Domino Falls

by Steven Barnes

  “Think we’ll pull this off?” Darius said. During some moments, the idea of the rescue, so daring and selfless, felt ennobling in a way he thought would make their families proud. As long as he felt the call of his parents’ expectations, they weren’t quite gone yet.

  “Some of us will make it,” Dean said.

  Darius glanced at his cousin askance. It was hard to tell when Dean was kidding, but Darius didn’t sense any levity.

  “If we lose anybody,” Darius said, “it won’t be on my watch.”

  “Not the way it works, man,” Dean said. “Plans go wrong. Don’t fool yourself.”

  “And you’re okay with that?”

  “It’s all the same to me.”

  “So you don’t care if you live or die? Or if our friends live or die?” Darius said, although he knew that wasn’t what Dean meant. “Everybody lost their families, Dean. Not just you.”

  “That’s right,” Dean said. “Everybody ‘lost’ their families, like a dog that pulled off a leash and won’t come when they whistle. Kendra and Ursalina didn’t ‘lose’ their families—they watched them get hunted and bitten like animals. They saw them bleed and scream. Ursalina’s kid was stolen from her arms. And if something happens to any of these guys tonight, pampered one, it’s gonna rain pain on your soft little soul.”

  “You think ’cuz I wasn’t at the rez I can’t handle pain?”

  “I don’t know what you can handle,” Dean said. “You’ve never tried it. Instead, it’s jokes. Jokes ain’t gonna protect you tonight, apple-boy.”

  Red on the outside, white on the inside, roughly equivalent to “Oreo” among black folks. Darius wanted to bloody Dean’s nose, but only because he knew he was telling the truth.

  “Then we better get it right,” Darius said. “You’ll shoot straighter if you give a damn.”

  Dean laughed the mirthless laugh he had brought back with him from Snug Harbor, walking a tightrope between sanity and madness. Sliding down the razor blade of life. “Give a damn? Listen to you, Darius. We don’t know jack about this infection. Or what these Cujos are, or where they came from. We don’t know if any of us will be left to wonder about it a year from now. So, do I care? Sure. But I walk around with my eyes wide open. I see the lie. Nothing we do matters now.”

  So much for the pep talk, Darius thought. He remembered the cousin he’d been able to laugh and dream with at Camp Round Meadow and wondered if he would ever find him again.

  Just like Terry was looking for his sister and Kendra was looking for her great-aunt, maybe he would find his lost cousin in Devil’s Wake. Maybe one day the Indian Twins would ride again.

  Wales’s tour took Sonia through sections of the mansion he said outsiders rarely saw, corridors crammed with artwork and towering sculptures of misshapen creatures that, to her, looked like insects standing on two legs. The art gave Sonia the creeps, but she asked Wales polite questions to keep him out of groping distance.

  “You do all of these yourself?”

  “Yes, it’s my passion now!” Wales said, momentarily forgetting to brush the nape of her neck. “I use ceramic. Pewter and bronze are too hard to come by these days. I’ve always enjoyed other people’s art, but I never knew I had so much in me until a couple of months ago, to be honest. I’m up all hours of the day and night, and the pieces seem to”—he paused to search for words, finally waving his arms in the air—“appear.”

  Wales swigged from the engraved silver flask he kept in his robe pocket. When he made a sudden movement, brushing his hand across Sonia’s shoulder, she was so startled that she reflexively nudged him away. But she caught herself quickly and pretended to have stumbled, losing her balance. Wales steadied her with the crook of his arm across her back.

  “Here, sweetheart,” he said, offering her the flask as if whiskey would help her coordination. Sonia smiled and faked a swig, all the while keeping her lips shut. Wales was already blurry-eyed from the booze, but she wanted to stay sharp. Wales’s grip cinched around her waist.

  “Wow,” Sonia said, staring at the creepy art again. “You have hidden talents.”

  “My dear, I have secrets you couldn’t dream about,” Wales said, in a convincing Clark Gable imitation à la Gone With the Wind. “A few of them, I must admit, are best displayed in a more discreet setting.”

  His hot breath flooded her ear. Vaguely, Sonia wondered if this toad was old enough to be her grandfather, or just her father. Her flesh crawled.

