Lucas glances at her. “Like a brig?”
She shudders. “We can’t be contained by bars or even glass. It has to be far worse than that. And this all happened weeks ago. Ever since then, I’ve been trying to get into the base to rescue her.”
He chews on that for a little while, watching the landmarks. At last, an open gate appears up ahead; the huge, hand-painted sign proclaims ‘RENT A BLIND’. As he turns in, he sees that the little booth next to the gate is empty, locked shut. There’s trash on the ground that hasn’t been picked up in months.
“I remember this place,” Zechariah realizes softly. “We went hunting here, back in November.”
Lucas nods. “Zechariah, why were you afraid of the orb?”
He shrugs, staring out the glass-less passenger window. “It creeps me out.”
As trees close in overhead, the mood in the cab turns dark. They drive in silence down the rutted dirt track, slower still as the road became rougher. They encounter several forks, and Lucas chooses left or right seemingly at random.
After a little while, they find a turn-off partly grown over with grass and weeds. Lucas chooses it and slows even more, watching for stumps or fallen logs in the underbrush.
They reach a clearing surrounded on all sides by forest. He parks the truck just inside the treeline and shuts off the engine. It hisses loudly in the sudden silence; even in the frigid February air, the temperature gauge is well above normal and still rising.
Io notices and groans. “There’s probably a bullet in the radiator.”
“That’s fine,” Lucas murmurs. “They’ll be looking for this truck. Better to leave it here.”
She inspects her wounds, which have nearly closed. “I’m drying out. Any water in here?”
“Back seat.” He gazes out the pocked windshield, across the dull-green winter pasture. “How did you deal with it?”
She’s unbuckled herself and is digging around in the back. “With what?”
“Your entire life being ruined.”
She hands a bottled water to him, then to Zechariah, and then sits back down with two for herself. She drains one, gulping it down as if her body itself demands it, then relaxes with a sigh. “During the Disaster, I had my friends. And now that everything’s gone to shit all over again, I know I have to keep going, keep fighting, because I’m the only one still alive and free. My sister is counting on me.”
They listen to the engine cooling down, though Lucas sees that the temperature is still high. The truck will probably never move again.
“I ran,” Io whispers. “I could have saved her. Instead, I get farther from her every day.” She sucks in a deep breath and presses a bloodied hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry. I’m such a coward. If it were r-reversed, she’d have rescued me by now. I’m s-such a failure.”
Lucas draws a deep breath, lets it out. “If we keep running, we might escape. Once we get back to civilization, I can make some phone calls, call in some favors, try to create new identities for us. But.” He looks to Io, who reluctantly meets his eyes. “I know you won’t leave your sister.”
“Go without me. I’ve been on my own for the past month.” She struggles not to look bitter. “I’m getting used to it.”
Lucas shakes his head. “I don’t feel right making you go it alone. Just because I can’t go home doesn’t mean I’m running away.”
She looks stunned. “Are you saying you want to help me?”
“I have to help someone!” he snaps. “All these months, I’ve protected the site. Now it’s theirs. At least everyone they evacuated will be taken to FEMA, probably in Fort Smith. There’s no way Drews would try to kidnap that many people.” He looks to her for confirmation.
“Err. Well, he is pretty crazy. But, yeah, no, not with civilian humans who didn’t do anything.”
Lucas blinks at her for a second, then closes his eyes. “Pinche viejo. Mr. Condy. They’ll have arrested him by now.”
Zechariah looks confused. “He probably blended in with the other evacuees.”
“No, no, listen. I told Drews about him. The, the laptop, he was doing some crazy shit with his laptop, and he said it made the monsters appear. There’s no way Drews would let him slip by.”
“They’ll take him to FOB Abbott, inside Gothic,” Io reluctantly points out. “Same place they’re keeping my sister.”
She and Lucas stare at each other.
He slowly nods, sighing softly. “Then I’m coming with you.”
