Life Eternal Part 5

"Do they look different?" the girl pressed. "Clementine said that they look like corpses. That their eyes are cloudy."

My stomach tightened. "You've never met one before?" I asked, gazing at the St. Clement girls on the other side of the table. They shook their heads as if it were obvious. "Well, Clementine doesn't know what she's talking about."

"But she's met the Undead before. With her dad."

"So have I," I said. "And she's wrong."

A couple of girls across from me went rigid, as if I had insulted their religion.

"But aren't they angry and uncontrollable?" said a delicate brunette, her eyes wide behind her gla.s.ses. "That's what Clementine said. That they're animals."

"I don't see how they can stand it," her friend said, playing with the straw of her soda. "Knowing that a murderer is lurking inside them." The other girls nodded in agreement.

I stopped eating. "Not all Undead take souls at random. And besides, any of us could kill someone. It's not like we're perfect. Humans kill each other all the time. As Monitors, we're going to learn how to kill the Undead. That doesn't bother you?"

There was an awkward stillness as everyone gazed at me. I looked to the girls from Gottfried for support, but only April gave me a sympathetic glance before looking away. The rest of them were too cowardly to even look me in the eyes, even though they had been close with the same friends I'd had at Gottfried. "Allison, are you still in touch with Eleanor?" I asked.

"She's different now."

"She's had a hard time. It's not her fault."

"I never said it was," Allison said, offended. "But she's Undead now, and I'm a Monitor. That's not my fault, either." Putting down her fork, she stood up. "You know, I'm not really hungry anymore." Without looking at me, she turned to her sister. "I'll see you back at the dorm."

The table went silent as she gathered her things, and I realized that none of them were comfortable with me there. "Right," I said, crumpling my napkin in my fist. "I guess I'll go." And picking up my tray, I walked down the aisle, refusing to look back. I paused when I spotted Anya Pinsky sitting by herself in the corner. Smiling, I walked over to her table and sat across from her.

She looked up from her brisket. "Did I say you could sit?" she asked, p.r.o.nouncing every consonant immaculately. Her dark red hair was pulled into a low bun.

"Sorry. I thought you were alone."

"I am," she said.

"I was just trying to be friendly."

"I don't need any friends," she said.

"Now I know." Just as I moved to the end of the table, the main door of the dining hall opened, and a tall, ebony-skinned man sauntered down the aisle, carrying a folder of papers. He was wearing a dark green suit, the kind only a tall person could pull off. His hair was graying.

A hush fell over the crowd as he stood at the head of the room and put on his gla.s.ses.

"h.e.l.lo," he said in a French-Caribbean accent, his voice deep yet wavering, as if he were singing the words. "As many of you know, I am Headmaster LaGuerre, and I'd like to welcome you all to Lycee St. Clement."

Everyone clapped. From where I was sitting, I could see the back of Clementine's head near the front. Her last name was LaGuerre, too.

"You are all Monitors," he said, and smiled. "It makes me proud to say those words. Some of you come from old Monitoring families, others are new to our community, but we are all united by our shared talents: the unique ability to sense death, and the primal urge to seek it out and bury it."

The room went still as he gazed around us, his words pulsing beneath the silence like electricity.

"In your time at St. Clement, you'll make new friends, discover new skills, and eventually you'll specialize in one branch of Monitoring. However, most important, you will learn how to control and use your powers. The purpose of our calling is to police the Undead, and to put them to rest only when completely necessary. All life is precious, even second lives."

I wanted to turn to April's table, but resisted the urge.

"Monitoring is not a safe calling. Every day you will be risking your lives for the betterment of humanity." He paused dramatically. "In your cla.s.ses you will hone the three basic Monitoring skills: intuition, sensing the Undead; evaluation, judging the Undead; and execution, putting the Undead to rest. But cla.s.ses aren't a replacement for real experience. You need to learn how to watch after yourselves, and now is the perfect time to start." He motioned toward the doors. "The gates are always open. You can come and go as you please, and at your own risk.

