Plague (20 page)

HE
FLOATED ABOVE the ground in the arms of a monster. His cheek lay against a stone shoulder. Rain no longer fell. Wild colors—green and yellow, brown and red, jagged edges of color scraped at him, wounding his ears.

The sister walked behind him. Her face was as stony as the monster’s. Lips too red, eyes too blue, the sound of her breathing too loud.

At each step the monster’s pebble skin rubbed against Pete’s raw flesh, like sandpaper, like a thousand saw blades drawn slowly over tender scabs.

He wanted to scream, but if he screamed the loud colors would get louder.

He was no longer high atop the sheet of glass. He had fallen, fallen, down into the world of noise and blazing light. The Darkness was only a distant echo now. Now was now, utterly now and here and like needles under his skin, like knives in his ears. His eyes ached and throbbed.

He coughed and it was a cannon firing out of his chest, up through his throat, his mouth, burning him like blazing lava.

Why was he here? Why in a monster’s arms? What was happening to him? After a long and peaceful escape he had been recaptured by the too-much world of furious activity and disjointed images.

His body, his body, that was all he could see or feel, the pain and the ache and the shivering that made him feel as if parts of him might come loose and fall, his body, forcing his attention away from the pristine glass cliff. Forcing him to feel every shiver, recoil at every cough, to feel, really feel, the sickness that was overwhelming his defenses.

DRAKE
DID NOT see Tanner.

The gaiaphage needed no angelic illusions to reach into Drake’s fevered mind. Drake knew all he needed to know. The bugs, the creatures would serve him. He had his army.

And in his head he had a list of names. The freaks first. The normals next. All of them.

All but one, the gaiaphage told him. Kill until there is no one left to kill. But don’t harm Nemesis.

Drake was filled with a pure joy he had never known. He felt a wild energy. All his life he had waited for this kind of moment. It was as if every single thing he had ever done—the beatings he had suffered, the much more numerous beatings he had delivered, the pleasure he had found in burning frogs and microwaving a puppy and drawing all those endless loving pictures of weapons, spears, knives, torture devices, all of it, all the hatreds, all the burning lust, all the madness and rage, had come together to form this perfect, ultimate moment of crystalline joy.

He thought he might die from the pleasure he felt, so much emotion, a flood, a storm, a crashing of planets! Death! He was death, unleashed at last.

He snapped his whip and threw back his head and howled till his throat was raw.

Then he ran, leaped, cavorted through the swirling tides of insects, running and climbing, indifferent to the sharp rocks that lacerated his undead flesh.

Kill them all!

He raged when he reached the heights he couldn’t climb but then the creatures rushed to lift him up and sped him up and up at dizzying speed through the endless caverns.

An army!

His army!

They vomited from the mine shaft and Drake leaped onto the rock pile. A single coyote waited there.

“Where is he, Pack Leader?” Drake demanded.

“Not Pack Leader. Pack killed.”

“I don’t care what you call yourself, where is he?”

“Who?” the coyote asked.

Drake grinned. “The one with the killing hands, you stupid dog. Who do you think? Sam!”

“Bright Hands is far. By the big water.” He simpered and turned in a circle and then with his muzzle pointed to the west.

“Excellent,” Drake purred.

Just then a rush of bugs, a new column of the creatures came over the ridge and poured into the mass of Drake’s army. Different. These had bloodred eyes.

They were not alone.

Brianna stood, arms on hips, glaring down at him.

“You!” Drake said.

“Me,” Brianna said.

To the creatures he said, “Red eyes, serve me! To the town. Kill everyone but Nemesis!”

“You talking to these bugs now?” Brianna said. “I have to tell you: I don’t think they speak psycho.”

“Blue eyes, with me!” Drake said. “Two columns, two armies: blues with me, reds back to town and kill. Kill!”

“What exactly do you think you’re doing?” Brianna demanded.

“Me?” Drake laughed loudly. “I’m going on an epic killing spree.”

