Alexander

Chapter Five

I never did get a full explanation from her, but as I make my way down the hall with the second half of our meals I consider if I ever would. It doesn’t seem likely. It feels weird trying to avoid eye contact as I carry my awkward selection of foods. I don’t think anyone would question, but then again you never know when someone might be up to some drama to make things more interesting. I always thought that was Clara’s job, but now I realize she is just putting up a front to keep people off her trail. No one has ever asked what she is, why would they start now?

Quietly as I can I sneak into my lab, slipping the door closed without a sound, I set the tray down just the same on the island in the middle of the room. I listen to observe if he is asleep, then take a few calming breaths. I am going to poison him again. What the hell is a matter with me? I should have more respect, I really should, but I miss my sister too damn much to care. No, that’s not right. I do care. I care if I kill him before I can get a sense of his blood and if it’ll help. I care if he dies, but Clara had a point. He’s unknown here. It isn’t as though he could just blend in. There would be questions, there always are when new arrivals come. They haven’t come in a long time. Leaving us to assume we are at the end of survivors. In reality we don’t necessarily know what else could be out there. It isn’t as though we have evening news anymore.

I can do this I tell myself. It won’t hurt him. Clara assured me of that. Yet, I question if I am making the right choice. How likely is he going to just give up a blood sample? Should I even ask? No, he wouldn’t help me now. I don’t think he would have helped me like this even if I had asked to begin with. Not after all of the time that has passed. A few more calming breaths and silence and my mind is made. I don’t have a choice. I pull a syringe out of the drawer and quickly load a few cc’s of alcohol into it before I jab it into the food and depress small amounts all over so that he doesn’t notice the taste. I cap the syringe and drop it into my lab coat pocket. I stir the food up a bit and then brace myself. Hands on the edge of the counter I lean over the food and reconsider one more time.

“Are you going to just stand there or are you going to turn on the light so I can eat?” he asks me in a low voice from the back corner.

“Sure.”

I reach over and flip on the light then grab his tray. I slide it through the trap door while I feel myself biting my lip. Making myself stop I turn around and walk over to my notes. Shuffling the papers around to look busy I take a seat and click my pen on. He swallows with vigor as he eats and downs the bottle of water on the tray. I make a note that the amount given seems satisfactory. I wonder how long it’ll take for the alcohol to work and what exactly the effects would be.

He stares at me as I write. He must know. Are Angels psychic? I don’t recall that ability, but anything is possible with them. It was a long time ago when I knew Serissa and while some memories stand vivid against the change of time, others are quite faded now. I barely remember the farm itself, but I remember the events as if they were a recording I just watched this morning. I couldn’t tell you anything about what we ate or wore when things got rough, but I could tell you about how long the line was to get food. I could recall the smell of the beasts I watched her demolish right before my eyes and the sound of the Earth as it transformed into walls around us to keep the other beasts from getting in.

Hours pass with me deep in thought, recalling as much as I could about the past with the angels and my sister. Sophia was almost twice my age, she had known Serissa as the music artist that the rest of the world had known her as. It’s why she convinced Grandma to let her stay with us when they were down on their luck. We didn’t know then how much luck would play a role in the following months.

Sophia was at my grandmother’s side through every meal, meals that began to feed hundreds in the last days before we were brought here. She was the one who also managed to keep everyone clothed and with the bare comforts of home in a way of a bed or at least sheets and a place to sleep. I finished learning to read with her help, and I also learned how to survive in the woods with what she learned from Kyle. The only time she spent away from me was with him. He would teach her how to set traps and create weapons. I was left helping entertaining the younger kids as they came in, the ones I in turn taught to read. At one point I was certain she was in love with Kyle. He was always so kind to her, teaching her so she could teach us younger kids as we got older.

Kyle was a big help to Pa George, my grandfather, saving him his back on many occasions. I can’t tell you how long we lived side by side the angels, but they left their impression. They took my sister and made her into someone so admirably strong, it was more than a disappointment when she began to come down with the illness born from the contagion. It had hit much like the flu, fever and aches, and then the personality just disappeared. Their eyes would glaze and become hollow. We lost a few doctors when the first few changed they became the first meals of this new aberration.

At first there was mass panic. A few were killed if they became ill. What families remained were easily destroyed. It took weeks to rebuild and come up with a plan to help determine the best way to protect ourselves. It was around then that the amiables showed up, only months after the beasts and weeks after the illness found us. A couple of angel’s came down with them and after the compound was built and we were allowed to enter they left again. Instructions were given and from there on out we had to follow suit. We haven’t had any kind of disrupt since. Everyone is too afraid of being cast out, because out there you would die.

The sound of his body hitting the floor of his cage brings me back to reality. I glance over and check his chest for breathing movement deciding he was simply passed out. With confirmation of his unconsciousness I slide from my stool and gather supplies to draw his blood. I can feel my breath frozen in my lungs and my blood pulsing as I open the door to his cage slowly, fearing he would wake up and charge at me. The consistent rate of his breathing assures me he isn’t about to wake up any time too soon. I gather the blood as quickly as I can and close the cage.

