The Gatherer Series, Book 1

by Colleen Winter

Alan had crept forward again, like a tourist at the zoo hoping for a better look.

  She pulled the blanket closer, Kowalski and the three men staring at her like she was on trial. Was it true? The signs had been there, if she had bothered to look.

  “Mac lives right next to the damn thing.”

  Curtis had remained in the shadows of the kitchen, his grim, bearded face visible in the lamp light.

  “It’s a rumour. Nothing else.” The Constable had raised his voice, using volume to banish the very idea. “Do you all want to go back on the generator? No one—not even the hospital—ever really having enough?”

  His hand was back on his holster again and he had moved closer to the bed, his gaze sliding down the sleeping bag, along the shining frame of her shelter, and returning to her face. There was a low growl from Blue as he rose to his feet.

  “You’ll need to come with me.”

  “It’s okay, Blue.”

  Storm closed her eyes against the pressure pushing at her skull. Was this it? The world finally coming to drag her back in?

  “The Gatherer in town was misfiring. I disabled it before it self-destructed.”

  There had been Gatherers that had misfired. Though this wasn’t one of them. The battery overcharged so that it had burned up in the newer models where they had expanded the Gatherer’s original function far beyond its capabilities. The Gatherer in Three Rocks had worked fine; she had felt it in every burning wave that had rolled through her body.

  “Are you telling me you shut it down?”

  She met his gaze, hating his certainty and his strength.

  “By shutting it down I saved the mechanism. Otherwise it would have been irreparable.”

  The mechanism had been saved—physically—but it would never again latch onto the elusive shards of energy it was meant to collect.

  “Do you have any identification?”

  “I need to stay in here.” She lifted her chin to indicate her shelter.

  “I’m not too concerned about where you think you need to be. What I am concerned about is that you halted the Gatherer that supplies power to the entire town. I’m going to need some identification saying you are who you say you are.”

  “It’s her alright.”

  Alan moved into the light looking like he would hand her a photo to autograph at any moment.

  The Constable stopped his approach with an outstretched hand.

  “I’m going to need something more official than your starry-eyed confirmation.”

  “She’s—I’m not being starry-eyed. It’s her. My God. Wait until I tell—”

  “You won’t tell anyone.”

  Maria’s words came out as an order, and forced open a crack in what Storm had been denying. It was too much. Her fatigue, the men, the understanding that the world would once again know where to find her.

  “I can do what I like.”

  “Back off Alan.” The Constable turned back to Storm.

  “I’ll need that I.D.”

  Storm tried to sit, her arms slow to respond. She’d be exhausted just getting out of the bed.

  Kowalski picked up Storm’s pack that lay on the floor beneath her discarded pile of clothes, and withdrew Storm’s wallet from the side pocket. Kowalski handed over the license that showed Storm with longer hair and a beaming, world-conquering smile.

  Storm tried to think what else Kowalski would have found in the pack. Her jacket, the head lamp. Anything important had been left at the Gatherer.

  The Constable spent a good minute examining the license, lifting his eyes to Storm several times before handing her the card.

  “You’ll still need to come back to town. The Gatherer needs to be back on line and you’re going to do it.”

  “You need someone from head office. Someone with tools.”

  The Constable moved in close, one side of his face lighted by the oil lamp.

  “You’re coming back to town. Now.”

  Blue growled, though he faced the door, not the Constable. The bed shifted and rolling waves of fatigue swept through her.

  “Pull yourself together.”

  She pushed herself to sitting, the weight of her head falling to her chest. Heat from the stove mixed with the cold air from the door that no one had bothered to shut.

  “It’ll kill her.”

  Storm sat for a moment letting the dizziness subside. Did she look that close to death?

  “She made it here. She can make it back.”

  The cold passed right through her. The fire popped and she looked up to their shocked, averted gazes flicking away from her thinness. The fatigue pulled stronger like the bow line of a moored boat.

  “You’re not taking her.”

  Kowalski’s hip brushed Storm’s shoulder, blocking her from the Constable.

  “You’re obstructing justice.”

  Curtis and Alan fell in behind.

  “I’m not moving.”

  Storm lowered herself back to the bed. She would rest while they argued. The chink of metal and the flash of handcuffs. The Constable stepped towards the bed and Kowalski met him, her small chin lifted in defiance, his powerful shoulders leaning over her.

  Storm let her eyes begin to close. A crash and Blue started barking wildly. Kowalski and the Constable spun around, their bodies a frame for the distressed human that had come out of the dark. He was panicked, with unfocused eyes in a pale, tortured face, a torn open coat, with one boot gone, and lips that moved in a stream of suffering.

  Blue backed off at her command, the man’s words emerging as a low drone. He staggered forward, his movements sudden jerks out of a constant trembling.

  Curtis caught the man before he struck the floor, the big man falling to his knees beside the convulsing man. Curtis laid a large hand on the side of the man’s face, the man’s eyes rolling as he tried to focus. His lips moved in a continual mantra as his legs spasmed and the one boot clunked against the floor.

  “Help me.”

