Plague (6 page)

CAINE
HAD FOUND a telescope in the house. He carried it out to the cliff on the eastern edge of the island. It was afternoon. The light was pretty good, low, slanting rays that lit up the far shore. Sunlight glinted off windows and car wind-shields in Perdido Beach. Bright red tile roofs and tall palm trees made it seem so normal. As if it really was just another California beach town.

The nuclear power plant was closer. It, too, looked normal. The hole in the containment tower was on the far side, not visible from here. The hole he’d made.

He was startled by the sound behind him but didn’t show it. Much.

“What are you looking at, Napoleon?” Diana asked.

“Napoleon?”

“You know, because he was exiled to an island after he almost took over the world,” Diana said. “Although he was short. You’re much taller.”

Caine wasn’t sure he minded Diana tweaking him. It was better than the way she’d been lately, all depressed and giving up on life. Hating herself.

He didn’t mind if she hated him. They were never going to be a cute romantic couple like Sam and Astrid. Clean-cut, righteous, all that. The perfect couple. He and Diana were the imperfect couple.

“How did it work out for Napoleon?” he asked her.

He caught the slight hesitation as she searched for a glib answer.

“He lived happily ever after on his island,” Diana said. “He had a beautiful girlfriend who was far better than he deserved.”

“Stop worrying,” he said harshly. “I’m not planning on leaving the island. How could I, even if I wanted to?”

“You would find a way,” Diana said bleakly.

“Yeah. But here I am anyway,” Caine said. He aimed the telescope back at the town. He could see the blackened hulks of burned-out homes just to the west of downtown.

“Don’t do it,” Diana said.

Caine didn’t ask what she meant. He knew.

“Just let it go,” Diana said. She put her hand on his shoulder. She caressed the side of his neck, his cheek.

He lowered the telescope and tossed it onto the overgrown sea grass. He turned, took her in his arms, and kissed her.

It had been a long time since he’d done that.

She felt different in his arms. Thinner. Smaller. More frail. But his body responded to her as it always had.

She did not pull away.

His own response surprised him. It had been a long time for that, too. A long time since he’d felt desire. Starving boys lusted after food, not after girls.

And now that it was happening, it was overwhelming. Like a roar in his ears. A pounding in his chest. He ached all the way through.

At the last second, the second when he would have lost the last of his self-control, Diana gently but firmly pushed him away.

“Not here,” she said.

“Where?” he gasped. He hated the neediness in his voice. He hated needing anyone or anything that badly. Need was weakness.

She detached his hands from her body. She took one step back. She was wearing an actual dress. A dress, with her legs showing and her shoulders bare and it was like she was a visitor from another planet.

He blinked, thinking maybe it was all a dream. She was clean and wearing a yellow summer dress. Her teeth had been brushed. Her hair was brushed, too, still a mess from cutting it all off and having it grow back while too hungry, but a shadow at least of its former dark, tumbling sensuality.

She bent down demurely and picked up the telescope. She handed it to him.

“Your choice, Caine. You can have me. Or you can try to take over the world. Not both. Because I’m not going to be part of that anymore. I can’t. So it’s up to you.”

His jaw dropped. Literally.

“You witch,” he said.

Diana laughed.

“You know I have the power . . . ,” he threatened.

“Of course. I would be helpless. But that’s not what you want.”

Caine spotted a boulder, not far away. Impressively big. He raised one hand, palm out, and with a scraping sound the boulder lifted into the air.

“Sometimes I hate you!” he yelled and with a flick of his wrist sent the boulder flying off the cliff and falling toward the water below.

“Just sometimes?” Diana raised one skeptical brow. “I hate you almost all the time.”

They glared at each other with a look that was hate but also something else, something so much more helpless than hatred.

“We’re damaged people,” Diana said, suddenly sad and serious. “Horrible, messed-up, evil people. But I want to change. I want us both to change.”

“Change? To what?” Caine asked, mystified.

“To people who no longer have dreams of being Napoleon.”

She was her usual smirking self again as she looked him slowly up and down. Slowly enough that he actually felt embarrassed and had to overcome a modest urge to cover himself. “Don’t decide right now,” she said. “You’re in no condition to think clearly.”

