by Rob Thurman
Then it was Salome and Catcher trying to eat each other in the back of Niko’s car. Catcher might fool some nosy human into thinking he was a harmless, good-natured husky mix when he was grinning and pawing the air for a treat—he had to hate the mortification of that—but in full fight: he was wolf, all wolf, and you couldn’t fool anyone into thinking anything else.
I checked my holster. “I’ll hold off the office from calling the cops.” Hopefully the cars passing on the interstate would be moving too fast for a good look below at a wolf-cat fight.
“Don’t shoot the desk clerk,” Niko warned as he, Rafferty, and Robin moved to break it up.
I growled a little myself. “If you’d seen what was living in the closet of the room they gave us, you might let me.” I looked back behind me as I moved. “Five bucks on the dead cat.” I’d seen Salome in action. That was one safe bet.
7
Cal
The office was fake wood on the outside, fake wood on the inside, and had one set of double glass doors. It also had a fat guy who’d checked us in last night when I’d gone for the extra room. Last night he’d worn a faded T-shirt with the logo of some local barbecue joint. A pig’s ass and the family friendly name of the place, PORK ’EM, emblazoned over the pig’s chubby-cheeked, curly tailed butt. He looked happy as hell to be eaten. Things had tried to eat me on many occasions. I didn’t think I’d ever looked close to that happy when it happened—if an ass could grin, this one was doing it.
The man from the night before was still wearing the shirt, but there was no grin from him. He also still had the comb-over greased to the top of his head and dull blue eyes. This time, though, they weren’t dull from stupidity. They were dull and cloudy from death.
He was lying flat on his back, one hand limp at his throat, although I could see the dried blood from where he’d clawed at it tearing at his skin. The other hand was limp at his side and covered with a green-yellow coating of . . . I didn’t have a remote idea. There was more of it on his mouth, face, nose—all spread to pool on the floor around him. There was so much that only part of it had dried. It was mucus. Under the secretions his face was bluish purple from lack of oxygen. He’d drowned in his own mucus and pardon me if I didn’t whip out my PocketMD to run down that symptom. I coughed and felt a rattle in the base of my lungs.
Oh shit.
I grabbed at my cell phone and got Niko. “Put Rafferty on, Nik. Put him on now.”
I didn’t read much. That wasn’t news to anyone who knew me. Old detective novels with big- breasted hookers with hearts of gold. Old Westerns with big-breasted saloon girls with hearts of gold. Old science fiction books with four-breasted alien brood queens with hearts of gold-plated titanium. That was good enough for me. But once . . . out of sheer stupidity . . . I’d read a different kind of book. I’d been sixteen. We’d been at the local library of whatever town we were hiding in then. Niko had started homeschooling me a few months before and it was book report time. If boobs weren’t on the cover, I didn’t care what I read. So I’d just walked down an aisle, closed my eyes, picked a book at random, and what do you know. I’d lucked into Stephen King’s The Stand.
At first the weight of it alone was pure terror. Twenty-five pounds if it was an ounce, but Niko was right there, an amused glint in his eye, and there was no backing out. And then it managed, unbelievably, to get worse.
There was no way anyone could’ve convinced me the flu could scare me almost as badly as the Auphe. Swollen blackened necks, people gasping for their last breath as their eyes started from their sockets, choking and gasping for help through the gurgles of slime blocking their airway. Oh, and God and Satan, separating the good and the bad like naughty schoolchildren by killing off most of the population. Gotta break some eggs to make that omelet. It made me glad I didn’t believe in God.
I believed in Rafferty, though. As soon as I heard his voice, I said, “Owner’s dead. It was . . .”
“Suyolak,” Rafferty finished for me. “It’s viral pneumonia. It’s nasty and he’s made it about a thousand times more contagious and aggressive than it should be. If I hadn’t been thinking about other things”—like Catcher—“I’d have known when I pulled into the parking lot. Hell, I would’ve known twenty miles down the road.”
At least it wasn’t the legendary fictional, fucking badass flu of all time. I rubbed my chest. It was beginning to ache. “Contagious. Great. There’s probably some floating your way from when I opened the door.”
