The Conformity (29 page)

“I don't have a father. But, okay.” The knife stills on the wood.

“People like you … these
bugfucks …
they are racked with needs and desires they cannot control due to the loneliness and isolation their abilities bring. Is this not true?”

After a long while, Shreve simply says, “Yes.”

“My father picked the most obvious of vices. Alcohol.”

Shreve goes back to whittling. I know from what he's told me about his mother that she's a sauce.

“I understand,” Shreve says.

“You must guard yourself against addiction, Shreve.”

“Yes. That's old news. I've—” He stops. Swallows hard. “My mother was the same. And I'm like her, except—”

“Except what?”

“I'm a thief. I—” Shreve looks at the wood and knife in his hands as if he can find an answer there. “I've stolen memories. The good ones. Drank the emotional content from them like a drunk cracking a can of beer.”

Negata leans back. Watches the fire. “And you still do this?”

“No. Not in a long while. But I know the urge. Weird thing is, I used to look down on Moms because I had to raise Vig, my little dude, myself. And she was such a lush. I was doing
her
job. But then I
became
her.” The knife begins moving once more. “I wouldn't want it on my highlight reel.”

“Nor would I.”

“And since then … shit, I've killed thousands. I didn't
mean to.
I try to help …” Shreve throws the wood block he's been carving into the fire, and when it lands on the coals there, they brighten and flame. He folds his pocketknife. “Every monster I've had to face, I've had to
become them
to survive.”

Negata stands and moves over to his sleeping bag silently. Once he's inside, he says, “I have nothing to say to help ease this pain except this: Children have the luxury of looking at the world simply, in terms of black and white. Good and evil. But adults must make compromises.”

That sounds about right. Negata stills, closes his eyes.

Shreve sits there a bit longer, staring at the banked fire.

“There will come a time, Shreve,” Negata says softly from his bedroll. “You will have to go to face this evil that has fallen upon us all. I have done what I can to protect you, but when you must go, you must go. I do not know what gods decided that this is a war that must be fought by children, but I fear it is so. You must leave me behind and go to the fight, when the time is here.”

“You can come with us. All you have to do is open your mind to me—”

“No,” Negata says sadly. “I've spent all my life becoming nothing. I cannot become more than I am now.”

“But …” Shreve trails off.

Negata says no more, just remains still, and then his breath deepens and he's asleep.

Shreve returns to our nest of blankets and slips in beside me. The length of him presses against me, and I feel him press his lips to my forehead. I put my arms around him and share his warmth.

The frozen world beyond these walls requires compromise. It requires us to fall. But here, with his arms around me and his face soft and quiet in the low light, his eyes closed and no sign of the wolf about him, we need make no compromise. We can be pure.

thirty-two

JACK

We land in the open space of the dorm, and Tap pulls back his hood, pulls off his gloves, and stares at the remains of our room. He looks like someone's gut-punched him. He steps over a frozen corpse, walks over to Shreve's old bed. The wind from the great opening in the wall blows his hair as he sits down on the thin mattress.

It's taken us a week to reach the campus. We had to search for our old home as if we were geese or carrier pigeons. It was only when we spied a road sign pointing to Bozeman that were we able to trace the dead, empty trails of white highways below us and then thread our way back to the campus.

The campus itself is in ruins. Some structures still stand, but it looks as though the Conformity had a tantrum after we escaped, if you can call
that
an escape. Buildings are crumpled and shattered, massive spills of red and gray brick, jagged snarls of shattered timber, partially cloaked in white. The canteen and admissions are rubble, along with the research and development housing. The Army barracks has been squashed flat, as well as the girls' dorm. On the heights, the water tower lies where it fell. I'm thankful the field of human bodies below it has had a blanket of snow drawn across it, with only a few mangled limbs poking through the crust here and there. I wish I could do something for them all, but it would take months of work to get them buried. The bears and mountain lions will be well fed this winter.

The boys' dorm still stands, but half of our room is sheared away; the floor is jagged and buckled, the rest open to the sky. It's a brilliant winter's day, bright and bitter cold, throwing the whole world in sharp relief. There are three frozen corpses splattered about what's left of the room—two men and a little girl, probably sloughed off from the soldier as it struck the building.

“We knew it was never going to be permanent,” Ember says, inclining her head toward the ruinous view before us. “You knew, eventually, we'd go on assignment or move on.”

“Speak for yourself,” Tap says. “I never would've come here if I'd thought that. I would've stayed with my family, even though
this—”
He sweeps his arm to take in me, Ember, the remains of the campus, the corpses, the existence of extranaturals in general. “—would've put them at risk.
I love my family, goddamn it
. I wouldn't have left!”

Tap's shaking. He covers his face with his hands. Yeah, he's still a dick. But now I can see what motivates him, and it's not that different from what drives me. Strange to say, Ember—my girlfriend … no, we've gone beyond that. Ember, my
lover—
is more opaque to me now than Tap.

There's not much I can say to Tap's outburst. So I switch subjects. “They evacced out of the south pass,” I say, looking down the valley—a wide view now that the whole of our dorm room has been ventilated. It's like King Kong just ripped half of the dorm building away. “They were in Jeeps and troop transports. How long did the Conformity chase us before it—”

“Turned off the electricity?” Ember asks. “Seemed like only minutes.”

Tap stands, wipes his eyes. I'm very careful not to notice his tears. “Nah, it was way longer, we were just terrified. That made it feel like things were happening faster than they were.”

