by Shanon Hunt
He is poison. He is the plague.
Before the maggots could break away, she grabbed the iron off the ironing board and swung it downward with all her might. The satisfying crunch of his skull delighted her.
But then he got to his feet, blood dripping from his caved-in head. “Here you go. You seem a little disoriented. Why don’t you have a seat?” He reached out with a gangrenous black hand.
She fell back onto the bed. Another crackling sensation in her skull and the guard flickered from monstrous to normal.
“Ma’am? Have I upset you?”
She leaned forward. She could still feel the handle of the iron in her grip, but there it was on the ironing board, right where Harmony had left it earlier. What the hell was going on? Terrified, she returned her gaze to the guard who now hovered over her. He reached up to scratch the back of his neck again, this time peeling off layers of skin before moving toward the door.
The hammering between her ears was beginning to slow, but adrenaline was still blasting through her veins. She trembled on the edge of the bed, mouth open, staring vacantly.
His voice seemed to come from far away. “I’m glad everything is okay. You give us a call if you need anything.”
Her front door slammed shut behind him, creating a seismic aftershock she was sure shook the whole house. She exhaled. How long had she held her breath? The smell of death lingered in the stifling hot cabin. The sickening stench of poison. Plague. Sweat poured into her eyes. She rolled out of bed onto shaky legs. She needed air.
She flung the front door open and staggered into the cool night.
15
March 2024, Nevada
Nick stumbled over to the poker table with a sloshing whiskey in one hand and a handful of chips in the other. It was barely noon, far too early to be drinking for anyone but a complete lush. He collapsed into the only available seat at the poker table.
“Name’s Nick. Whatch’all playin’?” He slammed his whiskey onto the felt-covered table, splashing booze onto the pile of chips of the player to the right. “Oops, sorry ’bout that.”
He awkwardly flung his left hand over the rail and slowly opened a tightly clenched fist to drop four purple five-hundred-dollar chips onto the table with a snort and a grunt.
“Jesus,” the guy to his left muttered.
“’M in!” Nick threw a chip into the pile.
With a sigh, the dealer reached into the pile, removed the chip, and set it back down in front of Nick. “Sir, we’re in the middle of a hand. You’ll need to wait until the next hand.”
“Oops, sorry ’bout that,” he repeated. He tilted his chair back on two legs and eyeballed the casino. Cool place. Nice bar, with a damn good liquor selection. Lots of people. Lots of security cameras. He blinked a couple of times and shook his head.
“Showdown,” the dealer called.
Nick leaned back a bit too far and lost his balance. He grabbed for the chair on his right. The front chair legs slammed back down, hurling him chest first into the rail.
“What a jackass,” he heard from somewhere at the table.
“Hey maaan, yo. Whassa game?” Nick asked the guy to his left.
“What the fuck you think? Hold’em.”
“Riiiight. ’M in!” He declared, loud enough to turn heads from the other tables. He tossed his chip into the pile.
The dealer again removed his chip and changed it for five black hundred-dollar chips. He leaned over the table and looked Nick in the eyes. “Sir, are you sure you’re sober enough to play?”
“Wha? Yeah. Hell yeah I can play, riiight?” He slapped the guy to his right with the back of his hand. “Yeah, I can play.”
The dealer tossed two cards face down in front of every player.
“Ah, shit,” Nick said, looking at his hole cards. “What the fuuu…?”
“Bet is a hundred.” The dealer looked at him.
Nick looked around the table.
“Sir. I need a black chip.”
“Sorry.” Nick tossed the chip, and it rolled across the table. He giggled.
The dealer dropped the flop—five of hearts, king of spades, seven of spades—and Nick vacantly watched the bet go around the table. When it came to him, he shouted, “’M in!” and tossed a purple into the pile.
“Sir, are you asking for change, or raising the bet to five hundred?” The dealer’s voice was significantly sharper.
“Raise it!” Nick pointed a finger at the ceiling.
Half the table folded.
