“Oh, Paxton, it’s not like it was before,” Rhonda said, keeping her voice low. “This is Reverend Hooke’s church now. I go to First Baptist, though I can’t be as involved as I’d like.”
Paxton’s father had impressed upon him at a young age that attending First Baptist was almost as bad as converting to Roman Catholic. The First was where the rich people went—as rich as anyone got in Switchcreek—and everybody knew they didn’t take their scripture seriously.
“Aunt Rhonda’s the mayor now,” Deke said, sounding amused. He was bent under the ceiling, holding his plate and plastic cup of iced tea between big fingers. Waiting to see how Pax would react.
“Really?” Pax said, trying not to sound too shocked. “Mayor Rhonda.”
“Six years now,” Deke said.
“Well,” Pax said. “I bet you keep everyone in line.”
Rhonda chuckled, obviously pleased, and patted his arm again. Her mood kept changing, fast as switching TV channels. “You and I need to talk. Have you seen your father yet?”
He felt heat in his cheeks and shook his head. “I just got in.”
“He’s not in a good way, and he won’t take my help.” She pursed her lips. “After your visit, you give me a call.”
“Sure, sure,” he said lightly.
Her eyes, already small in her huge face, narrowed. “Don’t sure me, Paxton Martin.”
Pax blinked. She wasn’t joking. He remembered a church picnic when he was nine or ten: Aunt Rhonda had found Pax and Jo misbehaving—he couldn’t remember what they’d been doing—and she’d taken a switch to their backsides. She didn’t care whose kids they were. Then she gave them both Moon-Pies and told them to stop crying.
“I’ll call,” he said. “I promise.”
She smiled, all sweetness again. “Now you better go eat your meal before it’s cold.”
She turned away, and several people at the table nearest them resumed talking. The charlie man stepped away from the wall and followed Rhonda. He glanced back at Paxton, his expression serious.
Deke walked toward the other end of the room, where a group of argos, including the woman in the green dress, ate standing up, bent under the drop-tile ceiling. Pax tried to follow, but he’d been recognized now, and people wanted to shake his hand and talk to him. Some of them seemed exactly as he remembered them. Mr. Sparks, already an old man when Pax knew him, had been one of the few of the elderly who’d survived, and in his own skin. He still looked trim and vigorous. Others had become distorted versions of their old selves, or else so changed that there was no recognizing them. Each of them greeted him warmly, without a hint of reservation or disapproval, as if he’d decided on his own to leave Switchcreek for greater things. After all, every other unchanged person under thirty seemed to have left town. After the quarantine lifted, after the Lambert riots and the Stonecipher murders, who the hell would stick around if they didn’t have to? The skips skipped.
He squeezed past two tables of charlies, nodding back at those who said hello to him, even when he wasn’t sure of their names. The people of Aunt Rhonda’s clade were as wide as he remembered from the year and a half he’d lived among them: squat, moon-faced, engulfing their metal folding chairs. Finally he made it to the far side of the room where the argos had congregated. Most stood with their slouched backs touching the ceiling. A few perched on benches at the edges of the room, knees and elbows splayed, like adults at kindergarten desks. Each of them was a different shade of pale, from pencil lead to talcum.
Deke held out a long arm. “P.K., you remember Donna?”
Like all argos, the woman was tall and horse-faced. But while argo hair was usually stiff as straw and about the same color as their skin—troll hair, Deke had called it—hers was long and red, cinched tight close to her head and then blossoming behind, like the head of a broom.
The woman held out her hand. “Good to see you again, Paxton.” Her voice was as deep as Deke’s—deeper maybe—but the inflection was more feminine somehow.
“Oh! Donna, sure!” He put down his plate and grasped her big hand in both of his. Donna had been a year behind them at school. She was a McKinney, one of the poor folks who lived up on Two Hills Road. Poor black folk. And now, he thought, she was whiter than he was.
“You two have been married how long again?” Pax asked. As if it had just slipped his mind. He remembered a wedding invitation that had been forwarded to him from his cousins’ house in Naperville. He’d meant to respond.
