She listened as the strange woman described her life. She’d come from a sanctuary to the south, and the voices off camera asked her every conceivable question about it. How did her community deal with the singers? Did they have any trouble brewing quiet? How often did they have contact with free-roaming wicked? Were they in contact with any other sanctuaries, and if not, did they know of any other communities of true people? Did her neighbors still listen to The First Voice? When was the last time someone in her community had tried the vex? Had the vex ever worked, to her knowledge? Had she heard any stories, or even just rumors, of vexed people?
The questions came from many voices—Natalie could pick out both Reggie and his boss, Miranda, in the mix—but none of their faces ever appeared. Just the woman, seated on her metal folding chair, looking through her mended glasses and into the camera. Natalie saw that the video went on for a good two hours more, so she decided to skip ahead and check if there was anything interesting later on.
The scene that greeted her next was entirely different.
The woman was still seated on the chair, but her posture had changed. Her shoulders were slumped forward, and her tight bun of gray curls had come undone. Behind her stood a man, his head out of the frame. Natalie could just make out the tattoo of a large purple singer crawling up the side of his neck. His arms were crossed tightly over his chest—muscles coiled like wet rope.
“Are there any expecting mothers?” a soft voice asked from offscreen. It was, unmistakably, Reggie. The woman didn’t answer him. She only sat there, slumped over, her cascading hair puffing back and forth as she breathed.
“Are there any expecting mothers?” Reggie asked again, with the exact same intonation. Still, the woman said nothing.
“Are there any expecting mothers?”
“Are there any expecting mothers?”
Finally, the woman looked up at the camera. Natalie nearly dropped the phone. They had—what had they done to her? The woman’s face looked like a boiled lobster, apple-red and cracking, swollen meat bursting out from beneath. Her mouth was moving, but no sound came out. The man behind her uncrossed his arms, and Natalie, tongue between her teeth, stopped the video.
She skipped to the end.
There was the woman again. But now she was lying flat on a wooden table. There was a piece of her head, sitting very close to the rest of her head. Hands in rubber gloves swarmed over her like white spiders. They were using things that looked like knives and spoons to hollow her out. Somebody—Miranda, maybe?—was complaining that they weren’t labeling the samples right. Somebody else said that they were nearly out of sanitary vials. Reggie promised to look for some the next time they passed a pharmacy.
Natalie’s stomach spasmed, but there wasn’t enough in there for her to puke out. She turned the phone back on silent and closed the video. She tasted blood. In her head, Eva scolded, Stop biting your tongue.
“Hey . . . don’t be mad, all right?” The voice came from behind her.
Natalie swung around to see Reggie, wide awake, standing in the doorway of the bus. For a second she thought that he’d caught her. That he’d seen her watching the video. But no—it was worse than that.
Reggie was holding Eva in his arms.
“I’m sorry I picked her up,” he soothed. “I know you don’t want me to touch her. But it’s just . . . I think you need to look at this.” He stepped down off the bus and onto the road. “I think something is wrong with your sister.”
CHAPTER 27
The Man in the Yellow Suit
NATALIE COULDN’T MOVE.
Moments ago she’d been listening to Reggie speak to the doomed woman in the video. She’d watched his gloved hands as they’d reached with ginger precision into the woman’s skull. And now those hands were holding her baby sister. Reggie pressed Eva to his chest. His tinted bonnet sparkled with reflected singers in the dark.
“Don’t you panic, now,” he said.
“I’m not panicking.”
Even to Natalie’s own ears, her voice sounded remarkably calm. Under the surface she was doing insane, screaming somersaults. Her mind spun with the image of the woman’s face—before and after. Sipping coffee one moment, dripping with blood and tears and snot the next. But none of that showed in Natalie’s expression or in her voice. It was like some other, better, stronger version of Natalie had suddenly arrived and taken control.
“That’s good,” Reggie said. “I’m going to hand her over now.”
“Do it, then,” Natalie said.
