“NOOO!” I shout, and charge at Ashley June, throwing myself with all the force I can muster.
She smacks me away. I feel nails gash the side of my head but no pain. The pain will come later. I go flying, over ground that spins wildly beneath me. The impact smacks the air out of my lungs. I rise unsteadily, fall down. Start crawling toward Sissy.
Ashley June’s eyes flick past me, over my shoulder.
Another dusker has emerged out of the dark shadows of a cottage. Its eyes are rapt with desire as it places me in its crosshairs. It crouches low and scuttles forward, crab-like, its legs and arms stabbing the ground like pincers.
Ashley June lifts her head from Sissy’s neck, blood dripping down her chin. She growls at the other dusker.
In a split second, the dusker goes from crab-shuffle to puma-sprint. At me.
As it leaps past the unconscious Sissy, Ashley June snaps her hand out and grabs its long flowing hair. I hear the tear of hair roots ripped out of scalp skin. The dusker’s legs fling out and it flips over, crashes to the ground. Ashley June is upon it before it can regain its footing. Crouched atop the dusker’s body, she lowers her face until her nose is almost touching the dusker’s. She snarls, her jaw widening to expose the long sabres of her razor-sharp teeth. The dusker snarls back, its eyebrows pulled together in fury. But also fear. It snaps at Ashley June.
Ashley June pulls her head back to avoid the clash of teeth. Then, in one fluid, powerful motion, she flings the dusker across the square. The dusker spins ungracefully through the air. Its upper torso smashes through a cottage window, its legs smacking into the siding. It hangs draped and twitching, half in, half out the window.
Ashley June turns to me. Her chest is heaving in and out. Her emerald eyes, clear and fierce, yet somehow also softened, contain a questioning, yearning glimmer. The pouch bag strapped on her back is ripped half open now; the cover of a book pokes out.
I take a step backward.
She is suddenly pummeled from behind by the other dusker, shards of glass sticking out of it. They fall away in a tangled ball of fangs and claws, hissing and attacking one another.
I use the precious few seconds to run to Sissy. Her eyes are closed; she’s murmuring incomprehensibly. I pick her up in my arms, start sprinting. I ignore the sound of Ashley June fighting with the other dusker behind. I ignore the tiredness in my legs as I race across the meadows on the other side of the village, ignore even the sight of the train beginning to pull out of the station. Ignore the thunderous stampede I know is closing in on me, the horde from Krugman’s office catching up with me. And most of all, ignore the heat humming off Sissy, the sweat pouring down her face, the ashen paleness in her face. Ignore the fact that she’s begun turning. Right in my arms, she’s turning.
I cry out sounds that have grown hidden and unseen in me for years, for my whole life, gurgled, strangled sounds of anguish. They pour out of me like a tide of fury, and they are more than the tears gushing down my face, more than the lactic acid rocking my legs.
The ground softens and undulates beneath my feet, and I can’t locate solidity, can’t find traction. And then I am collapsing because I have no strength left, because I cannot go on for one more stride, because the running and constant fleeing has wrung out the last drop of strength. I fall on the grass. Enough. Enough. I cradle Sissy’s fevered head on my chest, gaze at the stars above. Feel the ground shaking under me. I hear their approach, so close now. Pounding of feet, hollers, high-pitched, hysterical voices.
Then hands grabbing at me, my legs, arms, pulling me apart.
No, not apart. Pulling me up, hands in my armpits, hoisting.
“Gene! Get up! Get up!”
Above me loom the faces of David and Jacob. They’re already picking up Sissy, dragging her away. More footsteps approaching. It’s Epap, and he pulls my arm over his shoulder. “Gene, you’ve got to help me. I can’t carry you all by myself. Run, damn it! The train’s pulling out!”
I do. As fast as I can, but I’m exhausted. I reach the platform, can barely climb the stairs. The train is halfway down the platform, pulling away. I see David and Jacob climb into the nearest train car, lower Sissy to the floor. The train is already picking up speed. Epap and I are going to have to run for it. From behind us, a cry of anger. I steal a quick look back. There’re about a dozen duskers way ahead of the pack. They’ll be on us in less than ten seconds.