“Eight years at the end of the month,” Donna said.
“You guys were kids!” Pax said. “Tall kids, but still. What were you, nineteen? That must have been some shotgun wedding.”
“Not really,” Deke said.
“Oh shit, I’m sorry,” Pax said, then realized he’d said “shit” in church and felt doubly embarrassed. There was no such thing as a pregnant argo, no such thing as an argo baby. “I didn’t mean—”
Deke held up a hand: Don’t worry about it.
Donna said. “We want to feed you supper, then of course you have to stay at the house.”
“No, really, that’s okay—”
“We’ve got plenty of room. Unless you’re staying with your father?”
“No.” He said it too quickly. “I thought I’d just stay at the Motel Six in Lambert.”
Deke said, “Have you talked to him lately?”
Pax started to say, Twelve years, give or take—but then the two argos looked over his head. Pax turned. Tommy Shields walked toward them, the twin girls trailing behind him.
Tommy had been tall before the Changes, but he’d lost several inches of his height. His face was hairless, without even eyebrows, and his skin had turned a light brown that was splotched with dark across his cheeks and forehead. But he was still first-generation beta, with a broad jaw and too much muscle in the shoulders, and the old Tommy was still recognizable under the new skin.
His voice, however, was utterly different. “You’re Paxton,” he said softly. His lips barely moved, and the sound seemed to start and stop a few inches from his thin lips. “Jo Lynn’s friend.” He extended a hand, and Pax shook it and released without squeezing.
Pax couldn’t think what to say, and finally came up with, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Girls,” Tommy said, “this man was a good friend of your mother’s.”
The girls stepped forward. Heat flared in Paxton’s chest, an ache of something like embarrassment or fear. They were the same height, their heads coming up to just past Tommy’s elbow. They had to be almost twelve now.
Tommy didn’t seem to notice Paxton’s discomfort. “This is Sandra,” Tommy said, indicating the girl on his left, “and this is Rainy.” They were second-generation betas—the firstborn of that generation—and their wine-colored faces were expressionless as buttons.
“Hi,” Pax said. He coughed to clear his throat. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” He knew their names from decade-old letters. Jo had rejected twin-ish stunt-names. No alliteration, no groaners like Hope and Joy. The only thing notable was that Rainy—Lorraine—was named after his mother. “Your mom was—”
He blinked at them, trying to think of some anecdote, but suddenly his mind was empty. He couldn’t even picture Jo Lynn’s face.
No one spoke.
“She was a great person,” Pax said finally. “I could tell you stories.”
The girls stared at him.
“I bet they’d like to hear those,” Tommy said. “Come by the Co-op and we can talk about her. Before you leave.”
Pax hesitated. Co-op? “I’d like that,” he said. “I’m not sure if I can, though—I have to see how my father’s doing. But if I can get away …”
Tommy looked at him. “If you can spare the time,” he said in that soft voice. He smiled tightly and turned away. The girls regarded Paxton for a long moment and then followed Tommy across the room.
Pax exhaled heavily. “Man,” he said.
Donna said, “Are yo
u okay?”
“Yeah, it’s just those girls.” He shook his head. “I know Jo loved them. She did, right?” Before they could answer he said, “Never mind, stupid question. It’s just that I can’t believe she’d leave them.”
There was an awkward silence, and he looked up at the argos. Deke was frowning, and Donna wore a strangely fierce expression.
“She wouldn’t,” Donna said.
He looked from Donna to Deke, back again. He could see it in their faces. “You don’t think she killed herself?”
Neither of them said anything for a moment. Deke shook his head. “It’s just a feeling,” he said.
“Show me,” Pax said to him. “Show me where it happened.”
Chapter 2
THEY WALKED INTO the midday heat, and Pax said, “My car or yours?”
Deke looked down at him.
“Oh. Right.”