  “Really?” she said with her best wide-eyed stare. “Like where?”

  Good. Privacy. She hadn’t seen a Gold Shirt pass in the hall in two or three minutes, but they weren’t alone yet. She would have to commence the more daring part of her plan, and she only hoped Wales had nipped enough whiskey to make it as easy as she’d planned.

  “I think you know where,” Wales said. “You’re not as innocent as you look.”

  “I look innocent?” Sonia said. “Been a long time since I heard that.”

  “Then let me show you my favorite room,” Wales said.

  Naturally, he led her to his bedroom, which was big enough for two or three rooms—so large and luxurious that Sonia remembered what she would have given to be in Wales’s room, in Wales’s arms, two days ago. While the world outside was cowering in fear, she had dreamed of moving into Wales’s mansion and living like a queen. Wasn’t that the secret in every groupie’s heart? You would be the One. A tear stung the corner of Sonia’s eye. Was she mourning her lost dream, or was she ashamed that she was still tempted even now? She’d let Piranha go for Wales, and Piranha would have died to protect her. He still would … wouldn’t he? Worse, if things went wrong, he still might. The freaks hadn’t bitten Sonia, but they had changed her all the same.

  Murals covered the walls in the bedroom too: more shapeless, bleeding into one another. Shades of red. To Sonia, they looked like the color of blood.

  There was no way to avoid kissing Wales. No way to avoid the bed. Sonia artfully managed to keep her clothes on while she tried to work up her nerve. She had everything she needed, even old-fashioned iron bed rails she hadn’t dared to hope for. She grabbed a thick rail, checked its sturdiness with her free hand while she massaged Wales’s silken hair with the other. He wasn’t bad-looking for a paunchy old guy, and he smelled clean in a way most people didn’t anymore. The bastard was tempting, even now.

  But the bed rails made her job easier. So much easier.

  Sonia’s basic magic kit had survived Freak Day, and so had her favorite semisheer scarves. When Sonia pulled the first scarf from her bosom and began tying one end around Wales’s wrist, he only propped himself up on one elbow and grinned.

  “My, my,” he said. “The wind has blown in a very naughty girl.” He only chuckled when she pulled his wrist toward the bedpost and secured him deftly, manipulating her scarf until it might as well be a leather strap.

  “That’s a bit tight, isn’t it?” Wales said.

  “Sorry,” she whispered, climbing over the mountain of him to reach his other wrist. “I didn’t want it too loose or too tight. It’s my favorite scene, you know which one, that edgy one from the first Threadrunner—let’s be honest, the only really pure movie, before the studios ruined it.”

  “Yes!” Wales said, forgetting his wrist. “The more money they made, the less they invested in the franchise! And they took out the message, the teeth. In the end, I wasn’t allowed to kill anyone on-screen! Even if I threw him off a building, they had to have a shot of him writhing below. ‘See … no one’s dead here!’ Can you imagine?”

  The second wrist was tied before he could finish whining.

  “Poor you,” Sonia said. She almost let too much of herself leak out, and she hadn’t tied his feet yet. “Still … you must to be very punished.”

  Alien-butchered English directly from the movie. Wales’s grin returned as his eyes glazed. “You’re better than this,” Wales said, taking his cue to help her sink into the fantasy. “You didn’t come to
hurt us. You don’t want to hurt me.” Sonia almost laughed, wondering how many times he’d watched his own flicks.

  Wales’s eyes rolled a bit, a sign he’d had too much to drink. Even better.

  “So much more you don’t know,” he said, nearly giggling. He pulled against his binds, testing them. “I see you’ve done this before.”

  “Once or twice,” Sonia said, leaning over him, close to his face. “What else don’t I know?”

  “So much, my dear, so much.” He shook his head, giggling again.

  She kissed him lightly. “You know you’re dying to tell.”

  The kiss stopped Wales’s laughter cold. “That’s not all I’m dying for.”

  “Just give me a hint,” she said. “Were you always expecting Freak Day?”

  “Oh, no,” Wales said. “That was only a game. But the game became real. It wasn’t the way I imagined it … but suddenly, they were here.”