Jacob jumps out of the last car, sprints back to Epap and me. He pulls my arm over his shoulder, drags me. “C’mon Gene, come on, help us.”
“Drop me,” I say. “There’s no time.” I’m right, and they know it. We’ll never make it to the train, not with me weighing them down; the duskers will get to us before then.
Jacob suddenly lets go of me, starts sprinting ahead. “Keep going, don’t stop, get into the train!” he yells. And he bends over, picks up a hose from the platform. As we push past him, he flicks the ON button of the generator. It hums to life. Water shoots out, a strong propulsive force.
The duskers bound up the steps onto the platform. As they do, Jacob turns the hose on them. The jet of water smashes into their misshapen bodies. Their flesh—partially melted and made pliable by earlier exposure to the sun—is hosed off their bones in seconds, splattering off in a wet explosion of chunks. Not even their skeletal structure is spared. The jet of water obliterates their bones, sending fragments and chips flying into the air. The duskers disappear in a mist of bone and flesh. Jacob drops the hose, races to catch up with us.
And then he trips over another hose. Goes sprawling onto the platform floor.
A trio of duskers leap up the stairs. In seconds, they are upon him.
“NO!” Epap shouts. He drops me to the platform floor. Even as he vaults over a large container and picks up a nearby hose, the three duskers are already hunched over Jacob’s body, fangs sunk into his neck and thigh, eyelids fluttering with rapture. Epap turns on the hose. In seconds, the duskers are obliterated. He runs to Jacob, picks him up, slings him over his shoulder. Doesn’t look to see the damage he knows has been inflicted.
I’ve gathered strength in the meantime, enough to scramble to my feet and kick aside hoses on the platform that might trip the approaching Epap. He draws even with me, and together we run for the train.
I can feel the heat pouring off Jacob in droves. Even without looking down, I know he’s turning, and rapidly. Bitten and infected by three duskers, his turning will be exponentially swift.
“Faster! The train’s pulling away!” David shouts, hanging out of the last train car.
Fear injects both Epap and me with adrenaline. We explode forward in a burst of speed. As we draw even with the train, David sticks his arm out of the still-open door. He pulls in Epap and Jacob, then me, and we go crashing onto the train floor. Sissy is lying next to us, still unconscious, surrounded by a group of kneeling village girls. The girl with freckles looks at me, then casts a panicky look back at the duskers giving chase.
“No, no, no!” Jacob says. He’s beginning to shiver, sweat beads pouring out. I see his punctured neck, not just two tidy holes, but a slew of fang marks polka-dotting his neck. He’s turning with exponentially accelerated speed.
He knows it, too. He looks at Epap with frightened eyes.
“You’re going to be all right, Jacob!” Epap says, stroking back Jacob’s hair. “Everything’s going to be just fine.”
Outside, we hear the manic cries of the duskers as they charge toward the train. It’s gradually picking up speed but the doors are still open.
“Where’s Ben?” David screams, looking back.
Jacob spasms, a film of sweat glimmering over his cold body.
“How much more speed?” I shout to the girl with freckles. “Before the doors close?”
“Soon!” she answers. “I think we’ve almost hit the critical speed.”
And then, sure enough, there’s a mechanical click, and the door begins to slide shut.
At the sound, Jacob
turns to see. A haunted, terrible expression crosses his ashen face. “I’m turning,” he says. He stares at the closing door. And he realizes what none of us have yet to fully grasp. If the door locks shut and he turns inside, everyone in this train car is dead.
Jacob springs to his feet. A second later, I realize what he’s about to do. My hand shoots out to stop him, to tackle him to the floor. But I freeze. And in that hesitation, he takes three strides and is leaping through the closing gap. And then he is gone. The door clicks shut.
“NO!” David cries out, and he is already at the door, trying to pull it open. But it is locked and will be, until we reach the destination. “JACOB!” he shouts, “Jacob, Jacob!”
