Plague (10 page)

The wheels in Turk’s mind began to turn slowly. But they were picking up speed. “Jamal’s with us and he’s black.”

“So? We use Jamal. He gets us into Albert’s. You do what you gotta do. All I’m saying is, you and me, we’re normal people. We’re not black or queer or Mexican. And we’re the ones digging toilets. How come?”

Turk knew the answer: because they had failed in their attempt to take over. But he’d never thought about this new angle.

“Astrid’s a normal white person,” Turk argued halfheartedly. “So’s Sam.”

“Sam’s a freak, and I think he might even be a Jew,” Lance said. His eyes were glittering. He was showing his teeth, grinning as he talked. It wasn’t a good look for him. “And Astrid? She’s not even on the council anymore.”

Turk was buying it. He felt the new ideas settle into the dark places in his aggrieved mind. “Drake’s white. So is Orc, you know, underneath it all. But they’re kind of like freaks. Only . . . only not really. Because they didn’t like, turn into freaks, they had accidents or whatever that made them what they are now.”

“Exactly,” Lance said.

Yes, Turk thought. This could be good. This could be very good. Taking out Albert would cause more problems than burning a bunch of houses. Albert was the one who was really in charge. He had the money and the food. That made him even more important than Sam.

Lisa came in then with cabbages she’d picked from the fields, and a fat rat she’d bought. Turk’s mouth watered: dinner was late.

“Let’s eat,” he said. “Then we think about what comes next.”

EDILIO
WAITED UNTIL the sun was up to go for Roscoe.

It was all very peaceful. Roscoe wasn’t the kind of guy to make much trouble.

“We just have to put you somewhere safe,” Edilio explained.

“So I don’t give it to anyone else,” Roscoe said.

“Yeah. While we figure out how to cure you.”

“I want to say good-bye to Sinder,” Roscoe said softly. He jerked his head indicating that she was in the house.

“Of course, man. But listen. Don’t let her touch you, okay? Just in case.”

Roscoe struggled a little then, not against Edilio but against himself. He fought to stop a quiver in his lip. Fought to keep the tears from filling his eyes.

Edilio took him to town hall. There was an unused office with a cot. Edilio had made sure there were books for Roscoe to read. And a covered pot for Roscoe to do his business. A jug of water was on the shelf next to the window. A cabbage and a cooked rabbit were there, too.

The rabbit was a delicacy.

Roscoe thanked Edilio for being decent.

Edilio closed the door. Then he turned the key in the deadbolt.

Quinn’s fishermen had had a good day. The boats were reasonably full of fish, squid, octopi, and the weird things they called blue bats. Those they fed to the zekes—the worms in the fields—to buy safe passage for the vegetable pickers.

The prize of the morning’s work was a five-foot-long shark. Quinn’s boat was actually cramped because of the thing. He was sitting on the tail as he rowed, which was awkward and would give him a backache later. But no one in the boat was complaining. A shark was a twofer: not only was it great eating, it was a competitor for the limited supply of fish.

“Here’s what we ought to do,” Cigar was saying as he pulled at his oar. “We ought to sell the teeth at the mall. I mean, did you see all those teeth? Kids would pay a ’Berto for, like, a necklace of teeth.”

“Or they might, like, glue them onto a stick and make a gnarly weapon,” Elise suggested.

“What do you think it weighs?” Ben wondered.

“Ah, not much,” Quinn said.

That got a laugh. It had taken eight kids just to haul the fish over the side into Quinn’s boat, and then they’d practically swamped the boat.

“Weighs more than Cigar,” Ben said.

Cigar plucked at his ragged T-shirt and revealed a hard, almost concave, stomach. “Everything weighs more than me nowadays. When this all ends and we get out, I’m writing a diet book. The FAYZ diet. First, you eat all the junk food you can. Then you starve. Then you eat artichokes. Then you starve a little more. Then you eat someone’s hamster. Then you go on the all-fish diet.”

“You left out the part where you fry up some ants,” Elise said.

“Ants? I ate beetles,” Ben bragged.

