“Of course,” David replied, struggling to keep what he felt out of his voice.
Mattock lifted his head slightly, as if sniffing the air. “As for me, I do not care for most things,” he said. “Very little interests me. Not sex, not money or fine food, not these comfortable couches or the multitude of palaces. I have no harem, nor am I draped in expensive cloth, nor do I sleep under silk blankets. Servants do not bring me wine in crystal carafes. All of these things I could have, if I wanted them, but I don’t.”
He let the comment hang, as if he expected a response. David didn’t know what to say, so he stared dumbly.
“The only thing I really desire is power,” Mattock said. “It’s the only thing worth desiring. You are a performer, David, so let me put it in terms you will understand. When you take hold of an audience, when they are held in your grasp, and you shape their thoughts, their emotions—they laugh when you command them to laugh, they weep when you command them to weep, they gasp and they applaud according to your will—ah, that is the place of ecstasy, boy. You have felt this before, I take it?”
David recalled his moment on stage in Fayette, not the whole of the performance, of course, but those few minutes when everything had fallen into place. All eyes upon him, a whole room full of people swept along by his performance.
“Yes,” he replied. “I’ve felt it, a little bit.”
“That is what I desire,” Mattock said. “Only my audience is the whole world. Like a lump of molten metal upon an anvil, I bring the hammer down and shape everything around me to conform to my will. That is the only thing I crave. A power not reserved for mere men, but I have found it for myself. You cannot know the depths of my joy, to see the world bend around me, to break off the unyielding pieces and cast them away.”
Again he let the comment hang, and this time David didn’t dare speak. The hatred in him was roiling beneath the surface, seeking a way out.
“What I see in you, boy, is someone who is yet moldable,” Mattock said. “Not set in his ways, not ruined by too many experiences, no deep attachments. I see tremendous potential. Ah, to think what you might become.” Mattock swept his cloak off his shoulders and turned. “Come with me.”
When David did not immediately rise, Mattock snapped his fingers at him. Even then, David struggled to get his legs under him. He massaged the aching muscles in his thighs—every muscle ached—then started after the general. Gazing at that long cloak, the curve of a tan neck beneath close-cropped hair, David wanted to launch himself at the tyrant, lock his hands around his throat and crush the life out of him. And what if he did it? Could he move fast enough in his sickly state? He didn’t think so, and even if he succeeded, even if he choked Mattock to death and left his body here, what hope did he have? He was infected, his friends were infected, and they were surrounded on all sides by miles and miles of Tockland.
Mattock led him across the room to one of the tapestries, a long black cloth with a constellation of stars depicted in tiny flecks of silver. He swept it aside, revealing a metal door in the wall behind it. He pressed his palm to the center of the door, and it opened with a click. Immediately a musty smell wafted out. David gagged on it, turned and heaved, but he had nothing in his belly to vomit. The room beyond looked dark and damp, lit only by a very faint pale radiance. David followed the general into the room, though he had to pinch his nose shut to drive out the smell. A metal walkway encircled the room, a high handrail on the inside curve. The circular space in the center of the room appeared to be some sort of hatch with a massive hinge on one side. The faint light came from a row of small bulbs on the wall above his head.
Mattock walked around the circle, his gloved hand sliding along the handrail. David did not follow him but remained near the door. Something about this room made his skin crawl—a heaviness in the air, a faint vibration under his feet.
“Close the door,” Mattock said.
David did so but only reluctantly.
“Tell me something, David.” Mattock took his hat off and held it in his hands. He tapped the silver star with a finger. “Do you know what the star on the Tockland flag represents?”
“No, sir,” David said. “I’d never even seen the Tockland flag before yesterday.”
Mattock put the hat back on his head and pulled it down low. “That star is Wormwood, boy. Wormwood. Have you ever heard of it?”
“I don’t…” David shrugged. Had he heard that word somewhere before? He thought maybe he had, but it didn’t connect to anything solid in his memory. “I’m not sure.”
