“Why not just kill him?” Erin asked.
Malena was quiet as she considered it. “I grew up in Mexico and Los Angeles,” she said. “I never lived anywhere where people were good to one another. Someone told me once, though, that we must strive to fight our enemies without becoming our enemies. We must always fight to be better than they are. I didn’t do it because it’s what he would have done.”
Erin looked the younger woman over and then shook her head. “I don’t know if I can do that.”
She walked over and knelt down beside Silver. “You hear that?” she said. “My friend over there is a much better person than I am. I’m still inclined to put a bullet or three in you. I decided it was her call, though, but listen up: I’m gonna keep an eye on these girls. Anything- and I mean anything -happens to them and I’ll come for you. You hear me, Silver? You’ve seen what I can do.”
The face that turned up to look at her was battered and swollen. What caught Erin’s attention, though, what made her start in surprise were his eyes. The contacts he must have been wearing were gone, knocked out by one of his victim’s blows, and the eyes that stared back at Erin were the color of new rust with straight lines of black radiating out from the iris. The pupil was a horizontal slit. “What..,” he whispered as bloody spittle dripped in long strings from his swollen lips, “what bloodline are you?”
Erin stood up quickly and took a step back. She turned to Malena.
“What did he say?” the younger woman asked.
“Nothing. We need to go. I’ve got a car a few blocks over.”
“Was it about how you move without moving?” she said.
Erin locked eyes with Malena. “You can’t tell anyone,” she said. “None of you can. It would be dangerous for you.” She didn’t strictly know if that was true, but it sounded good.
Malena shrugged. “Who would believe it? Besides, we owe you everything. I don’t think anyone who saw you will have a problem keeping it to themselves.”
Erin nodded and they started hustling the girls out of the warehouse. Outside, the desert was cold and it wasn’t long before the girls were shivering. It took Erin a few minutes to regain her bearings from street level, but she managed to get them to the van. When they arrived, she and Malena looked at each other. “We have twice as many people as that thing is meant to carry,” Erin said.
Malena nodded. “Si. I guess we just have to enforce a stereotype for a little while.”
Erin leaned against the van and closed her eyes. She was so very tired. “I don’t know where to take any of you.”
Malena turned and started talking with the other girls in hushed Spanish. After a minute, she touched Erin’s shoulder. She hadn’t quite been asleep, but close enough that she jumped a little at the touch.
“One of the girls knows a safe place in Victorville. She says we can call the others’ families from there. Do you have the keys? I can drive.”
“Where’s Victorville?”
“About two hours west of here in California. I know the way.”
Erin’s first instinct was to tell her that she was fine and could drive them no problem. The weight of her eyelids, though, quickly convinced her otherwise. “Fine,” she said as she handed the keys to Malena, “but don’t get us pulled over.”
Getting the girls in the van took some planning and a lot of people sitting on laps and squeezing into tight spaces, but they managed it. Before long they were moving through the dark streets. Malena was behind the wheel with Erin in the passenger seat with one of the younger girls in her lap. The little girl didn’t speak any English, but after they had been on the road a few minutes, the girl gave Erin a quick peck on the cheek and said, “Gracias.”
Erin looked at her and smiled when she recognized her as the face she’d seen on Tiko’s computer in those final moments. Tears came unbidden to Erin’s eyes and she nodded. The girl laid her head on Erin’s shoulder and started playing with her hair in short, gentle strokes. Erin laid her head back against the headrest.
By the time they reached the interstate, she was sound asleep.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The first thing he noticed as he came back to himself was the thick bits of fur caught between his teeth. Israel sat up and was blinded by a sun that seemed far too bright. He held up his hand against the glare. He could hear a stream gurgling over stones nearby. Cool air moved through a grove of tall pines with a static whisper. Brown pine needles were stuck in patches to his chest and hands. Stuck there, he noticed, because they had gotten caught in the layer of dried blood and gore that stretched from his fingertips to his elbows.
He lowered his hand and looked down at himself. The sun was still too bright, but so long as he kept his face turned from the sky, he could see well enough to make out details. His shirt was drenched in blood and bits of flesh and fur. His eyes scanned the area and found the source. A deer carcass, its antlered head torn from its body and its rib cage opened to the too bright sky, was only a few feet away.
Mentally, Israel was repulsed. So much so that he took a step backwards and slipped on the carpet of pine needles and fell on his butt. He sat there, staring at the carnage and waiting for his stomach to roll over and dump its contents into the grass. There was no nausea, though, no physical reaction at all. While his logical mind gibbered and fought with the impossible reality he found himself in, his body remained motionless and content.
Without needing it, he took in a deep breath. The anguished, frustrated scream that came out after surprised him.
Israel sat that way for a long time, staring at the blood and bone, listening to the wind and water. He told himself over and over to focus. Eventually, he succeeded. He got up and walked to the stream. It was wide and clear and he washed in it, stripping down and getting as much of the blood from his clothing as he could manage. He rinsed out his mouth and even drank some of the cold water though he felt no thirst. Habit, he supposed. When he was finished, he draped his clothing over some branches so it could dry. His sneakers and socks were relatively clean but he washed them anyway.
