Jerusha knelt before the kids. She spoke to them gently, in French. She pointed at herself and Wally. Wally caught the name “Lucien.”
The kids didn’t say anything. They stared at Jerusha and Wally, wide-eyed. One little boy gave his head the tiniest shake. He said something to his companions, but it didn’t sound like French.
“What did he say?”
“Not sure,” said Jerusha. “But I think he’s translating to Baluba for me.”
“Hold on a sec,” said Wally. He squeezed Jerusha’s hand before releasing it. Freed children and emancipated staff members cowered when Wally limped across the clearing. The staff members looked even more frightened than the freed children; maybe they were right to do so.
Wally hurried to where he and Jerusha had stashed their packs, ignoring the pain in his leg. He dug out his photo of Lucien and brought it back to Jerusha.
She was talking with the little boy who translated for her. He had large, almond-shaped eyes. He looked to be nine or ten. His name was Cesar, she said.
Wally pointed at the photo. “Lucien?”
Cesar shook his head. So did the others.
Jerusha took Wally in one hand and Cesar in the other. She pulled them toward another, larger, group of kids. He held up the photo while she spoke in French and Cesar translated into Baluba. Nothing. Just confused glances.
They questioned everybody. A few of the former staff members trembled, or erupted into a torrent of French when Jerusha spoke to them. She translated their pleas for understanding, for mercy, for Wally and Jerusha not to hurt them. They’d been forced to do these terrible things against their will, she said. Jerusha’s eyes watered, too.
Wally grew more anxious, his palm sweaty in Jerusha’s hand, with every person they questioned. Every blank stare was another lost chance to find Lucien. Every shake of the head was another path to Lucien, closed.
Something tugged at his pant leg. He looked down. A little girl, not much older than eight or nine, looked up at Wally. Dozens of quivering fingers with gnarled, yellow nails protruded from her neck, arms, and legs; the poor thing was one of the dozens of jokers Wally had freed by disintegrating the cage doors. “Lucien?” she said quietly.
“Yes! Lucien!” He held up the photo. “Lucien?”
The little joker girl said something in French. Jerusha knelt beside her. They had a short conversation. It ended with the girl crying, and Jerusha turning pale.
“What? What did she say?”
Jerusha stood. She flung her arms around Wally, sniffling. “Oh, Wally… She says she was in a group of kids that received injections two days ago. She was the only survivor.” Her voice broke. She hugged him more tightly. “I think Lucien was in that group.”
“No. No, he wasn’t. That’s not true. She’s wrong.”
“She knew him, Wally. She’s from Kalemie, too.”
“No. Lucien’s alive and I’m gonna find him.”
“Lucien,” said the girl. She raised her arm, pointing. The extra fingers all bent in the same direction, like stalks of wheat bowing before the wind. They pointed toward the edge of the clearing, toward that place where Wally didn’t want to look.
Where the backhoe stood next to a wide mound of freshly turned soil. Where the jungle stank of death. Where vultures picked at the earth.
“No!” Wally limped to the mound. “No, no, no. Please, no.” He grabbed the backhoe and heaved, ripping it free with the shrieking of tortured metal. The vultures squawked in protest, the wind from their wings buffeting Wally as they leaped for the sky.
Wally gripped the backhoe bucket with both hands and scooped a long, narrow trench out of the mound. He flung the dirt away. He did it again and again, each pass going a little bit deeper, each pass proving that Lucien wasn’t here. Proving that Lucien was alive and safe. Somewhere.
Until he hit something soft. A tiny foot, caked in quicklime, curled toes sticking up through the mud.
“No!” Wally hurled away the broken backhoe arm; it whistled out over the jungle and disappeared. A distant clang echoed back a few seconds later, along with the screeching and shrieking of upset wildlife.
He fell to his knees. He dug with his hands. A shadow fell over him: Jerusha, weeping softly at grave’s edge.
The grave held seventeen little boys and girls, their bodies all ruined by the wild card virus. Melted, crystallized, putrefied, skinless, boneless, faceless. Black queens, and jokers who had survived the transformation only to be shot in the head. Or what passed for the head.
