His eyes were sad. “You always say we.” He shook his head slowly.
“I…I need you to be here for me, Scotty.”
Now he looked directly at her, and when he spoke his voice was almost a whisper. “I’m not here…at all…”
And then he wasn’t. Pepper blinked and stared at the empty seat across the table, the only sound the rising and falling cry of the wind outside. She was alone, and she’d always known it. She began to cry. “You had to go and get yourself killed. You had to die and leave me behind.” Pepper started to sob. It hadn’t been the end of the world that had left her with this great empty hole inside. It had been losing her brother, her twin. She’d been alone ever since the Army told them what happened five years ago.
“Please come back,” she sobbed, and put her head down in her hands.
Pepper wasn’t sure how long she stayed like that, but eventually she rose from the table feeling hollow and wrung out. She wanted to crawl into her bed and hide beneath the covers as she’d done when she was a little girl, simply wish the world away and lose herself in the merciful oblivion of sleep. Instead she bundled up in her layers and coat, pulled on an actual pair of leather gloves (both CHP corpses had a pair tucked in their gun belts) and headed back up to the roof. The coming storm had already dropped a couple of inches on the solar panels. Wincing at the wind and biting cold, she crawled about on her hands and knees with a flashlight and spent almost an hour wiping them clear. She knew they’d be covered again by morning, and she’d be back up here repeating the task, but tonight’s work would mean a little less labor tomorrow.
When Pepper returned to the warm interior she was shaking and barely able to make her hands work well enough to take off her coat and boots. She found her bed and cocooned herself in blankets.
He’s wrong. There’s life out there. “I will get out,” she muttered.
Just before sleep claimed her, Pepper thought she heard a howl outside in the night.
Only the wind.
Fiddler stood in Pepper’s snow trench, thirty yards away from the tour bus. Her new vision saw the world in reds and grays, and the bus was a long, cherry-colored rectangle as black motes of snow swept down all around her.
She was motionless except for her hands, which clenched and unclenched repeatedly. Fiddler struggled with the thoughts and imagery assaulting her newborn brain, all of it colored by an undercurrent of seething violence. It was almost too much to control, and she wanted – craved – to smash her way into that warm place and feast on the meat inside.
She resisted. Half-formed scenes played out behind her eyes, tempering her rage with the knowledge that the prey had weapons, could destroy her, and that she would have to wait for the right moment, difficult as it was.
Rip. Rend. Destroy. Feed.
Her entire body shuddered, but she remained where she was.
Fiddler had seen the prey up on the…the…bus…crawling around and sweeping with her hands and arms, her little light bobbing and dancing. Whatever the prey was doing was important to her…the top of the bus was important to her.
The newly risen predator in Fiddler (the cunning part of predation, not the raw savagery) urged her to watch and learn.
Bite. Scream. Feed.
Think.
The Hobgoblin trembled in the snow, still opening and closing hands that felt neither cold nor pain nor knew what exactly to do but move. Whatever they were for, they were wondrous things, well-suited for tearing flesh and breaking bone. But she was certain they had other uses as well.
The creature stared through the night, up at where the prey had been crawling around, and thought.
TWENTY-SIX
Skye awoke to a dark room lit only by a single candle resting on a nightstand. It smelled like kiwi and strawberries. She recognized the bedroom of the owner’s apartment, and the queen-sized bed in which she lay. There was a chill on her skin where it touched the air, but she was warm and comfortable buried beneath comforters and a heavy quilt.
Both her eyes were open, but she was experiencing none of the double vision or disorientation of previous attempts to use both her normal eye and the strange, regenerated one at the same time, the two seeming to have come into some sort of balance. It was startling though, because she realized she was seeing and processing in two spectrums at the same time; both standard vision and heat detection, with its intense, accompanying clarity. She looked around the room a bit, getting used to it.
