by Lund, S. E.
“Just lay with me,” I manage, and go to the bed, starting to undress. He does as well and I lay on the bed and sigh as I watch him strip down naked, his skin glowing in the light from the moon.
CHAPTER TWENTY
"A flower cannot blossom without sunshine and man cannot live without love."
Max Muller
School goes on as usual the rest of the week. I act as if there's nothing different. I sit with Sarah and have lunch with her and Brenda, but when she invites me over to play piano, I decline, saying I have a lot of work to do for a project. Meanwhile, Julien tries to track down any links between our other suspicious death and Sarah, but can't find one.
That Friday night, after my shift at the Cove, I'm home reading a book I've taken out from the library when Julien comes in after his shift. Outside, a fierce wind blows. When he walks through the side door, I gasp.
“What happened to your face?”
“What do you mean?” he says and reaches up to his cheek. It looks like he’s cut himself for a streak of red mars his cheek.
He wipes the red from his cheek.
“It must be the algae again,” he says. “It rained a bit when I was walking to my car. Strange weather we’ve been having.”
It 's been unusually stormy the past week, with heavy rains and winds from the East battering the coast. Still, I think it strange that algae would be so abundant at this time of year.
Because of the last red rain, we don't think much of it until Saturday morning when we sit at the island at breakfast and listen to the news reports on the television. A news reporter stationed in Boston says that this rain was the same as the last one so there was no cause of concern except for one thing – there are isolated reports of power outages in areas where the red rain fell.
While we're clearing up from breakfast, the satellite feed fails and the flat screen goes blank.
"That's strange," Julien says and goes to the office. He tries to switch on the computers, but then the power fails, the lights snapping off. I go to the phone but when I touch the receiver, it burns my hand – it's hot. I drop it and rub my palm. A tacky crumbly material sticks to my skin.
I smell smoke in the air, like burning plastic.
"What the hell?" Julien goes to the computer. The plastic casing starts to smoke, the plastic itself melting, deforming right before our eyes. All around the house, everything plastic starts to smoke and melt – even the couch cushions crumble to the touch.
"This,” Julien says, glancing around, his hands up as if in surrender. “This is something different.” He looks at me, his expression alarmed. "This is an attack. Everything plastic – it's degrading, falling apart, or burning up in some kind of chemical reaction."
Julien tries his cell phone but it won't even turn on. We go outside and run to the next house down the street. Sure enough, the Godwins report that everything plastic in their house is falling apart or burning up.
Julien and I do an inventory of everything in the house that's affected. So much has plastic in it – even our clothes start to disintegrate, and I have to search for pure cotton or wool fabric so that my own clothes don't burn me. Large appliances that aren't even turned on are made unusable due to the extensive use of plastic in the material used in manufacturing. The seal that keeps the fridge door airtight disintegrates. Inside the fridge, containers of food and milk rupture, leaving a hideous mess. I grab some glass serving dishes and try to salvage what I can, but a lot is just spoiled by the degrading plastic.
Everything that isn't made of natural fabrics or materials becomes unusable.
We sit in the room on wooden chairs, our couch a ruin due to the cushions, and try to think what else will be affected.
Julien runs out to his car, which because of its age, has less plastic in it. He's able to turn it on, but it won't run.
"The gasoline," he says, tapping the gauge. "They've attacked petrochemicals and everything made from them." He gets out of the car and sits on the ground, his arms resting on his knees. "It's actually brilliant," he says, looking up at me. "Our entire economy, our civilization, is premised on them." He looks frightened, his lips pressed thin. "This will destroy us. They're disabling us so we can't fight back. We can't even contact Vasquez," Julien says, his voice frustrated. "All the phones, the computers use plastics in the motherboards, in the components. It has to be linked to the red rain."
"Maybe someone has an old HAM radio?"
He nods.
I sit beside him and try to think through the implications. I think of Dylan and his plans for failure of the power grid. Did he know this was coming? Was he helping Blackstone or trying to stop them?
Then, my thoughts go to Sarah. There's no power, but she has the backup energy source – the solar panels. But then I feel as if I’ve been hit in the stomach. Her respirator has tubes made out of plastic. She has a tracheotomy and an indwelling catheter that feeds her. Who knows what else made of plastic – all of it keeping her alive.
"I have to go," I say and stand, my hands shaking. Julien follows me to the road.
"Where?"
"To Sarah's house," I say. "She's on a ventilator."
“Eve, maybe you shouldn’t go…”
I ignore him, walking the few blocks along the road to check on her, running the last block as panic sets in. When I get to the house, I knock but there's no answer. I open the door and call out, but no one comes.
“Sarah?” I say and peek down the darkened hallway to her bedroom.
I go inside the room. Mr. Rhys sits on a chair in the corner of the bedroom, his eyes red-rimmed, his cheeks wet. He turns to me when I enter and I cover my mouth when I see Sarah on the floor, her skin dusky, her chest unmoving. She's dead, her red-gold hair spread out over the hardwood. Her wheelchair is on its side.
"There was nothing we could do," Mrs. Rhys says, holding up her hands, a brownish-yellow powder on her fingers. "The ventilator tubes all disintegrated. We couldn't even bag her manually. The unit was made of a plastic- rubber mix and dissolved in my hands."
