An Apple for the Creature

But the real people weren’t allowed to kill the unborn babies, because of the amendment to the Constitution: inside their moms, the babies all had rights. And maybe the babies would have something else, called higher cognitive functions, that their moms didn’t have anymore, because viruses don’t always work the same on unborn babies.

So there was a big argument about what was going to happen to the babies, and nobody could decide. Inside the cleared zone, in California, there were so many different groups of people with so many different ideas, it looked like it might all fall apart and the real people would kill each other and finish what the Hungries started. They couldn’t risk doing anything that might make one group of people get mad with the other groups of people.

So they made a compromise. The babies were cut out of their mommies. If they survived, and they did have those function things, then they’d be raised, and educated, and looked after, and protected, until one of two things happened: either someone came up with a cure, or the children reached the age of eighteen.

If there was a cure, then the children would be cured.

If there wasn’t . . .

“Here endeth the lesson,” says Sergeant.

He comes into Melanie’s line of sight, right behind Miss Mailer, and Miss Mailer snatches her hand away from Melanie’s hair. She ducks her head so Melanie can’t see her face.

“She goes back now,” Sergeant says.

“Right.” Miss Mailer’s voice is very small.

“And you go on a charge.”

“Right.”

“And maybe you lose your job. Because every rule we got, you just broke.”

Miss Mailer brings her head up again. Her eyes are wet with tears. “Fuck you, Eddie,” she says.

She walks out of Melanie’s line of sight, very quickly. Melanie wants to call her back, wants to say something to make her stay: I love you, Miss Mailer. I’ll be a warrior for you, and save you. But she can’t say anything, and then Sergeant’s people come. Sergeant’s there, too. “Look at you,” he says to Melanie. “Fucking face all screwed up like a tragedy mask. Like you’ve got fucking feelings.”

But nothing that Sergeant says and nothing that Sergeant does can take away the memory of that touch.

When she’s wheeled into her cell, and Sergeant stands by with his gun as the straps are unfastened one by one, Melanie looks him in the eye. “You won’t get fair winds, whatever you do,” she tells him. “No matter how many children you kill, the goddess Artemis won’t help you.”

Sergeant stares at her, and something happens in his face. It’s like he’s surprised, and then he’s scared, and then he’s angry. Sergeant’s people can see it, too, and one of them takes a step toward him with her hand halfway up like she’s going to touch his arm.

“Sergeant Robertson!” she says.

He pulls back from her, and then he makes a gesture with the gun. “We’re done here,” he says.

“She’s still strapped in,” says the other one of Sergeant’s people.

“Too bad,” says Sergeant. He throws the door open and waits for them to move, looking at one of them and then the other until they give up and leave Melanie where she is and go out through the door.

“Fair winds, kid,” Sergeant says.

So Melanie has to spend the night in her chair, still strapped up tight apart from her head and her left arm. And it’s way too uncomfortable to sleep, even if she leans her head sideways, because there’s a big pipe that runs down the wall right there and she can’t get into a position that doesn’t hurt her.

But then, because of the pipe, something else happens. Melanie starts to hear voices, and they seem to be coming right out of the wall. Only they’re not: they’re coming down the pipe, somehow, from another part of the building. Melanie recognizes Sergeant’s voice, but not any of the others.

“Fence went down in Michigan,” Sergeant says. “Twenty-mile stretch, Clayton said. Hungries are pushing west, and probably south, too. How long you think it’ll be before they cut us off?”

“Clayton’s full of shit,” a second voice says, but with an anxious edge. “You think they’d have left us here, if that was gonna happen? They’d have evacuated the base.”

“Fuck if they would!” This is Sergeant again. “They care more about these little plague rats than they do about us. If they’d have done it right, we didn’t even need to be here. All they had to do was to put every last one of the little bastards in a barn and throw one fucking daisy cutter in there. No more worries.”

It gets real quiet for a while after that, like no one can think of anything to say. “I thought they found a cure,” a third voice says, but he’s shouted down by a lot of voices all at the same time. “That’s bullshit.” “Dream on, man!” “Onliest cure for them fuckin’ skull-faces is in this here clip, and I got enough for all.”

“They did, though,” the third voice persists. “They isolated the virus. At that lab in Houston. And then they built something that’ll kill it. Something that’ll fit in a hypo. They call it a phage.”