Sam stood on the street corner watching Lana and Astrid enter the house he had shared with Astrid. Lana was carrying a water jug. Patrick stopped and stared in Sam’s direction, but the girls didn’t notice him and Patrick quickly lost interest.

He had come to tell Astrid he was going out of town. Astrid would keep the secret. And he wanted at least one person other than Albert to know where he was and what he was doing.

Anyway, that was what he told himself. Because admitting that he still, even now, even after everything that had happened, and everything that hadn’t happened, couldn’t just walk away from Astrid . . . that would be too big an admission of weakness.

He couldn’t not tell her he was leaving. She had to know that he was still . . . whatever he was. He kicked at a crumpled soda can and sent it skittering down the trash-strewn street.

Why was Lana going over to see Astrid? Little Pete must not be feeling well. But how could anyone tell what Little Pete was feeling?

Sam frowned. He didn’t want to have some scene with Astrid in front of Lana.

The sky was getting dark. He would be leaving soon. Dekka, Taylor, and Jack would be meeting him across the highway. Each was supposed to keep the whole thing secret.

In reality, of course, Jack would tell Brianna. Taylor would keep it quiet only because she didn’t know what was going on, and by the time she did they’d be out of town. Dekka would tell no one. And Sam? He would tell Astrid.

Sam knocked at Astrid’s door.

No answer.

Feeling strange and wrong he opened the door to what had until very recently been his own home and went inside.

Astrid and Lana were upstairs; he could hear the murmur of voices.

He took the stairs two at a time and called out, “Astrid, it’s me.”

They were in Little Pete’s room. Astrid and Lana stood a few feet apart with their backs to Sam.

A woman—a grown, adult woman—was sitting on the bed with Little Pete’s head in her lap.

“Mom?” Astrid said.

The woman was in her late thirties. She had streaked blond hair and Astrid’s translucent pale skin, somewhat aged by sun. Her eyes were brown. She smiled sadly and cradled Little Pete’s head. She stroked his hair.

“Mom?” Astrid said again, and this time her voice broke.

The woman did not speak. She did not look up at Astrid. She kept all her attention focused on Little Pete.

“She’s not real,” Astrid said, and took a step back.

Lana glared at Astrid. Then she noticed Sam, standing there.

Lana’s eyes narrowed. “You knew about this, didn’t you?” she accused.

“She’s not real,” Astrid said again. “That’s not my mother. That’s . . . it’s an illusion. He’s sick. I was out so . . . so he made her appear. To comfort him.”

“He made her appear.” Lana practically spit the words. “He made her appear. Because that’s something just anyone can do, any of us can just make a three-dimensional real-life mommy appear to cuddle us when we feel bad.”

“Stop it, Petey,” Astrid said.

The woman—the illusion of a woman—did not react but kept stroking Little Pete’s head.

“Cure him, Lana. Cure him and it will stop.” Astrid was pleading. “He has a fever. He’s coughing.”

As if demonstrating, Little Pete coughed several times.

It was weird. He didn’t cover his mouth or change his expression. He just coughed.

“Give it a try, Lana,” Sam urged. “Please.”

Lana rounded on him. “Interesting power for an autistic to have, isn’t it?” she demanded. “Especially when you think about all the stories going around about how the dome went clear for a few seconds when Little Pete blacked out.”

“There are a lot of mutants,” Sam said as blandly as he could.

“Wasn’t he at the power plant when the FAYZ came?” Lana asked.

Astrid and Sam exchanged a glance. Neither spoke.

“He was at the plant,” Lana said. “The plant is the center of the FAYZ. The very center.”

“Please try to heal him,” Astrid urged.

“He’s got a fever and a cough, big deal,” Lana said. “Why is it so urgent that he be healed?”

Again, Sam had no answer.

Lana moved closer. The woman’s hand was still on Pete’s forehead. But she didn’t react when Lana laid her own hand on Little Pete’s chest.

“So, that’s your mother,” Lana said more calmly.

“No,” Astrid said.

