The Last Days p-2

by Scott Westerfeld

  When Cal visited to give us his geeky lectures, he’d offer the scientific version. It was all a chain reaction: the rising worms upset deep-dwelling rats, who carried the parasite to the surface; they infected felines, who gave it to their humans, who turned into peeps and spread it to still more humans. The disease made people stronger and faster, vicious and fearless—the perfect soldiers to fight the worms.

  Through most of history, vampires were rare; but every few centuries, humanity needed tons of them. This epidemic was our species’ immune system gearing up, peeps like killer T-cells multiplying in our blood, getting ready to repel an invader. Of course, as Cal liked to point out, immune systems are dangerous things: lupus, arthritis, and even asthma are all caused by our own defenses. Fevers have to be controlled.

  That’s where the Watch came in, to organize the peeps and keep them from doing too much damage. Like your mom bringing you aspirin and cold compresses and chicken soup—but with ninja uniforms.

  Early one morning a week after we’d arrived, they finally let us see the others.

  Moz was in a hospital bed, looking worse than I’d expected. His arms and legs were restrained, and long IV tubes snaked into both arms, dripping yellowish liquids into his bloodstream. Electronic monitors were taped all over his bare, pale chest. A plastic shunt jutted from his throat, so they could inject things without opening up a vein.

  Moz’s eyes looked bruised, his skin stretched taut across his cheekbones. The room was dark and smelled vaguely like garlic and disinfectant.

  Minerva sat silent beside him. The sight of her sent a tremor of rage through me: she’d done this to him, infected him with her kiss.

  Cal said she’d been partly under the parasite’s control. Always trying to spread itself, it made its hosts horny, greedy, irrational. But I was still pissed off. Parasite-positive or not, you should never, ever hook up with anyone in your band.

  Not twice in a row.

  “Hey,” I said. They’d warned us not to say his name, because of the anathema. He’d only just recovered enough to look at our faces.

  “Hey, man,” Zahler said. “How’s it going, Minerva?”

  Minerva pointed to her own mouth, then made a key-turning gesture. My lips are sealed.

  Of course… Moz had been in love with Min. Her sultry, beautiful voice would burn his ears. I noticed that he looked at Zahler and Alana Ray and me, but kept his gaze averted from Min.

  Not that I could look at her myself.

  “Hey,” Moz said hoarsely.

  “You look like crap!” Zahler said.

  “Feel like crap too.”

  “At least you aren’t smashing things,” Alana Ray said. She tried to smile, but her head jerked to one side instead. Since the gig, she was twitchier than I’d ever seen her.

  Moz winced, as if remembering the wreckage he’d left of the Strat. He must have loved the guitar more than Minerva, I realized, half smiling. He hadn’t smashed her to pieces, after all.

  Small favors.

  “Pretty intense gig, though, huh?” Moz said.

  I nodded. “Yeah, fawesome. For most of one song anyway.”

  “That crowd thought we were totally fool.” Zahler sighed. “Too bad about the, uh… giant worm, though.”

  “Yeah. That part sucked,” Moz said.

  We were all quiet for a while. The Watch hadn’t told us anything about that night, and the news had much bigger things to talk about, but we all were pretty sure that people had been killed. Of course, so had the beast we’d raised—one less underground monster.

  That was why the Night Watch was interested in us.

  They knew the secret history of how worms and peeps had always appeared together and had a grip on modern science as well. Cal said they’d known before anyone else that this apocalypse was coming. They had cures and treatments for turning maniacs into soldiers to fight the enemy. They had cool worm-killing swords.

  But we could do something they couldn’t.

  We could sing the worms up. We could bring them out of hiding and to the surface, which made them a lot easier to destroy…

  After we’d been talking for a while, Min handed me a note. Her handwriting was still a mess, but I could understand it. More or less.

  “So, Moz, we have to leave for a while,” I said. “Just for a day or so. We’ll be back before you’re out of bed.”

  “Where?” he croaked.

  My fingers folded the note up small. “Manhattan.”

