Unwelcome Bodies (2 page)

She’d never have someone to hold again. They’d never find a vaccine in time.

The clock ticked over to 9:16. She blinked hard, fighting back the tears that were too unsafe to shed here.

“I need the locker room,” a tearful Reyna said, dashing out into the hallway.

Kathleen let out a shaky sigh. She peeled one surgical glove back from her wrist, pushed up her goggles, dabbed her eyes dry on the newly-exposed skin, then carefully covered the tear-stained skin back up with the glove.

She startled back as the doors banged open and several nurses in full biohazard suits wheeled the HIV testing cart into the circulation office. They began setting up their testing station in the empty space where the reading tables and card catalogs had once been.

Anna walked back in, her eyes puffy and red behind her safety goggles. “I wish they’d do this every week.”

* * * *

Tessa pulled on gloves and a mask as she emerged from the Porter Square T station. She’d blend in better that way. And the gloves hid her rash. She fingered the sprayer in her pocket —the “golden vial.” It looked like a can of Mace, but it was filled with her own fresh piss and blood. Her HIV-7-laden piss and blood. Next to her, Adolfo was feigning confidence, but she could tell he was just as nervous as she was. Maureen seemed calm, but it was tough to tell behind the full gas mask she wore to cover her lesions.

“No one’s going to be out on the streets now,” Tessa said, digging her hands deep into her pockets to ward off the December chill. “They’ll all be at work. We won’t be able to infect anybody.”

Maureen pulled her mask slightly away from her face. “Not infect. Save. And here.” Maureen handed them each an ID card. “Congratulations. You’re now Harvard students.”

Tessa looked at the photo on the ID. It was her, all right: her old high school ID photo. “Will these really work?”

“They should,” Maureen said. “They’re gifts from a newly-saved member of the congregation. She worked in ID Services until yesterday.”

“So what’s the plan?” Adolfo asked.

“Once we get inside the Yard, we’ll split up so we can save as many people as possible. Tessa, you take the library; Adolfo, you take the Memorial Church. They’re having morning services right now. I’ll go to the Science Center.”

“We’re going to save a lot of people!” Adolfo said, bouncing on the balls of his feet as he walked.

“Amen,” Tessa mumbled underneath her mask. The voices in the back of her head started screaming louder, but she silenced them by mentally repeating, “…and no man was able to enter into the temple, till the seven plagues of the seven angels were fulfilled.” Father Moran preached the truth. She believed that. She had to.

* * * *

Kathleen paced nervously in the cavernous hallway as she waited for her test results to come back. Her results had to be negative. She hadn’t done anything stupid these past two weeks. Wait, there’d been someone coughing hard on the T last week. Oh God, what if she were positive?

She shook her head sternly and forced herself to abandon that line of thought. The coughing person had been wearing a surgical mask, and Kathleen had been wearing her goggles. True, they weren’t as safe as a good gas mask, but she hated the way gas masks limited her peripheral vision. If the crazies came for her, she wanted to be able to see them coming and get a head start.

Kathleen let out a long breath and rubbed her gloved hands together. No, she probably wasn’t positive. She’d worn protection outside her apartment at all times. Anything she’d brought into the house, she’d quarantined in the hall closet for twenty-four hours before moving it into her living space. Even food. She’d bought a second refrigerator just for that purpose. And she hadn’t touched the skin of another human being in nearly a year, no matter how much she ached to.

She pressed the ring to her chest again.

One of the nurses popped his head out of the circulation office and said, “Congratulations, you’re negative.”

“Oh good,” she said, the words coming out in a rush of air, and she closed her eyes and just let herself bask in the moment. Still negative. She’d beaten the odds.

A piercing scream came from circulation. “I can’t be positive! I can’t be!”

“Anna,” Kathleen whispered, splaying her hand across her breastbone, across the ring. “Oh God, Anna.”

She could hear voices speaking in soothing tones, but Anna keened and wailed, and Kathleen tried not to imagine the scene on the other side of the door. What had she seen Anna touch today? What was Anna touching now? Was she even still wearing her mask, her goggles, her gloves? Had she ripped them off in her despair, spreading tears and sweat all over the room? Kathleen belatedly realized she was inching backwards, slowly increasing the distance between herself and the circulation office’s door.

