Helix: Plague of Ghouls (7 page)

“It’s all gone, my friend.” Shuffle tapped his blockish head and said, “Every data point. Every desire to figure it out. That Grey is dead.”

It’s not all gone
, Ishmael thought. In the right front pocket of his jeans was the USB of Foster’s in-quarantine research: the analysis of more than three hundred lycanthropic blood samples, every datum she knew about the virology of the disease Dr. Grey himself had engineered, the weaponized enzymes which could trigger or rollback a change, and the ill-fated “vaccine” Foster had developed in her third-world lab.
There has to be something on that thumb drive they can use
, Ishmael thought.

“You might have some insight Gil overlooked,” he said. “Shuffle,
I
need your help. I’m not . . . I brought something
back
. We need an expert. Fast.”

Shuffle wasn’t listening.

Nearby, there was a man at a pair of sawhorses, with his lean back turned toward them. Beside him, battery operated construction lights shone on his shoulders and on his work. Ishmael didn’t have to see his face to know who he was. With the entire commissary at his disposal, Dep had found the one used t-shirt with a picture of Ren and Stimpy on the back.

Was he always that tall?

Shuffle wanted to talk, Ishmael could tell, but he kept glancing at Dep’s back, wary and angry. Dep sawed through one of the planks and silence fell on the swamp.

“How is she?” Ishmael said.

“Which one?” Shuffle asked.

Ishmael shrugged. “Start with Helen, I guess.”

“Haberman suggested she ought to stay up at the main house,” Shuffle replied, heading into his half-made cottage, where he kept his tools. “Gradually re-immerse her into civilization. Doubt she stays there long, though. I’ve seen her about the Hollow a couple of days ago. Ferox says she’s seen her, too. Not often. She’s . . .” Shuffle sighed. “She’s not . . . dealing . . .”

When he came out of the collapsing tunnel at Wyndham Farms, Dep had had a bloody knife and gore up to his elbows. When Helen came out of the tunnel, she’d jarred every time Dep spoke. Helen’s mother never came out at all. She’d sent her daughter running for her life, screaming, with four claw slashes across her shirt and chest.

“I don’t know how to fix her,” Shuffle said quietly. “Helen, I mean.”

Ishmael’s jaw hurt from clenching his teeth.

Shuffle took a long deep breath. “Here’s hoping that your virus does its job.” He tapped his head. “That she ends up with false starts and a clean metamorphosis. And if she loses her memory, we’ve all promised: nobody reminds her what she’s lost.”

“I think it did catch.”

Shuffle folded his arms across his chest. “Here’s hoping,” he said again.

“Her scars are fading,” Ishmael said. “For all we know, in a couple of months, she may forget she’d ever been human.”

But what will she become?

“God help me, I actually agree with Haberman,” Shuffle said, with a shrug. “Start re-socializing her now. That way, once she’s finished her false starts, civilization will be the only thing she remembers.”

Ishmael nodded slowly. He hated agreeing with Haberman too, but every once in a while, the Wyrd Chairman backed the right ideas.
Like quarantine, for example. In case of an outbreak of wendigos and other abominations. And I had to go and bust free, and take you people with me.

“Now the question is . . . how clean was my virus when I gave it to her? Or to you?” Ishmael asked. “Or any of you?”

Shuffle flipped his hammer and caught it again by the handle. Ishmael’s head felt like a target. Shuffle grunted, frowned mightily, and grabbed a box of nails. “That’s a damned good question you ask.” Ishmael moved out of his way as he stepped outside.

“You haven’t been feeling . . . off?” Ishmael asked.

“Haven’t felt this good since . . . Well, honest to God, I couldn’t tell you when.” He put a plank in place, held the nail where Ishmael would have to jump to touch it, and with one clean rap, slid the nail home. “No, I’m fine.”

“And Ferox?” Ishmael asked.

“Spends half her time with Helen up at the house, half her time here with Dep. If she’s sick, she hasn’t told me. Never seen her healthier either. Hell, first time I’ve seen her stay human for more than four hours at a time. Eighteen days and counting.”

“Good . . . good,” Ishmael said. He was leaving a name off the list, and Shuffle hammered planks to fill up the silence. Ishmael wished Holly was there with them.

