Slap some headphones on this kid, and maybe he could write down conversations in Russian. Fill in missing gaps in recorded conversations. Maybe even recite conversations in real time just by watching people through a pair of binoculars.
He picked up the phone, punched a number, and asked for a lab tech to come down to Room Two. Out the corner of his eye, he saw the freak grab a fountain pen off the table and draw two cartoon eyes on his chin. Unbelievable. Then the kid started cramming his cheeseburger into his weird upside-down face.
“How would you like to be a secret agent?” Shackleton said.
“Are you serious?” the kid said, his cheeks bulging.
“Dead serious.”
“I’ll believe it when I see my hat.”
“I’ll get you ten hats if you want,” Shackleton told him.
“As long as one’s a fedora. Am I gonna get to go home ever?”
“You’ll be staying here a long time—”
“While we do testing, Jeff. Gotcha. So is this a prison or not?”
Shackleton returned to his chair and crossed his ankles on the tabletop. “No. This is not a prison.”
“What is it then?”
“We call it Special Facility. We bring special kids like you here. If you’re good, you’ll get to meet them. They’ll be your new friends.”
“You could bring my real friends here,” the kid said. “Since we’re scratching backs.”
Shackleton smiled. “You don’t get to make demands like that yet.”
A long-haired young man in a lab coat entered the room. He peered at the freak through the shiny lenses of steel-rimmed glasses. “This is your new subject?”
“Yes,” Shackleton said. “Have a seat facing him.”
“He’s not dangerous or anything, right?”
“Just sit in the chair, will you please? Thank you. Jeff, this is Zack. He works in the research division. He’s going to tell you what he knows about the disease.”
The kid licked salt off his fingers. “Sounds very interesting. Can’t wait.”
“Hi, Jeff,” Zack said. “You want to hear about the pathogen?”
“Sure, why not.”
“A pathogen is a microorganism that causes disease. Like the kind that gives you a cold, though the germ is a bacterium, not a virus. It’s shaped like a little coiled worm—”
The plague kid opened his mouth to jump in, but Shackleton cut him off. “Zack, talk to him as you would to a colleague. Make it as technical as you normally would.”
“If you say so.” The technician’s gaze flickered between the kid’s drawn and real eyes. “Okay, Jeff. This mode of congenital mutagenesis is a sexually transmitted disease of the—”
“Treponema pallidum species,” the kid said.
“That’s right. Very good. It’s a highly virulent relative of syphilis. A—”
“Gram-negative, mobile spirochete bacterium that is asymptomatic in adults.”
“Correct,” Zack said with a frown. “Transmitted to a—”
“Fetus, however, it generates chronic gummas that rewrite embryonic development.”
“Holy shit,” Zack said. “How are you doing that?”
The plague kid looked at Shackleton with a toothy grin. “You’re right. I didn’t understand a word of it.”
The scientist looked angry. “What’s going on here?”
“That will be all, Zack,” Shackleton said. “Thank—”
“You,” the kid said.
Shackleton smiled. This little freak was his ticket.
He’d worked for the Bureau for three years, touring one crappy Home after another, pushing paper and looking for a way out. Then everything changed. A few of the kids began developing abilities, crazy abilities. Overnight, they became national security assets, the start of a preternatural arms race. The Russians have their freaks, we have ours. The Bureau’s second-rate burnouts found themselves fighting over who could come up with a valuable asset.
Last year, few among the monsters exhibited extraordinary capabilities. This year, some. Next year, it might be many. It might be so many the Bureau’s field agents would get quotas instead of rewards. For the present, though, it was still virgin territory. Finding a hot one could get an agent promoted upstairs to management. Within five years, he might even make director.
As far as Shackleton was concerned, it was about time the freaks gave something back to the USA. For the past fourteen years, the economy had limped through one recession after another. The cost of keeping them all alive was a constant drain on tax dollars even with funding cut to the bone. Millions had been spent on a cure that never materialized. Religious cults, paranoia, and superstition were rampant everywhere you went. Watergate and Vietnam still weighed everything and everybody down. For the first time since the Black Death, the world population had declined for more than a decade. Every four years since the plague, a new president got elected promising to restore American glory, good times, morning in America, a hard line against internal disorder and the Soviets abroad. But the country just kept falling apart a little more every year, going backward instead of forward.
Who would have ever guessed these kids might be the key to America reclaiming its status as a superpower? That an annoying, skinny kid with an upside-down face might play a role in that historic event?
The U. S. Army had put a lot of resources into militarizing the paranormal. Project Grill Flame, they called it. Guys sitting in a room trying to draw remote Soviet installations and getting it wrong. Agent Fischer had found a kid who could do real remote viewing. Agent Kaplan dug up one who could hear what people were saying a mile away. Telekinesis, pyrokinesis, clairvoyance, clairsentience. The impossible now possible. Not just possible but routine and put to work for the United States government.
Shackleton saw a future when the children were weaponized or sold to industry. When infected couples got paid to make more of them. When the experiments conducted by Zack and the other eggheads in the research division cracked the genetic source of the children’s abilities.