At the turn card, Nick threw out another purple, out of sequence. The dealer moved to protest, but the player in sunglasses seated at the dealer button smirked and said, “Let it go.”
The rest of the players folded. Only Nick and Sunglasses remained.
“Ah, shit.” Nick picked up his hole cards, one in each hand, and eyed them, back and forth, back and forth.
“Sir, keep your cards on the table.” The dealer was seething now.
“Riiight.”
“Showdown.” The dealer revealed the river card.
Nick leaned over the table to scrutinize the final card: king of hearts. He tossed a purple.
“Purple hearts!” He pointed to the chip and then the card. “Geddit?” His head bobbed proudly.
Sunglasses did not smile at his joke. Instead, he saw Nick’s five hundred and raised him a thousand.
“Ah, shit … Ah, man,” Nick whined as he looked at his remaining chips, a purple and four blacks. “Shit.” He groped in his pocket. “Wai …wai … I goddit. I goddit.” He pulled a stack of bills from his wallet and began meticulously counting. “Twenny … fourdy … sisty…” He slammed a hundred on the table. “I goddit.” He grinned. “Call.”
Sunglasses flipped his hole cards. Nick leaned over the rail to see: ace of spades, seven of clubs. Two pair.
“Respect.” He sat back down and raised his eyebrows in Sunglasses’ direction. “I wouldn’t have played those rags even if you did get lucky and pull a pair out of ’em. Ballsy move.” He flipped his cards. “Fives full of kings.” A full house.
Sunglasses flew out of his chair, tore his shades from his face, and gaped at Nick’s cards.
Nick pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, picked up his whiskey glass, and wiped the spilled booze from the leather rail. “Thanks for the game, fellas. What was it again? Hold’em?” He laughed at his joke. “No hard feelings, right?” He nodded at the dealer. “Color me up, will ya?”
Sunglasses looked ready to explode. “You son of a bitch.”
Nick knew better than to engage. Nothing made a man want to take a swing like being hustled. Add insult to injury, and you were just asking for a trip to the hospital. Not that he hadn’t won fair and square; a pair in the hole was a nice start. But three of a kind on the flop? That was a winning hand by itself, damn good luck. The kings were just icing on the cake.
He picked up his chips and made his way toward the cashier but was intercepted by two suits. “Sir, may we have a word with you?”
Nick glanced up at the camera in the corner. “You bet.” He shoved his chips into his pants pocket.
“Right this way.”
He trailed the management team, bracing himself for the riot act, and cast a furtive glance back at Sunglasses, who appeared to be gathering a group.
The suits ushered him into a closet-sized office with no windows. A wave of fear washed through him. He hadn’t been to Vegas in a long time; perhaps the eighty-sixing procedure had become a bit more physical in recent years. Ever since the virus, aggression had significantly increased.
The leader positioned himself directly in front of Nick, well inside his physical comfort zone. “Sir, we take cheating very seriously in our casino.”
Nick glanced down at the man’s nametag, which read Manager on Duty. The man had a dopey Gomer Pyle way about him. By the insecurity in his voice, Nick guessed he’d probably been trained for situations like this but hadn’t had to deal with one on his own watch.
/> His fear melted away. “I didn’t cheat.” He made a show of looking at all the furniture for surveillance devices.
“Do you have a form of ID on you?”
“Yes, I do. I’m an adult, after all.” He didn’t move to get his wallet.
“May I see it?” Gomer took a small step backward, now seeming uncomfortable with his initial assertiveness.
Nick rolled his eyes. This wasn’t going to be any challenge at all. Might as well cut to the chase. “No. Nor will I sign a document giving you the legal right to arrest me if I return. I’ve given you plenty of good camera shots to post on your Facebook page. You can spin your wheels to make sure I never gamble in this town again, but let’s be honest. No one’s managing a black book anymore. It’s every shop for itself.”
He leaned back against the metal desk, bracing himself with his palms, pressing his fingertips hard enough to leave good print impressions.