  “Are you kidding?” Zahler said. “It’s dangerous back there! And I promised my mom I’d stay right here!”

  I nodded. Local phones were mostly still working, so we knew that my mom was safe in the Hamptons, Elvis at her side, and that Zahler’s parents were at a Guard camp in Connecticut. Minerva’s family had been scooped up by the Night Watch, who’d wanted to check and see if they also carried her weird monster-calling strain of the disease. But Moz’s parents, like most New Yorkers, were holding out in their building. And they’d said things looked ugly down on the street.

  “Sorry, Zahler. But there’s someone the Night Watch wants us to meet.”

  “Can’t this someone come out to Jersey?” he asked.

  I crumpled the note and shrugged. “Apparently not.”

  “Well, screw that!” Zahler said. “New York is one big Maniac City! They can’t make us go, can they?”

  “Pearl,” Alana Ray said. “Does it say what they want to talk about?”

  “Only that maybe we can help. What happened that night—we might be able to use it to save people.” I turned to each of them as I spoke, pushing my glasses up my nose, like this was a rehearsal and I wanted to get them to stop tuning up and playing riffs and listen to me. “These Night Watch guys are the only people in the world who aren’t clueless about what’s going on. When that thing turned up at our gig, they were the ones who stopped it from killing everybody, remember? It won’t hurt us to listen to them.”

  “It’s not the listening that I’m—”

  “I am sorry to interrupt, Zahler,” Alana Ray said, tapping her forehead twice, a shiver moving across her. “But I agree with Pearl. We called that creature up; we were responsible.”

  “We didn’t know it was going to happen!” Zahler cried.

  “Whether that is true or not…” Alana Ray’s eyes dropped to the floor, as if she saw something there. “It would be unethical not to help if we can.”

  I looked at the others. Minerva nodded silently, trying to catch my eye. Moz crooked one thumb into the air, and Zahler let out a defeated sigh.

  28. DOCTOR

  — ZAHLER-

  There was a checkpoint at the Jersey end of the Holland Tunnel, swarming with New York cops and Guardsmen and guys in khaki toting machine guns. It didn’t look to me like they were letting anyone through.

  I figured this was the end of the trip—too bad, we’d tried—and that was fine by me. But then Lace zipped down her window, flashed a badge, and said, “Homeland Security.”

  The unshaven Guardsman stared at the badge, his eyes red. He looked like he’d been awake for days, like he’d seen some scary shit, and like he thought we were crazy.

  But he waved us through.

  “Homeland Security?” I asked. “Are you guys, like, really Homeland Security? Some sort of paranormal branch?”

  “Please.” Lace snorted. “Those guys can’t even handle natural disasters.”

  Our convoy slid into the tunnel. We were in two big military-looking vehicles, a bunch of angels riding on the outside. I wondered what the cops thought of them. But I guessed everyone had seen much weirder stuff than black ninja suits and swords lately.

  The tunnel was completely dark. Lace flicked on the headlights and drove straight down the middle, ignoring the lane dividers. As I watched the entrance disappear behind us through the back window, blackness swallowed everything except the red tinge of our taillights. It felt like sinking to the core of the earth.

  “Aren’t there wor
ms down here?” I asked.

  “They’d never attack us here,” Lace said. “The whole Hudson River’s balanced over our heads. They breach this tunnel, and a million tons of water gush down on us and them.”

  “Oh. Fawesome,” I said, reminding myself to shut up forever, as of now.

  “Are they that smart?” Alana Ray asked.

  Lace shrugged. “It’s all instinct. They evolved underground.”

  I swallowed, thinking about how much earth there was below us. Room for all kinds of weird stuff to be brewing, and I’d never even thought about it.

  “Okay, let’s get a few things straight about Dr. Prolix,” Cal said. “There’s a red line painted on the floor of her office. Whatever you do, don’t step across it.”

  “A line on the floor?” Pearl said. “Doesn’t she like musicians?”

  “She’s a carrier, like me,” he explained. “A really old one, so she’s got a few diseases that aren’t around much anymore. Typhus and stuff. Bubonic plague. If you get too close to her, we sort of have to… burn your clothes.”