“Weird seeing an adult, isn’t it?”

“It’s an illusion,” Astrid said weakly. “Little Pete has the power to . . . to make his visions seem real.”

“Yeah,” Lana said dryly. “That’s all it is. The blink, when everyone saw the outside, that was just an illusion. And your mom, here, that’s an illusion.”

The woman disappeared suddenly. Little Pete’s head fell back against his pillow.

“You’re helping him,” Sam said. “He’s getting better.”

“You know what’s interesting?” Lana said in a mockery of casual chitchat. “The sun and the moon and the stars here are all illusions, too. So many illusions. So many coincidences. So many secrets.”

Sam didn’t look at Astrid. He wished he hadn’t come. More, he wished Astrid hadn’t brought Lana here, although he understood it.

After a while Lana stepped back from Little Pete. “I don’t know if that fixed him or not.”

“Thanks,” Astrid said.

“I can feel it, you know,” Lana said softly.

“The healing?”

Lana shook her head. “No. It. I can feel it. It touches him. It watches him. I can feel it. It reaches him.” Her brow creased and she seemed almost to be wincing in pain. “Just like it reaches me.”

Without looking at either of them, Lana rushed from the room.

They stood silent, neither knowing what to say.

“I’m going to be away for a couple of days,” Sam said finally. “The water situation . . . I’m going to search out another lake.”

A tear spilled down Astrid’s cheek.

“That must have been hard,” Sam said. “Even knowing it wasn’t real.”

Astrid used one finger to brush away the tear. “Lana’s smart. She’ll put it all together.” She sighed. “If things get bad they’ll come after him. The kids will come after Petey.”

“Before I go I’ll ask Breeze to keep an eye on you,” Sam said.

Astrid stared gloomily at her brother. He coughed twice and then lay quiet. “The thing is, I don’t know what would happen.”

“If he got sick?”

“If he died. I don’t know. I do not know.”

THE
DARKNESS WAS watching him, touching him with its wispy tendril, listening for him to speak.

He would not speak. The Darkness could not help him. The Darkness only wanted to play, and it was so jealous when Pete played with anyone else.

Come to me,
it said over and over again.

Pete’s legs were weak. He stood poised atop the glass but his legs hurt and his feet, too, like the glass sheet was slicing into him.

He had felt better when his mother was there. She was quiet, the way he liked. She had not tried to touch him except to let him lie there against her breast and feel the soft rise and fall of her breathing.

But then the breathing had begun to wear on him, making him distracted. If it didn’t stop . . .

But then it did stop when he made her go away. He could remember the good part, before the sound of breathing got to be too much, and not have to hear it anymore.

Loud sister was talking and then another. The other touched him with her hand. He looked at her and was puzzled. A faint green tendril spiraled up to touch her. She seemed to be on both sides of the glass at once.

He felt her touch and it made him tense. He endured it, but inside he was feeling worse and worse.

Hot. Like fire was inside him.

He didn’t want to hear any more from his body.

The other left. She took her hand away and left. But he could feel an echo of her inside him. She had touched the Darkness, but she refused its pleas to come and play.

He wondered . . . but now his body was drawing his attention again. Hot and cold, hungry and thirsty.

It bothered him.

“KILL
IT! KILL me!”

It was muffled, but you could still hear it. They’d closed the air-conditioning vents—wasn’t like there was air-conditioning anymore—but still the desperate wail came up from the basement.

Howard was out at some kind of stupid meeting. Some big deal. Howard always had big deals.

Charles Merriman, who everyone called Orc, rummaged in the mess beside his couch. There had to be something left in one of these bottles. He didn’t want to have to go into the back room closet and get another bottle.

“It’s the only way. Sam! Sam! Tell Sam to do it!”

Orc wasn’t drunk. Not drunk enough to ignore the sound of that stupid girl’s voice. That took a pretty good drunk and right now he was only drunk enough that he didn’t want to get up off the couch.

His stony fingers lifted a bottle. Wild Turkey. Only about half an inch of brown liquid left in the bottom. He twisted the cork. The glass neck of the bottle shattered in his grip. That happened fairly often. Orc had a hard time gauging his strength when he was a little drunk.

