Outside the Conex trailer the sun was very, very bright. Clark hurried around the side of the shipping container and pushed in the other end through a zippered wall, then through a decontamination station. An automatic shower pelted him with scalding hot water and he threw his arms up around his face, his eyes burning with antiseptic. Behind him he heard boots crunching gravel—too far away, he was the only one close enough to respond. He pushed through the inner air lock, heedless of the whooping alarms that told him he’d failed to close the outer door.
Inside in air that smelled of decay and horror he wiped soapy water out of his eyes and tried to get his bearings. He found himself standing next to the gurney, on the far side from Sanchez. The infected man had torn loose the restraints on his wrists—he sat upright on the table, both of his hands clutching at the squirming biowarfare expert. The exposed brain slouched forward across the decimated face, dangling on its spinal cord. My God, Clark thought, how is that possible? He grabbed for the instrument tray, looking for anything that might be a weapon. He came up with a gore-caked scalpel and tried to stab at the infected man’s wrists but Sanchez kept writhing around, trying to break the iron grip. There was no way to guarantee that he wouldn’t stab her instead.
“It’s—it’s alright,” she said to him, “I’m sorry I scared you. He can’t hurt me—he doesn’t have a mouth, so how can he bite me? Really, Captain, I—”
The infected man released her wrist and plunged his fingers into her throat, the thick, jagged nails sinking deep into her flesh. Clark jabbed at the specimen’s wrist, trying to cut the tendons there but even as he connected hot, red blood sluiced down his forearm. Sanchez's blood. The infected man had found her jugular vein.
Clark dropped the scalpel and rushed around the side of the gurney, intent on getting his own hands around Sanchez’ neck to stop the bleeding, knowing it was too late. He caught his hip on the metal edge of the table and felt pain blossom through his thigh. The infected man let go of Sanchez and she staggered backwards, blood pouring from her throat like wine from a bottle.
She didn’t look so much frightened or pained as curious. Clark wondered—was she a good scientist right up until the end? Was she approaching her own death with a burning desire to know what it felt like, to see what happened next? She didn’t so much fall to the metal floor of the Conex as collide with it.
Something in Clark’s body contracted as if he were having a heart attack or a stroke. No—it wasn’t him at all. The infected man had grabbed him in both hands and was trying to pull him close. He whirled to face Sanchez’ killer and saw two MPs come rushing into the room. They raised their pistols to shoot at the specimen. “No, no!” Clark ordered. “There’s bottled oxygen in this room!” The firearms dropped at once.
The infected man tightened his grasp, his fingers cold against Clark’s arm and stomach. The determination in his arms was nothing short of extraordinary. Clark stared into the gray folds of his brain and wondered where he got that resolve. He reached out with his own hands and took hold of the man’s frontal cortex. It was softer, much softer than he’d expected it to be and far less slimy. He shredded it like a head of lettuce.
The fingers weakened where they touched him and then they stopped moving altogether. The cut-down man fell backwards, what was left of his skull colliding noisily with the metal edge of the gurney.
The MPs came closer and Clark waved them away. They huddled over Sanchez, probably trying to determine if she was actually dead. Clark staggered toward the airlock, intent on getting some fresh air. He could barely believe what had just happened. Florence ADX was supposed to be a fortress, an impregnable stronghold in this new and horrible war. If death could come for them even inside of its barbed-wire fences and dog-patrolled perimeter, then where was safe? Did such a thing as safety exist any more?
Before he could switch off the automatic shower in the airlock—he was already drenched with soap, suds filling his mouth and nose—he heard one of the MPs grunt from just behind him and the other one took his arm. What was happening?
“Beg pardon, sir,” one said. His eyes were very, very blue. Clark blinked. Why were they holding him up? “You looked like you were about to fall.”