This done, he sat down with his back against a thick pine and closed his eyes. He wasn’t tired, not at all, but the sun was just so damned bright. Scents drifted on the wind, things he couldn’t identify that were sweet and musky. He listened to the world around him and tried to recall how he’d gotten wherever he was. His thoughts were groggy, like he was hung-over, but as things started coming back to him he grew more alert. Stone and the Twins had released him, he remembered that. Then he had started running and had jumped so far and then he had run into the guys with guns.
Guns.
Israel’s eyes popped open and he ran his hands over his chest. He remembered getting shot. He remembered getting shot a lot. There were no wounds, though, just smooth, brown skin and the minimal chest hair he’d always had. He leaned his head back against the tree and closed his eyes again. The fight replayed in his mind. Had he really thrown a full grown man around like a basketball? Bullets had hit him, he was certain of that. It hadn’t hurt, though. Rather than pain, he remembered a growing hunger, a need like he had never known before. He remembered it overwhelming him.
Then, he’d opened his eyes here. The deer carcass flashed through his mind along with the steak bones in the cell back at Silversky. The video Warburton had shown him played across the big screen in his brain. So that was it: He had to eat or he turned into that thing in the video. Getting hurt, using his new strength, these things made the hunger grow until he lost himself. He wondered what would have happened if he had come across a bunch of campers instead of a deer. Would he have woken to a different kind of carcass then?
He pushed that thought away. There was no point in it, no point in speculating. This was how it worked out and this was what he had to deal with until he could get back to Allison and Stone. That might not be as easy as it sounded, though.
He was pretty sure that he hadn’t killed any of the soldiers that he’d encountered, but he kne
w he’d hurt a couple of them pretty badly. What had John called them? The Weird Shit Squad? Yeah, those guys would probably be looking to deal Israel more than a little payback. If they were anything like the cops back in Chicago, they would be looking at all his known associates. In this part of the country, that meant the people back at The Sentry Group.
The plan had been for him to go north until he hit a road and then take a right. He gritted his teeth in frustration. He wasn’t even sure where he was. He didn’t know how long he had run before he’d caught the deer. Had he crossed the road and it was behind him now? Which way was north from here? He was suddenly aware of how much he took street signs for granted.
Israel continued thinking through his problems and options without moving. He noticed that he never had to shift position or move his limbs because they had grown stiff. When he opened his eyes again, he squinted against the light and saw his shirt catching the light breeze, completely dry. The jeans and shoes were still damp, but he dressed anyway. His shirt was tattered with bullet holes but he figured there was nothing he could do about that and he didn’t want to leave it behind to mark his passing.
He looked around carefully. He knew he had to get moving. If the WSS was looking for him then sitting still would just make it easier for them. Which direction, though, was a question he couldn’t answer. The stream continued its trickling song while he thought. Then, he remembered hearing someplace that one of the things you should do if you ever got lost in the wild was follow a stream or river. He couldn’t recall why, but he was pretty sure that was the rule. So, with no other plan, he shielded his eyes and started walking.
It was, all things considered, a pleasant walk. There was relatively little underbrush in this part of the forest and more than once he came across some animal or another that bolted from his path. For some reason he thought there would be more birds chirping but he heard none. He wondered if he had anything to do with their absence.
He walked for over an hour before stopping. He wasn’t tired, but rather wanted to take a moment to look around again. Following the stream wasn’t working out the way he’d hoped but, then again, maybe he was just being impatient. After a few minutes he continued moving through the forest. The stream continued to babble, branches cracked and broke beneath his feet, honeysuckle and musk drifted in the air, and the sun- damned bright as it was -continued to shine. It was, in all, a beautiful day. It became even more so when he heard the sound of a car passing from farther up the stream.
He sprinted at the sound, easily dodging or jumping over obstacles. He couldn’t help but grin at how effortless it was. He stopped when the small rise that led up to a road come into view. The stream continued on under a small bridge that showed its age. Israel started to run again but then stopped. He realized that running like that, jumping higher than should strictly be possible, would use up whatever his body used for fuel now. He had to hold back or risk the hunger overwhelming him again. So, he walked the distance at a normal pace and climbed the berm up to the road.
It was the kind of back country road that rarely saw a maintenance crew, which was fine since it seemed to rarely see any traffic, either. He couldn’t find any signposts or anything to give him any idea where he was, so he just turned left and started walking again.
He’d been walking for maybe a half hour before he saw any cars. The first was an old pick up that didn’t even slow down as it passed. The driver, an old white guy in a green and yellow ball cap, gave him a sidelong glance as he went by. Israel ignored him. He’d never spent any time in the American south, but he imagined that even in the modern era, old southern white guys didn’t usually stop to give a young black man a ride.
He kept walking without tiring or even breaking a sweat. He found that odd. Thirst, muscle fatigue, perspiration, gastric rumblings: All the little biological signals that he had grown accustomed to over a lifetime were gone. The overall stillness of his internal workings was disconcerting but also liberating. He had no idea how he was moving, but he kept moving nonetheless.
