Gods of Anthem Read Online Free Page B

needle into my side, I don’t feel it.
    He finally realizes I’m still here, present, and his pretend gaze meets mine. It wills something to me.
    My peace steals away in an instant. Anger replaces what had been a calm ready to chariot me away to eternal rest.
    I’m trying to die as quickly as I can!

Twelve
    “You were dead!” Mimi’s standing at my bunk, owl-eyed and pale.
    “I was…? I guess I was.” My voice sounds a thousand years old, and with the blanket over my head to block the light of day, I’m hiding from the living.
    Mimi gulps and leans over to be sure.
    By the gasp she makes, I assume how I feel coincides with how I must look. She probably expects me to turn into a zombie at any moment. It’s unknown what will happen next, but I’m certainly alive, and I’m wondering what to do with myself now.
    My three days of sleeping in the sick bay had been a merciful coma, I’m told. Apparently, I’d died during that time, as well. Flat-lined for four minutes, May said. Why they bothered to perform CPR is beyond me, but they had, and they’d brought me back.
    That place on the other side of the island—the shots, the Pretend Man—evidently, it was all a dream. A very elaborate one, too. Upon waking in the sick bay, when I’d asked about it, the nurses had looked at me strangely. Even May frowned and felt my forehead.
    Mimi said she thought I’d only been at the sick bay. And the look on her face now says it all: Liza is a zombie. She’s certain of it. She’s biting her lip, afraid, but willing to stay close out of loyalty. She’s shaking, though.
    Am I a zombie?

Thirteen
    I’m a really healthy zombie. Not only am I back on my feet, but they stopped me on my way to treatment and told me I didn’t need it.
    Tests show that my cancer is in remission. It was such a surprise that I sat there anyway with all of the others through their dose, arm out.
    Remission. The word is completely foreign. Dying has always been my destination. Recovery is unprecedented.
    I’m allowed to simply go to checkups from now on, they say. No one’s come back from what I have, or from any cancer in the last five years, for that matter, they say.
    They say so many things; my head feels like it’s floating away on their words.
    No use in asking: What now? They wouldn’t know. This is new territory for many of the staff. A patient who doesn’t end up as a pile of ash is so unplanned for.
    Mimi and a few others gape at my smiles and waves from across the cafeteria. I’m in a good mood, and hungry, too. Ravenous. Never been so starved in all of my life.
    There’s already a helping on my plate, but I beg for another, and the food servers dote on me because word’s gotten out that a shrimp-girl with blue eyes was dead, but is now all smiles.
    With a tray full of food and a biscuit in my mouth, I turn to leave. What I see stops me in my tracks. In the corner of the cafeteria stands the doctor from my dream. Pretend Man. And he’s looking right at me.
    I’ve stumbled into the person in front of me, and they catch an elbow to the back while I’m staring in bewilderment across the sea of prisoners.
    A real doctor, not an imaginary one, not a dream at all because … here he is. The shots. The other place. It had been real.
    My mind is still reeling with the possibilities when the prisoner I’d bumped turns around and then stiffens. The sudden stillness forces me to look away from the doctor and turn to find grey eyes locked onto mine.
    The prisoner in front of me stares back with eyes the color of smoke—they go right through me.
    Nothing makes sense, and then everything does. He seems surprised before the grey turmoil turns guilty.
    My sudden recoil dumps my precious food tray onto the floor, but I’m too busy shrinking backwards to care. Panic seizes my senses: He’s alive!
    All of the cafeteria fades away.
    There is only me and him.
    Angry red zigzags of barely healed tissue cross the now-crooked nose. Misshapen lips