Peeps p-1

by Scott Westerfeld

  “All right. Just be careful.”

  “Don’t worry about me.” Through the vinyl, she squished the cat into one corner of the bag, then unzipped the top and reached in to grab it. With any other noncarrier, I would have been nervous, but Dr. Rat handles infected rats all day.

  The peep cat emerged into the sunlight, growling.

  She dangled it by the scruff of its neck. “Not too different from a regular cat.”

  I took my first good look at the peep cat and frowned. Up here in the real world, it didn’t seem very frightening—no strange gauntness or peeped-up musculature, no spinal ridge to show where the parasite was wound into its nervous system. Just those weirdly red-reflecting eyes.

  “Maybe the parasite doesn’t have much effect on felines,” Dr. Rat said.

  “Maybe not on the outside,” I said. “But it had its own brood!”

  Dr. Rat shrugged, turning the cat around to look at all sides. It wailed at the indignity. “Rats may just tolerate it because it smells familiar.”

  “I haven’t noticed much smell from it,” I said. “And it’s related to me.”

  She shrugged again. “Well, so far I haven’t gotten any positive results with PNS. I’ve injected some of its blood into a few test cats, and they don’t show any signs of turning positive. This is an evolutionary dead end, just like I figured.” She looked closer at the peep cat, which took an angry swing at her nose with one claw, coming up short by an inch. “Or maybe this cat is the mutant, and your strain of parasite is the same old stuff.”

  “Well, now you can check for cat-to-cat transmission,” I said.

  “Sure thing. Just don’t get your hopes up, Kid.” She smiled. “I know it’s exciting to discover something new, and you want to feel like it’s a big deal and everything. But like I keep saying, failure is the rule when it comes to evolution.”

  “Maybe.” I looked up the river to where the exhaust towers stood. “But this cat was really smart, almost like it was leading me down. And I think there was … something else down there.”

  Dr. Rat looked at me. “Like what?”

  “Kind of a huge rumbling thing, and it was breathing.”

  “Rumbling?” She laughed. “Probably just the PATH train.”

  “No, it wasn’t.” I cleared my throat. “I mean, yeah, there was a train down there. But this was something else, even deeper. It smelled like nothing I ever smelled before. And it seemed like the cat was taking me along for a reason, as if it wanted to … show me what was down there.”

  Dr. Rat frowned, looking at the captive cat dubiously, then her eyes swept across my sweat-matted hair, my bandaged face, and my torn Garth Brooks T-shirt. “Cal, maybe you should get some rest.”

  “Hey, I’m not being crazy here. That guy Chip in Records says that really big, old, monstery things can get woken up when tunnels get dug. And this was right under those exhaust fans.”

  She chuckled. “I know all about Records. They’re always telling stories that give you hunters nightmares. They spend a lot of time reading ancient mythology, you know. But in R&D we try to focus more on the science side of things.”

  I shook my head. “This thing wasn’t mythological. It was really big and smelled evil, and it was breathing.”

  She lowered the struggling peep cat a bit and stared at me, trying to decide whether I was kidding or in some sort of shock or just plain bat-shit. I held her gaze steadily.

  Finally, she shrugged. “Well, you can always fill out a US-29.”

  I nodded. The Unknown Subterranean form, also known as the Sasquatch Alert. “Maybe I will.”

  “But not till tomorrow, Kid. Right now you should go home and lie down.”

  I started to argue, but at that moment a wave of exhaustion and hunger hit me, and I realized that I could go home to Cornelius and Lace and probably sleep for real again. The orange tape was up, the transport squad was here—the site was secured.

  Maybe this could wait until tomorrow.

  Chapter 16

  THE WEALTHY DISEASE

  Some more thoughts on the goodness of parasites …

  Meet Crohn’s disease, a nasty ailment of the digestive system. It gives you the runs and causes severe pain in your stomach, and there’s no known way to cure it. No matter what foods you eat, the pain of Crohn’s won’t stop. The disease keeps its victims awake night after night and is strong enough to drive many into a deep depression.