Io wrestles with herself for a moment, then breaks into a wide smile. “And I’m happy to have you along. But how are we supposed to get inside the Quarantine? We’ll be lucky to stay free until sunset. Plus, you guys are unarmed.”
Zechariah pulls Drews’ sidearm from under his belt. “Lucas, you can have this. You know how to use it.”
“Where did you get that?” He snatches it, checks the chamber and magazine.
“Found it.”
“Ten rounds. Now I feel capable of going up against Mr. Special Ops and his team of girl-murderers.”
Io sits back, crossing her now-healed arms. “If only I was half the monster Drews claims I am. I could just punch down the gate and walk through a hail of bullets.”
He sets the gun on the dashboard and gives her a sidelong glance. “What if you infected me?”
She shoots him a horrified look. “First of all, there’s no cure, so don’t talk about it so casually.” She shudders. “Second of all, it’s just . . . No. Believe me, if there were a cure, I’d take it. Besides, my friends and I took something called the Oath. As soon as one of us infects a human, we’re all free to. And that would obviously be a clusterfuck.”
“Dios no lo quiera.” Lucas stares out over the clearing. “So . . . You didn’t infect me back there.”
“I wouldn’t!”
He shakes his head. “Then how the hell am I still alive?”
“Oh, that’s easy.” Zechariah reaches into the footwell and pulls forth the laptop bag. “Mr. Condy did it.” As the other two watch in shock, he frees the laptop and opens it, revealing a screen full of gibberish.
Lucas blinks at it, then at him. “Mr. Condy brought me back to life using his portal-making laptop that talks to aliens using Io’s rave toy.”
“Yeah.”
“And the government wants to capture Io because she’s infected with a needle parasite that makes her immortal.”
“That about sums it up,” she agrees.
Lucas hears something go snap in his head. He pushes open his door, climbs out of the truck, slams the door, and starts walking. Sounds no longer make sense. He walks out into the clearing, boots crunching in the grass. He’s not sure where he’s going. The grass reaches his hips, and snakes might lurk at any step. Tiny adrenaline spikes shudder through him, but mostly he feels drained.
Far behind, Zechariah calls after him.
And then Lucas is in trees again. The relative darkness makes his heart hammer. He comes to a halt and presses a hand to his chest, then touches his fingertips to the pulse in his neck, then raises his palm and feels the heat of his breath.
Water stings in his eyes; he hurriedly wipes at them with his sleeve. But the more he wipes, the more they water, until he has to lean against a tree and suck in deep breaths and the water is pouring down his face. His mouth keeps groaning, a low and piteous sound.
The law, the law, the law, once sang an angel on his shoulder. Now the little creature is gone, its absence painful. For the first time in his life, he is making his own laws, and for it, he is a fugitive.
Crazy, desperate, unhinged ideas flash across his mind, barely suppressed all these months and now running wild. He wants to go home — to his apartment — go to bed, go to work, go to the dojo, go to the gym — but the city is barren, infested with monsters. Yet it is still his destination. He’ll go home, and he’ll die. Again.
Drews’ handgun is in the truck. Lucas badly wants its comforting weight in his grip — and then scolds himself for
such a childish thought. The gun can’t protect him any more than his FEMA badge or his oath or even his honor. Especially his worthless honor. He’s fought all his adult life to prove to himself and everyone around him that he is a Good Person, and Drews’ bullet didn’t even care.
Poor Mr. Condy. Poor Io, and her sister. Poor Zechariah. Poor refugees who will never, ever see their homes in Gothic again.
“Let’s give him a minute,” Zechariah decides, climbing back into the cab and shutting the door.
Io nods distractedly. “I remember the first time I died. Messed me up for days.” She has Condy’s laptop open on her knees, its screen displaying an amazing mess of windows and garish color schemes. “Holy crap, did you know how crazy that old man was?”
Zechariah leans closer and catches sight of the screen. “Wow. That gives me some idea.”
