Helix: Plague of Ghouls

by Pat Flewwelling

  Two-Trees pushed away from the bridge and started walking.

  “Why did Crow tell me to trust you?” Buckle asked.

  “You ever find out where the other Reid brother went?” Two-Trees asked from a few steps away. Buckle looked up. “Any of those files redacted?”

  Buckle shrugged.

  “Maybe you want to go back and check again,” Two-Trees suggested.

  Chapter Twenty

  FOSTER CHECKED ISMAEL’S temperature. “I wish you’d kept track of your baseline readings,” she grouched.

  “Gil has everything you need,” he said.

  “Well, thank God we’ve got one rational mind in our corner.” She took the large cup of vodka from Bridget and stirred it with the glass thermometer. “Here.” She gave the thermometer to Bridget next. Bridget didn’t balk or complain, though she glared as if she’d rather throttle Foster than trust her.

  Ishmael’s stomach made noises. He was tired of eating. He curled in on himself, wishing the intestinal discomfort would just go away.

  “You think that’s going to be enough to sanitize it?” the Padre asked.

  Foster looked into the cup. “It’s the best I’ve got at the moment.”

  The sun was going down. They had to operate by the light of the truck dashboard and by the glow of the open laptop.

  “Ah, screw it,” Foster said. “After all the fluid swapping we’ve been doing anyhow . . .” She tossed her head back and drank a very large shot of contaminated vodka. She hissed and shuddered. “That was stupid of me.” She stuck her tongue out and gagged. “Show me your arm.”

  “No skin samples,” Ishmael insisted.

  “Shut it.” Foster turned Ishmael’s scarred arm this way and that, prodding the tight, hot skin. “This is getting worse,” she said. “Why is your scar getting deeper?”

  Bridget’s phone rang. She answered it without taking the thermometer out of her mouth. “Yaw,” she answered. “Uh uh. Ngo chlange,” she said. Foster retrieved the thermometer from Bridget’s mouth and checked the reading. She seemed mildly curious. “No, we’re all well off-cycle. I mean, we could try shooting him and see if that triggers a change. No one would report a gun shot out here.”

  They were, after all, in the middle of a field where gunfire wouldn’t be out of place. Bears could get aggressive at that time of year.

  “Padre,” Foster asked, handing the Padre the thermometer and a fresh cup of vodka to sterilize it in. “What about you? Any changes?”

  The Padre shrugged as he stirred the vodka. He watched as Bridget got out of the truck while she spoke into the phone.

  “Hello?” Bridget yelled. “Hello, Two-Trees? You still there?”

  “I’ve only had one cycle since we left Wyndham Farms. No big deal, either,” the Padre said. “Hardly any pain in the up-cycle or down-cycle. No fever, no short-cycle, no . . .” He pointed at Ishmael, who was sitting with his back against the driver’s side window, hugging his ribs. “Abs.”

  Foster told him to take his temperature.

  “But you and I were on the island together since the beginning,” the Padre said. “You’ve seen how many bites and gouges I’ve taken. I never picked up any extra viruses from the Lost Ones.”

  “It’s not the Lost Ones I’m worried about,” Foster said, once the Padre had inserted the thermometer between his teeth. She drummed her fingers on the back of the passenger’s seat. “Did Digger ever bite you?”

  Ishmael stared at her with baleful eyes. The Padre solemnly closed his eyes and shook his head.

  They sat for a while in silence while Bridget wandered around the field in search of signal reception. Ishmael’s stomach made more noises, cramping as if in hunger pains.

  “Thirty-eight point eight degrees means fever in humans,” Foster said to Ishmael. “But you . . . ? I don’t know. It could be normal. You could have miscounted the number of days since your last cycle.”

  “And Bridget’s temperature is . . .”

  “Normal,” Foster said, “by human standards.”

  The Padre took the thermometer out of his mouth long enough to ask if he liked vodka, because he couldn’t remember if he did or not. She said drinking was a sin, and took both the thermometer and the vodka from him. “Think of this as me saving your soul.” Foster downed the vodka and coughed.

