Unwelcome Bodies Read Free Page A

sprayer in hand, opened the door.
     
    * * * *
     
    Kathleen heard the door open behind her just as she tossed her gloves, mask, hairnet, and goggles into the dispenser. “Reyna!” she barked. “Whatever you forgot, can’t it wait? I’m naked…” She trailed off as she turned around and saw the unmasked, ungloved girl standing in front of the door, a spray can in her hand. “Oh God,” Kathleen whispered, blood freezing in her veins. “Please don’t kill me. Please don’t.”
    “I…I’m here to save you,” the girl said, voice quavering.
    Kathleen was frozen, body and brain, her lips repeating the words over and over, as she stared helplessly at the girl with the can of death. “Please don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me.”
    “I have to do this,” the girl said. “They said so.”
    A sliver of hyperawareness pierced through the haze in Kathleen’s brain, and she started racing through her options in a blind panic. Should she scream? No, she’d just get sprayed. Try to startle the girl and make a run for it? No, she’d still get sprayed. She forced herself to look quickly over her shoulder. The window was no good. It was both barred and boarded over. Could she get to her Mace in time? She flicked her gaze at her locker and shuddered. She couldn’t risk touching it bare-handed. Anna had been in here this morning.
    Her life now depended on her ability to talk her way out.
     
    * * * *
     
    “Look, I don’t want to die,” the woman said, her voice shaky, but measured. “I’m not like you. I don’t want to be sick. Don’t you understand?”
    Tessa struggled to keep her can level. It suddenly felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. “I have to do this,” she said. “We all have to be saved. That’s what Father Moran says.”
    “But I don’t want to be saved,” the woman said. “Please, just go. Let me live.”
    “But…but we all have to be saved, otherwise the temple won’t be open to us.”
    The woman flung her arms out to her sides and cried, “What does that mean?”
    Tessa opened her mouth, then blinked hard. “It means…” She struggled to find the words, but they weren’t there. She didn’t know what to say. When Father Moran described it, it made so much sense. She could see the angels and the throne and the beautiful colors. She could hear the singing, the laughter, the prayer. She could see her little brother healthy, running to meet her, arms wide, and she was hugging him without fear. But she couldn’t form the words herself, couldn’t make them come together in her brain. She swallowed hard, then said the only words she could find. “God wouldn’t have made us sick if He didn’t have a reason to.”
    The woman looked down at the floor, blinking hard, then looked back up and said, “Well then, shouldn’t you let God make me sick? I mean, who are you to make decisions for God?”
    Tessa knew the answer to that one. “Oh, we’re doing the work of the angels.”
    “Did they tell you to do that work? Did the angels tell you personally?”
    Tessa blinked hard. “No… I…” The can’s weight doubled, and she struggled to keep it from slipping from her fingers.
     
    * * * *
     
    This was it. This was her opportunity. Kathleen looked over at the locker again. She would just tuck her hand inside her sleeve, Mace the girl, and then throw the sweater away as soon as she got home. She started inching slowly toward the locker.
    The girl suddenly looked up, her eyes filled with tears, and raised the can. “I have to do this,” she said through clenched teeth. “I have to.”
    Kathleen froze, throat tight, the locker within arm’s reach. “No, you don’t.”
    “Yes, I do.”
    “Why?” she asked, still clinging to the faint hope that she could talk some sense into the girl and make it out of there without a death sentence. “I mean, why do you believe them when they say you’re saved?”
    “Because…because God wouldn’t have made us