"Not entirely," I said again. "We did find a cure, but we found it too late."
"I never heard that," Kelis said with wonder. "That's... I don't know, that makes everything so much worse, somehow. To know that someone got so close to stopping it all."
I shook my head. "No, not really, you see..." I laughed harshly, because this was harder to do than I'd imagined. "You see, I haven't been entirely honest with you."
At that I felt four different people stiffen around me and I remembered suddenly that all of them had guns. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea, but I could see their faces, closed and untrusting, and I knew that it was too late to back down now.
"The Infected, on Cuba - I knew exactly what was wrong with them. I knew it because I recognised it. Jesus, I helped to design it."
"They'd been given the Cure?" Kelis said slowly.
I nodded. "Yeah. A version of it. The Cure stopped the Cull, you see, but it didn't leave the people we gave it to unchanged. It caused auditory hallucinations, delusions, the whole schizophrenic works."
"You were cured," Haru said in amazement, and one by one I saw the others realise that he must be right.
I smiled with unexpected relief. It felt great not to have to hide myself any longer. "Yes. We tested it on ourselves, me and Ash, and on a few of the others."
"That's why you need those drugs," Kelis said. "The ones we went hunting for in Havana."
"Yes," I said again.
"And what exactly happens," Haru asked, "if you stop taking them?"
Like Kelis earlier I leaned back, looking up at the sky rather than across at my companions. "Bad things. Worse things than even I imagined. You see Ash - he was another scientist, a bio-weapons expert - he took the Cure too. We were both sick for a long time, days of pain when we didn't think we'd survive. When we finally woke up, there was... the Voice." I could hear it now, on the edge of my consciousness, hissing at me to keep quiet, to go on keeping its secret. But I found that with these not-quite-friends around me it was possible to ignore it.
"It spoke to me, inside my head. It still does. It's not my voice - it's not the voice of anyone I know. And it's not - I don't know how to describe this, to someone who hasn't felt it. The Voice doesn't make me obey it. There's no compulsion about it. It's just that when it speaks, everything it says seems to make such perfect sense that there's really no question of not listening to it."
"Yeah?" Haru said uneasily. "And what kind of thing does this Voice say? Are we talking along the lines of 'kill them, kill them all'? Because speaking as an objective observer, that sort of thing really doesn't make sense."
"Sometimes it says that kind of thing," I admitted, feeling the atmosphere thicken around me. "But it's not..." I laughed. "It feels absurd to talk about the Voice as a person, but in a way it seems to be, or that's how I experience it: as something independent that has its own agenda. And that's what it's about, when it tells me to do terrible things. It doesn't want them because it enjoys seeing people suffer. It's not psychotic - except in the literal sense. It just wants what it wants and it doesn't care who gets hurt in the process."
"So," Kelis said, "not so much psychotic as sociopathic."
"Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't care about anything, except maybe me, and even then I think it just sees me as a means to an end."
"You realise this is crazy, right?" Haru said. "This voice isn't real. It doesn't want anything. It's just, I don't know, repressed urges inside you getting out, right? The things you don't want to admit to wanting."
His pale cheeks were flushed and I thought that he really was only a few seconds away from shooting me where I sat. "I thought that too," I told him. "I mean, it's the only thing that makes sense, isn't it? Except how could I have gone my whole life without even beginning to guess that I wanted to do those things? And if the Voice really is just my subconscious, why does it seem to be working to a plan that I'm not privy to?"
"You keep talking about a plan," Kelis said softly. Her face was a closed book again. Before, she'd been trying to tell me something about the way she felt about me, but I knew looking at her that whatever that was it wouldn't save me if she decided I was a threat. It was like she'd said - everyone there had survived for a reason, and one of those reasons must have been that they didn't let sentiment get in the way of necessity.
She held my gaze for only a moment, then looked away. Best not to look in the eyes of a woman you might be about to kill. "What is the plan? What is it that you think this Voice inside you wants?"