  Bridget returned, saying that the phone seemed to have service but the call wouldn’t reconnect. The Padre suggested that maybe Two-Trees was the one with the reception problems. “Well, it’s gonna be a hell of a walk, especially if we don’t know exactly where he or the body is. This is a big field.”

  “If I could just get into coyote mode . . .” the Padre said.

  “Offer still stands,” Bridget said. “Gun’s in the glove box.”

  Foster picked at Ishmael’s scars. “Why don’t these go away?” she mused. “Your body resets itself every time . . . Should be getting shallower, not worse . . .”

  “Gil asked me the same thing,” Ishmael said. He reached past her to open the side door wider and take advantage of the October wind. He unzipped his hooded jacket. His face felt flushed. “If it was because of . . .” He burped, and that only made him feel worse. “If it was because of the Lost Ones, I should have scars all over.”

  “Icepick’s hand never grew back,” the Padre said. “Bug-Eye never got his eye back.”

  “Yes,” Foster said, “but after cross-contamination with Ishmael’s blood, you lost your hunchback and a host of other complaints. And Shuffle grew back both testes.” Her breath was foul after the vodka. “Ishmael’s blood is much better at repairing tissues than yours was. So why isn’t he repairing himself? Oh, I regret the vodka.”

  “Can I try your phone?” Bridget asked Ishmael. He put his hand in his sweatpants pocket and took out his cell. “Thanks.” She stepped back outside, checked the signal, and dialled.

  The Padre leaned forward. “The last time I saw Ishmael in fur, he had stripes, too.”

  “Huh?” Foster asked.

  “Yeah, and it pisses me off,” Ishmael said. “Ruined a perfect coat.”

  “Brown stripes on his arm, where those scars are,” the Padre explained. “Wolf hair, long and shaggy like ours. And it doesn’t look that bad. It’s like a badge of honour or something. Or a tattoo.”

  Foster stretched out the skin of his arm. “Any pain?”

  “Itching before I up-cycle,” Ishmael answered. “And it burns. But no pain.”

  “And yet it’s warmer than the rest of you.” She touched his arm and his forehead at the same time. He thought that if he closed his eyes, he could imagine it was Holly touching him. “Do we have any flashlights in here?”

  “We might,” the Padre said, looking into the luggage compartment.

  Ishmael caught her arm and pulled her close. She struggled. “Don’t make me go like Bug-Eye.”

  “You’re hurting me.”

  He let her go.

  She rubbed her arm. “And you’re sweating.” She retreated to the front passenger’s seat, moving the laptop to the driver’s side so she could sit down.

  The Padre came forward with a shrug and no flashlight.

  Bridget returned. “It’s got to be Two-Trees’ phone,” she said. “Yours still has reception too.” She tossed it to Ishmael and he caught it out of the air.

  “Give me that,” Foster said, taking the phone from him. She flipped through his various apps until she found the one that made the camera flash to stay on. She shone the light on Ishmael’s upper arm, smoothing out the flesh again. Disappointed, she shut off the light.

  “And?” Bridget asked.

  “I’d thought his virus had been strong enough to overwhelm anything else he came in contact with,” Foster said. “Besides that, look at me! I’ve been slashed, bitten, spat on, shat on, name it, I’ve come in contact with every type of bodily fluid that came out of either the first or second or third generation victims, and I haven’t shown any symptoms at all in the last six years.”
>
  “You’re also a one-of-a-kind,” the Padre said, from the back of the truck.

  Ishmael began to think he should have skipped the vegetables.

  “Just how in the hell do you change your face like that?” Bridget asked.

  “Face, personality, body type,” the Padre replied. “Holly’s two inches taller than Eva.”

  “But how?” Bridget asked. “And why has no one else ever been able to do something like—wait, are you actually a lycanthrope? Or do you just switch between Holly and this?”

  “No, she’s as werewolfy as you can get,” the Padre said, on her behalf. “When she needs to be. Except in her case it’s a choice.”

