Plague (17 page)

Brittney had reappeared once during that time and she had bought into the idea of helping with the digging. But Drake couldn’t kid himself: they weren’t getting anywhere. It could take months. Years. Forever.

The coyotes came and went, watching, no doubt thinking about eating Jamal. So when Drake heard the sound of movement coming from around the bend in the road, he assumed it was coyotes.

Only it wasn’t the usual stealthy
pad-pad-pad
of coyotes. This was a sound with clicks and sudden rushes.

Drake wiped his brow and turned warily toward the sound.

It looked like something from a science fiction movie. Like an alien or a robot or something, because it was way too big to be just an insect.

It was silver and bronze, dully reflective. It had an insect’s head with prominent, gnashing mouthparts that made Drake think of a Benihana chef flashing knives ceremonially. Its wickedly curved mandibles of black horn or bone protruded from the side of its mouth.

It smelled like curry and ammonia. Bitter but with a tinge of curdled sweetness.

More came now, scurrying up beside the first. They had eyes and antennae. The eyes were arresting: royal blue irises that could almost pass as human. But with nothing of human awareness, nothing of human vulnerability or emotion. Like ice chips.

They ran in a rush on six legs, stopping, starting, then skittering forward again at alarming speed. Their tarnished silver wings folded back against bronze carapaces, like beetles or cockroaches. The wings sometimes flared slightly as they ran.

Bugs. Maybe. But each at least five feet long and three feet tall, with antennae adding another foot.

Drake stared into the soulless blue eyes of the first bug.

He was ready with his whip hand, and Jamal was ready with his rifle, but Drake didn’t like his chances much if they were looking for a fight. There were a dozen of the creatures, jostling around one another, like ants pouring from a mound or wasps storming angrily from a disturbed hive.

Drake felt a stab of fear: could he survive being eaten? Chopped into chunks by those gnashing mouths and swallowed?

A coyote, keeping a cautious distance, loped to the top of the rise and spoke in the strangled speech his species had achieved.

“See the Darkness,” the coyote said.

“Them?” Drake asked. The coyotes and these monstrosities could communicate? “They want to see the Darkness? Fine,” Drake said. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the mine. “Go for it.”

“They hungry,” the coyote said.

Drake didn’t have to ask what he was supposed to do about that. Because now the same foul, insinuating voice that was speaking through the coyote reached him directly, touched his willing, submissive mind and flooded it with a deep and awful joy.

Drake closed his eyes and rocked slowly back and forth, feeling the touch of his master.

Soon Drake would be with the Darkness. The Darkness would give him all he needed. And Jamal had served his purpose.

“So tell them to eat something,” Drake said. “Sorry, Jamal.”

“What?” Jamal waited for Drake to laugh, like it was a joke. But Drake just smiled and winked and said, “Dude, sooner or later I was going to kill you anyway.”

“No, no!” Jamal gasped. He backed away. He turned and ran.

The nearest bug, icy blue eyes focused with terrible intensity, flashed out something that might have been a tongue. It was black, and as thick as a rope with a barbed tip like a cluster of fishhooks. The tongue caught Jamal’s leg and Jamal fell facedown.

“Drake! Drake!” Jamal yelled. “Please!”

Drake laughed. He gave a little wave as the rope tongue yanked Jamal toward his doom.

Jamal fired.
BLAM BLAM BLAM.
At close range, then closer range, then inches from the bug’s hideous face.

The tongue released and snapped back. Then scimitar mandibles cut Jamal in half and there was no more firing, just a hopeless wail of despair.

The massive bugs surged, and within seconds nothing was left of Jamal.

Then, without a pause, the blue-eyed monsters went to work moving rocks at dazzling speed, pushing with their mandibles, rising on their hind four legs and gripping with their front two.

Drake felt Brittney returning. But that was okay, because now his Lord and Master, the Darkness, Drake’s one true God was with him, filling his heart and soul.

And It would not be thwarted.

ASTRID
WAS IN the backyard using the slit trench when it happened. She had sat by Little Pete’s bed for two days, waiting, fearing.

But even dehydrated, she still had to go eventually. She’d hoped it would be safe. She’d hoped to see that Albert’s people were delivering water and food and the epidemic was past.

But the streets were abandoned. She heard no distant sounds of truck engines, nor even the squeaky wheels of hand-drawn wagons.

So she did what she had to do at the slit trench in the yard and continued to pray as she had almost constantly.

Whooosh-craaack!

The entire upper floor of the house blew apart.

There was no fire. No flame.

The top floor—the tile roof, the siding, the walls, wood, and drywall, all of it—blew apart almost quietly. A big chunk of roof spun over her head, throwing off red tiles as it spun and dropped with a massive crash against the wall of the house next door.

She saw a window, the glass still somehow in place, go whirling straight up like a rocket. She followed it with her eyes, waiting for it to come spiraling down at her. It crashed into the branches of a tree and finally then the glass shattered.