“You’ll have to go through me,” Brianna said.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Drake said.

They walked out of the rain. Astrid and Orc and Little Pete. The cloud did not follow them. No new cloud appeared. The cloud remained, no longer expanding, but still pouring rain on the street and the ruined house.

Little Pete coughed directly against the side of Orc’s face. It was getting worse, the cough, slowly but steadily worse.

Maybe it would kill him.

Go ahead. Shoot him. Kill Little Pete.

Astrid told herself she hadn’t meant it. It was just a tactic. After all, if someone was using a threat you had to devalue the importance of the threat, pretend it didn’t matter.

Lance’s face exploding. Some of it had hit her.

Turk moaning in pain, writhing on the wet carpet.

It had to stop. It had to end. One death to save dozens, maybe hundreds of kids?

A simple act of murder . . .

Astrid saw herself choking Nerezza. She felt again the way her fingers dug into the soft neck, fingertips finding the spaces between tendon and artery.

Astrid had never felt anything like that red-misted rage before in her life. She had hated before—she had hated Drake. She had feared before—many, many times. But she would never have believed herself capable of that murderous rage.

The true revelation was the joy she’d felt at that moment. The sheer, vicious, uncomplicated joy of feeling the blood pounding to get past arteries blocked by Astrid’s own hands. Feeling the spasms in Nerezza’s windpipe.

Astrid let loose a whimper. It had to end.

“You okay?” Orc asked.

Would she ever be herself again? Or had Astrid, the old Astrid, died, to be replaced by this new creature, this angry, frightened witch?

Not for the first time she realized that this had been Sam’s life since the coming of the FAYZ. How much rage and fear had he endured? How much bitter shame for his failures? How much guilt ate at his soul as it now ate at hers?

She wished he were here now. Maybe she would be able to ask him how he lived with it.

No, she told herself, it’s not Sam you need. A priest. You need to confess and do penance and be forgiven. But how could she be forgiven when even now she was watching Orc as he labored uphill, seeing Petey’s lolling head, and asking herself over and over again if she had meant it.

Go ahead. Shoot him.

God hears prayers, even from those who have not repented, she told herself. She wanted to pray. But when she tried she couldn’t see the face of a patient Christ as she had in the past. She could see memories of crucifixes, paintings, statues. But the God she had believed in was not there anymore.

Was she losing her faith?

Had she lost it already?

A simple act of murder . . .

Leslie-Ann knew about the quarantine. But she also knew she couldn’t stand being thirsty and hungry any longer and her two brothers couldn’t stand it, either.

The one good thing about being Albert’s maid was that Albert made sure she had enough to eat. Albert always had food and water. He wouldn’t let her starve.

So Leslie-Ann made her way from the house she shared with her siblings to Albert’s much fancier house.

She noticed a strange thing over toward the west: a cloud. Leslie-Ann frowned, wondering why that seemed so strange.

But she had no time to wonder: the FAYZ was full of weird stuff. If you’d seen Sam shoot light from his hands—and she had—you stopped being amazed by strange things.

Albert’s front door was open. That in its way seemed weirder than the cloud. Albert never left his door unlocked. Never. Let alone open.

Leslie-Ann approached cautiously. She felt for the hilt of the knife she carried. She was nine years old, and not exactly big or scary. But once she had waved the knife at a kid who wanted to steal her cantaloupe and he had run away.

“Albert?” she called out.

She pushed the door all the way open. She drew her knife and held it out in front of her.

“Albert?”

She thought she heard something coming from the living room. Her foot slipped on the Spanish tile. She looked down: a red smear.

Blood. It was blood.

She turned and ran back to the door. Ran outside, waving the knife around her.

She looked around, wishing Edilio or someone would come along. But if they did she’d be in trouble for going outside during the quarantine. Her brothers would still be thirsty and hungry, and so was she.

Leslie-Ann steeled herself and headed back inside, knife first. She stepped over the blood smear.

