Peeps p-1

by Scott Westerfeld

  “And why the landlord is covering it up.”

  “Yeah, because this is all about your rent.”

  She raised her hands. “Hey, I didn’t know you were all into saving the world, okay? I just thought you were a stalker ex-boyfriend or a weird psycho cousin or something. But I’m glad you’re the good guys, and I want to help. It’s not just my rent situation, you know. I have to live with that thing on the wall.”

  I put down my coffee cup with authoritative force. “Okay. I’m glad you’re helping. I thank you, and your city thanks you.”

  In fact, I was just glad the cover story had made it through the worst of Lace’s suspicions. I’d never really worked undercover before; lies aren’t my thing. She frowned, eating a few more bites of potato salad, and I wondered if Lace’s help was worth involving her. So far, she’d been a little too smart for comfort. But smart wasn’t all bad. It wouldn’t hurt to have a pair of sharp eyes on the seventh floor.

  And frankly, I was enjoying her company, especially the way she didn’t hide her thoughts and opinions. That wasn’t a luxury I could indulge in myself, of course, but it was good to hear Lace voicing every suspicion that went through her head. Saved me from being paranoid about what she was thinking.

  On top of which, I was feeling very in control, hanging out with a desirable woman without having a sexual fantasy every few seconds. Maybe every few minutes or so, but still, you have to crawl before you can walk.

  “Dude, why are you scratching your wrist like that?”

  “I am? Oh, crap.”

  “What the hell, Cal? It’s all red.”

  “Um, it’s just…” I ransacked my internal database of skin parasites, then announced,

  “Pigeon mites!” “Pigeon whats?”

  “You know. When pigeons sit on your window and shake their feathers? Sometimes these little mites fall off and nest in your pillows. They bite your skin and cause…” I waved my oft-pinged wrist.

  “Eww. One more reason not to like pigeons.” She glared out the window at a few of them scavenging on the sidewalk. “So what do we do now?”

  “How about this? You take me back to your building and show me which apartment used to be Morgan’s.”

  “And then what?”

  “Leave that to me.”

  As we passed the doorman I made sure to catch his eye and smile. If I came in with Lace a few more times, maybe the staff would start to recognize me.

  On the seventh floor, she led me to the far end of the hall, gesturing at a door marked 704. There were just four apartments on this floor, all the one-bedrooms you could squeeze into the sliver-thin building.

  “That’s where she lived, according to the two guys upstairs. Loud and freaky in bed, they tell me.”

  I coughed into a fist, again damning my fugitive memories. “You know who lives here now?”

  “Guy called Max. He works days.”

  I knocked hard. No answer.

  Lace sighed. “I told you he wouldn’t be home.”

  “Glad to hear it.” I pulled out another of the items requisitioned that morning and knelt by the door: The lock was a standard piece-of-crap deadbolt, five tumblers. Into its keyhole I sprayed some graphite, which is the same gray stuff that gets on your fingers if you fiddle with the end of a pencil, and does the same thing to locks that Bahamalama-Dingdongs do to repressed memories—lubricates them. Two of the tumblers rolled over as my pick slid in. Easy-peasy.

  “Dude,” Lace whispered, “shouldn’t you get a warrant or something?”

  I was ready for this one. “Doesn’t matter. You only need a warrant if you want the evidence to stand up in court. But I’m not taking anyone to court.” Another tumbler rolled over. “This isn’t a criminal investigation.”

  “But you can’t just break into people’s apartments!”

  “I’m not breaking. Just looking.”

  “Still!”

  “Look, Lace, maybe this isn’t strictly legal. But if people in my job didn’t cut a few corners every now and then, everyone in this city would be infected, okay?”

  She paused for a moment, but the ring of truth had filled my words. I’ve seen simulations of what would happen if the parasite were to spread unchecked, and believe me, it’s not pretty. Zombie Apocalypse, we call it.

  Finally, she scowled. “You better not steal anything.”

