He was a soldier now. He had his orders.
“No, I don’t think people should panic. What kind of question is that? Look, just be ready to move. We’ve already had some evacuations. I think it’s fair to say that you should expect more.” [San Francisco Chief of Police Heather J. Fong at press conference, 4/1/05]
Nilla wandered through a landscape the colors of bleached bone. The rock beneath her feet looked white, whiter than her pale skin. The aspens and sequoias of the forest behind her had given up on the stony ground. From horizon to horizon all she could see were bristlecone pines, leafless, twisted things that looked undead by starlight. Their branches wrapped around their trunks like hurt people hugging themselves for comfort or speared upwards in accusation at the frozen sky. Some were dead outright, cracked and splintered. They didn’t rot, it seemed, so much as erode.
She was cold. She’d been cold before and never really cared but now, naked, soaked with dew, exposed in the chilly mountain night, she felt it in her skeleton. She could feel the frost getting into her individual ribs, into the creaky joints of her kneecaps and elbows.
She wanted to go back but she didn’t know what that meant. Charles would be huddling with Shar in their room, wouldn’t they? Terrified of her.
Charles had to know. He must have suspected before and now he knew.
The smell on her was the stink of death. The discoloration on her abdomen was the first sign of putrefaction. Her body and her mind were breaking down and there was nothing she could do about it, nothing anybody could do about it and why would they, anyway? She was dead, a corpse! She should be rotting away. Her flesh would sag and fall off in gobbets, her skin would slough off in greasy strips. Her face would melt away until her bare skull grinned out at the world—would she feel better then?
A prickling of the skin behind her ears made her look up. Something—something living nearby. She would turn her face from it, flee it, whatever it might be. It was big. She closed her eyes and saw it, not a hundred yards away. Two, maybe three times the size of her, its energy brighter than any living energy she’d seen.
She had to get closer. Damnit—the hunger in her had become a solid mass, a tumor in her stomach that had control of her feet. She wanted to run away, to hide herself but the hunger had other plans. She got closer.
Her nose picked up the smell of death right away. It was like her own smell but sharper. Her foot blared with pain as she tripped on something. Bending down she felt metal and wood. A gun, a shotgun. She looked up and saw a human body with no head dangling from the colorless branches of a bristlecone. Its lower extremities were missing and its life, its energy was dull and motionless. It was just dead meat. The corpse might be the owner of the motel, maybe, who had come out all this way to kill himself. She had no way of knowing for sure.
Something massive shifted behind her and she turned as fast as she could. The energy she’d seen, the bright source was right there. It came off of a black bear weighing maybe three hundred pounds. A female, old and grizzled, her pitch black fur ending in white tips that glistened with the reflected light of stars. The bear made no sound—she didn’t growl.
She was beautiful. She stood on her hind legs, her eyes looking directly into Nilla’s. There was something there. Understanding? Recognition? Impossible. Nilla was undead and unnatural while this gorgeous animal seemed carved out of the very earth she stood on. Was this some kind of spiritual awakening, Nilla wondered, was she meeting her spirit animal? Maybe this was the moment when everything would make sense.
The bear swiped one paw across Nilla’s stomach, the claws digging great bloodless gouges through her midriff, slicing up her tattoo. The blow had enough force behind it to outright kill a full-grown deer. It knocked Nilla off her feet and sent her falling into the body in the tree. Looking up at the corpse Nilla finally understood. The bear had been having a midnight snack—breakfast after a long winter’s hibernation. Nilla had just gotten in between the bear and her meal.
Relocation camps are now open at Cathedral City, Winterwarm and Oceanside. A map to these facilities is on the back of this handout. When entering a camp you may bring with you: personal (PRESCRIPTION) medication, TWO changes of clothing and ONE small toilet kit. All weapons, illegal items and communication/recording devices (laptop computers, PDAs, CELL PHONES) will be confiscated. [Flyer handed out at bus and train stations in Los Angeles, emphasis as per original, 4/1/05]
The bear didn’t growl or roar or make any sound at all as she advanced. Her fur shivered in the breeze and her eyes glowed with fire as she pressed her snout wetly against Nilla’s leg. She had to be seven feet long and her legs were all muscle. Hot breath jetted up Nilla’s thigh and she cringed.