He blew slivers of glass away. He raised the bottle high, careful to keep the sharp points away from his still-human mouth.

The one part of him that could be cut: his mouth.

Well, his mouth and his eyes.

He drained the fiery liquid into his mouth and swallowed. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But not enough.

Orc levered himself up. He was heavy, like you’d expect of a boy made of wet gravel. Like a walking creature of wet cement. He couldn’t fit on a scale although Howard had tried once to weigh him.

He had crushed the scales.

He stomped toward the booze closet where Howard kept his stash. With the exaggerated care of a person not in control of his body, Orc opened the closet door.

A few bottles of clear booze. A few bottles of brown booze. A couple bottles of Cabka, the liquor Howard made by distilling cabbage and rotten oranges. It was nasty stuff. Orc preferred the brown booze.

He snagged a bottle and after a few seconds of clumsy fumbling he gave up and twisted the glass neck off.

“Is that you up there, Orc? I hear you stomping around.” Drake. The girl Brittney was gone now, replaced by Drake.

“You still alive, you stupid, alcoholic pile of rock?” Drake taunted. “Still following Sam’s orders? Doing what you’re told, Orc?”

Orc stomped angrily on the floor. “Shut up or I’ll come down there and smash you like a bug!” Orc roared.

Drake laughed. “Sure you will, Orc. You don’t have the stones. Wait, that was a funny! The stone monster who doesn’t have any stones.”

Orc stomped again. The entire house shook when he did it.

Drake called him various names, but now Orc had about a quarter of the bottle inside him. The warmth spread throughout his body.

He yelled something equally rude back at Drake. Then he staggered back to his couch and sagged heavily into it.

He didn’t mind Drake so much. Drake was a creep.

It was the girl who made Orc want to cry.

She was a monster. Like Orc. Begging for death. Begging for someone to let her go to her Jesus.

Kill me, kill me, kill me,
she begged every day and every night.

Orc took a deep swig.

Tears seeped from his human eyes and fell into the rocky crevices of his face.

Someone was knocking at the front door. Normally Howard would answer. But then Orc heard Jamal’s voice yelling, “Hey, Orc! Open up, man.”

Jamal was one of the very few people besides Howard who ever came to see Orc. Of course it was just so he could get a drink. But still, any company was better than listening to Drake or Brittney.

“Want a drink, Jamal?”

“You know it,” Jamal said. “Albert’s busting on me all day.”

“Yeah,” Orc said. He didn’t care. He snagged a bottle and handed it to Jamal, who took a deep swig.

Orc flopped onto his mattresses, the floor groaning beneath him. Jamal took a chair and kept the bottle.

“Who is that up there?” Drake’s voice floated up. “Is that Jamal or Turk? Too heavy to be Howard.”

“It’s Jamal,” Jamal yelled.

“Don’t talk to him,” Orc said, but without much conviction.

“Hey, Jamal, how about letting me out of here?” Drake asked, almost playful.

Orc yelled something obscene back at him.

“Only if you kill Albert first,” Jamal shouted, then laughed and took another drink.

“How come you work for Albert if you hate him?” Orc asked.

Jamal shrugged. “I’m tough, he needs someone tough.”

“Yeah,” Orc said. “But he treats me like crap.”

“Yeah?”

“Should see how he’s living, man. You think he’s living like the rest of us? Get this: at night he doesn’t even go out to take a leak. He’s got, like, a jar he pees in.”

“I got a jar I pee in.”

“Yeah, well, he’s got a maid to take it out and dump it for him.”

Orc’s head was buzzing, not really paying attention, but Jamal was getting fired up, listing complaints about Albert, starting with the fact that Albert had meat every day and kids to clean up after him.

“See, man, he loves it like this, right?” Jamal said, already slurring his words. “Back in the world Albert was just some shrimpy little nothing. In here he’s a big man and I’m, like, his, you know . . .”

“Servant,” Orc supplied.

Jamal’s eyes flared angrily. “Yeah. Yeah. Like you, Orc, you’re Sam’s servant.”

