If he could speak, he'd tell the strangers the truth of their existence. He wanted to relieve them of their heavy burdens, but there were too many and their needs were too great.
Nurses wearing n95 respirator masks stood behind clear plastic screens. Before being allowed into the camp, refugees were required to have their temperatures tested. Everyone was questioned.
A soldier stood stiffly holding a wicker basket of masks. “We don’t have an infinite supply of masks, people! We have to identify anyone who’s sick and quarantine you in a separate area!”
“What’s your name, handsome?” a nurse asked Jaimie.
The boy glanced up at the fluorescent lights and squinted. The headache pain struck him hard in his temples. The sound of the nurse’s voice made him recoil. It wasn’t just that her voice was the equivalent of fingernails on chalkboard. Her jagged energy came at him in red daggers. The nurse wasn’t infected, but her heart was weak and she suffered some sort of metabolic disorder. Her heavy breathing in her mask made Jaimie feel heavy. His skin felt tight.
“I have to have a name so I can make out your ID bracelet, son. Are you deaf?”
Jack stepped forward to speak for her son but the soldier barred her way, his rifle at the ready, pushing her back roughly. “Get back behind the green line on the floor and wait your turn!”
Anna caught Jack as she stumbled backwards. “My brother is autistic!” she yelled.
“We don’t care if he’s artistic!” the soldier with the basket of masks screamed. “Answer the nurse, boy!”
“Awe-tistic! He’s got Aspergers, for God’s sake!” Anna screamed.
Jaimie watched the nurse’s energy shift sharply from red to snowflake white as the epiphany hit. The woman’s energy drained to embarrassed streaks the color of bile as her aura shrank to within an inch of her body. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”
The boy caught the soldier’s mean look.
No one understands. I’m not here for ‘God’s’ sake, Jaimie thought. I’m here for all of you.
As soon as Jaimie’s mind was aligned with his purpose, he began to move. The fluorescent lights didn’t bother him anymore and he dismissed the receding headache. He heard no extraneous sounds. Jaimie did what he’d done all his life: he focused.
The soldier with the basket of masks frowned as Jaimie stepped forward. He pulled an arm back as if to strike the boy with the back of his hand. However, he froze as the boy reached into the basket and plucked out five hospital masks.
“B-boy? Whachoo doin’?”
Jaimie turned and walked down the line. He tugged on the sleeve of a man standing beside Theo.
“Que pasa?” The young man looked confused.
Jaimie’s father nodded and smiled. “Show them, son,” Theo said. “Calm them and help them avoid indignity. They’re all so afraid.”
The boy offered the Hispanic man a mask. The stranger took the gift without a word and allowed Jaimie to pull him out of line gently by the elbow. Jaimie walked farther down the line, ignoring seven more refugees until he arrived at the chosen ones. He did the same trick three more times: an old woman with a cane, a pretty blonde chewing and popping her gum furiously and the child beside her with streaks of tears tracking through dirty cheeks. He pulled each person from the line gently and none resisted or protested.
Jaimie turned back to the head of the line. He walked to the soldier who had pushed his mother with a rifle. He looked up at the big man and offered the last mask.
“Already got a mask, boy!” the soldier barked. But when he met Jaimie’s gaze, time slowed.
Jaimie watched a rivulet of hot sweat slip down the man’s temple, the moisture spreading through the mask’s fabric. By the shape of the soldier’s eyes and his aura’s fire engine red draining to rust, Jaimie knew the man’s arrogance had faded. The man had the same white shimmer the nurse had suffered as the sharp epiphany cut into his brain. A fresh cascade of adrenaline and fear pulsed through the soldier’s body. He looked smaller as his shoulders sagged.
Jaimie watched, fascinated, as Sutr’s wasps wound through the aura over the man’s lungs and infected his heart valves. They were merely black agents of the virus, of course, not insects. As they drained energy from human cells, they looked like wasps to Jaimie. With each pass, they darkened from ebony to a shining obsidian.