Then they’d synthesize these abilities into a shot. One stab of a needle, and you could read minds. You could fly.
Men would become gods.
“Jeff,” he said, “you just earned yourself—”
“A hat,” the kid said.
Shackleton frowned. He was sure he was going to say the kid earned himself a job as a spook. But yeah, he’d get the freak his hat. It was the least he could do.
Ten
Sally traveled the narrow dirt track leading up to the Stark County Home for the Teratogenic. Honeysuckle crowded the road on both sides. The wind whispered through the leaves of shagbark hickories. Squirrels clambered across the branches as she walked past. Her bare legs shook, rebelling with each step.
The sheriff terrorized those poor plague kids, then let her and her friends go with a slap on the wrist. It had gotten her dander up, seeing Sheriff Burton bully those kids. It made her think about what George said about there being two worlds. About Mr. Benson saying they’d all have to live together one day. She wanted to do something more than just give out iced tea. She’d decided to go see what their world looked like. Maybe check on them and make sure they were okay.
Sally felt responsible, but now she felt foolish and scared. She didn’t really know the plague kids, though they’d worked on her farm for years. She hadn’t known they hung out in the woods, thought about what was happening to them, had special names for each other, played their own music. Everything about them was alien to her. They might see her coming out here as just more monsta face.
Worse, she might get them in another heap of trouble they didn’t need.
It was all so unfair.
She froze at a commotion in the bushes. Something in the trees. Sally looked behind her. It wasn’t too late to run on home. Then she took a deep breath and lifted her chin. She may have been the spitting image of her mama, but she was her daddy through and through, stubborn when she set he
r mind to something.
Sally picked up her courage and marched on. “Everything is fine.” Voicing her thoughts aloud like a protection spell. “There ain’t nothing to be scared about.”
The Home came into view, a vast old mansion surrounded by ramshackle buildings all fallen into ruin in the wilderness. A prosperous plantation once stood here, abandoned following the Confederate War. The forest had reclaimed it after more than a century of neglect, a reminder nature had more energy than humans. Groping oak branches, draped in Spanish moss, darkened the weedy yard. A tire swing hung from a thick, dead branch. The damp air smelled of decay.
A single flower grew in an old flowerbed choked with weeds, a Cherokee rose common along the Trail of Tears. The Indian mothers had cried as their children died during the exodus west to the reservations. Their tears planted these white roses all the way to Oklahoma. Here, it was a single spark of life and beauty among the decay and squalor. A single tear shed for the plague kids.
Seeing nobody around, Sally walked up to the front door and rang the bell. A rusty chime filled the house. No answer, like they’d all packed up and left. She was about to ring again when the door creaked open. The house poured out its warm, musty breath along with strange sounds, hoots and growls and flapping.
A man stood in the doorway in jeans and T-shirt. “You lost or something?”
“I’m Sally Albod. My daddy sent me out to check on Enoch and George and Edward. Make sure they’re coming tomorrow. Are they around? Daddy’s got important work for them to do this week. Cotton needs harvesting.”
It was a good lie. The best lies always came wrapped around the truth.
The man scratched at one of his sideburns. Crude tattoos rippled and flexed along his forearms. “You’re Reggie’s little girl.”
“That’s right, mister, um.”
“Bowie. I’m Ray Bowie.”
“Mr. Bowie, can I see the boys just for a minute please?”
“The boys. You don’t want to see their teacher.”
Sally scrambled for a good answer. Of course, Mr. Bowie would want to fetch Mr. Gaines to answer her question. She brazened it out. “Seeing as it’s Sunday and Mr. Gaines ain’t working, just the boys will do.”
“Most of ’em are out carrying on in the woods, but I’ll check if your crew is on the premises. You wait right here, darlin’.”
The door slammed shut, sending a tremor through the floorboards. Sally looked around at the chipped paint covering the porch. She touched a curling piece and watched it flutter to her feet. She leaned to peek inside the big cracked picture window, but somebody had drawn the curtains. She heard muffled noises from inside, bangs and something roaring.
God, what a place. She shouldn’t have come here.
The door creaked open again and Dave Gaines stepped out. “Ray came and told me we was being visited by a hissy fit with a tail on it. What you doing out here, Miss Sally?”
Brazen it out, Sally told herself. “I came to check on the boys and make sure they’re coming tomorrow.”
“Did you now?” His breath smelled like beer.
“That’s right. What are you doing working on a Sunday?”
“The principal wanted me come in for something special, so I did. You mean you came all the way out here to ask for the boys. Not to see me.”
“I didn’t ask for you, Mr. Gaines. But since you’re here, please do the job my daddy pays you to do and fetch the boys.”
“I don’t work for your daddy,” he said. “Anyways, you want to ask about whether the boys are coming, I’m the one you’re asking, not them.”
His good eye dropped to her chest then to her bare knees visible under the hem of her dress. Looking down made his eyes line up in the same direction.
She crossed her arms over her breasts. “What did I tell you about being forward with me, Mr. Gaines? You’re drunk.”
“Like I said, it’s Sunday. You want a beer?”
“You should mind your manners.”
