Em Garner - Contaminated

“What they really should teach us is how to use a gun,” Veronica offers.

I take aim, let fly. I’m not very good. My arrow bounces off the bottom of the target. We’re not allowed to retrieve them, even with their rubber tips, until everyone’s gone through the line.

“You’d still have to get a gun,” I say.

“Oh, well, my dad says we don’t need to worry about this crap, anyway, because all the wild Connies are rounded up, and all the ones that are left have been neutralized, right? My dad says it’s too bad they repealed the Lobo Laws.

He says the shock collars aren’t as reliable.”

“They’re fine,” I say. “They work.”

“I don’t know,” Veronica says doubtfully.

Neither of them knows me that well, though they probably know that I’m a Conorphan. I don’t think it really means anything to them, though. Neither one of them seems very smart.

“I know.” I pass the bow to the girl behind me and go back to my sprints.

Lots of kids look at me with envy when I get out of school early, but I wish I were one of them, sitting in a boring class and daydreaming about my boyfriend. As it is, I spend too much time trying to find Tony when the classes are changing. I don’t see him, but I miss the bus I need to take to work.

I have to run.

Like, literally run, my sneakers slapping the concrete. It used to be I could barely huff and puff for half a mile, but now I can manage to keep up a steady pace for much longer than that. I take shortcuts, too, ducking and weaving through backyards and leaping hedgerows. All those hours of obstacle courses and sprints have come in handy.

Today I run and jump, my backpack banging against my spine. It feels good to stretch my muscles like this. To push myself. Running, I’m strong and fast, nothing can catch me, nothing can stop me. Nothing can hurt me.

I get to work a few minutes sooner than if I’d ridden the bus. Bonus. I change dirty sheets and help diaper old people who are different from Connies only in that most of them aren’t trying to bite off my face. Most of them. There’s one little old lady who has to be restrained because she’s convinced anyone who comes to help her is really trying to do something bad to her. I don’t know if she had a trauma in her past or if it’s just old age scrambling her brains, but she’s left scars on more than a few of the attendants.

I’m in the middle of changing Mr. Robertson’s bed linens when he speaks up.

“You seen the news lately?”

I pause, my hands full of dirty sheets. “I don’t really watch the news very much.”

He shakes his head, staring with bleary eyes at the television set in the corner of his room. It’s showing some entertainment show. Someone’s singing. I don’t recognize the hostess. I think the old one was Contaminated. Most of Hollywood became Connies, which is why some people call the Contamination the Hollywood virus.

“This girl isn’t the one who said it, but that other fella did. The one who comes on before her. That local fella, with the gray hair. You know the one I mean?”

I have no idea what he means, though I guess it was one of the local news anchors. “What did he say?”

“He said there are still those things roaming around in whatchamacallit… urban areas. Those whattayacallem.”

I shove the sheets into my cart and strip off my latex gloves to toss in the trash. “People call them Connies.”

“Commies?” He looks up at me. “I thought we got rid of all of ’em back in my day!”

“Connies.” I emphasize it. “It’s short for Contaminated . It’s just a nickname. Really, they don’t need to be called anything.”

He looks at me harder. “You know what? You’re right. They don’t need to be called anything, poor schmucks. Poor things. They have enough troubles, don’t they?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

“Fella on the news says they’re passing some new laws. Like them whattayacallem. Robo laws?”

“The Lobo Laws? The ones that said they all had to be lobotomized?”

“What’s that?”

“It’s when they shove an ice pick into their heads and scramble their brains to keep them from being violent,” I say flatly, not sure his brains are still unscrambled enough to understand.

He shudders. “No, he said they were something else. Some kind of restraining laws. Something like that. Something about containment.”

“Maybe he said contaminant .”

“No,” the old man says, with a shake of his head.

The woman on the screen’s talking about a new movie that’s due to come out. All the major stars of the film were Contaminated. Most of them are dead. The rest I guarantee are not in cages, and if they are, the bars are made of gold. There’s talk of the movie being nominated for an Oscar.

“I’m sure I’ll hear about it, I guess.” I start putting on the clean sheets while the TV drones behind me.

I think he’s sleeping, until he talks again.

“I think they’re talking about rounding them all up and killing them.”

I’ve just finished putting on his pillowcase and I turn, squeezing it hard between my fists. “What?”

“Just… killing them. I think that’s what he said. All of them.”

“Not just the unclaimed? The ones that don’t belong to anyone? All of them?”

“There’s some senator or congressman. He was talking on the TV about it. That guy was with him, that doctor fella.”

“Doctor… Frank? Philip Frank?” He was the one who’d figured out the link between the protein water and the Contaminated. He’d been all over the TV in those first weeks, but I hadn’t heard much about him lately.

“Don’t know his name, but he had on a lab coat, so I’d say he was a doctor. Sure. Said he thought they should all be put away.” The old man nods, head wobbling under its own weight. “But I think put down , that’s what he means. Not put them all away. Put them all down.”

The world spins and I have to lean against the end of the bed to keep from letting it push me down. “No.”

“It ain’t right,” the old man whispers. “It just ain’t right. I know what they done. But… hell, Dunwoody from down the hall’s a lot more of a mess, done a lot worse than some of them, and he’s still kicking around. They ain’t all bad, right? Them Connies. They don’t know any better, I guess, just like some of us old farts. Some of them done bad things, but not all of them.”

“No. Not all of them.”

“But they all could,” he says seriously. “They all could.”

I don’t ever want to know if my mom’s done anything bad. She must’ve. Because he’s right. They all could. They all would, if they’re not stopped. No, they don’t all kill people, but they would. There’s nothing left inside them to stop them, unless they’ve had their brains scrambled up like eggs in a frying pan.

“Maybe it’d be the best thing for them,” he says. “It ain’t like they can ever get better.”

He looks around the room and shrugs. “Heck, it might be better if they did it to all of us in here, too.”

I’m so upset by this conversation that I leave the room and push the linen cart to the end of the hall. I tell my boss, Ms. Campbell, that I feel sick to my stomach and that I need to go home early. I must look pretty convincing, because she just nods and waves me on.

Outside, I run again. I’m sweating, I look gross, but I push myself harder. Faster. I jump the curb, thinking for one horrible moment I’m going to come down wrong and twist my ankle, break my leg, face-plant on the sidewalk. I catch myself at the last second, arms pinwheeling. It felt for the length of a breath and a heartbeat like I was flying, but then my feet hit the concrete and I’m still firmly anchored to the ground.