Wasps, Jaimie mused. A nest of wasps, a pail of wasps, a pladge of wasps. There were so many collective names for the insects, the wizards who designed language must have been feared them terribly. If people could see their deadly flights spreading the Sutr virus, they’d come up with many more names for them now.
Jack hugged her son, pulling him back. She called to the nurse, still frozen behind the glass, fascinated and aghast. “His name is James A. Spencer. I’m his mother, Jacqueline Spencer. He doesn’t do well with fluorescent lights, so — ”
Eager to get rid of the strange boy and his family, the nurse rushed to type out the required information: name, birth date, blood type, and number of dead in the family. When she was done, the bracelets dropped into a box through a one-way trap door.
“Your bracelets are neon magenta. That means you’ll need to make your way to the area marked R as in Romeo. The tents are marked with tags of the same color. Someone will direct you at the bottom of the ramp.”
The soldiers stood silent. The one with the basket stared at the guard with the rifle.
“Private Daniels? I think you better go to the Q Zone with those people that kid picked out. Get checked yourself.”
“It’s…it’s crazy. I feel fine. I mean…pretty fine.”
“I’m superstitious, Private. Let the docs clear you before you come back to finish your shift.”
Daniels hung his head.
Jaimie wanted to tell the soldier that the mask was a symbol, like ink in a book. He wanted to assure him there was nothing he could have done to avoid his fate. Death is too strong for a paper mask. Death does the choosing.
Jaimie wanted to warn Daniels that he had three days left to divine his purpose before Sutr-X slipped through him completely and stopped his breath.
But the boy was wrong about that detail. Another new mutation of Sutr was coming to the Brickyard. It would kill the soldier in a most horrific way, and soon.
Small heroes fall while villains gain bloody prizes
Dayo still had her two-by-four. It was awkward, standing on the steep steps and pounding on the underside of the hatch above her head. Ten times she struck it. Then twenty. She stopped counting after fifty. Before she was done, her palms were bloody and slick. Whatever Dr. McInerney had used to seal the catch, it held. The hinges did not. Dayo lost her balance when the hatch popped, but wasted no time scrambling up to the deck.
The water’s chop and a heavy crosswind pulled at the small boat and, as she stood, Dayo dropped her length of wood and grabbed at the rail to steady herself.
McInerney stood his post at the wheel, facing aft. He stared into Dayo’s eyes and smiled. One hand was on the wheel. In the other, he held Aadi’s eldest girl, Aasa, by the back of her coat.
“Go below, Dayo,” McInerney commanded. “Once we make more distance from Dungarvan, I’ll call you up top and you’ll help me with the sails. The engine will be fine for now.”
Dayo took a step forward.
“Can the girl swim, Dayo? Can you?”
Dayo stopped, squinted and peered through the fog.
“The boys aren’t here to help you and I have a pretty, little hostage. I’m going home, Dayo! This was always a fool’s errand!”
“Your home isn’t your home anymore, Doctor!”
“Even so. A man should be able to choose his death. Maybe I’ll make it home! Maybe we can take London back! Did you even think of that? Maybe I can still die in my own bed on clean sheets. Maybe I can die next to my wife’s pillow. I’ll still have something of Sheila back there!”
“Don’t do this, Doctor!”
“I’m not a dentist anymore,
Dayo. I’m not a husband. I’m nothing.”
“Listen to me! You only have one chance to do the right thing. This is your chance. I’ve seen men do terrible things in my country. They don’t do bad things because they’re bad. They do bad things because they’re afraid or sad and they want to control something because they know they really can’t control anything!”
“Spare me the psychology lecture!” McInerney shook the little girl and she shrieked. He pushed her toward the side and pulled her back at the last moment.
Aastha appeared at the hatch, only her head showing.
“Get below, girl!” McInerney screamed.
The six-year-old stared up at the man for a moment. Her gaze shifted to her sister. The child frowned and climbed to join Dayo. She offered her hand and Dayo took it. Dayo lifted the lifesaver marked Shepherd of Myddvai. Together, they walked forward.
“I’ll throw her overboard! I swear it! That little circle won’t save you. We’re too far from shore and that water’s bloody cold! You won’t last more than a few minutes! The girls will drown. You’ll watch them die as you die!”