  People who get Crohn’s often suffer their entire lives. The symptoms may go away for a few years but invariably return in all their destructive glory. There is no escape.

  So what kind of parasite causes Crohn’s?

  Hah, fooled you! Unlike all the other diseases in this book, Crohn’s is not caused by parasites. Quite the opposite. It is probably caused by the absence of parasites.

  Say what now? Well, no one knows for sure, but here’s what some scientists have noticed:

  Crohn’s disease didn’t exist before the 1930s, when members of a few wealthy families in New York City got it. As time passed, the disease spread to the rest of the United States. It always started in rich neighborhoods first, only making its way into the bad parts of town much later. It took until the 1970s to reach the poorest parts of our country.

  These days, Crohn’s is on the march across the world. In the 1980s, it appeared in Japan, just when a lot of Japanese were starting to get really rich. Lately it’s been making its way through South Korea, in the wake of that country’s economic boom.

  And guess what? It still doesn’t exist anywhere in the third world. Poor people never get Crohn’s disease. And this has led many scientists to think that Crohn’s results from the most common sign of a rich society: clean water.

  That’s right: clean water.

  You see, most of the invaders of our guts come from dirty water. If you drink clean water your whole life, you’ll have a lot fewer parasites. But that can actually be a problem. Your immune system has evolved to expect parasites in your stomach. And when no parasites show up, your immune defenses can get kind of … twitchy. Sort of like a night watchman with nothing to do, drinking too much coffee and cleaning his gun again and again.

  So when your twitchy, understimulated immune system detects the slightest little stomach bug, it launches into emergency mode and goes looking for a hookworm to kill. Unfortunately, there are no hookworms inside you, because your water supply is cleaner than at any time in human history. (Which you thought was a good thing.)

  But your immune defenses have to do something, so they attack your digestive system, tearing it to pieces.

  Lucky you.

  We humans have lived with our parasites for a long time, evolving alongside them, walking hand in hand down the generations. So maybe it’s not surprising that when we get rid of them all at once, strange things happen. Our bodies freak out in the absence of our little friends.

  So the next time you’re eating a rare steak and start worrying about parasites, just remember: All those worms and worts and other little creatures trying to wriggle down your throat can’t be all bad.

  They’ve been making us their home for a long, long time.

  Chapter 17

  TROUBLE IN BROOKLYN

  On the way home, I bought bacon.

  The gnawing in my stomach was reaching critical proportions, my body crying out for meat to keep the parasite happy. One thing about being a carrier. Saving the world from mutant felines is no excuse for missing meals.

  I put a can of tuna in front of Cornelius, then headed straight for the stove and set it alight. Then I shut the gas off, sniffing the air.

  Something was different about my apartment.

  Then I realized what it was—the smell of Lace all around me. She’d slept here, filling the place like a slow infusion.

  My parasite growled with hunger and lust, and I hurriedly relit the stove, working until my largest dinner plate was filled with a stack of crispy strips of bacon. I carried it to the table and sat down. />
  The first piece was halfway into my mouth when keys jingled in the door. Lace burst through, dropping her backpack to the floor.

  “Excellent smell, dude,” she said.

  For a second, I forgot to eat, a piece of bacon hovering in midair. Her face was lit up with happiness, so different than it had been the night before. An almost orgasmic look of contentment came over her as she breathed in the scent of bacon.

  “What?” she said, meeting my dorky stare with a raised eyebrow.

  “Um, nothing. Want some?” I pushed the bacon into the center of the table, then remembered the vegetarian thing and pulled it back. “Oh, right. Sorry.”

  “Hey, no problem.” She put down her backpack. “I’m not a vegan or anything.”

  “Um, Lace, this is bacon. That’s not a judgment call on the plant-or-animal issue.”

  “Thanks for the biology lesson. But like I said, it smells good, and I’m going to enjoy it.” She sat down across from me.

  I smiled. On the excellent-smell front, Lace’s scent was much more powerful in person. I let myself breathe it in, carefully sampling it in between bites. I had expected her staying in my apartment to be torture every minute, but maybe it was worth fighting my urges, just for this simple pleasure.