Her foot kicked a can. It rolled noisily. A can on Albert’s floor? Who would have made that kind of mess? She would have to clean that up or Albert would fire her.

She bent down and snagged the can with her free hand. It smelled of food. Her mouth watered. She held the knife awkwardly as she ran her finger inside looking for anything that might be left. She came up with maybe a tablespoonful of tomato sauce and licked it greedily from her finger.

It tasted like heaven.

She carried the can with her to the living room. And there the full extent of the mess became clear: cans and wrappers everywhere. And tomato sauce all over the white carpet.

Only here it wasn’t tomato sauce and Leslie-Ann knew it.

Then she saw Albert. He was sitting with his back against the wall, which was splattered with gore.

His eyes were closed. He wasn’t moving.

“Albert?”

She fought the desire to run and run and keep running. Only, she was still thirsty and hungry. And there lay a water bottle with a few precious sips still. She drank it. Not enough, but something.

She went to the kitchen and with shaking fingers dug out the plastic trash bags. Then, quick, quick, before someone stopped her, she gathered all the cans and bottles and thrust them into the bag. It wasn’t much, but her brothers could find a couple of ounces of food.

She glanced at Albert, feeling sorry for him and a little guilty and . . .

His eyes. They were open.

“Albert?”

She went closer. Were his eyes following her?

“Are you alive?”

He didn’t answer. But slowly, slowly his eyes closed. And then opened again.

Leslie-Ann ran from the room and from the house. But she did not drop her bag.

BRIANNA
DREW THE bowie knife from its sheath. “Cutting you in three pieces didn’t do it,” she said to Drake. “So this time I’m going to dice you like an onion.”

She blurred and Drake split open at the waist. Not clean-through, but she’d finish it with the next one.

“Get her!” Drake yelled.

She twirled in midair, kicked off the back of a bug, and brought the huge knife down again, chopping Drake’s whip hand and leaving it like a reddish python, squirming but no longer attached to Drake.

She struck! Again! Again! In the blink of an eye.

But the creatures were reacting now, a mass of them, rushing her. Slow, too slow, but still she had to sidestep them, and that cost her a precious second.

And Drake was still alive. Or something like alive.

She threaded past gnashing mouthparts and scything mandibles and buried the knife in Drake’s skull. The blade sank into the bone, stuck.

She yanked on it, but Drake’s upper body came with it. The blade would not come free.

Speeeewt!

Something slapped her calf. She twisted to look and saw a long, barbed, black rope extending from the mouth of the closest bug. She shook her leg but it did not come off.

“Gross!”

Another bug tried the same thing and she somersaulted out of the way. Still that first tongue was attached to her and she could feel hooks buried in her skin.

She needed her bowie knife. But now it was out of range as Drake dragged himself away with his one arm.

Brianna spotted a stone with a dull edge. She slammed it down on the tongue with all the force her speed afforded. The tongue bled but did not break. Blue bug eyes fixed on her with what now looked like triumph.

“Oh, no you don’t.”

She hit the tongue fast, twenty times in a second with her rock and it yanked away, quick as Drake’s whip hand.

Shwoop!

But now the bugs were around her, snapping at her with their creepy froggy tongues and those tongues were fast, fast even by Brianna’s standards.

The bugs had played her. They’d concealed this weapon in their arsenal and she’d gotten cocky.

Speeewt!

Brianna kicked and squirmed, but two of them were on her. She used the rock on the tongue that latched on to her stomach and knocked it loose but it was instantly replaced by three more.

Speeeewt! Speeewt!

They had her! She was held in a web, yelling, cursing, smacking.

Drake was putting himself back together, but his whip hand was still squirming by itself like a snake on hot pavement.

She was pinioned by half a dozen of the tongues and now the rest of the bugs were closing in to chew her up, mandibles slicing the air like scimitars.

Brianna felt a sudden wave of fear. Was it possible she could lose this fight?

“Don’t kill her,” Drake said. “Hold her! She’s mine!”

