by Pete Hautman
The motes are settling into my body, preparing their offensive.
Is Mother K right? Is this the future?
I hear voices, then several thuds and gasps. I hear the chain rattling. My heart is hammering. I don’t know what is happening, but I do know one thing: When that door opens, I am gone.
The virulence and extreme contagiousness of Grunseth’s Flu, while undeniable, has been considerably exaggerated in popular opinion. While it is true that the most casual contact with a victim is likely to produce a new infection, it is not true, as has been claimed, that the virus can pass through solid glass, endure blastfurnace heat, or lie dormant for months on a doorknob. Recent studies have proven that the virus cannot survive outside the human body for more than an hour or two. It cannot pass through glass or any other solid, and it is instantly killed by temperatures over 67° Celsius.
It is true, however, that victims become contagious within hours of exposure. Experiments with pigs have demonstrated that, after first contact with the virus, they are able to transmit the disease within three to four hours.
—from A Recent History of the Human Race by P. D. Boggs © 2038
PART THREE: TIM
CRAZED
I WOKE UP AND HEARD BELLA talking to Ceej, her voice low and soft. I opened my eyes a crack. Her hands were on his neck, giving him a massage.
Harryette gave me a massage one time. She rubbed my shoulders for a few minutes when we were all watching a movie. I think it was Ghostbusters. I tried to remember her fingers digging into my neck but I kept seeing her face looking at me out that third-story window signing at me: Go away!
How could she want me to go away? The Kinka must have done something to her. She couldn’t really not want to come with us.
I made a picture of Harryette’s face in my head: Green flecks in her eyes. The corner of her mouth dimpling just before she smiled. Hands making signs, fingers forming letters, words, thoughts. You are very agile, she once said to me, finger spelling the word agile. I had to ask Ceej what it meant. He told me it was the opposite of clumsy. That made me feel good. I liked that Harryette thought I was agile. Sometimes, when she was watching, I would try to act agile.
I remembered this one time sitting in front of her watching her hands move. She was teaching me to sign, forming thoughts in the air and putting them inside my head. Even though we were not actually touching, I could feel her.
I will feel her again soon, I thought.
I closed my eyes and saw her green eyes laughing. Her lips smiling. Her hands telling me to come closer.
After a while I fell back asleep.
I woke up with Ceej’s fingers digging in, shaking me, his voice urgent in my face.
“Tim! Wake up.”
I knocked his hands away and sat up, my mind still a fog. We were in the Ranger Office. Evening sunlight filtered in through the fly-specked windows.
Ceej wore a frantic, scared look. “Bella’s gone.”
My first thought was, Good! With her gone we can get down to the business of rescuing Harryette. Then we can drive up to Page and try to do something about the dam without all this mumbo jumbo about other worlds and—But 1 could see that Ceej was really shook up.
“Where’d she go?” I asked.
“How do I know? I woke up and she was gone!”
“Okay, just take it easy. Maybe she went back into the canyon.”
“Why would she do that?”
“To get to her sipa-whatchacallit. I dunno.”
“But … I was going with her!” He sounded whiny, like a little kid.
I used to think if I was half as smart as Ceej I’d know twice as much as I needed. Ceej had the brains all the way. Me, I just do whatever comes into my head. That’s why I got in so much trouble. I counted on Ceej to keep me from doing stupid stuff. That was why it was so weird when he went all goofy over Bella. Walking around all moon-eyed. He couldn’t see she was nuts. I think he actually believed that Indian legend stuff. Like, you crawl through a hole and there’s this whole Flu-free planet waiting, the Third World. Maybe the snakebite fried his brain.
Or maybe he was in love. I’ve seen all the movies. Love can mess a guy up way worse than snakebite,
“You’re as crazy as she is,” I said.
Ceej’s face turned red. “She’s not crazy!”
“Okay, okay, take it easy.” It was my turn to be the reasonable, smart one. I stood up and looked around the room. Bella’s leather pack was leaning against the end of the ratty old sofa. “She didn’t take her pack. That must mean she’s planning to come back.”