“So let’s cut a deal. The house rake for a shitty joint like this is, what, five percent? Tell you what. I’ll hand over half my winning chips, you cash me out for the other half. That’s more than you’ll make all day. You have one of your goons give me an escort to my car so that Sunglasses and his fuckwit friends don’t break my face, and you can have the moral high ground. I’ll take my business elsewhere. No need for an ugly scene, no blood to clean up. Whaddaya say?”
Nick’s eyes darted from one glowering face to the other as the seconds ticked by. A lot of seconds. This was the warehouse district of Las Vegas. They were sketchy at best, and down here they probably didn’t even have a gambling license.
Finally, Gomer Pyle shifted his glower to his partner. “Get Mr. Slater some cash.”
Nick kept his face impassive, but he was impressed. He knew they’d eventually identify him, and he gave them a head start by dropping his first name at the table, but still. This was much sooner than expected.
“And so we’re clear, Mr. Slater,” the man was continuing, “we’re a close-knit group out here. I’ll spread your name around. You might be able to hustle the big houses, but I wouldn’t return to this neighborhood if I were you.”
The big houses? Who was he kidding? Vegas was shattered, just a bunch of enormous unstaffed hotels with cruddy brown half-filled swimming pools and prostitutes who’d give you blow job for a buck. But he shrugged and dropped his gaze, hoping his body language read Ah, shucks, you got me.
Someone appeared with his cash; Gomer was making good on the deal. Nick allowed the goon to grab him by the arm and haul him to his Jeep, although he couldn’t resist a wink and a smirk as he passed by Sunglasses and his buddies.
As soon as he was certain no one was following him, he pulled over on one of the twisting back roads of the warehouse district and dialed Darcy on his burner phone.
“Okay, all set with the strategic misdirection. I’ve been seen and recorded here in Vegas. My identity will make the rounds, and Arizona state police will bury the warrant.”
“They’ll put out a bolo in Nevada.”
He could hear the worry in her voice, but he forced himself to snicker. “No way. They don’t have the resources for extradition. They won’t chase a warrant across state lines. If the cops come around, tell them I took off. Otherwise, I’ll check in when I can.”
“Listen, Nicky…”
“Hey, don’t worry. We knew this day would come. I have everything I need. I’ll be back in a few weeks. Just gonna lie low until the case lands in the cooler.”
He left it at that, but he wasn’t sure if and when he’d be back. No one had been hurt in the explosion, presumably; the Vitapura campus had been completely abandoned. But if the EGNX people were serious about finding him, with all their power and money and influence, they could put the FBI on his tail.
He turned the Jeep down the sleazy part of Fremont Street and dropped his speed to fifteen miles per hour as he eyed the eternal lineup of used car lots. He pulled into Barter Brother’s Used Cars, partly because they hadn’t bothered to rebrand with the euphemism preowned, as all the others had, and partly because he could’ve sworn that was Danny DeVito himself standing out front, waving him in.
He didn’t need a great deal or a fair trade. He was looking for a shady cash-based business transaction, the kind where they’d throw in a set of old plates registered to the mechanic’s eighty-five-year-old grandma.
Because despite what he told Darcy, Nick had no intention of lying low. Gotta strike while the iron’s hot, as Uncle Jay would’ve said.
16
October 2022, Mexico
Layla woke shivering and pulled her comforter over her head. Her phone dinged with a text message, and she squinted with one eye to read it.
James: I’m 15 min out. Want me to bring you some lunch?
Something smelled. She put a hand over her nose.
Ugh.
She jerked her hand away, opened her eyes, and threw the blanket off to inspect her hand. Dirt. And … was that blood?
She gasped. Her memory of last night was nothing but flashes in her mind: E. Ortiz, EGNX Security. The guard. He’d been inside her house. There’d been blood—was blood. An attack.
What had she done?
The poison. The plague.
Oh god.
She rolled out of bed, slightly dizzy, and her feet came down on something crunchy. She lifted the legs of her pj’s. Her feet were orange with dried caked clay mud, the kind found well beyond the main walkways. Her heart felt like it stopped beating and she closed her eyes, searching for a glimmer of memory. Had she walked in her sleep?