He was on his feet and searching through the wild melee for his whip arm.

Suddenly, the coyote was in the fight. He leaped for her, jaws open, teeth flashing yellow.

“Really?” she cried.

She shoved back against the greedy muzzle with all her strength. The move stretched one of the lashing tongues taut. The coyote’s powerful jaw, missing Brianna’s arm, clamped hard on the tongue, which snapped back like a cut high-tension cable.

She was pinned, but she still had her speed.

She grabbed the coyote’s ruff and swung it around to clamp on a second tongue.

Now just four tongues still pinned her. She didn’t have the strength to hold on to the coyote. The creature, maybe fearing the bugs would retaliate, took off yelping as if it had been kicked.

Four lines held the Breeze, all more or less on her left side, so she kicked off, pushing straight toward the insects. The tongues slackened. Brianna somersaulted. It was a sketchy maneuver, poorly executed, and she landed hard on her back, but the four tongues had been twisted around and now, as one, they released her.

Even as they released others struck. She could see them flying toward her like striking cobras.

She kicked a bug in the face, kicked hard against a slashing mandible, then
boom boom boom
, three hard kicks and she was out of there.

She caught her breath on a rise a hundred feet away. Her body was blistered wherever the tongues had touched. But she was alive.

She watched, panting, shaking, as Drake’s tentacle melded seamlessly into his shoulder.

“Come on, Breeze,” Drake taunted. “Come and get me. Here I am!”

Brianna had never been one to ignore a taunt. She had never run from a fight. But she had escaped by inches. By millimeters.

“It’s the end, Breeze,” Drake crowed. “I’m going to kill all of you. Every last one of you!” He danced in a circle, twirling in wild glee. “Run, Breeze! Ruuuuun! Because when I catch you, I’m going to make you suffer!”

Brianna ran.

Leslie-Ann fed her siblings the scrapings from the cans and let them drink the water.

Okay, she told herself: You did all you could.

Except that she hadn’t done all she could. Not yet.

She had never liked Albert much. He was kind of a jerk to her. He never said anything nice like, “Good job, Leslie-Ann.”

But he didn’t deserve to just die like that. Maybe he was still alive.

“I’m just a kid,” she said aloud to no one.

But she knew what she felt, and what she felt was that she hadn’t done right.

She went out into the streets, not knowing exactly who she should locate, or who she should tell, but she knew she had to tell someone.

From where she stood she could see the big, weird cloud more clearly. It looked like it was raining. And just then two kids came past. They were walking in tandem, sharing the load of a heavy plastic tub. It was sloshing water over the sides and they were soaked through.

One of them noticed her and grinned. “It’s raining!”

“No one’s s’posed to go out,” she said.

The kid snorted. “No one’s telling anyone what to do right now, and there’s water. If I was you, I’d get some fast.”

Leslie-Ann ran back inside and located a bucket in the garage. Then she walked as fast as she could toward the rain cloud. If everyone was there, maybe she could find someone to tell about Albert.

As she drew nearer she noticed something that was, in its own way, as weird as the cloud, which was now almost overhead: there was water running in the gutter. Actual water. Just running down the gutter.

She broke into a run and saw a crowd of dancing, cavorting kids ahead of her. Buckets sat under the downpour. Kids stood with their mouths open, or tried to shower, or just shoved and played and splashed.

A very unusual sound for the FAYZ: the high-pitched laughter of children.

Leslie-Ann set down her own bucket and watched, marveling, as a quarter of an inch of water covered the bottom.

When she looked away, she saw an older kid. She’d seen him around. But usually he was with Orc and she was too scared of Orc ever to get near him.

She tugged on Howard’s wet sleeve. He seemed not to be sharing in the general glee. His face was severe and sad.

“What?” he asked wearily.

“I know something.”

“Well, goody for you.”

“It’s about Albert.”

Howard sighed. “I heard. He’s dead. Orc’s gone and Albert’s dead and these idiots are partying like it’s Mardi Gras or something.”