  They were here. The room spun slightly, as if Sonia had been drinking too. Her heart pumped adrenaline through her.

  “What are they?” Sonia said, because her proximity to Wales’s eyes revealed the truth: he knew, or thought he did. “Where did they come from?”

  “Somewhere that’s not here,” he said, almost dreamily. “Somewhere else.” He blew out a puff of breath. “Like summer dandelions. Seeds scattering. I saw that much in my vision, the first one. I saw red threads when I first had the ’shroom.”

  Yes, the mushroom was all mixed up in it, and she’d had one just yesterday. If someone gave her a flu shot, would she freak out too?

  “Everybody in Hollywood was takin’ ’em. Had been for years. Nobody guessed any of this. All of this.” He wriggled as if to sweep his arm, but remembered his binds.

  “So the books were … what?” Sonia said.

  “Oh, the books!” Wales sounded dismissive. “I meant to try to crack the code, I suppose, or make a kind of blueprint. I was so ignorant! The books were nothing, a trifle. My feeble attempts to understand, to put words to it. So laughable now!”

  “What’s changed?”

  “What’s changed?” He looked at her with disbelief. “Everything’s changed. Not just the infected. That’s only … a glitch! It’s gone way beyond that now.” He laughed so long that it almost sounded like crying at the end. Wales’s eyes were moist. “Do you really want to know?”

  Sonia fought a primal urge to leap away from Wales, to run for the door, because the insanity in his eyes looked contagious. Whatever he knew had done that to his eyes, and she didn’t want any part of it, now or ever. What would knowing do to her?

  “Yes,” she whispered, nearly close enough to kiss him. “Tell me.”

  “I wrote the books, I grew my own mushrooms here, all to try to … reach them,” Wales said. “To … bring me closer to the vision. Not this … horrible accident with the infection. My vision was peaceful, about an evolution. Our evolution.”

  Sonia’s heartbeat nearly overpowered her ears. “Evolving into what?”

  “Something beautiful,” Wales said. “I knew I wouldn’t get it out of my head unless I saw one again, to help me believe something so beautiful could come from …”

  His voice trailed off. More and more, Wales’s words sounded like drunken rambling. “Until I captured one, I couldn’t be sure. But we have it now. Proof. We are waiting. Changing.” He bit his lip hard, suddenly. “So much death and fear. It shouldn’t have happened this way. But we can’t change the past, only the future.”

  “What did you capture?” she said.

  “One of them,” Wales said, eyes glinting with pride. “Not the … bastards, the hybrids, out terrorizing the world in their infancy. You’ve seen the others, haven’t you? Growing like the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden. The new creation from our ribs and our planet’s soil.”

  Wales laughed with his eerie combination of mirth and sorrow. “Not all of them,” he said. “Most of them rot as fruit on the vine. They’re still adapting—chemical reactions, so much to try to anticipate …”

  “But some of them turn into something else?” Sonia said. “And you caught one?”

  Wales nodded. “Oh, yes.”

  The icy block of fear in Sonia’s chest thawed a degree or two. “Can we use them for a cure?”

  “A …” Wales looked at her, confused, then barked his pathetic laugh again. “A cure! Yes, that’s it, exactly! They are the cure, Sonia. They are the cure for us.”

  Wales’s blue eyes suddenly cleared, instantly sober. “I’m tired of this game, my dear,” he said. “Untie me.”

  Sonia tried to flash a seductive smile, but she doubted the look on her face was anything except petrified. She counted the levels of freaks in her head. “So, you have a fifth-level freak. Where is it? Is it here?”

  Wales yanked at his wrists, hard. Sonia was good with knots, but Wales was strong and persistent. “Let me go!” he shouted. “Do you know the penalty for disobedience?”

  The true personality emerges, Sonia thought, wishing the sudden anger in Wales’s voice hadn’t sent fear shooting across the back of her neck. She could imagine what happened to anyone who got on Wales’s bad side.

  “Where’s Rianne?” Sonia said. “What are you doing to those girls?”

  With a loud grunt, Wales slipped one of his ankles free of its bind and swung it over hard enough to knock Sonia from the bed. Luckily, she missed the corner of the night table when she landed, splaying awkwardly to the floor. Wales thrashed on the bed, working to untie himself.