"I don't know. I didn't want to know, that was why I started taking the drugs to silence it - first the opiates, then the anti-psychotics. I never let myself hear the Voice clearly enough to find out what it wanted."
"I still do not see the connection to the Infected of Cuba," Ingo said. "You are not telling us, are you, that it was you who infected them?"
"No," I said. "It wasn't me. It was Ash."
"The face on all the posters, the Leader," and Kelis was there again, too quickly for comfort. "That was the other scientist you worked with?"
I nodded. "The thing about Ash was, he liked the Voice. When I first woke up, after the Cure had run its course, I... killed a young soldier. The Voice told me to do it. And I think that's probably how I was able to resist the Voice long enough to suppress it. Because however much the Voice told me to, I couldn't forget the look in the soldier's eyes just before I snapped his neck. But Ash... he found me just after I'd done it, and I could tell that he didn't feel any guilt at all, even though I found out later that he had a lot more blood on his hands than that.
"He'd woken up before me, you see. I don't know why - maybe just a faster metabolism. So he'd had time to speak to some of the others on the base. I didn't see it at the time but I read the accounts of it later in the logs. There was videotape too, from the security cameras. Ash was like a messiah. He had this incredible self-belief when he spoke, and it made other people believe him too - even when he told them to do terrible things."
"What sort of terrible things?" Kelis asked.
"Turning people against each other, soldiers against scientists, soldiers against soldiers. People who'd once been friends. Ash sowed doubt in everyone's minds and in the end the only person they trusted was him. I guess it didn't work on me because the Voice in my own head gave me a kind of immunity. When Ash wasn't watching me I sneaked away and found some opiates and I injected enough into my veins to make sure I didn't give a damn what the Voice wanted me to do.
"The trouble was, the opiates stopped me caring about anything - including trying to stop Ash." I swallowed as I realised that maybe this was the real reason I hadn't wanted to tell them the story. Not because I was afraid of their anger, but of their disdain. Old guilt is like wine. It doesn't lose its strength, it just turns to vinegar - sour and corrosive. "He was trying to get everyone else to take the Cure, you see. Even back then. I'd almost forgotten it - I guess I'd just dismissed it as a part of his madness. But now... now that I've seen what he did in Cuba, I know that it wasn't incidental to what he wanted. It was central to it."
"And was that where the first Infected came from?" Kelis asked. "Those soldiers and scientists on the base?"
I shook my head. "They would have been, I suppose, but Ash wasn't the only crazy person there. There was a soldier, I don't really remember his name, but I do remember that he started some kind of fight, a stand-off between Ash's men and his. I just tried to get away from it all, hiding deeper in the base. Then there was an explosion and I was left on one side of it with them on the other. And that's where the story ends."
"Not Ash's story though," Soren said. "Seems like his story has quite a long epilogue."
"Yeah." I took the wheel again and looked out over the waves ahead of us, where the American coast was finally approaching. "I can only guess what happened next. He must have made it away from the base with his followers. I suppose he tried to give them the Cure like he'd been intending, but my guess is that it didn't work
. It was designed specifically for non O-negs. I don't know what it would have done in its original form to anyone who was O-neg, but I suspect it might have been fatal. So he would have had to do more research, refine it. If he took what he needed from the base when he left, that would have been possible." And now I thought about it, some of the equipment in that laboratory in Havana had looked familiar. I shrugged. "Then at some point he came to Cuba and tested it out."
"But why?" Soren asked. "What exactly was he hoping to achieve?"
"I don't know, but I know it's nothing good. When I heard the Voice something inside me knew that it was the voice of madness, and I rejected it. But Ash embraced it, and I think maybe he wants everyone else to embrace it too. Cuba was just the start. It was a failed experiment - that's why he abandoned it. But there's no question in my mind that he's going to try again."
"And you intend to find him," Kelis said. It wasn't a question.