The bear looked up at Nilla and panted for a second. She stepped closer, her mass making the ground shake and Nilla cried out as she rolled away. Slowly, keeping her hands in plain view she got back to her feet. If she just walked away, backwards so the bear wouldn’t think she was running, well then, surely the bear would leave her alone. Right? The bear didn’t want to eat her. She was undead—rotting flesh, full of toxins.
Nilla glanced at the corpse hanging from the tree. Oh. Bears must eat carrion, she decided.
It wasn’t food the bear was after, though, she could see it in the animal’s eyes. The bear knew what she was. It was the same look she’d seen in Lost Hills—the same look she’d gotten from Charles less than an hour earlier. The bear was intelligent enough to recognize an abomination.
Nilla turned and tried to run, her bare feet slapping on the slickrock, her arms pistoning as she—
The bear tore past her at a gallop, not even exerting herself. She rolled one shoulder and slammed into Nilla, sending her sprawling down a slope of loose shale. The pain was intense as she bounced from one sharp rock to another, her skin bruising and tearing as she rolled. When she finally stopped she could only curl around herself, her body screaming.
The bear came lumbering down the hill, a black shape that obscured half the sky, headed right for her.
No, she thought, she didn’t want to… to die like this, not alone in the dead wilderness. No.
No.
The bear stopped not three feet away from her and sniffed the air. She lifted her head and opened her mouth, then moved in, her paws smacking the rock. She would have stepped on Nilla if Nilla had still been there.
Nilla was invisible. The cold bit her with renewed force but the pain melted away. She looked down at her hands with eyes closed and saw nothing—no dark energy, just nothing. She stared at the bear and knew the animal couldn’t sense her at all. Whatever power Nilla possessed, whatever strange ability, it allowed her to cloud all the senses of the bear just as she had clouded the eyes and ears of the SWAT troopers back at the hospital. She had become invisible. As far as the bear was concerned Nilla had vanished in thin air.
She was momentarily safe. The danger wasn’t over, though. Nilla had to end this or eventually she would run out of strength and become visible again—she had a span of time measured in seconds, maybe—and then the bear would be on her with rending claws and vicious teeth. Nilla had to defend herself if she wanted to walk away.
She reached over and grabbed a handful of loose flesh at the back of the bear’s neck and squeezed through the fur, squeezed as hard as her fingers allowed, digging her nails into the pliant skin beneath. The bear made a noise, a titanic, warbling yell that almost sounded like human language.
Nilla’s teeth entered the bear’s neck. She could see the artery throbbing there. She could smell the blood. When she broke the loose skin the blood coursed out and over her, a red flood to carry her away. What happened next didn’t involve thinking at all. She bit and tore and gouged as the bear screamed. A chunk of meat came loose in her mouth and she swallowed it effortlessly. The skin tore open and she thrust her face deep into the bear’s body, into its hidden recesses. Blood clotted and stuck in her hair. It washed across her open eyes and she didn’t blink. She bit and chew
ed and swallowed and bit, desperate to steal the bear’s energy before it ran out. The bear couldn’t resist her—shocked by the suddenness and the pain of her attack it could only scream and try to run but she had it, she had it down, down for the count.
Its life flowed into her, through her. Warm as blood, rich and sweet as the bear’s flesh it thrilled in every cell of her body. It felt like being on fire. It felt like being alive again—there she was, all dressed in white bopping down the street, shaking her hips in the sunshine because it felt so very good to be alive and healthy and beautiful. It was almost too much.
She fell to the ground on her knees and swayed with it for a while with her eyes closed, watching the bear’s golden energy degrade. When she opened her eyes again she saw the bear looking back at her with that same expression of recognition she’d been so startled by before. Then she did a double take. Her benefactor was sitting on the bear’s back as if he planned to ride off into the sunset.
“You—” Nilla looked up at the naked man. His beard looked newly-trimmed and the blue tattoos that covered his skin glowed with their own light. “Who—”
“Mael Mag Och,” he said, thumping his chest. He looked down at his mount, at the expression on her face. “She knows you. She knows what it is to be gruaim air le acras.”
Either he was speaking in two languages at once or Nilla’s hearing was shot. It didn’t matter what he said, though. It was just noise when she wanted information. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.
He ignored her. Slipping down the bear’s furred flank he stepped onto the slickrock and looked straight upward at the stars. “In the salmon moon, she wakes from winter and eats, and does not stop. She swallows a river of fish if she can, a cliath bhradan. In summer she takes moths—forty thousand every day. They are so many they fill the forest air and they fly right into her mouth.”