Ceej devoured the pack with his eyes, hope naked on his face. It was a sorry sight. I turned away from him and walked into the next room.
That was when I saw her hair.
• • •
We both knew right away what she’d done. The only reason she’d have cut off all her hair was if she wanted to look like a Survivor. Maybe she’d decided to join the Kinka, or maybe she’d gone after Harryette. Either way, as far as I was concerned, it proved she was nuts.
“We gotta go after her,” Ceej said, tying on his boots.
“We better wait for dark,” I said. “We go out there now, they’ll see us for sure.”
“No they won’t. Not if we’re careful.”
I grabbed him by the shoulders. “Just sit and think for a minute, okay? If they see us, it’s all over.”
He shrugged me off.
I said, “It’ll be dark in an hour or so, then we can go get her and Harryette both.”
Ceej sat very still for a few seconds. “She’s not crazy,” he said.
At least he wasn’t charging outside in broad daylight. I said, “You don’t really believe all that stuff about another world, do you?”
“Why not? It’s no weirder than any other religion. It’s no weirder than Heaven and Hell and the Garden of Eden and Noah’s Ark and all that.”
“Maybe, but Bella’s talking about crawling down some hole in the ground.”
“Her grandfather was there. He saw it.”
“That’s what she says. Look, I’m not blaming her for being kind of loopy. All that time wandering around alone in the canyon would make anybody a little strange. She thinks she can crawl down a hole and end up in paradise. And now this chopping off her hair and joining up with the Kinka—”
“She’s not joining them!”
“We don’t know that. We don’t know what she’s doing. But whatever it is, it’s dangerous. If we’re not careful we’ll all end up dead.”
Ceej was giving me a look, his mouth hanging open, his eyes blinking. I thought maybe I’d gotten through to him.
I said, “We can’t afford any mistakes.”
Ceej stood up.
“I’m going,” he said, moving toward the door. “She needs me.”
I stepped in front of him.
“No you’re not,” I said, bracing myself.
I never saw it coming. His fist connected with the point of my chin; my teeth clacked together, sending a shockwave over the top of my skull. I staggered back and hit the wall. Stunned, I slid down onto my butt, dimly aware that Ceej was opening the door and stepping outside.
It took forever for my brain to start working again. Or maybe it was only a minute. Either way, Ceej was gone and I was alone.
As I sat sorting through the fuzzies in my head I thought, I’ll just take off, leave them all behind, find a safe town and set myself up nice and comfortable. Hap was dead. Emory and Harryette had joined up with the Kinka. Bella and Ceej were both bonkers. I didn’t need them. I could make it on my own. Why put up with a bunch of crazies? I got up and started stuffing things in my pack. I’d head for Tusayan. Find a working car. I’d go east, toward Holbrook. There were still a few people living there—me and Hap and Emory had traded with them a few times. They were Mormons, but I was pretty sure they’d let me stay with them for a while.
But by the time I’d filled up my pack, I was thinking about Harryet
te again. She’d told me to go away, but I knew she didn’t mean it. I kept seeing her face. I could almost count the flecks of gold in her green eyes. I remembered the way she smelled, sweet, with just a hint of vanilla, and the feel of her hands on my shoulders, and the way her hands moved, forming silent words, talking to me. The thought of never seeing her again hit me like a sharp blade twisting in my gut.
Was that how Ceej felt about Bella? Yes, I decided, only more. I tried to imagine the way I felt about Harryette multiplied ten times, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t leave them. Not any of them.
I grabbed the rifle and left the Ranger Office.
THE BOILER ROOM
I CAUGHT UP WITH CEEJ just down the hill from El Tovar. He was standing in the open, staring at the front entrance of the hotel. When I came up behind him he didn’t even turn around.
“The least you can do is stay out of sight,” I said.
Ceej shook his head. “Something’s going on. They’re all inside.”
Just then, three Kinka came out of the lobby.
“Not anymore.”