  The horror of it was unbearable. Mac, her steady, quiet contact with the outside world, who had not once told the world she was there, writhing on the floor, his agony turning him to a creature she no longer recognized. It was a pure, unfiltered accusation of what she had done. Mental symptoms worse than anything she had, the weight loss and terror in his eyes paralyzing her. He had to have been hiding his symptoms, not knowing what was happening.

  There was a shifting beneath her as if she were on a raft at sea, the waves crashing across the boards enough to tear her free. She gripped the rough wood of the shelter.

  “What do I do?”

  Curtis, helpless above the convulsing Mac, gripped the man’s hand to keep him there.

  “Bring him here.”

  She slid to the back of the bed, opening a spot wide enough for Curtis to slide Mac in. A trembling mass of jerking limbs and the sour smell of sweat and piss.

  She wrapped her hand around his, squeezing hard enough to cause pain.

  “Hold on.”

  She was rewarded by his gaze sweeping across hers before lifting to the roof of the enclosure.

  Kowalski pushed through the bulk of the three men crowded at the bedside, handing Storm a filled syringe. She checked the dosage level—more than she would have given, but the extra wouldn’t hurt him.

  Curtis lowered Mac’s pants while Kowalski held him steady. A red, weeping rash covered his upper thighs.

  There was no response when she jabbed the syringe into his buttocks, the pain of the needle not even registering in the maelstrom that was his body. The tremors started to subside as she handed the empty syringe back to Kowalski. The pop of the fire was the only sound as Mac slowly calmed, the rigid grimace on his face relaxing as he slid from his place of mental cacophony into unconsciousness.

  She pulled the blanket up to cover
both of them, feeling a strange intimacy with him. Curtis tucked the edge around Mac’s shoulder, a heightened flush of red across his round cheeks.

  “What was that?”

  Small twigs rested in Mac’s straight black hair, dirt streaked his cheeks, and blood had crusted his fingernails where she held his hand.

  “The injection will stop the attack. And let him sleep without any more seizures.”

  Her own fatigue was unrelenting, and she longed for the oblivion of the syringe.

  The men hadn’t moved, frozen in the helplessness and fear of men accustomed to taking action who suddenly don’t know what to do.

  She lowered herself off her elbow, the wafting dizziness buffeting her even as she lay still.

  “But what was it?”

  There was no denying the fatigue, its tendrils firmly wrapping around her. She tried to think of an answer, flipping through the available options, their clarity blurring each time she tried to pick one. The heat of Mac’s body drew her towards him and the sweet release of sleep. Before she went under, Kowalski spoke, her abrupt, no-nonsense voice clear and plain in the silent room.

  “That is the plague.”

  TEN

  The rising sun set the copper roof of Storm’s lab on fire, the steel sides shimmering walls of reflected light, a beacon amidst the stunted shrubs and dormant brown of the clearing. Maria ran her fingers over the surface of the window, feeling the tiny ridges of the mesh attached to the inside. She hadn’t noticed it the other times she had checked the window.

  Curtis’s steady breathing disturbed the silence of the cabin with Mac’s low snores beside Storm in the enclosure. She envied their sleep, the dull heaviness of exhaustion still clinging to her as she crossed to a second window above the sink. Two tire tracks led to the road and the stretch of the river that was beginning to reflect the sun’s rays back to her.

  Curtis had stayed behind when the Constable and Alan had left, promising to keep an eye on things. As Storm and Mac had slept, it had become clear that Curtis was more concerned with Mac’s well-being than anything the Constable wanted him to do.

  The thud of an elbow against wood drew her back across the room to Storm’s enclosure. The copper that covered the bed was cool to her touch, strips of it forming a web with thinner strands of silver. A blanket with copper threads woven through it lay over both of them. Mac lay closest to the edge with Storm on her side in the narrow space against the back wall. Storm’s eyes moved beneath her eyelids as Maria slid open the door, but Mac’s slack facial muscles didn’t register the disturbance.

  She shook Storm’s shoulder twice and Storm reacted, her eyes wide with confusion and fright. Maria hated her vulnerability, her fragility feeling like a betrayal.

  “Time to get up.”

  Storm struggled to focus, disoriented by Maria’s presence until her memory kicked in and her confusion tightened into a frown. Storm lifted her head enough to check if Mac still slept as Maria slid the door fully open.

  “We should have been gone by now.”

  Storm pulled up the blanket to cover her bare shoulders and curled her head into the pillow next to Mac.

  “They have you on video. They’re going to take you back to Three Rocks.”

  Storm opened her eyes reluctantly, her gaze fixed on Mac’s shoulders.

  “I’m no good to them.”

  “They don’t know that.”

  Storm lifted herself onto one elbow, her red hair smashed against her skull, the blanket held close though the room was warm from the fire.

  “What is it you expect me to do?”

  The floor shook and Maria moved to the window, but it was only Curtis bumping his chair as he shook the sleep out of his mane of hair. Her concern turned to irritation as he scraped the chair further across the floor. The clearing lay still, the increased reflection of the sun off the river the only change.

  “Can you help me get some supplies together?”

