Deception

by Teri Terry

  His fists are clenched, and even though he can’t feel me, I stand next to him, hold my fists next to his.

  He can’t hear me, he can’t see me, but we are in this together.

  Anger isn’t a big enough word to cover how Dr. 1 makes me feel. He made this illness that changed Shay and me; he cured me too—burned me in fire to make me what I am now.

  Together, Kai and I will find him and make him suffer.

  PART 2

  OUTRAGE

  Human emotions and reactions in response to given stimuli are often predictable; human actions frequently are not. They are rarely governed by the rules of logic or evolution.

  —Xander, Multiverse Manifesto

  CHAPTER 1

  KAI

  IT IS BETTER TO MOVE. The rain is good too—being cold and wet gives me something else to feel.

  The tight feeling across my chest is still there, but when I’m walking fast like I am now, I have to keep breathing to keep moving; my heart must keep beating.

  I won’t fail again. I can’t.

  Shay, I will find you.

  And then? What then?

  Then can wait. Find her—find her first.

  My feet falter when I reach the grassy place above the cliffs where Shay fell asleep against my shoulder in the sun after we climbed up from the beach.

  I can feel her body, warm and curled against mine, and smell her hair, still damp from the waterfall—she was just here.

  Move. Keep moving.

  I start to climb straight down the cliff, not the easier way we came up. The rain has stopped now, but my foot slips on wet rock.

  My hands and feet scrabble against rock, and one hand slams into a crevice. There is sharp pain in my palm, but I hold on. My feet search side to side, find a toehold so I can ease weight off my hand. And there’s an almost sound, like an echo of a shout in my mind, like I thought I heard on that cliff behind the house yesterday.

  “Is that you, Callie?” I say. “Don’t worry, I’m all right.”

  I take more care, reach the bottom, then inspect my hand. Just a cut in the fleshy part—a little blood. It’s nothing.

  Though if Mum were here, she’d be grabbing disinfectant and a bandage. Then I’m remembering cutting myself on Callie’s broken glass teddy bear in her room, and Mum cleaning and bandaging it. She said she wished all my hurts were so easy to fix. But they just get worse and worse, don’t they?

  The tide is farther out than it was when the rowboat left Shay and me here, but the sea isn’t as calm. Should I wait to see if it improves? I stare at the water. Keep moving, I decide.

  I take off my T-shirt and jeans—wrap them in plastic and put them inside my backpack with the last of the food and bottled water I could find at the house.

  One foot in the water, I curse under my breath—it’s so bloody cold. Quick in is best, isn’t it? I take a few steps to deeper water and dive in.

  The shock chokes my breath for real now, and it’s hard to reach out with my arms and swim when it is telling me to get out, to wrap something around myself and get warm.

  I swim, hard, to try to get some warmth into arms and legs that feel clumsy and numb. The cove is soon behind me and the rocks cleared; the water is getting deeper. Now it’s much rougher. The cave is along the coast to the left, but when I try to head in that direction the current fights against me, pushing me across to the right. Instead, I head farther out to sea, away from the island—just edging to the left gradually in ever-rougher water.

  Each stroke is getting harder.

  Spots dance in my vision.

  Exhausted, I close my eyes to rest for a moment, floating, letting the swirling cold water take me where it will. My thoughts are jumpy and scattered. Shay and Mum and Callie’s faces flit in and out, and…

  No!

  I jump, open my eyes. That was less of an echo and more of a shout.

  “Right, Callie. On we go.” I make myself start swimming harder across to the left. The undertow is less now that I’m farther out, and I overshoot the cave on purpose, then start to cut back in to the island. The current strengthens and drags me to the right once again as I swim for the shore.

  Gradually the sea quiets. In the shadow of cliffs, I swim for the dark gap in the rocks.

  CHAPTER 2

  CALLIE

  KAI PULLS HIMSELF UP on a rock near the entrance of the cave, breathing heavily, not moving.

  I feel like I’m breathing as hard, my heart thumping as fast. He kept going farther out, then just stopped—floating in the water, eyes shut, being dragged by the sea away from the island.

  He definitely heard me that time. When I screamed at him to swim to the shore, he actually jumped. Then I was really scared: people only hear me if they’re about to die. How close was he to giving up?

  I’m so focused on Kai, on watching the movement of his chest as he breathes, that at first I don’t see it.

  Farther inside the cave behind us.

  It’s a boat. It’s nothing like the one we came here in, not at all. It’s white, sleek, and pretty, while the other one was rough and heavy. The sails are down now, but that is what it is: a sailboat.

  It’s quiet. Is anyone there?

  Kai is stirring behind me now.

  He sits up on the rock, still breathing hard, and his eyes must have adjusted to the darkness by now. He sees it, he must see it. He turns toward it. His eyes widen.

  The water inside the cave is almost still. Kai slips back into it and swims the few strokes to where the boat is tied. He clambers onto the rocks next to it.

  “Hello?” he says.

  There is no sound.

  He’s shivering even more violently now, goose bumps standing up on his arms and legs. He takes off the backpack and gets his clothes out, then struggles to pull them on as they stick to his wet skin.

