Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Half title
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Twenty-nine
Thirty
Thirty-one
Thirty-two
Thirty-three
Thirty-four
Thirty-five
Thirty-six
Thirty-seven
Thirty-eight
Thirty-nine
Forty
Forty-one
Other Books in the After the Cure world:
Poveglia
Deirdre Gould
Poveglia
Copyright 2015 Deirdre Gould
All rights are reserved to the author. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, character, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover art and design by West Coast Cover Design (http://bit.ly/westcoastdesign)
For my brother Joe, for always having my back. In everything.
Poveglia
One
It was the children’s plane again. Never one of the others. Never the one filled with rich infected assholes who’d shoved wads of cash at the pilot so they could die somewhere apart from the dirty, noisy crowds. It was always the kids. Sometimes Paul was in the cabin with them, watching the stewardess holding an infant while she cried. And another attendant sitting in the aisle reading a rhyming dinosaur book while preschoolers giggled around her and peeked over the backs of their seats to see the pictures. He could always feel the weight of the descent before everyone else, pressing him into the thin cushions like bricks.
Other nights, like this one, he was in his proper place. His back to the blue wooden barricade, his hand shading his eyes against the colorless light of the December sky. People were patting his back and shoulders, reaching, clawing for his attention. But all of his focus was on the noiseless glide of the glittering monster as it swooped toward the runway. There was never any noise. He knew there were people shouting behind him and he could see the other policemen saying things to the crowd, but it was always perfectly silent as the plane slid down the sky. The gunner in the tank always hesitated, every night, as if he too, were reliving it, as if he too, knew which plane it was. But then he always fired, following the plane as it skidded into the ground. And the gun broke the silence, like someone had turned off “mute.” There was no fire, no enormous explosion, just the tooth grinding pop of the gun and screech of metal twisting. The gunner wasn’t really necessary, the plane came in far too hard for it to matter much. The plane’s hulk had grated over several hundred feet of tar before plowing into an adjacent field.
The crash was bad, but it wouldn’t have haunted Paul night after night. It was the next part that made him dream over and over. The order blared out of the radio and the people behind him gasped and fell away, as if it were Paul who had suddenly turned. As if he were toxic. He looked over to his chief, but Dan was gone. Every time. No one to appeal to. The line of soldiers ahead of him were already marching forward, their guns leveled lower than normal.
“They’re Infected, Paul,” said his radio. It wasn’t his dispatch or the chief. It was Paul’s own voice nested in the static. “They’re just as dangerous as the adult Infected. You can’t let it spread. You can’t let them get off the airfield.”
Paul shook his head, and he fumbled with his belt, trying to pull the radio from it so he could throw it far away. Instead, he found his revolver in his hand, his feet moving toward the downed plane without his consent. A woman’s hand emerged from one of the shattered plane windows. The soldiers broke into a run, and Paul along with them. He could hear crying. Terrible, frightened wails and the sharp shriek of a child who has hurt itself and is looking desperately for its mother. Behind the cries was a terrible silent void where there ought to have been dozens of others. The other men made a ring around the plane, closing in around the crumpled machine. Paul was drawn to the window where the woman waved for help.
“Don’t look, Paul,” his radio told him, “Just do it, before they crawl out. Think of them like pupae. Or maggots. Just like maggots, Paul. If they crawl away, they’ll spread disease. Gotta squish it out, Paul. Gotta stop it here.”
Paul tried to cover his ears, but instead his hands closed over the gun and aimed it at the dark window.
“Is— is somebody there?” came a soft voice. The woman’s hand retreated. “Thank goodness. Bless you, bless you. You have to take the baby. Forget about me, I’m pinned. I— I think part of me isn’t there anymore. Just get the baby.” The hands emerged again, this time with a bundle. Paul tried to call out, tried to lower the gun. The baby’s blanket fell from its face, but instead of a crying child, only the glistening gray, tentacled mouth of an enormous maggot lay there. He startled awake as the gun fired.
Dan leaned over the top bunk. “The plane again?” he asked sleepily.
Paul sat up and swung his knees out onto the floor. “Yeah.”
“Inside or outside?”
“Outside again.”
Dan sat up. The flimsy wood frame shook as he came down the ladder. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I didn’t do anything right either.”
“It was a plane crash, what were we supposed to do?”
“I didn’t try, though. Maybe there was someone left.”
“What would have happened if there were? The plane was ordered down, even before it ran out of gas. If there’d been survivors, then we’d have had to— those soldiers would have been ordered to finish it. There was nobody left on that plane. And that was a great mercy to us all. You have to let go of this. It wasn’t your fault. Wasn’t anyone’s fault. Everyone was just trying to do what was right. But sometimes there isn’t any right thing to do.”
Paul shook his head but was silent.
“Go on,” said Dan, “You’ve still got an hour before breakfast.”