They went on like this for a while, rowing their heavy-laden boat and bragging about the awful things they had eaten.

Quinn noticed something he hadn’t seen in a long time.

“Hold up,” he said.

“Aw, is Captain Ahab tired of rowing?”

“You’ve got good eyes, Elise, look over there.” Quinn pointed toward the barrier across a half mile of water.

“What? It’s still there.”

“Not the barrier. The water. Look at the water.”

The four of them shielded their eyes from the sun and stared. “Huh,” Quinn said at last. “Does that or does that not look like there’s a breeze blowing over there? It’s a little choppy.”

“Yeah,” Cigar agreed. “Weird, huh?”

Quinn nodded thoughtfully. It was something new. Something very strange. He would tell Albert about it when they got into town.

“Okay, enough with that. Let’s get back on those oars.” The other boats were catching up to them. Quinn could see each of them in turn stop and stare at the clear evidence of wind.

“What’s it mean?” Ben asked.

Quinn shrugged. “That’s above my pay grade, as my dad used to say. I’ll let Albert and Astrid figure that out. Me, I’m just a dumb fisherman,” he said.

“Oh, look,” Elise teased. “I see an oar with no one pulling it.”

Quinn laughed. He seated himself properly, braced his feet, and grabbed the available oar. His back, like those of all the fishing fleet, was thick with muscle.

He was happy. This life made him happy. The sun, the salt water, the smell of fish. The backbreaking work. It all made him happy.

It was simple. It was important.

Quinn thought about the breeze blowing across the water. There was nothing sinister about a nice breeze. And yet he had the feeling it spelled trouble.

Dahra Baidoo had seven new cases of flu. That made thirteen in all. The so-called hospital rang with the percussion of coughing.

No one had died in the night.

But no one had gotten well yet, either. Lana’s touch did not heal this illness. Which meant Dahra was no longer in the business of keeping kids comfortable until Lana came around and made everything better: she was now in the business of trying to understand this sickness.

She took temperatures. She kept more-or-less careful charts showing the progression of the sickness.

She tried not to think about Jennifer’s story. Jennifer wasn’t backing off her tale: she had seen the other Jennifer cough herself to death.

Dahra also tried not to think about what it meant if illness could develop an immunity to Lana.

A kid named Pookie was her worst case right at the moment. She stared at the thermometer in her hand, not quite believing it—106 degrees. She had never seen a number that high.

Pookie was shaking like he was freezing. He was no longer able to answer questions sensibly. He had started talking to someone who was not exactly there, talking about how he didn’t want to go to school because he hadn’t finished his report.

And his cough was getting louder and more violent.

The flu had laughed at the Tylenol she gave Pookie. His fever had burned right through it. Whether or not he developed some kind of killing cough, he would die of fever if it rose much higher. She had to bring it down.

The book suggested an ice bath. The odds of that were precisely zero. No water, let alone ice. If Albert didn’t arrange a water delivery soon, kids would be falling out from thirst, not even waiting to die of fever or cough.

Dahra made a decision. Ellen was there helping out, along with one of the new kids from the island, Virtue. She wished she had time to talk to Virtue: Dahra’s parents were from Africa. And so was Virtue himself.

“We have to cool him down,” Dahra said. “Virtue? Hold down the fort here, okay? We’re going to the beach.”

Ellen and Dahra maneuvered Pookie into a wheelbarrow. The three of them made an odd procession down San Pablo Avenue to the beach.

Crossing the sand was the hard part. But finally they made it to the lacy surf and set the sick kid down. Water surged around him.

Not an ice bath, maybe, but close enough. She figured the cold salt water should drain away some of the heat inside Pookie’s body.

“There,” Ellen said. “Hopefully he can walk back on his own.”

Dahra flopped onto the sand beside Ellen. Ellen said, “You heard about Drake, right?”

“Him escaping? Yeah. Don’t worry, Sam will get him.”

Ellen shook her head. “Sam’s out of town. Albert got him to go off for water. Or something like that.”

