Plague

by Michael Grant

  “Just sometimes?” Diana raised one skeptical brow. “I hate you almost all the time.”

  They glared at each other with a look that was hate but also something else, something so much more helpless than hatred.

  “We’re damaged people,” Diana said, suddenly sad and serious. “Horrible, messed-up, evil people. But I want to change. I want us both to change.”

  “Change? To what?” Caine asked, mystified.

  “To people who no longer have dreams of being Napoleon.”

  She was her usual smirking self again as she looked him slowly up and down. Slowly enough that he actually felt embarrassed and had to overcome a modest urge to cover himself. “Don’t decide right now,” she said. “You’re in no condition to think clearly.”

  And she turned and walked back toward the house. Caine threw many more large boulders into the sea. It didn’t help.

  Sam stood on the street corner watching Lana and Astrid enter the house he had shared with Astrid. Lana was carrying a water jug. Patrick stopped and stared in Sam’s direction, but the girls didn’t notice him and Patrick quickly lost interest.

  He had come to tell Astrid he was going out of town. Astrid would keep the secret. And he wanted at least one person other than Albert to know where he was and what he was doing.

  Anyway, that was what he told himself. Because admitting that he still, even now, even after everything that had happened, and everything that hadn’t happened, couldn’t just walk away from Astrid . . . that would be too big an admission of weakness.

  He couldn’t not tell her he was leaving. She had to know that he was still . . . whatever he was. He kicked at a crumpled soda can and sent it skittering down the trash-strewn street.

  Why was Lana going over to see Astrid? Little Pete must not be feeling well. But how could anyone tell what Little Pete was feeling?

  Sam frowned. He didn’t want to have some scene with Astrid in front of Lana.

  The sky was getting dark. He would be leaving soon. Dekka, Taylor, and Jack would be meeting him across the highway. Each was supposed to keep the whole thing secret.

  In reality, of course, Jack would tell Brianna. Taylor would keep it quiet only because she didn’t know what was going on, and by the time she did they’d be out of town. Dekka would tell no one. And Sam? He would tell Astrid.

  Sam knocked at Astrid’s door.

  No answer.

  Feeling strange and wrong he opened the door to what had until very recently been his own home and went inside.

  Astrid and Lana were upstairs; he could hear the murmur of voices.

  He took the stairs two at a time and called out, “Astrid, it’s me.”

  They were in Little Pete’s room. Astrid and Lana stood a few feet apart with their backs to Sam.

  A woman—a grown, adult woman—was sitting on the bed with Little Pete’s head in her lap.

  “Mom?” Astrid said.

  The woman was in her late thirties. She had streaked blond hair and Astrid’s translucent pale skin, somewhat aged by sun. Her eyes were brown. She smiled sadly and cradled Little Pete’s head. She stroked his hair.

  “Mom?” Astrid said again, and this time her voice broke.

  The woman did not speak. She did not look up at Astrid. She kept all her attention focused on Little Pete.

  “She’s not real,” Astrid said, and took a step back.

  Lana glared at Astrid. Then she noticed Sam, standing there.

  Lana’s eyes narrowed. “You knew about this, didn’t you?” she accused.

  “She’s not real,” Astrid said again. “That’s not my mother. That’s . . . it’s an illusion. He’s sick. I was out so . . . so he made her appear. To comfort him.”

  “He made her appear.” Lana practically spit the words. “He made her appear. Because that’s something just anyone can do, any of us can just make a three-dimensional real-life mommy appear to cuddle us when we feel bad.”

  “Stop it, Petey,” Astrid said.

  The woman—the illusion of a woman—did not react but kept stroking Little Pete’s head.

  “Cure him, Lana. Cure him and it will stop.” Astrid was pleading. “He has a fever. He’s coughing.”

  As if demonstrating, Little Pete coughed several times.

  It was weird. He didn’t cover his mouth or change his expression. He just coughed.

  “Give it a try, Lana,” Sam urged. “Please.”

  Lana rounded on him. “Interesting power for an autistic to have, isn’t it?” she demanded. “Especially when you think about all the stories going around about how the dome went clear for a few seconds when Little Pete blacked out.”