All in one movement Reggie closed the distance between them and pressed Eva into Natalie’s arms. She could tell right away that Eva’s fever had worsened. The baby shivered against her, eyes clenched tightly closed. Her little chin was slick with mucus, and her blanket was soaked through.
“She was vomiting,” Reggie said. “It must have woken me up. At first I didn’t know where you were, or if you’d . . . I thought you might have run off.”
“I wouldn’t leave her with you,” Natalie said curtly. She peeled off Eva’s blanket, found a dry corner, and used that to clean her up.
“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” Reggie said. “But, I mean . . . I also don’t know you that well. Not even, like, your name.”
After what Natalie had just seen, Reggie’s little “aw, shucks” act was both disgusting and impressive. She resolved to do as good a job hiding what she knew about him as Reggie was doing hiding what he truly was.
“Do you have any spare water?” Natalie asked.
“Absolutely,” Reggie said. He began to pat down the many compartments of his bee suit, as though searching for his canteen. Then, from one of the pockets he fished out a pistol. His pistol. Reggie held it just high enough for Natalie to see that he’d gotten it back, then returned it to his pocket.
You left the gun on the bus? Eva asked through her fever and her chills.
Natalie glanced down at her sister and nodded.
Eva writhed weakly. Don’t beat yourself up about it, she said.
“Here it is!” Reggie announced, grinning wide as he produced a dented tin canteen from a cargo compartment on his upper thigh.
Natalie took the canteen from him, moistened her fingers, and rubbed them across Eva’s gums. Then Natalie poured more water into her hand and patted down Eva’s head. Steam rose up off of her baby sister’s scalp.
“I guess it doesn’t look so good,” Reggie said. He sounded like he was already preparing to offer his condolences.
“It looks how it looks.” Natalie waved him off. Then she gently placed her fingertips on Eva’s face and pried open one of her eyelids. The eye beneath was cloudy and sunken. And glowing. Natalie let the eye shut and opened it again, just to be sure. Still glowing. The light was faint, but it was there. Tiny purple embers sparked in Eva’s iris, throbbing and fading in the darkness. Natalie couldn’t believe it. She hadn’t expected it to happen so quickly.
“Holy shit,” Reggie said, genuine awe in his voice.
“Yeah,” Natalie said. Despite everything she’d just seen, she felt a surge of relief. Carefully, she released Eva’s eyelid. It snapped closed like a shade drawn over a tiny lamp.
“Does that mean what I think it means?” Reggie asked, his voice wobbly. “Does that mean it worked?”
“It only means that it’s started to,” Natalie said. “She still has to make it through this fever.”
“But if she does?”
“When she does,” Natalie said. “Yes. She’ll be vexed.”
“Holy shit,” Reggie said for the second time. “I can’t . . .” For a moment his words became lost in a swell of light-headed laughter. “Man. I can’t believe I didn’t get that on tape.”
“You’ll just have to remember it,” Natalie said. She poured water into the cap of the canteen and tried tipping some into Eva’s mouth. But the fluid came right back out, chased up by a film of cloudy mucus. Eva’s fists beat the air, and she began to bawl.
“I have a friend who
can help,” Reggie said. “Miranda—she’s not a doctor, exactly. But she knows some stuff. If you’d like, we could go back to the cabin together. . . .” He trailed off, allowing his words to hang among the singers. Again, Natalie saw the wooden table in her mind. She saw the woman, cut to chunks and hollowed out.
“You mean I have a choice?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” Reggie said. “Nothing’s changed about that.”
“Something has.” Natalie nodded toward the pocket in which Reggie had stashed his pistol.
From inside the dome of his helmet, Reggie sighed. “I just didn’t like having it aimed at me is all.” He sounded wounded by her implication. “Honestly, after everything I’ve told you, can you really think I’d hurt you? As far as I’m concerned, you are the most valuable person on the planet. You and your sister.”
Natalie believed him that they were valuable. But, if anything, that made her feel even less safe with him.
“Miranda can probably help us get that fever down.” Reggie raced on, almost tripping over his own words. “She can help with the dehydration and anything else that comes up. We’ve got a place where your sister can rest, and . . .”
