“What will they do to you?”
“I don’t know,” Lynn said. “Lock me up, exile me from the Territory, maybe even execute me.”
“Then you can’t go back,” Squid said, a sudden burst of fear in his voice. “You can’t!”
Lynn reached over and took Squid’s hand. She held it tight. “I’m not going to run again, Squid,” she said. “No more running away.”
“Then whatever they do to you they can do to me,” Squid said.
Lynn smiled sadly. “You’re my best friend, Squid,” Lynn said. “But you’ve already done that once and I can’t let you do it again.”
“I’m sorry I got angry at you for being a girl,” Squid said. “I just—”
“I know,” Lynn said, looking down. “I should have told you earlier. I’m sorry too.”
“I don’t really mind that you’re a girl,” Squid said.
“I know,” Lynn said and then she laughed. “You’re so weird, Squid.”
Then the two of them sat, leaning against each other under the water tower in the town called Dust for a long time without saying anything at all.
*
Sometime later Mayor Ferdinand Rust came running down the street calling up to them.
“Lynnette! Squid!”
He ran to the base of the water tower, breathing heavily, bending at the waist and taking in deep full breaths.
“Quickly,” he said. “You need to come.”
“What is it?” Lynn said.
“It’s your friend Darius,” the mayor said. “He’s collapsed.”
Squid and Lynn looked at each other.
“Hold on,” Lynn said. “We’ll be right down.”
As they hurried up the street behind the mayor Lynn was thinking back over how Darius had been acting. He’d seemed tired, perhaps more tired than he should have been. They should have known something was wrong.
Beside the Church of Glorious God the Redeemer was a small building that served as Dust’s one-room hospital. Squid explained that they had no doctors in Dust, but one of the Sisters, Sister Rosie, was trained in rudimentary medical care and acted as the town’s nurse. She was standing beside the bed where Darius lay. His eyes were closed and he drew in the long slow breaths of sleep.
“I’ve given him something to put him to sleep,” said Sister Rosie.
“What happened?” Lynn asked.
“He was in the pub,” the mayor said. “He was getting rude and angry, having a go at Dee the nice young barmaid, so I asked him to leave. He stood up but then he collapsed and we brought him here.”
“Any idea what’s wrong with him?” Lynn said.
The Sister nodded gravely. “I’m afraid so,” she said, and pulled his shirt up to reveal his side.
“What are you …” Lynn began, but her words died off when she saw what was under Darius’s shirt.
“That,” Sister Rosie said, “is a bite.”
Lynn placed her hand on Darius’s forehead. It was like touching a sword that had been in the sun all day. He was burning up, but strangely, she noticed, he wasn’t sweating, not a single drop. In fact his skin looked dry. She touched it with her finger and it came away in flakes. His lips were cracked too. He looked like he hadn’t had a sip of water in days, weeks even.
She watched his lips move. He was on the edge of consciousness, hiding somewhere just behind those closed eyelids. She brushed a stray lock of blond hair away from his face. His hair seemed to be lighter now, almost translucent. She brushed her fingers gently along his cheek. His skin felt alien, so dry and scaly. Even after everything that had happened, she still wished she had spent more time with him, got to know the person she suspected he really was.
Darius opened his eyes like they were on rusty hinges, his one brown iris and one green one barely visible through the thin slits between his swollen eyelids. His eyes searched for a moment before finding Lynn, then they locked onto her and he murmured something unintelligible, barely a whisper between slightly open lips. She leaned in close, straining to hear what he was saying. He had to repeat it several times; each time he seemed to be fighting to say it louder. With one last push against his failing body, he managed to lift his cracking voice enough that she could hear.
“Lynn.”
“I’m here, Darius,” she said.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Lynn said, feeling the emotion surface at her eyes as his fingers tightened around hers with a weak squeeze. “It’s okay.”
Lynn felt the tickle of a single tear running along the inside of her nose, turning at the end so that it dropped off the underside of the tip. She watched it fall and land soundlessly on Darius’s forehead. As soon as it landed Darius’s skin drank in the moisture like a raindrop falling on dry, cracked earth.
