by Nancy Kress
It was easy to find the first lipstick marks in the maze passage that Tommy and Violet had taken. They followed the marks, running in single file. A drum beat started in Amy’s head: two hours two hours two hours. That was how long they had to get to Violet with the medicine before there “might be brain damage.” How much damage? How certain was “might be”?
After several turnings of the maze, Amy said. “Wait—I have an idea. Rafe, boost me to the top of the wall. If it’s wide enough, I can walk up there and see farther. Maybe I’ll spot her.”
Rafe cupped his hands. Amy shed her share of their gear, put her foot into Rafe’s hands, and vaulted upward. The top of the wall was an inch wide; not enough to balance on, not even if she took off her sandals. She wasn’t that good of a gymnast.. “This won’t work. I’m coming down.”
Rafe caught her, and for a moment her body slid down against his. Amy flushed. She avoided looking at either him or Kaylie.
Rafe said, “I guess it’s the lipstick trail, after all.” His voice was husky.
Amy said, “I wish I’d thought of that at Maze Base. I could have stood on the top of the camp building and maybe seen more.”
“Do you want to go back?”
“No. Let’s go on.”
Another twenty minutes and Amy said, “Wait—she’s going in circles. Here are two sets of lipstick marks but in different colors.”
Kaylie, a little way ahead of them, said, “Cai and I went in circles, too. It’s so confusing. We— Fuck!”
She had turned another corner. Amy and Rafe raced to join her. A section of the fence had been smashed in with one of the ice chests. A corner of the chest was dented as if it had been used as a battering ram. Two boards had given way, leaving a hole about a foot above the ground, just above the horizontal railing to which the upright boards were nailed. On one edge of the hole, blood stained the raw wood.
Amy stooped and looked through the hole, hoping to see another part of the maze, another weed-strewn walled path. Instead she saw bushes and, in the near distance, trees. Kaylie said flatly, “She escaped.”
Amy straightened. Anger swept over her: at Violet, at Myra, at TLN, at Keegan’s syndrome, at the world. Why should she go through that hole after Violet? Why should Amy have to feel so responsible? For Violet, for Kaylie, for Gran, for Tommy in the Frustration Box, for the entire world? Why always her?
Responsible. Response-able. She was able to respond. Well, great, fine, wonderful—“able to” wasn’t the same as “compelled to.” So why did she always feel compelled to help, to arrange, to comfort? All at once she was sick of it. Let somebody else take responsibility for a change!
Only there wasn’t anybody else. Not right here, right now. If she said she was not going out into the island, with its infected coyotes, then Rafe wouldn’t go either. He was here to protect her, not Violet. Probably not even Kaylie would go alone, away from any cameras. There was only Amy to make the decision, only she right now at this place in this particular awful moment among the awful moments her life had somehow become.
She flung her leg over the smashed wood and prepared to squeeze through the hole.
“Wait,” Rafe said. “Don’t come in contact with her blood.” He wrapped the bloody edge of the wood with cloth torn from the blanket in his garbage bag, and Amy climbed through. Rafe and Kaylie followed.
The ground sloped down for a few feet. They could clearly see where Violet had slid in the loose gravel. Next came a strip of weeds and torn-up ground rutted with deep tire marks, probably from construction equipment. At first it wasn’t hard to follow Violet’s trail. She had dropped a used-up lipstick, shed her jacket, torn a bit of silk on a thorny bush. Once into the trees, however, it became more difficult.
“Listen,” Rafe said. “Hear that? I think it’s the sea. If Violet is thinking at all, maybe she’d head that way to search for a boat, or to circle around back toward the start of the maze. The helipad is on that small cliff right beside the ocean.”
Amy said, “It’s not much to go on. We don’t know how rational Violet still is.”
Kaylie said, “She was rational enough to break out of the maze. Besides, I don’t have any better idea—do you?”
Amy shook her head.
Kaylie said, “You know, it’s funny—the show was supposed to be about predicting people’s behavior, and here we are predicting Violet’s. Don’t you think that’s funny?”
“Hilarious,” Amy said sourly. “Come on.”
