Cages Read online

  CAGES

  Chris Pasley

  Text Copyright © 2012 Chris Pasley

  All Rights Reserved

  Dedication

  For Aeryn

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  April twelfth was the day they locked me up in the local Quarantine. The best day of my life.

  Of the two chain-link fences that enclosed the Quarantine perimeter only the interior was electrified, but even waiting behind the white line at the main gate I could smell the batteries cooking. The building itself was as faceless and drab as any government facility, before the Outbreak or after, plunked down roughly in what I’m told was once a park, though the only evidence of that were the skeletons of wood benches that littered the place, metal Ls reaching up from the ground in a relentless mission to bruise the shins of unwary joggers. Paint peeled off red cinder-blocks, as if some heat welling from inside bubbled away the polymers.

  The cheers of my classmates were deafening – literally, as one younger kid jumped up to shout right in my ear. Bobby Harper, the homeroom runt. His parents refused to let him go, fed him testosterone blockers for years, and now he was a year late and a head too short. He’d be the last of our class to go, poor bastard. No one to see him off into the cage. The last kid at the dance.

  An added blessing to the day; my parents actually stayed home. They don’t see you go in, and they don’t see you come out – that was tradition and for once my folks followed the rules. I was surprised… whatever I had expected my parents to be that day, merciful wasn’t it. And so my last memories of them would be stoic (my mom) and prickly (my dad), should I not make it out. Weeping families clutching at the chain-link was probably the only reason the outer fence wasn’t electrified.

  I mugged it up with my classmates, showing girls my biceps, whooping with the boys and punching their arms. It felt like a graduation, or no… like a concert and I was being invited onstage. Until the time I walked through the flat gray doors I was a superstar. I’d been waiting for this my whole life.

  The doors creaked open and spat out two guards, dark-eyed kid killers. They carried their MP5s in plain sight, squat little submachine guns. They held onto the extended banana clips a bit too lovingly for polite company. Abruptly the fence stopped humming and the giant latch sealing the outer gate spun open. Taking a side each, the guards pulled open the gate. The badly sheared chain-link cut into the hard dirt in the no-man’s-land between fences, rubbing two enormous bat wings in the dirt.

  I swaggered through the gate and past the door guards, whacking off big deal behind their backs, much to the joy of the crowd. The adulation was intoxicating, like the heady feeling you get right when you’re about to do something stupidly dangerous, but for some reason you just don’t care. I blew a kiss to Sarah Stevens, a seventh grader who had made moon eyes at me for months now. Her hand went to her mouth, eyes growing wide. I’d be a frequent player in her dreams for weeks to come, I was sure. It was important to me right at that moment that everyone I was leaving behind know exactly how cool I was. And man, was I cool.

  The guards resealed the latch and the fence thrummed back to life. Their faces were hidden by tinted facemasks, but I doubt it would be a stretch to read revulsion in the way they walked. They stepped around me, rapping hard on the massive double doors that seemed twice as big now that I was next to them. Six locks scarred the otherwise unbroken surface, iron monsters with awestruck mouths. I heard each one snick open, and the doors lurched toward me, swinging wide. In the bright April sun, the interior gaped darkly, impenetrable. I was suddenly not so confident.

  The butt of an MP5 nudged me forward and I stepped into Dekalb Quarantine #4. Within seconds, the doors slammed shut behind me.

  Two concrete barricades lifted from a highway median blocked the hallway, staggered on the left and right sides like a still-life sculpture of a giant zipper. I followed the guards as they threaded their way between them. Compared to the sun outside, the light was clinically bright; every splinter grasping up from the dark hardwood under the barriers was clearly visible, doomed sailors treading away from a foundering ship. Further down, pale yellow lockers stood in trim military fashion, tall and sturdy for cheap tin, cold eyes of the combination wheels black and uncaring. A huge dent scarred a swath of four whole locker units, standing broken and humble. The hall terminated at a furnishing that could have gone unnoticed in any other institution of learning except for the fact that it was made of steel and wire mesh rather than wood and glass: a sizable trophy case with awards I couldn't make out through the screen.