“I know,” he said quietly. “And it already has you. Do you feel it?”
I coughed again. I was feeling it all right—the increasing rattle and with it a heaviness at the base of my lungs. “Yeah, and not a bottle of cough medicine in sight.”
“Sit down, back against the wall or the desk. Whatever you do, don’t lie down, got it?” he ordered. “You lie down and you’ll drown.”
Didn’t get much clearer than that.
“Got it. And whatever you do,” I said, echoing him, only more sharply, “don’t let Nik come with you. He’d drop dead an inch past the door.” If he made it to the door. This was taking me down and doing it fast. Like I’d thought, Suyolak had ripped through my Auphe immune system as if it were tissue paper. Our barbecue- loving friend had probably died in seconds. I sat down hard, back against the desk while Santa’s bowlful-of-plague-ridden-jelly twin lay to the side, keeping me company. His conversation was for shit. He wasn’t exactly fragrant either.
I watched through the door as Rafferty spoke to my brother and roughly from the looks of the finger he jammed in Niko’s chest. He then pointed the same finger at a still cat-battling Catcher who promptly fell over asleep in the backseat, ending the fight. Salome preened and made herself comfortable on the furry new heap of a bed. Robin grabbed Niko’s arm when he started after Rafferty as the healer began running toward the office. Niko yanked and Robin refused to let go. Niko could’ve gotten away, but he knew coming to my side only to die before I did wouldn’t do me much good. Not exactly as festive as a Get Well Soon balloon.
My cell rang. “Nik,” I answered, “stay put and don’t worry. Hell, Rafferty rewrote Catcher’s frigging DNA. All I have is pneumonia.” I coughed yet again and began to shake as the temperature of the room felt as if it had plummeted thirty degrees in a single moment. “It reminds me, though.” My teeth chattered as I glanced at my office mate again. What’s blue and purple and dead all over? Hell, you had to be philosophical there. The pork clogging his arteries would’ve gotten him before too much longer anyway. “You know that goddamn Stephen King killed off my favorite character? Did I put that in the book report?” I smothered another cough. It was the last. Suddenly there was barely enough air to use to cough and the rattle had become a rising tide of thick mud.
And I was sleepy. I was sitting next to a deceased motel clerk—at least I wouldn’t have to worry about paying for the headboard that Delilah had ripped off the bed—and I was sleepy. That didn’t seem quite right.
“Stephen King . . . ? I remember. It was a good book, though, Cal, wasn’t it?” His voice was solid and firm, something to hold on to as the waves of tiredness crept over me. “And nearly a hundred times longer than any other book you’ve read—before or since.” His voice began to drag toward the end, the words crawling into my ear.
Fast, I thought again. The disease moving through me so damn fast—while everything around me was getting slower and slower.
“I’ll never go to Vegas. The devil lives in Vegas,” I slurred. “Think the Elvises would’ve kicked his ass.” I stopped for a few seconds to drag in air. I wasn’t too successful. “Or is it Elvi? Sounds better . . . like that. More . . . snooty. More . . . scientific.” Niko would like that. He liked science. He liked anything boring and academic—like the dead guy. I focused on him. He was pretty academic now—ancient history and uninteresting.
My gaze drifted back toward the door. Rafferty looked as if he were running in slow motion, and around him the air began to s
park red. Pinpoint explosions of light. Viruses biting the big one. By the time he reached the door, he was surrounded by a massive halo of scarlet light flashing brighter and brighter. I closed my eyes. It didn’t help. I tried to block the light with my arm across my eyes. I lost my balance when I did, sliding down the desk and falling onto my side. The oxygen fought its way through the swamp sludge that had filled my lungs in a matter of seconds. “Cal?” The cell phone had fallen from my other hand to the floor next to my ear. “Cal? The book, it was a good one, wasn’t it? Tell me. Cal, tell me.”
Trying to keep me there, keep me with him. “Scared . . . shit . . . out . . . of . . . me. Me . . . the . . . monster.”