Finally, I sit beside Sarah, and take her hand in mine. I stroke her skin and blink away tears.
"Dylan's here," Mr. Rhys says. "He didn't go back to Boston after the first red rain. He went looking for you."
On the road home, he's there, walking towards me. Through my tears, he fades in and out of view like film stuttering in the broken Kinetoscope at the antique store in town. For a second, I think I'm imagining things, because I see wings spread out behind him. When I blink, they're gone. What is he? Is he a vampire who has ascended like Julien and Michel? Is he an Ancient?
My heart beats faster as he approaches. I don't know how to respond, and dig my nails into my palms.
"Dylan," I say, my voice breaking. "I'm so sorry…"
He seems so in control when he comes to me and stands there, waiting, but his eyes are very bloodshot, his lashes wet and clumped together.
"What's happening?" I say, my fists clenching.
"Something bad," he says, his voice sounding as if he's close to losing control. "I made sure we got solar panels, back-up generator, but they were useless to save her. . . "
My throat closes as I think about Sarah suffocating to death when the respirator stopped working, the respirator bag and tubes disintegrating so that her family couldn't even bag her and keep her alive manually. No matter what she was, death is still death.
"I knew it would be an attack on the power grid," he says, his voice breaking. "But I didn't expect this." He holds his hands up and I see the same stain on them that I saw on his mother's hands. He shakes his head. "I thought it would be a Carrington Event to coincide with solar maximum."
I stand in silence for a moment, trying to understand.
"Can… they," I start to say and stumble, wanting to ask 'can Blackstone do that?' but I don't, not wanting to give too much away. "Can whoever did this create a Carrington Event? How could anyone create one? They'd have to be able to manipulate a star…"
He shakes his head and then covers his eyes with a hand, finally overcome. I stand and watch him, feeling helpless. After a moment, he seems to regain control, glancing away.
"I'm sorry," he says, after clearing his throat. "I just wanted to make sure you were OK. I have to go."
"Why did you want to check on me?"
"Because," he says, wiping his eyes. "You're my sister."
I'm stunned into silence. I watch him walk away for a moment then I snap out of it.
"Wait," I say and run to him, grabbing his arm. "What do you mean, I'm your sister?"
He nods and pulls me into an alley. "We have the same mother and were enhanced in the same batch. They took more eggs from her and implanted us in different women. They made a dozen of us but only we survived."
"What parents? Is Natalia our mother?"
He nods, but says nothing more.
"Tell me!"
He stops and seems to struggle with himself. "We're both enhanced Adepts. I've just," he says and shrugs. "Been turned. Transformed."
"You're a vampire? Your skin isn't pale."
"Vampires are pale because they have little circulation in the skin. Blackstone developed a genetic fix that makes the skin retain its peripheral circulation. You won't look pale either when you're turned as well."
"I don't want to become a vampire."
He shrugs. "To get your full powers, you must. It's your destiny."
I squeeze my hands into fists. "I don't believe in destiny. How can you? You're a scientist!"
"Science is just one way of knowing, Eve. There are others, like religion and faith. They're not empirical. They're spiritual. They can't be measured or quantified."
We stand there for a moment in silence. In my mind, I fight what he says.
"I saw you in the park with those men," I say. "You had some kind of power that threw them a dozen feet in the air."
He nods. "We're weapons, Eve. We're meant to fulfill the prophecy."
"Prophecy?"
"St. Therese of the Reeds."
It's then I remember reading my journal about the document Seth gave me.
"Now I have to go back to my parents," Dylan says. "But we'll talk again."
"What are you doing? Who are you with?" I say, not wanting to let him go.
"Blackstone," he says and shakes his head. "But you already suspected. No one knows about me, Eve. This has to be just between us. Please don't let anyone know about me. Put up your blocks. Keep people out."
I let him go without another word, too stunned to say anything because I have a brother.
Problem is, he's also my enemy.
I walk back to our house, my arms wrapped around myself against the cold wind.
"Sarah Rhys is dead," I say once I'm inside the door, barely able to hold back my tears.
"Oh, God," he says and shakes his head slowly, looking at me with alarm on his face, his eyes wide. "I'm so sorry about Sarah." He stands there, his hands in his pockets as if he's trying to keep them off me. "I know you were becoming close to her. I wish I could hold you." He runs his hands through his hair and stares at the ceiling. "This is it." He glances back at me. "This is what we feared and we're too late. I had no idea they were so close."
We go to the town square, joining the crowd that formed spontaneously, waiting to hear from someone in authority. The new mayor and the sheriff stand at the statue of a mariner in the center of the square and wait until the crowd hushes. There are almost a hundred people waiting, speaking with each other. We wear strange clothes – probably the only clothes that are natural fibers – cotton, linen, wool. There are no plastic rain slickers. There are no rubber boots – just various versions of leather shoes.