The thermal bloom of PFC Rooker was standing by the bedroom door, as far from Skye as he could get and still be in the same room. He was blowing into his cupped hands, watching her, but as soon as he realized she was awake, his hands dropped to the assault rifle hanging around his neck. Skye saw his central, cherry glow brighten, and she detected a sudden, sharp change in his scent. Tiny beads of perspiration appeared on his forehead.
Why was he acting like-
Prey
-he wanted to bolt out the door?
Skye noticed an empty chair beside the bed, a blanket draped over the back. She looked at Rooker again, seeing him shift from foot to foot, noting the way his hand kept flexing around the pistol grip of his rifle.
Weird kid.
She stretched under the blanket, feeling well-rested. No, it was more than that. She felt wonderful, strong and full of energy.
“How long have I been sleeping?” she asked Rooker.
The PFC jumped at the sound of her voice. “Y-you slept all last night, and a-all through today.”
Skye shifted under the covers, realizing she was naked. What the hell? How-?
“The Top’s been sitting with you the whole time,” Rooker said. “He just left to talk to the captain. I’ll go get him.” The young Ranger fled the bedroom.
She didn’t remember undressing or even getting into bed. Had something happened? Had she been wounded somehow? Skye started to run her hands over her body beneath the comforter, searching for an injury, and then cried out at a sharp pain in her hip as if she’d just been cut with a knife. The hand on that side felt wrong too, and she pulled it free of the covers.
It was enlarged; not swollen, but bigger than her right hand by half as much, and there was no pain as there would have been with swelling. It was thick with new muscle (in fact her entire arm felt more muscled) and it seemed as if the bones themselves had grown. White gauze encrusted with dried blood bound the fingers together, and protruding from the tips of her first two digits and thumb, replacing the fingernails, were three, gleaming black talons, each two inches long and curving into razor-sharp hooks. One was tipped with fresh blood from where it had cut her hip.
Skye held the monstrosity before her, and began to cry.
Master Sergeant Cribbs entered then, his complexion bloodless in the candlelight. He stopped beside the bed, looked at the hand, then at the girl’s face. She met his eyes, tears streaking cheeks the same color as the Ranger’s.
“What is this?” she whispered, choking on a sob.
Cribbs gently took her wrist and inspected the dressing. “The bleeding’s stopped. Does it hurt? Wiggle your fingers.”
She pulled the hand away. “I don’t want to wiggle my fingers,” she cried. “I want you to chop it off!”
Cribbs sat down in the chair and shook his head. “Skye, I don’t know the first thing about genetics. And if all this is biological warfare, and that’s my theory, all I know about that is that it’s destructive.” He frowned. “But even an old bullet-blocker like me knows it’s the virus, the Slow Burn. But I can’t explain this,” he gestured to the clawed hand now resting on the quilt, “any more than I can tell you what happened to your eye.”
Skye immediately raised her good hand to cover the strange eye.
“It’s okay,” Cribbs said, pulling the hand away, still gentle. “Does that hurt at all?”
She shook her head, the tears still flowing, and Cribbs told her about the bath and how they’d found her, how she’d been sleeping ever since. “We’ve been r
otating watches to keep an eye on you.”
“So you can kill me if I turn into a monster.” She let out a sob and looked away. “I am a monster.”
“Bullshit. We wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
“I’m not. I’m nowhere near okay. Rooker…”
“Rooker’s a stupid kid, and he’ll get over it.”
Skye lifted her clawed hand and stared at it again. It was large and hideous. She tried to bend the fingers, but the gauze allowed only a small amount of movement.
Cribbs turned to the door. “Bracco,” he called, and a moment later the big corporal entered with his medical kit. “How’s the patient?” he asked, smiling at Skye.
“Let’s cut away the gauze,” the master sergeant said. Bracco sat on the edge of the bed, his mass making it creak, then carefully used a pair of surgical scissors to snip away the wrapping. Uncovered now, it was even uglier than before, and Skye let out a gasp at the large knuckles and knotted muscle. She wiggled the altered digits as instructed; they moved without pain, though the weight was a new sensation and the movement felt awkward.