“I ain’t anyone’s servant.”

“You’re babysitting Drake all day and night, man, what is it you think you are? You’re doing what the Sam Boss tells you.”

Orc didn’t have a ready answer. He wished Howard was home because Howard was smarter at talking.

Jamal pushed it. “Guys like you and me and Turk and Drake, right? We used to be in charge. Because we were tough and we weren’t afraid and didn’t take anyone’s crap, right?”

Orc shrugged. He was feeling very uncomfortable. “Where’s Howard?” he muttered.

Jamal made a rude noise. “Howard’s not the one stuck being a jailer, you are, Orc. Sam’s prison guard. Keeps you busy, right, and trapped here all the time. So it’s like Turk said.”

“What’d Turk say?”

“Said Sam got you and Drake locked up at the same time.”

“It’s not like that.”

Jamal laughed derisively. “Man, all you have to do is see who is top dog and who is bottom dog. See, that’s where Zil was wrong: it’s not about moofs and normals, freaks and non-freaks, it’s about top dog, bottom dog. You and me, Orc, we’re bottom dogs. Should be top dogs.”

Just then Brittney’s voice came up from below. “Is Sam there? Get Sam! You have to call Sam!”

Orc levered himself up off his bed and yelled, “Hey shut up. I already gotta listen to Drake all day and night.”

He swayed, tried to catch himself and couldn’t. He slipped and fell back on his rear. Jamal exploded in derisive laughter.

This time Orc leaped to his feet. “Stop laughing!”

“Orc, get Sam!”

“It was funny, man,” Jamal said through his own braying laughter.

“Orc, Drake is trying—”

Orc cursed loudly. He stomped on the floor. “Shut up, shut up!”

And suddenly, with a rending, ripping sound, the floor beneath Orc gave way.

He fell through wood and plaster. He landed hard and lay flat on his back, winded. Splinters and dust settled on him.

He blinked, too stunned to make sense of what had just happened. His first thought was that Howard would be pissed. His second thought was that Sam would be even more pissed.

Brittney was standing over him, looking down at him.

Flat on his back. Drunk and foolish. A monster. And from above came Jamal’s donkey laughter.

Orc reached to touch the skin that still stretched over a part of his face. He was bleeding. Not bad, not a lot, but bleeding.

In blind rage Orc got to his feet. He punched Brittney with all his strength. The girl went flying into the wall. Her head snapped against cinderblock, a hit that would have killed any real, living girl.

But Brittney couldn’t die.

Which was the final straw. Something in Orc’s brain snapped. He leaped, trying to grab the floor above and pull himself through, but he slipped and fell again and Jamal was pointing and laughing and Orc ran for the door, the barricaded door that had kept the Drake/Brittney thing locked up. He body-slammed the door. It held, but barely. He reared back and kicked and kicked and splinters flew.

“No! No!” Brittney screamed. “He’ll escape!”

Orc stepped back, raised both his gravel-skinned arms and ran straight at the door.

It didn’t fly open, it simply came apart. The frame shattered and splintered. The door itself split. And Orc tore through.

“Want to laugh at me?” he roared as he pounded up the stairs and emerged in the kitchen.

Jamal was still standing next to the hole, laughing.

“You wanna laugh?” Orc roared.

Jamal spun around, realizing too late the danger he was in. Orc was over six feet tall and almost as wide as he was tall. His legs were like tree trunks, his arms like bridge cable.

Jamal fumbled for his gun, but Orc wasn’t having any of that. He grabbed Jamal by the neck, lifted him off the floor, and threw him down the hole.

Jamal hit hard. The gun flew, scraping across the floor.

Orc was panting, sweating, heart pounding in his chest. Now reality was starting to penetrate the alcohol-fueled rage and he saw what he had done.

Howard. He should . . . Or Sam . . . Someone, he should tell someone, get someone . . .

It was all over now for Charles Merriman. He had redeemed himself, he had been given something important to do. But now all that was gone. And he was just Orc again.

He wanted to cry. He couldn’t face it. He couldn’t face Howard’s disappointment and pity. Sam’s cold anger.