Lucien was near the bottom.
His body had become a kite. Narrow bones like pencils formed ugly bulges in his waxy, translucent skin. They’d torn through in places, cracking his skin like fragile parchment. His face had become flat and two-dimensional, like a stained-glass portrait of a little boy. But he still had those ears, those ridiculously large ears…
Lucien had died in an American Hero T-shirt. It was part of a whole package of clothes that Wally had sent; it had his face on the front.
He lifted Lucien out of the grave. Jerusha held Wally while he cradled his dead friend. They stayed that way a long time. Wally’s tears fell on Lucien’s lifeless body, a rain of salt and rust.
Halifax
Nova Scotia, Canada
It was a generic cheap hotel room, old-fashioned enough to look that way even to Mark’s eyes. Off-white wallpaper yellowed from decades of tobacco smoke before it was banned in even such out-of-the-way precincts as these, green pinstripes and fleurs de lys, a hunting print with dogs and guns and ducks on the wall. A little TV with bunny ears instead of a cable or satellite box. He smelled cleanser, heard the cicada drone of canned laughter on a TV set on the other side of a wall not strong enough. His alter ego didn’t care much about comfort, far less luxury. All Tom cared about was security.
“Sun Hei-lian,” he said. I’ve got the mouth, he thought, and he doesn’t know. “Listen to me.”
Sitting upright in bed beside him, combing that exquisite black hair threaded in fine silver, the naked woman froze. Her eyes alone moved toward where he lay on his side, fearing to move. “Your voice
…”
“… is different. Yeah. I’m not the Radical. Tom, you call him. I’m Mark.”
Very deliberately she laid the brush down on the flimsy hotel nightstand. He knew very well that not far from it lay a compact black Makarov pistol. Sun was an expert with a handgun. “Who are you? How did you take over Tom’s body?”
“I’m the rightful owner,” he said. “The man who calls himself Tom Weathers is a squatter.” She didn’t relax. But she brought her hand down to her lap. Good sign. “You look better firsthand,” he said before he could stop himself. She furrowed her brow. “I’ve watched you, all along,” he said, thinking, Oh, Jesus, I sound like Earth’s creepiest stalker. “I see… pretty much everything Tom does. But for me it’s all soft focus. Like a dream.”
“Is this some kind of trap?”
“The Radical can make himself look and sound like anybody else on Earth. Why would he try talking with a funny voice out of his own mouth?”
It took her a moment to answer. “For a long time,” she said, not looking at him, “I’ve felt there was something inside Tom. Something gentle. Someone… kind.”
She shook her head. “I was attracted from the first. He was a beautiful Western animal, stronger and more vital than any natural human being. And there was the wildness of him. Like an element of nature. Like wind and fire.” Her hair swept across her face like soft banners as she turned to look at him. “Why am I telling you this?”
“Because I’m him,” he said. “Only not really.”
She frowned. “What do you want with me?”
Everything, he longed to say. But… what was he? What did he have to offer a woman like this? His own body was middle-aged and gawky, not prepossessing, not the body of a rebel Greek god. And he didn’t even have it. And anyway, that wasn’t the urgency that drove him like a dehydrated man’s cra
ving for cool water. “I wanted to thank you. For being kind to Sprout. But mostly to warn you. Somebody’s got to stop him. Haven’t you seen how he’s getting shorter-and shorter-fused all the time, more violent in his outbreaks? He’s losing his inhibitions.”
“Stop him? How?” She seemed to be asking mainly from intellectual curiosity.
“I don’t know,” he said. Maybe we can’t. He quelled the thought. Plenty of time to wallow in doubt later, when he was locked safely away back in the Radical’s subconscious.
“How could you stop him?”
“Take back control.”
“Can you?”
He grinned ruefully. His lips stretched in strange ways. As with seeing, feeling was different firsthand than at one remove. “No luck so far.” He gave Tom’s golden head a slight shake, the most he dared. “I won’t tell you to trust me. Just trust your judgment. I think you know the truth already. Don’t you? No one can control him. He can’t control himself.”