“So they could've gotten quite a ways. We were on the switchbacks, but when you go that way,” I say, pointing to the south, “Highway 10 is right there. Once they got on the pavement, they'd be moving fast.”

“Let's go, then,” Tap says, pulling his hood back over his head. “The quicker we find the Liar, the quicker we can—” He stops.

We can what? Find Shreve? Confront the Conformity? And then? Will we be dead? Will we become part of the great pulsing mass? Be consumed?

Everything waits in ruin.

Ember wants to sift through the rubble of the girls' dorm to look for some of her things. Mementos. A necklace. A picture of her grandmother.

I don't tell her it's pointless.

Maybe the point is to realize it's all gone.

From on high, Tap and I scout the area for any signs of life. Not surprisingly, the only signs are of wildlife. The forest and animals have already reclaimed some of what once was our home. Game trails lead to piles of rubble that possibly have dens in them now. There's big-cat shit—probably mountain lion—in the boys' dormitory atrium, right outside Roderigo's little office.

Let's check the bunkers,
Tap sends in the face of wind.
I could stock up on ammunition. And I'm hungry.

I'm hungry too.

The entrance to Bunker H is no more; the Conformity battered it to oblivion. But on the far side of the mountain, at the end of the switchback, the motor pool door stands open and we're able to gain entrance there.

We trudge down the long hall, into the guts of the mountain where there's absolutely no light; we have to resort to the matches and candles we took from the lodge to see our way back to the underground armory and cache. There's still some MREs and weapons and ammunition, so we both stock up, taking another M14 and pistols for each of us. Tap slings a bandolier of rounds for the grenade launcher over his shoulder.

Looking at him, I laugh.

“What?” he asks, not far from outrage.

“You look like a bandito. You got the bandolier, and you're still wearing that old wool blanket cape. All you need is a cowboy hat and cigar.”

He looks at me, the corners of his mouth curling up in an involuntary smile. “You're not so bad, Jack.”

“Thanks.”

“Let's not start sucking each other's dicks just yet. Help me with this bag.”

“You gonna be able to carry all that?”

“Don't start, man. The doc was
heavy
.”

We lug the nylon bag full of ammo and MREs back out. Tap threads his arms through the handles, making an improvised backpack, and we lift off, heading back over the mountain, back to campus. At the apex, as we're passing over the snow-wreathed peak, the valley beyond seems strangely washed out. The firs seem dark, not green. The sunshine is bright yet brings none of the buttery color. The sky, normally blue, seems just gray. The colors are there, but only the barest hint.

What the hell?
Tap sends. In flight, it's easier to speak mind-to-mind.
Who put on the black-and-white movie?

We make it back to where Ember waits for us in the aerie of the ruined dorm room. Tap unslings the bag, and we divvy up the ammunition and food.

“You notice anything different?” I ask Ember, moving next to her. Sometimes I just want to ditch Tap, find some little abandoned house with a stocked kitchen and a thick woodpile, and hide away from all of this with Ember. We'd spend the rest of our lives in bed. But thinking about it makes me uncomfortable. And she'd never go for it, and I couldn't live with myself if she did.

“You guys look like zombies.”

I glance at Tap and then back to her. She's right. “It's like the color has been leeched out of everything.”

Ember shrugs. “It's the Conformity.”

“How do you know that?” Tap says. “You don't know that.”

“No,” she responds. “You're right, I don't.” She takes out an MRE labeled MEATLOAF WITH GRAVY, rips the top part off, and dumps the contents out on the bed. She snatches up a packet and, with her teeth, tears the top open. From her jacket breast pocket she removes a metal spoon—over the last days, we've taken to carrying everything we need on our persons at all times—and digs in. Around a mouthful of meatloaf she says, “The Conformity turned off the juice, right? We agree on that much.”

Tap nods, reluctantly.

“Then what's to say the fucking thing hasn't washed the color away? It feeds on misery and can alter the fundamental aspects of the universe.” She digs her spoon into the meal packet, stirring. “More people it takes over, the more power it has. Maybe soon it'll be able to black out the sun or … shit, I don't know … eliminate gravity. Alter quantum physics. Feed on our emotions, maybe.” She takes another bite.

“You don't know what you're talking about. You're just speculating.”

“That's right, dude. There's only one way to know for sure, and I'm not going to trot right up to one of those shitballs and ask. But whatever the case, the world's had the color sucked right out of it. I'd say the Conformity is the prime suspect.”

There's nothing I can say to argue with her. There's no way to prove she's right or wrong, but what she says
feels
right.

Ember looks into the opening of her meal packet, glances at the frozen corpse of the girl in the corner, and purses her lips. She cleans her spoon off with her mouth and tucks it back in her pocket. “This tastes like shit,” she says, and chucks the meal into the void. “Let's get out of here.”

You okay?
I say to her alone.

The fucking thing has sucked the color out, Jack. There's a dead girl in the corner. How do you think I am?

Before I can say anything, she takes three quick steps toward the jagged opening in the wall of the dorm and leaps into the air.

“Come on, man,” I say to Tap. “Let's go.”

thirty-three

CASEY

“This is where I leave you,” Nelson says when we emerge from the tree line and the horses find their footing on the pavement of the highway. All is silent, and there's a hush in the trees and on the mountain.

“Come with us,” Shreve says. “What we're doing is important. Possibly the most important thing—”

“No,” Nelson says, his face clouding. “I've got my horses to think about. And—” He looks at our back-trail, a large furrow in the snow. And then his gaze goes to the pass we just came from, beyond. “My whole world is there, and I can't leave it.”