The bear didn’t growl or roar or make any sound at all as she advanced. Her fur shivered in the breeze and her eyes glowed with fire as she pressed her snout wetly against Nilla’s leg. She had to be seven feet long and her legs were all muscle. Hot breath jetted up Nilla’s thigh and she cringed.
The bear looked up at Nilla and panted for a second. She stepped closer, her mass making the ground shake and Nilla cried out as she rolled away. Slowly, keeping her hands in plain view she got back to her feet. If she just walked away, backwards so the bear wouldn’t think she was running, well then surely the bear would leave her alone. Right? The bear didn’t want to eat her. She was undead—rotting flesh, full of toxins.
Nilla glanced at the corpse hanging from the tree. Oh. Bears must eat carrion, she decided.
It wasn’t food the bear was after, though, she could see it in the animal’s eyes. The bear knew what she was. It was the same look she’d seen in Lost Hills—and from Charles, less than an hour earlier. The bear was intelligent enough to recognize an abomination.
Nilla turned and ran, her bare feet slapping on the slickrock, her arms pistoning as she—
The bear tore past her at a gallop, not even exerting herself. She rolled one shoulder and slammed into Nilla, sending her sprawling down a slope of loose shale. The pain was intense as she bounced from one sharp rock to another, her skin bruising and tearing as she rolled. When she finally stopped she could only curl around herself, her body screaming.
The bear came lumbering down the hill, a black shape that obscured half the sky, headed right for her.
No, she thought, she didn’t want to… to die like this, not alone in the dead wilderness. No.
No.
The bear stopped not three feet away from her and sniffed the air. She lifted her head and opened her mouth, then moved in, her paws smacking the rock. She would have stepped on Nilla if Nilla had still been there.
Nilla was invisible. The cold bit her with renewed force but the pain melted away. She looked down at her hands with eyes closed and saw nothing—no dark energy, just nothing. She stared at the bear and knew the animal couldn’t sense her at all. It wasn’t over, though. Nilla had to end this or eventually she would run out of strength and become visible again—she had a span of time measured in seconds, maybe—and then the bear would be on her with rending claws and vicious teeth. Nilla had to defend herself if she wanted to walk away.
She reached over and grabbed a handful of loose flesh at the back of the bear’s neck and squeezed through the fur, squeezed as hard as her fingers allowed, digging her nails into the pliant skin beneath. The bear made a noise then, a titanic, warbling yell that almost sounded like human language.
Nilla’s teeth entered the bear’s neck. She could see the artery throbbing there. She could smell the blood. When she broke the skin it coursed out and over her, a red flood to carry her away. What happened next didn’t involve thinking at all. She bit and tore and gouged as the bear screamed. A chunk of meat came loose in her mouth and she swallowed it effortlessly. The skin tore open and she thrust her face deep into the bear’s body, into its hidden recesses. She bit and chewed and swallowed and bit, desperate to steal the bear’s energy before it ran out. The bear couldn’t resist her—shocked by the suddenness and the pain of her attack it could only scream and try to run but she had it, she had it down, down for the count.
Its life flowed into her, through her. Warm as blood, rich and sweet as the bear’s flesh it thrilled in every cell of her body. It felt like being on fire. It felt like being alive again—there she was, all dressed in white bopping down the street, shaking her hips in the sunshine because it felt so damned good to be alive and healthy and beautiful. It was almost too much.
She fell to the ground on her knees and swayed with it for a while with her eyes closed, watching the bear’s golden energy degrade. When she opened her eyes again she saw the bear looking back at her with that same expression of recognition she’d been so startled by before. Then she did a double take. Her benefactor was sitting on the bear’s back as if he planned to ride off into the sunset.
“You—” Nilla looked up at the naked man. His beard looked newly-trimmed and the blue tattoos that covered his skin glowed with their own light. “Who—”
“Mael Mag Och,” he said, thumping his chest. He looked down at his mount, at the expression on her face. “She knows you. She knows what it is to be gruaim air le acras.”
