One of Us

by Craig DiLouie

  “Get us out of here,” Burton said. “Faster, go faster.”

  The car roared in response. One by one, the children gave up the chase. The last stood in the road, a tall and spindly figure, and waved the cruiser out of sight.

  Thirty-Eight

  TERATOGENIC, Mr. Benson wrote on the chalkboard.

  “The word traditionally used to describe the plague children is teratogenic,” he told his bored class. “Teratology again being the study of congenital abnormalities. We named the government agency that manages the plague children the Bureau of Teratogenic Affairs. Nobody expected the children to survive longer than a few years at most. We saw them as broken. We have since learned we were wrong.”

  Amy glanced at Jake, who stared at Archie Gaines’s empty desk as if contemplating some deep mystery. She wished she knew what he was thinking, but it wasn’t hard to guess this time.

  Jake hated fighting. Jake had to fight again.

  Mr. Benson erased TERATOGENIC and wrote the word MUTAGENIC.

  “The word we should be using is mutagenic,” he said. “The children aren’t genetically defective, just different. The plague changed their genes to produce something that is human and yet not. When we talk about genes, we’re talking about DNA, the body’s blueprint for how chemical processes happen in our cells.”

  The girls Amy knew never settled scores like boys did. They fought with words not fists, and they made every effort to get along. Boys acted on their emotions while girls talked them out. Somehow, girls got tagged as emotional.

  The teacher wrote = DNA + CATALYST.

  “What scientists learned is teratogenesis interacts with a dormant section of that blueprint, waking it up,” he said. “That section then rewrites the embryo’s development by producing severe random deviations.”

  Boys appeared to enjoy beating each other up, Amy mused. Strange how Jake seemed to complete her, and yet in many ways his mind seemed so alien. She always knew what Michelle was thinking and feeling. Not so with Jake.

  “The viability of these deviations improved as the pandemic spread,” Mr. Benson went on. “Like it was learning from its mistakes. In a short time, it began producing offspring that survived. From a scientific perspective, it’s miraculous. Beautiful, even. A dynamic genetic agent that generates new and unique life forms. Like us, the plague children are all one of a kind, only much more so.”

  Strange how she could love a boy she really didn’t know, not really. As strange as him and Archie hating each other enough to fight when they hadn’t really known each other since the third grade.

  Strangest of all to love a boy she couldn’t be honest with about what she was. She lied to him because she cared about him.

  Mr. Benson wrote, WHAT IS THE PATHOGEN?

  “First, categorization,” he said. “Teratogenesis. A strain of antibiotic-resistant syphilis that spreads as easily as HPV. But that’s not really it. The disease has only one effect, and that is to trigger a genetic script that has been part of our DNA for thousands of years if not longer. If you have it, your very genetic makeup is altered. The genetic material you secrete during sex becomes highly infectious and robust. Like the children, you are human and yet not—”

  The principal knocked on the doorframe and entered the classroom. He motioned Mr. Benson over for a private chat.

  The teacher put his piece of chalk back on the board and dusted his hands. “Hold that thought.”

  The class erupted in conversation. Amy said, “Hey.”

  “Hey,” Jake muttered.

  “You could just let it go. All this feuding.”

  Jake leaned across, his face fierce. “Dan Fulcher pushed me yesterday. In the bathroom while I was standing in front of the commode. That’s how it works in the jungle.”

  “I just hate seeing you like this, is all.”

  “I have to fight Archie again, and I have to beat him good. Hurt him so bad he doesn’t even think about coming after me again. Send a message to the whole school. It’s that simple.”

  “You boys are all idiots. Why can’t y’all just get along?”

  “You think I don’t know how stupid it all is?”

  The principal left. Mr. Benson raised his hands for quiet. Everybody pretended not to hear so they could get a few more words in.

  “Settle down,” he yelled.

  The kids sat up straight in their chairs, mouths zipped. Mr. Benson never yelled.

  “Thank you,” he said. “There’s been an emergency. The school is closing until further notice.”

