Cages (6 page)

He traveled for two solid
weeks before he saw his first Bitten.

"He had been clawing at
the butcher's locker at a supermarket I went in," Remi recalled. 
"I don't know why, there can't have been any meat in there, but maybe he
remembered that there was supposed to be.  His hands were gone to the
wrist-bones. I was terrified at first, just bolted out of there, but after I
got out to the sidewalk I noticed he wasn't chasing me.  So I went back
in.  He was kinda humping his way across the floor towards me - his legs
had rotted away.  And then, finally, I got it."

"Got what?" I asked
dumbly, but Dave quickly shushed me.

"This is what all the
adults are afraid of.  Not Beasts.  Not us.  They're afraid of
turning into that thing I saw in the supermarket.  Brainless, moaning,
their bodies falling apart and their teeth rotting, just shuffling along,
craving the sweet taste of life.  Have you seen a Beast in person,
Sam?"

I shook my head.

"They're terrifying, but
not the way the Bitten was terrifying.  Even though I've seen a Beast kill
kids I know, I can't help put look at them and think - my God, look at that
power.  That energy!  That...potency!"  Remi's eyes were
burning, his voice echoing loudly in the concrete dorm room.

"Remi thinks Beasts are a
natural stage of evolution," Dave explained.

"Of course they
are!"  Remi grinned, pumping his fist wildly.  "Do you know
why
Homo Habilis
died and
Homo Sapiens
went on to rule the
earth?  Because
Homo Sapiens
killed the
Habilis
off, or
hunted better, or were just better survivors.  And here we have a clearly
superior evolutionary species being hunted and killed by the weaker species. 
It's unnatural."

Ben mumbled something, but
Remi ignored him. 

"So...you
want
to
be a Beast?"  I asked.

Remi snapped his
fingers.  "Absolutely.  I've been thinking, meditating,
preparing my mind so that when the change comes I'll retain my faculties. 
I'll escape from this
dump
. 
Then we'll see which is the superior species!"

Remi had killed the Bitten
himself with a tire iron from the auto repair aisle, but his unbridled hatred
for adults did not really manifest until he reached the populated zones. 
No one had told him about Quarantine.  The only saving grace in this
prison, he claimed, was that they had a fairly good chemistry class.  And
he proposed putting it to work.

He wanted to build a dirty
bomb.

Of all my classes I enjoyed
Mr. Jarvis's best, in spite of the indignity of that first day.  He was
old, a bit past middle age, but he taught like I imagined someone would have
taught before the Outbreak.  Sometimes he would get so excited about the
things he was saying that he would be all grins and actually engage the
students at their level, coming close and sitting down eye-to-eye like none of
the other professors dared do.  He was a small man who enjoyed fulfilling
old professorial stereotypes about tweed jackets and glasses, but there was
often a self-mocking twinkle in his eye that said
I think we've got 'em
fooled
.  I thought there was more to him than a shuffling Quarantine
teacher. 

Literature had always been my
favorite subject; of all my mother's sins, forcing me to read far beyond my
level was the one I most easily forgave.  I think she was desperate to see
me into adulthood and tried to force me there as fast as she could, before
Quarantine ended m
e early
. 
So while Mr. Jarvis taught things I had read long ago, I hadn't looked at these
books and stories the way he was making me look at them.  From what my
mother said, literature was about pattern recognition more than anything else,
and Jarvis seemed to ignore the obvious connections my mother had made. 
Instead,
he focused on emotional impact and a shallow web of allusions that revealed
deeper meaning. 
One day I
stayed after class and told him as much.

"You're a bright kid,
Sam," Jarvis said.  "But from what you've told me, your mother
was a deconstructionist.  Scum of the earth, deconstructionists."

Did he just call my mother
scum
? I
wondered
for a second, then remembered that I
wouldn't really have cared if he did.  "What do you mean?"

"I'll cover
deconstructionism next week, just for you.  How's that?"  Jarvis
said, clapping me on the shoulder. 