“What are you doing here?” Nilla demanded.
He ignored her. Slipping down the bear’s furred flank he stepped onto the slickrock and looked straight upward at the stars. “In salmon moon, she wakes from winter and eats, and does not stop. She swallows a river if she can, a cliath bhradan. In summer she takes moths—forty thousand every day.”
“How do you know that?” Nilla demanded. The bear’s life energy was flickering out. She felt a pang of guilt like a rippling in her stomach muscles but—hey. Stomach muscles. She look down and saw the four deep gashes there where the bear hit her first.
“I know many things. I know some English, now. Before, chan fhaigh mi lorg air na facail!” He grinned sheepishly. “Sometimes I slip back. I know you. I understand hunger, but do not know it. I talk to dead, you see. I learn.”
Nilla frowned. “What are you? I know you’re not really here. I thought before you were a hallucination. You aren’t though. You’re real.”
He ignored her. “I know what you are. You are shadow, like so many shadows. Different, though. Like fires in a longhouse, except… this one, it goes out. Covered fire. Then it comes back. Know it is you. Sometimes no fire is better signal than fire, yes? You are stronger, and you are smarter than the rest. I must use you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“A job, for you. A cam-borraig. Work. Purpose. You want something more than that?”
“What kind of job?” She brushed hair out of her eyes.
He smiled. “Be yourself.”
She opened her mouth to speak then closed it again with a click. “Be myself.”
“Be the darkness. Be a shadow. You first come east, come to me. To my body. It is is, is in some place of high towers and broad flat canyons. We talk there. No live things, though. No more of the living. They are not allies. They are food for you.”
Nilla shook her head, confused. “What? I—what?” She thought of Charles and Shar—and everyone else who had stared at her, condemned her, hated her. She didn’t like where the thought headed (into her teeth) so she threw it away. “I need them. I can’t drive. I don’t remember how.”
“Then you walk to me.”
The bear died. She made no death rattle, nor did she go into convulsions. She simply flickered out, the last of her vital fire gone. Darkness began to fill her up instantly. There was no transitional zone, it seemed, between life and death, or at least between life and undeath. It was a change of state, not form.
Nilla pulled her hair back in a ponytail but had nothing to tie it with so she just held it. It felt less greasy than before, strangely enough. It had more body, too. That was weird but she had no time to consider it. “Screw this. I don’t need a job, guy. What I need is to stay alive. If that means consorting with living people, I don’t mind that at all. You want me to walk east, with no idea where I’m going.”
“Yes,” he nodded happily.
“To talk to some guy who doesn't understand English. Or clothing.”
“Yes.”
“And for this I get a sense of purpose.”
“Oh, yes,” he said, and opened his arms as if to embrace her. “Let us begin.” He bowed and gestured toward the east with one arm. The first pale glow of dawn was surging there. “You begin, now.”
“No. Not tonight.” She turned on her heel and started walking away, up the slope and back towards the motel. Whatever the future held it started with a shower. She was covered in the bear’s lifeblood, thick gobbets of it coagulating on her skin. She could imagine a better time
to conduct a job interview. “When we’re talking about full dental and three weeks paid vacation, then you get back to me.”
Behind her she felt the bear stir, her energy smoky and dark. She didn’t want to look back and see her own handiwork.
“Very well,” he said to her back, “I’ll give you what you want, though is fhasa deagh ainm a chall na a chosnadh.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“You drive a hard bargain, but it may be worthy. Lass, you come east, to my body, and I’ll tell you the name you’ve lost.”
He was gone when she turned to look. Only the bear remained, inching her way up the slope toward her interrupted meal. The look of recognition on her face was gone. Nilla saw nothing there but hunger.
Chapter Ten
KNOW THE SYMPTOMS OF CHOLERA! Diarrhea. Abdominal cramps. Nausea and Vomiting. Dehydration. [Hospital Bulletin published by the Centers for Disease Control, 4/1/05]
“I don’t see enough lights down there. It’s only what, 2200 hours? There should be lights on, people should be watching primetime television. Get us closer and hit that target with the main light,” Clark said over the headset built into his helmet. He couldn’t hear himself think over the noise of the helicopter’s engines.