“You know what I think? I think your daddy didn’t send you out here at all.”
“We can always ask him and see what he says.”
“I think your daddy don’t even know you’re here.”
She shrank back as he took a step forward. “You keep away from me.”
“Or what?”
“You touch me, it won’t be Daddy killing you. It’ll be me. I’ll be the last thing you ever see.”
He tilted his head back and laughed. “It’d be worth it. All those pretty blond girls on that farm, and you’re the only one worth a fight.”
“It’s a fight you don’t want, trust me.”
“You got spirit, girl. But your mind is all wrong. You won’t let a man give you a compliment, but you got a soft spot for your little cuckoos. It don’t add up.”
“Why you call them that? They ain’t crazy.”
“I’m referring to the birds,” he said. “They lay their eggs in other birds’ nests. Their babies hatch and take all the food from the rightful babies, force the parents to take care of them.”
“That’s a mean way of looking at it.”
“What, you think they’re saints? They ain’t saints any more than I am or pretend to be. Any more than you are deep down. When you lie in bed alone on a warm night. Now I know you didn’t come out here to see any creepers.”
He took another step toward her.
“You better keep away from me,” she warned.
“I know what you want,” Mr. Gaines said. “How about you and me take a walk out back so we can talk.”
Sally’s toughness flew away at the idea of him lying on top of her, forcing her down into the dirt. Mashing himself between her legs, his rank breath in her face. Planting himself in her sex, his seed maybe crawling with the germ. Little worms inside her starting a monster baby that would live in this house.
She ran.
The yard swam in her gaze. Banging and roaring in her ears. Something in the trees. Mr. Gaines’s mocking laughter following her all the way back to the county road.
He admired her as she bolted across the yard. Blond hair flying. Muscles working under her little dress. Flashes of bare legs. Such a nubile young thing.
Dave Gaines had brought the creeper boys to the Albod farm for years and hardly gave Albod’s sloe-eyed youngest a second look. Now she was all grown up like a sweet Georgia peach ready to be plucked and sucked.
Young, pretty, and legal, but that wasn’t her whole appeal. He meant what he said about her spirit. The way she walked around the farm like a little barefoot Scarlett O’Hara, looking down on him as the hired help while waiting on her pets with iced tea. All that fire looking for somebody to burn. He just knew she’d be a wild one in bed once he got her lathered up and taught proper. He would give it to her gentle or rough, however she liked it. Whatever she liked, he would give it to her as long as she gave him what he needed. The key to taming a wild animal wasn’t to break its spirit but to get it to respond to your command. Get all that bursting spirit directed at you and what you wanted.
He liked flirting with her but never thought it’d come to anything. Now he saw an open road. Her coming all the way out here pretending to check on the creepers. She wasn’t fooling anybody. Let her run. She’d come running back soon enough, yes, sir. She wanted him even if she didn’t really know it yet. He just had to keep the pressure on until her mind and body got on the same page.
Good thing he was drinking today. It had made him brave and bold. Let him tell her where he stood and what he wanted. That was how a man did things.
Her white dress flickered in the trees like a candle in the dark. Then she was gone. Inside the house, Bowie and the principal waited on him. Old Willard in his usual three-piece suit, jacket off and shirtsleeves rolled up, Bible on the steel sink next to his instruments. Ready to teach an unruly creeper a wholesome fear of the Lord and the Home rules. Dirty work, but it was part of the job that kept a roof over his and his boy’s head.
Gaines snorted one last time and went inside. The stink of sweat and mildew washed over him. Then he headed down to Discipline, where the problem kids went.
Eleven
Come Monday, the bell filled the school with its piercing ring. The hallways flooded with tramping kids. Freed from their desks, they talked, slammed lockers, and packed up books and homework to go home. They spilled out the main doors.
Bright sunshine outside. The janitor rode his mower in lazy circles on the lawn. The big yellow buses sat idling ready to take everybody home. Insects buzzed in the warmth. The day belonged to the children now.
Anything could happen. Nothing much ever did, but it could, and that counted. Releasing pent-up energy, everybody screamed and laughed except Jake and his friends frowning at the ground.
Amy noticed her friends looking glum. “What’s bugging all y’all?”
“I got in so much trouble with my daddy it ain’t funny,” Michelle said.
“They find out you stole their wine?”
“No. It was talking to the plague kids. Which apparently is a crime against humanity. I wish I’d never laid eyes on them boys.”
Troy picked a pebble off the ground and winged it into the road. “Let’s go down to the corner store. Get a Coke or something.”
“I ain’t got money,” Sally said. “But I can tag along.”
The rest nodded. They would skip the buses. Hang out and talk. Go down to the store and buy some Cokes. Walk home later before the dark came.
“I’ll share mine with you,” Troy said.
Sally didn’t thank him for the offer. She seemed preoccupied by her thoughts. Michelle said she could go as long as she was home by five on the dot.
“What about you?” Amy asked Jake. “Did your daddy chew you out?”
“I told him we’re all God’s creatures. I told him Jesus said to love the sick. Then I told him he could stick it where the sun don’t shine.”
The kids laughed at that.
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