After the Ending (40 page)

Also, my computer was ruined in the fire, so I’m using
Sarah’s dad’s laptop. Thank God for generators. Anyway, that’s why I haven’t
been in touch, and yes, our internet connection is pretty shitty too. I tried
emailing you a couple days ago, but it wouldn’t go through.

BTW, you should see Sarah’s house, D. It’s ridiculous. I
still don’t think I’ve been in all the rooms. Like you, we have no power, but
we still have the generators we pilfered from Home Depot, plus they already had
a backup generator here. Thankfully. With the exception of worrying about Clara
and Crazies, we’re in pretty good shape. We have everything else we need, for
now, which is nice. Well there’s still no hot water, but a cold bath is better
than nothing. Clara might not have killed us all, but she’s sure made the last
week a nightmare. Thinking about having people like her roaming around—plotting
and manipulating people’s minds—doesn’t help with my nightmares.

On top of everything else that’s been going on, I have a
confession to make, a juicy one. I think you’re going to squeal. I’ve come to
terms with the fact I like Jake, A LOT. I’m not sure if it was seeing his naked
body in the locker room last week (I’ll fill you in more later) or the fact
that he saved my sketchbook from the fire…or the fact that he’s saved my life a
couple times, but it took some serious shit for me to realize it. All things I
need to fill you in on, I know.

Everything else is okay though. I’m safe, so don’t worry
about me. I’m just anxious to meet up with you. Keep working on your telepathy.
Maybe we won’t need these shoddy internet connections anymore once you harness
your mutant-ninja-animal-whisperer-telepathy power.

I love you, and I miss you a lot.

Hasta la pasta,

Zoe

Dani

Chris sat on a boulder a few feet away, the weak rays of the
fading winter sun turning her blonde hair an ethereal silver-gold as she
studied me. Behind her, the surface of an expansive lake reflected the pines
and snow-capped mountains surrounding it, looking like Monet’s version of the
breathtaking alpine scenery. Chris and I were sitting near the lakeshore, several
hundred feet from the tents in their dense shield of trees.

“There has to be a way. You can’t keep going like this,”
Chris said.

“I’m fine.” I waved her worry away and shifted on my own
little boulder—my butt wasn’t enjoying the cold stone, especially not after
another day spent in the saddle.

She snorted. “Yeah…you’re so fine that you almost slid
right off your horse.”

I shrugged. I’d been maintaining a connection with the
animals around us for the past four days, ever since we left Bodega Bay. It was
necessary, but it also came at a high price, leaving me completely
exhausted…except at night. Once we stopped each evening, I would find several
dozen nocturnal animals and ask them to keep an eye out for other “two-legs.”
Even though I kept the connection with them open while I slept—using my Ability
throughout the night—I tended to feel a little better when I woke each morning.
I should have been
more
worn out…it just didn’t make sense. On the other
hand, the unusual dreams about stalking deer through deep woods and soaring
over snowy peaks made perfect sense—the animals’ thoughts were bleeding into my
subconscious and influencing my dreams.

Chris pursed her lips for a minute before speaking.
“Maybe it’s like a passive and active thing. Like you’re trying harder when
you’re awake. Can’t you just turn it down or something, so it’s not as tiring?”

“I don’t think so…it’s more of an on-and-off thing. I’m
either connected to a mind, or I’m not.”

Frustrated, Chris huffed. “Well you’re always connected
to Jack, right?”

“Yep.”

“But that doesn’t wear you out, right?”

I shook my head. “Doesn’t seem to.”

“So it’s also a numbers game. The more minds you’re
connected to, the more energy you expend.”

Nodding, I gave a tight-lipped smile. “And people’s minds
are harder, like they’re trying to kick me out.”

“But why are you less tired in the morning? You said
you’re still doing it at night,” Chris said, thinking out loud. We’d already
been over it, multiple times. Narrowing her eyes, she asked, “How do you find
them? The minds, I mean.”

“I don’t know…at first it was like casting out a net and
seeing what I caught. But the past few days I’ve sort of been able to see them
in my head.”

She leaned forward, intent. “Like radar?”

I thought about it briefly, picturing a black screen with
sonorous beeps bringing green shapes intermittently to life. “I think…maybe?”

“So right now, can you tell me where the nearest living
mammal is, besides me?” Her eyes were bright, excited.

It took only a moment of focus. “Down there,” I said,
pointing to the ground beneath us. “It’s a group of something small. They’re
hibernating, I think.”

“If you do whatever you just did, how long can you just
‘observe’ without actually connecting?”

“I’m not sure. Want me to try right now?” I asked, and
Chris nodded.

