by Lund, S. E.
"What was the extent?” he says, his voice hushed. “How far did it reach up the coast?"
I sit on a chair and listen as he speaks to Vasquez.
"OK," he says, running his hand through his hair. "I'll keep an eye out. Call if anything develops."
He hangs up and stands for a moment in silence, contemplating the screens in front of him. On them are maps of the world and of the United States. Sections have been marked off in red, covering the whole Eastern Seaboard of the US from the Carolinas to Maine and beyond into Canada.
"What's happening?"
He shrugs. "Some kind of strange weather phenomenon. It’s probably algal spores."
"I've read about that before," I say. “There was a scare a few years back. People thought it was extraterrestrial.”
"It's from algal blooms." He clicks on a link in the web browser. "Gets sucked up into the high atmosphere and then falls when the weather conditions are right. It's just weird. So far, the experts think it's from a massive red bloom due to warm waters off the coast. Don't eat oysters for a while, I guess."
We read reports from the CIA and Homeland security for a while, side by side at the two computer desks. Finally, I yawn and turn to him.
"How are you feeling?" I say, wanting so badly to touch him, for us to fuck. "Better?"
He doesn't say anything for a moment but then he shrugs.
"Nothing a little tequila won't fix."
"Are you coming to bed?"
He shakes his head.
"You go. I'm going to monitor things for a while."
"Julien!" I say. "Come to bed with me. Even if we can't touch, we can watch each other."
"Not tonight," he says without looking at me.
I want to argue but it's pointless. Instead, I exhale and go to bed, but I leave the door open. I can see him sitting at the desk alone, the light from the screen illuminating his face.
* * *
The next morning over coffee, we listen as the news channels report on the fall of red rain. At first, there are suggestions that the rain was part of the meteor shower, but that was just fanatics and conspiracy theorists talking.
Later in the day, scientists report that the substance was a lichen-forming alga belonging to the genus Trentepholia. The spores were likely picked up in a storm, mixed with the rain high in the atmosphere, and then dropped on the East coast of the US. The fact that it took place during the meteor shower was pure coincidence.
Since there is no cause for alarm, people go about their business, washing off the red drops from their cars, their houses and the streets and only the crackpots raise alarm, calling it the start of the end of the world. I think nothing more of it, except to bring in a sample to my marine biology class where other students and I examine the spores under a microscope. They look like red blood cells, except they have a nucleus and visible organelles.
Everyone's interested in the strange phenomenon for a few days, but by the end of the week, people’s thoughts turn to a plane crash off the coast of France that killed over a hundred passengers and crew. Soon, the red rain is forgotten, my samples placed in a box and shoved to the back of a cabinet in the laboratory.
* * *
That week, I pretty much carry on as a normal college student again. I try to forget what I saw that day in the park, but ask I Sarah about Dylan when I see her in class on Tuesday.
"How's Dylan?"
She follows me down the hall to our class.
“He didn't go to Cambridge. He's still in town.”
“How come?” I say and frown.
“I don't know. After the red rain fell, he was strange, like it spooked him.” She rolls her eyes. “I don’t know what’s up with him lately,” she says. “He’s been so mysterious.”
I shake my head. "I never had a brother. You have two."
“I know – I'm so lucky.” Sarah smiles.
* * *
The investigation into the identity of our killer continues, but at a slow pace. Julien orders a full background check on our mysterious Mr. Colville Black and it seems he's spent some time in prison and was hoping to start a new life in Davis Cove. He isn't an Adept or a member of Blackstone after all, for when Julien meets him at a service station by accident, he scopes the man out and there was nothing when he made sure to touch the man. Just an ex-con trying to start a new life somewhere where his ghosts couldn't follow him.
A dead end.
I find it really hard to go through the motions. All week, I drag myself from class to class, confused about Julien, who's remained aloof, not wanting to be with me, sleeping on the couch still. I'm uncertain about what to say to him about Dylan – if anything. I know I should tell him what I saw in the park, but something makes me hold my tongue. Part of it is that I don't want him to be jealous. I followed Dylan into the park. I've kept it from him for this long, and I know he’ll be mad about that. Part of it is that it shows a lack of judgment on my part that I don't want to admit.
I should have reported everything to Julien immediately. I want to understand myself before I raise the alarm with Julien.