“I think he might not be dead,” Leslie-Ann said.

Howard shook his head, angry at being distracted. He walked away. But then he stopped, turned, and walked back to her. “I know you,” he said. “You clean Albert’s house.”

“Yes. I’m Leslie-Ann.”

“What are you telling me about Albert?”

“I saw his eyes open. And he looked at me.”

Albert dead.

Sam gone, and no telling when he would get back.

Astrid gone with Little Pete and Orc.

Dekka away with Sam and Jack.

And now Edilio, numb with the scale of the disaster, sat exhausted on the steps of the so-called hospital. He didn’t need Dahra’s thermometer to tell him what he already knew: he was hot, flushed, weak.

He coughed. And stared blankly at Brianna, who buzzed and vibrated to a wild halt before him.

“Bugs!” she yelled. “I passed them heading this way. Drake and a bunch more bugs are still back at the mine shaft. I saw them heading west but I think it’s just a fake; he’s probably coming here, too.”

“How do we stop them?” Edilio asked and coughed into his hand.

“We need Sam,” Brianna said.

“We—” He coughed again and fought off a wooziness that made him desperately want to lie down. “I don’t know where he is.”

“I’ll find him,” Brianna vowed.

“You’re all I’ve got left,” Edilio said. “You’re the only freak with any serious powers. I don’t think the Siren would be much help against”—he coughed—“those creatures.”

“She might work on Drake, though,” Brianna said, and laughed as if oblivious to what was going on around her. In fact, as Edilio coughed again, she blinked, frowned, and said, “Are all these kids sick?”

“When the Siren sings, it affects everyone; she’s just a pause button.” Edilio coughed hard. It hurt his chest.

He was sick. Sick in his body and sick in his heart.

He had seen so many terrible things and done so many terrible things since the coming of the FAYZ. But nothing so cold-bloodedly awful as lining up the sights on Lance’s head and squeezing the trigger.

It was the right move. Probably. It was the winning move, it seemed, since Astrid and Little Pete had both survived.

It was the ruthless move. The lesser-of-two-evils move. It was what Sam would have done in his place.

But it was poison in Edilio’s heart.

“I can’t save us,” Edilio said. “Neither can you, Brianna. And Sam . . . I don’t know if he can, either. So maybe this is the end. Maybe this is it and we lose.”

Brianna slapped herself in the chest. “I don’t lose!”

“You can’t beat them alone, Breeze.” A coughing fit, the worst one yet. It was several minutes before he could continue. “I’m done for. I don’t know if this will kill me or not but I can’t even stand up.”

“Hey, we can’t just give up,” Brianna said. “Those things are the size of ponies now, some of them. And they’re growing! You can’t give up, Edilio. You’re the one in charge.”

He aimed his eyes at her, but they were swimming. She was an angry, unfocused face.

“Get me a piece of paper and a pen,” Edilio said.

She was back in less than a minute.

His fingers were trembling as a fit of chills racked his body. He had a hard time steadying the pad and holding the pen. But with supreme effort he scribbled something, folded the paper, and handed it to Brianna.

“Quinn,” he said.

She read the message and flushed furiously. She threw the paper at him. It hit him in the face. “Are you nuts? I’m not doing this!”

“I’m in charge,” he whispered. He bent with shaky fingers and retrieved the note. “My call. It’s the only way. Do it, Breeze: do it.”

“No, no. No way.”

Edilio grabbed her arm and squeezed it with the last of his strength. “For once in your life, think. Can you stop them? Can you stop those bugs from reaching town and killing everyone here? Yes or no?”

“I can try.”

“Yes or no?”

She stifled a sudden sob. She shook her head. “No.”

“Okay, then,” Edilio rasped. “Do you want to be responsible for the lives of everyone who will die just so that you can act all tough?”

She had no answer. She glanced around as if seeing the sick and the dead, the wrecked church, and the sad graveyard for the first time. “No,” she said.

“Then go, Breeze. Go.”