I didn’t know why only Gazzy’s life was in the picture frame, or why none of the rest of us got one. Those whitecoats sure liked to keep us guessing!
We all checked one another for expiration dates, but none of us had them. Yet. But you know, when you’ve faced imminent death as often as we have, it gets a little old, frankly. Our room had no windows, so we had zero reference for time passing. We fought off boredom by coming up with plans to escape, courses of action to take. I led the flock through all kinds of scenarios, how we could use each one to our advantage.
That’s what leaders do.
“Now, let’s say they come get us,” I started for the hundredth time.
“And, like, the halls are full of zebras,” Iggy muttered sarcastically.
“And suddenly tons of bubbles are everywhere,” said the Gasman.
“And then everyone starts eating beef jerky,” Nudge suggested.
“Yeah,” said Iggy, rubbing his hands together. “I’ll grab a zebra; Gaz, you fill all the bubbles with your trademark scent, so people are choking and gagging; and let’s throw beef jerky right into their eyes! Now, that’s a plan!”
They all collapsed into laughter, and even Fang grinned at me as I gazed sourly at the flock.
“I just want us to be prepared,” I said.
“Yeah—prepared to die,” said Iggy.
“We’re not going to die!” I snapped. “Not now, not anytime soon!”
“What about our expiration dates?” Gazzy asked. “They could show up any second. And what about stupid Angel, turning on us?”
There was a lot I wanted to say to him about that, but now wasn’t the time.
I opened my mouth to spout some reassuring lies, but the door opened.
We tensed, turning quickly to see a whitecoat coming at us, armed with a clipboard. He checked his notes and pushed his glasses up on his nose.
“Okay,” he said briskly. “I need the blind one and the one that can mimic voices.” He looked up expectantly as we stared at him.
“Are you on drugs?” I asked in disbelief.
“Me? No,” he said, looking confused. He tapped his pen against his clipboard. “We need to run some last tests.”
I crossed my arms over my chest as Fang and I instinctively moved between the whitecoat and the rest of the flock.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
The whitecoat looked surprised at my noncompliance—obviously he hadn’t read all of our case notes. “No, come along now,” he said, striving for authoritative and achieving only weenie.
“You’re kidding, right?” I asked. “Unless you’re packing a submachine gun, you’re flat out of luck, buddy.”
He frowned. “Look, how about they just come along peacefully, and there won’t be any trouble.”
“Uh...how about, no?”
“What kind of trouble?” Gazzy asked from behind me. “I mean, anything to break the boredom.”
The whitecoat tried to look stern. “Look, we’re trying to explore other options to your retirement,” he said. “You might be useful to us in other ways. Only people who are useful will survive the By-Half Plan. Actually, it’s really more like the One-in-a-Thousand Plan. Only people with useful skills will be necessary in the new order, the Re-Evolution. You should want to help us find out if you’re at all useful to us alive.”
“Because we’re probably not that useful dead,” Nudge said thoughtfully.
“No,” I agreed. “Well, maybe as doorstops.”
The whitecoat made an “eew” expression.