Legs—Clark’s legs—stretched out before him, connected to him only in the most metaphysical sense. His body reeled, his head was wrapped in felt. He had hit the wall. There was only so much fear and exhaustion a man in his sixties could handle. Fighting himself he regained control. He was more afraid of further humiliation than he was of exhaustive collapse.
“Yes, soldier, I see that… I’m fine now, though, so—”
Metal clashed to the floor behind them, a bright, jangling, piercing sound. Clark turned his head and saw Desiree Sanchez standing up. Her neck had ragged holes in it. She had knocked over the instrument tray: one scalpel had fallen into her foot and stood there quivering, sticking out of her uniform shoe. The goggles had gotten themselves wrapped around her ears in such a way that they occluded one of her eyes. The other one was blank. Her mouth opened, showing teeth stained with blood.
Clark reached down and grabbed at the belt of the blue-eyed MP. Ignoring his own order he came up with the soldier’s weapon and fired one shot right through the middle of Sanchez’ head. For the second time in as many minutes she fell to the ground, lifeless.
“I’m going to retire to my room now,” he told the younger men standing with him. “I think I need to get some sleep.”
Chapter Seven
I’m sorry but the number you requested is not answering. If you’d like, I can keep trying, and your phone will ring when I get through. This service will incur a seventy-five cent surcharge. Press one now. [Automated telephone message, 4/10/05]
Nilla picked at a curl of paint on the side of the shack. It came loose in her hand and she rattled it around in her fist, then threw it away from her, out into the scrub brush by the propane tank. She couldn’t stand just waiting around but what else did she have to do? Eventually Singletary would give in. Eventually he would tell her what she wanted to know.
She heard him whimpering in her head, even through the wall of the shack. Begging her to go, to stay, to listen to him. He kept prattling on about his guilty man and some place up in the mountains—probably a hallucination he’d had from being out in the desert too long. She didn’t give it much credence, since he was obviously crazy. Her presence was terrorizing him but she knew she couldn’t just leave. Not without getting something first.
Nilla, the guilty man… you are the one he’s looking for… please, it’s all up to you… he moaned. The fire… it will burn up the world.
Rage spiked up inside of her and she felt him curl like a moth in the middle of a bonfire. Her emotions pained him, excruciated him, she had discovered. Normally she tried to get control of herself, to consciously calm down when he screamed like that. This time was different—she had run out of patience. She fed her rage, stoked it until it blazed.
“I’m not working for anybody!” she shouted out loud. Her words rolled around the canyon, echoing like rippling explosions but they were far louder in her head. “Nobody but myself. I am my own…” she struggled for the right word. Boss? Master? “My own… woman!”
The word you’re looking for is ‘weapon,’ she thought. No, somebody else thought that. It didn’t sound like something Singletary would have said.
It wasn’t me! he howled. Nilla! Don’t—don’t go up there! You have to listen to me first!
Images unfolded in her head. A landscape of rugged mountains topped with snow. A herd of huge animals—enormous beasts, reptiles lumbering across lichen-ringed rock. A ring of fire that spread outwards, rippling, engulfing the entire world.
It made no sense.
Singletary had been sending her those pictures for days but he didn’t have an explanation for them. He had received them from the last ghost that happened to pass by and somehow, she wouldn't understand but really, he knew he was supposed to pass them on to her.
Because she had some duty, some sacred mission to perform relating to those mountains, those animals, that fire. Nilla had no idea what they meant, not even a frame of reference to begin to piece together their significance, if they had any.
“Stop that! You tell me what I want to know and then we can play any game you want. Stop mucking about in my head and concentrate on finding my name!”
His suffering leached into her and she felt her body shiver in the eighty degree heat. She could see him through the wall, or rather, she was so connected to him she could imagine him there perfectly. He was twisted on his plank floor, one arm constricted under his body, the circulation cut off. His back arched, drool spilled from between his lips. The pain was awful.
Then stop it, lass. Stop it forever if you find it so distasteful.
“Singletary, shut the fuck up already!” she screamed. The psychic was beyond understanding her, though. In his pain he didn’t even hear her.