“Wormwood, the burning mountain that fell out of the sky,” Mattock said, gesturing vaguely skyward. “It was the beginning of the end for many people and many nations. Almost thirty years ago, well before you were born, it rained stars for two days, but Wormwood was the greatest of them. I remember it well.”
A burning mountain falling out of the sky. The image of it in David’s head was profoundly disturbing, another thing to add to the long list of nightmare imagery that would haunt him continually for however long he had left. Mattock turned to the wall, gesturing toward a small panel with a myriad of buttons. He pressed one of the buttons, and somewhere under their feet machinery came to life, gears grinding. After a moment, the hatch in the center of the room began to lift up on its hinge.
“Was it sent to us?” Mattock said. “A stone of judgment cast down among the wicked. Or did it come to us by accident? Don’t think I haven’t pondered this hours on end.”
As the hatch rose, David saw light playing on the surface of some kind of thick liquid. Blue as seawater but opaque and slimy. And then he saw the dreadful shape poking out of the surface of the slime. An animal body, round and gray, covered in warty bumps like a toad’s back, with no visible appendages or anything resembling a head. As if embarrassed as its sudden exposure, the strange creature shuddered, and the opaque, bluish liquid oozed from its pores. When it did, the musty smell wafted off, burning in David’s nostrils and making his eyes water.
“You are not the first to see this,” Mattock said. “I have shown others. However, only Captain Helt, my trusted right hand, has seen it and lived. Perhaps you will be the second. A pivotal moment is almost upon you, David. A pivotal moment.”
Mattock knelt, reached under the handrail and thrust his hand into the slime, stirring it with his hand. When he brought his hand up, he was holding some kind of gray segmented tail between his fingers. At the end of the tail was a metal cap attached to a rubber tube that snaked off into the darkness under the walkway.
“What is it?” David asked.
“The source of all sickness,” Mattock said. “Right here.” He dropped the tail back into the water. “She raises the tail into the air and releases a kind of spore cloud. The spores are either carried by the wind or fall back into the water, where they seek a host.” He dropped the tail back into the pool. “We’ve capped the end, so we can collect the spores and control their release.”
“You…?” David went numb. His legs, unable to support his weight, buckled, and he went down on his knees, clutching the handrail. He thought of all those thousands upon thousands of sick people, Gooty’s wife, the rampaging hordes in the streets of Fayette, and now himself.
“I am a prince, destined to rule the world,” Mattock said, standing up and flicking the excess liquid off his glove. “But I am not a prince by force of arms, nor by military might, no. I am a prince of the power of the air, David. All of the battles waged, they give my people purpose and show my strength to the conquered nations, but they are not the true source of my strength. At this very moment, my army fights its way into the Southwest Territories, battling from house to house and hilltop to hilltop, but the end is already decided. The sickness is upon that nation, and no strategy, no trickery, no diversion will alter its course. It will all be my territory soon enough, from the Llano Escatado to the Chihuahua desert to the Pacific coast. The sickness is upon many territories. I am softening whole regions, to prepare the wa
y for my empire.”
“You made us sick,” David said. “When you gave us water yesterday.”
“I did,” Mattock said, leaning on the handrail. “And you cannot alter your course, boy. But I can. You see, this strange creature, this queen of Wormwood, she and her brood have a curious life cycle. Human beings, as best I can gather, are not the intended host of her children but merely a poor substitute. They enter through the mouth, gathering in the gut lining until they reach a larval stage. Then they make their way to the brain, eating their way in, looking for something, some sustenance their intended host possessed that we do not. In the process, they decimate the human brain unto death, and then they, too, leaving the host, shortly thereafter die. They are not transmitted from human to human, David. They do not survive beyond their initial host. They belong to another world and another life cycle that does not exist on this planet.”
“So the only way to keep making people sick is for you to send out new spores,” David said, and his voice shook. Disgust and anger, he wanted to leap over the handrail, across the pool and claw at the tyrant’s face, that long, weather-worn face. All the sick people, all the misery, it was more than he could stand.
