Stranger

by Simon Clark

“Yes, I heard. Remember, I want three hundred pounds of dynamite. Detonators. Fuse wire.”

  “Valdiva, you asked for two hundred.”

  “The price just went up.”

  “OK, you bastard, you’ve got it.”

  “Leave it outside the gate. Two people in an army Jeep will collect it. Don’t harm them . . . otherwise I’ll sit out here and pick you all off one by one. Right?”

  “OK! OK! Give us half an hour.”

  Ben smiled and held out his hand. “You’re the miracle man.”

  Smiling, I slapped his palm. “It was easier than I thought.”

  “That’s because you scared them good and hard, old buddy.”

  My smile turned grim. “I had help from other quarters.”

  “Oh?”

  I rubbed my stomach as it spasmed. “Ben, they’re scared because they’re in the early stages of infection.”

  His eyes went wide.

  “That’s right, old buddy; Sullivan’s lousy with Jumpy. They just don’t know it yet.”

  With Ben staring at me like I’d just punched him, I began to make my way back along the ditch to where Michaela waited with the others.

  Forty-seven

  “How long do you give them?” Michaela asked from the passenger seat as we drove away from Sullivan.

  “A few days before the symptoms become obvious.” I shifted the gearshift. “Then they’ll cull the ones they know are infected. Only the ones doing the killing will be infected themselves.”

  She pushed her hair back from her eyes. “So why aren’t we infected?”

  I shrugged. “Natural immunity.”

  “I wish you could be so sure.”

  “You’ve been exposed to the bug enough, and you haven’t been infected yet. Those people back in Sullivan managed by sheer chance to avoid contamination for so long because they were isolated from the rest of the world.”

  “Do you think I introduced the bug to them?” she asked. “I may not be infected, but I might be a carrier.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t. In fact, I’m certain they infected themselves.”

  “How?”

  “One thing the people of Sullivan ate plenty of were fresh fish. For months fish had been feeding on bodies that had been washed into the lake.” I looked at her. “It adds up, doesn’t it?”

  “Agreed. But not everyone will be infected with Jumpy.”

  “No, a few will survive. They’ll wander from place to place, scavenging food. But the town’s as good as dead now.”

  “Greg?”

  “Michaela?” I smiled.

  “Slow down, boyfriend. Remember what we’ve got in the back.”

  I glanced at the cases of dynamite stacked in the back of the Jeep. I eased off the gas. On this rutted road the boxes were hopping about in a way that was too lively for us to be comfortable with.

  “So,” she said, “how do you use dynamite?”

  “Search me, I haven’t a clue.” I shot her a smile. “We’ll figure out how one way or another.”

  Her face broke into a slow grin. “Yeah, we’re Vikings now. We can do anything, right?”

  “Right.”

  We drove back the way we came, along roads that cut deep gullies through the forests. In the distance we caught glimpses of rivers and lakes. The afternoon sun had been buried behind a big, dark funeral mound of cloud. A flock of white birds glided along the valley to our right, over shattered houses and villages that lay bitched and broken with their living hearts torn out. Yeah, Valdiva. We’re Vikings now. Warriors of the wasteland. Lords of Chaos. We’d inherited a ruined planet.

  Ahead of us by a few yards rode Tony, Ben and Zak, in a line of three, the bikes eating up mile after mile of road. I guessed they were taken by surprise by how easily we’d gotten hold of the dynamite in the end. Within thirty minutes of me shooting the bullhorn from Crowther’s hand the townspeople piled the cases of explosives outside the gate. Tony and Ben rode up in the Jeep and loaded it; then we were away in a swirl of dust with the Jumpy-raddled people of Sullivan watching us go. Only when I was five miles from the place did the muscle spasms ease in my stomach.

  When I thought about it later, it all added up. I’d been downwind of them in the ditch. I’d smelled their aftershave. I’d smelled the infection, too.

  Zak rode with the cowboy hat on his head, the brim flapping in the breeze. He grinned back at us. We’d be back at the cabins within the hour.

