Plague

by Michael Grant

  The walls around him all glowed. With his eyes fully adjusted to the pitch black he could see fairly well now with nothing but the toxic radioactive glow.

  Was he there? Was he at the end of the trip?

  Come.

  Farther still, down a sloping ramp. He realized that this was a different type of tunnel, no longer a man-made mining shaft but a natural cave deep, deep in the bowels of the stifling earth.

  He entered a cavern that soared hundreds of feet above him. Green-tinged hanging stalactites met stumpy stalagmites. Like walking into the jaw of a gigantic shark.

  Through the cavern and ever downward, following the faint trail of green. The creatures kept pace behind him. They had fallen after him, one by one, slowing their descent with their wings, spiraling down like helicopter seedpods.

  An army! His army!

  How far had he fallen? He could not know. How deep was he now? Miles.

  Closer and closer.

  And then, even as he felt his journey drawing to a close, his desperate goal coming close, Drake felt the familiar disturbance and swift onset of stumbling awkwardness that accompanied the transformation.

  “No!” he moaned. “No, not now!”

  But he had no power to stop the transformation.

  It was not Drake but Brittney who finally came to the place where the gaiaphage lay. It was like living green sand. Billions of particles, each almost invisible to the eye, but together forming a single living thing, a hive.

  The cavern was vast, impossibly huge. As if someone had sunk a sports stadium into the earth. The green, glowing mass of the gaiaphage covered stalactites and stalagmites, granite walls, and sandstone rock skyscrapers.

  But beneath Brittney’s feet the floor was strangely level and smooth. The gaiaphage had left an uncovered space for her to see and to understand.

  She knelt and pressed her hand against a clear patch of translucent, pearly gray beneath her. The searing pain a living person would have felt was only an interesting tingle to Brittney.

  She knew what it was and where she was. This was the bottom of the FAYZ wall, the bottom of the giant bubble. She was ten miles down, at the lowest depths of the enclosed universe of the FAYZ.

  She stood and looked left and right, in every direction, turning slowly to see. It was all resting on the barrier, she realized. The rock walls, the jutting stalagmites, all of it rested on the barrier itself.

  And everywhere but in this one patch, the gaiaphage covered the barrier. It touched the barrier and did not feel pain.

  Then, as Brittney looked down, she saw the color of the barrier change. The eternal blank grayness was crossed by fingers of dark green, the color of late summer leaves.

  She understood: the gaiaphage could touch and alter the barrier itself.

  She knew it was conscious. She knew it because she felt now the dread touch of that awful mind in hers. There could not be the slightest doubt.

  Brittney fell to her knees.

  She laced her fingers together and squeezed her eyes tight. But she could not block out the green glow. She could not stop herself seeing. She could not keep her mind safe from its terrible touch.

  She felt her every thought opened, like so many files on a computer, each opened, observed, understood.

  She was nothing. She saw that now. She was nothing.

  Nothing.

  She tried to call on her God. But her prayers would not form in her brain, would not whisper from her numb, trembling lips.

  She saw it all clearly, the whole of it. A race of creatures who worshipped life. A virus designed to spread life wherever it reached. The planet first infected, then deliberately blown up so that seeds of life would spread throughout the universe in a billion meteors.

  The endless, endless blackness of space, of millennia during which one of those rocks spun along a path that might never reach an end.

  It was caught in the gravity well of a small star.

  And then of a small planet.

  The shattering, fiery impact.

  A death. A man obliterated.

  And the absorption into that alien virus of something new and incredible: human DNA.

  A new life-form. The unintended consequence of a noble plan.

  No God in His Heaven had created the gaiaphage. And here, now, in the airless pit, no God could save her.

  It was then in her despair that Brittney prayed, not as she always had, but to a new Lord. A savior who waited to be born, to break free.

  Brittney bowed her head and prayed to the gaiaphage.

  Tanner appeared to Brittney as she prayed.

  Her dead brother was an angel. Not with wings and all of that, but she knew he was an angel. And now he appeared to her and spoke in a soft, soothing voice.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Tanner said.

  “Let me die,” Brittney whispered.

  “Who do you pray to?” Tanner asked.

  “To you,” she said. Because she had no doubt that Tanner was speaking for the gaiaphage.

  “I cannot give you death,” Tanner said. “You are two in one. Your immortality is his. And he is necessary to me.”

  “But who made me this way? Why? Why?”

  Tanner laughed. “‘Why’ is a question for children.”

  “I am a child,” Brittney said.

  There was softly glowing magma dribbling from Tanner’s cruel mouth. He bent down and touched her with fingers of ice.

  “I must be born,” Tanner said. “And then, at the ending of my beginning, you will die.”

  “I don’t understand.” With piteous eyes she looked up at the angel-turned-devil. “What do you need me to do?”

  “Nemesis must be mine,” Tanner said. “Nemesis must serve me and me alone. All who defend him and protect him must be destroyed. He must live to serve me.”

  “I . . . I don’t understand.” She knelt with bowed head, unable to look at Tanner, knowing now that he had never been an angel, that he had never been God’s servant, that he was nothing real at all, just the voice of the evil one.

  “Nemesis,” Tanner said, hissing the word. “We are two in one, like you and the whip hand. Two in one, waiting to be born. Only when he is alone, utterly alone, will he serve me. And then I will be burst from this cocoon.”

  “I don’t know anyone called Nemesis,” Brittney whispered.

  She could feel her consciousness fading. Already her fingers were melting together to form the whip.

  In the moments before she lost sight and sound, as she spiraled down into the blackness and Drake surged upward, Brittney’s tortured mind saw the image of Nemesis.

  She knew his name.

  Peter Michael Ellison. Who everyone called Little Pete.

  Pete

  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 sh
ivering 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.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  5 HOURS, 1 MINUTE

  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 ki
cked 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.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  4 HOURS, 8 MINUTES

  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.