Rafe said, “Stay together. I’m going first and looking ahead. Kaylie, you keep a watch on either side, and Amy, you watch behind us. If you see, smell, hear, or anything else the first sign of a coyote, yell. They’re primarily nocturnal but I’ve seen them out in daytime, and anyway their behavior will be changed if they’re infected.”
“I have no idea what a coyote even looks like,” Kaylie said. “Wait! I have an idea! We should carry torches, like when people are attacked by wolves in the movies!”
“I thought of that,” Rafe said, “but it would take too long to find pine pitch and coat branches with it, and otherwise the branches will just burn too soon.”
“Too bad,” Kaylie said, and Amy turned to stare at her sister. Kaylie was enjoying this.
They moved cautiously through the trees. Rafe was proved right in his choice of direction; almost immediately they found one of Violet’s shoes in a little clearing. Rafe said, “If the disease causes fever, she’s going to take off as many clothes as possible.”
Now Amy could hear surf through the trees. Not loud, it wasn’t a windy day, but steady. Waves breaking against rocks. They found Violet’s other shoe.
Something moved through the trees. Amy gasped and said “There!” The shape picked up speed. Amy’s heart thudded as the three of them backed into each other. Rafe and Kaylie took out knives. Rafe said “Careful—”
A deer broke cover and bounded away.
Kaylie laughed shakily. “Bambi. And we react like it’s Shere Khan.”
Shere Khan—the tiger from The Jungle Book. Gran read it to them when they were small. Amy was surprised that Kaylie remembered. Somehow, despite all reason, that made her feel better.
Several minutes later, as the surf sounded more strongly, Rafe picked up a bloody scrap of silk from on top of a stand of weeds. Violet’s blouse. He dropped it again, careful to not touch the blood.
The trees thinned. As soon as they cleared the forest entirely, they saw Violet. She sat beneath a stunted pine, one of a little grove on the edge of the cliff, the trees bent from years of salty wind. Violet, in jeans and bra, had her knees drawn up to her chin and her bare arms wrapped around them. She rocked back and forth, singing.
“OK,” Rafe said. He took a length of rope off his belt. “I’m going to tackle her and—”
“Ha!” Kaylie said brutally. “She’s way taller than you and twenty pounds heavier, even slim like she is. I’ll tackle her and you two tie her.”
“No!” Amy cried, without thinking.
“Still the big sister?” Kaylie said. “Knock it off, Amy.” Kaylie started forward.
Amy stuck out her foot and tripped her. Kaylie sprawled on the ground, her face sliding across dirt. In a second she was up, lip and cheek bloody, fists clenched. “Why did you do that? Amy, you don’t own me!”
“It’s too dangerous!”
“But I’m the biggest one here!”
Too true. Kaylie was nearly as tall as Violet, and without Violet’s dancer’s slimness. Kaylie had breasts, hips. But Violet had muscular legs and arms from her constant dance classes, and Amy didn’t want Kaylie anywhere near Violet. Amy pretended to turn away and hang her head, and Kaylie twisted to again look at Violet. Instantly Amy was on her, the sheer weight of her attack carrying both of them to the ground. “Rafe!” Amy called. “Tie her!”
But Rafe was gone.
Both girls realized this at the same second and sprang to their feet. Rafe had dropped his pack and was halfway to Violet, who also
stood up and looked poised to run. But even as Amy ran forward, she saw Violet stagger and fall. Closer, and Amy could see Violet’s eyes: wild, rolling from side to side, crazy.
Violet shouted something incoherent. She flailed on the ground, clearly unable to rise. Rafe, intent on getting to her before either Kaylie or Amy, held a length of rope in his hands. But his words, coming to Amy over the surge of waves, were calm and soothing. “It’s OK, Violet, I’m not going to hurt you, it’s OK—”
He reached her, the length of rope stretched between his hands, the shadow of the spindly pine only partly darkening both their figures. Then something fell or leapt from the tree branches above and fastened itself on Rafe’s neck.
He screamed. The thing did not let go. Amy, stopped cold in horror, saw that it was a squirrel. Rafe tore it off him and it ran a few steps, staggered, and fell. She saw the foam around its mouth. Then the squirrel ran again, floundering, and plunged over the side of the cliff.