“You’re not a monster. You’re an annoying, messy, kid brother who might be twenty-one, might be an adult finally.” I didn’t think it was delirium that made me think he emphasized “finally” so strongly. “But you still don’t listen to those who are smarter than you. Now sit up, you son of a bitch. I can see you lying down on the job from here. Sit up now.”
Easier said than done. But I did try . . . for my brother, who always made me try whether I wanted to or not. I took my arm from my eyes and I did. I did try.
I failed miserably, which wasn’t usual for me. Ordinarily I failed spectacularly with explosions, splattered body parts, holes ripped in time and space, and other equally entertaining things. This time I just failed in a typically ordinary way. I slid back down, this time flat on my face. With an effort so huge it was ridiculous in its pathetic result, I turned my head . . . but I only managed enough to see the door.
It was the same door that opened as the entire room disappeared in a shock wave of crimson so bright I thought the world was on fire. The earth had hit the sun or vice versa and there was not one damn Elvis around when you needed one.
“Suyolak, you bastard.” There was respect there—loathing and disgust, but respect too. If Rafferty thought someone was close to half as good as he was, that was bad news. If Rafferty actually had enough regard for Suyolak’s talents to curse him for it, then we were fucked as they came. I twitched my fingers at the healer in the best attempt at a wave I could pull off. I could see the blue tinge to them as the red faded from the air. Blue didn’t seem right. But I was tired, more than tired, and I didn’t much care.
Rafferty dropped to his knees beside me. He was faintly blue himself, but in a second he was back to his normal color as he turned me over onto my back. He then laid his hand on my chest. There was already an anchor sitting on it. His hand didn’t add much weight. When you couldn’t breathe, it didn’t matter whether it was an anchor or an elephant.
“I’d say hang in there, Cal, but it sounds goddamn stupid on every TV show I hear it on. Doubt it’ll sound any better here.” His hand was warm, warmer, and as my eyelids began to slide closed, it became fiery hot. That woke me up. My eyes widened as the heat passed through me. Every vein and artery carried liquid fire; every cell burned like an incendiary round. If I’d had any air left in my lungs, I would’ve screamed in agony. And if I could’ve moved, I would’ve kicked Rafferty in the balls while I was screaming. Multitasker—that was me.
But since I couldn’t do either, I lay there and burned. My vision went in and out as I went in and out. Eventually I was more there than not and the burning faded. I blinked once, saw Rafferty’s face, but I still couldn’t breathe—not until Rafferty lifted me and turned me over as I hung uselessly, his arms wrapped around my stomach to hold me off the floor. I would’ve been on all fours if I could’ve borne any of my own weight. “I’m sure you’ve puked a time or two in your day, Cal,” he said brusquely. “Think of this as your lungs vomiting instead of your stomach.”
It was a good description. You didn’t quite get the range you did with vomiting, but the sensation of your lungs turning almost inside out made up for the lack of distance. It couldn’t have been a gallon, but it felt like it coming out and looked like it puddled on the carpet. Green, yellow, and extremely repugnant. I coughed harshly several times, before getting enough strength back to wipe at my mouth with my jacket sleeve. That was when I noticed I was breathing again, which, now that I thought about it, was really underrated. Great hobby. Couldn’t get enough of it.
“That’s . . . just . . . not right,” I said, coughing again. “Couldn’t you just . . . have gotten rid of it?”
“I did,” Rafferty responded with exasperation at my ear.
“I meant, just make it disappear. Poof.” He helped me stand upright and steadied me when I staggered.
“I’m a healer, not Houdini,” he grunted. “And that’s the second time I’ve saved your life. Show a little gratitude, you thankless jackass.”
“Maybe I’d be more grateful if you, Mr. Super Healer, had noticed all this shit sooner. You know, not been watching your cousin Sir Hump- a-Lot giving Delilah the eye and wanting to give her a whole lot more.” I staggered back away from the pool of stinking fluids. Jesus, I could still taste it. I needed gum . . . toothpaste . . . anything.
“It was your Kibbles ’n’ Tits that started that scene,” he snorted.
My legs stabilized under me and I quirked my lips at the picture of Delilah’s face if she’d heard that one. “It’s good to be among my own kind.”