  My hands found my pockets and I slumped over. My swagger melted into a nervous shuffle. I wasn't an idiot. I knew what happened when a kid went from middle school to Quarantine. A big fish in middle school is nothing but a shrimp in the Cage. Don't look too cool, don't hold your head too high, or some third or fourth year will likely beat it off your shoulders. So I followed the peeling, over-trodden yellow tape that began in worn strips at the double barricades into the first corridor on the left, hardwood giving way to greasy linoleum.

  My two guards matched pace next to me like stone golems, their eyes never once leaving the yellow tape, but I knew they watched me from their peripherals. One hint of the change and I'd be drilled to the floor with thirty rounds each, the most an MP5 could carry. Bits of me would be rotting in the concrete slab underneath the floors for years. Once I reached the registrar's office and signed in they would be relieved to wander again on patrol. The halls were empty, but through the metal grates in the classroom doors I could see the idle movement of kids fighting off sleep and hear the bored drones of teachers reading line-by-line from their textbooks. The hallways of Dekalb Quarantine #4 weren't too much different than middle school. Same stupid motivational posters, same homemade banners and signs advertising the Homecoming dance, Photoshop on wax paper. The biggest difference was the presence of bullet holes, most of which were hidden behind posters or notices, but sometimes air would pipe through from the classroom behind the wall and there they would be, like hotel door peep-holes. I counted eight.

  In this place I was in more danger than I had ever been in my life - more danger than I was ever likely to be in again after graduation. But there, locked behind the iron doors and under the watch of the stone-faced guards, I finally felt free. I could be myself in here. And lucky me, I was pretty sure I was gonna be a badass. There was a quick energy running through my limbs. I wanted to dance on my toes like Bruce Lee, reborn into who I was finally meant to be. As long as I didn't get my head blown off by the guards or my guts torn out by a Beast. Either would diminish my dreams of grandeur quickly enough, but even the threat of such a gruesome end couldn’t dampen my spirits.

  The Registrar's office was barred inside and out. The guards wrestled with massive padlocks the size of grapefruit while an interior rattle suggested just as many latched on the other side of the iron door. When the locks all sagged loose I shuffled forward into the office and offered myself up to be registered. The cream-white room was barren except for a flimsy particleboard desk of the Scandinavian variety, the man in the chair behind it and what smelled like fresh paint. No motivational posters, no family pictures.

  "Sam Crafty?" The registrar raised an eyebrow at me. He was a skinny, graying man who had let himself get both a jutting potbelly and a bright red tie two inches too short. Thick glasses and shiny head. The only thing eye-catching about the man was that
his right elbow ended in an ugly stump, which he took no pains to hide.

  I shrugged. "After the Outbreak nobody had any old records so my dad decided to change his name."

  The registrar, whose nameplate sitting burnished on the desk read "Mr. Wilson," snorted. “So your dad was a criminal."

  I stiffened. "I never said that, Mr. Wilson."

  The registrar looked confused for a moment, then craned his neck around to see his own nameplate. "Oh. No, I'm not Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson was our registrar."

  "But I thought –”

  "Mr Wilson's dead, Sam. Last week. I'm registering new students until we can find and train a willing replacement." The man reached his only remaining hand out to me. "I'm Principal Conyers."

  I shook his hand solemnly, his fingers dry and indifferent under mine. Shake a man's hand solid and he'll respect you, even if he don't know you from Adam, my dad always said.He rarely said anything terribly coherent, so when he did I made it a point to listen.

  Conyers’s smile faded as he let go of my hand. "That's the last time you'll touch me or any of the staff, do you understand?"

  I nodded.

  "I know you want to ask about it, so go ahead. Ask."

  "What happened to your arm?"