Deke led him across the gravel parking lot. One of the satellite trucks had left, and the other had its rear doors open. A young man in a blue suit jacket sat on the back fender, smoking a cigarette. He looked like he was going to ask them something, but a look from Deke made him put the cigarette back in his mouth and glance away.
“I wouldn’t let ’em in the church,” Deke said. For good reason, Pax thought. The media had been no friend to the town. The summer of the outbreak they’d been invaded, squads of masked reporters shoving cameras in their faces. The quarantine had forced the newspeople out, but the phone calls for interviews had kept coming, and the people of Switchcreek could see on TV what the world thought of them. Then came the Lambert riots, and the Stonecipher murders, and the feeding frenzy continued. A few betas had tried to go grocery shopping in Lambert, and the town went nuts. That’s when the drive-bys started, rednecks roaring through Switchcreek to knock down mailboxes and shoot up the stop signs. A barn burned, and the state police finally started patrolling the streets. A few weeks after that, the Stonecipher brothers were found beside the road, shot dead. They were argos, big old boys and a little wild. The killers were never found.
The spotlight eventually moved on to the next hurricane or celebrity overdose, but Pax still saw Switchcreek popping up on TV every once in awhile, mostly for some science or health update. A couple times some website would run rumors about other outbreaks, in other countries, but they were never substantiated. Mostly Switchcreek was ignored. A normal death in the town probably wouldn’t go further than a mention on local news, but a suicide or murder might be worth a few seconds on the cable news networks.
Deke opened the door of a green Jeep Cherokee with the canvas top rolled back. The back bench had been removed, and the front seats had been pushed back and raised. They climbed into the cab. Deke’s long arms and legs easily reached the oversized steering wheel and foot pedals.
Paxton’s legs dangled from the passenger seat. He felt like a kid in a car seat.
Deke followed Piney Road back to the highway, then turned south toward town, driving with one arm resting on the roll bar in front of him. His curved spine gave him the appearance of hunching over the wheel. The car speakers squawked with static, then went silent. Nestled into the dash was an elaborate black receiver.
“CB?” Pax asked.
“Police scanner.”
Pax thought a moment. “You must have been one of the first to hear, then.”
Deke sighed, a slow sound like a freight train coming to rest. “I heard when the dispatcher called for the ambulance, but by then it was way too late.”
“Jesus,” Pax said. “I’m sorry, man.”
They crossed the two-lane bridge and then slowed as they entered downtown. They passed the Gas-n-Go, the Power Rental, the Icee Freeze. Each building looked more run-down than Pax remembered, slope-shouldered and tired. Only the old one-room schoolhouse, which had been falling down when he was a kid, looked like it had been refurbished. The walls wore a fresh coat of red paint, and a new sign out front declared it to be the Switchcreek Welcome Center.
Right. Welcome to Monster Town.
Nobody had figured out what had turned the residents into freaks. Transcription Divergence Syndrome was just a fancy description of the damage, not an explanation. No strange microbe had been found skulking in their bloodstream. The water and air and dirt were radiation free, and no more poisoned with toxins than any other poor mountain town. The most common theory was that it was a new retrovirus, whatever that was, but if there’d been any kind of virus in the air it was gone now.
TDS wasn’t contagious, either. No one who wasn’t living within five miles of downtown that summer had ever caught it, even though during the outbreak victims had been parceled out to a dozen hospitals in Eastern Tennessee. After thirteen months with no new victims it became clear that the quarantine was a waste of money. The national guard pulled out. The government still kept tabs on them, and doctors and reporters still made their own drive-bys, but most of the rest of the country, satisfied that TDS couldn’t happen to them, lost interest in the town.
Pax was surprised, then, to see so many cars in the parking lot of Bugler’s Grocery. A smoked-glass tour bus was disgorging middle-aged people in shorts and shirtsleeves. One of them saw the Jeep and lifted a camera to her face. Deke stared straight ahead as they passed.
Pax stared at Deke. “Oh my God, were those tourists?”