  “There are a lot of mutants,” Sam said as blandly as he could.

  “Wasn’t he at the power plant when the FAYZ came?” Lana asked.

  Astrid and Sam exchanged a glance. Neither spoke.

  “He was at the plant,” Lana said. “The plant is the center of the FAYZ. The very center.”

  “Please try to heal him,” Astrid urged.

  “He’s got a fever and a cough, big deal,” Lana said. “Why is it so urgent that he be healed?”

  Again, Sam had no answer.

  Lana moved closer. The woman’s hand was still on Pete’s forehead. But she didn’t react when Lana laid her own hand on Little Pete’s chest.

  “So, that’s your mother,” Lana said more calmly.

  “No,” Astrid said.

  “Weird seeing an adult, isn’t it?”

  “It’s an illusion,” Astrid said weakly. “Little Pete has the power to . . . to make his visions seem real.”

  “Yeah,” Lana said dryly. “That’s all it is. The blink, when everyone saw the outside, that was just an illusion. And your mom, here, that’s an illusion.”

  The woman disappeared suddenly. Little Pete’s head fell back against his pillow.

  “You’re helping him,” Sam said. “He’s getting better.”

  “You know what’s interesting?” Lana said in a mockery of casual chitchat. “The sun and the moon and the stars here are all illusions, too. So many illusions. So many coincidences. So many secrets.”

  Sam didn’t look at Astrid. He wished he hadn’t come. More, he wished Astrid hadn’t brought Lana here, although he understood it.

  After a while Lana stepped back from Little Pete. “I don’t know if that fixed him or not.”

  “Thanks,” Astrid said.

  “I can feel it, you know,” Lana said softly.

  “The healing?”

  Lana shook her head. “No. It. I can feel it. It touches him. It watches him. I can feel it. It reaches him.” Her brow creased and she seemed almost to be wincing in pain. “Just like it reaches me.”

  Without looking at either of them, Lana rushed from the room.

  They stood silent, neither knowing what to say.

  “I’m going to be away for a couple of days,” Sam said finally. “The water situation . . . I’m going to search out another lake.”

  A tear spilled down Astrid’s cheek.

  “That must have been hard,” Sam said. “Even knowing it wasn’t real.”

  Astrid used one finger to brush away the tear. “Lana’s smart. She’ll put it all together.” She sighed. “If things get bad they’ll come after him. The kids will come after Petey.”

  “Before I go I’ll ask Breeze to keep an eye on you,” Sam said.

  Astrid stared gloomily at her brother. He coughed twice and then lay quiet. “The thing is, I don’t know what would happen.”

  “If he got sick?”

  “If he died. I don’t know. I do not know.”

  Pete

  THE DARKNESS WAS watching him, touching him with its wispy tendril, listening for him to speak.

  He would not speak. The Darkness could not help him. The Darkness only wanted to play, and it was so jealous when Pete played with anyone else.

  Come to me, it said over and over again.

  Pete’s legs were weak. He stood poised a
top the glass but his legs hurt and his feet, too, like the glass sheet was slicing into him.

  He had felt better when his mother was there. She was quiet, the way he liked. She had not tried to touch him except to let him lie there against her breast and feel the soft rise and fall of her breathing.

  But then the breathing had begun to wear on him, making him distracted. If it didn’t stop . . .

  But then it did stop when he made her go away. He could remember the good part, before the sound of breathing got to be too much, and not have to hear it anymore.

  Loud sister was talking and then another. The other touched him with her hand. He looked at her and was puzzled. A faint green tendril spiraled up to touch her. She seemed to be on both sides of the glass at once.

  He felt her touch and it made him tense. He endured it, but inside he was feeling worse and worse.

  Hot. Like fire was inside him.

  He didn’t want to hear any more from his body.

  The other left. She took her hand away and left. But he could feel an echo of her inside him. She had touched the Darkness, but she refused its pleas to come and play.

  He wondered . . . but now his body was drawing his attention again. Hot and cold, hungry and thirsty.

