North

by Frank Owen

  But even Kurt could tell that Felix was everything Tye had never been, him with his reluctant bird. Felix was smart, for starters, and he was tough too. Here he was, volunteering himself for action. And the Resistance had trusted him with a stash of guns – an AK-47 that he’d showed Kurt, then an M9 handgun and an M14 rifle with enough ammunition to keep all of them humming for days. Kurt liked the heft of them, the bone-deep cold of the mechanisms. It was nothing personal, with guns. Even though it really was, all of this. He knew he had a lot more killing to do before he felt the weight of guilt. That was a long way off still.

  Kurt had taken to spending his evenings elbow to elbow with Felix, the two of them quiet as they cleaned and oiled the guns, practicing loading and unloading. Afterward, Felix would tell Kurt about the plans he’d seen on the walls of the rooms he’d sneaked into – maps of Chicago, the virus factory, the route there – as well as all he’d learnt from Adams about viruses and how the antiviral water worked. Kurt was eager to listen and to learn, and it made Felix proud to have such a dedicated apprentice. The talking also helped him to set things straight in his brain, like the tapes used to do, where he’d listen to the recordings he’d made of his old life and line them up with what he still remembered. He’d started that to keep track of brain viruses, to know when one had settled in – but it had quickly turned into a kind of therapy. This was the same. Felix wasn’t shy to repeat things he’d said before, and Kurt was always watching, absorbing.

  They slept close by in the Senate Chamber, two Callahans where they belonged, though they took care to mingle just enough with the Northerners who would be their comrades in arms. Linus had got shot of Kurt almost as soon as the boy put him down in the Capitol Building, but Kurt was bearing no grudges. He had Felix now – an old cat for an old cat; fair’s fair. And Linus was smart: any feline worth the name would find his place among the hard women who worked the kitchen, the ones who had lost something and remembered the ache. What else were animals for, if not comfort and company? Let Linus hunt all the rats he could find. Kurt had bigger things to occupy his mind.

  The target of the Resistance’s attack was the virus factory – a single building ringed like Saturn with razor wire and concrete walls. A sequence of RPGs and mortars would create a path of access, according to Adams. Once the guards got wind of an attack, they’d deploy the airborne viruses – each one new and deadly.

  ‘HQ. Just like old times,’ said Felix.

  ‘You better hope it isn’t,’ Adams told him. ‘You better hope it isn’t like the first time we went in.’ He went on to detail that attack, from before the Resistance was the Resistance. Those rebels had been careful to drink their morning dose, but the new viruses were strangely undeterred. ‘People melted clean away.’ Adams drew a hand over his face as if he was wiping out his features.

  Kurt shivered. Man, he would’ve liked to see that!

  This time around, if Buddy’s mushrooms did their good work, the Resistance army could keep going, impervious to sickness. C-4 would blow a hole in the side of the building.

  ‘And then we hope for flashover.’ Adams grinned.

  Goddam, thought Felix. This fucker is enjoying the explanation.

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘Then lots more C-4.’

  Adams was making triple sure. There were two teams dedicated to planting the bombs, and two more teams as backup. On top of that there had been a couple of extra classes, mandatory for everyone in the Capitol Building, which covered the basics of carrying, placing and arming the explosives.

  ‘This ain’t kindergarten,’ warned Adams. ‘That shit may look like Play-Doh, but we’re not fucking around here. If this sounds simple, then you got the wrong end of it.’ He paused and looked around, scanning for faces that appeared unsure, the weak links that would break the whole careful, deadly chain.

  ‘Those mushrooms are miracles: ain’t no mistaking that. We ought to take a moment now to think about Buddy and his sacrifice, but we also need to remember that they aren’t going to make us immune to bullets or grenades or shrapnel. This is a battlefield, people. We can’t say how quickly Renard’s forces will rally, but you can bet your bottom dollar that they’re ready for anything. We may have to deal with armored cars and whole squads of soldiers. But the beauty of it is, if we can knock that virus plant offline, then the whole shebang will be open to attack. We have the chance to make sure it’s an even fight again. And we need to grab onto that!