“Sam’s gone?” Dahra looked nervously over her shoulder. No reason Drake would come after her. But Drake didn’t need a reason. “It’ll be okay. Dekka and Brianna and—”

Pookie coughed, coughed, doubled over, choked on sea-water, and then coughed so powerfully that it made a clear indent in the water.

“Whoa,” Ellen said.

Pookie sat up. His head lolled back and forth like a marionette with a loose string.

He coughed and the force of it threw him backward into the water with a splash.

Dahra ran to pull him up, but he’d done it on his own. He got to his feet, staggering.

He coughed and it was like an explosion. He flew backward. Like he’d been hit by a car.

“Oh, my God,” Dahra cried.

Pookie rolled over, on hands and knees, and coughed again so powerfully that sand flew. Something pink and raw was sprayed across the sand crater.

“No, no, no,” Dahra moaned and backed away.

Pookie coughed again and the force of it lifted him up onto his toes, bent him back in a C. Blood sprayed from his mouth and drained out of his ears.

With blank, uncomprehending eyes he stared at Dahra. And fell dead, facedown in the surf.

No one spoke.

Dahra barely breathed.

For several very long seconds Dahra stood paralyzed.

She blinked. “Ellen, quick, into the water. Get wet all over. Scrub off with your hands!” Dahra followed her own advice. She plunged in and submerged.

When she came up, she yelled, “Now stay away from Pookie’s body. Stay in the sun for a while. Until you’re dry. Sunlight is supposed to kill flu virus on your skin.”

“Oh, my God,” Ellen said and her face went pale. “He coughed his insides out.”

“Just do what I tell you! Face up to the sun, I have to go!”

She ran back across the beach, her insides churning, panic eating at her.

She spotted Quinn and the fishing fleet pulling wearily up to the dock down at the marina. She ran as fast as she could, waving her hands over her head to attract attention.

Quinn and some of the others saw her, they just didn’t understand why she was yelling. Dahra was sweating hard by the time she reached the dock.

“No! No! Don’t come any closer!” she yelled to Quinn.

“What the—”

“Pookie just died,” Dahra panted. “Flu. Maybe. But, oh, God. Just don’t come any closer. In fact, don’t get off the boats.”

“I already had the flu,” Cigar said.

“So did Pookie,” Dahra said. “Listen to me: it’s catching and it’s way bad.”

Quinn motioned for his people to stay in their boats. “What are we supposed to do, Dahra? We can’t just float around forever.”

Dahra sighed. “Let me think.”

“I have to go check on my—,” one of the fishermen said.

“Shut up, I’m thinking!” Dahra yelled. She had acquired a fair amount of medical knowledge since stupidly volunteering to run the so-called hospital. But that didn’t make her a doctor.

She remembered reading about flu, though. Nothing spread faster. Nothing mutated and adapted faster. Hand washing removed it, alcohol killed it, sunlight killed it a little, anyway. But once it was in your nose and lungs it could go crazy and kill you. Especially some new strain.

“Stay in your boats,” Dahra said. “We’re still going to need food. Throw your fish onto the dock. I’ll get Albert to send someone here to collect it. Then go back out, row up the coast a little ways, and camp out.”

“Camp out?” Quinn echoed.

“Yes!”

“You’re serious.”

“No, it’s my idea of a joke, Quinn,” Dahra snapped. “Pookie just coughed up a lung and fell over dead. You understand what I’m saying? I mean he coughed his actual lungs out of his mouth. Hah hah hah, it’s so funny.”

Quinn took a step back.

Dahra waited for him to make up his mind. She had no right to give orders. Except that she knew what was happening and no one else did.

“Okay,” Quinn said. “There’s a spot just up the shore. Tell Albert to send someone right away for the fish. We have a nice big catch here. We got a shark.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Dahra’s thoughts were already turning to her next move. The virus was the enemy: she was the general in this battle. But only two thoughts were really clear in her mind: One, Jennifer B had been telling the truth. And two, how could Dahra hope to avoid catching it?

