Chapter 27
Once they got back Ben pulled Niko aside. He had changed since she left that morning, he limped more and the skin around his eyes had an oily bruised cast as if he had just been punched. Up close she could feel the waves of heat coming off him and see the sweat condensing on his forehead.
“We need to get out of here.” He said, his tone serious while everyone around them chattered happily over the new stuff and gasped in amazement at the three thermoses of gasoline.
She shook her head before he could continue. “I’m not going back, I told you.” She wrapped her arms around her stomach, wishing he wouldn’t try so hard. “There’s someone who might know where Jared is. I can’t go.”
He closed his eyes briefly. “My leg’s infected.” He said.
Niko felt her own eyes widen as they fell to his injured leg. The skin that peeked out above the bandages was flushed, a red army invading his healthy brown skin. He probably had less than a week if he didn’t get it properly treated and she silently cursed herself for not grabbing the bag with the medical supplies. Infections killed people nearly as much as Slithers did.
“It’s not your fault.” He said mistaking her silence for contrition. “You did everything exactly as I told you to. These things are hit or miss out here, it missed you and got me.”
She remembered how fast the boy who had cut his hand on the mirror went, changing from a bright young child to one who’s whole arm had become so black and rotting that he died before surgery could be attempted. If Ben’s infection progressed as fast as that boy’s had he was in trouble.
“Jade.” She asked over Ben’s shoulder. “How far away are we from the city?’
Jade was knitting silver needles flashing up and down in her hands. She turned toward the sound of her voice though she still wasn’t quite looking in Niko’s direction. “About two days.” She said her fingers brushing along the length of the right hand needle until she found her place again and resumed knitting.
Niko was surprised; she had no idea that less than an hour of flight could cover so much distance.
“You’re leaving already?” Asked Lo who had been listening in on their conversation.
Ben touched her arm lightly; even his fingertips were hot. If they started out that day and didn’t run into too much trouble it was possible for them to make it back to the city in time, she didn’t have to enter its walls.
Still she shook her head. “Ben's the one going, I’m staying here.”
He sighed in disappointment.
Lo gave them a small frown. “Don’t go yet. At least wait until tomorrow after Gretchen sells the gasoline. That way you can have some supplies when you leave.”
Ben hesitated, the faster he got back to the city the better his chances were of keeping his leg but it was also near dark, Slithers would be out soon and an injured traveler made a tempting target.
“I guess I can wait until the morning.” He said eventually. He glanced at Niko. “Maybe I’ll convince you to come with me by then.”
But the next morning just as the waterman had predicted it was raining. Ben’s lips spread into a thin line as they listened to the rain pounding above their heads with no signs of abating.
“At least you weren’t outside in this.” Devon said as a consolation. Ben did not look consoled. In the morning he unwrapped the bandages around his calf and she saw how much worse the infection had gotten through the night.
His skin had been so tight that Niko felt uncomfortable just looking at it. The dark stitches stood out like small black bugs and she could see the prominent spider-web pattern of veins. He winced when she touched his skin.
“I don’t want to die like this.” He said in such a low voice that she barely heard it over the roar of the storm.
He became more and more silent as the storm persisted through the day and his window of opportunity grew smaller and smaller. He lay on the mattress his body curled away from her. She wished things were different, that the rain didn’t burn, that Slithers didn’t roam, and that Ben was free to leave whenever he wanted. But it was only wishful thinking; if things were different they probably wouldn't be in their current situation.
She placed a light hand on his shoulder before she went over to Lo and asked her a quiet question.
When they’d first entered Lo’s and Norm’s home she had noticed several cans of paint lining the hall. She carried one into the main room where she situated herself in front of a bare wall. She removed the lid, taking a thick carpet of dust along with it.
While the outside of the can had been battered by time and the elements inside the color was bright, probably as bright as it had been when it was originally manufactured all those years ago.
Niko dipped her hand into the paint coating fingertips to wrist in a vivid pink color. She reached out and with long, broad strokes began to paint the wall.
She could feel the grit and grease that clung to its surface as she worked. Excess paint dribbled down her arm and plummeted to the floor like spattered blood drops of some new creature neither Slither nor human.
The color was an odd one but she was glad for it, its eccentricity livened the room and everyone fell silent, watching her. She sometimes caught Ben’s eye as she moved and she smiled.
When she was finished she sat on the mattress besides Ben.