Exactly as I’d done with the small, furry family beneath
us, I focused on the part of my brain that let me hold conversations in others’
minds. It was like removing headphones to hear what somebody was saying. I
closed my eyes, blocking out distracting visual stimuli, and a world of living
minds blossomed around me.

Every other time I’d entered the “observation” state, I’d
been looking so intently for specific individuals that I’d missed the wonder of
the collective. It was breathtakingly beautiful, like an orchestra of stars
pulsing together in harmony, playing the song of life. I lost myself in their
melody. It was balanced and perfect and random and…right. When one throbbing
mind extinguished, another appeared elsewhere. Death and life—the natural order
of things.

Like the mythical Sirens, each mind hummed, luring me in.
I wanted to take the next step, to bridge the chasm separating us. I wanted to
connect.

“Dani?” Chris asked softly, pulling me back from the
precipice.

“Hmmm?” The sound was wistful. As I opened my eyes I felt
rejuvenated, like I’d spent the day at a spa instead of on horseback.

“How’d it feel?”

I smiled. “Great. Gets dark fast here, huh?” It had been
late afternoon when I’d closed my eyes, but twilight had fallen.

Without taking her eyes from me, Chris rubbed her hand
over her mouth before resting her chin on her fist. Sitting on a rock, with an
elbow on her knee, she could easily have been posing for the female version of
Rodin’s
The Thinker
.

“Your eyes have been closed for almost an hour,” she told
me slowly, letting the words sink in.

Shocked, I stared at her.

“And you don’t feel more tired?” she asked.

I shook my head. I felt awesome—completely alive, like
the mental immersion had pumped me full of endorphins.

“Can you tell the difference between people and animals
when you’re, you know…in observation mode?”

I nodded.

“What’s your range?” she asked. At my confused look, she
amended her question. “How far can you ‘see’?”

“I…,” I began but had to clear my throat. “I don’t know.
I could feel everyone in the camp, but that’s not that far.”

“Hmmm…,” she said, pulling a map out from the pack she’d
set down beside her rock. “According to your ‘scouts’, the last group of people
we passed was in that little town about five miles back. Can you try to reach
that far?”

I nodded again and reentered the state of concentration.
Reaching out, I expanded the diameter of my awareness, each new life increasing
the lure of the Siren song. Suddenly, a cluster of armored, human minds appeared,
and I gasped.

Gritting my teeth, I said, “I…feel…them.”

“Go further,” Chris’s distant voice instructed. I pushed
on.

The further I stretched my awareness, the more clumps of
humans appeared. It wasn’t tiring exactly, just difficult to resist completing
the connections. I was about to pull back—overwhelmed by the millions of living
creatures pulsing around me—when I noticed it. It was like the glow of city
lights in the dead of night, barely visible over a hillcrest. It drew me in,
and again, I pushed on.

As a throng of human minds appeared, the sliver of a gap
between my mind and all others threatened to vanish. I was so painfully close
to connecting to all of them, thousands of human minds. If I did, I was certain
it would permanently fry my brain, but I didn’t seem to be strong enough to
resist their magnetic pull.

“No…no…too close…too many…,” I repeated over and over. I
was vaguely aware that I’d begun rocking back and forth on my boulder and had
buried my face in my gloved hands.

Suddenly, I was no longer moving, and my mumbling
stopped. I could barely think through the need to close that final
infinitesimal distance separating my mind from all of the others. Someone was
pulling on my wrists, trying  to remove my hands from my face.

“Dani, look at me!” Jason’s voice was strong, deep, and
reassuring. But it also held terror…his was a voice that should never sound
terrified.

Barely cracking open my eyelids, I peeked at the man
kneeling on the ground before me. His eyes were bright, wild, and his face was
ferocious.

He looked away and roared at Chris, “WHAT DID YOU DO TO
HER?”

“Not…Chris’s…fault,” I groaned, reaching up to grasp
Jason’s wrist. “Too far…too many people…too much…can’t stop…”

Jason pulled off my gloves and grasped my hands almost
painfully, but his voice was calm when he spoke. “Focus, Dani. Come back to me.
You have to fight. You can do this.”

The pulsing minds didn’t blink out of existence, not like
when I’d stopped using my Ability completely, but they suddenly stopped pulling
me toward them. It was like I’d flipped a switch that muted their enticing
song. I quickly retracted my awareness until it barely extended beyond our
camp. I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t passed out, why I didn’t feel the bone-deep
exhaustion I’d grown used to, but I certainly didn’t mind.

Smiling weakly at Jason, I removed his hands from my
shoulders and held them in my lap, ignoring the salty tears on my cheeks.
“Thank
you.”

He scooted forward, wedging himself between my knees, and
wrapped me in a fierce embrace. “Sometimes you scare the shit out of me,” he
said, his voice gruff.