The bed from her own bedroom was on a roof two houses down. Sheets and clothing fluttered to the ground like confetti. It was almost festive, like someone had set off a Fourth of July rocket and now she could oooh and aahh as the sparkles came down.

But no fire. No loud explosion. One second it had been a two-story house and now it was a one-story house.

One of Astrid’s kneesocks from her dresser landed on the grass, draped over the lip of the trench.

Astrid remembered she could move. She ran for the house yelling, “Petey! Petey!”

The back door was partly blocked by a small piece of siding. She threw it aside and ran through the kitchen and up the debris-strewn stairs.

The full weirdness struck her then. The handrail of the stairs stopped as it reached the level of the upper floor. The steps themselves ended on a splintered half riser.

Astrid stepped out onto what was now a platform, no longer the second floor of a house. Everything was gone. Everything. It was as if a giant had come along with a knife and simply sliced off the top, cutting through walls and plumbing pipe and electrical conduit.

All that was left was Little Pete’s bed. And Little Pete himself.

He coughed twice. He licked his lips. His eyes stared blankly up at open sky.

Astrid followed the direction of his gaze. And there, in the blue morning sky, a puff of gray cotton. Directly above the house.

Brianna was seething. She seethed a fair amount at the best of times, but she was still doing a long, slow burn over the fight with Drake and the fact that Jack had left town without even telling her so she had to hear it from Taylor.

She didn’t much like Taylor. She had once suggested that Taylor should adopt a cool name, like Brianna had with “the Breeze.” “The Teleporter,” maybe. Taylor had laughed at her.

Brianna wasn’t supposed to be on the street. The quarantine was still in effect. But she was thirsty, hungry, humiliated, and furious, and she was looking for trouble.

Or at least a sip of water.

She was giving this whole waiting-around thing a few more minutes and then she was going to run up to Lake Evian herself for a drink. Taylor said the road was dangerous, that the greenies were there. But Brianna didn’t fear flying snakes. Not even flying snakes that peed green bug eggs, or whatever that was all about. She was too fast for some stupid snake, flying or crawling.

Someone had nailed plywood up over a window in town hall.

“What’s that about?” she wondered aloud.

She shrugged and was getting ready to zoom when she heard a sound like chewing. Like a lot of chewing getting rapidly louder. And coming from the window with the—

Splinters pushed out through the bottom of the plywood. They were pushed by something silvery that moved with respectable speed.

Brianna stared up at it for a few seconds and then, quite suddenly, metallic-looking insects, each the size of a small dog, began to force their way through the plywood.

The first to emerge spread beetlelike wings and floated to the ground.

Brianna had plenty of time to observe its gnashing mouth and its antennae, and to be utterly creeped out by eyes the color of rubies.

She could guess what they were. These were the things that Taylor had gotten all freaked out by. The things that had supposedly come out of Hunter’s guts. Only now they were right here and pouring down the wall from the second floor of town hall.

The instant the first bug landed it launched itself at Brianna. She sidestepped it like a matador with a bull.

“You’re quick, I’ll give you that,” Brianna said. “But you’re not the Breeze.”

As one the swarm raced toward her, scythe mandibles slashing and mouthparts gnashing and red eyes blazing.

This was more like it. She could just zoom far away, of course, but she was enjoying this game.

Until Edilio came at a run, unlimbering his automatic rifle and yelling at the top of his lungs.

“Oh, well,” Brianna said. “Time to end this, I guess.”

She unsheathed her big knife and sliced the antennae from the nearest bug. Then, just for show, just because it was a cool move, she somersaulted and landed almost astride another bug. She stabbed it, aiming for the space between its hard-looking wings. Her blade bit the wing instead and did not penetrate.

The bug twirled, fast, very fast. Not fast enough. Brianna stabbed straight for the bloodred eyes and the blade sank deep into one.

The bug stopped moving.

“That’s why you don’t bug the Breeze,” Brianna said.

Edilio had almost arrived and Brianna was pretty sure he would spoil her fun. So she awaited the charge of another bug, dropped low, swept her knife, and sliced through its two front legs. It crashed forward onto its horror-movie face.

BLAM! BLAM!

Edilio fired at one of the bugs that had evidently had enough and was running from the Breeze.

Brianna saw the bullets hit. And she saw them ricochet off the hard wings.

“Head shots!” she yelled to Edilio. “You have to get ’em in the head!”

She had meant to point to the one she killed as an example. But the dead bug was moving.

So was the bug from whom she had subtracted the front legs.

With a frown she pulled out her shotgun. She caught up to the wounded bug, placed the muzzle right in its eerie eyes, and pulled the trigger.

The bug head blew most of the way off. Greenish-black brain goo sprayed.

The bug shook itself like a wet dog. Then kept moving.

“No, no, no,” Brianna said. “I may lose to Drake, but I do not lose to a bunch of bloodshot roaches.”

BLAM! BLAM!

Edilio shot his bug twice more. Then, seeing Brianna hesitate, he yelled, “Try to crush them!”

