“I don’t believe you!”
“You believe every word. You feel it. And you can’t hide your feelings from us.”
Zeriam turned away, paced across the room, then back. He glared at Eli. He looked around like a trapped animal.
“Andy?”
Zeriam did not answer.
“Andy, there’s something you haven’t noticed yet. Something that might help you realize you can have a life here.”
“What?”
“Lorene is pregnant.”
“She’s what? Already? I’ve only been here three weeks.”
“You two didn’t waste any time.”
“I don’t believe you. You can’t be sure.”
“You’re the one who can’t be sure. I noticed the change because I’ve seen it before.”
“What change in only three weeks?”
“She smells different,” Eli said.
“You’re crazy. She smells fine. She—”
“I didn’t say she smells bad. Just different. It’s a difference you’ll learn to recognize.”
“Hell, I ought to tell you how you smell.”
“I know how I smell, Andy—especially to you. I’ve been through all this before. And you should keep in mind that you’re beginning to smell as threatening, as wrong to me as I do to you. Later, we’ll have to get used to each other all over again. The organism seems to pull women together and push men apart—at least at first.” Eli sighed. “Now we can be men and work this out, work the ranch with the women and keep the disease to ourselves as much as possible, or we can let the organism make animals of us and we can kill each other—for nothing.”
“We get a choice? It’s not another compulsion?”
“No, just a strong inclination. But it will rule you if you let it. Lay back, and it will drive you like a car.”
“So what are you doing? Holding it all at bay by sheer willpower? You’re so full of shit, Eli!”
He was giving in to the organism, letting the smell of a “rival” male enrage him. No doubt it was easy. Anger was so much more satisfying than the uncertainty he had been feeling. He did not yet understand how easily his anger could get out of hand.
Eli stood up. “I’ll send Lorene in,” he said as he moved toward the door. Zeriam was bright. He would learn to handle inappropriate passions eventually. Meanwhile, Eli decided it was his responsibility to avoid dominance fights Zeriam could lose so easily and so finally.
Eli did not quite make it to the door. Zeriam grabbed his arm. “Why should you send her in here?” he demanded. “Keep her! You had her before. For all I know, it’s your kid she’s carrying!”
He was not saying what he believed. He had given himself over to the organism for the first time. There was no thought behind his words—nor behind his swing a moment later.
Eli caught his hand in mid-swing, held it, hit him open-handed before Zeriam could swing again. Eli struck twice more. He was in control because he knew Zeriam could not hurt him. If he had let the organism control him, if he had acted as though he were truly threatened, he would have killed Zeriam, and perhaps not even realized it until later, when he regained control.
As it was, Zeriam was not seriously hurt. He would have fallen, but Eli caught him and put him in a chair. There, he sat, nursing a split lip and coming out of a rage that had probably surprised even him.
“Eli,” he said after a while, “how much of what you do is what you really want to do—or at least, what you’ve decided on your own to do.” He paused. “How much of you is left?”
“You’re asking how much of you will be left,” Eli said.
“Yeah.”
“A lot. Most of the time, a lot.”
“And sometimes … insanity.”
“Not insanity, Andy. Now is the most irrational time you’ll have to face. Get through this, and you’ll be able to deal with the rest.”
Zeriam stared at him, then looked away. He was frightened, but he said nothing.
Later that night, he sat at the kitchen table and wrote Lorene a long, surprisingly loving letter. There was no bitterness in it, no anger. He wrote a longer letter to his unborn child. He had convinced himself it would be a son. He talked about the impossibility of spending his life as the carrier of a deadly disease. He talked about his fear of losing himself, becoming someone or something else. He talked about courage and cowardice and confusion. Finally, he put the letters aside and cheated the microbe of the final few days it needed to tighten its hold on him. He took one of Meda’s sharp butcher knives and cut his throat.
Present 20
BLAKE WORRIED ABOUT HAVING to use lights to stay on the poorly marked dirt trail. He had night glasses—glasses that utilized ambient light—but he was afraid to trust them in this dangerous, unfamiliar place. Yet he knew he was giving Eli’s people a beacon to follow—and he had no doubt they were following.
“I saw something,” Rane said, right on cue. She had climbed into the back because the seats in front were intended for only two. “Dad, they’re coming. Three or four of them. You can see them when the mountains aren’t directly behind them. They’re running without lights.”
“They can see in the dark,” Keira said.
“So they say,” Rane answered contemptuously. “Anyway, unless their cars are as different as they are, I don’t see how they can catch us.”
“Keep your head down,” Blake told her. “They could have guns with night scopes. If they do, they can see in the dark all right. And they know these roads.”
“Where will we go?” Keira asked.
Blake thought about that, glanced at his dashboard compass. They were heading due north. To reach the mountaintop ranch, they had traveled southeast, then south. “Kerry, take a look at the map,” he said. “Use I-Forty as your northernmost point and the Colorado River bed as your easternmost. Give it fifty miles west of the river bed and south of the highway. Look for towns and a real road. We’ll probably have to go all the way back to Needles, but at least there should be a road.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Kerry said as she turned on the map and keyed in the area he had specified. He glanced over, saw Needles in the upper right hand corner of the screen and nodded.