Paul padded out of the quiet barracks in bare feet. The sun was still a thin ribbon of silver on the horizon and the street smelled green and musty, like baking stone suddenly cooled by unexpected rain. He walked past the old tennis courts. He wondered how many people even remembered that’s what they had been, Before. They housed the training course now. Paul stopped at the edge of the last court. Tom was up early too. He was trying to swing from a rope to a higher platform, but as Paul watched, a hand slipped and the rope swung too far, bashing Tom into the wooden wall and he fell onto the artificial turf.
“You okay?” called Paul.
Tom groaned.
“What are you doing?”
Tom sat up slowly. “Boss says if I don’t finish the course under the time limit, he won’t let me go on leave with the rest of you next week. This d
amn wall keeps tripping me up. I was doing it just fine last week. I don’t know what’s wrong.”
“You probably just need more sleep.”
“Look who’s talking.”
“Yeah. Listen, you know he’s bullshitting you, right? Boss doesn’t withhold leave. It’s not in his makeup. He’ll let you go.”
“Just don’t want to disappoint him,” said Tom.
“It’s no good wearing yourself out, kid. Go get some breakfast.”
Tom nodded. “You coming?”
“After a swim,” said Paul. He waved and walked down to the City pool. There hadn’t been chlorine in years and the water in it was snow melt and rain. Leaves had fallen in and made a mushy, organic bottom and seeds, blown in on the breeze had started to root in the cracked cement around the edges. Most people were squeamish, the rotting leaves made it dark and cloudy. But Paul loved it. It smelled like the lake his family had summered at, when he and his brother were just boys. It was quiet at the pool. He liked to sit on the low dive board and pretend it was the soft wood dock where he had spent so many hours fishing. There wasn’t enough time for that now. He slid in, instead, letting the murky water close over him, chilly and real, peeling the bad dream off his skin. He opened his eyes. Fingers of sunlight filtered into the water, the brown particles of leaves swirling around him, sparkling like gold flake. He forgot the maggot baby. Crystal globes of breath sizzled past his face and the glittering metal of the falling plane went with them. He turned onto his back and surfaced, closing his eyes as the rising sun glanced off the water. His arms and legs dissolved into the coolness of the water beneath him and the weight of the crash in his chest melted away.
“Paul!”
The water at his ears made it sound far away, the voice from his radio in the dream still chasing him. He pushed it down.
“Paul! We have to go!”
He floundered and struggled to right himself. It was Dan, not his radio. He was running toward the edge of the pool. Paul swam toward him.
“What’s wrong, Boss?”
“We got a call from the power plant. There was an incident.”
“An incident? Dispatch knows we’re due for leave tomorrow, right?”
“Paul— dispatch says it might be a Relapse.”
He groaned as he pulled himself up onto the dry cement. “C’mon Boss, we get one of these every couple of months. It’s never been anything except a moonshiner who’s tumbled into his own batch.”
“I know,” said Dan, handing Paul a towel. “But this one managed to shut down the entire grid. Whatever it ends up being, we’re going to hear it if that power plant isn’t cleared for operation by this afternoon. Suit up. I’ll meet you in the truck. And I won’t wink if you stop to grab a bite on the way.”
“I’ll hurry. Be there in ten.”
Dan nodded and took off with a jog to wake the others.
Two
Paul swung out of the passenger seat as the other men climbed down from the back. The plant’s manager was waiting at the door. He opened it and waved them inside frantically. Paul heard shouting coming from the interior. He didn’t wait for Dan to give the order, old habits kicking in like reflexes.
“Anyone injured?” he asked as he passed the manager.
“Uh— just one so far…” the manager found himself addressing a stream of soldiers instead of Paul who was helping two other men hold down a third.
The man was growling from deep in his chest as he struggled to push himself off the linoleum. “How long has he been like this?” asked Paul, half glancing at Dan who was giving the others orders to secure the building.
“About half an hour now. He just up and snapped.”
“What’s his name?”
“Ned. Ned Glist. He’s a welder.”
The man’s drool was pink. Paul leaned over to sniff his breath for alcohol. Ned snapped at Paul’s face and he jerked back in surprise.
“Ned,” he said, raising his voice over the growls, “I’m trying to help you, man. It’s going to be okay. But you gotta calm down so I can let you up. Ned?”
Ned just grunted.
“Did you hurt your mouth, Ned? We can get someone to take a look, you just have to calm down.”
“That isn’t his blood,” said one of the men holding him. “He bit another welder.”
“Does the other guy need help?”
“Yeah, he’s pretty bad off. It’s like Ned was trying to eat him or something.”
“Why don’t you just say it?” said another man.
“Say what?” asked Paul.
The first man turned red. “I— I told Randy that it was like he was Infected or something. But Ned’s one of the few Immunes in the plant.”
“So this wasn’t a fight?”