“NEAR,”
PACK LEADER said.

“Where?” Sam asked wearily. It had been a long night, followed by a long morning of tired feet and bruised shins.

They were over the hills, coming down the long slope toward the road and Lake Evian. It would have been easier to come up the road, this was definitely the long way around, but Sam had needed to see Hunter first.

To kill Hunter.

And now, if he could, he meant to find the nest of greenies and take them out.

Once more he saw the dark, troubled looks of the judges he feared would someday weigh his every action. He heard their questions.
What right did you have to take Hunter’s life, Mr. Temple? Yes, we understand that he did not wish to be eaten alive, but still, Mr. Temple, don’t you understand that every life is sacred?

The road was below them, cut off from view by a large, rocky outcropping. He’d been down that road a few times, back during the early water runs. Enough times to picture the spot in his head.

“The rock is all busted up down there, boulders and crevices,” Sam said. “It’s like a shallow cave, only it doesn’t go in very far, I don’t think.”

“The snakes that fly are there,” Pack Leader confirmed. “Now kill me, Bright Hands.”

“How do I know you’re not lying?”

“Why lie?” Pack Leader snarled.

“Because you’re a murderous creepy animal who obeys the Darkness,” Sam said. He was too tired and sleepy to be diplomatic.

“The Darkness is dead,” Jack said.

“No,” Pack Leader said.

“No,” Sam agreed with a significant look at Jack. This was the first outside confirmation that the gaiaphage still lived. If you could call it living.

A new bug mouth erupted from Pack Leader’s flank. The canine looked at it, snapped at it, and bit it. Black liquid gushed from the insect head.

“Is this his doing?” Sam asked. “Are these things creatures of the Darkness?”

“Pack Leader not know.”

Sam nodded. “How do we kill it? The Darkness, I mean? How do we kill the gaiaphage?”

“Pack Leader not know.”

Sam sighed. “Yeah, well that makes two of us.”

Sam could see the creatures writhing within Pack Leader’s skin. Like he was a baggie full of worms.

“Ready?”

“I am Pack Leader,” the coyote said. He tilted back his head and howled at the sky.

Sam aimed both his palms at the beast just as his hide split open.

The killing light burned and burned. Pack Leader was dead instantly. His fur stank as it burned. His flesh crisped like bacon.

The creatures, the insects, whatever they were, crawled out of the flames and popping fat. Unfazed. Unharmed. Bright-lit and yet seemingly invulnerable.

Sam had used his power to burn through concrete and solid rock and steel. It was impossible that he couldn’t kill these things. It was like they had some magical power to shrug off his deadly light. Like they had developed an immunity to him.

“Jack,” Sam said. “Get a rock. A big one.”

Jack was frozen until Dekka smacked him on the back of the head. Then he leaped to a rock the size of a Smart Car. It was half-buried in the ground. Jack grunted with the effort, but the rock tore free of the dirt with a little gravity-canceling help from Dekka.

Jack lifted the rock high over his head. He smashed it down with all his strength on two of the squirming, escaping bugs.

The rock hit so hard it shook the ground, literally making Sam bounce.

“Now push it back off,” Sam ordered.

Jack did. The rock rolled easily from Jack’s shove.

Beneath it were two very crushed bugs. Their carapaces were dully reflective, like smoky mirrors. They had short, crushed wings held tight against their bodies. Their wicked, curved mandibles had not been broken. Their slashing mouthparts still glittered like tiny knives.

“Like cockroaches,” Sam said. “Hard to kill. Not impossible.”

“Yeah. Roaches. A couple more over there,” Dekka said, and pointed. As she pointed she suspended gravity and the two bugs lifted into the air. They motored helplessly on their legs.

“Your turn, Jack,” Sam said.

Dekka let gravity flow, the boulder rose and fell and scored two more dead bugs.

Others, though, were skittering down the hill.

Sam, Dekka, and Jack pelted after them, high on the discovery that the nasty creatures could in fact be killed.

Half a dozen of the monsters raced over rock and through scrub grass.