"That said, we do have two rules. First, I ask you to keep what you learn at St. Clement to yourselves. You are not to discuss the existence of Monitors or the Undead to anyone outside of these walls; nor shall you blatantly display your talents to anyone outside this community unless the situation is life threatening. Should the public find out about the existence of the Undead, they will try to bury them all. History has proven this to be true over and over again.

"And second, I ask you to carry around some sort of protection at all times. A small shovel is preferable, as it can be used as both a blunt weapon and a burial tool; but a box of matches, a roll of gauze-any of these things will suffice. It is our job to start training you to act and think like Monitors." He reached into his jacket and pulled out something wrapped in a cloth. He unfolded it and held up a small trowel and a pair of gloves. "As you can see, we professors take the same precautions as you."

The room was completely silent as he wrapped up his tools and slid them back into his pocket.

"Finally, I'd like to name this year's top rank. For those of you who are new to St. Clement, the top rank is the student who scored the highest in the placement exam, which the entire school takes. That student is thus the best Monitor at our academy."

He looked down at a piece of paper. "Renee Winters."

It took me a few moments to realize he had said my name. When I did, I was so surprised that I dropped my fork into my lap. I picked it up and brushed myself off, feeling my cheeks flush as all heads turned in my direction. How could I have gotten first rank when I hadn't even finished the exam?

"Renee, would you come to the front?" the headmaster said, gazing around the crowd, unsure of who I was.

I stood up and walked to the podium, my shoes loud against the wooden floor. People whispered as I approached the front of the room. The headmaster beamed and took out a small brooch in the shape of a cat.

"The cat is the mascot of St. Clement, and the symbol of Monitors all across the world," he said as he pinned it to the collar of my s.h.i.+rt. "Now you and the cat are one."

"Thanks," I said, trying not to blush.

"Congratulations," he said. "And welcome to St. Clement." Under the noise of everyone clapping, the headmaster added, "Could you meet me in my office Monday afternoon after your cla.s.ses?"

"Sure," I said, giving him a curious look. But he only smiled. I was about to return to my seat when he stopped me.

"And now Renee will lead us in the recital of the Cartesian Oath."

I felt a wave of nausea pa.s.s over me as the entire dining hall rose, their benches sc.r.a.ping against the floor.

"Drafted by our ancestors in the spirit of Rene Descartes, the Cartesian Oath is the sole pledge all Monitors must take in their training. It is our const.i.tution, our ethical standard, our declaration des droits."

Ethical standard? I was the last person who should be reading this aloud. I shook my head at him, but he merely smiled and handed me a roll of paper. "If you would please repeat after Renee."

I could feel the girls from my floor glaring at me. Trying to will my hands to stop shaking, I unrolled the paper.

"Go on," the headmaster said softly.

I cleared my throat. "As a Monitor, I swear by O-Osiris'" -my voice cracked-"G.o.d of judgment and the afterlife, that, to the best of my ability, I shall bury all deceased humans within ten days of death, to prevent reanimation, even if the deceased is my son, daughter, sibling, friend, or-or...or lover,'" I said finally, apologizing to Dante in my head as I listened to the drone of my cla.s.smates repeating my words.

"If I should sense the presence of an Undead, I shall seek him out and evaluate his rate of decay,'" I continued. My eyes rested on Brett's as I watched him mouth my words and give me an encouraging smile.

"Should he be desperate, dangerous, or close to complete putrefaction, I shall endeavor to capture him and bring him to the High Monitor Court for examination and trial.'"

Clementine stared at me from the center of the room, her face wrought with jealousy.

"I shall never bury an Undead until he has proven himself guilty of murder or has-has-'" The headmaster nodded at me to continue. "Has threatened my life.'"

When the voices stopped, I unrolled the paper even more and continued. "When I do bury an Undead, I shall do so promptly, painlessly, and in accordance with Monitor ritual, with no vengeance or brutality.

"I shall never announce myself to Plebeians or Undead. And finally, I understand that every being on earth has the capacity to cause pain, even Monitors, and that I will use my power and training with the caution and consideration given to my own life.'"