And Jacob has picked himself up, his face shuddering with fear and shock. He is out there in the world all alone for the first and only time in his life. It is more than he can stand, and he runs alongside us, if only to tenuously be with us a few seconds longer. David stretches out his arm between the bars, and for a moment, Jacob is able to sprint fast enough to catch up and hold his hand. His hair is flopping up and down, his cheeks are bouncing, his eyes are full of tears, this boy who dreamed of carousels full of galloping horses and leaping frogs and flying dolphins. He looks so small out there. He is alone and there is nothing we can do about it now.
The train picks up speed and Jacob can no longer keep up. Their hands begin to separate.
“Jacob!”
Their hands part.
And still he sprints as fast as he can, his arms swinging wildly, his legs a blur beneath him. He doesn’t want to be alone, he doesn’t want to fall away into the night, he doesn’t want to lose sight of the only family he has known. But he is losing ground, the train now accelerating.
And then he trips and falls. I can barely look. He is a pale pebble on a beach of darkness. A tide comes from behind, swallowing him up.
* * *
The metal bars of the car start to vibrate. Not vigorously, more like a hum thrumming up and down the bars. But it increases, until the bars are shaking in my hands as if they’re coming to life. And then it’s not just the bars; the whole train starts pitching side to side.
A hard drumming noise fills the night, the sound of a thousand horses galloping. But these are no horses outside, gaining on us. Horses do not emit a pale fleshly gleam off their skin, do not hiss and spit and drool, do not howl and wail, do not emerge from darkness with the whites of their eyes glowing like demented moons.
A scream. A dusker has leaped onto the car, catching a small girl—who’d been leaning against the bars—by surprise. It rips her out through the bars, more or less in one piece, bones broken, joints pulled out of sockets. On the ground outside, it balls around her, silencing her screams.
“Move away from the sides!” I yell. The freckled girl starts throwing girls from the side into the center of the car. A dusker suddenly flies out of the darkness, splats onto the side, hands wrapping around bars with the dexterity of an ape, then reaches in, its arm slashing through the air.
“Duck down, stay down!” the freckled girl shouts, and a moment later, a dusker lands on the roof. We cower, flattening ourselves against the floor, just as its arm swings from above like a poisonous vine. It hisses in frustration, gobs of saliva dripping down onto us. I leap to Sissy, still lying unconscious, covering her neck bites from the dripping saliva, tucking in her arms and legs, making sure none of her limbs stray within reach of a dusker arm. Her skin is cold as ice, her arms jerking spasmodically.
Yet another dusker smacks against the side of the car, then another, rattling the car like a birdcage. And still they fall upon us, covering the exterior of the car until their collective pale skin drapes over the entire caged car. The translucent, membranous blanket of skin is a vision of hell. Dotted intermittently in this unbroken cover of skin, like a teat on a dog’s underbelly, is a dusker face, hissing and snapping, eyes wide and gaping.
The train rattles on, speeding toward the bridge.
Under me, Sissy murmurs, her lips struggling to speak, her eyes closed. As if uttering a prayer. Or ministering last rites. To me. For now I feel the pain on the side of my head, and when I gingerly touch it, my fingers come away with blood. Where Ashley June had clawed me, had opened me up. With nails dripping in her own saliva.
The train rumbles forward, the duskers scream their strange howls at us, and the only thing I find myself capable of doing is tucking in the strands of Sissy’s hair, carefully, obsessively, behind her ears.
The tracks start to rattle with a different tempo. We’re crossing the bridge. Throok-throok. Throok-throok. The clacking of the rail tracks, passing underneath. And then we’ve crossed the valley and are heading down a steep decline, picking up earnest speed now. Throok-throok, throok-throok-throok, throok-throok-throok-throok.
I gaze back at the bridge through thin gaps between hanging duskers. On the other side of the bridge, I see swarms of duskers bottlenecking at the entrance to the bridge, dozens pushed and spilling over into the canyon.
And we pull farther away, gathering more speed, until we curve a bend, and the bridge, and the Mission, are no more.
44
THE JOURNEY THROUGH the night feels endless. We huddle together at first from the duskers who, refusing to let go, remain strapped onto the cage. Then later, we huddle for warmth against the bitter cold. We move boxes of supplies around us, cocooning ourselves within the tight perimeter. Nobody sleeps, nobody can, not with the gobs of deadly saliva dripping down on us, not with the intermittent screeches of anger and desperation from the duskers.