  “Hello?” he says again, then covers his nose and mouth with his hand like something smells bad.

  I slip into the boat.

  It doesn’t take long to find them.

  Three red-haired children. A woman with long red hair, lying next to them. Their eyes are open, staring; dark, dried blood around them. They’ve been dead a while.

  And sitting next to them? A man. Alive. He would be tall if stretched out, but he is folded in on himself on the deck. His arms are wrapped around his knees, and he’s humming quietly, eyes closed, his body rocking back and forth.

  Can you hear me? I try. No flicker of response, so either he’s ignoring me or he’s not dying himself.

  Kai climbs up the short ladder by the rocks and looks into the boat. His white face goes even paler.

  CHAPTER 3

  KAI

  I CLEAR MY THROAT. “Hello. Can I come aboard?”

  No answer. The only sounds are the gentle lapping of the water and bird calls, muted, from outside the cave. And the tuneless humming from the man who ignores me. Eyes closed, he rocks slightly back and forth next to what must be his family—they were his family. I try to avert my eyes, but they are drawn again and again.

  I’ve seen the dead—bodies of all ages, shapes, and sizes that I carried to the pyres, first in Newcastle, then in Killin. I could close myself off to what they were and do what had to be done, but they always came back to haunt me at odd moments—lurking in corners of my mind, appearing in my dreams late at night.

  But not like this. He’s arranged them together at his feet, on the deck, and they’ve been there for some time. There is decay, and the particular horrifying smell of rotting flesh, and my senses are imprinted with things I know will stay inside in places I don’t want to visit but will again and again.

  This boat is a mausoleum, and I want to back away.

  But I can’t leave him.

  He hasn’t gotten sick in however long they’ve been like this; he must be immune like I
am. To leave him would be for him to starve and die slowly, alone with their ghosts.

  I climb into the boat. Stepping away from them and focusing on him, I keep my eyes on his thin shoulders, dark hair. His head is turned down.

  “What’s your name?” I say.

  He doesn’t look up. There’s no answer, but there is a small break in his humming. It resumes again.

  “I’m Kai.”

  This time his head moves a little. His eyes flick up to me, then slide away.

  I maneuver myself to sit down next to him and lean against the railing, with him between them and me. “Were they your family? I’m sorry.”

  No response. He hums a little louder, as if trying to block me out.

  “Do you need a drink?” I get a water bottle from my pack, hold it out, and then touch the man’s shoulder. He flinches and looks up.

  “Here.” I hold the water bottle by his mouth and angle it back a little so it splashes his lips. He licks his lips, tilts his head back, and I hold up the bottle so he can have a proper drink. He swallows, coughs, and then turns his head away from the bottle.

  “This is wrong,” he whispers. “I’m waiting to die. That won’t help.”

  “You’re not sick, though, are you?” He shakes his head slightly. “You must be immune like me.”

  No answer. His arms are wrapped back around his knees, his body still rocking.

  I lean back against the side of the boat.

  There is nothing I can do to help him, nothing I can even imagine about the pain he is in right now. And then my blood is rushing, my muscles clenching, and I’m angry, full of red-rage fury—at what has happened to this man’s family, to Callie, to so many people; all the bodies I carried to the pyres. Back in England and the rest of Scotland, it’s probably even worse now.

  And somebody did this.

  It’s not an accident of nature, some flu mutation or new virus caught from a mosquito or a monkey in a forest—somebody made this happen.

  I swear loudly.

  He turns, looks at me. His humming stops.

  I do it again, even louder, and slam my hand down hard on the deck. “It’s wrong that this happened to your family. To you. To me. To the world! It’s not fair!”

  “It’s my fault,” he says. “Sally wanted to leave ages ago.” His voice is hoarse, and I hold out the water bottle. This time he takes it in his hands, has a long drink, and then gives it back. “I wouldn’t go, kept thinking things would get sorted out, that they’d find a cure. That we’d be all right. Then when she finally talked me around, it was too late. The kids started to get sick before we were even halfway here.”

  “But what are you going to do about it?”

  “Do about it? What do you mean?”

  “Listen to me.”

  He shakes his head, puts his arms back around his knees, rocking. Humming.

  But I tell him: about Shay, that she is a survivor, and why we came to Shetland. Where the illness started: underground in a lab. That someone did it on purpose, and that the army is involved somehow—that it’s their fault, not his. That Shay turned herself in to the air force when she realized she was a carrier. That now we need to leave this island, go back to mainland Scotland, and make sure those responsible are held accountable.

  He doesn’t look at me the whole time I’m talking. He stays as he is, as if he’s pretending I’m not here, he’s not here, nothing exists.

  When I’m finished, there is silence for a while, a long while.

  Then he stops rocking.

  He doesn’t look up. He says something, but it is muffled against his knees, not loud enough to hear.

  “What’s that?”

  He turns back toward me. His face is still pale, but where all was dull in his eyes before, now there is a trace of a spark, of anger—of fire.