I hear you just fine, love. Look up here.
She turned, slowly, beginning to understand, and shaded her eyes. On top of a ridge, not two hundred yards away, Mael Mag Och sat with his long hair blowing in a breeze she couldn’t feel. He raised one hand and waggled his fingers at her.
Nilla crossed the bottom of the canyon and clambered up the rock face beyond. She kicked off her shoes and used her bare toes to dig for footholds, clawed at the weathered sandstone. She didn’t sweat, nor did she pant for breath as she climbed upwards, always upwards, but she felt the strain in her dead muscles, the pull in her back as she hoisted herself bodily to where the naked man sat waiting for her, not moving an inch to close the distance between them.
“So brutal you can be.” He tsked her, looking like he had just dropped by for a social chat. She clambered up to him on her stomach, crawling like an insect, and just collapsed. “So angry. I suppose it’s understandable. The living have been so cruel to you, haven’t they? And now you’re willing to torture them just to find out a name that doesn’t mean anything anymore.”
She stared at him for a moment, unsure what to think. She was pretty sure that Mael was not at all what he appeared to be. “You have a better plan?”
“I do, lass. Would you like to hear it?”
She rolled over onto her back and lay staring up at the intensely blue sky, so rich in color it nearly turned to black at the zenith. “Your English has improved,” she told him.
He took it as a yes. “End all the anguish, finish all the sadness. Wipe out the violence and the depravity and the suffering in one fell swoop. It is a tall order, I’ll admit. Perhaps we can go one better: get them to do it for themselves.”
She hadn’t cared for Singletary’s nebulous refusals. She liked even less when Mael talked in riddles. “What are you?” she asked, sitting up, facing away from him. He wasn’t really there, of course. He was pushing himself into her head just like the psychic. It didn’t matter if she looked at him or not.
“A musician, once upon a time. And a politician. I was a sorcerer and a hunter, too. I wrestled with monsters in my day. I conversed with what you would call gods.”
She smiled weakly. Great. A Jesus freak. Or no, he had said gods, plural. A Hare Krishna. “Oh, I see. And what did they tell you?”
His voice softened. “Shall I be plain? They whispered to me in the dark and stillness of the forest that humanity is wicked. That men are born with evil in their hearts, and must expiate their corruption by deeds."
"Oh yeah? What kind of deeds makes up for somebody with evil in their heart?" Nilla asked. She wished he would get on with it.
"Sacrifice. Blood sacrifice, if necessary. The longer we go unredeemed, the steeper the payment. They told me that should the necessary rituals go unfulfilled and the good works left undone it might eventually be necessary to wipe out the human race altogether. For the good of the world.”
“That’s…” Nilla started, but she knew better than to finish.
“Crazy? I know you think it so. Your generation knows better. Your land doesn’t believe in gods. You believe everything just sort of happens for no reason, isn’t that right? You call that belief science. In my day we knew better. When the gods, especially when the Fathers of Clans spoke, we listened.”
Nilla stood up on the top of the rock and stared down at him. “Did you start the Epidemic?” she demanded. “That’s what I’m feeling here. You brought the dead back to life so they could kill all the living for you. I swear—”
“Lass, you’re confusing the author with the agent. I didn’t make this apocalypse. I serve it. As will you.”
She shook her head violently and started away from him, moving as fast as she could, walking flat-footed on the uneven rock. The sun’s heat, stored up all day in the rock, burned her feet but she kept moving. She wanted to get away from him, away from—
“You were created to be the sword in my hand. My weapon.” He stood before her. She hadn’t seen him move, hadn’t even seen him blink into existence there, he just… was there. She stopped short before she collided with him. “Why do you think your name was taken away from you?”
“Brain damage. There was no oxygen going to my brain so part of it died.”