That perfect mouth thinned to a line. The thin network of lines that brought out only enhanced her beauty to his lost and lonely eyes. “Even if you are telling the truth-what can I do?”
“Help me. Try to find… something. Anything. If you can’t let me out, you have to find some way to destroy us. Me. Him. Whoever
… oh, shit. I’m losing it…” He heard his voice grow vague, as if coming from ever-farther away. Her face flickered as his lids fluttered before his eyes. “Gotta go… he’ll kill you if he knows I talked to you. I don’t want anybody else getting hurt for this stupid-crazy dream of mine.”
“Dream?”
“Peace, love, justice. All that good stuff. Turned out to be not that simple-no time. I can’t stand hurting anybody else. Especially not you. But not anyone. Not ever again. If you can’t let me out, you have to find some way to destroy us. Me. Him. Whoever. Please-”
Mark felt himself beginning to spin. “-destroy-”
And away he went.
“Aaaahh!” Tom Weathers sat up in bed and took his head in his hands.
She sat beside him, brush in hand, his Chinese angel. “The dreams
…” she said.
“Yeah.” His mouth was inexplicably dry. His tongue stung. “The dreams.”
15
Thursday,
December 10
Nyunzu, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
Wally gave every child in the mass grave a proper burial. Especially Lucien.
It would have gone faster if he hadn’t tossed the backhoe bucket halfway across the PPA. But he wouldn’t have used it anyway. He wondered if Lucien had been alive to see the PPA men dig the trench with that backhoe, and if so, if Lucien had known he was seeing his own grave.
Wally used a shovel he found in the ruins of a supply shed. But the handle shattered under Wally’s relentless drive to make things right. After that, he used his hands. All throughout, he refused Jerusha’s repeated offers to help. This was Wally’s job.
Hours and hours of digging. Wally’s back ached, ferociously. Far worse pain came from kneeling on his injured shin, where the bullet had grazed a vulnerable spot thinned out by rust. It felt like a red-hot knitting needle had been rammed through his leg. But it was nothing compared to the pain in his chest, his heart. That was so intense he could hardly breathe.
The pain was a penance. He deserved it. His friend had been in trouble, and Wally had done nothing to help him. Nothing that made the tiniest difference, anyway.
Exhaustion claimed him the moment he finally took a rest. He woke with no diminishment in his pain. The burials were important, but they hadn’t even begun to make things truly right. Could anything?
The freed children watched everything he did with a combination of fear and curiosity on their faces. They seemed to understand that he and Jerusha were their friends. But all the same they kept their distance. Wally wondered if they would ever be capable of trusting another adult. Even Cesar and the joker girl.
The kids needed breakfast. Together, Wally and Jerusha didn’t have nearly enough food in their kit to feed so many.
Jerusha emerged from the only building that hadn’t collapsed, crumbled, or burned down. Unlike the other structures, it was relatively sturdy: thick, reinforced concrete walls; a solid, pitched roof for keeping out seasonal rains; no windows. “Hey,” she said. A thin, sad smile touched the corners of her eyes. “You’re up.”
“Yeah.”
“How are you holding up?”
Wally shrugged. Pretty bad, he thought. But better than Lucien and the others. “The kids,” he said, gesturing around the destroyed camp, “they need breakfast, but…”
“Don’t worry. Let me handle it. You’ve done more than enough, Wally.”
What would I do without you, Jerusha? “Thanks,” he said glumly. She carried a folder, he noticed, like the kind that hangs in a filing cabinet. Tears had cleaned little paths from her eyes through the smudges of dirt and smoke on her face. “What’s that?”
Jerusha sighed. She jerked a thumb over her shoulder, back toward the building. “That’s where they kept their records. I found this,” she said, shaking the folder. “Look, I hesitate to bring this up, but I thought you should know.” She took his hand. “This isn’t the only lab. The Nshombos have places like this hidden all over the PPA.”
Wally’s knees gave out. He sat heavily on a stack of bricks, the remainder of a corner support for one of the open structures. The bricks crumbled into a pile of rubble.