After numerous breathing checks I go about getting everything in order and checking his blood. That’s how she finds me, Clara, her head peaks in my door with an ornery smile. She has a duplicate key that she sets on the counter next to my microscope.

“How’s it going? Looks as though the alcohol worked,” she says.

“It did, maybe better than it should have.”

“Eh, you’ll want him out while you test. He’ll just distract you. That’s what they are best at you know?”

“And your presence isn’t a distraction?” I question glaring at her.

“Well, not as much as he would be. I’m on your side,” she laughs and spins the key on the counter top.

“Why is that exactly?” I swivel towards her and she takes a step back leaving the key in its place.

“We’re both bitter, remember? I don’t want to be here anymore than you do.”

“How am I supposed to help with that?” I ask sliding the key into my hand and putting it in my pocket. “Last one, I hope?”

“Yes, last one.” She grins. “Your help comes in the form of just letting me know if they return so I can plead my case. Life here is boring as hell and I fully intend to get out of here.”

“Explains why you are so willing to help keep him alive. Is that all though, really? Just the hope they’ll take you back with them?”

She shakes her head. “Not back with them, back to my own people.”

I eye her curiously. “I obviously don’t know what you know about what’s out in the universe, but I often question why they left us here this way.”

“I don’t know why,” she sighs, twisting the toe of her shoe into the floor. “So are the results in?”

I nod accepting her change in subject as her way of not letting me in on the secrets of the universe. “Looks good so far, but this was only prelimenary. I still need to process a vaccine from it to test, but in a few days I should be ready to capture one of the vamps and give it a go. Then it’s really up to time. Course the process to capture one might be a challenge.”

She laughs. “I won’t be helping you there. I don’t like those things out there.”

“One of those things is my sister, and I will be bringing her home.”

She shrugs.

“You do what you have to do, but I’ll enjoy watching you explain it to the community.”

She offers me one last humored grin before heading out the door again.

Explaining isn’t going to be easy. I’ve done all of this on my own and of course I hadn’t put any thought into how to explain it. I only wanted to see if it were possible to create a vaccine, and to see its uses beyond that. I’m handling things on a step by step basis. Now she’s gone and created paranoia I don’t need. Sophia, this is all for Sophia. I will have to remind myself that this is for her and it doesn’t matter who I piss off in the process. Families are hard to come by here, and I am getting mine back.

Checking on him one last time, I wrap up my work and head out for the night ensuring I lock the door tightly behind me. Only a few days and I would know if my first attempt would be successful. It’s exhilarating; the idea of having my sister back, even though I’m not entirely sure what she would be like. For all I know she would still crave blood, but its obvious the hope is that would go away, that all normal senses would return and she would go on like it hadn’t happened. It has to work.

The commons are quiet as I pass through. The cafeteria already shut down with baskets of a few snacks out in case someone were to need one overnight right next to the few dozen water bottles always at hand on the end of the counter where you gather your food. Most are already in bed, only a few of us stay up this late myself included. It was a relief on the usual night, but tonight it is more. I don’t hesitate to grab an apple and a bottle of water on my way through.

Sophia would love this, the indoor farming with all the fruit and vegetables. She wanted our grandparents to let us garden like this, but even on the farm we had a modest average family garden until the end of our days there and then we weren’t even the ones who got to manage it. The weather was harsher than it had been in the past and we were growing colder weather vegetables that required an extra green thumb of experience neither of us kids had at the time. I think my favorite would be hers too, the potted orchard. It would sound crazy to someone who didn’t make it this far, who never saw the destruction and devastation, but it’s almost beautiful the way the commons are laid out. You nearly have a sense of being outdoors when you are close to the crops.

Not that we can’t go outdoors at all, but it’s not the same. It’s always hazy; it doesn’t warm much above fifty and frequently our temps bottom out over night. Ice turnes to slush that turns back into ice. It is never really dry. We have water to come by at least, it took some filtration, but the moisture is there. Sometimes when it gets near the fifties the ground would half dry and you could see into the distance for a brief moment before the fog hits.

I found myself daydreaming staring into the plants when I hear them coming, a couple of the amiables who patrol later in the evening. Not realizing it was so late, I nod as they pass. Their eyes search mine; their large deep eyes, as though to see what I could be hiding. I knew they couldn’t read my mind, but I could hear them if they spoke to me telepathically.

Late night? I hear in my thoughts.

“Yes, breakthrough science,” I explain simply.

They don’t require much to move on.

Sleep now. I hear as they continue on.

I give them a quick nod in acknowledgment before moving on to my quarters. That feels closer than it was. I have no real reason to fear them, I had passed them numerous times in the past, but my guilty conscience screams internally. God, I hope they don’t investigate me. I can’t afford them trying to figure out what I am up to yet.