  Rob Rowland’s hand shot up. “Did something happen, sir?”

  “There was an incident at the Home.”

  “Did some creepers get killed?”

  “Go home,” Mr. Benson said. “Straight home and lock your doors.”

  “Are we in any danger?” Jake said.

  The kids giggled. They thought he was joking.

  “I don’t know,” the teacher answered, which shut them up again.

  The kids packed the halls. Sneakers squeaked on the floor. Lockers slammed. Otherwise, the school was strangely quiet. Troy and Michelle caught up with Amy and Jake and asked if they knew what was going on. They shook their heads. Nobody knew anything. They trudged out with everybody else in gloomy silence.

  Anxious parents crowded the parking lot, calling out to their kids.

  “Look at them all,” Jake said. “Something bad happened.”

  “I see my daddy,” Michelle said.

  “If things get really bad, we should meet up at my pa’s church. It’s located on the other side of town from the Home, far enough to maybe be safe.”

  “What do you think is gonna happen?” Troy said.

  “I don’t know. But we should stick together if something does.”

  “My daddy will look after me,” Michelle said. “I’ll be fine.”

  She and Troy said goodbye with puzzled looks and ran off to their folks, who would drive them home.

  “What are you thinking?” Amy said after they’d gone.

  “The school ain’t just closing,” Jake said. “It’s closing indefinitely.”

  “That’s a dramatic way of looking at it.”

  “It’s what ‘until further notice’ means, Amy.”

  “So what you think?”

  “I don’t know. Something big is going on, though.”

  “I hope the Albods are okay,” Amy said. “They don’t live that far from the Home.”

  They talked about going into town to get more information. In the end, they decided to go straight to Amy’s as Mr. Benson directed. Jake would call his pa from there and then stick around until he was sure she’d be safe.

  “If there’s trouble, you should go home,” Amy said.

  Jake took her book bag and shouldered it. “My place is with you.”

  An air raid siren started up at city hall as they started walking. A pickup roared past, men sitting in the bed with hunting rifles between their knees. A station wagon loaded with furniture and possessions zoomed the other way. Then dozens of vehicles. The traffic thinned as they left Huntsville and reached the junction where he’d kissed her in the yellow jasmine.

  Back in town, the air raid siren powered down to silence.

  “We’ll turn on the radio as soon as we get to your place,” he said.

  Mama came out onto the porch as they approached the house. “Took you long enough to get yourself home. I was just about to get in my car and come fetch you. You do seem to enjoy making me worry.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Green,” Jake said. “Do you know what’s going on?”

  She scowled at him. “You should run along home.”

  “I wanted to make sure Amy got here safe, and I intend to keep her safe.”

  “That’s my job. Your job is to help your daddy give everybody comfort.”

  Jake wagged his head. “No, ma’am.”

  They stared at each other.

  Mama sighed. “Get in the house then. You can call your daddy a
nd let him know you’re okay.”

  “What’s happening, Mama?” Amy said.

  “The kids killed their teachers. They killed twenty men who went out to bring them in. Word is they’re coming for the town next.”

  She gasped at the impossible news.

  Horrible, every word of it.

  The children would kill some townsfolk and then get killed themselves, both sides consumed in the slaughter. And Jake, poor brave, sweet Jake, who’d fought a losing crusade to prevent this horror from happening, was in danger now, too.

  “Jake,” she said. “I have to tell you—”

  “Amy,” Mama said in her warning voice.

  She reached into the pocket of her housecoat. Amy knew what Mama had in there, ready to be used to protect her child.

  Amy could never have a normal life. She understood that now. The stakes involved in keeping her secret just got raised. After tonight, the government might kill all the children everywhere.

  “Never mind,” she said.

  “I tried to warn them,” Jake said, lost in his own bitter thoughts.

  “You was right. You was right all along about them plague kids.”

  He nodded, taking no satisfaction from it. “They declared war back.”