Bracco held her hand in his. “The tissue where they came through is already knitting together. Maybe the tearing wasn’t as bad as we thought…” Then he shook his head. “No, that flesh was ripped at the tips. This is accelerated healing like…well, like nothing else.” He pressed his thumbs in different locations across her hand. “Any discomfort?”
“No.” And that was the strangest thing of all, she thought. The hand, wrist and forearm felt strong. She made a fist, then instantly cried out. Two pinpricks of blood had appeared in the pad of her hand where the talons had met flesh.
“Going to take some getting used-to,” Bracco said as if talking about a rainy day. She liked him for that. The corporal opened an alcohol pad and swabbed at the tiny wounds. Skye continued flexing and moving the fingers, abruptly realizing that with a single blow she could probably rip the corporal’s face right off his skull.
Where did that fucked up thought come from?
“I don’t think you’ll be able to wear gloves,” Bracco said, as if he saw this every day. “I’ll find you some kind of mitten.”
“It better be a big mitten,” she said, but the attempt at humor came out as a cracking whisper.
Cribbs looked at her. “I can’t help but wonder if this is what’s waiting for me.” He immediately flushed and looked away, angry for making this about himself. Skye grabbed his forearm with her good hand and squeezed. “I hope not, Oscar.” She wiped her tears from her cheeks with the palm of her left hand (very carefully – she didn’t want to accidentally blind herself) but they came right back. “You don’t want this. I’m a freak.”
The master sergeant gave her a smile. “Then there’ll be two of us.”
Now she closed her eyes, not even trying to hold back the sobs. Bracco quietly left the room as Cribbs shushed her, gently stroking her bristly head. After a while Skye quieted.
“The captain’s worried about you,” Cribbs said. “Think you can come down and show him you’re still alive?”
She nodded.
“I’ll give you some privacy so you can get dressed.” He indicated the clothes and boots she’d stacked in the bathroom near the tub, now waiting on a nearby dresser. She also noticed that not only was her rifle, bandoliers of ammo and all her combat gear piled neatly at the base of the dresser, but her .357 was in its holster on the nightstand next to the candle, easily within her reach.
Cribbs saw that she’d noticed the weapons, and gave her his best glare. “If I was worried you posed a threat kid, don’t think for a second I wouldn’t have put you down myself.”
Skye smiled and squeezed his arm again.
“Listen,” the Ranger said, “our situation hasn’t changed. We’re still in the shit. If you’re up to it, I’m going to need my sniper.”
Skye gave him a single nod, and the master sergeant left, closing the door behind him. Careful not to disembowel herself by her own hand, Skye climbed out of bed and got dressed.
Sallinger didn’t say much. Stretched out on the couch in front of the fire, his broken leg unseen under a wool blanket, he looked pale and unable to get comfortable, shifting frequently and wincing every time he did, gritting his teeth and hissing. He was overdue for painkillers.
Skye wasn’t wearing her eyepatch on purpose, and she raised her hand to show it to him.
“Are you in pain?” he asked.
She said she wasn’t. The Ranger leader didn’t look long at her new talons, but looked closely at her eyes, and not with revulsion or morbid curiosity, she thought. More like an evaluation. She found it difficult to meet his stare, and didn’t know why.
“How do you feel?”
She shrugged. I’m okay. A little freaked out.”
The Ranger looked at Oscar, who nodded slowly. He looked back at Skye. “Are you good to go?”
Skye crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t know…I can’t…my hand…” She made a frustrated noise. “I don’t know what I am,” she said at last.
“You’re under stress, like any combat soldier,” he said. “The virus has fucked you up, that’s for sure, and life is hard. It doesn’t change the fact that your squad needs you, so I’ll ask again. Are you good to go?”
For a moment Skye almost blurted out that she was definitely not good to go, that she was sick of the virus fucking her over, and that this dwindling squad of soon-to-be dead men was better off without a dangerous and unpredictable monster in their midst.
“I’ll try.”
Sallinger made a disgusted noise and looked away. “Never mind.”
Skye bristled. “What does that mean?”