"If I can have your attention, please," the mayor says, speaking through an old megaphone with no power. "This is what we know, or the best we can piece together about what's happened. According to local scientists, this second fall of red rain appears to have been the catalyst for the destruction of anything made from plastics and petrochemicals where the rain fell, including gasoline, fuel oil, coal and all byproducts. You'll all be familiar with this as it’s affected each one of us. We don't know how it was done and we haven't been able to get any updates from Washington due to the fact that we have no power, and our communications technology either relies on electricity or has plastics in some part of it and is no longer functional.”
A sense of unreality takes hold over me. We're completely cut off.
“We've sent out scouts to see how far it extends, but we haven't heard back yet from any of them. We have a HAM radio operator gathering information but he's using a very old HAM radio from the Pre-WWII era, and it's spotty. We know the red rain fell along the entire eastern Seaboard, up to one hundred miles into the continent so we have to assume it extends at least that far and that what happened here happened there as well. Jed Thompson took a horse and went south to see if power was on, but there wasn't."
He pauses for a moment, flipping through hand-written pages that flap in the wind. "We've taken a preliminary stock of food in stores in Davis Cove, but a lot of the perishable food that's been kept in freezers will start to degrade quickly if we don't get power back. A lot of food was lost due to being packaged in plastic containers. We're working on an inventory of food and medicines in grocery stores, restaurants and our stockpiles for emergencies, but a lot are either stored in or made with some form of fossil fuels."
He pauses for a moment and glances down at a sheet in his hand.
"We've had a number of deaths in our community due to this disaster and it's impossible to tell how many have died in the affected areas but we anticipate its in the thousands, if not more. Cars and boats made with plastic parts have fallen apart. We have to assume some airplanes have as well. Possibly – probably in flight. Everyone we had who relied on respirators has died. That comes to twenty-three in total who died immediately in the entire county. Several people had heart attacks and died when we couldn't do anything to help them because there was either no electricity or the batteries used in technology – or the technology itself – failed. In total, the death toll is about fifty-seven but we expect more once the full count is in."
He pauses as if to gather his composure. People take that opportunity to speak to each other, a murmur running through the crowd.
"I've declared a state of emergency for Davis Cove. Until we have a better sense of the extent and whether we'll be getting any aid from outside the affected areas, community events and all school has been suspended. I'm asking all able-bodied adults aged twenty-one and over to volunteer to help with disaster assistance. If any of you have experience in emergency management or response, please indicate so when you sign up. We need folks who have experience planning for and responding to this kind of emergency. We're asking you to sign up for four-hour shifts." He put the paper down and stared out at the crowd.
"We'll pull through this if we cooperate. Until I indicate otherwise, a ten o'clock PM until six o'clock AM curfew is in place. That's all for now. Thank you and may God be with us in our time of need."
The crowd murmurs in response, and I see some of the Catholics making the sign of the cross. Of the hundred or so people gathered in the square, a good number form a line and start signing up for community service shifts.
Julien joins the line to sign up for us and I go home, deciding to spend my time trying to find candles and wood I can use in the fireplace to keep warm while Julien signs us up.
We spend the rest of the evening sorting through what had become junk and what survived the 'plague', as Julien calls it. I find some old beeswax candles in the bathroom cupboard that appear intact, and some safety matches that work. We'll have some light at night for a while if we conserve it. We have some flashlights but they've been made out of plastic. Besides, the batteries look weird, because they had plastic wrappers. The batteries might still be useful, except everything that might have used them has plastic in them somewhere.
; As far as food goes, our dry goods that aren't in plastic containers are fine. We have lots of oatmeal and pasta, tea and coffee, flour, sugar, cans of beans and soups. Boxes of crackers. Rice in plastic bags spilled out onto the cabinet shelves, but most of it is reclaimable. I store it in empty glass jars that the cottage owner had in a cupboard in the pantry. Our food might last a week, if we conserve. We still have running water, but I wonder how long it will last or how safe it is. I find an old tin kettle in the bottom of a cupboard and decided to make tea to keep us warm.
The fireplace isn't designed for cooking, but we'll make do. We also have a barbeque outside on the porch, but there's no natural gas or charcoal to use. Julien starts a fire in the fireplace, and soon, I have some beans and rice cooking in pots near the fire. I pour him some tea and we sit at the kitchen island and eat in silence.
"I hate this not knowing," Julien says finally. "I'm so used to instant communications with Vasquez. This is going to be a test of our adaptability."
I spend most of the next day in bed and Julien lets me mourn Sarah without forcing me to do anything. Of course, he tries to comfort me with words, but I really just want him to hold me.
A funeral is held on Tuesday for many of the victims who died in the initial hours of the plague. I see Dylan there and Sarah's parents. I go to them, giving him and them my sympathies.
"How are you, Eve?” Mrs. Rhys says, taking my hand in hers.
"I'm fine," I say, squeezing her hand. “How are you holding up?”
She smiles sadly. “We always knew she’d die early. She knew it as well. She viewed life as a journey with death at the end, but she wanted to live as long as possible. This was cruel, but it was fast. She passed out immediately from lack of oxygen and died within a few minutes.”
I can't help but tear up again at the thought and she squeezes my hand again.
“Are you getting enough food and water?" she says and puts her arm around my shoulder.
I nod. "We have enough for now."