  ‘Now listen close. I have good news. Pay attention now! Something most of you don’t know is that the Resistance isn’t just the people under this roof. I’ve kept it secret for good reason, to keep the organization safe, but there are a lot of sleepers who are part of the Resistance. People working in police stations and coffee shops, plumbers and housewives and nannies and fucking hairdressers, all of whom are going to mobilize as soon as that factory comes down.’ A cheer went up and the crowd clapped. ‘And, my friends, that’s when the hard work will begin: the real fighting, the kind that sorts the heroes from the zeroes. Wheat and chaff, isn’t that what the Good Book says? What happens after that depends on our stamina and our determination. But, folks, I know you got that in spades. Heck, what am I saying? If it comes down to willpower, I know – goddam it, I know down to my pinky toe – that we got truckloads more of it than those motherfuckers!’

  More cheering. Felix cleared his throat and started to say something to Kurt, but he was drowned out by the people around him. Kurt caught his eye and shook his head slowly, his eyes shining as he focused again on Otis, who stood grimly behind Adams. Felix gave up. He owed Kurt family loyalty. One chance, he thought. One loner to another. See if he’s the good kind of Callahan or the bad kind.

  And if he was the bad kind, Felix figured that was okay. There were worse ways to meet your maker. So maybe the kid was right to be excited. It would be over soon enough.

  45

  It was midnight when the plane flew high over the Capitol Building. Its engines whined as it banked and then turned northwest. Adams heard it only because he’d been listening for it for years. He sat up and pulled on the essentials, and then he willed the blood back into his sleep-heavy legs so that he could get up to where Felix had first laid out his bed.

  Adams opened the window and climbed out. The plane was circling, a distant flashing red light, and then it was gone behind the scudding moonlit clouds. But he knew what it meant. The Northmen knew where they were. They’d probably traced the call Hank had been forced to make to Renard. Or – and it made Adams pant harder to think it – the patrolman had already got his message out by the time they’d even found him. It could have been something as simple as an old lady awake in the night with her weak bladder, looking out of her window at the desolate city, thinking over her past and how long it had been since the quiet time had come.

  Shee-yit. Adams sat down to get his breath back. That they hadn’t been bombed outright, or sprayed with pathogens from a crop duster, was probably because of Vida and Ruth.

  ‘Don’t spoil the merchandise,’ Adams said to himself. His finger crept to the hole in his cheek, as it always did in times of stress.

  There was no more time to guess. He made up his mind, cupped his hands around his mouth to make a megaphone and started shouting down inside the dome at the sleeping Resistance. His voice echoed off the walls.

  The guards on duty took up the call as soon as they realized what it was. ‘Spotter plane! We’re a go! We’re a go!’

  Alarms were sounding as Adams made his way quickly down the staircase before it became impassable, and joined the swarm of Resistance running to get their gear.

  ‘No one stays!’ he shouted, but he’d created a monster. No one could hear him. He reached out and grabbed a bearded man in pajama pants. ‘Everyone gets out of here. Everyone packs up. Women and children – everyone. No one stays in the building. I don’t care where they go. Make sure the word gets out.’ The man nodded dumbly. ‘You understand what I’m saying
? We’re burning this place to the ground!’

  Shit. The mushrooms. Adams had planned to wait at least another half a day for them to take and multiply, but he would have to work with whatever was there now. He didn’t think about Buddy: he forced his mind away from what he would find there. There had been shrieks, and then whimpers, and then nothing, quite early on. What was done was done.

  In the kitchen he searched the drawers for a paring knife and a colander. Then he raced back through the Senate Chamber, clambering over people and their piles of belongings. They had packed fast, but they were still too laden with their worldly goods.

  ‘Take only what you need, folks!’ They shook their heads and kept packing. He hoped to Christ that Felix was in the armory.

  At Buddy’s cell he stopped to breathe. Then he braced himself and banged on the door.

  ‘Buddy!’