  “I could explain the science behind it,” Foster said, gazing down her nose at Bridget. “But it’d probably go over your head.”

  “Bridget,” Ishmael said, “move, will you?”

  She moved a little. “You could try me,” she growled at Foster.

  “Bridget, move,” Ishmael repeated. He got up, and she moved out of his way.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Ishmael fell out of the truck with one arm around his gut. He managed to get two steps away before he doubled over and brought up a lot of scrambled eggs.

  Shape-shifters never vomited.

  He threw up again.

  Shape-shifters could eat rotting flesh, if there was nothing fresher around. Ishmael had once caught a rogue who lived off nothing but trash, like a raccoon. Werewolves did not vomit.

  The third time brought up nothing more than spit and bile.

  “Shit,” Bridget said. “You okay?”

  He spat. “Sure.” He kept his hands on his knees. “Peachy.”

  Foster was the one who approached him first. She brought with her the bottle of vodka. “Here. Wash your mouth out with this, if it helps. But don’t drink it.”

  He took a fresh plastic cup and she poured the drink.

  “You were the only one who ate the steak and eggs,” Foster said. “It could be food poisoning.”

  “I’m the only one overeating, too,” he replied.

  “Do you need to cycle through?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so.” He horked and spat again, then sloshed the vodka like mouthwash. He spat on the vomit he’d left on the brown grass between his feet.

  Foster shone the makeshift flashlight on the lumpy pile on the grass. Behind her, the horizon glowed yellow-white, where the city lights of Elmbury glowed against a rising, autumn fog. “I need that medical equipment. Maybe we can break into a clinic.”

  Ishmael shook his head. “I just figured it out.”

  “What?”

  “Cats can’t digest vegetables,” he said.

  She helped him stand up straighter. “But they can digest eggs, and you’ve brought up about four dozen of them.”

  He took a deep breath. “I don’t remember ever vomiting before. Not even after a sixteen-hour Ouzo binge.”

  “You feel better now?”

  “Yeah. A little.”

  She put her hand on his forehead again. “Curiouser and curiouser . . . Just when I thought I had this disease figured out . . . I wonder if it’s a symptom of the . . . but that shouldn’t be the case . . . after all, because of the atrophy of the bile gland and the autoimmune suppressive effects . . .” She left him standing alone, wondering out loud how to set puke on fire, to prevent anyone else catching what Ishmael had contracted.

  This was more than a case of food poisoning. He doubted steak and eggs could bring on another round of the fever.

  Bridget stood at the side of the truck. “Chuck the vodka on it. We’ll come over with a flame.” Ishmael upended the bottle, and Bridget came over swiftly with a smouldering receipt she’d burned with the truck’s cigarette lighter. It took a couple of tries before the vodka caught fire.

  “You’re going to take care of it, right?” Ishmael asked her.

  “What, like dig a hole or something?” Bridget asked.

  “If this really goes south,” he said, wiping his face, “you’ll take down this cannibal?”

  Bridget had something ready to say, but then changed her mind.

  “You’ll take care of my Pack?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I’ll make sure they get some place safe.”

  “And you’ll take care of me?”

  She put her hand on his back, then walked away.

  THE KNOCK CAME shortly after Ishmael finished in the shower. He was still in the bathroom when Foster opened the door. Ishmael ran the water and brushed his teeth so he wouldn’t have to hear what Foster had to say, but with his ears no longer fully human, he caught every word. The Padre was coming in, luggage and all. Foster was going out, laptop and all. With the threat of random exposure to change pheromones from Ishmael, Holly could come out at any time, but they needed Foster, more than ever now. And Foster had no desire to share a room with Ishmael.

  The hotel room door closed.

  Ishmael shut off the water and came out of the bathroom. “Any more news?” he asked.

  “Not much to tell,” the Padre said. He sat on the edge of the bed. “Two-Trees is pissed because I can’t change on command. Bridget’s pissed because none of our phones are working. Foster’s pissed because she’s Foster and because you’re sick and she doesn’t know why—”

  “Wait, none of our phones . . . ?”