  Conyers leaned back in his chair, took off his glasses and chewed on one end. "Still bothers me to talk about, to tell you the truth. I was bitten."

  I couldn't stifle a gasp of surprise. No one had ever heard of a Bitten who survived. I had seen one of them in the early stages of the change once, shuffling along the side of the road in a bloody tweed jacket, moaning and creaking, but his face still flush with blood. Where he had come from I never knew, but I'll never forget what my dad did, pulling the car over and fishing the baseball bat from the back seat with as much urgency as a man stopping to change a flat. My dad never shied away from responsibility. He had done his share of Bitten slaughter during the Outbreak. More than his fair share, he would probably have said. One more was nothing.

  Conyers saw the doubt on my face and grimaced. "It was seven years ago, at Dahlonega Quarantine #2. I was just a physics teacher then, but I volunteered to teach woodshop after...well, that's another story there. But I was locking up one day after the class had left when I noticed someone screwed up the count. There was a boy still in the room, hugging his knees in the corner where we swept up the woodchips. I was young then...naive. I thought he was scared, or lost, or heartbroken. So I reached my hand out to him.

  "He lifted his head up, and instantly I knew him. Jacob Gussock, quiet kid, good learner. But that was my mistake. I looked at his face. I didn't look at his eyes. He threw himself at me, so fast, so goddamned fast....latched his teeth right there," he waved just beyond his stump "and began just gnashing and tearing."

  Conyers went quiet for a moment. After a deep breath he asked "Have you ever actually seen a kid go Beast? Ever seen what happens, how it works?"

  I shook my head, enthralled.

  Conyers sat forward, gesturing expressively as if he still retained both hands. "I lost my best chance to escape by being too slow. At first, they're just like you and me, just as weak, just as slow. But then, once they get going, get moving, get motivated...I could feel him getting stronger, ripping more and more of my flesh. I could see the bones of his spine sharpen through his T-shirt, splinters digging out through his forearms. I looked there at poor Jacob, literally shaking with bloodlust and you know what I did?" He gestured me in closer."I flipped on the table saw and beat the blade over and over with his skull. He held on for a while - not only was he a bright kid he was also stubborn as hell - but finally his body fell away and after about ten seconds the kid's jaws loosened up."

  I licked my lips. "Then you sawed your arm off?"

  Conyers nodded, remembered anger clear on his face. "Then I sawed my arm off. Total gamble, seventy to one chance I was gonna turn like the rest of them, but I figured what the hell. Might as well try, see if I could stop the parasite. I got lucky. And you know what I learned that day, Sam?"

  There was suddenly a small, heavy revolver in Conyers's hand, pressed hard against my temple. My mouth went dry. "I learned I can't afford to trust any of you, not one of you. You're all bad inside. Maybe you're one of the lucky ones. Maybe you'll survive. But you go Beast and I'll put a bullet through your brain. I won't let you hurt my teachers, my staff...or my students. Now, that also means that if someone else goes Beast in here, I’ll do my best not to let them hurt you either. I promise you that. You understand what I'm telling you?"

  I swallowed, desperate for saliva. "Yes sir."

  Conyers put his revolver away in a brown leather shoulder holster I hadn't noticed before. "Good. Welcome to Dekalb Quarantine #4. You are now registered. Here's your class schedule and your bunk assignment. Get out of here and let these patrolmen go do their jobs."

  My first class was Freshman Literature. I considered going to my bunk first, but the screeners would still be going through my bags (of course I had hidden several contraband items I was confident they wouldn't find) and I was eager to dip myself head-first into Quarantine life. The guards left me in a great hurry after the registrar's office was relocked to an extent that would have been comical had I not seen the terrible scratch marks scored deep into the metal on the other side. Something had been trapped in there and kept from leaving. I suddenly had a pretty good idea what had happened to Mr. Wilson.