I grabbed Ceej and pulled him over a low stone wall into a locust thicket. The Kinka started down the steps to the driveway. A tall black woman in a purple robe—Mother K—followed them out the lobby door. Right behind her came Harryette, signing frantically.
Harryette was signing, Wait, please wait.
Mother K kept her eyes fixed straight ahead. She would not look at Harryette. Other Kinka were coming from the lobby, following them. They were all talking, their voices sounding like the putter of a distant engine. The first three—two large men on either side of a younger, smaller Kinka—were coming down the driveway. They would pass within a few feet of us. I heard a low moan—almost a growl—come from Ceej. He was staring fiercely at the three. The one in the middle, I suddenly realized, was Bella. I hadn’t recognized her without her thick black hair. She was struggling. The two men held her by the arms, pulling her along against her will.
Afraid he’d run out there after her, I grabbed Ceej’s arm. It was hard as granite. We could hear Bella pleading, demanding to be let go. I saw another familiar face: Emory, wearing his usual slack-jawed expression, walked slightly behind the milling, muttering crowd. Two thick blue stripes were painted across his forehead. We remained still and silent, hidden by the frilly leaves, until they had passed us by.
“Where are they going?” I whispered.
Ceej motioned for me to be quiet. The Kinka parade turned at the bottom of the hill and took the service road toward the rear of the hotel. Ceej and I left the thicket and ran across the driveway to an overgrown footpath that paralleled the service road. Hidden by a screen of pinyon pine and tall grasses, we kept pace with the Kinka, watching as they turned uphill to the paved area at the rear of the hotel.
“They’re going to the old boiler room,” Ceej said.
The group gathered near the door to the boiler room, a twenty-by-twenty foot, windowless, log building attached to the back of the hotel. We lost sight of Bella and Harryette behind the mass of Kinka bodies, but we could see the door open and close. The crowd let out a low sound, like forty people all sucking in their breath at the same time. Seconds later, the crowd began to break up and move back toward us. We ducked down low in the tall grass. Harryette and Mother K stayed by the boiler room with the two men who’d been holding Bella. Emory, standing off to the side, watched expressionlessly. One of the men fastened a chain to the door. Harryette suddenly ran to the door and tried to pull it open, but the other man wrestled her away and twisted her arm behind her back. Mother K stepped forward and cuffed Harryette on the side of the head and shouted something. She turned, purple robes swirling, and walked quickly back around the hotel. The man holding Harryette followed, squeezing Harryette’s arm, pushing her in front of him. The other man—the one who had chained the door—sat down on the step and rested his back against the doorjamb.
We saw no sign of Bella. They had locked her in the boiler room.
Keeping our heads down, we waited for the Kinka to pass our position. After a half a minute I raised my head and found myself looking at Emory. He was standing in the driveway not thirty feet away, staring directly at us. I froze. After a few seconds, Emory shrugged and continued up the hill.
“You think he saw us?” Ceej whispered.
“Oh, yeah.” One thing about Emory. He didn’t miss much.
“We better get out of here.”
I shook my head. “He won’t say anything.” Somehow I knew it was true. I’d known Emory for a long time.
A few minutes later I caught a familiar smell. Cigar smoke. I couldn’t be sure, but I would’ve bet anything it was one of Hap’s cigars. I raised my head and saw a cloud of transparent blue smoke hanging over the guard. In his fingers was a short, black cigar. A surge of anger blasted up my spine—I wanted to run at him and grab that cigar out of his hand and grind it in his face.
Ceej held me back. It was his turn keep me from doing something stupid.
“Wait for dark,” he said.
“I know.”
“She has to be in there,” Ceej said. “She’s got to be.”
I agreed with him, but my mind wasn’t on Bella. I was worried about Harryette. I didn’t like the way she’d been dragged off. “We’ll get both of them, Bella and Harryette, after dark. Okay?”
Ceej agreed. “Before the moon rises”
Hap always told me that simple plans are the best. “You get yourself all tangled up if you get too smart,” he once told me. “Best way to get from here to there, you start walkin’. That’s the way you do it, boy. You pick your time and place, and you act.”