Deke looked at him, a half smile on his lips. “We get a bunch every weekend,” he said. “Not so much since the anniversary.” The ten-year anniversary of the Changes had been three years ago. Pax had avoided watching any of the specials.
Deke stopped at the traffic light, even though it was yellow and there were no other cars at the intersection. On the corner was a new building, a gray brick one-story with white columns holding up the entrance roof. It looked like a library.
“Oh my God,” Deke said with a weird nasal whine, and then laughed.
“What?”
Deke shook his head, laughing.
“What, damn it?”
“Listen to yourself. You sound like a Yankee now.”
“Hey, get beat up a few times in a Yankee high school and you drop that southern accent pretty quick.”
Deke’s short laugh was like the beat of a bass drum. Pax flashed on an image of them lying on the floor of Jo’s living room. God they’d spent so many hours hanging out there during the quarantine. The beery, happy SOS meetings.
The light turned green. Deke turned right on Bank Street. He nodded toward the new building. “The free clinic,” he said. “And worth every penny. All you have to do is keep filling out their surveys.”
“Sounds familiar.” In the early days of the Changes, they’d all been poked, prodded, and interrogated on a daily basis. Even after Pax left Switchcreek he’d get fat envelopes in the mail requesting him to be in this or that study. He never followed up. He moved out of his cousins’ house in the Chicago suburbs when he was eighteen, then kept moving through a series of apartments around the seedier parts of downtown, and somewhere along the way the scientists lost his scent.
The clinic was the only evidence he could see of the disaster relief money that had been supposed to rain down on Switchcreek after the quarantine lifted. When Paxton left town they were talking about new schools, scholarships, compensation for every family that had lost someone in the Changes. But now the place looked more run-down than when he’d left.
Pax said, “So what do people do for a living around here?”
Deke laughed shortly. “Most of the town’s on welfare. Not much work for anybody since the economy tanked, but for us …” He shook his head. “We’ve got a hell of a preexisting condition. Even the service jobs with no insurance, nobody wants us serving burgers or talking to the customers.”
Deke drove back behind the elementary school, which looked about the same as when Pax and Deke and Jo had gone there. In the blacktop recess area one of the basketball hoops was bent almost straight down, and the other was missing. Argo kids had to be hell on hoops.
“Not some restaurant. The number three Mexican restaurant chain in Chicago, not counting Chi-Chi’s and Taco Bell.”
“Really.”
“Really.” Pax shrugged. “It’s not a career or anything.” No shit, he thought. There were two types of people in the restaurant biz: temps and lifers. The lifers were alcoholics with hefty pot habits. He’d always thought he was a temp—marking time until he figured out what he wanted to do with his life—until he woke up one morning with his fourth hangover of the week and realized he owed his dealer $300.
“You got a girlfriend up there? An ex-wife? I don’t see a ring on your finger.”
“I’m not exactly husband material,” Pax said. “Or boyfriend material. Actually, I’m not even sure I’m material.”
At Creek Road they turned left, taking them higher, up along the side of Mount Clyburn. The mountain marked the edge of the state. Walk up into those trees and you wouldn’t start back down until you were in South Carolina.
“I like Donna,” Pax said. “You two seem happy.”
“I got lucky.” Deke slowed the car, swung onto a gravel driveway. “Jo moved out this way a couple years ago.” He followed the driveway up in a steep S. After two curves and a couple hundred yards the driveway leveled out at a patch of ground dug into the side of the mountain.
The house was a simple wood bungalow that could have been built at any time in the last seventy years. The front door of the house was closed, and drapes covered the windows.
When Pax was a boy, well before the Changes, the house had been a run-down rental inhabited by a succession of nearly identical poor white families: rarely seen except for their dogs forever trotting into traffic. Jo, however, had fixed the place up as well as could be expected. The canary paint and green trim looked only a couple years old. There were flowerbeds along the front and a pair of dogwood trees at each corner.
A huge oak rose up behind the house, its full limbs spread protectively over the roof.
The Devil's Alphabet Page 2