  It bothered him.

  Chapter Eight

  54 HOURS, 21 MINUTES

  “KILL IT! KILL me!”

  It was muffled, but you could still hear it. They’d closed the air-conditioning vents—wasn’t like there was air-conditioning anymore—but still the desperate wail came up from the basement.

  Howard was out at some kind of stupid meeting. Some big deal. Howard always had big deals.

  Charles Merriman, who everyone called Orc, rummaged in the mess beside his couch. There had to be something left in one of these bottles. He didn’t want to have to go into the back room closet and get another bottle.

  “It’s the only way. Sam! Sam! Tell Sam to do it!”

  Orc wasn’t drunk. Not drunk enough to ignore the sound of that stupid girl’s voice. That took a pretty good drunk and right now he was only drunk enough that he didn’t want to get up off the couch.

  His stony fingers lifted a bottle. Wild Turkey. Only about half an inch of brown liquid left in the bottom. He twisted the cork. The glass neck of the bottle shattered in his grip. That happened fairly often. Orc had a hard time gauging his strength when he was a little drunk.

  He blew slivers of glass away. He raised the bottle high, careful to keep the sharp points away from his still-human mouth.

  The one part of him that could be cut: his mouth.

  Well, his mouth and his eyes.

  He drained the fiery liquid into his mouth and swallowed. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But not enough.

  Orc levered himself up. He was heavy, like you’d expect of a boy made of wet gravel. Like a walking creature of wet cement. He couldn’t fit on a scale although Howard had tried once to weigh him.

  He had crushed the scales.

  He stomped toward the booze closet where Howard kept his stash. With the exaggerated care of a person not in control of his body, Orc opened the closet door.

  A few bottles of clear booze. A few bottles of brown booze. A couple bottles of Cabka, the liquor Howard made by distilling cabbage and rotten oranges. It was nasty stuff. Orc preferred the brown booze.

  He snagged a bottle and after a few seconds of clumsy fumbling he gave up and twisted the glass neck off.

  “Is that you up there, Orc? I hear you stomping around.” Drake. The girl Brittney was gone now, replaced by Drake.

  “You still alive, you stupid, alcoholic pile of rock?” Drake taunted. “Still following Sam’s orders? Doing what you’re told, Orc?”

  Orc stomped angrily on the floor. “Shut up or I’ll come down there and smash you like a bug!” Orc roared.

  Drake laughed. “Sure you will, Orc. You don’t have the stones. Wait, that was a funny! The stone monster who doesn’t have any stones.”

  Orc stomped again. The entire house shook when he did it.

  Drake called him various names, but now Orc had about a quarter of the bottle inside him. The warmth spread throughout his body.

  He yelled something equally rude back at Drake. Then he staggered back to his couch and sagged heavily into it.

  He didn’t mind Drake so much. Drake was a creep.

  It was the girl who made Orc want to cry.

  She was a monster. Like Orc. Begging for death. Begging for someone to let her go to her Jesus.

  Kill me, kill me, kill me, she begged every day and every night.

  Orc took a deep swig.

  Tears seeped from his human eyes and fell into the rocky crevices of his face.

  Someone was knocking at the front door. Normally Howard would answer. But then Orc heard Jamal’s voice yelling, “Hey, Orc! Open up, man.”

  Jamal was one of the very few people besides Howard who ever came to see Orc. Of course it was just so he could get a drink. But still, any company was better than listening to Drake or Brittney.

  “Want a drink, Jamal?”

  “You know it,” Jamal said. “Albert’s busting on me all day.”

  “Yeah,” Orc said. He didn’t care. He snagged a bottle and handed it to Jamal, who took a deep swig.

  Orc flopped onto his mattresses, the floor groaning beneath him. Jamal took a chair and kept the bottle.

  “Who is that up there?” Drake’s voice floated up. “Is that Jamal or Turk? Too heavy to be Howard.”

  “It’s Jamal,” Jamal yelled.

  “Don’t talk to him,” Orc said, but without much conviction.

  “Hey, Jamal, how about letting me out of here?” Drake asked, almost playful.