  Still, I ate fast to keep the beast in check.

  “So,” I asked, “are you one of those fake vegetarians?”

  “No, not fake. I haven’t eaten meat in, like, a year?” She frowned at the plate of seared flesh and dumped a tub of potato salad and a brand-new toothbrush onto the table from a paper bag. “But the whole vampire thing has been very stressful, and that smell is comforting, like Mom cooking up a big breakfast. It takes me back.”

  “That’s natural. When humans were evolving, the smelling part of our monkey brains got assigned to the task of remembering stuff. So our memories get all tangled up with smells.”

  “Huh,” she said. “Is that why locker rooms make me think of high school?”

  I nodded, recalling my descent under the exhaust towers, how powerfully the scent of the huge hidden thing had affected me. Maybe I’d never smelled anything like the beast before the day before, but some fears went deeper than memory. As deep as the parasite’s traces hidden in my marrow.

  Evolution is a wonderful thing. Somewhere back in prehistoric time, there were probably humans who actually liked the smell of lions, tigers, or bears. But those humans tended to get eaten, and so did their kids. You and I are descended from folks who ran like hell when they smelled predators.

  Lace had opened her tub of potato salad and was digging in with a plastic deli fork. After a few bites, she said, “So, what’s with the face?”

  “Oh, this.” I touched the bandage gingerly. “Remember how I warned you about cats?”

  Lace nodded.

  “Well, I went down into the Underworld through your swimming pool this afternoon. And I managed to catch… Um, what’s wrong?”

  Lace looked like she’d bitten down on a cockroach. She blinked, then shook her head. “Sorry, Cal. But are you wearing a Garth Brooks T-shirt?”

  I glanced down at my chest. Through the muck and puckered claw marks, his smiling face looked back at me. I’d been too hungry coming in to take a shower or even change my shirt. “Uh, yes, it is.”

  “Ashlee Simpson, and now Garth Brooks?”

  “It’s not what you think. It’s really more sort of… protection.”

  “From what? Getting laid?”

  I coughed, bits of bacon lodging in my throat, but I managed to swallow them. “Well, it has to do with the parasite.”

  “Sure, it does, Cal. Everything’s about the parasite.”

  “No, really. There’s this thing that happens to peeps: They hate all the stuff they used to love.”

  She paused, a forkful of potato salad halfway to her mouth. “They do what?”

  “Okay, let’s say you’re a peep. And before you got infected you loved chocolate—the parasite changes your brain chemistry so that you can’t even stand to look at a Hershey’s Kiss, the way movie vampires are afraid of crucifixes.”

  “What the hell is that all about?”

  “It’s an evolutionary strategy, so that peeps hide themselves. That’s why they live underground, to escape signs of humanity, and the sun too. A lot of them really do have cruciphobia—I mean, are afraid of crosses—because they used to be religious.”

  “Okay, Cal.” She nodded slowly. “Now this is the part where you explain what this has to do with Garth Brooks.”

  I grabbed a piece of bacon, which was starting to glisten as it cooled, and chewed quickly. “Records, the department that helps us with investigations, found out that some of the folks who lived on your floor were Garth Brooks fans. So they gave me this shirt in case there was an encounter underground. Which there was.”

  Her eyes widened. “Dude! A peep did that to your face?”

  “Yeah, this scratch here was a peep. But this one here was a cat—Morgan’s cat, probably—that sort of put up a fight.”

  “Sort of? Looks like you lost.”

  “Hey, I made it home tonight. The cat didn’t.”

  Her expression froze. “Cal, you didn’t kill it, did you?”

  “Of course not.” My hands went up in surrender. “I don’t kill when I can capture. No vampires were harmed in the making of this film, okay? Jeez, vegetarians.” I grabbed another strip from the plate.

  “So this infected cat is where?” Lace glanced at the closet where PNS had spent the previous night.