“And what’s that?” he asked suspiciously.
“Assholes.” I grinned ruefully. I looked down at the ruined carpet at my feet. “I need to get rid of my DNA. Niko’s been paranoid for a while about the government’s accidentally finding a random mutant gene of mine floating around somewhere, starting a manhunt, and beginning to clone me to sell.”
“For what? Soldiers?” He went behind the counter, rummaged around, and returned with half a bottle of vodka.
“Come on. Borderline psychotic. Do anything for the right price. Half-fiendish monster.” I squatted down. “Supersoldiers, nope. More like an army of congress-men.” Pulling out one of my knives, I cut a circle in the flat, worn carpet. By the time I was out the door, a matter of seconds, and tossing it on the asphalt of the parking lot, Niko was there to watch me use the vodka and my lighter to burn it.
“Considerate of you to not burn down the entire motel.”
The fire was flaming nicely and I let Rafferty pull the bottle of vodka out of my hand to take the last remaining swallow. “It was nice of me. You’re going to smack the back of my head anyway?” I asked Niko. “Because I’m beginning to worry about your causing a bald spot there, and I have enough going against me already in the dating department.”
“No, I’m not. As far as I can tell, this, by some means completely beyond comprehension, is not your fault.” His fingers were gripping my chin firmly, turning my face to one side, then the other. He was examining my skin color, the whites of my eyes, double-checking Rafferty’s work. When it came to me, Niko trusted no one but himself for the last word.
“Want to look at my teeth too?” I asked. “Guess my age like a horse’s?”
He decided to swat me after all. “Get your things and let’s go.” He stopped my first step with a hand on my shoulder. “You know, this may be one of the few times I was actually grateful you’re half Auphe.”
“You should be.” Rafferty dropped the bottle onto the concrete. It didn’t shatter, instead rolling from side to side with a musical tinkle. “Otherwise he would’ve never even made it to the door. He’d have been facedown in the parking lot right about where we’re standing. Dead between one breath and the next. Suyolak’s hypervirus had made it at least this far out. And if Cal had been human, all human, I’m not sure I could’ve brought him back.” Reddish brown went to yellow, then to dark amber as he stared at us through ragged auburn hair. “The Plague of the World. They weren’t shitting when they gave him that name. He’s a harvester of death, all right, but I’ll reap his ass.”
“You can be sure of that?” Niko demanded.
“No,” he answered, passing us on the way back to the car.
At least he was honest.
8
Catcher
My name is Catcher. . . .
My name is Catcher. I was pretty sure about that, as I gave a sleepy blink—as sure as I was of anything. Sun and wind and smells; some were new, some not, and all of them confusing. There was also a hazy memory of a cat. My ears lay back and I decided I didn’t care about my little way of checking if I was in my right mind, because then I sort of wished I weren’t. Full consciousness had hit me, and I woke up to a massive case of unhappy. Despite the easygoing attitude I tried to hang on to all my life, I didn’t think that was going to change anytime in the next day or so.
The day before Rafferty and I had gone to the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming to meet with an American Indian healer. He also happened to be about one-sixteenth trickster. One-sixteenth didn’t sound like much, but when some tricksters counted themselves as gods, it could give you serious bragging rights and sometimes the ability to go with it. I didn’t know if this guy had gotten anything extra from his trickster blood, but if he had, it hadn’t superpowered his healing ability any. He couldn’t undo what Rafferty had done and told us both, sympathetically but in no uncertain terms, that no one could. I’d been a dead man walking. Rafferty had traded my human half for more than five years of life, and only he could’ve pulled that off. No one else could do what he’d done to begin with and there was no way on Coyote’s green earth that anyone could undo it either, the other healer had said.
My cousin didn’t take it well.
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t throw anything either, and with his temper, that was saying something. I would’ve been less worried if he had thrown something. But he didn’t. He just said calmly that we’d keep looking. He wasn’t giving up, and he meant it. He actually meant it.
Raff didn’t get it. He was never going to get it. He talked about Niko’s knowing some Japanese healing entity and maybe . . .
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