The captain looked at her again, his eyes hard once more, as they’d been during their conversation on the Amtrak train, when she’d suggested he put PFC Moore down before the infected soldier could turn into a threat. “You’ll try? That’s a child’s answer.”
Now her gray cheeks reddened. “What do you want?”
Sallinger sat up, clenching his teeth against the pain, and jabbed a finger into her chest. “I don’t want a child, Dennison. I want a fucking killer!”
She slapped his hand away and bared her teeth, his scent and heat signature triggering something inside her. The taloned digits of her left hand opened into a claw shape. “Don’t…you…touch me,” she said softly.
Sallinger stared back at her. “That’s what I need,” he said. “Now, are you fucking good to go?”
“Yes!” she shouted.
“Hoo-ah,” Sallinger whispered, sagging back onto the couch. Bracco moved in with his needle full of oblivion, and Cribbs motioned for Skye to follow him. The young woman stood and stared at the wounded Ranger for a moment longer, her rage draining away, her emotions torn and conflicted. Finally she followed the older soldier.
Several minutes later they were standing in a small room at the top of the Coburn Hotel’s uppermost staircase, a door leading out onto the rooftop to their right. The master sergeant’s flashlight picked out a metal shelving unit against one wall loaded with small tools and painting supplies. Leaning in a corner were three rolls of heavy black roofing paper, with several sealed buckets of tar resting on the floor nearby. Filling most of the small space was a snow-blower covered with a blue plastic tarp. The room smelled of dust and oil, and it was freezing, an icy draft curling around the edges of the door to the roof. They could see their breath in the flashlight beam.
As cold as it was, Skye was comfortable enough. In addition to the jeans, sweater and high boots with the heavy tread and spikes, she’d found a woman’s coat in the back of the hotel owner’s closet. It was all white, a down-filled Columbia insulated by a wool lining, with a similarly insulated hood. She also wore her death’s head ski mask, now rolled up into a cap. On her right hand was a Nomex shooting glove, and as promised, Bracco had found her a roomy snowmobile mitten for her other hand. Already the talons were starting to tear through the fabric at the end.
“That must have been a bitch to get up here,” Cribbs said, gesturing at the snow-blower. “The stairway’s too narrow. Must have hauled it up with ropes.”
Skye nodded, wondering what it was doing up here in the first place. Weren’t snow-blowers for sidewalks and driveways? A moment later she got her answer when Cribbs opened the outside door. Wind and stinging snow particles hit them hard, making them tuck their chins into their collars. Ahead of them, the roof of the Coburn was expansive and buried in hip-deep snow. Shoveling would have been a monumental task, exhausting and impractical.
“Now the snow-blower makes sense,” she said. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the wind.
The Ranger nodded. “See how flat it is? If no one removes the snow, it’ll collapse. These aren’t new buildings.”
“Is it going to collapse underneath us?”
“No, I checked it.”
She could see that Cribbs had come up here at some point earlier, for there were narrow paths stomped through the snow from the rooftop door to all four sides of the building. At the end of one of those trails, the one that led to the front of the hotel where it overlooked the street, Cribbs had overturned a pair of steel mesh baskets to form a platform of sorts.
“Did you bring me up here to help you clear snow?” Skye asked.
Cribbs shook his head. “The virus did all this shit to you, but it couldn’t burn away the smartass? No, Miss Dennison, we’re not going to be here long enough to worry about collapsing roofs.”
At least you and the squad won’t be, she thought.
Cribbs led her along the path toward the front of the hotel, both still hunched against the biting wind. As they moved out onto the roof, Skye could see that at four stories, the Coburn was indeed the tallest building in Truckee. She also saw that the buildings attached to the left and moving east up Main Street, as well as those across the intersection heading in the other direction, all had lower but similarly flat roofs, and all of them were blanketed in snow. She wondered why they hadn’t been built with peaks, but remembered what Cribbs had said about them being old. This part of town had probably been standing since those railroad days she’d seen in the lobby photos.
Omega Days (Book 5): The Feral Road Page 26