Darius’s eyes floated shut for a second or two but he seemed to use all his strength to force them open again.
“If you need to do it,” he said in a voice below a whisper, “you do it.”
“I will,” Lynn said as Darius closed his eyes again. She watched him as his chest began to rise and fall in a slower, rhythmic pattern, and his fingers lost their gentle grip on hers.
Lynn stood and left the room, Squid in her wake. As she walked outside she turned to him. “What are we going to do?”
Squid smiled the saddest smile Lynn had ever seen on his face.
“What is it, Squid?” she asked.
“I … I saw my uncle, Lynn,” Squid said, his voice distant. “He was a ghoul.”
Lynn was silent. What was she supposed to say to that?
“That’s what will happen to Darius, isn’t it?” Squid said.
“Squid, I …” Lynn started. She had been thinking about herself the whole time. About how awful she felt about Lieutenant Walter and the battle, about the fate that awaited her on her return to Alice. She hadn’t even thought about how all this had affected Squid, and now this. She stood and hugged him. She thought of her father. At least he was just dead. He wasn’t still walking around; he didn’t look like one of them. Then Squid did something entirely unexpected. He smiled.
“Well,” Squid said, “at least he’s probably nicer now.”
Lynn looked at him, shocked at first, and then together they laughed. They laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of Squid making perhaps his first ever joke at that moment. They laughed at their continued laughing. They laughed because sometimes that’s all you can do.
“Really though, it’s okay,” Squid said as they calmed. “We need to worry about Darius now.”
Squid was sad, Lynn could see that, and it was far from okay, really, but he was doing what he always did, being the smartest and worrying about what needed to be worried over.
“What are we going to do with him?” Lynn asked.
“I don’t know.”
“If it’s a ghoul bite, then he’ll turn.”
“I think so.”
“How long does it take?” Lynn asked, glancing back in the direction of the small wooden building. “When we were in the battle and the ghouls … when they got to Lieutenant Walter he was up again in a minute, maybe less.”
“I suppose it depends on the number of bites and how deep they are,” Squid said, “like a poison.”
“It was only a small bite,” Lynn said, “and very shallow. Maybe he’ll be all right.”
Squid nodded at first and then, chewing his lip and holding the key that hung around his neck, he looked up at Lynn. “I don’t think that’s how it works.”
“We need to leave,” Lynn said. “We can’t wait too long before we go back to Alice.”
“We can’t leave him here,” Squid said. “He’s, well, he’s our friend now, right?”
“I know,” Lynn said, “but I don’t know what to do.”
They were both quiet, each wanting the other to know the answer.
“My father always knew the right thing to do,” Lynn said.
“You should kill him now,” said Sister Rosie,
emerging from the hospital building with the mayor on her heels. “There is nothing I can do for him and when he turns he will put the whole town in danger.”
Lynn turned to face the Sister with a ferocious glare. “That’s the Sisters’ solution to everything, isn’t it? Kill people, do away with them because they aren’t working out the way you want them too, because they’re beyond your control.”
Sister Rosie looked at Lynn with steely eyes. “You had better be careful, girl,” she said.
“Why?” Lynn said. “What are you going to do to me? Nothing the Church isn’t already planning. I’m not scared of you. Churches are supposed to be places of hope, but all you use is fear.”
Lynn knew as soon as she’d spoken that she’d crossed the uncrossable line. Why did she always do this? Why did she let herself speak out against those it was dangerous to speak out against? But then that was the point, wasn’t it? She thought that if she didn’t speak, no one would.
“Do not think the situation excuses blasphemy or crimes against the Church,” Sister Rosie said. “The Holy Order shall be summoned to take you into custody.”
“No!” Squid said, before calming himself. “I’m sorry, Sister,” he said, “it’s just that all this has been very hard on us. We’ve just been through a battle and now this with Darius. I’m sure Lynn didn’t mean what she said.”