“Precisely,” Mattock said with a smile. “But here is another interesting feature, and this is key.” He knelt again beside the pool and scooped up a handful of the opaque blue liquid. “The slime that oozes out of the queen’s body serves a very important purpose. You see, it neutralizes the spores. So if they are not carried away by the wind or swept downstream by water, if they land back on the queen’s body, the excretion prevents her own children from burrowing into her flesh.” He held his hand to his mouth and sipped some of the slime, grimacing. “Foul tasting, but it is also the cure, the only cure, for the sickness.”
David gasped. Could it be? Instinctively, he reached through the bars toward the pool, but he stopped himself before touching it.
“Go ahead,” Mattock said. “Drink and cure yourself.”
“But—but why did you tell me all of this?”
Mattock rose again, and his smile widened, showing a hint of teeth, animal teeth, green in the strange light. “I am telling you this to force my own hand. How could I let you leave this place, knowing what you now know?”
“You’re gonna kill me anyway,” David said. “What does it matter?”
Mattock leaned on the railing, and the metal creaked. He got a distant look in his eyes and gazed up at the ceiling. “A meteor shower that fell for two days, like nothing the world had ever seen,” he said. “They fell like bombs, obliterating whole cities, and in the aftermath, among the burning rubble, we found her.” He spread his hands over the pool. “Inadvertently, we awakened her, and she rose in fury. You cannot imagine it, boy, like an angel of death, going to and fro, slicing bodies into pieces and cutting through bones like brittle chalk, eating through brick and concrete and steel like a tornado. Ah, but she is sleeping now. I have calmed her, and I keep her well fed on the flesh of my enemies. She yet lives, and here in this quiet place, this dark place, she sleeps and, unknowing, casts death over the whole world. But here there is life, as well. Drink, boy, and live.”
Could it be a trick? He was already infected. Madness and death were upon him. What could be worse than that? David reached through the bars and stuck a finger in the pool, felt the warmth of the strange slime.
“I am offering you a place in Tockland,” Mattock said. “You needn’t go down into the pit with the rest of the world. You are a performer, and the stage is where you belong. I am only asking you to join me on the greatest stage of all, and the whole world will marvel at us.”
David cupped his hand and scooped up some of the liquid, ghost-blue in the light. “What about the others?”
“I am offering this to you,” Mattock said. “To you and no other. Drink and live. It will kill the larvae, kill them early before they’ve burrowed too deeply into the brain.”
David drew the liquid to his lips. The idea of being part of Tockland disgusted him. He would rather die with his friends, screaming and clawing his scalp in the cell, but he couldn’t let this thought show, or he would never see them again. He was, in a way, onstage at that very moment, behind a mask and firmly in character. His audience was not the world. His audience was one dangerous tyrant. David sipped from his hand, drawing the foul, earthy-tasting liquid into his mouth. It tasted like mud and rot and burned as it went down his throat.
“You will need more than that, to be certain,” Mattock said.
David drank another handful. Then another. It was all he could bear. Anymore and he would puke it all up.
“That’s enough,” Mattock said. “Welcome back to life, boy. And, tell me, will you renounce all ties and swear allegiance to Tockland?”
Already, David felt an easing of the aches and pains, as the liquid settled in his belly. He wiped his lips on the back of his sleeve and rose. “I...well, it…” He struggled even to speak the lie that he knew he must speak. Like his failed tumble in the nightclub, he was in danger of losing his audience. He cleared his throat. “Yes, I will,” he said.
Mattock smiled, and it was a genuine smile, but the wrinkles on his face, formed by years of sneering and frowning, balked at this sudden extreme upturn of the lips, creating ugly heaps of flesh on his cheeks and around his eyes.
“Very good,” he said. “Yes, very good, indeed. I have such plans for you, David, dancer of death.”
Mattock turned back to the wall and pressed a button, and the hatch closed. David saw the creature, that vile humped back, give a last shudder, as if welcoming the complete darkness, and then it was gone from sight.