Outside the halls were lined
with the cool kids and filled with the offal.  Remi was waiting for me
there.  We had Geometry together and he was helping me study.  I
didn't need his help - my mom used to say my first word was "Euclid,"
but only when she was making me study math in the hours after normal school let
out.  Other times it was "Socrates" or
"Einstein."  I asked my Dad once and he said my first word was
"ball."  In any case, Remi liked to help me and I didn't want to
burst his bubble.  It didn't do to get on Remi's bad side.

As we walked
through
the barricades between the English hall
and the Math hall, Alan Tallart stopped us.  Alan was a star on the
basketball team, not because he was very good, but mainly because he acted like
one.  He was far bigger and
at least three years
older than either Remi or I. 
"Remi.  I need some of your stuff."

"I'm not doing that
anymore," Remi said, attempting to push past. 

"No.  I need
it."  Alan's hand gripped tight on Remi's.  His eyes were dark
and dangerous.

Remi stared right back, but he
looked up to see two guards paying careful attention to the encounter. 
H
e shrugged Alan's hand off. 
"Fine.  Not here.  After intramurals, Blind Hall."

Alan grinned and punched Remi
on the arm.

The hierarchy of Quarantine
deserves its own study, an ecosystem as complex and illogical as the most
hidden parts of the Amazon or the Everglades.  By necessity, any ecosystem
is a pyramid.  There must be more at the bottom than at the top. 
That model as applied to social situations is an odd
tradition
I've never understood.  Alan and his
ilk were the "popular" kids.  But why?  Why were they
popular?  Not because they had a lot of friends.  Dave was just as
much an outsider as Remi and he had at least as many friends as Alan. 
What was even stranger was that the kids at the bottom seemed to respect the
truth of the pyramid, that Alan was indeed on top and for the most part
deserved his elevation.  They admired him and tried to be like him, to
date the cheerleaders who shared the cultural throne, to somehow earn the
purple letter jackets that served as the tribal markings of the modern warrior
elite.  I put a lot of thought into it, but the only cause I could think
of was TV.

TV had told these kids all
their lives that the values the popular kids had were values to be
admired.  The jocks always got the girl, and even in the movies where the
odd kid out bucks tradition and nabs himself a cheerleader, that is an
established truth wherein the exception proves the rule.  They are told
that sports heroes are the pillars of community.  That friendship is more
important than good grades.  That creativity isn't as much a turn-on as
the ability to throw a forty-yard pass.  On one hand, it's not even the
networks' fault.  It's a hold-over from the early days of the medium, the
ideal the producers of chipper family sitcoms pushed into living rooms across
the country.  The fervor which those early TV shows engendered in the
American people was almost Aryan; this is perfection.  This is what you
should be.  White picket fences.  A healthy love of the
outdoors.  Excel in life, as long as you fit in the mold prepared for you.

Well, Alan at least had bought
into TV's lie.  He knew he was at the top of the food chain, the feudal
lord ruling his subjects with a benevolent smile and an okay
three-pointer.  And when he asked something of Remi, he expected to get
it.

"What did he
want?"  I whispered to Remi as we walked away.

"Yes, Remi,
what?"  A face was suddenly there beside Remi's, leering. 
Conyers.  "Tell Sam what it is that you do here.  What you spent
three weeks in solitary for?  Do you remember that, Remi?  Do you
remember what I said would happen the next time you plyed your little trade
among my students?"

Remi scowled, looking Conyers
right in the eye.  "I haven't done anything, Conyers."

"
Principal
Conyers.  So when I play back the tape of this hallway, I won't be able to
hear you promising to deliver something to Mr. Tall
a
rt, in clear violation of our little
agreement?"  Conyers's jaw twitched, as if he were restraining
himself from biting. 
Carnivore
was the word that came to
mind. 

Remi sighed.  "I
know you watch Blind Hall, even though you try to make us think you don't."