“This is how he brought Lucas back to life?” She clicks around randomly, trying to understand what she’s looking at. “Back in the trailer, he was using the orb, in—” She paws at the plastic bag and finds a sort of dock inside. “In this. And Lucas said he was blaming the portals on it.”
Zechariah eyes the laptop suspiciously. “Maybe we’d better destroy it.”
But Io has found a window full of cryptic code interspersed with notes in English. “Hang on. There’s something in here about . . . miracles?”
His gaze returns to the pasture. “Once Lucas comes back, we have to get moving. The longer we stay here, the more chances they’ll find us.”
“Give me a minute,” Io mumbles, not looking up from the laptop screen. “These notes are crazy. I knew he was in some kind of fugue state, but this is . . . stream of consciousness.”
“—hope the Oathkeeper fucks up and infects someone. Lucas deserves immortality—”
“—’designate target’, ‘set level of entropy or leave zero for auto-detect (experimental)’—”
“—when we find Drews, I’m debating whether to take his skin off or let Lucas have the first—”
“Uhhhhhhhhhh! Zechariah!”
“What?”
“I hit a key and then a thing happened and now it’s doing things!”
Together they watch text scroll violently fast in one of the side windows. Most of it looks like errors — ‘TRANSPONDER OFFLINE’ appears a lot.
The screen goes black, and every indicator light goes out at once. The laptop is abruptly dead.
“Battery,” she realizes, sounding half annoyed, half relieved.
Zechariah pushes open his door and climbs out, helps Io down after him. The air has cooled back down but still tastes like a storm. The midday sun is pale overhead, blurry in the overcast sky, and its beams play over the rain-soaked grass.
“I still say we should destroy it,” he mutters as they start walking across the grass.
“Condy used it to bring Lucas back to life, didn’t he? This could change so much for humanity! No one would ever be tempted to get infected if we could just bring them back with a computer!”
“It needs the stupid blue orb to work. You can’t go near it, and I refuse to.”
“Lucas can use it, then.” They both look in the direction their friend has walked off in.
Several yards in front of the truck, folding and refolding the air in the middle of the clearing, is a shimmering rip in space.
Lucas finally manages to push himself to his feet, though shame is heavy upon him. What if the others see his distress? Despite himself, he’s enjoyed Io’s worshipful gratitude, and Zechariah’s loyalty is one of the few things he can count on anymore. Now he’s endangering it all by being such a fucking woman.
Speaking of which, he hears Io and Zechariah yelling, way back by the truck. Probably arguing about something moronic. If he returns now and inserts himself as the voice of reason, maybe they won’t notice his reddened eyes—
The woods’ carpet of dead leaves moves subtly around him, shifting as if stirred from underneath. He backs up a few steps, meaning to return to the clearing. The movements intensify around his feet. Now he’s afraid to look, and yet his face turns toward the clearing.
—masses of black vines growing from the center of the field, stretching out in all directions, reaching for him like a thousand thorny hands—
A vine grips around his ankle and yanks. He jerks in surprise and tries to keep his balance, but with another violent pull, the vine whips him onto his back. The air shoots out of his lungs, leaving him choking.
“Lucas!” Zechariah shouts from somewhere in the clearing. “Luuuuucaaas!”
He wants desperately to scream back. Instead, his head spins as he is wrenched down, down into the clearing, toward the heart of the monster. His hands scrabble helplessly at the dead leaves, coming up with fistfuls of pale winter grass.
Lucas’s fingers wrap around a tree root — which then grips his left hand and whips hard at it, nearly dislocating his elbow and shoulder. He grunts in surprise and pain—
—around his waist, pinning his other arm to his side, squeezing—
Sunlight above. He’s in the clearing, moving too fast toward the writhing black mass. He jerks and yelps, then feels a vine slide up his shoulder and around his neck.
In the corner of his vision, Zechariah wrenches helplessly at a dozen black hands dragging him to the ground. Beyond him, Io fights from the treeline, slicing at the vines with arms like scythes. Both are screaming his name.