There was a lull in the room as we uttered the last phrase. Without a word, Headmaster LaGuerre gave me a slight bow indicating that I could sit down, and the hum of conversations recommenced.

After dinner, everyone parted around me as we filed out of the dining hall. I tried to blend in, covering the pin on my collar with my scarf. The lobby was crowded with girls, all clamoring to look at something on the bulletin board.

"What's going on?" I asked a girl standing near the perimeter. She started when she saw me, as if I'd frightened her. "It's the cla.s.s rank list. They just posted it, along with our cla.s.s schedules."

Just then Clementine LaGuerre stormed through, glaring at me as she pushed past my shoulder and up the stairs. I made my way to the front and flipped through a folder of schedules until I found the sheet with my name at the top. It read as follows: WINTERS, RENeE: JUNIOR YEAR SCHEDULE.

History of Monitors Strategy and Prediction Child Psychology French Advanced Latin I scanned the cla.s.s rank list until I found my name. Winters, Renee. Number one. I stared at it, still incredulous. Out of curiosity, I looked for LaGuerre, Clementine. She was number two.

IT WAS A BRISK SEPTEMBER MORNING, THE SUN spilling into the halls as I climbed up the three flights of stairs that led to History of Monitors, my first cla.s.s of the semester. The room had beamed ceilings and pigeons roosting on window ledges, their chests puffing as they slept. I envied them. My weekend had been sleepless, and with no one to talk to, the days had become languid and distorted, like a dream. I took a seat, watching Mr. Pollet fiddle with a projector in the back of the room, his underarms damp with sweat.

There were only nine others around the table, including Anya, Clementine, Brett, and a few boys I didn't know. When the bell rang, Mr. Pollet straightened himself out and took his place at the blackboard.

"Montreal is a city underground," he said, dabbing his pink forehead. "It's the only city built by Monitors, for Monitors, and is therefore the only Monitor safehold in existence, the only Monitor fortress."

He crossed the room to switch off the lights, and turned on the projector. "Monitors first emigrated here from France, with the dream of designing a place where they could study the Undead in an enclosed environment. Thus, they chose to settle on an island, where they built a network of tunnels underneath the city to keep them safe from the Undead, who cannot go underground."

He pressed a b.u.t.ton on his remote control, and the first slide appeared. It was a photograph of a normal city street. On the sidewalk was a small hut that looked like an outhouse.

"An entrance to the tunnel network," he said, and clicked to the next slide, a photograph of the stairs inside leading down under the earth.

He clicked ahead. A tunnel entrance beneath a building. A staircase in the back of an alley. A wooden hut on the side of Mont Royal, which marked the center of the city.

"And conveniently, they all connect here."

He showed a black-and-white ill.u.s.tration of a sprawling gothic building with castle spires and pointed alcoves. "This is the Royal Victoria Hospital, just after it was built by the Monitors. Of course, at the time it was called Hopital Saint-Laurent."

Something within me began to throb with antic.i.p.ation, as if years of effort had led up to this moment. I was suddenly overwhelmed with the need to know what rested behind its walls. Not the patients or the doctors and nurses, but something else....

"In the early days, when Monitors ran the city, Royal Victoria was one of the first hospitals in North America to treat Undead children. Later, during the 1890s, the hospital was taken over by the Plebeians, but this sketch was drawn during the time of the Monitors."

I blinked and the image was in color.

"Tunnels from all across the city led directly to the hospital supply room. That way, if there was ever an Undead attack, the Monitors could easily access supplies like gauze, ointments, and scissors in the hospital."

I blinked again, and the flags on the building's spires seemed to move in the wind.

"After the Monitoring community began to die out, we slowly lost control over Montreal."

I blinked once more, and the cla.s.sroom around me seemed to collapse into itself.

"Today, Montreal is no longer run by Monitors, nor is the hospital. In fact, most people here are not even aware that we or the Undead exist."

That was the last thing I heard before everything went black.

The next thing I knew, I was in the image, standing in the gra.s.s on the lawn in front of the hospital. It was a crisp autumn day, a slight breeze making the flags on the spires billow. I was holding a bouquet of flowers.