“We know. You’re so afraid, you’d do anything.”
“Then — ?”
“We know something you don’t.” It was a small, narrow boat. Dayo and Aastha were just a few feet away.
A large gray shape loomed out of the fog and a collision alarm sounded from somewhere on the deck of the larger vessel.
“Ahoy! You, in the sailboat! This is the Irish naval patrol vessel Ciara! You’re beyond the Quarantine Zone! Give the password or prepare for your boat to be boarded for inspection!”
McInerney threw Aasa Vermer into the cold North Atlantic. Dayo and Aastha didn’t hesitate to jump. Neither girl could swim, but Dayo was a strong swimmer. She stretched, missed and lunged again. By two fingers, Dayo snagged the hood of Aasa’s coat. Despite the slap and shock of the frigid water, she pulled both girls to the lifesaving ring. The girls sputtered and cried as they watched the sailboat pull away, its little engine chugging and whining at the sudden strain. McInerney steered as close to the Ciara’s hull as he dared, slipping past them.
He spun the wheel and made for the fog as he called to the Ciara’s crew, “Man overboard, you bastards! Two children and one woman in the water! Save ’em if you can bloody stand ’em!”
A different alarm sounded aboard the patrol vessel as the Ciara’s crew lowered a zodiac. Three sailors wearing orange vests over hooded flotation suits leapt into the boat. One sat aft to steer the rescue boat’s powerful engine. The sailor in the middle carried a machine gun and the sailor in the bow directed them through the waves.
To Dayo, the wait to be rescued felt like hours. Her breath was fast and shallow. She’d never been in such cold water and she wondered if her racing heart would give up before help arrived. She told the girls to be calm, but the swell rose and then dropped far away and, for a moment, she couldn’t even see the ship anymore.
She shook and shivered. The little girls’ teeth chattered. They turned so pale, Dayo was sure McInerney’s prediction of their death was right. She had failed the girls and their father. Dayo’s aching hands were frozen claws and her arms felt like sticks. She closed her eyes and prayed, but not to God. She prayed to Aadi and asked his forgiveness.
Aastha was lifted up and away by her coat. Then the man in the bow of the zodiac pulled Aasa by her long ponytail. The girl was so far gone to the cold, she didn’t even murmur in pain.
Her work done, Dayo felt herself slipping and now she felt warm. It was okay. She could drown now, and gladly. Her eyes rolled up to the whites and she let go of the lifesaver ring. She would have dropped away into the welcoming deep if not for the loop of rope that caught her about one arm at the shoulder.
Dayo’s fight wasn’t over after all. One sailor grabbed her by the back of the pants and another helped him muscle her over the side and into the bottom of the zodiac.
All she felt was regret that they hadn’t let her slip and sleep forever, far from monsters deep and dark.
Monsters, she thought, come in all shapes and sizes.
The ones who chose to do evil were far worse than the cannibals she’d fled. The men who had become rabid animals? She could understand them in a way. They were innocent. Sutr did that to them. But men like McInerney? She would hate herself if she understood what some men could become.
When Dayo opened her eyes again, she and the girls were in the zodiac, naked and wrapped in shiny, silver blankets. A sailor with concern in his eyes crouched over them while he took Aastha’s pulse and talked to the others about hypothermia. The Ciara was close by on her left. On her right, another boat pulled alongside out of the fog.
The Irish sailor with the machine gun pointed it at Dr. Sinjin-Smythe, whose hands were above his head. Dayo wanted to yell but found she couldn’t.
“Stop! Stop!” the seaman yelled.
“Those are my daughters! Those are my daughters!” Aadi screamed.
Another man in a dark blue uniform Dayo had never seen before appeared at the rail. Their eyes met. He called to the sailors to calm themselves and smiled at her.
The sailor with the machine gun took aim at Sinjin-Smythe’s chest, ready to shred him.
Sinjin-Smythe held out his hands. “The password is Prometheus.”
The sailor lowered his weapon.
The Ciara’s 20 mm cannons roared and hammered above them.