A cool breeze lifted her hair. The front door was standing wide open. After a tentative glance outside, she closed the door and tiptoed to the bathroom. Her reflection in the mirror brought another flash of memory.
The maggots. Feeding on his rotting flesh.
It had to be some sort of hallucination, probably brought on by the scare the guard had given her barging into the house so late at night. She’d seen drug addicts hallucinate, panicking as they described whatever horrible things they thought they were seeing. And the sleepwalking was probably related, too. That’s all it was.
Her phone flashed another text. You up, sleepyhead?
She tore the bedsheets off the bed and tossed them, along with her pajamas, into the washing machine. She just stepped into the shower when she heard James call out, “I’m home!”
***
James had set up her place at the dining table with a meatless cheeseburger, french fries, and a green salad.
“I saw you eyeing my cheeseburger the other day,” he said with a smirk.
It was a nice gesture, but Layla had no appetite. She picked at her salad greens. All she could think about was the beautiful woman on the Kauai website, the most romantic place on earth. “How was Iowa?”
“Terrific. I’m thinking the site could serve as a stage one recruiting center. Since we’re getting most of our recruits from the US anyway, there’s no sense bringing them all the way down here if there’s a chance they’ll be a better fit for the British Columbia colony, right?”
She wanted to stand up and slam her hands on the table. Who is she, James? But she nodded mindlessly, unable to bring herself to confront him.
“Lay?”
She jerked and looked at him.
“So would you want to?”
She didn’t know what he was referring to. “Uh, yeah.”
“Great, I was hoping you’d agree. Farm work can be quite rewarding.”
She squinted at him. “Huh?”
“Ha! I knew you weren’t listening. I’ll assume it’s your pregnancy, not my lack of charm.” He winked. “I need to jump in the shower. Big day ahead. Not all of us get to lie around and daydream all day.” He kissed her forehead and tottered off to the bathroom, humming his favorite Beatles song as if nothing had happened. As if everything was normal.
How long had he been lying to her?
A knock on the door startled her. She froze, though she w
asn’t sure why. James apparently couldn’t hear the knock over his na-na’s from “Hey Jude.”
She waited a full minute before tiptoeing to the door and peeping through the spy hole. The porch was empty. She eased open the door and picked up a yellow folder that lay on the doorstep with a handwritten sticky note.
“Brother James, you left this in the car this morning. Your driver, Will.”
She sank onto the sofa and set the folder on the coffee table in front of her. She’d never looked through James’s work. His role in the organization meant he needed to keep secrets. I can’t be with you if I can’t trust you, Layla, and I very much want to be with you. They’d established strict boundaries early in their relationship, and she’d always respected his privacy.
Well, that was before the lying. That was before he broke her trust.
She opened the folder and pulled out a small stack of papers. The top page was a meeting agenda in James’s familiar format.
Global Carrier Meeting, Kauai, Hawaii, USA
Chair: James Elliott, Mexico (attending)
Co-chair: Stewart Hammond (not attending)
She sighed with relief. It was a meeting, not a woman. But her brow wrinkled as she read on.
Agenda
8:30–10:00 Sensus recruiting update—site leaders
There it was again. That word: sensus.
China: 980 successful implantations, 773 sensus births, 79 praefuro
Canada: 610 successful implantations, 604 sensus births, 54 praefuro
Mexico: 380 successful implantations, 212 sensus births, 26 praefuro
The list went on: UK, Japan, Philippines, Argentina, New Zealand. She stared at the agenda for a full minute before her mind was able to piece together what she was reading. Her medical chart flashed in her mind: Carrier Strain: Sensus 253/380. That was her. She was number 253.
Her mouth went dry.
She wasn’t the first carrier of the pure generation. She wasn’t Eve in the Colony’s Garden of Eden. She was just one subject in a pool of hundreds. James had lied to her all this time, leading her on and making her feel special.