  “Bobby. My name is Bobby.” He holds out a hand, and I grasp it, hold it tight.

  Bobby leans forward against me and cries.

  CHAPTER 4

  CALLIE

  THERE’S A SMALL LIFEBOAT, and that’s where they put Bobby’s family. Kai tries to help, but Bobby insists on doing it himself and fusses over how to have them—the smallest child, a boy, on his mother, the two girls on either side. Their favorite toys with them. When he tucks a soft blanket all around them with trembling hands, there is such care on his face, even when he soaks it with gasoline. Bobby’s eyes are dry now, as if the tears before were all he had left, but it is all over Kai’s face that he’s struggling not to break down.

  Near dusk Bobby uses the engine to maneuver the sailboat out of the cave and away from the island, with the lifeboat towed behind. The sea swells are bigger than they were earlier; the wind has picked up. When they judge they’ve gone far enough away from the shore, Bobby pulls the lifeboat up to the sailboat.

  Now he needs help. He can’t bring himself to do it.

  Kai uses matches to light the torch they made.

  He holds it aloft, then throws it onto the lifeboat. When they’re sure it has caught, they release the boat and push it away with an oar.

  Flames dance into the sky.

  * * *

  Later, Bobby shouts instructions at Kai and between the two of them—Bobby knowing what to do, and Kai having the strength to do it—they somehow get the sails up. The wind is steady and the stars in the sky are clear as we sail through the night and all the next day for Scotland.

  CHAPTER 5

  KAI

  THE ST. ANDREWS MARINA is deserted when Bobby bumps us up gently against the pier. I clamber along the side of the sailboat, unwrap the ropes, and sling them over the pilings.

  We’d thought about what to say if challenged by the coast guard or anyone at the marina, but it seems authorities only care if you’re trying to leave. No one wants to come here unless they belong.

  Now that we’ve docked, Bobby doesn’t seem to want to leave his boat. He goes below, and after a while, I follow. He’s in the cabin, touching things, picking them up and putting them down again.

  He turns and sees me. “Wish I’d burned the lot,” he mutters.

  “We wouldn’t be here if you had.”

  He draws in a shuddering breath. “No. And so I have to go on.” He opens a drawer, takes out some keys, and gestures toward the ladder. “Come on.”

  We climb off the boat and walk along the pier to the harbor. Bobby doesn’t look back.

  Apart from the sounds of the sea and some seagulls, everything is quiet, still. There are no people anywhere.

  There’s a parking lot behind the jetty, and we go there. “Here,” he says, pointing at a four-wheel drive, and he hits the key fob in his hand. The lights flash and it beeps. We get in; he starts it. He shakes his head. “Seems so weird that this is still here. That I can just get in and start the car that we left behind.”

  “How long has it been?”

  “I lost count of the days, but not many. Though it is a lifetime—four lifetimes—ago. Over in a minute.”

  I don’t say anything. There is nothing I can say.

  We drive along a deserted road: deserted, as in no one else is driving along it, but every now and then a car is empty and abandoned, and Bobby has to maneuver around it. The traffic lights are dead—there’s no power? Everywhere we look is dark, silent.

  We get to a junction, and Bobby starts to take the left turn. He stops, hesitates, then reverses a little and turns right. “Change of plan,” he says. “We’re going to the pub.”

  “The pub?”

  “Tonight is their wake. Tomorrow will come soon enough.”

  He pulls in front of a big, old country pub. It’s cold, dark. The sun is almost gone now. We get out and walk to the door. It’s locked. I peer through the window but can’t see anything in the dim shadows.

  Bobby picks up a brick that was on the ground, the s
ort probably used to prop the door open on a fine day. He shrugs and knocks on the door. “It seems wrong not to knock,” he says. But then he uses the brick to smash a window.

  I help him kick out the panes of glass, and we climb in. It’s almost dark outside now and even darker inside, and we stand, waiting, while our eyes adjust.

  “There are tea lights. They used them at dinner.” Bobby feels his way through a door to tables; we gather a few together. Matches he finds in a drawer behind a desk. He lights a match, and the thin flame wavers as his hand shakes. I guide it to a candle, and the wick catches.

  “Sit,” I say, and push Bobby onto a bar stool. I go behind the bar. “What’ll it be?”

  Bobby tells their stories over a few pints of beer. His hands and voice are steadier now as he lights four candles. One for Sally, who changed his life forever when he met her, here, by this bar a dozen years ago. One for their first daughter, Erin, the daydreamer—so like her mother. One for Maddy, who was never still or quiet and loved to run. And one for Jackson, so small they were only just starting to know who he was.

  And I don’t know how he can do this. How he can sit and talk and not scream with rage. I want to shake him, to make him find the anger that will help keep him going.

  The way mine does me.

  CHAPTER 6

  CALLIE

  KAI’S SLEEP IS TROUBLED. He’s caught in a dream—not a good one; he must be. He twists and shudders, and I wish I could wake him.

  If I could sleep, what dreams would I have? I shrug. Nightmares couldn’t be much worse than here and now.