Plague

by Michael Grant

  She realized she was not alone.

  “Who are you?”

  “Jamal. I . . . I work for Albert, kind of. A bodyguard, like.”

  The boy stood stiff, rigid, hand gripping the stock of his rifle too tightly. His other arm had been hurt.

  “Why are you here, Jamal? Are you here to catch Drake?” She noticed a few feet of rope coiled and hung from Jamal’s belt. “I don’t think you can tie him up. He’s very dangerous.”

  “I know that,” Jamal said. He was tugging the rope free.

  Brittney suddenly understood why Jamal was there. She bolted.

  Jamal ran after her.

  “Don’t run or I have to shoot you,” Jamal cried.

  He was faster than she was. Everyone was faster than Brittney. But he was fumbling one-handed with the rope and had to sling the gun over his shoulder. All Brittney had to do was run.

  She burst into the town plaza. Not knowing what she was looking for, not consciously. But she found herself running up the stone steps toward the ruined church.

  Jamal caught her on the steps, grabbed her hair, and yanked back. Her legs went out from under her and she fell hard on her back, slamming onto sharp-edged granite.

  But Brittney no longer felt real pain. She had long since gone beyond pain.

  Jamal tried to straddle her, but he tripped on the rope and she pushed away from him.

  “Stop it!” Jamal yelled.

  Brittney rolled down a couple of steps, climbed to her feet, and plowed straight back into Jamal. She knocked him aside and dashed past him.

  The church roof had collapsed long ago. But a path had been cleared to the inside. The cross had been propped back upright, leaning a bit but still there, silver in the moonlight.

  Brittney ran toward the cross, tripped on debris, and slammed into a pew.

  Jamal was on her in a flash, cursing, fumbling, trying to grab her, swat away her punching hands, trying to get the rope around her.

  “No! No! No!” Brittney shouted.

  Jamal punched her in the side of the head.

  Brittney blinked and punched back. She kicked and flailed and punched as well as she could from her position half beneath a pew. And Jamal kicked her back viciously.

  But Jamal could still feel pain. He backed away suddenly, eyes wild and dripping sweat. He leveled the rifle at her.

  “I don’t want to shoot you,” Jamal pleaded.

  “You can’t kill me,” Brittney said and got heavily to her feet.

  “I know. Drake told me you’d say that. But I can blow up your face and then you won’t be better right away. That’s what he said. He told me to shoot you right in the face and tie you up.”

  “I wish you could kill me,” Brittney said. And then, in a loud voice, trying to shout at heaven, she cried, “Jesus, I am in your house. I am in the house of the Lord begging you for death!”

  “Just let me tie you up,” Jamal pleaded. “He’ll whip me if I don’t.” There were tears running down his face and Brittney felt sorry for him. They were both bound to Drake, unable to get away from him.

  Jamal aimed the gun at her face.

  “Don’t,” Brittney said. “We have to fight Drake, we have to get help. Sam. He has to burn Drake to ashes and scatter the ashes in the ocean.”

  “Please don’t make me do this,” Jamal pleaded.

  Brittney yelled, “Help! Some—”

  Orc had run until he was tired. That didn’t take long. He was drunk and dehydrated. Weaker than he should have been. More easily tired.

  But despair drove him on, staggering and weeping and bellowing in rage through the night.

  “Never wanted to be no guard,” he yelled at the closed and darkened houses. “Everybody hear that? I didn’t ask to be no prison guard!”

  He stood swaying back and forth, big stone-fingered fists clenched.

  “No one wants to talk to me, huh?”

  He smashed one arm down on the roof of a car. The driver’s-side window had long since been beaten in so the door could be opened and the car could be searched. The trunk was open, too, and the recoil from Orc’s blow made it bounce.

  “Need another bottle,” he muttered. Then louder, yelling at the darkened windows and locked doors, “I want a bottle. Someone give me a bottle so I won’t hurt anyone.”

  No answer. The streets were silent.

  He started crying again and brushed angrily at the tears. He started running once more, ran for a block and stopped, wheezing and threatening to topple over.

  Then he spotted the boy. A kid. Maybe eight, maybe nine or ten, hard to say. The boy was walking bent over, holding his stomach. Every few feet he would stop and cough and then groan from the pain of coughing.