He grinned at her. “That sounds crazy to me. Why would the Father of Clans bring you back damaged? He had his reasons, I can assure you. He wants to make this task easy for you. You have no attachments to the humans. They hate you—you may safely hate them back because you don’t remember what it is like to be one of them. You can do violence without guilt. You don’t ever need to question your own motives. What a gift you have been given!”
“Christ! I’m not some kind of evil undead warrior! I don’t want to hurt anyone!”
“Except Jason Singletary.” Mael place a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. The touch felt good—it had been a long time since anyone had touched her—but she shrugged it away. “I’ve seen through you, Nilla. You would have shaken him till his teeth rattled in his mouth if it would have gotten you a name. And what about those children? You lead them right to their deaths, even after I warned you to stay apart from them.”
She took a swing at Mael, her hard fist tight as a muscle cramp, but the blow met no resistance. She felt a clamminess in the air but there was no connection. She reached out and grabbed for his throat but her fingers just disappeared into his flesh as if she had stuck her hand into a column of smoke.
Nilla threw her hands up in disgust and turned around, heading back the way she’d come.
“His life has been one of torture. He’s been in pain since he was a child. Your heart didn’t go out to him, though. You were willing to use his pain. You wanted to make him hurt more.”
“And that’s a good thing?” she demanded. She was not surprised when she found him standing in front of her again. She tried walking right through him but he grabbed her shoulders and stopped her dead in her tracks. “You want me to do that, to hurt him?”
“Lass, you haven’t been listening. I want to stop his pain.” Mael glanced down into the canyon, toward the weathered shack. “I want to take it all away.”
Nilla looked too and her eyes nearly bugged out of her head. A dead man stood on the doorstep of Singletary’s little home. The dead man with no arms. With his head the corpse butted open the door and stepped inside.
She nearly broke her neck racing down the side of the rock.
Chapter Eight
Virgin desperately seeking help before world ends, T/Th 5:00, tap foot [Graffiti in a bathroom stall, O’Hare International Airport, 4/18/05]
Dick stumbled through the door into cool air and just swayed there for a moment, glad to be out of the punishing sun, glad to have a soft wooden floor under his bare foot. For a moment, just a moment he felt the comfort of being in a place with square corners again. There were no memories in his head to be awakened, no thoughts of any kind but this perfectly simple, perfectly harmless pleasure. He was allowed to revel in it for just a handful of moments.
There were rul
es that had to be followed. This was a game. Dick’s universe had become a sort of game. It had rules.
“No—no, not now,” someone said from below him and it was over. The hunger raced up his spine and into his brain and he swung his head around, sniffing out whatever had made that noise. He stumbled against a table and metal crashed to the floor, bright sounds banging and crashing in staccato rhythm, turned and spun, the silvery grain of the wooden walls captivated him but no, he stepped forward and nearly trod on the very thing he sought.
Rule One: Dick will eat what Dick finds.
In a heap on the floor a nearly-naked man lay curled around one leg of the table, his head in his hands. “I didn’t hear you come in,” he said, a sad, gentle smile in his voice.
Dick didn’t understand the words—words as a whole were lost to him. That was less of a rule than a condition of play. It was a relief more than anything. When people spoke to him he knew that they were trying to get his attention, that they were trying to communicate. He felt no frustration when he failed to get the point. There were rules in this world, but no decisions.
Dick sank to his knees. The food in front of him whimpered quietly but didn’t try to get away. Dick felt no pangs of conscience. Sometimes food ran and you had to chase it all day, the hunger dogging every footstep, every moment that passed an agony of want. When the food just laid there perfectly still, that was best.
He bent lower, bringing his mouth down toward the glowing energy of the food. It looked a little thready, a little dulled as if this food was already wounded but that made no difference. Dick bared his teeth and aimed for the food’s throat.
Stop now. Wait for my command.
The voice did not startle Dick, even though he understood it perfectly. The message was not made of words at all but of pure neural voltage. It slotted into his nervous system like a computer program loading from a disk.
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