Jerusha showed him the folder. The lab here received its supplies of the wild card virus from a barge that traveled up and down the river. The barge, in turn, received its supplies from a central lab in Bunia, where they actually cultivated the virus. It was a huge program.
It had to be. For every hundred kids they killed, they might have created a single ace.
Changing them, Sister Julie had said. Wally had thought she meant the way they turned innocent kids into child soldiers. But that wasn’t the half of it: they were trying to create an army of child aces.
Suddenly Wally saw a chance to make things right. Except-
What will I do without you, Jerusha?
“We have to get these kids somewhere safe,” he said.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” said Jerusha. “Since we don’t have a boat anymore, and even if we did it wouldn’t hold all of the kids, we’ll have to start walking back east, toward Tanzania. Once we get somewhere with a working phone, we need to contact somebody on the Committee. They’ll send help. Then we can go find the other labs.”
Wally shook his head. “That’ll take too long. Kids are dying every day.” Like Lucien. “We have to split up.”
Jerusha’s mouth fell open. She gaped at him, as though he’d said something mean. She shook her head. “We can’t.”
“Them kids need a guide, somebody who can feed them, and somebody who can hide them in the jungle. I can’t do any of that stuff, Jerusha. But you can do it all. You’re exactly what they need.” Wally shrugged. “Me? All I can do is break stuff. So I’ll go to Bunia.”
“But they’ll know you’re out here. They’ll come looking for you.”
“Heck, yeah. Every soldier or Leopard Man they send after me is one more that won’t be chasing you. Even with the kids, your chances of hiding are way better than mine.”
“I don’t like this idea,” she said. “I hate it.”
“They can’t hurt me.” He looked down at his hands, flexing them into iron fists. “But I can hurt them.”
“But your leg,” she said, looking at the bandage taped over his bullet wound. The implication was clear: every day spent in the humid jungle made him less bulletproof. Made him vulnerable. But his iron skin didn’t have to last forever. Just until he made it to the Bunia lab.
Once he tore that place apart brick by brick, the rest didn’t matter.
He didn’t tell her any of that. Instead, he said, “I’ll be more careful. Now that I know about the d
anger, I won’t let it sneak up on me.”
He also didn’t mention that he was running out of S.O. S pads. It didn’t seem right to give Jerusha even more reasons to worry.
Michelle Pond’s Apartment
Manhattan, New York
“Are you ready?” Noel asked.
He’d popped into Michelle’s apartment in his new male form, and looking like he wanted nothing more than to leave as quickly as possible.
“Almost.” Michelle zipped her small Louis Vuitton duffel closed. It had been part of a gift basket she’d been given at an awards show a few years ago. She hated the way it looked (and hated being a walking billboard for Vuitton), and she didn’t care if it got lost or beat up.
“I need to see if Juliet is done with Joey.” She went to the bathroom and knocked on the door. “Are you done in there? Noel’s here and wants to get going.”
There were muffled curses through the door. Then she heard, “Fuck me. That ain’t half bad.”
The bathroom door opened and Juliet stepped out. She gave Michelle a withering stare, and then went into the living room. Michelle could hear her offering Noel tea.
Joey was in front of the mirror staring at herself. “Fuck me!” she exclaimed. “Will you look at this shit?”
Juliet had managed to cover the Crayola red with a dark chocolate color. And she’d cut Joey’s hair. For once Joey didn’t look as if she was going out to panhandle. Juliet had even dressed her in a crisp white blouse and neatly pressed grey slacks.
“You look great,” Michelle said. “Now stop talking. You’re ruining the illusion.”
“Fuck off, Bubbles.” Joey brushed past Michelle and went into the living room. Michelle followed her. In the middle of the room, Noel was holding a mug that read: lesbians do it with girls. A Lipton’s tea-bag tag dangled over its edge. He had an expression on his face like a cat being given a bath.
Michelle smiled. “I think we’re about ready,” she said. “I know you’re only doing this because of Niobe, but I want you to know how much I appreciate it.”
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