“I didn’t think any place could be as isolated as that ranch seemed to be,” Keira said. “U.S. Ninety-five runs north to Needles. The problem is, I don’t know where we are—how far we are from it. It might be to our advantage to stay on this road until we reach I-Forty.”
Blake glanced at the map again. “Since we didn’t cross Ninety-five on the way to the ranch, it has to be east of us.”
Keira nodded. “Yes, maybe six or seven miles east, and maybe a lot more.”
“Damn!” Blake grunted as the car bounced into and out of a hole. “I’m going to turn off as soon as I get the chance.”
“We could wind up going twice as far as necessary,” Rane said.
“Take another look behind you,” Blake told her.
Both girls looked. Keira gasped when she saw how much closer the pursuers were.
“Watch for a turnoff,” Blake said. “Any turnoff. I need a road I can see.”
Keira leaned back in her seat, eyes closed. “Dad, Ninety-five has ‘travel at your own risk’ signs all over it.”
He glanced at her. She knew what she was saying could not matter, but she had had to say it.
“‘High crime area,’” Rane read over Keira’s shoulder. “It’s a sewer! I didn’t know they existed in the desert.”
Blake said nothing. He had treated patients from city sewers—people so mutilated they no longer looked human, would never look human again in spite of twenty-first-century medicine. What the rat packs did to each other and to unprotected city-dwellers was not something he wanted to expose his daughters to. They knew about it, of course. The small armies of police who guarded enclaves kept out intruders, but they could not keep out information. Still, for sixteen years, he had managed to shield his daughters from the conten
ts of sewers and cesspools. Now he was taking them into a sewer.
The turnoff they had been hoping for materialized suddenly out of the night, marked only by a dead Joshua tree. Blake turned. The new road was better—smooth, graded, straight. He increased his speed, slowly pulling away from the pursuers. The Wagoneer could travel. With its modified engine it was much faster now than it had been when it was made—as long as it was not running a half-seen obstacle course.
Just over six miles later, the second dirt road ran into a paved highway—U.S. 95. They had gone from north to northeast. Now they were headed north again on a road that would take them to Needles—to safety.
Abruptly there were headlights directly in front of them—two cars coming toward them on the wrong side of the highway. Two cars that clearly did not intend to let him pass.
Reacting without thinking, Blake swung right. To his amazement, he discovered he was turning onto a road he had not noticed—another paved surface that headed him back almost in the direction from which he had come. Back toward the ranch.
He was being herded, Blake realized. They were on the eastern side, the wrong side of 95 now, but it had not taken much to force him to turn the first time. He could be turned again, made to re-cross the highway. All his effort so far could be for nothing.
How had Eli’s people gotten ahead of him?
He switched out the lights and turned off the road onto a dry wash. At almost the same moment, Keira shut off the glowing screen of the map. Now, let Eli’s people prove how well they could see in the dark. Nothing nothing would force Blake back to the ranch—force him out of the profession of healing and into a life of spreading disease. Nothing!
Lights.
A dirt road, smooth and level, cut across the wash just ahead. And along that road came a car. Only one. It could be a coincidence—some rancher going home, some hermit, a fragment of a car family, even lost tourists. But Blake was in no mood to take chances with anyone.
He turned onto the dirt road toward the oncoming car. Abruptly, he switched on his lights and accelerated.
The other car braked, skidded through the dust, swerved off the road into a thick, ancient creosote bush.
Blake sped on, knowing the dirt road must lead back to 95. He switched out his lights again, praying.
“That was a van,” Rane said. “Eli’s people have cars and trucks, but I didn’t see any vans.”
“You think they let us see everything?” Keira asked.
“I don’t think that van was one of Eli’s.”
“I don’t care whose it was,” Blake said tightly. “I’m not stopping until I reach either a hospital or the police. We’re not giving this damned disease to anyone else!”
“When Eli comes,” Keira said softly, “it will be to kill us, recapture us, or die trying. He won’t be frightened into a ditch by lights.”
Blake glanced at her. He could hear certainty and fear in her voice. For once, he realized, he agreed with her. Eli and his people would do absolutely anything to prevent the destruction of their way of life. He could understand that. The life they had at their nearly self-sufficient desert enclave was better than what most people had these days. But there was the disease—no, call it what it was, the invasion. And that had to be stopped at any cost.
He remembered the thing running alongside his car on all fours. Running like an animal, a cat. Jacob. It was possible if this insanity spread, it was possible that he could have grandchildren who looked like Jacob. Things. Christ!
The highway was ahead, down a slope. It looked empty and safe. Blake felt if he could reach it, he would have a chance.
He accelerated, swung onto the highway, headed north again.
“We’ve made it!” Rane shouted.
Keira looked around. “Someone’s back there. I can see them.”
“Sewage. I don’t see any—”
Lights again. Lights behind them, then abruptly, lights in front.
Blake was not aware of making the choice not to slow down. Apparently that choice had been made before, once and for all. He thought he saw a human shape leap from one of the cars, but the car kept coming. At the last instant, Blake tried to swerve up the slope and around. He did not quite make it. The front left corner of the Wagoneer hit the other car and Blake’s head hit the steering wheel.