  Thirty-Nine

  Goof and Shackleton wolfed down a fast-food supper after the long, hard day. A big greasy bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken with fries and biscuits and Coke. Today, he’d helped the FBI and CIA spy on a mafia boss, The New York Times, and France.

  All week, he’d worked marathon days in this blank white room empty except for a steel table, electronic surveillance equipment, smelly ashtray, and telephone. The whole time, his sole company had been a crabby government agent and a giant mute guard. He hadn’t seen Pussy or Mr. Hand since they’d plotted their escape over ice cream sundaes. They expected him to make the first move. Plant an idea with Shackleton that he should let them all take a walk outside, then improvise once they got out.

  He hadn’t done it. It had sounded great, especially when he was under the influence of the foxy girl with the whiskers. When it came time to do it, though, he’d chickened out. When he read what people were fixin’ to say, he saw their present and future selves in unity. When he told them what to do, he planted a future idea and they achieved unity themselves. Planning his own future, however, turned out to be a whole lot different.

  Future Goof read books, got plenty of exercise, and bravely busted out of a secret government facility. Present-time Goof played computer games and diddled with his pecker after lights out. Future Goof always broke out tomorrow. Present Goof always thought he had more time.

  Present Goof had gotten so scared by the idea of escape, in fact, he’d stopped planting any ideas with Shackleton at all, even little ones. Instead, he just accepted another fedora and did his slimy job. He had the power over folks to tell their future selves what to do, but he couldn’t make future Goof do anything.

  The truth was he wanted to go home and he wanted to help Dog but he had a good applecart here. If he tried to escape and failed, he might end up forever spying for the government from a dank prison cell, slowly losing his mind.

  Present Goof knew how to rationalize. Maybe that was the real difference between him and the Amazing Spider-Man. Spider-Man was actually heroic.

  Thinking all this made him punchy. “You know, we could eat something other than fast food sometime.”

  “Thought you liked it,” Shackleton said.

  “It ain’t very nutritious. I’m a growing kid.”

  “Well, what do you want to eat then?”

  “I got this craving for sowbelly and cornbread,” Goof told him. “And grits.”

  Shackleton stopped chewing. “You’re kidding me.”

  “Come on now. We’re in Virginia, you know. In the South. You act like you never heard of it.”

  “I grew up in Detroit.”

  “Well, sir, you are now in Dixie.”

  “We have a cafeteria here,” the Bureau man said. “If you want something other than fast food, then you eat what everybody else eats.”

  Goof sucked on his straw to wash down a mouthful of fries. “Well, what all do they serve at the cafeteria?”

  “Lots of things. Spaghetti. Salisbury steak. Whatever’s on the menu that night.”

  “Let’s give her a shot, Mr. Shackleton. Roll the dice. Expand our horizons. What are they serving for supper right now?”

  “Jeff, remember what I said about being annoying?”

  “I knew you was gonna ask me that.”

  “I’ll bet you did.”

  “You will notice, though, that I didn’t interrupt—”

  “You,” Shackleton shouted. “Ha. See? It’s annoying.”

  Goof laughed. “I wasn’t gonna say ‘you.’ I was gonna say—”

  Shackleton laughed now, too. “Save it, Jeff. I’m not buying it.”

  The telephone rang. The agent wiped his greasy hands on a wad of napkins and walked over to answer it, still chewing.

  “Room Two,” he said. “This is Agent Shackleton. Yeah. Wait. What?”

  Goof picked up a drumstick with both hands. He raised it above his eyes and started gnawing on it, still chuckling from the joking around. It was the first time in all these weeks he’d ever made the Bureau man laugh. A small victory.

  “How do you know?” Shackleton said. “When did it happen?”

  Goof perked up at the man’s tone. He read what the person on the other end of the line was saying while acting like he wasn’t paying attention. He kept on chewing and looking somewhere else. He’d done this before plenty of times.

  Goddamn.

  Dog was dead.

  Killed in jail.

  The kids at the Home had risen up and killed their teachers.