  Panting, Sonia patted herself for the parting gift Deirdre had given her, the same kind she’d given her daughter when she sent her to college. When Wales turned his head to examine his bound wrist, Sonia lunged back up to the bed and jabbed her hidden Taser into his neck.

  Wales let out a strangled yell, convulsing. Sonia watched his odd writhing, intrigued, until she remembered to pull the Taser away.

  “Stop!” Wales said. Begging. How many people had begged this bastard? Had he listened to their pleas?

  “Tell me the rest,” Sonia said. Quickly, she tested her knots and felt satisfied that they would hold. While Wales caught his breath, she quickly tied his foot again. “Where are those girls? What do you want with them?”

  “Ambassadors,” Wales panted. “To spread—”

  “I don’t believe you,” she said, and pressed the Taser into his crotch.

  The reaction was fascinating. His entire body clenched like a fist, muscles roping up on his pudgy body at the same time that a huge wet spot appeared on his pants.

  “Please, please.” He was slobbering now. “Sonia. Please. I don’t know what you want. You don’t know what you’re doing. This won’t make any difference. It’s too late—”

  Sonia Tased him again. “Waste my time again, and I’ll fry you.”

  Wales sputtered wordlessly, and Sonia gave him a not-so-gentle slap to bring alertness back to his eyes. “All right, I’ll tell you!” he said, his words slurred, and Sonia realized it was too late to ask herself if she really wanted to know. “Some of them do go out! Do you want me to send Rianne away to safety? I will. I’ll send Sissy too.”

  “What about the rest?”

  “I’m trying to … ease the transition. Prepare them with training. Meditation.”

  “What does that mean? Prepare them for what?”

  “To … help them cross over. Willing disciples won’t need to feed. They can go … gently. And they simply … change.”

  Sonia couldn’t speak the question in her mind: Change into what?

  “They’re nothing to fear!” Wales said, his words slurred. “They’re us, through the looking glass! You can meet him yourself. He’ll tell you how he used to be an artist.”

  The world fell still. “It … talked to you?”

  “Yes, don’t you see?” he said. “Not the poor, mindless creatures trapped in the transition! He’s made it across, to the next stage. Others of us can do it too, if only we will embrace and belie
ve without fear. Of course there are casualties! I keep my failures underground. But he said even if it’s only one in a thousand, it’s our best hope for the future.”

  He said. The words chilled Sonia’s blood. An ugly notion planted itself in her mind, steeping Wales’s words in horror. Was all of it about the words of a freak? Or something more insidious than mere words?

  “When did you say you first started painting?” Sonia said.

  Wales looked confused but relieved, as if he believed he was finally converting her. “It was … a little more than two months ago.”

  “And when did you capture this thing?”

  Sonia knew the answer before Wales spoke, saw awareness flicker in his eyes. “About … nine weeks. Yes, about two months ago.”

  “And you started painting all of a sudden?” Sonia said. “What about the ambassadors? When did that start?”

  Even in the bedroom’s dim lighting, Sonia saw color draining from Wales’s face.

  “About then,” he said. “The same time. The idea came in a dream.”

  “How did you capture this thing?” Sonia said. “Where was it?”

  “In the woods, just outside the fences,” Wales said, his face growing pasty. “I dreamed the place where they found it, and I sent my men. It was rooted, but … it was talking. None of the other rooters could talk. And this wasn’t the memory of babble, like the fresh ones—it could reason.”

  Sonia backed away from the bed, wishing she could back away from Wales, the ranch, and all of Threadville with a single step. Hadn’t he learned anything from his movies?

  “You incredible idiot,” Sonia said. “Who captured who, Wales? You brought that thing here after a dream? Is that when you started snatching people too?”

  “No, you’re wrong,” he said, although his eyes were wide and empty. “I’m still me. I’m not—”

  “What does it want? What does it want?”

  “It wants to help us!” Wales said. “The change is coming! We can’t fight, but it can eat our fear! You can be a part of it, Sonia. You can help change the world.”

  Sonia found out every horrifying detail she could from Joseph Wales, then she pressed the Taser to his flabby belly and kept it there until he could speak no more.