  “Hey-ey!” Orc yelled. “You! Go get me a bottle.” The word “bottle” came out “bah-hull.”

  The sick boy blinked and seemed only then to notice the monster in the street ahead of him. He clutched a stop sign to keep himself from collapsing.

  “Hey. You, kid. I’m talking to you!”

  The boy started to answer, then started coughing. He coughed and groaned and sat down.

  Orc stomped over to him. “You ig, um, ig . . . ignoring me?”

  The boy shook his head weakly. He made a gesture toward his throat, tried to speak, couldn’t.

  “I don’t want to . . . ,” Orc began, but lost the thread of his speech. “Just go get me a bah-hull.”

  The boy coughed in Orc’s face.

  Orc swatted him with the back of his hand.

  The boy hit the signpost so hard it rang. Then fell onto his back on the sidewalk.

  Orc stared stupidly, expecting the boy to start crying. But the kid wasn’t moving. Wasn’t coughing.

  Orc felt ice water flood his veins.

  “I didn’t . . . ,” Orc started to say.

  He looked around, feeling sudden, overwhelming shame. No one had seen him.

  He tried to lean down and prod the boy with his finger, but the blood rushed to his head and he almost passed out.

  “Whatever,” Orc said sullenly, and headed off again into the night.

  But quieter now.

  Chapter Thirteen

  48 HOURS, 29 MINUTES

  BRIANNA TOOK A deep breath of chilly night air. Was that a breeze? Excellent: a breeze for the Breeze.

  “Here, Drake-y, Drake-y,” she said.

  She was in the middle of the street. As long as Drake hadn’t found a gun, she would be safe. Drake was quick with that whip hand of his, but not Breeze quick. No one was Breeze quick.

  “Oh, Dra-ake,” she sang in a loud voice. “Oh, Dra-ake. Come out, come out wherever you are.”

  She ran down Pacific Boulevard, turned onto Brace, and shot back up Golding.

  She heard Orc bellowing drunkenly in the distance. It would be easy to locate him. But Orc wasn’t the problem.

  No sign of Drake. She paused at the corner. Either she could just zoom randomly around or she could go methodically, street by street.

  Methodical was not Brianna’s thing.

  Better to taunt him, tease him into showing himself. “Here, Drake-y, Drake-y.”

  She zoomed to Astrid’s house. No sign of him there.

  She zoomed to the firehouse. To the school. To Clifftop and down the beach, kicking a tail of sand behind her as she ran.

  Where would he go? What would he do?

  It dawned on her then: Brittney. What was Drake going to do about Brittney?

  As far as Brianna knew, Drake had no power to stop Brittney from emerging.

  Where would Brittney go if she were free?

  Brianna turned her gaze to the ruined church. And just then, she heard the sound of voices from within.

  She zoomed up the stairs and into the church as . . .

  BLAM!

  The explosion, a stab of yellow, blinded her. She stopped as fast as she could, but not fast enough. She slammed into a pew and flew headfirst through the air, unable to see.

  Anyone else w
ould have smashed face-first into the marble altar, but Brianna was not anyone else. As she was flying she tucked, spun, and landed on her feet on the altar. Like a cat.

  The wave of pain from the impact with the pew made her gasp. But she fought down the urge to scream.

  Then she saw.

  And then she did scream.

  The rifle blast had hit Brittney in the face and neck. The entire left side of her face was gone. Her neck was torn open. She should be spouting blood. But although the shattered flesh was red and raw as uncooked hamburger, no arteries sprayed.

  And Brittney was still standing.

  Jamal made a sound like a tortured animal, a howl of fear. He leveled the gun at Brittney’s chest but in the half second it took him to find the trigger with his finger Brianna was on him.

  She hit the barrel and knocked it away just as BLAM!

  She grabbed Jamal by the neck, yanked him forward so fast his head snapped back. She punched him six times in less than a second and Jamal crumpled, blood gushing from his nose and lips.

  “Don’t hurt me, it’s not my fault!” Jamal wailed as he dropped and curled into a ball protecting both the gun and his face.