  What happened next must have been fast. Only it seemed to roll in at me in slow motion. One minute there was open road, the banks of trees on either side of us. Then figures swarmed onto the road. Braking, I swerved to avoid them. I saw one aim a swing at me with a baseball bat. It smacked against the windshield. A white star appeared in the glass. Michaela shouted a warning. I swerved again, this time not to avoid the hornet but to use the car to smash his legs to crud.

  I looked to my right to see Ben’s dirt bike in the grass at the side of the road, the wheels still spinning like fury. I braked hard. Zak and Tony wheeled the Harleys ’round and raced back toward the hornets. There were maybe twenty of them. Not a huge pack, but there might be more nearby. What’s more, they’d managed to topple Ben off the bike.

  Zak and Tony, like old-time knights on horseback, charged the mob, the pair of them firing their sawedoff shotguns from the hip. The scattering buckshot dropped three or more of the bastards with every shell. I saw them go down kicking on the blacktop. Blood spurted from wounds in their faces.

  I reversed hard. Smashing the legs of any that got in the way. One old girl went down with a screech beneath the back wheels.

  “Greg, the dynamite!” Michaela shouted.

  I looked ‚round. More hornets piled into the road from the forest. With sticks and iron bars they struck at the car. Some beat at the boxes of dynamite, sending a flurry of splinters into the air. I lurched the car forward. A stick caught me on the shoulder, but I kept powering away from the mob. I looked back again. Zak and Tony rode in a circle ’round Ben, back tires ripping up the sod into a green blizzard that filled the air. They were keeping the hornets at bay as Ben hoisted the bike upright. Thank God the engine still fired. I could see the exhaust hazing the air behind the muffler. Hornets tried to rush him, but the ever-circling Zak and Tony kept them back with a few well-aimed shotgun blasts. A moment later Ben climbed back on the dirt bike. With a twist of the throttle he wheelied right out of there, Zak and Tony following. Zak fired back as the hornets ran after them, turning one guy’s face into a mess the color of crushed strawberries.

  “Damn, that was a close one,” I said to Michaela as I accelerated away. Then I glanced at her. Her head rolled to the rhythm of the wheels. Her eyes were shut. Streaming from the gash in the top of her head came what seemed to be a whole river of blood. Not a trickle, but a gush of blood that ran into the soft hollows of her eyes, down her cheeks like crimson tears, then down her throat to soak her T-shirt.

  “Michaela?” I shook her shoulder as I drove. “Michaela, can you hear me? Michaela!”

  A rush of air tore the words from my mouth. “Michaela?” I kept calling her name. But as the red stained her chest my voice slowly died.

  Forty-eight

  “Is she dead? Zak . . . is she dead?”

  “Just clear back there; let me see.”

  On the drive back to the cabins on the mountainside Michaela had shown no sign of life. Where her skin showed through smears of blood it had been the color of milk . . . a deathly gleaming white that chilled me to the bone. I’d carried her into a cabin to lay her on a bed. Immediately the others had gathered ’round, their eyes huge with shock when they’d seen the wound on top of her head. Boy sat on the floor with his back to the wall, his knees hugged to his chest, watching people rushing ’round with bowls of water, towels, surgical dressings. I crouched beside the bed as Zak carefully moved Michaela’s long hair aside so he could inspect the wound.

  I repeated the question. “Zak? Is she dead?”


  “Ben, pass me that mirror.”

  Ben handed Zak the small mirror from the dresser. Zak held it beneath Michaela’s nose. It seemed to take forever before I saw the glass mist.

  “Thank God for that.” Zak sighed with relief. “She’s breathing. . . . It’s shallow, but it’s there.”

  “What now?” I asked.

  “We’ve no medical training. All we can do is patch u p her wound, then wait and see.”

  “Jesus.”

  Zak gently parted her hair. “But look at the size of the scalp wound. It’s a big one . . . there’s a lot of blood, too.”

  He must have seen my sickened expression.

  “Greg, that’s a good sign, believe me.”

  “Good? You call that good? The bastard nearly tore off her entire scalp.”