“I am sorry, Bannerman, do you copy me?” Vikram asked from the next crewseat over. “Doctor First Lieutenant Desiree Sanchez is requesting that she be allowed to euthanize some of the victims, so she can dissect them. I am as discomforted as you, but I think it is the only way to—”
“I copied you the first time, and I still won’t allow it.” Clark peered down at the unlit streets of Lost Hills, California. He couldn’t see a damned thing. The pilot wore NODs to see in the dark but the passengers had to make do with their naked eyes. The town looked deserted. The people were scared, sure, he didn’t blame them but he didn’t see any vehicular traffic at all. What was going on? There were supposed to be people down there for him to interview, people who might have seen the blonde girl as she came through. Clark had gotten a truly lucky break—traditional channels had actually turned up something useful. The Kern County Sheriff’s office had flipped the girl’s description on a trivial shoplifting case at a local convenience store. The owner had described one of the thieves as blonde, maybe forty years old with a black tribal tattoo of a sun with wavy rays on her stomach. The Sheriff had recognized the description of the tattoo from the APB. She had been here, maybe a day or two before at the very most. This was Clark’s best lead.
“Bannerman, Captain, I must implore you! Destroying a few of the specimens may be the only way! What if by doing this she finds a cure?”
“And what if she doesn’t? How do I explain to the families that their dad, their grandma, their twelve-year-old son had to have his head cut open while he was still alive because we thought it might help other people with the same illness, except it turned out not to help at all? Let her use the bodies those SWAT butchers at the hospital gave us.”
Vikram stared at him. In the dark cabin his eyes gleamed with frustration. “Their heads were all shot to pieces. Not much use when studying a brain ailment.”
Clark grimaced in distaste. He stared through the polycarbonate canopy of the Blackhawk at the square shadows of buildings below. “Okay, get the lamp on that structure,” he demanded. The pilot flipped a switch.
In the overwhelming white light of the Blackhawk’s main search light everything was the same flat gray, distinguishable only by ultra-black shadows blasted away by the lamp. The infected swarmed across the broken windows of a feed store like enormous maggots, their faces slack as their twisted hands reached upward to try to snag the helicopter.
One of them held a broken piece of bone. He threw it hard and it bounced off the metal skin of the helicopter with a resonating clang.
Breath puffed out of Bannerman’s lungs. Not in surprise, not anymore, no, this was just nervous exhaustion. Another town overrun. That made six in California, three each in Utah, Wyoming, and Texas, twelve in Colorado. More of them, certainly, that he didn’t even know about yet. The infected had taken over the streets of Lost Hills. “Did we receive any kind of distress call from this place before it went down?”
The pilot answered on the helmet circuit. “Negative, sir. These little farm places, they’re full of illegals. Probably more afraid of la Migra than they are of the infected. Do you want me to initiate a search pattern of maneuvers and look for survivors, sir?”
“Yes,” Bannerman Clark said, wondering why he was being asked such a silly question. “Yes, I do.”
“You’ve got dead—or infected, or whatever—people wandering into streams and reservoirs and rotting there. You’ve got healthy people being shuttled around like livestock to camps where they don’t even have basic health services. We’ve got sanitation breaking down all over the west and with that comes cholera, with that comes typhoid, and giardia on a scale you can’t imagine. In Arizona, in New Mexico dirty water is going to kill us faster than these cannibals.” [The Surgeon General in a briefing for NIH Field Agents, 4/2/05]
Dick did not know why he’d been brought to this zone of naked blood-red rock. The sun was intense. It dried him, leached the moisture out of his most hidden orifices. He chafed, and blistered, and the skin of his thighs wore away in red patches but he didn’t stop. The dead don’t stop for pain.
The voice in his head that was no voice knew what needed to be done. Dick did not question his instructions. He marched with his two-step gait—bare foot, then the boot, bare foot, then the boot—and devoured the miles beneath him.