  My class was on the second floor. There was one elevator, my school map showed, but it was locked down, staff use only. The stairs were bent, illogical messes. Several stairs were cut to different heights than the rest, there were places on the stairwell that were suddenly narrower than others, and broad patches of metal hammered on the walls as if to cover holes. Something my brother told me clicked. The stairway was a murder zone, with locks designed to trap a roving Beast. The metal plates hid vicious traps, automatic guns and flamethrowers. In the event of an outbreak the stairs could be cut apart and isolated, effectively locking the upper floors away from the lower. I wondered if they had ever been used that way.

  The Quarantine was shaped like a dog bone, two stories of twin hallways separated by a grassy sports area in the middle and four open hubs on each corner. My first class was on the second floor, a Lit class in room 214. I was astonished they allowed me to roam free like this, but then I saw the cameras placed on every corner. The students at Dekalb Quarantine #4 were under constant surveillance. It was going to be great fun finding the holes in the coverage. I had become an expert at it at the local micromall. I would have loved to see the spike in the shoplifting graph that occurred the minute my parents let me out on my own at the age of ten. Candy and costume jewelry had flowed from my bag into the waiting hands of my friends like water.

  The door to my class was just like the rest, a sturdy metal grate allowing whoever was on the other side to see through. It was a scene like any other in the history of public education. A teacher at the head of the class in front of a large whiteboard, on which he'd written Compare and Constrast: "Romeo and Juliet" to "Romero's Joliet." I was a little impressed a controversial modern epic like Romero's Joliet would make its way into the classroom. I supposed this was the administration's way of recognizing that in such a different time kids needed something actually relating to the world in which they lived. It was difficult to give a crap about the trials and tribulations of Ponyboy when he didn’t have to worry about Johnny transforming into a slathering Beast every minute. No one taught The Outsiders anymore. I rapped hard on the door and everyone in the class jumped. I saw the teacher's hand go for the gun on his hip. "Code authorization!" the teacher yelped, loosening his tie.

  "I'm Sam Crafty, here for Literature. They didn't give me a code authorization."

  The teacher, a diminutive man in a brown jacket, thinning black hair carefully plastered to his skull, fished on his desk for his roll sheet, his left hand never leaving his pistol. He pulled the sheet up to his face. "Ah, right. Sam. The Principal didn't g
ive you a code?"

  I shook my head, which belatedly I realized he couldn't see well through the grate and said "No." Which now of course sounded like a lie.

  The teacher shook his head. "He was supposed to give you an afternoon code authorization."

  I waited nearly a full minute before realizing that the teacher wasn't going to give any ground. "Well...maybe he forgot. From what I understand Mr. Wilson just... I mean...maybe he hasn't got the hang of being a registrar yet, sir."

  The kids in the class were beginning to mutter. Crap. Drawing attention to myself already. Damn that Conyers.

  "I'm sorry son, I have to call this in."The teacher pulled a handset down from the wall and dialed a number. After muttering into it, he replaced the phone on the wall. "Okay. Principal Conyers is going to come up here and verify you. Wait out there in the hall until he gets here."

  The hall was empty, so I slouched down against one wall and read the motivational posters. Swear to God, there was one that said "Stay Human, Stay Happy!" It had a cartoon of two kids on geometrically awkward bicycles, smiling with teeth too big for their faces. The teacher had resumed his lecture, which I had actually been interested to hear - my mom had made me read Romero's Joliet last year - but I couldn't make out his words. Most teachers fall within three or four distinct categories. This guy was a Mumbler.

  I felt a slight breeze on my cheek and I turned to see an uncovered bullet hole. The hole was conical, the wide end towards me - the shooting had been from inside the room. I ran my finger around the edges of the hole, marvelling. Was this from a bullet that had ended some teenager's life?

  "Ahem."

  I turned. There was Principal Conyers, flanked by his two burly security guards. "A little morbid, don't you think, Sam?"

  I flushed. I wasn't about to let him get the better of me. "You were supposed to give me a code authorization to get into class."