  “I won’t.” The last two tumblers went, and I opened the door. “You can stay out here if you want. Knock hard if Max comes out of that elevator.”

  “Forget it,” she said. “I’m going to make sure you don’t do anything weird. Besides, he’s had my blender for four months.”

  She pushed in past me, heading for the kitchen. I sighed, putting my lock-pick away and closing the door behind us.

  The apartment was a carbon copy of Lace’s, but with better furniture. The shape of the living room refired my recognition pistons. Finally, I had found the place where the parasite had entered me, making me a carrier and changing my life forever.

  It was much tidier than Lace’s apartment, which might be a problem. After seven months of living there, an obsessive cleaner would have swept away a lot of evidence.

  I crossed to the sliding glass doors and shut the curtains to make it darker, trying to ignore the clatter of pots and pans from the kitchen.

  “You know,” I called, “you’re the one who’s going to have to explain to Max how you got your blender back.”

  “I’ll tell him I astral-projected. Butt-head.”

  “Huh?”

  “Him, not you. He had my blender all summer. Margarita season.”

  “Oh.” I shook my head—infection, cannibalism, blender appropriation. The Curse of 704 was alive and well.

  I pulled out another little toy I’d picked up that morning—an ultraviolet wand—and flicked it on. The demon’s eyes on my Kill Fee shirt began to give off an otherworldly glow. I swept the wand across the same wall that, back in Lace’s apartment, had held the words written in gristle.

  “Dude! Flashback!” Lace said, crossing the living room. She smiled, and her teeth flickered as white as a radioactive beach at noon.

  “Flashback?”

  “Yeah, your teeth are glowing, like at a dance club.”

  I shrugged. “Don’t go to clubs much since I … got this job.”

  “No, I guess you wouldn’t,” she said. “All that sexual transmission just waiting to happen.”

  “Huh? Hey, I don’t have anything against—”

  She smiled. “Just kidding, dude. Relax.”

  “Ah.” I cleared my throat.

  Nothing glowed on the wall in the ultraviolet. I held the wand closer, casting weird shadows across the stucco mountainscape. No pattern of a hurried paint roller appeared. I cut into a few spots at random with my fingernail, but nothing bright shone through.

  The other walls were just as clean.

  “So does that thing make blood show up?” she asked.

  “Blood and other bodily fluids.”

  “Bodily fluids? You are so CSI.” She said this like it was a cool thing, and I gave her a smile.

  “Let’s try the bedroom,” she said.

  “Good idea.”

  We went through the door, and my déjá vu ramped up to another level. This was where I had lost my virginity and become a monster, all in one night.

  Like the living room, the bedroom was impeccably clean. Lace sat on the bed while I scanned the walls with UV.

  “This goo you’re looking for, it isn’t still … active, is it?”

  “Active? Oh, you mean infectious.” I shook my head. “One thing about parasites—they’re great at living inside other organisms, but once they hit the outside world, they’re not so tough.”

  “Parasites?”

  “Oh, pretend you didn’t hear that. Anyway, after seven months, you’re totally safe from catching it.” I cleared my throat. “As am I.”

  “So, what’s with the glow stick?”

  “I�
�m trying to see if the same thing happened here as in your apartment.”

  “The wall-writing dementia festival, you mean? Does that really happen a lot?”

  “Not really.”

  “Didn’t think so. Lived in New York all my life, and I never saw anything like that on the news.”

  I shot her a look, the word news making me wonder if her journalistic instincts were kicking in. Which would be a bad thing.

  “What disease is this again?” she asked.

  “Not telling.”

  “Please!”

  I waved the wand at her, and several luminous streaks appeared on the blanket underneath her.

  “What’s that?”

  I grinned. “Bodily fluids.”

  “Dude!” She leaped to her feet.

  “That’s nothing compared to the skin mites.”

  Lace was rubbing her hands together. “Which are what?”

  “Microscopic insects that hang out in beds, feeding on dead skin cells.”

  “I’ll be washing out my blender,” she said, and left me alone.