"I have to," I said. "I'm the only one who can possibly understand what it is he's trying to do. Which means I'm the only one who's got a chance of stopping him."
"OK," Haru said. "And why exactly should we help you do that?"
"Because Cuba was only the beginning. You can leave me if you like. That's why I told you the truth - so you can make a real choice. All I ask is that you don't make mine for me. Leave me free to follow Ash. Because you all might regret it if I don't."
I got up to take the wheel after that, leaving them free to make their decision without me around. But the truth was, without them I was sunk. There was no way I'd be able to make it all the way to Las Vegas on my own. Even with them to back me up it was a long-shot.
"Why didn't you tell us this before?" Kelis asked. If there was anyone who might follow me, I knew it was her. For all the wrong reasons, though, and wasn't it wrong of me to exploit that? I shot her a quick look but she was watching the waves, not me.
"I was afraid of what you'd do if you knew I was Infected too."
"Are you infectious?" she asked me.
I shook my head. "I don't think so. That's what Ash's research was all about, you see - making the Cure transmittable, because that wasn't how we originally designed it."
"Its weapons tech, isn't it? The Cure." Kelis said.
"Ash's contribution was, yeah. We put stuff in there that we didn't fully understand - or at least I didn't. We were desperate enough to try anything."
"Do you think someone somewhere planned this all?" she asked me. "The Cull and the Cure?"
"That's another reason to find Ash, isn't it?" I said. "To answer that question."
She nodded and I thought that maybe she was going to tell me that she'd made her decision and she would come with me. But instead her hand reached out to clasp mine over the wheel. Her eyes strained towards the distant coastline of Florida.
"What is it?" I said. There were black dots on the shore that might have been people, but that wasn't unexpected. Miami was a big place and there was no reason to think it would be entirely deserted after the Cull.
She didn't answer me, just called out for Soren. He leapt up to join her, Haru and Ingo hanging behind. Ingo's dark face was sweating lightly, drops of crystal on mahogany, no clue there about what decision he'd made. Haru would go where the group went, I knew that, seeking safety in numbers. And Soren, I supposed, would follow Kelis. But that was something else I shouldn't be taking advantage of.
"Shit!" Soren said. "You're right."
"Right about what, exactly?" Haru asked. Kelis' hand was still over mine on the wheel but she wasn't moving it and I kept on steering a straight course towards whatever was waiting for us on the shore. We were close enough now that I could make out little figures, flashes of red and brighter colours on their clothing. I felt the first stirrings of unease.
"Are those..?" I said.
"Yeah," Kelis said. "I recognise the formation. Standard when facing a sea attack. All the island garrisons practised it."
"Those are Queen M's men?" Haru said, finally cottoning on.
"I think so," I said.
"I know so," Kelis said impatiently.
"This is no surprise," Ingo said calmly. "The tracking devices were never removed from Soren and Kelis."
Of course he was right. Haru turned an unloving look on the two of them and I remembered that he'd been all for leaving them behind. "OK," I said, "it's not a problem. I'll just turn and we'll make landfall somewhere else." I tried to shift my grip on the wheel to do just that, but Kelis held my hand firm.
"No point," she said. "While the trackers are in us she can just follow us along the shore. We'll run out of fuel before she runs out of patience. Besides - she's almost certainly got boats of her own. Faster than this, probably."
"There are only two options," Soren said. "Fight or surrender."
"There's a third option," Haru said sourly. I knew he meant to throw Soren and Kelis overboard and they knew it too. Soren half turned to him and Haru instantly backed away, demonstrating exactly why it was an entirely empty threat.
"Then I guess we fight," I said.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I took out my gun again. The weight of it had begun to feel very comfortable in my hand. I wondered if this was how it had been for my husband: first a burden, then a useful tool and finally an end in itself. The adrenaline was already surging through my body and that was addictive too, the rush of it, even the bitter taste it brought to the back of my throat.