There was nothing else.
Past 21
ZERIAM MADE IT.
He almost failed, almost survived. He had done a thorough job on his neck, but it was half-healed when Meda found him dead. The front of his throat was gaping, but the sides were merely bloody and scarred.
Meda brought Eli to him. When Eli was able to think past shock, past sadness, past the terrible knowledge that Zeriam would eventually have to be replaced, he examined the man’s neck.
“I wouldn’t have made it,” he said.
“Made what?” Meda asked.
“I wouldn’t have died—even if I had managed to cut my throat. I’d heal all the way.”
“From a cut throat without a doctor? I don’t believe you.”
“I was in a couple of dominance fights aboard ship.” He paused, remembering, shuddered inwardly. “The first time, I was stabbed through the heart twice. I healed. The second time, I was beaten literally to a pulp with a chunk of metal. I healed. Barely a scar. It takes a lot to kill us.”
She helped him clean up the blood. It was she who found the letters. They were sealed in envelopes and marked “To Lorene” and “To my son.”
Meda stared at them for several seconds, then looked toward the bedrooms. “I’m going to wake Lorene,” she said.
He caught her shoulder. “I’ll do it.”
She looked down and away from Zeriam. He felt her tremble and knew she was crying. She never liked him to see her when she cried. She thought it made her look ugly and weak. He thought it made her look humanly vulnerable. She reminded him that they were still humanly vulnerable in some ways.
For once, she let him hold her, comfort her. He took her out of the kitchen, back to their room and stayed with her for a few minutes.
“Go,” she said finally. “Talk to Lorene. God, how is she going to stand this a second time?”
He did not know, did not really want to find out, but he got up to go.
“Eli?”
He looked back at her, almost went back to her; she looked so uncharacteristically childlike, so frightened. He did not understand why she was afraid.
“No, go,” she said. “But … take care of yourself. I mean … no matter how strong you think this thing has made you, no matter what’s happened to you … before, don’t do anything careless or dumb. Don’t …”
Don’t die, she meant. She rubbed her stomach, looked at him. Don’t die.
Present 22
BLAKE REGAINED CONSCIOUSNESS IN darkness.
He lay still, realizing that he was no longer in his car. He was lying on something flat and hard—a carpeted floor, he thought after a moment. His head ached—seemed to pulsate with pain. And he was cold.
His discomfort kept him from realizing immediately that his hands and feet were bound. Even when he tried to rub his head and discovered he had to move both arms, he did not understand why at once. He thought there was something more wrong with his body. When, finally, he understood, he struggled, tried to free himself, tried to stand up. He managed only to writhe around and sit up.
“Is anyone here?” he said.
There was no answer.
He squinted, trying to penetrate the darkness, fearing that he might be blind. He remembered hitting his head as he sheared into the oncoming car. He probably had a concussion. And what else?
Finally, dizzily, he managed to turn around, see dim light outlining draperies. He could still see, then.
“Thank God,” he muttered.
“Dad?”
He started. “Rane?” he said. “Is that you?”
“It’s me.” She sounded half awake. “Are you okay?”
“F
ine,” he lied. “Where the hell are we?”
“A ranch house. Another ranch house.”
“Another … ?”
“It wasn’t Eli’s people, Dad. I mean, they were chasing us, too, but they didn’t catch us. A car gang caught us.”
That took a moment to sink in. “Oh God.”
“They think they can get a ransom for us. I made them look at your identification. Meanwhile, they’ve been exposed to the disease.”
“If there was no break in their skins—”
“There was. I scratched one myself. He tore my shirt open and I tore some skin off his arm.”
That shook Blake from one kind of misery to another. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah. A few bruises, that’s all. Before anyone could rape me, they decided I might be worth more … intact.”
“And Keira?”
“They let her alone too. She’s right here. She was awake for a while—said she felt awful. Said she’d left all her medicine at Eli’s.”
“Is she tied?”
“We both are.”
He tried to see them, thought he could see Rane sitting up.
“Shall I wake Keira?”
“Let her sleep. That’s the only medicine she has left now. How long was I unconscious?”
“Since last night. But you weren’t always unconscious. Every now and then you’d mumble and move around. And you threw up. They made me clean it with my hands still tied.”
Concussion. And he had lost a day. He had also lost his freedom again. Worst of all, he had spread the disease. He had failed at all he had attempted. All …
“There’s going to be an epidemic,” Rane whispered.
Blake inched over toward her, groped for her.
“What are you doing?”
“Give me your hands.”
“Dad, we’re not tied with ropes. That’s probably why I can still feel my hands and feet. We’re wearing cuffs—choke-cuffs.”
Blake lay down again heavily. “Shit,” he muttered. Everything the car family did to hold them sealed its doom and increased the likelihood of an epidemic. He tested the cuffs, doing what he could first to slip them, then to pull their bands apart. They were plastic, but felt surprisingly soft and comfortable as long as he did not try to get rid of them. Once he began to struggle, however, they tightened until he thought they would cut off his hands.
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