“And the others? How are they going to die?” David asked. “I mean…I’m only curious.”
Mattock started back around the walkway toward him. “I will make a spectacle of them, as I must. This is necessary. As you will soon learn, so much of what I do is for the benefit of the people. If there is no show, they will not call for an encore, you see?”
“Yes, I get it.”
Mattock clapped him on the back and reached past him to open the door.
“Can…can the girl be spared?” David asked. The question was out before he scarcely realized he’d asked it.
“She cannot.” Mattock opened the door and ushered David through. “She will join the others, ten thousand upon ten thousand irrelevant bodies heaped like rotten paper in fields from one end of Tockland to the other. You have known her a week, boy. Why should it matter to you? There are many more women here and anything else you might desire.”
David stepped into the room with the plush couches. He almost sat down on one of them. He needed to. His heart was breaking into pieces.
“This is acceptable to you, I take it,” Mattock said. “What is she to you, after all? She will die, and you will bury whatever short life you might have had together along with her. Better things await you in Tockland.”
“Yes, right, of course,” David said. He managed to keep the tremor out of his voice, but he felt the sting of tears.
Mattock closed the door and stepped in front of David, taking him by the shoulders. “She will burn, and the old life will burn with her. Is this…?”
A single tear leaked from David’s right eye and traced its course down his cheek. He quickly brushed it away, but it was too late. Mattock let go of him and stepped back, his brow dropping down, casting his eyes into shadow.
“Tears of joy, perhaps?” he said.
“Yes, that’s it,” David said. “Tears of joy. Exactly.” But now his voice shook, and the tears flowed freely. He thought of Karl, dragged through his own blood and brains like a slaughtered animal. He thought of Annabelle, reaching through the bars of the cage to hold his hand. Of Gooty—the first member of the Klown Kroo to call him friend. Of Cakey, after the fight in West Fork, saying, I’m a little bit proud of you, something his own mother had never said. David did not want to live if it meant they would burn, and that was the truth of it.
He rubbed at his eyes and tried to hide his face, but the tears would not stop flowing. Mattock took a deep breath, slowly, through his nostrils, then tilted his head back and let the breath out through his mouth in a weary sigh.
“You disappoint me, boy,” he said. “You disappoint me greatly.”
“It’s…I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” David said, covering his face. “Please, it’s just…overwhelming happiness. That’s all it is.”
Mattock clapped his hands, and the door on the far side of the room opened immediately, as if his men had been crouched there. A handful of soldiers entered the room, rifles at the ready. David dropped his hands to his sides. The tears had mostly dried up, but now his eyes hurt, and he knew his face must be red and blotchy.
“Take him back to his cell,” Mattock said.
“Sir?” one of the soldiers said.
“It is too late for this one,” Mattock said. He turned away from David, sweeping his cape out, so that it flew up and over David like a passing shadow. “I had hope for him, but…he is already ruined.”
“No, no, sir…it’s…” But David couldn’t think of anything to say. What lie could repair the betrayal of his own tears?
“He will die with them in great pain, and then he will be forgotten like all the others.”
Mattock strode out of the room and was gone.
David caught a glimpse of Vern in the recliner, eyes rolled back in his head, the front of his shirt soaked in blood, a faint, raspy breath escaping his throat. And then the soldiers grabbed hold of him, dragging David off his feet, and took him away.
Chapter Twenty Three
Destiny
They tossed David roughly and without comment back into the cell. He tripped over Gooty, who was curled up on the floor, and fell, catching himself on the rim of the toilet. Then the soldiers slammed the cell door and were gone.
“David, you’re back!” Annabelle. “What happened?”
He picked himself up. The light was on in the cell, casting its flickering unpleasant radiance on the sad, sick bodies gathered below. Annabelle had given the cot to Telly and taken a spot near the sink. Telly lay on his stomach, his face nestled in his arms. Cakey stood in the corner out of sight of the door, his arms crossed tightly over his chest, his head bowed. He did not seem to notice that David had entered the room.
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