The cries faded, then stopped.

The door opened, and two of the nurses carried Anna’s unconscious body out, enveloped in a biohazard suit. The third nurse stepped into the hallway and beckoned the employees still in circulation to come out and join her. Reyna’s normally warm brown skin was an eerie beige, and Tim had gone chalk white. “They had to sedate her,” Reyna whispered.

“It’s not safe to stay here,” the nurse said. “Get your things and go home.”

“Where are you taking her?” Kathleen asked.

“The Cambridge Hospice.”

“But she’ll die there!” Reyna cried. “The news said there’s an epidemic of antibiotic-resistant staph there!”

“She’ll die no matter where she goes. At the hospice, she’ll be made comfortable, and she won’t be able to infect anyone else. It’s the best we can do.”

Kathleen looked at Reyna and Tim and ached to hug them, to try and draw some comfort from their presence. But even though they’d all just tested negative, she couldn’t bring herself to trust that they were truly safe, and instead clutched her fists to her chest, her skin growing cold.

Reyna mumbled, “I’m getting my things,” and headed into the women’s locker room.

Kathleen wordlessly watched the nurse go back into circulation, then emerge with her cart and head for the elevators. Anna was positive. The building was infected. Anna was going to die. They were never going to find a way to stop the spread of this disease. They were all going to die. Every person on Earth was going to die. Kathleen was going to die.

She had to get out of there. For once, she found herself wanting to break the “one person in the locker room at a time” rule.

* * * *

The ID cards worked perfectly. Tessa found herself wishing they hadn’t. She was saved, she knew that, but what if these people didn’t want to be saved too? What if they wanted to stay healthy? What if they wanted to live? Oh God, Tessa wanted to live. She wanted to live so badly. She wanted to go to college, find a boyfriend, get married, have babies, see them grow up, and watch them have babies. She wanted to see her little brother grow taller than her, and her parents put their grandchildren on their knees and tell them stories. She wanted to have a big family reunion with all her aunts and uncles and cousins, and put the picture from it on her wall to have that moment frozen in time as she became an old woman.

Instead, she was going to die before she turned seventeen.

Maureen was suddenly standing in front of her, the thin December sunlight reflecting off of the lenses of her gas mask. “It’s normal to have second thoughts,” she said, her voice muffled through the mask. “But you’re strong. You can do this.”

“I can’t,” Tessa whispered.

“The sooner everyone is saved, the sooner the temple of God will be open to all of us. You have to have faith. God didn’t bring this sickness down to punish us. He brought it down to save us.”

Tessa didn’t want to die. But she was going to. And there had to be a reason why. She took a deep breath, her misgivings quieting somewhat, and nodded.

“Good girl,” Maureen said. “There’s Widener Library. God be with you.”

“And also with you,” she replied.

She headed toward the tall stone steps, but one of the guards called down, “We’re closing.” She nodded, walked toward another building until she was out of his sight, then circled the library to see if there was another way to get in. She flattened herself against the wall as she saw a figure in a biohazard suit wheel a cart out of the back door. Once the figure’s back was toward her, Tessa made a dash for the door, neatly catching it before it closed. No guards. Good.

This level of the building seemed abandoned, so she followed the arrows leading upward and emerged into a cavernous marble hallway. There should have been people here. Why weren’t there people here?

She heard a quiet shuffle of activity coming from a room off to the side of the hallway, so she took a deep breath, pulled off her gloves and mask, and, sprayer in hand, opened the door.

* * * *

Kathleen heard the door open behind her just as she tossed her gloves, mask, hairnet, and goggles into the dispenser. “Reyna!” she barked. “Whatever you forgot, can’t it wait? I’m naked…” She trailed off as she turned around and saw the unmasked, ungloved girl standing in front of the door, a spray can in her hand. “Oh God,” Kathleen whispered, blood freezing in her veins. “Please don’t kill me. Please don’t.”

“I…I’m here to save you,” the girl said, voice quavering.