Jack snatched up a smaller boulder and threw it one-handed. It hit one of the bugs and missed the others.

“Dekka!”

“Yeah,” she said, and raised her hands. Dirt and litter and gravel floated into the air ahead. Another one of the insects floated with it. Jack grabbed a rock but it wouldn’t come free, it was an outcropping of something too big even for Jack’s strength.

He scrabbled and found a head-sized rock. He threw it hard and missed the floating bug.

“The others are getting away!” Sam yelled.

“What’s that noise?” Dekka cried, and made a shushing gesture.

The three of them froze and listened. A sound like a mountain stream rushing over stones.

No, a beating of wings.

“Greenies!”

The flying snakes came in a cloud, rushing up from their lair below like swarming bats emerging from a cave at sundown.

Like tiny dragons, most just a few inches long, some as much as a foot long. They had leathery wings and whipped their tails back and forth to sustain a very shaky aerodynamic ability.

Sam yelled a curse and fired. Too late to catch them by surprise. A mistake that might prove fatal.

Bright beams of light sliced through the attacking cloud. Greenies burned and fell flaming.

Not enough. Not nearly enough and the greenies were not backing off.

Dekka canceled gravity beneath the leading edge of the swarm, but it only had the effect of disorienting some of the snakes, who responded by flying upside down or in wild circles.

They began to squirt greenish-black fluid.

Sam remembered Hunter telling him about being hit by some secretion from a greenie.

“Don’t let them hit you!” Sam yelled. “Run!”

Running uphill would be too slow on the steep slope. They ran at right angles to the swarm, ran all-out, panic speed, tripping and jumping back up, oblivious to bruises and scrapes.

The swarm was slow to react, but react they did, and wheeled after them.

Sam hit the road, staggered, caught himself, and spun around. The swarm was still emerging from its lair in the rock face above. Sam aimed hastily and fired.

Brush on the hillside instantly caught fire. Rocks heated and cracked. He played his light on the cave itself, lighting it up, making it a bright, blazing green mouth.

The swarm was lost now, unsure. It swirled in the air, dropping green-black droplets like an evil rain, but not over Sam and the others, not yet.

Confident he had burned out the cave, Sam swept his light upward into the swarm itself.

A mistake. Attacking their lair confused the greenies, but a direct attack on the swarm gave them a target.

Sam aimed again at the rock wall, hoping to distract them. Too late: the swarm was coming.

“Run! Run!”

Dekka ran backward, canceling gravity behind her. A cloud of gravel and dirt rose into the swarm. This slowed them.

Dekka turned and ran full speed after Sam and Jack.

The swarm seemed to be losing interest in following them. But a few of the more persistent greenies were still after them as they ran.

Dekka fell hard. Sam could see she was winded. He ran back to her but the greenies were faster than he was.

Dekka rolled over and looked up just as one of the greenies fired its fluid. The dark drop hit her bare shoulder. A second drop hit her jeans. Other drops fell around her.

Sam fired. The hovering greenies flamed.

Dekka jumped to her feet. “It got me, it got me!”

“Get your jeans off,” Sam ordered.

She complied. Jack grabbed the garment and carefully inspected the fabric. “It didn’t get through.”

“My shoulder,” Dekka moaned. “Oh, my God, it got me. It got me. Oh, God.”

“Hold out your arm, Dekka,” Sam ordered. “This is going to hurt.”

“Do it,” Dekka agreed. “Do it, do it!”

Sam formed a narrow beam of light. Carefully, carefully he moved it closer and closer to the dark splotch on Dekka’s shoulder.

Dekka gritted her teeth.

The beam of light burned and she cried out in pain but then yelled, “Don’t stop, don’t stop!”

But Sam did stop. He quickly grabbed Dekka as she came close to fainting. “Let me see the arm,” he said.

There was a burned scoop mark in Dekka’s skin. Maybe half an inch deep. Twice as wide. The flesh was cauterized, so there was no blood.

“Got it,” Sam said.

“You don’t know that,” Dekka said through gritted teeth.