The three men shook their heads. Randy spoke up first. “He and Josh were friends. I mean, I know friends fight sometimes, but we were all there. This wasn’t a fight.”
Paul pulled out a nylon cuff and pulled it securely around Ned’s hands. “Let’s move him, so you guys can tell me what happened.”
They hauled Ned carefully to his feet. He snarled and clacked his teeth together. Paul called down the stairs. “Hey Boss, I think we may need a sedative here.”
Dan appeared a few seconds later. “Yeah, we’re going to need an ambulance for the guy downstairs. I’ll call it—”
Ned let out a giant roar and wrenched himself free of Paul’s grasp. He raced toward the plant manager who was still in the doorway, Paul sprinting after. The plant manager fled into the parking lot. Ned didn’t even pause, throwing his ample weight straight into the plate glass windows. His momentum carried him through with a crash, but then he was down, his arms useless behind him. Paul picked him up, trying not to push any shards of glass further into Ned’s skin. Three of the other soldiers rushed to help him, carrying Ned inside again.
“He’s crazy,” gasped the manager, “He’s Infected. I know he’s infected. It was those damn pens.”
“Pens?” asked Paul.
“Yeah, Ned took jewelry work on the side. Not much, usually watches, sometimes resetting a ring or something. But a few months ago he was bragging about this commission he got. Said it was for Dr. Pazzo. We told him not to take it. We told him it was nuts. But it was a lot of tokens. Not even sure how Dr. Pazzo got so many, locked up there in the prison. Must have traded something. Anyway, Ned said he was making these pens. Had really specific orders for em too. Dr. Pazzo even gave him the gold to make em. At least, we thought it was gold. But a few days before they were supposed to be delivered, Ned gets called up there to get this special ink for em. When he comes back, he tried to sell two of the pens. Said Pazzo only wanted one of em delivered, and that he could keep the others and the pay. We told him there was something wrong with em. That anything from him was tainted. He couldn’t sell em for anything. Not even surplus food tokens. I know it was them. Had to be.”
Paul shook his head. “No, it can’t be. We were at the hospital. We watched Dr. Pazzo turn. He used the new strain on himself. That psychiatrist figured out the whole thing. It can’t travel through gold anyway— that’s not how it works.”
The plant manager shrugged. “How do you explain what happened in the welding room then? Or— or why he chased me?”
“Maybe you two didn’t get along.”
“He tried to bite your nose off.”
Paul was silent for a moment.
“Look,” said the plant manager, “I’m not a doctor. But he’s been clumsy the past few days— it’s his fault the turbine had to be worked on in the first place. And he was slurring so badly this morning that I thought he was drunk and tried to send him home but he insisted on staying. You saw what he’s like now, you tell me what it is, if it’s not the Plague.”
Paul felt his heart hammering against his chest. The heavy feeling of the plane returned. “Boss,” he said, jerking his head toward Dan, “You’re going to want to hear this, I think.”
Three
/> Sevita sat in her editing room. She let the footage drone on, waiting for her eye to catch on something. The blue light flickered over her as she scanned the shifting faces. Her friend, Nella, flashed onto the screen and Sevita slowed it to normal speed. “Ann can’t understand what is going on around her and she can’t aid-” Nella’s voice cut out as the tape stopped with a disappointed whir and the screen dwindled first to a thin white line and then a single bright dot before it too, winked out.
Sevita stood up with a sigh. Hopefully, it was just a short outage. At least it was a good excuse to stretch her legs. She caught herself on the door frame after stumbling over her own chair. Tired today, she thought.
The station manager was scowling at the lobby window. “Tonya!” he shouted as Sevita walked up to the window beside him.
“Relax Rick,” she said, looking out at the other buildings. Most were still empty, spackled with bird droppings and halfway fallen in, like sunken faces. The concrete was turning pale green where small plants had begun rooting in the cracks and empty windowsills of the remaining skyscrapers. The station was almost completely alone on the block, except for a tiny restaurant that catered almost exclusively to the two dozen station workers. Sevita wished they’d just raze the other buildings. Every window was like a grave. At least an empty lot didn’t stare accusingly at her.
“How am I supposed to run a television station without power?” fumed Rick.
“Maybe it’s just a sagging line or something,” offered Sevita.
“It better be. Lately, it’s been more out than on.”
“We lost a lot of electricians when that group of Cured left. They’ll get it back on. Besides, beats the winter when it was out altogether.”
Rick looked as if he’d tasted something bitter and wanted to spit. “Damn uppity Infected. What do they think they’re doing? If it were me, you can damn sure bet I’d be grateful and not turn my back on the people that saved me. They’ll be back, you’ll see. Starving and sorry, they’ll lean on us for help this fall, you mark my words.” He was silent for a moment, then yelled, “Tonya!”
Poveglia (After the Cure Book 4) Page 1