  “It shows it was a glancing blow. Instead of coming down hard into her skull, the club struck at a shallow angle, tearing her scalp.” Zak peered down at the head wound. It was a three-cornered tear like when you rip clothing on a nail. Through the pool of blood there gleamed the pink curve of the skull. Zak knelt with his hands open, fingers splayed. They barely trembled, yet I noticed they were smeared red from fingertip to knuckle.

  “OK, OK. I know I can do this. I can. I can.” He clenched his jaw. He was psyching himself up to do something. “Tony, find me that first aid kit. Not the domestic one. The big one we found in the ambulance.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “This is a bad tear in her scalp . . . really bad. I’m going to have to sew it back together.”

  I looked at him. “You’ve done this before?”

  “No, but trust me.” His eyes were fixed on the bleeding wound. “I know I can do it. One thing, though.” He looked ’round. “Clear the room. I need to be able to concentrate.”

  With Zak working on Michaela in the cabin I had to keep myself busy. Dark clouds overlaid the sky like a purple bruise. With Tony’s help I shifted the dynamite to a spare cabin some distance from the others. This stuff should be stable, but I wasn’t going to take any damn-fool chances. For a while we worked without talking. Only when I moved the Jeep to a garage alongside one of the cabins did Tony break the silence.

  Wrapping a rag around his hand, he reached into the back of the Jeep to pull out a hunk of what looked like steel rod. As thick as my thumb, it was maybe two feet in length.

  I stared at it for a moment.

  “The hornet’s weapon of choice,” Tony said at last. “Evil-looking thing, isn’t it?”

  I nodded. “Do you think that’s what hit her?”

  “Could be. But there’s no blood.” He shook his head, sickened. “Maybe one threw it as you passed, or he lost his grip on it when they attacked.” He looked more closely at it. “The problem is, they smear these things with their own shit. Whether it’s a crazy ritual or whether it’s to spread infection I don’t know.”

  I found myself glancing back at the cabin where Michaela lay. “What are you saying, Tony?”

  “Michaela should really have a shot of antibiotics and a tetanus inoculation.”

  “You mean if she recovers from the head wound she still might go down with blood poisoning?”

  “It’s happened to us in the past. We’ve lost people.”

  “But you’ve got first aid kits and medicines, right?”

  “But we haven’t any antibiotics or inoculation shots. They’re long gone.”

  “Hell.” I rubbed my jaw. “But I know where there are some.”

  “The bunker?”

  “First thing tomorrow we’re going back there.” I shot him a grim look. “We’re going to take whatever we need from that place.”

  “But you said it was built like a fortress.”

  “It is . . . so this is where we start making the impossible possible. It’s a habit we’re going to have to learn; otherwise we won’t survive.”

  “Greg . . . Greg!”

  I turned to see Boy come running across the grass. His eyes were big as boiled eggs; the whites flashed in a way that sent shivers prickling across my back.

  Boy shouted, “Greg . . . Tony! Zak says to come back to the cabin!”

  The bedroom where Michaela lay was in near darkness. Zak had drawn the blinds and turned down the kerosene lamp until only a smudge of light burned in the glass tube.

  She lay flat on her back, her black hair fanned out across the pillow. Zak nodded for me to go closer. As I crouched beside the bed her eyes opened. For a second they gazed up at the ceiling, as if puzzled by her surroundings; then she turned her head slightly to look at me.

  “Michaela,” I whispered, “it’s Greg. You’re going to be all right.”

  Her lips moved noiselessly for a second, then she breathed out the words: “Sorry, Greg . . . I messed up . . . should have been sharper . . . a whole lot sharper . . . uh.” She grimaced.

  “Don’t apologize.” I moved closer and squeezed her hand.

  “Let my guard down . . . that was stupid of me . . .”

  “Take it easy. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I did, Greg. . . . I should have kept my wits . . . these days you get lazy you’re gonna die . . . oh . . .”

  “Sshh . . . Easy, Michaela.”

  Swallowing, as if she had something stuck in her throat, she lifted both fists to her temples. She began to press her head so hard her knuckles turned white.

  “Michaela, what’s wrong?”

  She sighed. “It hurts . . . ssa’ bitch . . . uh.”