There was no love lost between Ishmael and Mary Anne, but Mary Anne was Pack, and so was Ishmael, so they tolerated each other. They would die for each other, if it came to a fight. Talking to each other, that was another matter. She blamed Ishmael for the incineration of Wyndham Farms, and to some extent, she was right. But anywhere was better than the Farms.

Unless I brought two wendigos back with me.
At Varco Lake, there were no steep cliffs nor rocky rapids to keep them penned in, and the rivers weren’t deep.

Shuffle sniffed and ran the length of his big hand under his nose. Ishmael’s neck hairs rose.
Please tell me that’s only hay fever.

“The reinfection didn’t take, did it?” Ishmael asked.

Shuffle didn’t answer. He moved on to the next plank, hammering in only the top and middle nails. Someone more limber would have to deal with the ones at the bottom.

Ishmael hooked his thumbs into his pockets. “Where’s Mary Anne?”

“She heard you coming. She’s not well, Ishmael. Let’s just leave her be.”

“And if she gets Lost?” Ishmael asked.

Shuffle’s bearded jaw flexed. “That’ll be between her and me.” His deep voice could make water tremble in a glass, and when he was in his other form, he could roar all the leaves off a tree, but for now, his voice was gentle. “Nobody else.” The hammer banged like a gunshot.

“We could always try again. We’ve got a proper lab now, and with Gil, and with a dozen other healthy lycanthropes—”

Shuffle’s hand was so large he could put his thumb on Ishmael’s left shoulder, and touch Ishmael’s other shoulder with his middle finger. He put that hand on Ishmael’s chest, and pushed him back. “No.” He looked tired. “No more.” Ishmael nodded impatiently and crossed his arms. “Your virus only made matters worse. Now, she’s alert and aware when she . . .” He flinched and looked away, as if he’d broken a tooth. He let out his breath. “Never mind. Doesn’t matter.”

“Shuffle, I wish you’d let us help her. I wish
you
would help
us
! She doesn’t deserve to go like this, not while we can still make this right.”

Now Shuffle’s ire rose. “Look what happened the last time I tried to make it right. Look how many suffered because of me. Look how many died! And in what condition! No. We leave her be.”

“All right.”

“It’s between her and me,” Shuffle said, bristling. If Shuffle was an ogre from a distance, he was a giant when he was in somebody’s face. The hammer looked puny in his hand. “Not you, not Wyrd—”

“Shuffle!” Ishmael raised his hands. “I get it! She’s your wife, and it’s none of our business.”

Shuffle rolled his shoulders, cracked his neck, and went back to work.

Ishmael fidgeted. “Is there anything I can get that’ll at least make her more comfortable?”

“No. Not right now.” Two more nails went in, and then another board went up. “Haberman asked the same question. He’s sending us a generator and fuel.”

“Wow. All right.”

Ishmael’s hands itched for something to do. He didn’t want to head up to the main house yet, but he didn’t want to stick around either. He had no idea where Holly had gone with the keys to the ATV. He had to do something. Anything but stand around yakking. He stuck his head into the yurt while Shuffle lined up the next board against the frame, but there were no more tools, save a hand saw and a couple of pencils. He pretended he was eyeing the perpendicularity of the door frame. “And uh . . .”

When Shuffle looked at him, Ishmael jerked his head toward the sawhorses.

“Ferox?” Ishmael asked again, though he clearly meant Dep.

Shuffle first gazed beyond Ishmael, then showed him a look of alarm. “She’s fine,” he answered, though he shook his head. He hovered his hand over his mouth, and with thumb and forefinger, he drew a sign for fangs. “Eager to get out and see the world, now that she can show her face in human company for the first time in years.” With wide eyes, he tapped his temple. All was not right in Dep’s world.

Ishmael’s eye twitched. “Yeah. I’ll bet.”

“She had no inclination to leave his side, until recently,” Shuffle added under his breath. “Things aren’t going well between them.”

Ishmael nodded. “Is he staying out here with you guys?”

“During the day, yeah. Hell if I know where he goes at night. Ferox used to go with him, or tried to. Then one night, it was like he suddenly discovered fifth gear or something. She can’t even keep up with him on our ATV. Guess she got tired of trying to keep up. Hell of a thing, too. He spent four and a half years locked in that damned restaurant with her, day and night. Now all he wants to do is sleep under the stars. To hell with
her
and to hell with the weather.” He hammered his thumbnail instead of an iron one. “Son of a bitch.” He hissed and shook out the pain.