Lucas consults his instincts and finds the same answer again and again: Should have brought the gun. Can’t do anything without the gun. Have a Taser? No? What do you expect to do without a gun or Taser?
He squeezes his eyes shut, turns his mind away from his terror—
—just got done being dead and now I’m dying again and holy fuck what will it do to me CAN’T BREATHE it’ll eat me it’s eating me pulling me in so it can chew up and digest me CAN’T BREEEEAAAATHE and eat me—
—and lets the answer come to him.
At his feet, the monster makes a high-pitched, hungry sound, like a coven of spiders skittering across a fresh meal.
Lucas’ eyes pop open, and his hand, though somewhat bound to his side, reaches for his belt. His fingertips are numb, but he still finds the hammer, finds its handle, presses the side of his hand desperately against its switch.
—blue—
The vines around him collapse without ceremony, immediately releasing his body. Lucas sucks in a breath so deep and urgent that his back arches up off the damp ground.
Then, though dizzy, he remembers Io. He sits up, needles pouring off his body like tiny, black seeds, and looks around. The vines are retreating into the center of the field; beyond them, Zechariah lies in the grass, facing away, shaking violently.
“You okay?” Lucas calls, wobbling to his feet.
The younger man sits up awkwardly, left arm pulled up out of his sleeve and hidden inside his closed jacket. “F-fine,” he manages. His eyes fall on the blue glow in Lucas’ hand, and he hurriedly backs away.
Io pants with exertion at the edge of the field. “You guys okay?”
Lucas raises a hand in answer, while the other unclips the open hammer from his belt. He carefully follows the vines back toward their source, slowly waving the weapon in front of himself like a flashlight — or a flamethrower. Vines writhe desperately away from him like retreating snakes, but some are too slow and instantly collapse into lines of lifeless black needles in the grass.
He glances up at Io, who has not approached, and thinks of what that effect would look like on her body. His stomach rolls.
Now that the mass of needle-vines has retreated almost completely, his eyes catch on a distortion in the air at the center of the clearing. When he tries to look through it, at the rickety old deer stand on the far side, the image folds and diminishes even as it zooms closer. He grimaces and averts his gaze. “Let me guess,” he calls toward Io. “That’s a portal, and Mr. Condy’s laptop made it.”
“Sorry! I just . . . If you died again, I
wanted to be able to . . . You know!”
He switches the hammer shut and approaches the other two. “I appreciate any ideas that will keep me alive, but let’s keep that laptop shut until we’ve got Mr. Condy back.”
“Battery’s dead, anyway. I read some of his notes, and near as I can tell, he used it to bring you back to life by hooking it up to Mjolnir and communicating through it.”
“Hang on. ‘Mee-ole-neer’?”
“Thor’s hammer.” She points at the closed weapon in his hand.
He grunts, clipping it to his belt, then looks back over his shoulder. “This portal, here. Does it go to the same place as the portals in Gothic?”
She shrugs, watching the space-fold nervously. “Probably. I’ve seen those vines over there before, on expeditions; it infests groves of trees and grabs up anything that passes too close. I hate to think what it’ll do to this forest once your hammer isn’t here to hold it back any longer.”
Lucas chews on his lip for a moment in thought, then looks back and forth between them. “So we’re sure we want to stage an assault on the GQZ and get your sister and Mr. Condy back.”
“Drews will be there, too,” Zechariah points out, still cradling his arm underneath his jacket. “Might get a chance at some payback.”
Lucas grimaces. “One last alternative: What if we go to the media, instead?”
“Drews will head you off,” Io counters. “Plus, other than the hammer, you have no evidence.”
“We have you.”
“I can’t risk exposing my existence. We’re lucky that only one government knows about human infection.” Lucas looks unconvinced; she compromises, “We’ll call that the nuclear option, okay?”
“What about the admin?” Zechariah points out. “He already won’t be happy that Drews has taken over the trailer camp. If we tell him the full story, he’ll be able to get help from FEMA.”
New Night (Gothic Book 2) Page 9