  Brianna did not want to look at Brittney, really really didn’t.

  “Are you okay?” she asked over her shoulder. No answer from Brittney. Not surprising since her mouth was smeared all around the back of her head.

  Brianna steeled herself and shot a glance at Brittney, but the whip hand was already reaching, yanking Jamal’s rifle away.

  Brianna pulled her knife free and leaped at Drake.

  She buried the knife in Drake’s chest. It was a huge blade, a bowie knife, as big as a chef’s knife and a lot thicker. The blade was in all the way, up to the hilt.

  Drake grinned. “This should be fun.”

  Brianna expected him to try to turn the gun toward her but instead he tossed it aside. Then, with his real hand, he drew the knife out of his chest, slowly, as if relishing every inch of steel.

  Brianna stared, mesmerized. And almost missed the sudden flick of Drake’s tentacle arm as it swept behind her.

  Almost missed.

  Not quite.

  Brianna dropped and the whip went over her head. Drake threw Brianna’s own knife at her, but it wasn’t even close. The knife stuck into the back of a pew.

  Brianna pulled her sawed-off shotgun from her runner’s pack, leveled, aimed, and fired.

  The blast caught Drake in the mouth. It turned his thin-lipped smirk into a gaping hole, like a sinkhole.

  Drake reached with his tentacle to feel the hole. He stuck the end of his whip hand into his own destroyed mouth. The pink-red tip came out through the back of his head and waved at Brianna.

  Drake made a grunting sound that might have been a laugh if he’d had tongue and teeth and lips.

  Brianna dropped back a few feet.

  Drake’s face seemed to melt and re-form. She could see individual teeth, white pearls in the starlight, moving like insects, crawling out of the shredded flesh to find places in newly reshaped gums.

  Brianna felt for the wire she hung from her belt. It was an E string from a cello she’d found. She’d wrapped the ends around short pieces of wood to form a four-foot-long garrote.

  “This is what you were going to do to me at the power plant, remember, Drake?” Brianna winced as Drake’s tongue grew inside the still-gaping hole of his mouth.

  “Oh, sorry, you can’t really chitchat, can you?” Brianna taunted. “Well, the thing is, whether it’s me running into a wire at two hundred miles an hour, or the wire running into you at two hundred miles an hour, it works just the same.”

  She grabbed the garrote and was behind Drake before he could blink. The wire went around Drake’s neck as she was still running. The wire bit and sliced, and she felt a powerful jerk in her hands that tore one handle from her grip as the wire sliced through neck bone.

  Drake’s head fell. It hit the stone floor hard, and rolled onto its side, rocked a few times, and lay still.

  Not enough, Brianna thought, turned, raced back, threw the loose end of the wire around Drake’s waist, caught the handle, and gripped with all her strength as she backpedaled at super speed.

  The wire cut through Drake’s still-standing torso just below his ribs. It stopped at the spine.

  Brianna yanked, but the wire would not cut the spine. She yanked and yanked and the meat of Drake’s body twisted sideways so she could see the insides, see the organs, the sliced raw flesh like steak, the pale intestine, and all of it clinical, like a drawing, like some hideous display.

  And suddenly her frenzied yanking, legs pummeling the slippery marble for purchase, succeeded, and with a grinding, grisly sound the spine parted and Drake fell in two pieces to the floor.

  Brianna was aware of screaming. Jamal, hand over his face but eyes staring in horror. Screaming and screaming like he would never stop.

  Brianna wanted to scream, too. But not in horror. In sheer, vicious triumph. She wanted to dance and smear herself with the blood of her beaten enemy. She wanted to leap atop the body chunks and kick them in contempt.

  Brianna threw back her head and howled at the broken rafters and the sky beyond. “Yaaaaah! Yaaaaah! The Breeze!”

  Jamal stopped screaming. He was gibbering, making word-like sounds, like a crazy street person. He was crawling away across the floor.

  Brianna laughed. “What’s the matter, tough guy? Did you figure out you picked the wrong side?”

  The tentacle was around her legs before she knew what had happened.

  She looked down and stared, unable to believe what she was seeing. Drake’s whip hand was coiled twice around her ankles, squeezing hard, crushing the bones together.