He heard a car coming up from behind him in the far lane. It slowed and then he heard the familiar short, sharp chirps of a police siren. He turned and faced the vehicle, making sure his hands were plain view, which wasn’t difficult since the sun was just behind the car and he had to shield his eyes from the glare.
It was one of those plain, dark-colored, unmarked cars. The police strobes blinked from a narrow light bar mounted along the top interior of the windshield. The engine was left running as two officers got out and shut the doors behind them.
There were two of them: one white, one black. They both looked to be in their forties with the thick builds that came with age and a career spent sitting in a car or at a desk. They both wore light-colored suits without jackets which showed off the Glock pistols and badges they carried on their belts. Gray was just starting to show in the black cop’s tightly trimmed hair and the dark, black-rimmed sunglasses he wore just seemed to highlight it. The white guy was a little shorter than his partner, but he carried himself like he was daring you to mention it. “You can put your hands down, son,” the white guy said.
“Sorry,” Israel said, “the sun is really bright and in my eyes.”
“Put your god-damned hands down, boy,” black cop said.
“Oh” Israel thought to himself. “It’s like that.” He lowered his hands and faced the officers.
White Guy studied him for a moment and then said, “Gerald, does this fella look familiar to you? Because he does to me. Why is that, son? Why do you look familiar to me?”
“No idea, sir,” Israel said.
“What are you doing out here all by yourself?” the one called Gerald asked.
“Was hiking with some friends,” Israel lied. “I got separated and then I got lost. I’m just relieved I found a road.”
White Guy nodded. “Uh huh. Thing is, son, you don’t look dressed for hiking. Take that shirt, for instance. That’s the kind of shirt somebody would wear in an office, not hiking, but it’s full of holes. Strange color, too. Almost like it’s stained or something.”
“Dan, I think he tried to wash something out of that shirt. Something red.”
Dan never took his eyes off Israel. His hand stayed near the pistol clipped to his belt. “I think you might be right,” he said to Gerald. To Israel, he said, “Son, why don’t you put your hands on the hood of the car for me nice and easy like.”
Israel hesitated. Getting arrested wasn’t a great turn of events. It would just be a matter of time before the WSS got word of it and then it would be game over for him. On the other hand, he was reasonably certain he could just start running and the two overweight cops wouldn’t be able to catch him. They might, however, shoot him, and he didn’t know how much of that his body could take before he lost control of himself. He decided to play along for the moment.
He put his hands on car’s hood. The one called Dan stood back with his hand at his hip while Gerald patted Israel down. “Nothing on him,” he said. “What’s your name?” he asked Israel.
“Matt Simms,” Israel said, his mind quickly putting together two recent names.
“Where’s you ID, son?” Dan asked.
Israel shrugged. “I left it in my friends car back where we started hiking. I didn’t think I’d need it in the woods.”
Dan nodded again. “Uh huh. And where was that?”
“I’m not sure what it was called. I’m not from around here. I know it was part of the state park.”
“That’s a lot of acreage,” Gerald said. “If you’re not from around here, where are you from?”
“Chicago. Just down visiting some friends.”
“What’s your friend’s name?”
“Malcolm,” Israel said. “Malcolm King.”
“Malcolm King?” Gerald said. “Sure it ain’t Malcolm King Jr? Or maybe Martin X? I’m smelling a lot of bullshit coming off your story, boy. Y’know what else? The more I look at your shirt, the more I thin
k that you’re walking around with a great big blood stain for all the world to see. Is that what that is?”
Israel hesitated. He knew a lot of cops and he had heard them all tell stories about how they became finely tuned to the sound of lies the longer they were on the job. These guys had obviously been doing the job a long time. “Look,” he said, “there was this dead deer-”
“So you admit that is blood on your shirt?” Dan said.
“Yeah, but-”
“No buts, son. Here in Georgia that’s what we call probable cause. Put your hands behind your back and we’ll get this sorted out.”
Israel didn’t move. He was confident he could get away from these two, but he wasn’t sure if he could do it without losing control. Plus, if he had to fight there was always the chance he could end up bleeding- did he bleed anymore? -on them or something. Allison had told him that it was his body’s fluids that passed on his Necrophage DNA. These guys were really close and Dan was ready to draw down on him. This wasn’t the time to make a break for it. He ground his teeth together in frustration and put his hands behind his back.
Gerald grabbed his wrists and clicked a pair of metal cuffs on him. “You feeling all right, boy? Your skin’s sort of clammy. You ain’t gonna give me something are you?”
“I’m getting over a flu bug,” Israel said. “You guys might want to wear gloves.”
“Thanks for the warning,” Dan said.
They led Israel to one of the sedan’s back doors and put him in the car. The two police officers got into the front with Dan behind the wheel. A thick, metal grate separated the backseat from the front. The front dash was an electronic mosaic of buttons and touch panels. There was a laptop mounted on a small arm in the middle of the dashboard and Gerald started tapping at the keys while Dan started the car.
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