“With what?”

Edilio looked around helplessly. “I don’t know.”

“They’re getting away!”

The bugs, half a dozen of them, were ignoring Brianna and Edilio now and racing off down the street, away from town.

“They’re too fast for you,” Brianna said.

Edilio looked like he was going to have a stroke. He glanced at the window above, the bugs racing away, and Brianna could have sworn his next move would be to throw up his hands and say, “Forget it, I’m outta here!”

But he gritted his teeth, took a deep breath, and visibly steeled himself for a decision he knew might be wrong. Might even be fatally wrong.

“Breeze,” he said grimly. “Listen to me before you go tearing off. I want you to follow them, see where they go. But this leaves us with, like, no one playing defense. Orc’s off on a drunk, Sam and Dekka and Jack are out of town, kids are falling out sick all over the place, and Drake may still be lurking . . .” He stuck his finger at her. “Don’t take risks, don’t be your usual reckless, stupid self: come back as soon as you can, as soon as you see where they’re going.”

Brianna executed a mock salute—she didn’t mind being called stupid so long as he was acknowledging her bravery— and loped off at an easy sixty miles an hour to catch up with the swarm.

“Don’t sweat it, Edilio,” she called over her shoulder. “The Breeze is all over these bugs.”

Orc was running dry. He stared balefully at the bottle in his hand. Shouldn’t he be dead by now? How much booze did it take before you just died already?

His mind labored to work out solutions to the problem. Probably still a couple bottles back at the house, if kids hadn’t looted them. If not, he had another option, but it was a long walk and he wasn’t really in the mood for a long walk. A long walk would sober him up.

He was on his way to the house and drowning his brain in booze again when he thoughtlessly walked past the stop sign.

No body lay crumpled there.

For a moment he thought he might be in the wrong place. Or that maybe he was mistaken about the body. But then he vaguely recalled running into Howard and Howard promising to fix things.

So now the little boy’s body would be rotting in an unused house. Probably not the only body lying around. Probably.

Orc took a drink. He was shaky in body and mind. He was used to booze, but even by his standards he had punished his body in the last day. His stomach burned. His head hammered. Now he had to fight down an urge to run and run and run until . . .

Until what?

Run where?

They would figure it out, sooner or later. That he had slammed that little boy, that little boy who never hurt Orc or probably anyone else. Just some sick kid.

Someone would have seen it happen, or one of the smart ones—Astrid or Albert or Edilio—would figure it out. And he wouldn’t even be given a chance to explain. They would make him leave, go live outside town, like they had Hunter.

But he wasn’t Hunter. He couldn’t live out there. Out there was where the coyotes were.

Orc remembered the coyotes. He remembered the way they had sunk their muzzles into his living guts and ripped and torn his insides out.

That’s when it had started. That’s when the ripped-up flesh had turned into gravel and the rocky, pebbly, monster skin had grown to take over his whole body.

No. They couldn’t make him live out there.

Astrid had rules, though; she had made them up and that’s what they would do, push him out,
Go away, Orc, go away and die, you freak.

Yeah, well, Charles Merriman was inside this monster. He was not an orc. He was Charles Merriman.

He had to talk to Astrid. She’d always been nice to him. The only one who’d been nice to him. They were her stupid rules, so she would be able to figure out something. She was smart, after all. And nice.

With that vague thought sloshing around in his brain, Orc stomped off toward Astrid’s home.

Two blocks away he noticed something very strange. So strange he thought he might be imagining it. Because it wasn’t right, that was for sure.

There was a cloud. Up in the sky. As he gaped up at it the sun started to slide behind it.

Cloud. A dark, gray cloud.

He kept moving. Kept drinking. Kept looking at that crazy cloud up in the sky.

He stepped onto Astrid’s street. From half a block away he saw the wreckage strewn out over trees and yards and draped over fences.

Then the house. That stopped him dead in his tracks. The top of the house was gone.

And there stood Astrid, right up on top, right out in the open because the walls were all gone, and there was her ’tard brother, only he was kind of, like, floating in the air above a bed.

Orc gaped up at Astrid, but she didn’t notice him. She was looking up at the sky, up at the cloud. Her hands were at her side. In one hand she held a huge-looking pistol.

A brilliant flash lit everything up.

A tree not ten feet away blew apart.

CRRR-ACK!

BOOOOM!

Lightning. Thunder.

Splinters and leaves from the tree came down in a shower all around Orc.

And suddenly the cloud seemed to drop from the sky, only it wasn’t the cloud itself, it was rain. Gray streamers of water, pouring down.

It was like stepping into a cold shower. The rain fell on Orc’s marveling, upturned face. It pooled in his eyes, it ran in streams through his quarry of a body.

Astrid cried out, words irrelevant. Orc heard the despair, the fear. She was soaked through, standing there with her big gun, screaming at her brother, sobbing.

Orc opened his mouth and water flowed in. Clean, fresh, as cold as ice water.