  I looked at the others, wondering if I’d really heard him say that. These angels or Night Watch guys or whatever were always saying stuff that was just messed up. Talking to Cal was like watching some psycho version of the History Channel that only showed the nasty parts—epidemics, massacres, and inquisitions, twenty-four/seven.

  “Burn our clothes?” Minerva said. “But this is my last nice dress! Shouldn’t you put her in a glass bubble or something?”

  Cal shook his head. “The whole house is set up for negative air-pressure prophylaxis, so the germs around Dr. Prolix can’t get to where you’ll be standing. Just don’t cross the line.”

  “Bubonic plague?” Alana Ray repeated. A shudder traveled through her body, and she pressed her hands together. “Exactly how old is this woman?”

  “Old,” he said.

  In Manhattan, the streets were still alive.

  Rats moved among leaking piles of garbage, stray cats sliding under smashed and motionless cars. You could see long ripples in the asphalt where the worms had passed, leaving gleaming stains of black water in the high sun. A few gaping holes showed where they’d burst through the surface. I wondered if anyone had been standing right there when they had…

  According to Cal, it was all natural: they were hunters and we were their prey.

  Nature can blow me.

  “There are no bodies,” Alana Ray said.

  “The peeps are cannibals,” Lace said. “And the worms are human-eaters.”

  “Much neater than your usual epidemic,” Cal said.

  A flash of disbelief went through me; this wasn’t really the Manhattan I’d grown up in. For a moment, it was all a big movie set—a giant, evil version of Disney World. There weren’t really any monsters under our feet, or crazy people hiding in the darkened buildings, and all our parents were actually back in the real Manhattan, wondering where we were.

  But then we passed an empty school yard, the concrete ripped and torn from one end to the other. An ice-cream truck waited beside it—split almost in half, ripped open from underneath. It was bleeding white goo into the street, and the breeze carried a smell like spoiled milk and burnt sugar through the open windows.

  A basketball sat abandoned in the middle of the playground. It stirred in the wind, and the realness of everything settled over me again.

  Our convoy weaved slowly downtown, avoiding the worst streets and any people we spotted. Small groups were scurrying from place to place, carrying water and food and other stuff they must have looted from the stores. Smashed and gaping windows were everywhere.

  “Are all these people infected?” Pearl asked.

  “If they are, they’re not symptomatic yet,” Cal said. “Peeps can’t stand direct sunlight.”

  I looked out the back window, twisting my neck to see up. It was almost noon, the sun reaching down into the narrow canyons of downtown. The angels all wore dark glasses, except for Cal.

  The problem was, this close to winter the sun went down early in New York. An hour from now the shadows of the empty skyscrapers would begin to lengthen.

  I hoped this wasn’t going to be a long conversation.

  We made our way down to the Stock Exchange. It was the worst part of the city we’d seen, the streets empty and broken. Papers and trash blew in little cyclones around us, and Lace honked her horn to scatter a big posse of rats. I guessed the stock market wasn’t going to open back up anytime soon.

  Lace turned the vehicle’s engine off, rolling the last dozen yards to a silent halt. The angels climbed carefully down, drawing their swords and forming a circle around us. The asphalt was pitted and gouged, as if worms popped through all the time around here.

  “Everybody out,” Lace said. “Step lightly, though. The worms can hear our footsteps.” I opened my door and stared down at the street. It was stained with black water, with old gum, and with something viscous and red.

  Crap, I thought. All my life I’d been at the top of the food chain and had never really appreciated it. Peeps were bad enough, even worse than junkies, I figured. But the worms—something about the ground opening up and swallowing people was just wrong.

  I lowered one foot softly to the street, then the other, a shiver of nerves traveling through my body. The asphalt felt fragile, like the ice on the Central Park Reservoir does when you sneak onto it in early spring. As I took my first step, my foot resisted, and I almost screamed, imagining a hungry mouth bursting through to grab my leg.