“I got it. It didn’t get anywhere else. I burned it off.”

Dekka grabbed the neck of Sam’s shirt. “Don’t let it happen, Sam.”

“It’s not going to, Dekka.”

“Listen to me: don’t let it happen. You understand? You see it happen, you take care of me. Like Hunter.”

“Dekka . . .”

“Swear to me, Sam. Swear it to me by God or by your own soul or whatever you believe, swear to me, Sam.”

Sam gently pried her fingers loose.

“I won’t let it happen, Dekka. I swear it.”

“Stay inside unless absolutely necessary,” Edilio shouted into the megaphone. Using up precious batteries. Albert had not wanted to give up the batteries. But he really didn’t care what Albert wanted or didn’t want.

He walked down San Pablo, shouting through the mega-phone. “We have flu going around and it’s dangerous. Stay inside unless absolutely necessary! Work is canceled today. Mall is closed.”

Flu. Yeah. A flu that makes you cough up your insides.

It was unreal, Edilio thought as he walked halfway down the street and repeated the loudspeaker warning.

Epidemic. The so-called hospital was full. All through the morning, feverish, coughing kids had dragged themselves to the hospital. The disease was spreading like fire and Lana was useless.

No way to know how many it would kill.

Maybe everyone who got it.

Maybe everyone, period.

“Quarantine,” Dahra had said, pounding her fist into her palm. “You have to shut everything down.”

“Kids have almost no food or water in their homes,” Edilio had protested.

“You think I don’t know that?” Dahra had cried in a shrill voice tinged with panic. “If we don’t stop this epidemic, no one will be thirsty, they’ll be dead. Like Pookie. Like that Jennifer girl.”

Kids poked their heads out of windows or stepped out onto the darkening streets. Which was kind of the opposite of what he was going for.

“I already had the flu,” kids would yell.

“Yeah, well, no one is immune,” Edilio would shout back.

“How am I supposed to eat?”

“I guess you’ll be hungry for a day. Give us time to work things out.”

“Is this the thing with bugs coming out of your body?”

How had that news spread so fast? Everyone knew about Roscoe being locked up. No phones, no texts, no email, nothing, and still kids heard things almost instantly.

“No, no, this is just flu,” Edilio said, stretching the truth almost to the breaking point. “Coughing and fever. One kid’s already died, so just do what I’m asking, okay?”

In fact, three kids had died. Pookie and a girl named Melissa and Jennifer H. Three, not one. And maybe more than that, no way to know what was happening in every house in this ghost town. No point in spreading more panic than was necessary.

One death should be enough to get their attention. Three deaths, on top of the bugs some kids were nicknaming maggots and others were calling gut-roaches, that was enough to create panic.

Edilio had no idea if a quarantine would work. He would get his guys to try and enforce it: the sheriffs at least would still be on the street. But what were they supposed to do if kids decided to ignore it? Shoot them to save them?

He couldn’t tell people to wash their hands: no one had washing water in their home. He couldn’t tell them to use hand sanitizer: not enough to go around and what they had was just for the so-called hospital.

Nothing they could do but ask kids to stay home.

Probably too late.

Three dead. So far.

Edilio thought of Roscoe locked in his prison. Were the bugs eating him from the inside yet?

He thought of Brianna—Lana’s healing touch had fixed her, but the Breeze was shaken up. Scared.

He thought of the monstrous thing that was both Drake and Brittney.

He thought of Orc. No one had seen him. Plenty had heard him, and there were a few smashed cars testifying to his previous presence.

He thought of Howard, out walking the streets looking for Orc, refusing to stop, even when Edilio ordered him to get to some shelter and stay inside.

And he thought of the two people who had held his job before him: Sam and Astrid. Both beaten into despair by trying to hold this group of kids together in the face of one disaster after another. Both of them now happy to let Edilio handle it.

“No wonder,” Edilio muttered.

“Stay inside unless absolutely necessary,” Edilio shouted, and not for the first or last time wished he was still just Sam’s faithful sidekick.