  Zak ran his hands across his head, angry with himself that he couldn’t do more for her. “I don’t think she’s suffered any brain damage. I did a good job stitching her scalp, but it’s going to be sore for a while.”

  “Isn’t there anything we can give her?”

  “All we’ve got now is Excedrin.”

  “They’re not even going to take the edge off pain like that.”

  “I know, Greg. Good God, I wish I could do more for her. She doesn’t deserve this. . . . She pulled us outta more crap than I don’t know what. She kept us together, like . . .” He shrugged as words failed him. “Hell, she doesn’t deserve this, Greg,” was all he could repeat.

  She didn’t deserve it. I gritted my own teeth as I watched her shudder as waves of pain ran through her. Her knuckles whitened again as she pushed her hands against the side of her head.

  What’s that old saying? Life’s a bitch and then you die . . .

  It came ringing back at me as I crouched there holding her hand. It came like a huge tolling bell that thundered the words ’round my head. Be a Viking, I said. Work miracles, I said. Do the impossible, I said. And, Jesus Christ, all I could do was watch the face of the woman I loved spasm as the agony tore through her like a goddam razor.

  Forty-nine

  I watched Boy through the binoculars. Disguised in rags, carrying a backpack on his shoulders that reached all the way down to the back of his knees, he limped ’round the fake house that comprised the bunker. I could see that he wore one shoe. His head hung down, exhausted.

  “The kid’s acting the part well,” I said.

  “He loves Michaela like a sister.” Tony crouched beside me. “He’d give his life to help her.”

  Zak crawled through the leaf mold, keeping below the bushes. “Anything happening yet?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Boy’s been hanging ’round there for two hours now. Are you sure this bunker guy can see him?”

  “He can see him, all right,” I whispered. “He can hear, too. My guess is, he’s sitting there watching Boy to make sure this isn’t some kind of stunt. So keep your voices down.” I glanced at Zak. “Is Ben ready?”

  “He’s about a mile down the road with the Jeep.”

  “Any sign of hornets?”

  “None that we’ve found, but that’s a big forest out there. You could hide a whole army; no one’d ever know.”

  We crouched there beneath the bushes just inside the forest fringe. I watched B
oy sit at the main entrance to the bunker. He’d done as I’d instructed. He’d made an act of finding what you’d suppose was simply a big country house in the forest. He’d examined the fake doors painted on concrete walls, looked at the astroturf grass. Then he’d sat down, his head hanging down as if he was too tired to take another step. Every now and again a squall of rain came from dark skies. Trees groaned and hissed before the coming storm like restless animals. It was as if they sensed something big was breaking.

  I kept my eyes fixed to the binoculars, seeing Boy’s dirt-smeared face. In my mind’s eye I was seeing Michaela, too. When I left the cabin that morning her face had a white, unnatural look, as if it were made from the same waxy stuff as candles. She breathed steadily, but she still hadn’t fully regained consciousness from the attack the day before. In fact, she seemed to sleep more deeply now. I found myself asking myself how you know when someone has slipped from natural sleep into a lethal coma. It scared me more than I dared to admit. Zak had done a good job of the suturing, however. After cutting a little of her hair away from the scalp he’d neatly stitched the flap of torn skin back. That had stopped the bleeding. The rest now, as they say, was in the lap of the gods.

  Minutes crawled to midday. I began to wonder again about the steel trap door on the annex roof through which Michaela and I had escaped. That would be the easiest way into the bunker, but I was certain Phoenix would have gone across to manually close it. What’s more, it was locked from the inside. If I did risk climbing up onto the annex roof that would alert Phoenix that we were up to something. And that trap door was a substantial piece of metal; I’d never be able to open the thing.

  Tony pushed aside a backpack to make himself more comfortable.

  Zak fanned himself with the Stetson. “Treat the bag with some respect, bud. We don’t know how stable that stuff is.”

  Like he was moving a sack of eggs, Tony gently shifted it farther from him. “Greg, you sure you know how to use it?”

  I didn’t take my eyes from the binoculars. “I’ve bundled half a dozen sticks together with a detonator and ten feet of fuse. When I tested it earlier the fuse burned at two seconds per foot.”