  But it was just the old wad of gum, softened to stickiness by the sun. It tugged at my sole with every step, making a sucking sound.

  The angels led us into a long, crooked alley. The old-fashioned cobblestones were broken and bulging, with a few gaping holes that seethed with rats. I shivered at the sight of all those furry bodies. Cal and Lace talked about rats like they were on our side, something about them storing the parasite and bubbling up to spread it when the worms began to rise. But how that was a good thing, I had no idea…

  We crept slowly down the alley, keeping clear of the wormholes. At the end was an old town house, its stoop covered with silent, watchful cats.

  Their red eyes followed us as we went in.

  There really was a red line on the floor.

  A breeze pushed me toward it, like a gentle hand pressing against my back. Cal had explained that all the air in the house moved toward Dr. Prolix, sucking her ancient germs away from us and down into a big, germ-killing furnace. She was immune to all her own diseases, being infected like the rest of the angels, but we’d be dead meat if we got too close. Even Cal and Lace kept away from the line. Didn’t want their fexcellent ninja suits burned, I guess.

  I stayed against the back wall, as far away as I could get. Not just to stay away from the Plague Lady but to be farther from the weird old dolls that lined the shelves of her office. Real-looking hair sprouted from their crumbling heads, and all their faces were painted with smiles.

  Kids in the old days must have loved nightmares or something.

  “You’re the one who sings,” Dr. Prolix said, her gaze dismissing the rest of us and locking onto Minerva. Her voice was dry and raspy, like two sheets of paper rubbing together. Her unwrinkled face didn’t look that old, except for the thinness of her skin and the stiffness of her smile. She looked like one of her own dolls, decorated with glowing human eyes.

  “Yeah, that’s me,” Minerva said in a small voice.

  “And where did you learn these songs, young woman?”

  “When I first got sick, I felt something down in my basement calling me, making me sort of…” She let out a giggle.

  “Sexually aroused?” Dr. Prolix asked.

  “Yeah, I guess. When I went there in my fevers, I could hear whispering from the cracks.” Minerva shrugged. “So I started writing down what they said.”

  I swallowed. I’d never really thought about where her lyrics had come from, but then, Minerva had never ment
ioned that they’d bubbled up from underground. That seemed like the kind of thing you might mention.

  “Perhaps I might hear a few words?” Dr. Prolix said.

  “Um, is that a good idea?” Pearl asked softly.

  “Don’t sing, dear,” the old woman said. “Just speak them.”

  Minerva paused a moment, then cleared her throat.

  A few syllables came from her mouth, at first halting and tangled, like someone trying to imitate the sound of a sink gurgling. But then she started speaking in rhythm, and the weird sounds smoothed into words.

  Then Minerva fell into the verses and choruses Pearl had built around the nonsense syllables, pitching her voice in a singsong way. I recognized a few phrases from Piece Two, and my fingers moved half-consciously, playing the bass line in the air, so I didn’t notice when she started singing.

  Maybe the floor trembled a little.

  “Stop that!” Dr. Prolix snapped.

  Minerva came to a halt, shaking her head as though she were snapping out of a daydream. Then she shrugged. “Sorry.”

  “I always wondered how that worked,” Dr. Prolix said softly from behind her desk.

  “How what worked?” Cal said. “What is that?”

  “The last time the enemy came was seven hundred years ago, before I was born. But the Night Mayor was born toward the end of those times.”

  I blinked. Okay, this woman was talking about centuries—about being alive for centuries. I felt my brain trying to switch off, like when a crazy person is ranting on the subway and you totally don’t want to hear it, but you can’t stop listening.

  Dr. Prolix spread her hand on her desk. “Have you ever considered, Cal, how the previous invasions were dealt with? Without seismographs? Without walkie-talkies and cell phones?”

  “Um… I thought maybe they didn’t deal so well?” he said. “Of course, they didn’t have Homeland Security in the way, making it hard to move medicine into regions suffering outbreaks, and there weren’t any subway tunnels for the enemy to slide around in. But it must have been hard. What did they lose last time? Two hundred million people?”