Kathleen was frozen, body and brain, her lips repeating the words over and over, as she stared helplessly at the girl with the can of death. “Please don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me.”

“I have to do this,” the girl said. “They said so.”

A sliver of hyperawareness pierced through the haze in Kathleen’s brain, and she started racing through her options in a blind panic. Should she scream? No, she’d just get sprayed. Try to startle the girl and make a run for it? No, she’d still get sprayed. She forced herself to look quickly over her shoulder. The window was no good. It was both barred and boarded over. Could she get to her Mace in time? She flicked her gaze at her locker and shuddered. She couldn’t risk touching it bare-handed. Anna had been in here this morning.

Her life now depended on her ability to talk her way out.

* * * *

“Look, I don’t want to die,” the woman said, her voice shaky, but measured. “I’m not like you. I don’t want to be sick. Don’t you understand?”

Tessa struggled to keep her can level. It suddenly felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. “I have to do this,” she said. “We all have to be saved. That’s what Father Moran says.”

“But I don’t want to be saved,” the woman said. “Please, just go. Let me live.”

“But…but we all have to be saved, otherwise the temple won’t be open to us.”

The woman flung her arms out to her sides and cried, “What does that mean?”

Tessa opened her mouth, then blinked hard. “It means…” She struggled to find the words, but they weren’t there. She didn’t know what to say. When Father Moran described it, it made so much sense. She could see the angels and the throne and the beautiful colors. She could hear the singing, the laughter, the prayer. She could see her little brother healthy, running to meet her, arms wide, and she was hugging him without fear. But she couldn’t form the words herself, couldn’t make them come together in her brain. She swallowed hard, then said the only words she could find. “God wouldn’t have made us sick if He didn’t have a reason to.”

The woman looked down at the floor, blinking hard, then looked back up and said, “Well then, shouldn’t you let God make me sick? I mean, who are you to make decisions for God?”

Tessa knew the answer to that one. “Oh, we’re doing the work of the angels.”

“Did they tell you to do that work? Did the angels tell you personally?”

Tessa blinked hard. “No… I…” The can’s weight doubled, and she struggled to keep it from slipping from her fingers.

* * * *

This was it. This was her opportunity. Kathleen looked over at the locker again. She would just tuck her hand inside her sleeve, Mace the girl, and then throw the sweater away as soon as she got home. She started inching slowly toward the locker.

The girl suddenly looked up, her eyes filled with tears, and raised the can. “I have to do this,” she said through clenched teeth. “I have to.”

Kathleen froze, throat tight, the locker within arm’s reach. “No, you don’t.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Why?” she asked, still clinging to the faint hope that she could talk some sense into the girl and make it out of there without a death sentence. “I mean, why do you believe them when they say you’re saved?”

“Because…because God wouldn’t have made us sick if He didn’t have a reason to.”

“You already said that.”

“I… I know.”

The girl’s expression was troubled, but her gaze was locked on Kathleen. Damn it. She should have gone for the Mace more quickly. She swallowed hard, trying to calm her churning belly, as her brain raced through several different things to try and say next. Her instincts screamed for her to beg, but her rational mind reminded her that hadn’t worked before. “Why… She took a steadying breath. “Why do you think God is responsible?”

“Because He’s all-powerful. He wouldn’t let this happen without a reason. Don’t you believe in God?”

Kathleen opened her mouth and closed it again. She hadn’t thought about her faith in years. She wasn’t sure if she’d lost it, or just forgotten it. “Maybe…maybe God brought this plague down to punish us, or test us. Or maybe the devil brought it to tempt people like you to kill people in the name of God.”

“No!” the girl screamed, and Kathleen threw her arms protectively over her face, breath stopped in her throat, waiting for the hiss of the spray.

And then she heard the sobbing.

She slowly lowered her arms, gaping, as the girl unabashedly wept, her disease-laden tears and snot coursing down her face. “God did this,” she hiccupped. “G—God killed my parents and my little brother. They were good people. He was such a good little boy.” She slid down the wall, knees tucked tightly against her chest, the spray can falling to the floor and rolling under the sink.