Fever (3 page)

            “What is it?” I ask him. “What do you see?”

            Jack’s precognition doesn’t reach far into the future. As far as I know, there isn’t anyone whose abilities do let them see very far. We thought that Johnny could, but it turned out he was just remembering his time working with us in the future. Maybe the weight of human choices gets too much beyond a few seconds, the way you can’t predict the weather too far in advance because there are too many things going on.

            What I do know is that when it comes to things a few seconds ahead, Jack is pretty accurate. Especially when those few seconds are going to contain danger. It’s one of the things that makes him so good in a fight, because there isn’t anything unexpected for him.

            “What is it, Jack?” I repeat.

            “I’m not sure,” he says. “I just get the feeling that whatever we’re going to find in there, it isn’t going to be pleasant.”

            “Does that mean we shouldn’t go in?” I ask. “If there’s a threat…”

            Jack shakes his head. “Even if it’s dangerous, it’s still the first sign of living things we’ve had since we left the tower. It might be able to tell us more about what’s going on, no matter what it is. We need to go in.”

FOUR

J
ack’s hand goes to the waistband of his pants and he pulls out a gun, a high caliber semi-automatic pistol that isn’t quite the same as the weapon Hammond’s men took from him.

            “I took it from the store in the mall,” Jack explains in answer to my questioning look, before slipping into the library. I don’t know if leading with a gun would be the right strategy normally, because if it turns out that there are ordinary people in here, then they’re more likely to panic when they see the weapon, but I trust Jack. I trust his senses. If he says that there is danger ahead, then there’s probably danger ahead.

            We head deeper into the library, past blank shelves of books, lit through a skylight in addition to the windows. That only seems to add to the shadows the book shelves cast, turning the place into a maze lit by dappled patches of light. We pad silently towards the far corner of the building, where it seems like the flashes we spotted came from. There’s another door there, with
Reading Room
over it in elegant lettering.

            There’s another flash of light, glowing beneath the door. At least, I
think
there is. It’s hard to tell, with the light and shadows of the library confusing things. It’s something, anyway, which is why we move over to that inner door. It’s already ajar, and this close to it I can smell an odd scent. Like copper and burning plastic, mixed in with burning paper and other things. Other things I know the scent of only too well, because it’s a scent that still comes to me whenever I think of all the people I’ve killed with my power.

            It’s the scent of burning flesh. A scent that comes complete with a scream, which cuts through the silence of the library before fading to a bubbling gurgle and disappearing completely.

            We’re through the door in an instant. Someone is in trouble, and that means that we can’t just stand by. Jack won’t, and I won’t. Not if there’s a chance to help someone. Except that as soon as we ge „t inside, it’s easy to see that it’s too late to help anyone here. On the floor, there’s a pile of charred remains, fire blackened fragments of bone sticking out of a pile of ashes, the remains of a plastic and metal chair melted in with that pile. Whoever this was, and I know from the speed of my own powers that it
could
be the person who screamed, we’re too late to help them. Far too late. I don’t even know if we’ll be able to help ourselves, because what’s standing over that pile of burned flesh…

            It’s larger than a human by a couple of feet, and there’s something vaguely reptilian about the way it moves as it sniffs the air. Yet there’s also something terrifyingly human about it too. The heart of it seems to be a human torso, and something that might once have been a human head, before horns rose up from it and it changed to accommodate a bestial maw. Ragged, leathery wings stick out from its back, while a long, reptilian tail reaches to the floor. It has scales that shimmer black and purple, like an oil slick, and when it turns to us, its eyes burn with a deep, fiery glow of power.

            “Run,” Jack says softly, as though hoping that keeping calm will be enough to keep it from attacking. It isn’t. The creature’s eyes fix on us, and it seems almost to smile before it crouches to lunge at us. “Run, Celes!”

            I leap back as the creature pounces, barely making it through the door to the reading room. Jack is already there, and I know that without the kind of speed we both possess, we’d be dead right now. Not that it isn’t still an option. Jack fires two shots through the gap of the door, the noise of them deafening after the silence of the library. They don’t do anything except buy us a second in which to close the reading room doors.

            Which start to glow with power…

            “Keep running, Celes!” Jack insists. “It’s coming through.”

            We sprint along the rows of books, but when there’s a crash behind me, I can’t help looking back for a second. The creature is there, standing in the ruins of the doors it has just destroyed, staring at us. At me. When it runs, it runs with the speed of something that isn’t built like a human, and its roar of anger has nothing to do with a human throat.

            I push over the nearest bookcases, hoping to slow it down, then sprint for the door using every ounce of extra speed I have. Jack and I skid out of the door, pausing to close it even though the last one didn’t slow the creature for long. Even a few seconds is something. Right now, we need all the time we can get.

            “The car,” Jack says. “Run for the car, Celes.”

            I don’t need him to tell me that again. I sprint for the car, leaping in at the passenger side while Jack takes the driver’s seat. He works the key we took from the car lot’s office, trying to get the car to start, the engine coughs, not revving yet. Werevving

            Behind us, the doors to the library glow with power. They won’t last for long. They
don’t
last for long. They burn to ash in seconds, falling away from the hinges that hold them like powder to reveal the creature behind them. It steps out into the street, blinking in the light, looking around for us until its eyes fix on us in the car.

            Finally, Jack gets the car to start.

            The creature lets out another inhuman sound and runs at the car in loping strides, but Jack hits the gas, and even with the layer of ash on the road, he manages to speed away. The creature hits the ground where the car was, clawed hands digging into the road like it’s butter.