Conyers laughed, waving his
stump as if passing his arm in front of his face.  "I don't see
anything, Mr. Remi."

Remi snorted. 
"Well,
Principal
Conyers, if you hear what's on that tape, then I
guess you know where to find me after intramurals.  Wait until you see
what I have to give him before you decide my punishment."

"Fair enough." 
Conyers tussled Remi's hair.  The boy tried to bat Conyers's hand away
,
carefully avoided making contact. 
Apparently he and I had been taught the same lesson about touching
Conyers.  "Say, Sam, do you know how Remi came to be with us?"

Remi hefted his bookbag and
gestured to me with his head.  "Come on, Sam.  We're gonna be
late."

"Oh, don't worry about
that, Remi.  I'm the Principal.  You can be late all day if I say so." 
Conyers took his glasses off and put them in his shirt pocket. 
"Well, you know Remi's a Bite Country baby, don't you?  When he was
thirteen years old it seems that our boy here pedals into town past the
Barricades on this clunker of a bike.  I mean, the thing's fifty years old
if it's a day, and it sure is a day.  Well, he takes in the atmosphere,
all the people, and boy, does he like it.  He decides right then and there
that he's never going back."

"I'm not going to stand
here and listen to this."  Remi tried to walk away.

"You stay right where you
are, boy."  Conyers's voice was coarse and commanding. 
"I'm just helping you get more aquainted with your friend here. 
Everyone knows how shy you are, so by my reckoning I'm doing you a favor. 
See, the first thing Remi does here is go into a supermarket and walk out with
a dozen bananas.  He'd never actually had fresh fruit before and those
retards he calls parents never told him that you actually had to
pay
for
things.  So when a security guard starts chasing him, he assumes that the
guy's a Bitten after some young blood.  So he goes screaming down the
street, hollering that there's a Bitten after him.  Sure enough, he gets
away in the panic, but now he's in a quandry.  Whatever will he do
now?  His family was so stupid, they never taught him about school, about
Quarantine, about anything resembling civilization.  But our boy Remi's
quicker than most Bite Country hicks and he figures out a money-based economy
in a day or two.  He falls in with a bit of the wrong crowd, living on the
streets as he did, and they found in him a marketable skill."

Remi glared at Conyers, hate
evident on his face.

Conyers chuckled. 
"Most kids Remi's age are just mules, but nobody the pushers ever met knew
chemicals like this kid.  In just a couple of days he had them churning
out custom drugs faster than you can say 'what a retard.'  Kept them in
good money another solid year.  It was about a year, right, Remi? 
Then it gets to be that time in a young man's life where he gets the urge to
tear people's throats out, and his drug buddies dumped him on our
door."  He clucked his tongue at the dark-haired boy.  "So
sad.  You want to tell us the things you told me when you first got
here?  Oh, you should have heard him, Sam!  'I thought they were my
friends!  How could they leave me here?'  You would have
laughed."

"
Screw
this," Remi swore and pushed
away.  Conyers nodded to the barricade guards to let him through,
chuckling the whole time.

"Jesus," I
spat.  "What is wrong with you?"

Conyers's smile faded.
"Make no mistake, Sam.  Remi's a bad kid.  Grade-A Beast
material."

"No one can tell –”

"I can." 
Conyers breathed in deep.  "I can smell it on him.  In some kids
it just takes a single nudge to make them go over the edge.  And Remi's
just that sort."

I snorted.  "And
what about me?"

Conyers squinted at me,
looking me dead in the eye, studying.  "I don't know yet.  But
I'm watching.  Mind what company you keep and you may stay off my
list."

The bell rang.  Conyers
nodded his head that I should go.  "But I'm late.  You need to
check me in or –”

Conyers laughed again. 
"It's your own responsibility to get to your classes on time, Sam."

"Don't trust
them."  Remi fumed as he limped down the hall, sweaty from his
volleyball intramural. "No matter what they say, or who they are, they are
not on your side."