“First week I was back, I had to sleep on the porch,” said Ishmael. “And now . . .” He leaned against the door frame. “Now I don’t sleep at all.” He pushed away from the wall, arms tight across his chest. “We need to fix this.”

“Fix this?” Shuffle straightened. “This whole damned situation should have been handled differently, right from day one, and we’ve been fixing it
worse
ever since.”

This isn’t my fault,
Ishmael thought. Then he got mad—at himself, at Shuffle, at Foster, at Wyrd, at the world.
No, none of this was my doing. None of this would ever have happened if Wyrd hadn’t tried to cut me out of the picture.

Ishmael’s face felt swollen and his skin felt tight.
Seriously, again? Can you not go one day? You going to run off and hunt every time one little thing upsets you?

“This isn’t our only badly handled situation, either,” Ishmael said.

“Those girls?” Shuffle sounded mildly amused. “Holly told me.”

“The kittens,” Ishmael agreed. “You guys can handle yourselves, if push comes to shove. But these girls . . . I mean, if the video’s real . . .”

Shuffle didn’t need any further clarification. “We’re fine on our own.” His eyes flicked to Dep’s workstation. “For now. You focus on the girls.”

“I’ll be here when you need me,” Ishmael said. The words sounded false in his ears. He lifted his shirt to wipe his face with its hem.

If Dep turned like Digger had, Ishmael knew that the only sure-fire way of putting him down was a strong trap and a fast decapitation. Granted, they had more resources and fighting-form personnel at Varco Lake, but Ishmael didn’t want to deal with another wendigo.

He didn’t want to deal with the blame.

“But damn it, I wish you’d help us out,” Ishmael said. “Whatever I’ve got—”

Shuffle dropped his hammer between them. “Do they know yet?” Shuffle asked, a little too loudly. “About Holly and Foster?” He was gazing over Ishmael’s head again.

Holly came up from the riverbank and went toward Dep. She kept her distance, and her weight was on the balls of her feet, as if she was ready to dodge and flee at the first loud noise. Ishmael couldn’t hear the words, but he could hear her voice. She was keeping the conversation light. Dep nodded and replied, then said something that made her laugh.

“No, they don’t know,” Ishmael said. “And Wyrd will never hear it from me.”

Shuffle seemed to deflate and change his mind about whatever he was going to say next. “Well . . . Thank you for that, I guess. I’ve never seen Holly stay out for so long. Usually something sets her off, and she’s back to being Foster again. If that happens here, they’ll interrogate her, analyze her day and night, force her to shift back and forth between forms . . . And try everything in their power to replicate what she can do.”

Holly gave Dep a quick, light hug before leaving him to his work. Upon seeing her old friend Shuffle, her face lit up. Shuffle smiled, bending his beard. He opened his arms. She fell into his embrace like she was hugging an enormous Plushie prize at a carnival. He mock-growled as he rocked her back and forth, nearly pulling her off her feet. She stepped back, but held his hubcap hands. “How are you?” she asked. She went inside the half-built hut, but turned at the doorway and tossed the jangling, gleaming keys to Ishmael, saying, “It’s just down the hill.”

Ishmael could take a hint. He and Dr. Grey were allies, but Shuffle and Holly were pack mates. Family. He wasn’t. Besides, he had to get up to the main house sometime. He kicked a stone out of his path.

Dep was at his workstation a short distance away, sawing under the construction lamp. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Ishmael answered.

Dep cut through another piece of wood. He unclamped one of the two halves. “You get much snow out ’ere?” His accent was as thick as ever. Maybe a little worse, now that his teeth were longer and his tongue slower. Ishmael didn’t have to look into Dep’s mouth to confirm what Shuffle had said. He could tell by the change in Dep’s facial profile that eye teeth were making his upper and lower lips bulge.
That can’t be good,
Ishmael thought. Most lycanthropes could hide their vestigial fangs behind a straight face. Dep couldn’t hide those fang-impressions under a brown paper bag.
He’ll have to grow a beard
, Ishmael thought, but that made him think of Gerard Depardieu with a sagging handlebar moustache, and he decided that a brown paper bag would be more flattering.