  One by one, the other Homes were joining in.

  He coughed on his food, almost gagging. He drank some Coke.

  “I can’t talk right now,” Shackleton said. “I have a subject in the room. Can I call you back in, say, five, ten minutes from my office?”

  Goof’s heart slammed in his chest. This was big, real big, and all he could think about was Dog was dead and he’d done nothing to try to prevent it. He’d sold his friend’s life for a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

  “What?” Shackleton said. “Are you serious? Can’t they handle it—all right. I said all right. Just tell me who ordered this.”

  Goof had stopped listening. All he caught in the man’s reply were the words Code Five and that the instruction came straight from the director. He had no idea what it all meant.

  “But the whole program,” Shackleton said. “Fine. It’s on him, then. Goodbye.”

  The agent glared at the phone like he wanted to smash it to bits with the receiver. Instead, he pressed the cradle down to terminate the connection then stabbed a few numbers with his finger.

  “Captain? This is Agent Shackleton. The director called a Code Five. Why? Turn on CNN, that’s why. Just do the code, okay? Okay. Great.”

  The agent slammed the phone back on its cradle. “Thank you, dumbass.”

  “What’s going on?” Goof said.

  “I can’t believe this.” Shackleton started pacing. “What a colossal fuckup.”

  “What’s Code Five mean? It’s something bad, ain’t it.”

  “So much time and energy. All this success. Straight down the shitter.”

  “Are you gonna tell me what’s going on or what?”

  “My career’s over. That’s what’s going on.”

  “I don’t understand. How could that happen? We’re doing good work here. What’s Code Five mean?”

  The man bent over gasping. Then he straightened his back. Closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Released it. Then again. Goof had seen him do this before when he got angry or stressed. Some kind of meditation he’d learned in Thailand. Breathe in the good, breathe out your stress. Let go of all attachments.

  Shackleton opened his eyes. Exhaled on
e last time. “Sorry, kid. Orders.”

  “What orders?”

  The agent reached under his suit jacket. “I have to—”

  “Kill myself,” Goof said.

  Shackleton pulled out a big ugly pistol, shoved it in his mouth, and squeezed the trigger. The gun roared. The bullet punched a hole through the roof of his skull, spraying blood and brains across the room.

  The man toppled backward and lay spread-eagled. Blood fountained from the hole in his head and pooled around his sightless face. A plume of smoke trickled between his teeth like a departing soul.

  “Oh, my God,” Goof said.

  He bent over and emptied his stomach on the shiny white floor. Chicken, fries, and soft drink all came pouring out of him.

  “Oh, oh, God,” he moaned and retched up a few strings of bile. “I’m sorry.”

  Five minutes ago, they’d been joking and laughing.

  Now he was in a fix. He’d get blamed for this. They’d put him in a dark cell for sure. No more McDonald’s, no more comic books.

  Then his shocked brain processed the fact he was in it far deeper than that.

  Code Five. Kill the specials.

  The kids had staged a riot in the Homes, and the normals decided they had their excuse to exterminate all of them. The army was probably lining up everybody he knew against a wall and shooting them.

  No, wait. That wasn’t it. He’d been spying for the men who ran the show long enough to get a feel for how they thought, the kind of world they lived in. They wouldn’t give up something as valuable as the specials without a good reason. What was the word? Investment. They’d made an investment.

  Holy crap, he thought. The kids weren’t rioting. They started a war, and it looked so far like they were winning it.

  He pictured old men in suits and military uniforms sitting around a table in some meeting room in D.C., everybody hollering at each other and pointing fingers. Then somebody says, Excuse me, sirs. They ignore him. Excuse me, he says again. Hey. Everybody stops and listens. The guy says, I seem to recall we put the country’s most powerful plague kids all in one building down in Virginia.

  The safest option was to kill them all.

  His applecart was spilled for good. There was no applecart. The only option was escape. Now, before whoever was on the other end of that phone had a chance to put Code Five into action.