Rafe had fallen to his knees. Blood soaked his collar. Amy heard the ranger’s condescending voice in her head: This isn’t West Virginia, son. Here only coyotes have been found as carriers. And this is an island. Squirrels don’t cross that much water.
But one had.
“Shit!” Kaylie cried.
And Violet jumped to her feet, not shaking or flailing, her eyes dark with emotion. She said, “I didn’t know about this part. Please believe me, Rafe—Myra didn’t tell me anything about this!”
Thirty-four
TUESDAY
AMY STOOD TRANSFIXED. Gooseflesh rose on her sweaty arms. She started forward and Violet said, “Don’t touch him! It can be transmitted by blood!”
Kaylie said, “You whore. You were faking!” She leapt at Violet. Both girls went down. Kaylie outweighed Violet but Violet was stronger. A few rolls on the ground and Violet had Kaylie pinned. Strands of Violet’s black hair straggled loose and fell into Kaylie’s mouth.
“I’m letting you up, Kaylie, but don’t try that again! It’s Rafe you should be thinking of, not your own stupid revenge for what you don’t even understand!”
Amy barely heard her. She ran back for Rafe’s makeshift pack and fumbled in the plastic garbage bag for the syringes, carefully wrapped in his jacket. She got one out, then hesitated. “I don’t know how to . . . or how much. . . .”
“Give it to me,” Rafe said. “I can still do it.” He looked normal, except for the torn flesh and blood on his neck. Amy, remembering the squirrel fastened to him like a leech, shuddered. Rafe took the needle and injected himself in the bend of his left elbow, emptying the syringe. His voice trembled.
“That should do it. But I don’t know if the symptoms come on anyway and then the medicine catches up, or what. The virus can cross the blood-brain barrier but I don’t know if the antidote can, or if it works indirectly. I might show some symptoms. Give me something to cover my neck, and don’t touch my blood or saliva. OK, Amy?”
She nodded. He was trusting her.
Rafe rose, shakily. “Let’s go while I can still walk.”
Kaylie said, “Not till this whore gives us some answers!”
Amy said, “It can wait. And I want to get away from the cameras!” She had figured out that much, anyway.
Kaylie had not. “Cameras?” She looked up into the tree branches.
“Somewhere. Come on!”
Across the open stretch, into the trees. Clouds had rolled in, blocking the oppressive sunshine, but also making it dimmer beneath the trees. They couldn’t find the path. After what seemed a long while but probably wasn’t, Amy said, “This way?”
“I don’t know,” Rafe said. “It’s so hot here—”
He fell down.
Immediately Amy dropped to the ground beside him. “Rafe—can you get up?”
He didn’t answer. Violet and Kaylie watched, Violet wrapping her arms around her skimpy bra, Kaylie uncharacteristically quiet, with her hands on her hips. When Rafe staggered to his feet, Amy slipped her arm under one of his shoulders. Violet darted to his other side but Kaylie shoved her away.
“You’ve done enough, bitch!”
Through the trees, trying to remember which way they’d come—“This way,” “No, that way”—but finally they got through the little forest, although not at the same place they’d entered. Clouds had rolled in, obscuring the sun, and a wind sprang up. Across a stretch of scrub and weeds rose the maze, seemingly miles of rough upright boards. It looked like a stockade, Amy thought, a pioneer barrier keeping out predators. If there were more infected animals on the island, wouldn’t the humans be safer inside the maze?
“Amy,” Kaylie said softly, “look at Rafe’s mouth.”
Saliva pooled at the corners of his mouth, foaming spittle. His brown eyes looked unfocused. They rolled back in his head.
“Put him down!” Amy said.
On her knees beside him, she said, “Rafe? Can you hear me?”
He started to speak, stop, and grinned crazily. Spittle flew from his mouth. Then he began to sing, a tuneless and almost wordless mumble.
“He’s going weird,” Violet said.
Kaylie suddenly laughed, a sound so shocking that both Amy and Violet stared at her. Kaylie said, “I know that song! Our stupid choir teacher at school liked all those lame old musicals . . . listen!”
Rafe’s voice grew stronger. His eyes grew wilder. Finally Amy distinguished the words croaked out in Rafe’s tenor: “Once in love with Aaaamy, al-ways in love with Aaaamy—”
Kaylie said, “Don’t quit your day job, Rafie. God, you geeks are all alike.”