  Brianna tried to kick but couldn’t even budge.

  Drake’s head was four feet away from his upper torso, but now the cruel mouth was back, and grinning. The cold eyes were watching.

  Alive!

  The upper torso used its good hand to shove itself toward the head while the tentacle held her tight with a python’s strength. The lower torso—stomach, hips, legs—was kicking and flailing, trying to move toward the upper torso.

  Drake was putting himself back together.

  Brianna fell on her butt. She reached reflexively for her knife, but it was too far away.

  Her sawed-off shotgun. She had re-holstered it. Her hand found it, yanked it free. She took aim at the tentacle that held her fast, aimed at the part just beyond her feet, pulled the trigger.

  BLAM!

  The blast came from Jamal’s gun. He had found it. She saw smoke curling from the muzzle.

  Brianna fumbled with her shotgun, but her fingers wouldn’t work right and her ears were ringing and somehow there was blood all over her chest.

  Drake’s head made a silent laugh.

  Brianna lay helpless, watching as the legs, the lower third of the creature began to change. Not Drake’s legs. A girl’s chubby limbs.

  Drake’s head cried out without sound.

  The tentacle was already sliding away.

  Jamal walking as if in a dream, his smoking rifle held at his side.

  Brianna could see Drake’s lips form the words, “Kill her. Kill her.”

  But without lungs, no sound came out.

  The body parts moved together. The arms of a girl fumbled for and found what was now Brittney’s head and dragged it to its perch on her shoulders.

  The legs kicked and scrabbled until the lower third melded back. Brianna watched it all, unable to move, unable to think clearly.

  The last thing she saw was Jamal using Brianna’s wire to wrap Brittney’s hands tightly behind her. He tore a sleeve from his own shirt and made a gag of it and stuffed it in Brittney’s mouth.

  Then he stepped back to Brianna. She could barely hear his words through the ringing sound and could barely understand what she did hear.

  “I could kill you,” Jamal said. He pointed the automatic rifle down at her, the barre
l an inch from her face. “Most likely Drake comes out on top. But if not, you remember that I coulda killed you.” He shouldered the gun. “But I didn’t.”

  It was only a few minutes before Edilio, accompanied by Ellen, both armed with automatic rifles of their own, came rushing in. Jamal and Brittney were long gone.

  Edilio knelt beside Brianna. She saw worry and compassion in his dark eyes and in her delirium really liked him for that.

  “Ellen, get Lana. Now!” Edilio ordered.

  To Brianna, he said, “Is he gone?”

  Brianna found it hard to get her voice to do what she wanted. But she managed after a few tries to say, “Have to . . . get Sam. Sam. I . . . I can’t beat Drake.”

  Edilio looked grim. “Yeah, that’s a good idea,” he said as he examined the bloody wounds in her shoulder. “Unfortunately Taylor took off. And no one exactly knows how to find Sam.”

  “Jamal . . . ,” Brianna whispered. But before she could complete the thought, the marble floor seemed to open wide and drag her swirling down into darkness.

  Lance came bursting in the door.

  “Drake is out!” he yelled.

  Turk—formerly Zil’s number one guy, at least he thought so, and boss of what was left of Human Crew—said, “Yeah, whatever.”

  Human Crew had been a group formed to defend the rights of normals against freaks. At least that was the Human Crew line. Most people now saw Human Crew as a straight-up hate group.

  Lance grabbed Turk’s shoulder and practically yanked him up off the stinking couch where he lay. “Turk, listen, man, listen to me: don’t you see what this means?”

  Turk did not see what it meant, or at least not whatever Lance thought he should see. Turk mostly disliked Lance. They were friends, kind of, but only because they’d both been with Zil and riding high. And now they were reduced to doing the worst work Albert could find for them: digging slit trenches for kids to go in, and then covering them up when they were full.

  Cesspool diggers. The Crap Crew, kids called them.

  And they had to kiss Albert’s butt because otherwise they didn’t eat. They’d been lucky they weren’t exiled. Turk had talked the council out of sending them off to live in the wild. He’d begged, that was the truth of it. He’d convinced them that it was better to find a place for him and the others from Human Crew.