I start having lunch with Sarah and crew at school, and that's nice. I get no more strange looks from Brenda, so I finally let that rest – maybe I was just too paranoid to recognize ordinary behavior.
On Wednesday, Julien's home waiting for me after classes are over. I walk in and put my backpack down, removing my books so I can start homework. He's sitting at the island that separates the family room from the kitchen, several files opened in front of him, a glass of blood in his hand.
“Hey,” he says, glancing up from his papers. “Come here, look at this.”
I go to his side and look over his shoulder, careful to keep my distance. “What is it?”
“List of all patients at the hospital the night that Bobby Wilson died. That boy with terminal cancer in palliative care?”
I remember it from our first week. It's one of the cases that convinced us we had a vampire in town.
“Oh, yeah. I remember him. Parents left him alone that night for the first time and went home. When the nurses checked in the morning, he was dead.”
Julien nods. “Guess who was in the hospital at the same time?”
I sit on the stool beside him. “I have no idea.”
“Your little friend in the wheelchair. Sarah Rhys.”
“What?” I reach for the file. In it is a sheet of paper with a list of names of all patients in the hospital on the night Bobby died. There it is, about six down from the top. Sarah Rhys.
I read the nursing report. Sarah and her family were new to Davis Cove at the time. She’d been sick with a respiratory infection and had been in the ICU. When the death happened, she was on a medical ward after improving. She was discharged a day after Bobby died.
“It’s probably just a coincidence,” I say. “She’s not a vampire, Julien. She’s on a respirator. She can’t walk or even stand up.”
“Yeah, but here’s the thing. When our older woman died in palliative care at the nursing home? Guess who was staying there in a respite bed while her parents went to New York City for some family event? None other than little Sarah Rhys.”
I grab the sheet of paper he holds up and read over the patient roster for the night the woman, Ginette Longman, died. Sure enough, there's Sarah's name. Nursing records indicate she’d been admitted on the Friday night into a respite bed so her parents could go to visit their older son at the seminary outside of New York City.
“Oh, my God,” I say, shaking my head. “Once might be a coincidence, but twice? There’s no way it’s an accident. But how?” I say, frowning. “How could she move into someone else’s room and share blood? She’s a quadriplegic.”
“Maybe she had help. You said her friend touched you and said she got a shock, right?” Julien says. “I wonder if there’s some kind of new Adept. Maybe there are several here, and we’re just looking for the wrong things.”
Now is when I should have come clean ab
out Dylan. I don't.
“Why would Sarah be blood sharing? She's not a vampire. It's not like she can be a hunter.”
Julien says nothing, just continues to flip through his file. "What about the brother?"
"He isn't a vampire. His skin is normal tint. He can go out in the sun."
Julien shrugs. "Maybe they've found a way to make vampires look more flesh colored."
Now, I wonder if both he and Sarah aren’t some new kind of Adept, as Julien suggested. One who can use telekinesis to move objects from a distance.
“I'll talk to Vasquez," Julien says. "I'll have to start getting all touchy-feely with folks. All we have is telepathy and good old-fashioned investigatory work to find whoever's doing this.”
“What do we do about Sarah Rhys? She’s become a friend,” I say.
“Her brother as well.” Julien eyes me.
An awkward silence passes between us. I press my fingernails into my palm, because I don't know what to say. "He has a girlfriend in Cambridge. I have you. Don't be jealous."
“I’m sorry,” he says. “You have to realize this is driving me crazy. I can't touch you, I can't connect with you. Just knowing that Michel came to you, kissed you, is so hard."
"I miss you."
I sit quiet for a moment and let that set in. Finally, I leave the kitchen, and go to our room. After I shut the door, I stand at the window and stare out at the ocean. Night falls very fast and soon, the ocean is lit up by the full moon.
The door to our bedroom creaks open.
“I didn’t mean to make you so upset,” Julien says, as he stands behind me. “I’ve been so jealous of Michel.”
I turn to him. “Just be with me tonight,” I say, my voice breaking. "Don't make me sleep alone again."
“Oh cheri,” he says and steps closer. "I’ve left you alone too much.” This time, he reaches out and runs his hand down over my body, about a foot away, his hand moving to mime my curves, to cup a breast, and over my hip. "I want you so much."
“I want you so much,” I say.
He shakes his head. “I've been a fool. I’m sorry,” he says. “I should have been more attentive.”
“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 70
"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 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."