Dr. Neil McInerney thought he’d gotten away. The dentist exploded in a fountain of flesh and shattered bone as the Shepherd of Myddvai splintered and burned from the Ciara’s volleys. The sailboat burned so brightly, the explosion lit the fog bank with a hellish, red cast.
Dayo tore her eyes from the sight and hugged the naked girls closer, waiting for their shared warmth to save them. She looked down and saw that both girls fixed their gaze on the torrent and interplay of smoke and fog and sky.
Dayo went colder when she realized both Aasa and Aastha were smiling. Their matching grins — spread wide over perfect, tiny, white teeth — could only be described as wicked.
Wraiths and ravens stalk the dead
The Spencer family stepped into the glare of artificial lights and roving spotlights. Helicopters buzzed in and out of the Brickyard like bees to a hive. This would not be the last tent city they would see, but it was the largest. Because of the heat and the press of bodies, people congregated near the gates. On one side stood water and aid stations. To the other side, portable toilets had been brought in. Outside each toilet, a line of people waited, shifting back and forth impatiently.
The Spencers had to pick their way through the mob, angling to the edge of the crowd where possible. Theo held the boy close. The crowd made Jaimie nervous and he held his hands tight over his ears.
Trying to distract her brother, Anna asked, “Why do they call it the Brickyard?”
“Because the Indianapolis Speedway used to be paved with bricks.”
“Duh. Yeah, sure, but wouldn’t that mess up the cars?”
“The old cars weren’t as fragile, I guess. Those stands could seat a quarter of a million people. Now…well, it looks like the Coliseum in Rome now. Already a relic.”
“I’ll never see Rome, will I?” The way Anna said it, she meant it as a statement, not a question. She sighed. “Do you trust Mrs. Bendham with all our stuff and the van?”
“She’ll be fine.”
“What if she decides to take off without us?”
“I gave her the key to the old car. The spare was still on the key ring. She’s not going anywhere, even if she tries. Besides, we’re her only hope.” Jack allowed herself a grin.
“If we’re her only hope, why’d you leave her with the wrong key?”
Jack shrugged. “I don’t know, Anna. Sometimes I can be such a bitch.”
“So it was spite.”
“She gave us away and she never apologized. She acts like she’s doing us a favor instead of the other way around. So, yeah, spite.”
They found their tent assignment. It was old, constructed of heavy canvas and smelled of mould. However, it was a four-man tent so they could stretch out. A nearby sign told them it was forbidden to cook in the tents or dispose of human waste anywhere but the portable toilets. Despite that, odors, both unfamiliar and foul, lay over the massive encampment like an old fetid blanket.
Anna sat in a corner and went through her backpack searching for fresh socks. “You realize when we go out, we’ll have to go through that line again.”
“Not a problem. This is only for tonight. In the morning I’ll find someone in authority and speak to them about Lieutenant Carron. If he is military, and I’m not altogether sure he really was, they can keep an eye out for him and arrest him. These people are the only authority left, so they should know about looters, murderers and black marketeers. Carron is all three. If he comes after us, he’ll have to come this way. Maybe a patrol can pick him up and shoot him.”
“Shooting’s too good for him,” Anna said. “I wish I could do it myself.”
“Me, too!” Theo said.
“You don’t mean that, Anna!” Jack said.
“Maybe.”
The buzz, beat and drone of helicopters hung over them through the night, but they surrendered to exhaustion sometime in the early morning hours. Jack’s last thought before drifting off was that this had been a long, hard day and it was only the first. She’d forgotten to cry for Brandy.
* * *
The Spencers didn’t have to find someone in authority. Authority came for them. Just before noon, a young officer found the Spencer family in their tent. He looked at his clipboard to confirm the tent’s ID tag and poked his head through the flap. “I need to talk to James A. Spencer.”
Jack, who had been reorganizing her backpack, said, “There’s no door but try saying, ‘Knock! Knock!’”
The man’s cheeks flushed. “Knock, knock!”
Jaimie raised his head. He’d heard this pattern many times at school. “Who’s there?” he said.
This Plague of Days (Omnibus): Seasons 1-3 Page 39