  No response. Why would there be, if it all had happened the way it was supposed to? Better to be sure, though.

  ‘Buddy! You in there?’

  He drew the deadbolts back as quickly as he could, then grabbed the handle, held his breath and pulled.

  The grease around the door gave way with a sucking sound, and the baptismal air from the cell spilt out, wet with humidity. Adams had expected the graveyard and the sewer, but instead it made him want to weep with memory. He couldn’t see much, but the little room smelt like grass cuttings and compost heaps and battery acid. He stepped backward and pulled his shirt up to cover his mouth.

  He let the air dissipate for a minute, and then he stepped over the threshold, cursing himself for forgetting the lantern. But it would waste too much time to go back for a light: the Capitol Building would be choked with people scurrying for their lives. He would have to try and find the silky, sticky mushrooms by feel in the darkness. He inhaled again, trying to make his other senses do the work of his useless eyes.

  This time there was some other smell underlying the mushrooms: a heavy, pheromonal stink that made him think of armpits and skunks.

  That was human, wasn’t it, that smell? Buddy was dead, right?

  He inched his foot forward and began to search the room, expecting at each skating stroke to come up against a cold leg or an arm. He took care to move without crushing anything that might be growing in the murk.

  But there was only, now and again, the maddening clink of the mushroom bowls as he blundered against them. Adams realized that his hands were damp. His heart was tickering away under his shirt with the kind of fear he hadn’t felt since he was a small boy, certain that the shape on the back of his bedroom door was the Hat Man, come to smother him.

  At the couch, he reached his arms out, terrified of what he might touch. But the seat was empty. The sacrifice had chosen somewhere else to settle. He suddenly had the idea that Buddy was a bat suspended from the ceiling, lying in wait to enfold him in his furry black wings.

  Adams pressed the foam stuffing with his fingers. The fabric had been stripped off it. He backed away, confused – and collided with the body standing upright in the center of the room. His throat seized. He was trying to scream, but the muscles wouldn’t let him. He turned to where he thought the door was and ran.

  In the Senate Chamber he found the closest lantern: a woman was carrying it, guiding her children through the congregation. Adams took it from her without a word. When she saw who’d snatched it, she let it go without complaint. He was pale as milk except for his fevered spots, and she knew better than to argue.

  He was still shaking when he approached the cell door again, half expecting to see Buddy standing there framed by the yawning blackness of the room, back from the dead and ready for vengeance.

  But there was no sign of anything strange. Adams held the lamp out in front of him. Every fiber of his body resisted going back inside, but he had to have the mushrooms. Had to. Otherwise it was all for nothing.

  He held his breath again, though he was pretty sure the spores that had dispersed were gone. He stepped inside the cell.

  And there Buddy was, a man standing ready to face his future with all its torments.

  No. Not standing.

  What was left of him was hanging. The body and its hungry passengers swayed a little, or maybe it was the lantern in Adams’s hand that shook.

  Adams felt his stomach lurch. Soon after they had left him in the cell, the little man must have fashioned a rope out of the couch fabric, and knotted it for strength into a noose. It looped, taut, over a rafter now, attaching him to heaven. Around his feet on the floor the Pyrex dishes were scattered. It looked like he’d balanced on them. Yep, that was it. Adams sighed, and the yellow light wavered again. Then he must have settled himself into the noose and kicked the crockery over. Buddy’s eyes were open, rolled back into his shaven head. Adams wasn’t stupid. He knew what color they ought to be: black, turned demonic with the burst blood vessels. Still they looked down at him in judgment, the flesh around them seeming to move and gibber.

  He put the lantern down and pushed the couch away from the wall until it was below the corpse. He climbed up onto the seat and balanced carefully on the back so that he could reach the rope. He made sure Buddy’s head was turned away from him, and then he hacked at the fibers, but the paring knife needed more persistent use and eventually he had to saw through them, the wrongness of the weight thrown against him all the while.

  And the smell! That earthy, sewery stink, like someone had dropped a load in his khakis.

  Christ.