Down in the dark basement a long, reddish tentacle reached for the gun.

Orc turned and ran.

Sanjit Brattle-Chance had not enjoyed his first week in Per-dido Beach. Virtue Brattle-Chance had enjoyed it even less.

“It’s like a giant lunatic asylum,” Virtue said.

“Yeah. It is, kind of,” Sanjit said. They had spent the afternoon inspecting the helicopter. Edilio had assigned them the job of reporting back on whether it was totally broken or just mostly broken.

So far it was looking totally broken. Both skids—the ski-like things it landed on—were crumpled. Part of the glass bubble canopy was shattered, just gone, and the rest of it was starred and cracked.

Night had fallen and that was the end of inspecting anything. Virtue had wanted to go straight home. Sanjit had stalled.

“Let’s just hang out and talk, Choo,” Sanjit said. “I mean, look, we’ve had all this stress, right? But now Bowie’s getting well—”

Virtue made a rude noise. “If you believe that so-called Healer.”

“I believe her completely,” Sanjit said.

The girl named Lana had come and laid her hand on Bowie. She’d barely spoken, had replied to polite inquiries with single-syllable answers or grunts. Or annoyed silence.

But Sanjit had been fascinated. He’d thought about little else ever since. After all, how could he not be attracted to a girl who could heal with a touch and yet walked around with a massive automatic pistol stuck in her belt?

His kind of girl.

He had learned that she lived up here at Clifftop. In fact Edilio had carefully and repeatedly warned Sanjit not to irritate her while he was checking out the helicopter.

His exact words had been, “For God’s sake, don’t get in Lana’s way.”

To which Sanjit had said, “Is she dangerous?”

Edilio had given him a strange look. “Well, she shot me once. But it was under the influence of the Darkness. Which she had tried to kill all by herself with a truckload of gas. And then she healed me. So I don’t know if that makes her dangerous. But if it was me, I would definitely not make her mad.”

So Sanjit and Virtue sat on the grass and watched the sun go down and the stars appear. And Sanjit secretly watched the hotel.

“Did you hear about the talking coyotes?” Virtue demanded. Like if there were such a thing, it was Sanjit’s fault.

“Yeah. Creepy, huh?”

“And the thing they call the Darkness?” Virtue shook his head dolefully. He’d always been gloomy. The cloud to Sanjit’s sunshine, the pessimist to Sanjit’s optimist. They were adopted brothers, from Congo and Thailand, respectively. From a desperate refugee camp, and from the tough streets of Bangkok.

“Yeah. I wonder what it is?”

“The gaiaphage. That’s the other word they use. ‘Gaia,’ as in world. ‘Phage,’ as in a worm or something that eats something up. I’m going to go way out on a limb here and say I don’t think something that calls itself a ‘world eater’ is a good thing.”

“No?” Sanjit made an innocent face, deliberately provoking his brother.

“Fine.” Virtue pouted. “But have you seen the graveyard they put in the plaza? There’s, like, two dozen graves there.”

Sanjit twisted around to look back at the helicopter. It had saved them. It seemed a shame just to let it lie there dead. “I’d need some big wrenches. A ladder. Hammer. And then, you know, someone who actually knew what to do with all of it.”

“Fine, you don’t really want to talk.”

They had landed the helicopter—well, crashed it, anyway— behind Clifftop hotel. In some scruffy trees and bushes just past the parking area.

The barrier was close at hand. So even if the helicopter could ever be flown—and Sanjit couldn’t imagine what the point would be—it would take a lot of luck not just to fly it straight into the barrier.

The barrier was a trickster. At ground level it was opaque, while suggesting translucence.

Higher up it was sky. But when you were up there it wasn’t like you could see beyond the barrier. If you tried, the barrier was just opaque again.

Tricky tricky. Like a street magician’s sleight of hand, Sanjit thought.

He realized Virtue was talking again.

“ . . . once Bowie’s completely better. Maybe Caine isn’t totally unreasonable. I mean, he was starving before and that would make anyone unreasonable.”

“Choo,” Sanjit said. “Caine is pure, distilled essence of evil. What are you even talking about?”