  “Elsewhere,” I said, chewing. “I left it with the experts; they’re testing to see if it can spread the disease to other cats or not. And the good news is that a Night Watch team is already cleaning up the rats under your building. It may take a few days to seal off that swimming pool, but then you can go home.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. They’re professionals, since 1653.”

  “So you found Morgan?”

  “Well, not her. But you don’t have to worry about Morgan. She disappeared.”

  Lace crossed her arms. “Sure, she did.”

  I shrugged. “We can’t find her, okay?”

  “And it’s really safe in my apartment? You’re not just saying that to get rid of me?”

  “Of course not.” I paused. “I mean, of course it’ll be safe. And of course not on the getting-rid-of-you part, which I wouldn’t do. I mean, you can stay here as long as you want… which you won’t need to, of course, because it’s safe at home and everything.” I managed to shut up.

  “That’s great.” Lace reached across the table and took my hand. The contact, the first since I’d pulled her over the balcony, sent an electric shock through me. She smiled at my expression. “Not that it’s been totally horrible, dude. Except for not having any of my stuff, commuting all the way from Brooklyn, and having your heavy-ass cat lie on me all night. Other than that, it’s been kind of … nice. So thanks.”

  She let go of me, and I managed to smile back at her while scraping up the last shards of bacon from the plate. I could still feel where she’d touched me, like the flush of a sunburn coming up. “You’re welcome.”

  Lace looked down at her potato salad unhappily. She dropped her fork. “You know what? This stuff sucks, and I’m still hungry.”

  “Me too. Starving.”

  “You want to go somewhere?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Lace waited for me to shower and change, then took me over to Boerum Hill, one of the original Brooklyn neighborhoods. The elegant old mansions had been split up into apartments, and the sidewalks were cracked by ancient tree roots pushing up beneath our feet, but there were still old-school touches. Instead of numbers, the streets had Dutch family names—Wyckoff and Bergen and Boerum.

  “My sister lives pretty close,” Lace said. “I remember a couple of good places around here.”

  She followed the street signs hesitantly, letting memories fall into place, but I didn’t mind wanderi
ng along beside her. Moonlight lanced through the dense cover of ancient trees, and the cold air was filled with the smell of leaves rotting on the earth. Lace and I walked close, the shoulders of our jackets touching sometimes, like animals sharing warmth. Out here in the open air it wasn’t so intense, being close to her.

  We wound up at an Italian place, with white tablecloths and waiters wearing ties and aprons, candles on the tables. It smelled gorgeously of flesh, smoked and seared and hanging from the ceiling. Meat all over.

  It was so much like a date, it was weird. Even before the parasite switched off my romantic life, taking women to fancy restaurants hadn’t been my thing. I found myself thinking about the fact that everyone who saw us would assume we were dating. I pretended for a while in my head that they were right, pushing the awful truth to the back of my mind.

  When the waiter came around, I ordered a pile of spicy sausage, the perfect dish to beat my parasite into overfed submission. The night before it had taken forever, but I’d finally reached a deep sleep. Maybe tonight it would be easier.

  “So, dude, aren’t you worried about that?” She was looking at my wounded cheek again. Dr. Rat’s bandage had slipped off in the shower, and I hadn’t bothered to replace it. The scar gave me a rakish doesn’t-know-how-to-shave look.

  “It’s not bleeding, is it?” I dabbed the spot with a napkin.

  “No, it doesn’t look bad. But what if it got … infected or something?”

  “Oh, right,” I said. Lace, of course, didn’t know that I didn’t have to worry about the parasite, having already been there and done that. I shrugged. “You can’t get the disease from scratches. Only bites.” This was more or less true.

  “But what if it was licking its paws?” she said, quite sensibly.

  I shrugged again. “I’ve had worse.”

  Lace didn’t look convinced. “I just don’t want you turning all vampire on me in the middle of the night… Okay, that sounded weird.” She looked down, her fingers realigning the silverware on the crisp white linen.

  I laughed. “Don’t worry about that. It takes at least a few weeks to go killing-and-eating-people crazy. Most strains take a lot longer.”