  It was a gamble but she thought she had read him right. He would be happy to see them go. He didn’t respond as he rubbed his hands over his face and pushed his fingers along his eyebrows, struggling to free himself from sleep. When her words finally registered he nodded and picked up the bag she pushed towards him without a word.

  “Pack whatever you can find. It won’t be long before they’re back.”

  Storm was lying down, her chin tucked into the cover when Maria returned. A thin band of dirt showed around the base of the bed posts, the wood frame buried directly into the earth.

  Maria shook her shoulder again. Storm’s eyes opened, her anger deepening the blue.

  “Go away.”

  Maria leaned in, hovering above Mac and Storm’s wasted bodies, trying to fit what she had found here with the hope that had propelled her across the country.

  “You need to fix what you started.”

  Storm rolled onto her back, her gaze locked on the underside of the enclosure.

  “I took out the Gatherer didn’t I?”

  The bang of cupboard doors sounded as Curtis searched the kitchen.

  “There are thousands of them.”

  Storm traced a pattern on the roof of the enclosure.

  “My point exactly.”

  Maria waited for the sound of a vehicle in the distance even as the morning stillness remained unbroken. Storm traced her hand again across the roof, a moment of grace in the slow movement. She licked her lips before she spoke, the corners cracked and dry.

  “I didn’t know.”

  Storm dropped her hand to her chest, her fingers bunching the blanket into her fist, the tips disappearing into its folds.

  “Didn’t know what?”

  Storm held her gaze on the roof of the enclosure, her focus on something farther away.

  “That anyone else was sick.”

  “You thought you were the only one?”

  There was a quiet, bitter laugh from Storm at either Maria’s surprise or her own blindness.

  “How could you not know?”

  Storm extended a long, thin arm from under the blanket, her palm open to indicate the entire room.

  “How could I?”

  Maria followed the sweep of Storm’s hand, to the wooden furniture, the water pump at the sink, and the click of the propane fridge. There was no computer or screen, not even a radio, the stack of newspapers next to the wood stove the only sign of the outside world.

  “No one else was sick when I came here.”

  “What about your team?”

  The question came out as an accusation, but Maria didn’t care. Three of Storm’s team had died within six months of her disappearance. There had been rumours they had disappeared with Storm, but during her search Maria had learned of each of their slow deteriorations—Callan from brain cancer, Ari and Jana’s illness unexplained.

  “I didn’t have the information I needed to fully understand.”

  Storm spoke with a fury out of sync with the frailty of her body, its force directed entirely inwards.

  Mac exhaled, reasserting his presence and Storm suddenly looked crowded by him. She climbed over him, all white boney limbs and the pale peach of her bra and underwear. The row of ribs, the bumpy notch of each vertebra, her heels cracked and dried with blood. She was up and moving immediately to her discarded pile of clothes. Maria and Curtis looked away but they needn’t have bothered. Storm was dismissive of their embarrassment, as if she had long ago detached herself from the degradation.

  She walked barefoot to the sink once she was dressed, the dog circling excitedly around her. Storm used two hands to pump the water.

  Maria moved next to Storm as the water rushed into the glass, spilling over the edges.

  “We need to go.”

  Storm had her back to the window, the glass at her lips, its sides beaded with water. She gestu
red towards the door where the dog had disappeared through its flap.

  “I’m not stopping you.”

  “Not without you.”

  Curtis had his head in the fridge and dropped several containers into the bag.

  “I still don’t know what you expect me to do.”

  Storm glanced down at her wasted body as she spoke, as if it were something outside of herself.

  “The same thing you did before. Solve the problem.”

  Storm took a long, slow sip of water, each swallow visible in her thin throat.

  “That person doesn’t exist anymore.”

  “Like hell.”

  Maria’s palms were sweating, her jaw aching from the force of her clenched teeth.

  “You need to talk to head office. They’re the ones who know where all the Gatherers are located and how to recall them if there’s a problem.”

  It was a rote answer, Storm once again speaking through the Corporation that had taken over the distribution of the Gatherer.

  Curtis had come to stand next to Maria. He smelled of animals, cigarettes and the residue of gun shots.

  “They aren’t acknowledging that the Gatherer is the cause.”

  A splash of water landed on the floor between Storm’s bare feet. Storm didn’t notice, her attention fixed on the leg of the woodstove where it touched the floor and the fragments of wood and bark that lay around it. Maria had seen her withdraw before, whatever was going on in her mind so intense that she forgot the rest of the world.

  “Neither is the government.”

  Storm’s brow tightened at Maria’s words as if she could deny what they were telling her.

  Maria had felt the same chill of realization across her shoulders when she and Havernal had first made the connection and understood that the government knew what the Gatherer was doing but wasn’t doing anything about it. Maria pointed to the half-filled pack hanging in Curtis’s hand. He nodded and resumed his search in the closet next to the door. She strained to hear any change in the morning’s suffocating quiet.

  “Is she telling the truth?”

  Storm directed the question at Curtis, who paused in front of the cupboard door. He looked like a thief caught red handed, the pack in one hand, a hat in the other. Yet his expression was of resignation, of a truth that couldn’t be ignored.