As Reggie rambled on, Natalie considered bolting into the woods. Even with the baby in her arms, she’d be faster than he would be in that bulky suit. And she was pretty sure he wouldn’t dare shoot her. But how far could they go with no supplies? How would she and Eva ever return to Puffin Island without their kayak? And even if they did . . . what if Eva wasn’t going to be all right? She was burning up, gagging out little threads of clear bile. Natalie had apparently gotten better all on her own, but what if Eva couldn’t? What if she really did need medical help?
Meanwhile, Reggie was selling as hard as he could. “We have plenty to eat as well—picked up a resupply a while back. I think there’s even some powdered milk in there. It isn’t baby formula, but it’s better than—”
“Sure. Sure.” Natalie had to say it a few times to get him to stop talking.
Reggie paused, uncertain. “Yeah?”
“Yes. Just promise me something.” Natalie opened her eyes as wide as they would go and looked right into the blank darkness of his bonnet. “Promise that when I’m ready, your people will let us leave.”
“Of course we will!” Reggie said, so eager to reassure her that he nearly leapt out of his bee suit. “Absolutely! Yes. And, I mean, not only that, but we can help you get wherever you’re going. It’s a wicked world out here.” He gestured out at the sparkling woods on either side of the road. “We can all use more friends.”
“I think that’s true,” she agreed.
That, right there, was another reason not to run. Because running would sacrifice that last advantage that Natalie still had—the fact that Reggie didn’t yet know that he’d been unveiled as a monster. The fact that Natalie had seen him. So she stood there and forced herself to smile.
“My name’s Natalie, by the way.”
• • •
Reggie was positively giddy. He babbled nonstop as they headed back up the road, returning once more to the dead, silent forest. He told her about his life in the Quiet Lands, where he’d grown up. About joining the searchers and taking his first expedition into wicked country. What it was like to see his first tree and first singer. What it was like to meet his first wicked person. Natalie pretended not to believe any of it—a place without the wickedness? But that was just to keep Reggie rambling. And ramble he did.
“They don’t mention this in any of those old radio shows, but it used to be called Agent Blue. The quiet, that is. It was invented by a woman who came from my hometown—a first-class pesticide, herbicide, and defoliant. California still had something like a government back then, and they were the ones who decided how to use it. I mean . . . you think this is bad?” Reggie gestured out at the rotting trees flanking the road. “You should see where we come from. They literally dropped the stuff out of airplanes. They poured it directly into the lakes and rivers. They even seeded the clouds with it, so that the rain came down blue. And sure, it did get rid of the singers. But this is one of those cure-is-worse-than-the-disease situations. Because it got rid of everything. Basically, if it’s green or it moves, then we don’t have it in the Quiet Lands. That’s one of the reasons we send searchers into wicked country,” he said. “I mean, other than looking for you, of course. We’re also here to study the singers. And to study the wicked. We even study the true people who have managed to hang on in this environment. We’re all just out here, looking for a better way to survive.”
Of course, Reggie didn’t mention the pictures and films on his phone. Not a peep about the interviews that started with snacks and ended with scalpels, metal scoops, and sanitary vials. Was that simply what they were doing—studying? Slicing up the brain of some true woman, just on the off chance that she might be vexed? Or in search of some clue as to how she had survived out here, in wicked country, for so long?
“But the vex . . . Good Lord, the vex!” Reggie’s satisfaction was uncontainable. “That’s always been the prize. We’ve been searching for it for years. Then suddenly . . . boom! Here you are. Two vexed ladies.”
“Here we are,” Natalie agreed gamely.
Her attention was divided—listening to Reggie as carefully as she could while examining the woods beyond the road for a way out. Dawn had broken, scattering sunbeams among the dry trees. In the gathering light, Natalie could see slivers of the seashore beyond. If she could just make it down to the beach, she could follow it back to her kayak, bypassing the cabin. She could hear the roar of the waves. They sounded close. It was Eva’s voice that pulled Natalie out of her own head.
Those aren’t waves.