Haru had taken the wheel from me. I could see the white of his knuckles as he gripped it and I knew that he was forcing himself not to turn aside. I guess he knew that Queen M's men might kill him, but Kelis would shoot him for sure if he didn't do as she'd ordered.
The coastline ahead of us looked like a cleaned-up version of Havana: white sand and smart resort hotels. Like in one of those old make-over shows, Havana was the before and Miami the after. The people had been made-over too: not shambling wrecks but whole and tooled-up, and lethal.
The front of the boat didn't offer much protection, not if there was any heavy artillery facing us. We were gambling that Queen M wanted to ask questions first and shoot later. There must be a reason she'd followed Kelis and Soren specifically - to find me, I was guessing - and she wasn't the type to waste resources on petty revenge. She wanted something from us other than our corpses.
On the other hand, if our corpses were all she could get, I was sure she'd settle for that. Fifty feet from the coast now and I could recognise some of the faces. The hardcore loyalists who hadn't fled the flagship when everyone had their chance. It was no kind of surprise to see Curtis among them, Queen M's top recruitment agent.
"Hold your fire," Soren said.
Kelis shot him a look and I think for a moment she suspected he was changing his mind. But he was right. The longer we could delay the moment when the cold war turned hot, the better our chances. If they wanted us alive, they wouldn't shoot first.
Twenty feet from the shore and we weren't slowing down. Kelis had clasped her hands over Haru's, forcing him to stay his course. His face was sweating and desperate. The boat began to judder and shake, jarring over the rocks in the sand, rising higher and higher above the water line. I clung on hard, knowing that if I fell that would be the end. The boat was the only protection we had.
There was a heart-stopping moment as the boat's keel scraped against a sand shelf beneath us and I thought we'd be grounded, still too far from dry land. But then the boat jerked itself over the ridge and suddenly I could see that we weren't going to stop at all.
The people on the shore could see it too. Their tight little formation began to fragment and then it was a free for all. Half a dozen ran off to the left, another five to the right. Two morons tried to outrun the boat straight back, sprinting towards the regimented line of hotels. The boat shot onto the sand, bumping twice as it went over their bodies. I didn't hear their screams because by then the first shot had been fired.
I staggered to my knees as the boat finally ground to
a halt. Haru was flung forward against the hard wood of the cabin. I saw a spray of blood and a shard of something white that might have been his tooth. His howl of pain was lost in the din of gunfire.
The boat splintered beneath the hail of bullets. The wood chips were as lethal as shrapnel, a threat to flesh and eyes. All I could think about was escape. I'd run twenty paces before I'd even thought about firing my gun.
The fighting was too close, too intense, for any kind of game plan. The only thing that saved us was the numbers game. The boat has scattered Queen M's troops in a wide circle and they couldn't fire at us without firing through their own. Instead they pulled out knives and I knew that the fighting would be brutal, bloody and personal. It was better that way. I wanted to see the faces of the people I was killing - punish myself with reality rather than abstraction.
Another five paces away from the sea and the first of Queen M's men was on me. It was Curtis, as stony-faced as ever, even as he swung the machete that was aimed straight for my throat. I didn't feel a moment's remorse as I put a bullet through his chest. His eyes glared all the way into dark. The last thing he saw was me smiling. I thought about the ghosts of Ireland and was glad.
I could hear a fierce whooping somewhere to my left and something told me it was Kelis, filled with the berserker rage of battle. There was a whimpering too, and that had to be Haru. I think maybe I was laughing but I didn't know why, except that there's a certain exhilaration in facing death. Another face and another bullet, but this one got his own blow in. I saw a thin line of red bloom and then widen on my forearm, the flesh beneath the cut parted with surgical precision.
The agony followed a second later. I gritted my teeth against it and kept on fighting. I knew where I was heading now, towards the hotels that lined the beach and the grid of roads behind that offered the only possibility of escape. Not fucking much of one, but any hope will do.
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