“You seem to have a thing for trees.” He said. She had painted a tree as she only saw in books with limbs reaching toward the sun and covered in lush green leaves though in her version the foliage was rendered in pinks.
She brushed a finger over his hot cheek leaving a thin trail of paint in her wake.
“Norm and Lo can kill Slithers.” She told him in a low voice and while he didn’t exactly perk up the same way he would have had he been healthier his eyes did brighten with interest and he called the two girls over.
Explaining what he was going to do he flipped open the lighter and passed the flame in front of their faces. Norm’s eyes flickered in the light changing from light brown to blue and a pale yellow. Lo’s eyes did not change at all.
He hummed quietly under his breath asking for their ages and receiving a twenty-two from Norm and an eighteen from Lo.
“What does all this mean,” Norm asked as Ben flipped the lighter closed and tapped it thoughtfully against his chin.
He paused. “It means that as long as you protect them from Slithers the Council will allow you to stay in the city.”
Norm and Lo clasped hands excited about the idea of staying in the city and bringing the rest of their family with them. Then Ben told them that the city only allowed people with the ability to kill Slithers in so easily and since Lo’s eyes couldn’t switch nothing except a live demonstration would get them to believe that she was capable of defending the city as well.
“Why do my eyes change and hers don’t then?” Norm wanted to know.
Ben hesitated, rubbing the side of his nose with a finger. “We have no idea but if Niko here is any example you’ll be better than most people who fight Slithers.”
Norm appeared satisfied with the answer but Lo remained silent her eyes bouncing between the two of them. Niko kept her hands clasped in her lap. She wanted to tell them about the experiments she read about in her file, how they all had Slither blood running through their veins and how it was possible that the only reason they were able to kill Slithers so well was because they were partly Slither themselves. The only reason why she didn’t was because she didn’t want them to be ostracized. Most people outside of the city walls hated the things enough already and if they learned that neighbors were part Slithers it would bring a lot of trouble to Norm and Lo.
Ben performed the test on everyone else in the room and they discovered Ed’s eyes flickered as well though he had yet to kill a Slither.
Ed looked both proud and nervous as they talked about his new found potential. “I want to go to the city,” He said shyly. “Will my mother be able to come too?” He broke into a huge smil
e when Ben said that since he was so young she would be let in as well. He didn’t seem terribly worried when Ben warned him that once he entered the city it would be difficult for him to leave it again.
“Who’s his mother?” Niko wondered out loud once Ed had skipped far enough out of earshot. She was surprised when Lo said Gretchen.
Late in the afternoon the rain finally stopped but with no Grey-men to salt the ground and neutralize some of the acid no one went outside. Ben would have to wait until tomorrow to begin his trek.
That night while he tossed in his sleep beside her, his clothes clinging to his body from the sweat of his fever Niko lay awake watching him and debating fiercely with herself.
She did not want to go with him; he acted as if her presence alone would insure his safety. If that had been the case the helicopter wouldn’t have crashed and infection wouldn’t have set in his leg.
Another part of her pointed out that it was partly her fault that he was in such dire straits, she could have found another way to escape the city, and in a way she owed him. She didn’t have to enter the city, she only needed to deposit him somewhere along the edge of it.
As she was formulating an argument to squash that particular piece of logic she heard footsteps coming down the hallway. It could only be Gretchen and though Ed claimed that she was his mother Niko gripped her pocketknife, she and Ben still slept on the mattress and she wasn’t sure how the woman would take that.
She paused at the mouth of the entry and this time the lamplight didn’t cast her in shadows and Niko could see her clearly. She had the darkest skin Niko had ever seen and her hair was pulled back in a crinkly bun. She held the short metal rod loosely in her hand as she scanned the room, her eyes settling briefly on Niko before Ed stirred in his blankets and called for her.
Niko heard nothing more than the slippery sound of whispers as the two talked but she was sure they were discussing Ed’s flickering eyes and what that would mean for their future.
She settled back down relaxing her grip on the knife. Ben moaned in his sleep and she rolled toward him, she could see the big vein at the side of his neck throbbing as blood rushed through his body with each beat of his heart. The wet cloth that she’d placed on his forehead earlier had fallen off revealing brows pinched in pain. An unconscious frown pulled down the corners of his full mouth.
She sighed moving in closer beside him. If she didn’t want to feel guilty because she let him die helpless and alone she was going to have to go back with him to the city.
Niko Page 35