  He had, hadn’t he? Buddy had shat himself.

  Adams turned his head and tried to vomit, but there was nothing in him willing to come out. He had to be up close for his work, and he had to get on with it.

  It was just that the dirty orbs in the sockets were not Buddy’s eyes.

  The mushrooms. They’d started there, seeking out all the wet membranes.

  And then, oh God, they had spread.

  Buddy’s whole face was leprous now, bulging, the mushrooms colonizing the flesh as he watched, like maggots.

  Adams jerked back and nearly slipped as Buddy fell at last, toppling over onto the bowls so that some shattered.

  He was quick to follow after. He steeled himself, and positioned the lamp on the eviscerated seat of the couch for better light. Get it over with, he told himself. Like a surgeon. That’s all I am. Cutting out the bits that can give other people life. Yes. That’s what Buddy is: an organ donor.

  He began trimming the mushrooms away from his friend’s body, starting with the eyes – he had to stop that accusing look, for God’s sake. Fingers streaked with gore, he set the fungi in the colander for safe keeping, and from then on he couldn’t say which were the mushrooms and which his fingers. If he cut himself, he wouldn’t be able to tell.

  The bottoms of the stems were drenched with Buddy’s blood, and this time Adams had to fight the urge to vomit. The man’s nostrils had split: from the crevasses grew the longest, thinnest filaments, like hairs. His mouth was also stuffed with mushrooms – not big ones, those caught halfway to full-grown, but they’d have to do. Adams slid the knife in through Buddy’s cheek and severed the stalks that reached down into his throat. The brown and yellow caps fell out like broken teeth – each precious one placed carefully into the colander.

  The tattooed chest was swollen with the growths, and Adams hesitated. There was something especially terrible about that: he was doing a sort of autopsy. But he said a quick prayer and then he went ahead and cut into the skin below Buddy’s sternum.

  The ribs held firm. Adams had to dig in deep and then reach a hand in to find the lungs, knobbly and tight with their fruit. They split as he touched them. He pulled out mushroom after mushroom until the colander was full. Blood had already collected at the perforations in its base. He would drip as he went, like a murderer.

  When he emerged from the cell with the colander, Otis was there, as if he’d been waiting.

  ‘Take them,’ said Adams. He wiped his face and left smudges of Buddy’s b
lood across his dented cheeks, like camouflage. ‘Everyone who’s fighting today has to get some. You got that?’

  Otis gave him a withering look, but he took the colander and was gone.

  Adams turned back to the cell and closed the door. He slid every lock closed. He found that he was crying as he did it.

  46

  ‘You go. Then come back and tell me what’s going on,’ Vida told Dyce. She wasn’t exactly ready to run up mountains, but as long as sleep was doing its good work, she would be all right.

  ‘Sure, baby,’ said Dyce. He wouldn’t tell her, but his throat was feeling scratchy, in the same way it had been right in the beginning, when he was on the run with Garrett. This time it could be anything – love, grief, heartache, revenge: they’d all been circulating inside him for years. Wasn’t that what the immune system was, when you got down to it?

  But it could be something else too – something nasty and specific – especially if they had all miscalculated and the mushroom dose had been too low, or Renard’s latest gift was settling in. By now Dyce knew his way around the sicknesses. He had marked his own immunity at about a fortnight now, maybe nearer three weeks. And of those days some had raced; others had dragged. Just to be sure, he felt in his pocket and found the wrinkled, giving mound of a mushroom, and popped it in his mouth. Gagging on the earthy bitterness, he thought that if Adams needed more hard science, he could run the fucking tests on himself.

  ‘You ready?’ Ruth was motioning at the people gathering below.

  They went to watch from the atrium as the soldiers lined up, their hands cupped like supplicants. Otis had sliced the new mushrooms as fine as he could make them, and he was handing the wafers out to each man and woman. There was something festive about the scene. Felix and Kurt stood side by side, grinning like children.

  ‘My Lord,’ said Ruth, soft and low: it was a prayer. ‘How do they know it’ll work?’