Four ambulances were parked in the driveway outside the hospital as I walked toward the entrance and through the double doors. In the foyer was a reception area lined with nurses sitting behind a counter. Smiling, I leaned over to get their attention.

"May I help you?" a young nurse asked. She was zaftig, with round cheeks and lots of freckles. She wore a white-and-yellow uniform.

"Yes, I'm visiting the patient in room 151," I said, holding up the flowers.

"Is the patient related to you?"

"My sis-I mean, brother. He's my brother," I said quickly.

The nurse gave me a sad smile. "I'm so sorry," she said as she typed something into her computer and directed me toward the pediatrics wing.

The hallways were sterile and fluorescent. I looked through the window of the door before opening it, to make sure no other visitors were inside, and then turned the k.n.o.b.

A little boy lay sleeping in a hospital bed. He looked about five and was very thin. He s.h.i.+fted under the sheets as I closed the door. Flowers lined the windowsill. I set my bouquet on the sill amongst them and approached the bed, checking the floor on either side. It was covered in creamy linoleum. The gap between the frame and floor seemed just big enough to fit my arm in comfortably. Kneeling down, I rolled up my sleeve and reached under the bed.

I couldn't feel anything at first, but after patting around, my fingers grazed something cool and b.u.mpy. Engraved metal. Relieved, I opened my bag and took out a piece of paper and a stick of graphite. I slid the paper under the bed until it was covering the metal spot, and, quietly as I could, I rubbed the graphite over the paper to make a print of the engraving.

Just as I finished, the door clicked open. I shoved the paper in my pocket, stood up, and leaned over the sleeping boy. I didn't even know his name. A nurse was holding the door open with an elbow, her back turned to me as she laughed and chatted with someone in the hall. The boy s.h.i.+vered and clutched the sheets to his chest. Gently, I pulled up his blankets and tucked him in. Above me, the lights flickered and slowly darkened until the room, the boy, and the nurse's laughter all faded away.

I woke up in a strange room, my face cold and wet. A well-dressed man stood over me, holding a spray bottle.

"Ah, here she comes," he said, his voice gruff. "Sorry to spray you with water, but we tried ammonia several times," he said, putting the bottle aside. "It seems you have a weak sense of smell."

"It comes and goes," I said, sitting up. I was lying on a worn leather couch. The room around me was made almost entirely of mahogany-the floors, the walls, the furniture. Several diplomas and certificates hung above a desk. A medical coat was draped over the back of the chair. On its breast pocket was a name tag that read DR. NEWHAUS.

"Am I in the hospital?" I asked, bewildered. Without thinking, I patted my pockets, looking for the paper that I had rubbed against the floor.

"You're at St. Clement," the man said, taking a seat in a chair next to the couch. His face was dull, fleshy, and somehow expressionless. As he stared at me, I noticed that one of his eyes was crooked, as though it was sliding off toward the side of his head. "My name is Dr. Newhaus. I'm your psychology professor, though we haven't met yet, and I'm also the school doctor." Opening a briefcase, he pulled out a stethoscope and a flashlight.

"You gave us quite a show," he said as he listened to my breathing.

"What do you mean-" I began to ask, but he quieted me.

"How strange," he said, lowering his stethoscope. "You have a slightly irregular heartbeat."

"It's just a murmur," I said quickly. The doctors this summer had noticed it, too. "I've had it for a while," I lied.

Leaning toward me, he listened again, the stethoscope cold beneath my s.h.i.+rt. "This is quite different," he said. "It almost has the cadence of an Undead-"

I cut him off before he could finish. "What did you say happened to me?" I asked, squirming away from him.

He removed the scope, draped it around his shoulders, and crossed his hands in his lap. "You collapsed during history cla.s.s and seemed to have had a kind of fainting spell."

I glanced at the clock above his desk. It had been a few hours since the start of cla.s.s. "What do you mean?"

"I was hoping you'd be able to tell me." His expression was so placid that it made me uneasy.