I’d been trying real hard not to think about Hap.
Shortly after sunset, while the sky was still light, a teenaged Kinka with yellow circles painted on his face brought a plate of food to the Kinka guarding the boiler room. That reminded me of how hungry I was, but we didn’t have any food with us. I stripped a blade of grass and put it in my mouth for something to chew on.
I hate waiting more than anything.
We watched the Kinka eat his food. By the time he finished it was almost dark. We heard the rumble of the generator start up, and a few lights came on inside ElTovar. The Kinka lit another cigar. The smell drifted toward us.
“Let’s go,” I said.
Moving silently, we left the thicket. I approached the boiler room from the east side, while Ceej came around to the opposite side of the building. Ceej had the rifle. I gave him thirty seconds to get into position, then stepped around the corner of the building.
“Hey, ugly.”
The Kinka dropped the cigar and jumped to his feet, startled. He was about twice as big as I’d thought. “Who the—”
Ceej stepped around the far corner of the building, took two long strides and swung the rifle like a baseball bat. Gun stock glanced off naked scalp; the Kinka staggered and let out a ragged gasp. I ran at him and drove my shoulder into his side. It was like running into a boulder. With a roar of fury, the Kinka grabbed my arm and threw me against the side of the building. I saw Ceej swinging the rifle again, chopping down with it. If it had been an ax, it would’ve split that Kinka’s skull straight down the middle. The Kinka dropped to his knees, dazed. He shook his head and started to rise, and I took another run at him, this time driving my fist, all my weight behind it, into his nose. His head snapped back, but he still didn’t go down. I tried to hit him again, but suddenly his arms were around me and he was on top of me, breathing cigar breath in my face, squeezing the air from my lungs. I heard a soft thud, and his grip loosened. Another thud. Something hot and wet spilled across my face. The Kinka made a whimpering sound. Another thud, and he was dead weight on top of me. I pushed and kicked my way out from under him and saw Ceej’s face white in the faint starlight, saw him raise the rifle to swing it again.
I jumped up and grabbed the gun from Ceej. “It’s okay, he’s out,” I said. The rifle stock was black and sticky with blood—I
was glad it was too dark to see its redness. “You get Bella, I’ll stand guard.” I ran a few yards down the short path to where I could see anyone coming from the direction of the hotel. I heard Ceej struggling with the chain, then the clatter of links being pulled free. I turned to look just as the door crashed open and a dark figure came boiling out, knocking Ceej down, dashing down the hill and into the woods.
Ceej yelled, “Bella, wait!” He took off after her.
I stood there for a few seconds, not sure what to do. Bella running away hadn’t been part of our plan. Should I go after them? I waited a minute, undecided. Ceej and I had agreed that if we somehow got split up, we would meet back at the Ranger Office, but going back to the Ranger Office now didn’t seem like such a good idea. The unconscious Kinka might wake up any time now, or another Kinka might come to relieve him. Once the Kinka knew we were around, they’d search all the nearby buildings in a hurry.
No time to lose. Ceej would catch up to Bella, or he wouldn’t. We would have to find each other later at our back-up rendezvous. It was time to act.
Gripping the bloody rifle, I started up the hill toward El Tovar.
That was when I heard the first cough.
I stopped, trying to locate the sound. After a few seconds it came again, a liquid rattle that made the hairs on my neck stand up.
It was coming from inside the boiler room.
I took a few steps back, toward the open door.
More coughing. Deep, gurgling, lung-shredding, agonizing, virus-spewing explosions. I stood ten feet back from the door, staring into the black rectangle. All my instincts told me to run, to get as far away from this house of death as my legs could carry me. But something else held me rooted there.
“Hello?” I called out.
The coughing stopped. I heard the sound of air being sucked in and out of ravaged lungs, then a familiar voice, hoarse and twisted with pain.
“Boy, you come one step closer you die.”
“Dad?”
“You ever listen to me, boy, you—” More coughing. “—you listen now. Go away!”