Sister Rosie looked from Squid to Lynn. “It is a trying circumstance,” she said, “of that I have no doubt. But the law is black and white, and you have spoken out against the Church.”
Lynn readied herself to reply—she was going to ask what the Church was so afraid of—but the mayor spoke before she could.
“Sister,” Mayor Rust said, “you know there is no one in Dust more dedicated to the Church than I, so I hope it is with that in mind that you let me speak for Lynnette. By returning here, she and Squid and the bitten boy Darius have likely saved the whole town by warning us and by leaving men to protect it.”
Sister Rosie looked at Lynn. “Do you recant your words?”
No, Lynn thought, I don’t recant anything, but then she thought of Squid risking himself by standing up for her and she thought of Darius lying in that small wooden room and she said, “Yes, I’m sorry. I take back everything I said, Sister Rosie, I was just scared. Praise be to the Pure.”
“Praise be to the Pure,” the Sister intoned. “Although it is highly irregular, I will let it go this once. You have one warning, and one only. Do not blaspheme again or you will go up on charges.”
Yeah, Lynn thought, because it’s going to make a lot of difference in the long run.
“Praise be to the Pure,” the mayor said. “There is still the worry of what to do about Darius.”
“I can’t leave him to die alone,” Lynn said. “I’ll stay with him until the end.”
“And when he turns?” asked Sister Rosie.
“I’ll do what needs to be done.”
CHAPTER 39
That night Lynn kept vigil beside Darius’s bed. They had tied his hands and feet to the four corners of the bed as a precaution but he hardly roused at all. Sometime before midnight, as Lynn felt her head dropping forward in sudden lurches, she was startled awake by the opening of the door and the chilled night air hitting her face.
“Wha…?” she said.
“It’s me. I couldn’t sleep.”
Squid came into the small hospital and sat on the arm of Lynn’s chair. Lynn dropped her head to the side so that it rested against Squid’s bony arm.
“I never hated him,” she said. “I wish I could tell him that.”
“Me neither,” Squid said. “You know what I think?”
“What?”
“I think he was scared.”
Neither of them spoke. They just continued to sit at Darius’s side long into the night.
When Darius began to move Lynn was startled into a heightened state of awareness. She wasn’t sure whether she had been asleep or awake or somewhere in between, but now she was definitely alert. She realized that Darius was groaning, soft gentle moans, something between the creak of a slowly moving door and the sound a dog might make while dreaming. It was an inhuman sound. Squid still sat in the chair beside her, resting against her, breathing through his nose in the long breaths of sleep.
“Squid,” she said, nudging him with her elbow, “Squid.”
Squid moved, adjusting his head and opening and closing his lips a few times, disturbed, but still, it seemed, in the depths of sleep.
“Squid,” Lynn said, elbowing him again, a little sharper this time.
As his head flicked to the side with the force of Lynn’s prod, Squid’s eyes opened and he rubbed them with his fingers hard enough that Lynn could hear the squelching of his eyeballs in their sockets. “What?” he said in the voice of the freshly woken. “How is he?”
“I think he’s turning,” Lynn said.
On hearing this statement Squid too was ultra-alert. He leaned forward, listening. Darius’s deep, labored breaths were raspy as the air grated through his bone-dry throat.
“Darius?” Lynn said.
The dehydrated body that lay on the cot, the body that may or may not have been Darius Canum, didn’t reply, at least not verbally. He moved. He moved the smallest amount, rolling his face toward them. He began to move his jaw, open and closed, as if testing that it worked. Then his eyes locked onto Lynn. Staring back at Darius, Lynn saw that his pupils were large, leaving only the smallest halo of color around them, and they were clouded over with a white film, as though he were looking out through a mist. Darius’s mouth opened in an extended O and he let out a throaty hiss that Squid and Lynn immediately recognized as the sound of a ghoul. Squid moved backward as fast as he could while scrambling to his feet.