  I chuckled to myself and turned the wand on the other walls, the floors, inside the closet. Other than Max’s blanket and a pair of underwear under the bed, the UV didn’t get a rise out of anything. Picking at the stucco didn’t help; nothing had been painted over in this apartment.

  Max was a lot neater than most single men, I’d say that for the guy. Or maybe Morgan knew not to eat where she slept.

  Suddenly, my ears caught a jingling sound. Keys in a lock.

  “Crap,” I said. Max was home early. “Uh, Cal?” Lace’s voice called softly, her vocal cords tight.

  “Shh!” I flicked off the wand, shoved it into my pocket, and ran into the living room. Lace was standing there, clutching her wet blender.

  “Put that down!” I hissed, dragging her toward the glass doors that led to the balcony.

  I heard the lock’s bolt shoot closed. A lucky break—I had left the apartment unlocked behind us, so whoever was coming in had just relocked the door, thinking they were unlocking it.

  Muffled Spanish swearing filtered through, a female voice, and I realized that Max’s apartment was spotless because he had a cleaner.

  I yanked the sliding glass door open and pushed Lace out into the cold. When it was shut behind us, I watched the thick curtains swing lazily to a halt, hiding us from the living room. Pressing one ear to the icy glass, palming the other to mute the roar of traffic, I listened. My heartbeat was ramped up with excitement, adrenaline making the parasite start to churn, my muscles tightening. Through the glass came the sound of a graphite-lubricated dead-bolt shooting free, and the door creaked open.

  “Mio!” an annoyed voice muttered. Fingers fumbling for a light switch. The apartment was too dark to work in—she would probably be opening the curtains in a few moments.

  I turned to Lace, whose eyes were wide, her pupils huge from the excitement. On the tiny balcony, we were only a foot apart, and I could smell her perfectly—the jasmine hair, a salt smell of nerves. We were too close for comfort. I pulled my eyes away from her and pointed at the next balcony over. “Who lives there?”

  “Um, this girl called Freddie,” Lace whispered.

  “She at home?”

  Lace shrugged.

  “Well, let’s hope not.” I jumped up onto the rail and across.

  “Jesus, dude!” Lace squeaked.

  I turned back to look down through the two-and-a-half-foot gap, realizing I should at least pretend to show fear, if only for Lace’s sake. The parasite doesn’t want its peeps too cautious; it wants us picking fights, complete with the biting and the scratching and other disease-spreading activities. We carriers don’t mind a little danger.

  Lace, though, was fully human, and her eyes widened farther as she stared down.

  “Come on,” I whispered soothingly. “It’s just a couple of feet.”

  She glared at me. “A couple of feet across. Seven stories down!”

  I sighed and jumped back up, steadied myself with one loot on each rail, and leaned back against the building. “Okay, I’ll swing you across. I promise I won’t drop you.”

  “No way, dude!” she said, her panic breaking through the whisper.

  I wondered if the cleaner had heard us and was already calling the cops. My Health and Mental badge looked real, and if a policeman called the phone number on the ID, there would be a Night Watch employee sitting at the other end. But Lace had been right about the whole illegal entry thing, and if someone went looking to complain to my boss in person, they would find only a bricked-up doorway in a forgotten basement of City Hall. The Night Watch had cut most of its official ties two hundred years ago; only a few bureaucrats remained who knew the secret histories.

  I leaned down and grabbed Lace’s wrist. “Sorry, but…”

  “What are you—?” She squealed as I lifted her up and over, setting her down on the next balcony.

  When I jumped down beside her, Lace’s face was white.

  “You … I could have…” she sputtered. Her mouth was open, and she was breathing hard. On the tiny balcony, my senses started to tangle up with one another, smell and sight and taste, the parasite pushing its advantage. Excitement radiated from Lace; I knew it was only fear making her pupils expand, her heart pound, but my body responded in its own blind way, construing it all as signs of arousal. My hands were itching to take hold of her shoulders and taste her lips.

  “Excuse me,” I squeaked, pushing her away from the balcony door.

