Emmy Laybourne - Savage Drift

It’s our only one.

The Type O Containment Camp at Old Mizzou is a prison, not a shelter.

The blisterers (type A), the paranoid freaks (type AB), and the people who’ve been made sterile (type B) are at refugee camps where there’s more freedom. More food. Clean clothes. TV.

But all of the people here at Mizzou have type O blood and were exposed to the compounds. So the authorities decided we are all murderers (probably true—certainly is for me) and penned us in together. Even the little kids.

“Yes, Mario,” I say when he starts to grumble about how wrong it all is. “It’s unjust. Goes against our rights.”

But every time my fingers itch to bash some idiot’s nose in, I suspect they were right to do it.

I remember my Gram talking about fevers. I remember her sitting on the edge of my bed, putting a clammy washcloth on my forehead.

“Gram,” I cried. “My head hurts.”

I didn’t say it aloud, but I was begging for Tylenol and she knew it.

“I could give you something, my baby girl, but then your fever would die, and fever’s what makes you strong.”

I would cry, and the tears themselves seemed boiling hot.

“A fever comes in and burns up your baby fat. It burns up the waste in your tissue. It moves you along in your development. Fevers are very good, darlin’. They make you invincible.”

Did I feel stronger, afterward? I did. I felt clean. I felt tough.

Gram made me feel like I was good through and through and I would never do wrong.

I’m glad Gram is long dead. I wouldn’t want her to know me now. Because the O rage comes on like a fever but it burns your soul up. Your body it makes strong and your mind it lulls to sleep with bloodlust and you can recover from that. But after you kill, your soul buckles. It won’t lie flat; like a warped frying pan, it sits on the burner and rattles, uneven.

You can never breathe the same way again because every breath is one you stole from corpses rotting, unburied, where you left them to bleed out.

It’s my fault that Mario is here in “the Virtues” with me. The Virtues are a quad of buildings with inspiring names: Excellence, Responsibility, Discovery, and Respect, as well as a dining hall and two other dorms, all contained by not one but two chain-link fences, each topped with razor wire. Welcome to the University of Missouri at Columbia, post-apocalypse edition.

I remember when Mario and I first passed through the gates. I wondered what the gates were protecting us from . Stupid.

At the screening and sorting, we had placidly submitted to the mandatory blood typing. We had told our story. Mario could have gone to a different camp—he’s AB. But he wouldn’t leave me.

A tall guard with bright blue eyes and not much hair signed off on us.

He looked at Mario’s paperwork.

“You’re in the wrong place, old-timer,” he told Mario.

“This girl here is my responsibility. We prefer to stay together.”

The guard looked us over, nodding his head in a way I did not like.

“You ‘prefer,’ do you?” he said, pronouncing the words slowly. “Little girl found herself a ‘sugar daddy’?”

“Come on now, there’s no need to be crass,” Mario grouched in his way. “She’s fifteen years old. She’s a child.”

The smile slipped off the guard’s face.

“Not in here,” he said. “In here she’s a threat. I’m going to give you one last chance—you need to go. You think you’re being high and mighty, protecting the girl. But this camp ain’t no place for an old man like you. You should go.”

“I appreciate your concern, but I’ll stay with my friend.”

I didn’t like this. A six-foot-tall bully looking down on frail, elderly Mario like he meant to flatten him, and Mario looking back with undisguised contempt.

I got antsy, started making fists and releasing them. Maybe I shifted from foot to foot.

The guard took hold of my jaw and forced me to look up into his face.

“How long were you out there?” he asked.

“She was out for just a short while,” Mario said.

“I DIDN’T ASK YOU, OLD MAN!” the guard shouted.

He tightened his grip on my jaw, gave my head a shake.

“My name’s Ezekiel Venger, and I’m one of the head guards here. Now, how long?”

“I don’t remember,” I said.

He let me go.

“I know you’re trouble, Miss Fifteen. I can tell which ones are dangerous. That’s why they put me in charge. You better watch yourself. I’m not gonna give you an inch of wiggle room. Not one sorry inch.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

I know when to call someone sir.

You call someone sir if you respect him. If he’s older than you. If he’s in a position of authority. Or if he’s got a nightstick and a chip on his shoulder.

Mario is my only friend.

He thinks I am a good person. He’s wrong, but I don’t argue with him. He tells me he believes in me.

We share a two-person suite with four others. I am not the only one Mario is protecting. He volunteered to sponsor four kids, and this is why they allowed him to be with us up on the second floor of Excellence. All the other suites on the second floor are just women and children.

It’s only men on the first floor and it’s rough down there.

I share a bed with Lori. She’s fourteen. She has brown hair and white skin and huge brown eyes that look so sad sometimes I want to punch her in the face.

She’s told me her story. She’s from Denver and she and her folks were hiding out in their apartment but they ran out of food. By the time they made it to the airport the evacuations had begun. They were among the last of the people there so when the rioting began—with people clawing and trampling one another as the sky over Colorado Springs lit up—her mother was killed. Then her father fell between the Jetway and the door of the plane as he shoved her in.

I didn’t want to hear her story. I wanted it to fall away from my ears, like beads of water on wax paper, but the words stuck in. Water, water, water. Lori is all water.

Lori lies against me at night and weeps and gets the pillow wet.

I know, I know I should comfort her. It wouldn’t take much. What? A pat on the back. A hug.

But there is no compassion left in me.

Like I said, that Josie is dead.

What do I give to her? I give her the warmth of my sleeping body. That’s all she can have. Escaping heat.

I should tell you about the other three. Yes, I should name them. Tell you about them and tell you what they look like and their sweet, scared smiles and how Heather looks like Batiste, her oval face very sincere and serious. Half Asian. How one of the boys is always getting words wrong. Nemolade for lemonade. Callerpitter for caterpillar. Bob wire for barbed wire. Cute, innocent, annoying, traumatized. Sweet, demanding, lost, and present. There is nothing I can do for them and I want nothing to do with them.