“He’s changed,” he called to Lynn. Lynn was already grabbing the shortsword that had been lying on the ground beside her. They had both known it would come to this. As they had sat and watched Darius slipping away they had known there was no other possible outcome, but now that it was happening some part of Lynn still couldn’t believe it. Could she really behead Darius?
Darius was arching his back, trying to rise from the bed, pulling against his bonds in the jittery motion of a ghoul. The bed shook with each pull Darius made with his arms and legs.
As Squid backed away, Lynn was moving toward him, the sword held out to her side, ready to bring it arcing through Darius’s neck. Darius stood without moving.
“Darius,” Lynn said, “Darius, it’s us.”
Lynn squeezed the handle of the sword. Darius was looking in her direction. Even through his dim white eyes she could tell he was staring at her, although it felt more like he was staring through her. He began trying to move toward her, snapping his jaws in her direction, his head tilted to one side. There had to be some part of him that was still human, Lynn thought. Surely some part of Darius was still in there.
“Darius!” she said, as if hoping that saying it loud enough might snap him out of whatever trance he was in. “You’re Darius!”
Darius’s struggle intensified. He thrashed on the bed so violently that the rope tying his right arm came free. He lunged towards Lynn and she felt his fingers grab the front of her shirt. She struggled to free herself as Darius managed to pull his other arm from the rope too, leaving, Lynn noticed, even in her panicked state, some of his skin on the rope.
Lynn lifted the sword as Darius lunged at her with both hands but realized too late that she couldn’t do it. She wasn’t going to be able to swing the sword. If there was a part of Darius left in there she couldn’t kill him. He was going to grab her and bite her and there was nothing she could do about it.
With a sudden jolt she felt herself pushed aside, torn from Darius’s grip. She fell awkwardly and looked back to see Squid standing where she had been, right within arm’s length of Darius. Darius pulled back for a moment, loading himself up like a coiled spring, and then lunged. Darius fell onto Squid, his legs twisting as his fee
t were still tied to the bed. Squid slammed backward, landing on his back with Darius on top of him. Darius’s hands wrapped around Squid’s arms, holding them to the ground. Darius was angry, so angry. His dry, pale face was twisted with an animalistic rage.
*
Darius’s face was close to Squid’s as he screamed, the hollow dry scream that Squid had heard so many times during the battle. Squid could feel Darius’s breath over his face, cold and dusty and already smelling like ashes as if his insides had burned away to nothing.
“Darius,” Squid said as calmly as he could, “are you really in there?”
Darius turned his head to the side and cried out again. He arched his back and rose up, opening his mouth wide. Squid felt Darius’s fingers push against his face, forcing his head to the side, opening up his neck for a bite. Darius’s fingers were dry and rough on his face. He tried to struggle but Darius was too strong. Darius began to plunge downward toward his neck, open mouth ready to suck the moisture from Squid’s body.
There was a gurgling noise as Darius hit him. Squid squeezed his eyes shut and waited for whatever pain would come with the end. Then he felt Darius’s face roll off his neck and the weight of the boy’s body land on top of him. When he opened his eyes Squid saw Darius’s headless body. He pushed it sideways and it fell away like a limp rag doll. Darius’s head had landed on the floor and his eyes were looking at him. Standing over him was Lynn, shortsword in hand. Hot tears welled in her eyes.
“He asked me to do it,” Lynn said after a moment. “I should have done it sooner.”
Squid realized he was staring at her with a look of horrified bewilderment on his face. He lifted himself into a sitting position and ran his fingers back and forth through his thick crop of black hair.
He swallowed a fist-sized lump in his throat. “He wasn’t in there, Lynn. All those people who become ghouls. They’re really gone.”
CHAPTER 40
When he opened his eyes everything was black. So black that he wasn’t sure whether he had actually opened his eyes or not. He reached up to his face and felt his eyelids twitch under his touch. His eyes were definitely open. It was just dark. Not the kind of darkness you can sit idly in, but the pressing kind of darkness that sinks into your pores, darkness that creeps into the furthest places of your mind, darkness that makes your heart flutter with anxiety.
A Town Called Dust: The Territory 1 Page 23