts of civilization, like the small towns in Maine that Stephen King wrote about where everyone knows everyone else’s business. Just thinking about those kids outside the dome living in splendid isolation made me nostalgic for the time we used to live in our own home, with our own space; a place where people didn’t mob us and ask painful questions about how we survived the Mclean High School Refugee Center Siege.

  I wouldn’t have minded being back in school if Nemesis were there with me. She reunited with her family after our cohabitation with death, and they lived in another domed city several miles away. I could only talk to her on Skype or Facebook or text her. It was cool that I could do that after going three months without the Internet and a working cellphone, but the signal kept going down or the screen would go blank and I didn’t get to message her as much as I would have liked to. Besides, I wanted to see Nemesis instead of just talking to her. She was a lot prettier in person.

  My consolation prize in all that was that I was back in Mr. Cromwell’s class. One of his emotionally charged lessons was on how we’d soon no longer have anything to fear from either the dead that walked the earth or the kind of rain that created the living dead in the first place. He began his lecture with a question. “Why do scientists think the rain will be pure again?”

  A timid voice from the back of the room hesitantly asked, “Please, sir, could you not use that term?”

  “What term?” Mr. Cromwell asked, puzzled.

  Margaret, the class know-it-all stated, “He’s talking about the word ‘Pure’. It’s what the vaccine-free are calling themselves.”

  Mr. Cromwell was clearly cross at this. His lips pressed into a thin line as he thought of what to say next. “How do you know?” he asked.

  “It’s all over the internet,” Margaret said matter-of-factly. “They consider themselves free of Parasites, so their blood is pure.”

  “Oh for heaven’s sake…” Mr. Cromwell spluttered in anger. “What the…why the…who do they think they are?” He balled his fists up at his sides in an effort to control himself. We got used to this treatment fairly quickly, but I guess most people are too chicken to say it to someone as tall and commanding as Mr. Cromwell. It’s not that big a deal to me because, well, it’s just words. Bullying is bullying; the same crap, different day, new location. Besides, where are we going to go if we decide not to put up with it anymore? I’m not going out there again.

  The timid voice from the back popped up again. “Please, sir, I don’t want to talk about this. I’m really sorry I brought this up. Can we just go on with the lesson?”

  Mr. Cromwell looked like he did not want to go on with the lesson, he wanted to discuss the injustice of discrimination and being presumed guilty before being proved innocent, but Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong aka Margaret changed the subject back to the original lecture. “We know the rain will be parasite-free again because something similar has happened before.”

  “What?” squeaked the tall lanky kid next to me. “This has happened before? How could we forget about having Parasites in our rain?”

  “I don’t think Margaret is referring to Parasites,” Mr. Cromwell said with a sigh. “She’s referring to something else in the atmosphere—ash.”

  “That’s right,” said Margaret smugly. “It was called ‘The Year Without A Summer’”

  “Well I’ve never heard of it,” said Mr. Tall and Lanky.

  “Well that’s probably because it happened in 1816. And because our education system still sucks. And because you don’t read enough.”

  “That’s enough, Margaret,” Mr. Cromwell admonished. She may have been a wenchbag, but at least she got us off the subject of Inoculated vs. Purebloods. I decided to keep moving things in the right direction by asking, “What do they think caused The Year Without A Summer?”

  “The clue was in Mr. Cromwell’s earlier reference to ash you….” Mr. Cromwell loudly cleared his throat and fixed Margaret with a scathing look, so the insult meant for me stopped before it reached her lips. She plowed on into her lecture, happy to have the floor and everyone’s attention. “Mount Tambora in Indonesia exploded in April of 1815. It was a category seven on the Volcano Explosivity Index.”

  “Is that high?”

  “Let me put it this way,” Margaret said in her most condescending voice. “When Mount Saint Helens blew in 1980, it was only a category five.”

  Tall And Lanky was suddenly interested in this. He pulled out his phone and started searching for information. “Says here that people four thousand kilometers away could hear it, and its ash spread over a thousand kilometers away.” He continued to tap away at his screen, dredging up more and more information. “It made red, brown, and yellow snow fall in Hungary and Italy! It also says that twelve thousand people died immediately from things like lava flows, tsunamis, and rocks that flew through the sky.”

  “Am I supposed to be impressed by that number?” Margaret sniffed. She didn’t like it when someone stole her spotlight. “We must have lost a hundred times that amount on the Lost Day and…Hey! You’re looking at your phone! You’re going online! You’re cheating! Mr. Cromwell, tell him that’s cheating.”

  “Hey, I’m doing you all a favor. Do you really want to listen to her for the rest of the class?”

  No, no we didn’t. Margaret’s glare went back and forth between Mr. Cromwell and the cheating device, but the phone won that visual tennis match when Mr. Cromwell said “I don’t care where you get your knowledge from right now as long as it’s accurate and you remember it.”

  Margaret looked like she was about to have a conniption fit over that while the rest of us lunged for our phones. Soon we were looking at the same information as everyone else, more or less. “Don’t worry, Mr. Cromwell,” I said. “If it concerns us, we’ll remember it.”

  Margaret flopped back in her chair, angry in her defeat. She folded her arms tightly over her chest. “You are all idiots,” she said with finality.

  “Well class, now that you’re all plugged in to the facts, can someone tell me, what was the knock-on effect of so much ash in the air?”

  I wasn’t looking at my phone but I was the first person to speak up. “It created a barrier that blocked out the sun.”

  Margaret jumped back in the game with a rolling torrent of facts. “The lack of sunlight led to unseasonably cold temperatures which led to a lack of vegetation which led to famine. Rivers froze to the point that boats could no longer deliver what little sustenance there was left, the price of food skyrocketed so they couldn’t afford to feed task animals like horses. That meant they couldn’t rely on that form of transport either and…”

  I knew Margaret was talking in a steady stream to stop anyone else from interrupting, but it didn’t keep Tall and Lanky from butting in with, “Staple foods like corn and other grains exploded in price. Oats alone were eight times more expensive than the year before. Most people sold off their livestock by the fall of 1816 and there were stories of people so desperate, they made bread out of straw and sawdust.”