She looked up the road. A pickup truck was approaching rapidly, shiny metal plating bolted to the hood and doors. A long antenna, floppy as a fishing rod, sprouted up from a mount on the roof. The headlamps blazed with white light.
“Don’t freak out, now,” Reggie said. “Everything is going to be all right.”
Somehow, Natalie found it within herself to answer. “If you say so.”
As the pickup truck got closer, she could make out yellow and black bonnets bobbing in the rear bed. Four—five of them. Another pair of heads was visible behind the windshield. The driver gunned the engine, and the pickup leapt the final distance toward them before screeching to a stop. Five bee-suited figures vaulted out of the back. They carried rifles. One had a coil of rope slung over his shoulder.
“It’s all right!” Reggie hollered, rushing to put himself between Natalie and the others. “She isn’t wicked,” he shouted. “Stand down!”
Still the searchers approached, forming a crescent around them. They raised their rifles, and Natalie saw to her surprise that they weren’t just aiming at her, but also at Reggie himself. The next person to speak had a voice that Natalie recognized. She must have been their leader—Miranda.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“That’s the wrong question,” Reggie answered.
“Good boy,” Miranda said, nodding. “How far away is the lake?”
“The lake is not far,” Reggie said, not missing a beat. “This is the lake. We are in the lake right now.” It must have been some kind of passphrase, because the very second Reggie finished, his friends relaxed. They lowered their weapons, and there was a general commotion of relieved grunts and gurgles.
“What the hell, Reggie?” Miranda said. “You couldn’t have called?”
“The kid had my phone,” Reggie said, stepping aside so that his group could get a better look at Natalie and her baby sister. “No need to be shy, now,” he said to Natalie soothingly, as though to a baby deer. “Come forward and introduce yourself.”
• • •
Reggie brought the searchers up to speed during the ride back to the cabin. Their reaction, much as his had been, was one of utter glee. One of the men, in the privacy of his domed bonnet, actually wept. But it was too early to celeb
rate. Eva’s fever still hadn’t gone down, and she seemed to be growing weaker from one minute to the next. Miranda ordered the truck off-road so that they could get back to the cabin as soon as possible, sending them crashing down the embankment and through the wilted woods. Once there Miranda took control, gently but firmly removing Eva from Natalie’s grip.
“Do you know how much the baby weighs?” she asked.
It seemed, to Natalie, an entirely baffling question. All she could do was shake her head.
“All right,” Miranda said. “When was the last time she fed?”
“I tried a few hours ago,” Natalie said. It was all she could do to keep from reaching out and grabbing her sister back. “She didn’t get much down. . . . The last time she really ate was yesterday evening.”
Miranda had heard all she needed to. She rushed Eva to the cabin, barking orders at the various searchers. “I want that scale, Danny. Also, get some water going. Reggie, go check the kit to see if we have any Tylenol left and cut me a few half doses. Nathan, the IV, and don’t forget swabs. Quickly, people! As far as we know there are exactly two vexed people on the planet, and we aren’t about to lose one of them!”
As sickened as Natalie was by these people, she couldn’t dismiss a feeling of relief at this very moment. They were going to help her sister. At least that—she had to stay focused on that. And stay alert for whatever might happen next. Miranda continued giving orders as she and Reggie peeled off their bee suits and pulled on pairs of horrifyingly familiar surgical gloves. Eva battled and brawled as they set upon her. She hollered so loudly when Reggie pressed the IV needle into her arm that her jaw looked like it might unhinge. But as the fluid began to flow into her, Eva calmed. Not five minutes later, with her hot head snug under a damp cloth, she fell asleep.
Natalie was determined to act her part, making herself every bit as sincere and as thankful as the doomed woman in the video. But all the while, she kept half an eye on the bee-suited figures rushing in and out under Miranda’s command. She took stock of the room, looking for anything that she might be able to use to defend herself—and her sister—with. She tried her best to picture the short path that led back down to the jetty. Would she be able to find it in the dark after everyone had fallen asleep?
How We Became Wicked Page 20