  I knelt and pulled out lock-picking equipment, desperate to get off that balcony and inside, anything to be a few feet farther away from Lace. My fingers fumbled, and I banged my head against the glass on purpose, clearing my brain long enough to squirt the keyhole with graphite.

  Seconds later, the door slid open.

  I stumbled inside Freddie’s apartment, away from Lace’s smell, sucking in the odors of industrial carpet, recently assembled Ikea furniture, and a musty couch. Anything but jasmine.

  When I managed to get back under control, I put my ear to the wall. The welcome roar of a vacuum cleaner rumbled back and forth next door. Taking another deep breath, I collapsed onto the couch. I hadn’t kissed Lace and the cops weren’t on their way—two near disasters averted.

  Without catching Lace’s eye, I looked around. Another clone of Morgan’s apartment, the walls innocently white. “Might as well check in here too.”

  Lace didn’t say a word, staring at me from where she stood just inside the balcony door. Her expression was still intense, and when I switched on the UV light, the whites of her eyes glowed fiercely. She was rubbing her wrist where I’d grabbed it to lift her across.

  She said calmly “How did you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Pick me up. Swing me like a cat.”

  I attempted a cavalier smile. “Is that how cats are swung?”

  She snarled, revealing a flash of ultraviolet teeth. “Tell me.”

  I realized she was still angry and tried to channel Dr. Rat’s lecture voice. “Well, the human body is capable of great strength, you know. Mothers whose babies are in danger have been known to lift cars. And people high on PCP can snap steel handcuffs or even pull their own teeth out with pliers.”

  This was a point often made in Hunting 101: Peeps aren’t stronger than normal people in any healthy sense—the parasite just turns them into psychos, setting their muscles at emergency strength, like a car with its gas pedal stuck down. (Which would sort of make carrier peeps controlled psychos, I suppose, though nobody at the Night Watch ever put it like that.)

  “So which category do you fall into?” Lace said. “Concerned mother or insane drug addict?”

  “Um … more like concerned mother, I guess?”

  Lace advanced on me, stuck one stiff forefinger into the center of my chest, her smell overwhelming me as she shouted, “Well, let’s get something straight, Cal. I am not… your… baby!”

  S
he spun on her heel and stomped to the apartment door, unlocking it and yanking it open. She turned back, pulling something from her pocket. For a second, I thought she was going to throw it at me in a wild rage.

  But her voice was even. “I found this in Max’s kitchen trash. Guess Morgan never bothered to get her mail forwarded.”

  She flicked it at me after all, the envelope spinning like a ninja’s star.

  I plucked it from the air and turned it over. It was addressed to Morgan. Just a random piece of junk mail, but now I had a last name.

  “Morgan Ryder. Hey, thanks for—”

  The door slammed shut. Lace was gone.

  I stared after her for a while, the echo of her exit ringing in my exquisite hearing. I could still smell the jasmine fragrance in the air, the scent of her anger, and traces of her skin oil and sweat on my fingers. Her departure had been so sudden, it took a moment to accept it.

  It was better this way, of course. I’d been lucky so far. Those moments on the balcony had been too intense and unexpected. It was one thing sitting across a table from Lace in a crowded restaurant, but I couldn’t be alone with her, not in small spaces. I liked her too much, and after six months of celibacy, the parasite was stronger than I was.

  And once she thought about my cover story a little more, she’d probably figure I was some kind of thief or con man or just plain freaky. So maybe she’d steer clear of me from now on.

  I let out a long, sad sigh, then continued sweeping for bodily fluids.

  Chapter 8

  LICE AGE

  A long time ago human beings were hairy all over, like monkeys. Nowadays, however, we wear clothes to keep us warm.

  How did this switch happen? Did we lose the fur and then decide to invent clothes? Or did we invent clothing and then lose the body hair that we no longer needed?

  The answer isn’t in any history books, because writing hadn’t been invented yet when it happened. But fortunately, our little friends the parasites remember. They carry the answer in their genes.