            Jack pushes the car to its limit in the next few seconds, so that there’s a brief point when I’m sure I see the speed reach ninety. I glance back and see the creature watching, not chasing, obviously having decided that catching us would be too much of an effort.

            “It’s okay, Jack,” I say. “You can slow down.”

            Jack glances back and slows a little, though he’s still doing more than the speed limit would be on a street like this. He doesn’t stop until we’re well clear of the library. Almost all the way to the freeway.

            “That was close,” he says. “Too close. Shooting that thing didn’t even seem to slow it down.”

            That obviously bothers him. I don’t think Jack likes the idea of an enemy he doesn’t know how to kill if he needs to. I know I don’t like the idea of an enemy Jack can’t kill. If that creature had managed to get hold of us, how long would we have lasted? I don’t think it would have been able to burn us, but it still had claws and teeth. It was still too strong to fight.

            “Jack, that creature…” I want to avoid this, but I know I can’t. We need to talk about it, and we need to do it now. “It burned the doors. It burned whoever that was back there. It has the same powers I do. What does that mean, Jack? Where did it come from?”

            Jack shakes his head. “I don’t know, Celes.”

            “Is it connected to me somehow? Am I the same kind of thing it is?” I can feel those questions gnawing away at me. Because if it’s something so terrifying and mindlessly evil, what does that make me?

            “You’re nothing like that thing,” Jack says.

            “I have the same powers.”

            “You’re nothing like it,” Jack repeats, reaching out for me. “You’re not a monster, and you never will be.”

            Trust Jack to guess what’s scaring me. How can he know though? How can he know that one day I won’t end up like that thing? What if I’m just the first stage on whatever path leads to it?

            “You have to trust me, Celes,” Jack says. “I don’t know what that thing is, but I know you aren’t it. You care too much about the world and the people in it. All that cared about was killing.”

            I nod, knowing that he’s right, even though there are still so many doubts nagging at me. “There’s so much we don’t know,” I say. “Where did that creature come from, Jack? Does it have something to do with Hammond?”

            “Your guess is as good as mine,” Jack says. “It could be up to Hammond. It could be from the future. It could even be something from the past. We don’t have enough information to make a guess, except that it seems to have a violent streak.”

            I think about all the ash in the town. Some of it has to be from the fire that was raining from the sky when we went into the shelter, but how much of it is from that creature, or others like it? How many people has it killed?

            “There might be others like it,” I say. “There might be dozens of them. Hundreds. There might be whole armies of them.”

            “Or there might just be a few,” Jack says.

            I nod. I don’t like being like this. Not knowing what’s going on. “What we need is more information.”

            “If we can get it,” Jack agrees. “But it isn’t the main priority. The priority is to get to Location Thirteen. If we’re lucky, the Faders there will know more about what has happened in the past couple of days.”

            “As well as how to stop those things,” I say.

            Jack nods. “Let’s hope so. If there are more of them, then they could potentially wipe out every human out there.”

            “But we know it doesn’t work out like that, don’t we?” I say.

            Jack shakes his head. “You know we can’t take that for granted. We came back to change things, so we have to believe that things can change. If they can, then they can change both ways.”

          New="T      Which means they can get worse as well as better. I’ve thought about it before. I’ve thought about it a lot now. We came into the past to try to make things better, but what if we make things worse? What if we’ve come here to this time to try to save the future, but we actually end up destroying it?

            No, we aren’t going to allow that to happen. Whatever it takes, we’re going to stop the Fever. We’re going to save people. We’re going to stop creatures like the one we’ve just run from. First, of course, we need to find a way to do that, but we will. I hope we will at least.

            That means getting to Location Thirteen. Jack seems to know that too, because he hits the gas again, heading out onto the freeway and setting off in the direction of Nevada.

FIVE

I
t’s only when we’ve been on the freeway a little while that I realize we aren’t heading south. Instead, we seem to be heading almost due west.

            “What’s going on, Jack?” I ask. “I thought that we needed to get to Location Thirteen?”

            “We do.”

            “But this isn’t the way to the Nevada Desert.”

            Jack shakes his head. “Not directly, but assuming everything is still there, it’s our best shot at getting there quickly.”

            “Assuming what’s still there?” I ask.

            Jack smiles. “You’ll see.”

            A half hour later, I do. There’s what looks like an old storage facility away to our left, but Jack pulls into it like it’s something much more important than that, bringing the car to a halt in front of the imposing looking gates.

            “This is a Location, isn’t itn T?” I guess.

            “Not exactly.” Jack punches a number into a keypad by the gate, leaning in so that a scanner can identify him. “There aren’t any people here. It was never designed as a shelter, or as a place for Faders to work out of. In a way, it’s exactly what it looks like. A storage facility.”

            “But one that stores things for the Underground?” I say. I can see how useful that would be. A place that didn’t have to have Faders in it looking after it, but where there would be plenty of things for any Fader who needed them. “What kind of thing do you store here?”

            “Just about anything we could think of that a Fader might need in an emergency,” Jack says. He smiles again. “Don’t worry, you’ll get the tour. We’re going to need a lot of things for this trip to Nevada.”

            I look around the place. It’s as empty as everywhere else. “Don’t you have anyone in these places? I mean, isn’t it a security risk just leaving it?”

            Jack glances towards a small building by the entrance. “In theory, there should be a couple of local security guards on it who think that it’s just a normal storage place. With everything that’s going on, I’m not expecting them to be here. There’s still plenty of automated security, though.”

            “What kind of automated security?” I ask.