Rafe turned his head at the sound of Kaylie’s voice and lunged for her.
She was too quick. She leaped backward and his jaws closed on air. Kaylie said, “He tried to bite me!”
Violet said, very low, “We can’t wait any longer to tie him.”
But Rafe had the rope. It still hung from his belt. Rafe swayed on his feet, grinning crazily. He was obviously very ill—didn’t that mean he would be easy to seize and tie? They were three against one. Amy glanced at Violet and they began to circle Rafe carefully. Kaylie, taken over by her own anger, stood fused to the ground and glared at Rafe.
“You fucker—you tried to bite me!”
“Kaylie—” Amy began, but too late she caught Kaylie’s expression: rage, the kind of primal fury that stops all thought, that hijacks all action. “No, Kaylie!” Amy shouted, but that was too late, too.
Kaylie raised her fists and hurled herself at Rafe. Amy screamed. He would try again to bite her and this time he would succeed, his teeth would sink into her and—
It didn’t happen. Rafe was not yet as physically weak as he looked. He leaped backward, away from Kaylie’s attack, and then he was gone, running into the trees behind them, as fast as ever.
Violet said shakily, “Adrenaline surge.” She wrapped her arms around her bare upper torso.
Kaylie didn’t pursue Rafe—not that she could have caught him. She stood with her head down, panting hard, fists closing and unclosing.
Amy said, “Did you . . . did you see his face?”
“No,” Violet said. “What about his face?”
“He knew.”
Violet put a hand on Amy’s arm. “Knew what?”
“Knew he was dangerous to us. Knew he’d tried to harm Kaylie. He ran away to keep us safe from him.”
Violet said nothing. Kaylie snapped, “Romantic bullshit! He tried to kill me!” Her fury turned on Violet. “This is all your fault!”
“Some of it, anyway,” Violet said. “Not all of it.”
Amy said, “We can argue about this later. For now we have to . . .” Have to what? She tried to think. “We have to get inside Maze Base, away from any infected animals. We can get there by following the maze wall.” She pointed to the upright boards, dull now under the increasingly sullen sky. “That copter pilot said he would come back or would send somebody back for us. As soon as he finds out his family is safe from the riots. Then
we can get help for Rafe.”
Violet said, “There are no riots.”
Kaylie whirled to face her. “We saw them on TV! It’s a revolution!”
“There is no revolution. You saw a CGI simulation that Mark Meyer put together.”
Unreality swept over Amy. None of this could be happening. It had nothing to do with normal life: with getting up in the morning, getting dressed, caring for Gran, going to work. That was what real people did. Real people didn’t end up on an island with infected animals, a foaming-at-the-mouth friend, another friend who was nothing like what she appeared, and a manufactured version of history in bright Technicolor. Real people also didn’t cause any of that to happen, as Myra Townsend and Mark Meyer apparently had.
She said to Violet, “Tell me. Now,” and at the tone in Amy’s voice, even Kaylie shut up.
Violet said, “There are no riots. The president wasn’t assassinated. I wasn’t bitten by a coyote. It was a trained animal, a shaved dog, and I had that fake blood that actors use, hidden under my blouse. Tommy was easy to fool.”
“So the whole thing was part of the scenario.” All at once Amy remembered Mark Meyer’s text message to her that morning: Last time. She’d thought he meant this was the last scenario. He’d really meant that Amy should remember the last time, when the spiders had been real animals but harmless.
Violet said, “I was part of the scenario, and so was the fake coyote attack, and me leaving the maze. But not the real infected squirrel that bit Rafe. I don’t think even Myra knew that was here.”
“I think she did. I think she had it brought here to bite one of us.”
Violet stared. “I thought I was the cynical one here. She would be breaking about sixteen laws if she did that. Including maybe attempted murder.”
“Only if anybody can prove it. Violet, why did you do it?”
“I can’t tell you that. But I hope you’ll believe I had a good reason.”
“Not good enough! What’s happening to Rafe—this virus thing is new and so is the antidote and nobody really knows how bad he could be! Wait—was that ranger fake, too? Compton?”