Sissy is burning hot, sweating profusely. Spasms shake her every so often. She is turning slowly—and I do not understand why it is so slow—but in a day or two, the disintegration will be complete. We cannot allow her to turn in here. When her turning progresses too far, we will be forced to do the unthinkable. We will have to move her to the side of the train car where, within reach of the duskers still draped on the bars, they will do what we cannot. No one mentions this but it weighs unspoken on all of us. On Epap most of all. He has not slept all night, has only stroked Sissy’s hair again and again, his face taut with grief and worry, his other arm over David.
Sometime in the dark of the night, I slide over to her. She is burning furiously hot now. I unsheathe a dagger from her belt. Epap awakens, jolts at the sight of the dagger. He looks at me, thinks I am about to do a mercy killing.
“Not yet,” he says. “She might still—”
“It’s not what you think,” I say. I place the dagger into my palm then slice; blood oozes out, pooling in my hand. The duskers are sent into a frenzy. I part Sissy’s lips and drip the blood from my hand into her mouth.
“In case it’s true. That I’m the Origin. That I’m the cure. Maybe it’s in my blood.”
But Epap is shaking his head, his eyes sad and withdrawn.
“It’s our last resort,” I say. “There’s nothing to lose.”
He can barely look at me as he speaks. “Gene,” he says, pointing at the gash on the side of my head. Where Ashley June had cut me. “You’re turning, too.”
He’s right. He’s seen what I have been denying, the paleness of my skin, the sweat glistening off my face, the fact that my shivering is not from the freezing wind, but from something deeper and sicker, the start of convulsions.
“You’re not the Origin,” he says, lying back down, closing his eyes. “You’re not the cure.”
* * *
Dawn arrives. The duskers fling themselves off the train, with reluctance, with anger, some of them swiping away one last time in hopes of catching someone off guard. Only a few remain; then, in a collective howl, they leap off, scampering into the dense woods. With the sheet of duskers gone, the wind blows unabated through the birdcage-like train car.
Only one dusker remains. But only because it has no choice. It had leapt headfirst at the train car, and its head had rammed right through between two bars. It could not extricate itself, not even after hours
of pulling, not even after dislocating its shoulders and breaking its jawbone in five places.
Sunrise arrives, and our ears are filled with the cries of that dusker until, sufficiently melted and softened like butter, it drops off, a pus-filled sac that splats wetly on the tracks. The train runs over it; yellow fluid is spun around wheels and spit up like a spinning firecracker. Gooey drops splatter down on us like thick yellow rain.
But it is morning, at last, and the rays of the sun offer a reprieve from the terrors of the night. No one speaks; we still sit huddled together despite the warmth of the sun, despite the absence of duskers.
A pale girl lifts her face to the sun, her eyes squinting. There is shock written all over her body, in her clutched hands, her tightly curled legs. But there is also a glint of hope in her eyes, an anticipation of what lies ahead. The Civilization, the shine in her eyes seems to suggest, the Civilization. Her eyes flick to me, hold my gaze for a second or two. The bars of the cage cast slanted shadows across her face.
Perhaps I should tell her the truth. Everything Krugman told me. But even now, in my feverish state, I’m beginning to question that truth. Because something doesn’t quite add up. But I say nothing, only tear my eyes away from her, tuck my head down. The sunlight, like acid to my turning eyes. Its rays slip through the pores of my skin, into my bones, jangling harshly against nerve endings I never knew existed in my marrow. Epap is right. I’m turning. I shake. I shiver.
45
IN THE AFTERNOON, we open the boxes of supplies. There’s a lot of warm clothes we no longer need now that we’re entering warmer low-lying terrain. We find paper, stationery, medical supplies. And, to cries of relief, a chest filled with canned peaches. A baker’s dozen, to be exact, which coincidentally matches the number of us in the train car. For now. By nightfall, there might be two fewer. The freckled girl distributes the cans. After a moment’s consideration, she places one next to the still-unconscious Sissy. She warns us to consume it judiciously. Nobody knows for sure how long the trip will last. It might be several days.
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