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to.”
If a mind voice
could tremble, mine did.

Chris rose and quickly skirted around us, saying, “I’m
just going to go do…something…not here…”

“Fuck! I’m not used to this!” Jason exclaimed as he stood
and stepped backward, leaving me alone on my rock. The lure of the minds
instantly resurfaced at full force.

“Oh!” I exclaimed and leapt up after him. When I seized
his hand, the lure faded again. “It’s
you
!”

Jason didn’t seem to hear me. Unexpectedly, he turned to
me, grabbed my face with his hands, and crushed his lips against mine. Rising
on tiptoes, I clutched his jacket at his sides and pulled his body closer. I
made an involuntary, throaty noise and readied to reel in my awareness
completely.
The minds! The lure! Jason!

“Jason, wait!” I gasped as he started backing me toward
our tent. He had taken to setting it up a short distance from the others, so
we’d at least have the appearance of privacy. Even so, I was exceptionally
grateful the sun had set and our companions couldn’t watch us groping each
other.

“Jason!” I said sharply once we reached our tent. “Wait!
I have to tell you something.”

“What?” He unzipped the tent, and then did the same with
his coat, shrugging it off and tossing it inside. Our enormous, moss-green tent
had two “rooms” and was a few inches taller than me at its apex.

“Something happens when you touch me,” I told him.

He held my eyes, unzipping my down jacket and sliding his
hands along my shoulders to slip it off. “You have no idea what can happen when
I touch you,” he said, tossing the coat on top of his in the tent.

As Jason clenched my waist in his hands, pulling my body
to his, I took a deep breath and held on tightly to my thoughts. But his hands
were moving under my shirt, sliding up my ribcage. His thumbs traced along the
curve of my satiny bra just under my breasts. I shook my head, refocusing. “I
mean…something happens to my
telepathy
when you touch me,” I told him, and
he stilled, his mouth inches from mine.

“What?”

“I gained control when you touched me, then lost some of
it when you walked away, and then it came back when I grabbed your hand. It’s
like you make me stronger.”

His face was unreadable, his hands unmoving.

“Jason…I think you have an Ability, too.” Not for the
first time, I wondered if MG had been right when he’d told me that everyone who
survived the Virus would eventually develop a strange new skill…at least, everyone
who wasn’t a Crazy.

“And that
Ability
is what, exactly?”

Thinking hard, I bit the right side of my lower lip. It
was a silly, manufactured habit that had become second nature. I could remember
Zoe laughing at me when I’d practiced it on her in seventh grade. Around that
time, I’d realized that teenage boys were less interested in smart, nice girls,
and instead preferred pretty, flirty girls. So, I’d practiced being flirtatious
until I no longer had to think about it. I’d transformed.

Jason’s eyes flicked from mine, lower, to the soft, pink
flesh pulled between my teeth. His hands tightened around my ribs, and he
licked his lips.

“Maybe it’s like a megaphone, but it amplifies other
people’s Abilities instead of their voices?” I tapped my pointer finger gently
against my lips—another of those silly habits—before pressing it against his
chest. “Or…it could be like a volume dial, turning other people’s Abilities up
or down. That could be super useful!”

“Sounds boring.”

“Not even! What if someone was going to hurt us with
their fancy superpower, and they could…I don’t know…shoot lasers out of their
eyeballs or something…and you could stop them by using your own crazy awesome
Ability!?”

He straightened, looking down at me with narrowed eyes.
“You think it’s possible?”

I smiled. “I think you’re already doing it.”

When he raised his eyebrows, I explained, “So, there’s
kind of this guy who can enter people’s dreams…and he was entering mine, mostly
when I was on my own. He did it a few times in the week before I left…but not
when you stayed with me that one night. But anyway, he helped me figure out
what I can do…he’s actually where the ‘Ability’ thing came from. And…he hasn’t
shown up since I rejoined you guys. So I’m thinking…it’s you. You must be
blocking him somehow.”

Stupidly, I’d become lost in my explanation and hadn’t
noticed Jason’s face harden to emotionless stone.
Crap! Idiot!

His jaw clenched, sharpening his features, and then he
spoke. “Some guy’s been visiting your dreams? For
weeks
?”

I nodded reluctantly.

“Who is he?” Jason’s voice was hot and cold in an
uncomfortable mixture that made me want to run away from him.

Instead, I locked my knees, refusing to take a step
backward. “I don’t know exactly,” I told him truthfully. “I call him MG, for
Mystery Guy. He’s never told me his name.”

“What does he do when he visits?”

“Let’s see…he was helping me figure out how to use my telepathy.
And, he would get rid of my nightmares about Cam, but I don’t really have those
anymore.” Cringing, I added, “And he comforted me the night I found out about
Grams.”