Dick lacked any kind of sense of time. He could not have determined how many hours or how many days passed when he finally came to the edge of a cliff and looked down on white, foaming water. His dry body cried out for the smooth kiss of the water and the thing that steered him agreed. Dick toppled forward and fell, an ungainly diver, into the hissing silver of the river, heedless of rocks, uncaring of his clothes. He surrendered himself to the current and for a while he drifted along the bottom, his toes brushing the stony riverbed, his eyes closed. When he opened them again he had washed up on the far bank and water poured from his wet clothing, rolling back down into the stream.
He did not know how many times he had done this before, or how many bodies of water he was yet to visit. Someone else, some other force kept track of those things.
Time to move on to the next errand. Dick pushed his face into a crack in the rock and dug out some spiders with his tongue. Just enough to give him strength. Then he headed forward, once again into the excoriating sunlight.
Chapter Eleven
STAY TOGETHER! Know your group number by heart! [Signage posted at Evacuation Centers in Los Angeles, CA, 4/2/05]
Nilla couldn’t help herself. She knocked on the door of the little apartment behind the motel’s registration desk. No one answered, of course. She stepped inside into a faint smell of mildew and a lot of dust that jumped up out of her way everywhere she moved.
She found a dresser in the cramped bedroom and touched the smooth wood of its drawers for a moment before opening them. It wasn’t so much that she felt bad about stealing another person’s clothes, though there was that. It was more the lack of familiarity. She couldn’t remember her own dresser, if she had one. She couldn’t remember her own bed, the smell of the sheets, whether they were starchy or silky or even what color they were. It felt less like she was intruding on someone else’s domain than as if she were inventing each gesture—the first time she ever opened a drawer, the first time she ever pulled on a pair of simple cotton boxer shorts. Things she must have done thousands, tens of thousands of times before in her living life.
Every single thing was new. Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe her life had been tragic and horrible. Maybe even that didn’t matter. Maybe getting a second chance, one where you didn’t have to be aware of the old life you’d lost—maybe that was something valuable and good by itself.
The clothes in the dresser
were men’s clothes. Maybe the man on the tree, the one who blew out his own brains with a shotgun—
The airy light coming in through the apartment’s windows wouldn’t let her dwell on thoughts like that. The little apartment was too cozy, the day too bright. She brushed the image right out of her head. It wasn’t hard. She felt good, amazingly good. Maybe not as exultant as she’d felt in the middle of the night with her hands steeped in the blood of the bear. But good.
She zipped up a pair of low-riding jeans around her hips and buttoned down a soft white cotton shirt, rolling up the sleeves because they were too long. She caught her reflection in a mirror hung behind the door and had to stop a while and just take it all in. Her skin was clear. Pale, still, but… her eyes were big and warm and bright. No dark circles, no bags, not even crow’s feet. Her hair looked like it had just been styled. She pulled up the shirt to check her abdomen, standing on tiptoe to see it in the mirror—a man’s mirror, it only showed her from the neck up—and saw there was no discoloration there anymore. Even the wound on her belly had settled down to a few thin lines of scar tissue that looked old and well-healed where they bisected her tattoo. The only real injury she retained was the one that started it all—the circle of tooth marks on her neck and shoulder where she’d been bitten to death.
“How about that,” she breathed, a smile folding her lips. Pinkish lips, not blue. She laughed out loud, just a single ha but it was natural, spontaneous.
She looked great. She sniffed her armpits—nothing.
She was still admiring herself in the mirror when she heard a door slam nearby and someone come clattering out onto the motel’s breezeway. Charles and Shar.
Now what was she going to do about them?
It is imperative, especially now, that facilities for worship and religious observance are made available for the use of relocated persons. In the interest of saving space a standard multi-faith chapel may be erected, as long as it follows military guidelines on diversity and tolerance. [FEMA Supplementary Notice No. 74: Relocation Camps: Facilities, issued 4/2/05]
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