  Orc yelled something obscene back at him.

  “Only if you kill Albert first,” Jamal shouted, then laughed and took another drink.

  “How come you work for Albert if you hate him?” Orc asked.

  Jamal shrugged. “I’m tough, he needs someone tough.”

  “Yeah,” Orc said. “But he treats me like crap.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Should see how he’s living, man. You think he’s living like the rest of us? Get this: at night he doesn’t even go out to take a leak. He’s got, like, a jar he pees in.”

  “I got a jar I pee in.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s got a maid to take it out and dump it for him.”

  Orc’s head was buzzing, not really paying attention, but Jamal was getting fired up, listing complaints about Albert, starting with the fact that Albert had meat every day and kids to clean up after him.

  “See, man, he loves it like this, right?” Jamal said, already slurring his words. “Back in the world Albert was just some shrimpy little nothing. In here he’s a big man and I’m, like, his, you know . . .”

  “Servant,” Orc supplied.

  Jamal’s eyes flared angrily. “Yeah. Yeah. Like you, Orc, you’re Sam’s servant.”

  “I ain’t anyone’s servant.”

  “You’re babysitting Drake all day and night, man, what is it you think you are? You’re doing what the Sam Boss tells you.”

  Orc didn’t have a ready answer. He wished Howard was home because Howard was smarter at talking.

  Jamal pushed it. “Guys like you and me and Turk and Drake, right? We used to be in charge. Because we were tough and we weren’t afraid and didn’t take anyone’s crap, right?”

  Orc shrugged. He was feeling very uncomfortable. “Where’s Howard?” he muttered.

  Jamal made a rude noise. “Howard’s not the one stuck being a jailer, you are, Orc. Sam’s prison guard. Keeps you busy, right, and trapped here all the time. So it’s like Turk said.”

  “What’d Turk say?”

  “Said Sam got you and Drake locked up at the same time.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  Jamal laughed derisively. “Man, all you have to do is see who is top dog and who is bottom dog. See, that’s where Zil was wrong: it’s not about moofs and nor
mals, freaks and non-freaks, it’s about top dog, bottom dog. You and me, Orc, we’re bottom dogs. Should be top dogs.”

  Just then Brittney’s voice came up from below. “Is Sam there? Get Sam! You have to call Sam!”

  Orc levered himself up off his bed and yelled, “Hey shut up. I already gotta listen to Drake all day and night.”

  He swayed, tried to catch himself and couldn’t. He slipped and fell back on his rear. Jamal exploded in derisive laughter.

  This time Orc leaped to his feet. “Stop laughing!”

  “Orc, get Sam!”

  “It was funny, man,” Jamal said through his own braying laughter.

  “Orc, Drake is trying—”

  Orc cursed loudly. He stomped on the floor. “Shut up, shut up!”

  And suddenly, with a rending, ripping sound, the floor beneath Orc gave way.

  He fell through wood and plaster. He landed hard and lay flat on his back, winded. Splinters and dust settled on him.

  He blinked, too stunned to make sense of what had just happened. His first thought was that Howard would be pissed. His second thought was that Sam would be even more pissed.

  Brittney was standing over him, looking down at him.

  Flat on his back. Drunk and foolish. A monster. And from above came Jamal’s donkey laughter.

  Orc reached to touch the skin that still stretched over a part of his face. He was bleeding. Not bad, not a lot, but bleeding.

  In blind rage Orc got to his feet. He punched Brittney with all his strength. The girl went flying into the wall. Her head snapped against cinderblock, a hit that would have killed any real, living girl.

  But Brittney couldn’t die.

  Which was the final straw. Something in Orc’s brain snapped. He leaped, trying to grab the floor above and pull himself through, but he slipped and fell again and Jamal was pointing and laughing and Orc ran for the door, the barricaded door that had kept the Drake/Brittney thing locked up. He body-slammed the door. It held, but barely. He reared back and kicked and kicked and splinters flew.

  “No! No!” Brittney screamed. “He’ll escape!”

  Orc stepped back, raised both his gravel-skinned arms and ran straight at the door.