  “And there’s no word from Ferox or Dep, and they ought to be here sometime tomorrow morning, but no one knows when they’ll arrive, and they won’t know where to find us.”

  “What do you mean none of our phones are working?”

  “Bridget took her phone, your phone, and Two-Trees’ phone. Tried to place a call to the front desk. The desk phone was working, but Bridget couldn’t get any of our phones to connect. The call just kept routing back to the cell phone company, asking that she call back during business hours.”

  “Shit,” he said.

  “I figured since all our phones are on Manitel,” the Padre said, “maybe they’re having an outage or something.”

  “Yeah. And they’re all on the same business account,” Ishmael said. “Wyrd’s business account.”

  The Padre blinked at him. “You mean someone might have cancelled the whole account?”

  Ishmael picked up his jacket.

  “Where are you going?” the Padre asked.

  “I need to find out just how marooned we are.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “They sent us here, where you could be found,” Ishmael explained. “They sent Bridget and me along—two of the least popular members of Wyrd—in order to be caught with you. Then they sent Ferox and Dep—and God only knows what’s happening with Helen and the Greys. And they just happened to send us on a mission three days after I started getting sick and losing control over my changes.”

  “Shit,” the Padre exclaimed. “But I thought the whole point of Wyrd was to keep werewolves from becoming public.”

  “It is.”

  “What about your credit cards? What about the hotel—”

  “That’s what I need to find out,” Ishmael said. “Between Bridget and me, we’ve got enough in cash to cover our hotel stay, at least for another two days. Thank God we hit that bank machine while we had the chance.”

  “And for food—”

  “That’s one problem,” Ishmael said. He checked that his wallet was still in his jacket pocket, and then he checked for his hotel room key.

  “Wait,” the Padre added. “Foster told me to make sure you didn’t leave.”

  “This isn’t something that can wait,” Ishmael said. “I just need to find a bank, that’s all.”

  “She says you’re probably mutating.”

  Ishmael grunted. “Could have sworn she said ‘Revolting.’”

  “She said that too,” the Padre admitted, “but more specifically, she said your virus is mutating, which means you’re probably a hundred times more likely to infect someone else—whether they’re
lycanthropic or not.”

  “Then I won’t bite anybody.”

  “Ishmael, you were infected by a scratch,” the Padre said, pointing at Ishmael’s arm. “What’s to say that you’re not . . .” The Padre shrugged. “Giving off super-werewolf germs every time you touch a flat surface? I mean, what if a waitress . . .”

  “Licked my credit card?” Ishmael asked. “The Lost Ones weren’t keen on personal hygiene, Padre. Chances are they’d just come from clawing apart one of their own. A little Lost skin sample under the claws, transferred into my arm . . .”

  “And you’ve been barfing,” the Padre said, pointing at the toilet. “Again.”

  Ishmael had vomited into the toilet while it was flushing, so Foster hadn’t heard it, but the Padre always had a stronger sense of smell, even in his human form.

  “We can’t risk it,” the Padre said.

  “And yet here you are,” Ishmael replied. He handed the Padre his wallet. The Padre declined.

  “I have all the same bugs you do,” the Padre said. “Which means I’ve got an equal chance of vomiting soon too.” He sat on the edge of one of the two beds, dejected. “Besides, I can’t risk going anywhere near a bank. I mean look at me.” He pointed to his face. “Last thing we need is for me to be caught on a built-in security camera.”

  Ishmael returned to his bed, flopped over, and put his arm over his eyes.

  “So now what do we do?” the Padre asked.

  “I’ll see if I can make a long distance phone call.” He looked at the time. It was 11:20 p.m. Eastern, making it 4:20 a.m. in London. He’d have to wait a couple of hours. He dropped his arm over his eyes again. The lamp light hurt his brain.

  After a worried pause, the Padre spoke again. “Would they do that? Maroon us in civilization?”