“How do you know that?” Nilla demanded. The bear’s life energy was flickering out. She felt a pang of guilt like a rippling in her stomach muscles but—wait a minute. Stomach muscles. She look down and saw the four deep gashes there where the bear hit her first.
“I know many things. I know some English, now. Before, chan fhaigh mi lorg air na facail!” He grinned sheepishly. “Sometimes I slip back. I know you. I understand hunger, but do not know it. I talk to dead, you see. I learn.”
Nilla frowned. “What are you? I know you’re not really here. I thought before you were a hallucination. You aren’t though. You’re real.”
He ignored her. “I know what you are. You are shadow, like so many shadows. Different, though. I see all the lights, like fires in a longhouse, except… this one, it goes out. Covered fire. Then it comes back. Reappears. I know it is only possible it is you. Sometimes no fire is better signal than fire, yes? You are stronger, and you are smarter than the rest. I must use you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“A job, for you. A cam-borraig. Work. Purpose. You want something more than that?”
“What kind of job?” She brushed hair out of her eyes.
He smiled. “Be yourself.”
She opened her mouth to speak then closed it again with a click. “Be myself.”
“Be the darkness. Be a shadow. You first come east, come to me. To my body. It lie in some place that is called—New York. We talk there. No more commerce with live things, though. No more of the living. They are not allies. They are food for you.”
Nilla shook her head, confused. “What? I—what?” She thought of Charles and Shar—and everyone else who had stared at her, condemned her, hated her. She didn’t like where the thought headed (into her teeth) so she threw it away. “I need them. I can’t drive. I don’t remember how.”
“Then you walk to me.”
The bear died. She made no death rattle nor did she go into convulsions. She simply flickered out, the last of her vital fire gone. Darkness began to fill her up instantly. There was no transitional zone, it seemed, between life and death, or at least between life and undeath. It was a change of state, not form.
Nilla pulled her hair back in a ponytail but had nothing to tie it with so she just held it. It felt less greasy than before, strangely enough. It had more body, too. That was weird but she had no time to consider it. “Screw this. I don’t need a job, guy. What I need is to stay alive. If that means consorting with living people, I don’t mind that at all. You want me to walk east, with no idea where I’m going.”
“Yes,” he nodded happily.
“To talk to some guy who may or may not be a figment of my imagination.”
“Yes.”
“And for this I get a sense of purpose.”
“Oh, yes,” he said, and opened his arms as if to embrace her. “Let us begin.” He bowed and gestured toward the east with one arm. The first pale glow of dawn was surging there. “You begin, now.”
“No. Not tonight.” She turned on her heel and started walking away, up the slope and back towards the motel. Whatever the future held it started with a shower. She was covered in the bear’s lifeblood, thick gobbets of it coagulating on her skin. She could imagine a better time to conduct a job interview.
A wave of humanity ran through her and her stomach tensed. She felt as if she were seeing herself from outside, as if she saw with human eyes once more. A naked beast covered in gore walking under the light of the moon. The image faded quickly but it left behind a cold horror that ran through her veins, stealing a little of the good feeling she’d had.
She refused to let him see what she was feeling. She straightened up and reached for a joke. Yes. That was how she responded to fear—with humor. That hadn’t been taken from her. “When we’re talking about full dental and three weeks paid vacation, then you get back to me,” she said.
Behind her she felt the bear stir, her energy smoky and dark. The bear was undead. Nilla had spread her curse. She didn’t turn around. She didn’t want to look back and see her own handiwork.
“Very well,” he said to her back, “I’ll give you what you want, though is fhasa deagh ainm a chall na a chosnadh.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“You drive a hard bargain, but it may be worthy. Lass, you come east, to my body, and I will tell the name you lost.”
He was gone when she turned to look. Only the bear remained, inching her way up the slope toward her interrupted meal. The look of recognition on her face was gone. Nilla saw nothing there but hunger.
KNOW THE SYMPTOMS OF CHOLERA! Diarrhea. Abdominal cramps. Nausea and Vomiting. Dehydration. [Hospital Bulletin published by the Centers for Disease Control, 4/1/05]
Clark heard Vikram just fine but he wished he hadn’t. “I don’t see enough lights down there. It’s only what, 2200 hours? There should be lights on, people should be watching primetime television. Get us closer and hit that target with the main light,” Clark said over the headset built into his helmet. He could barely hear himself think over the noise of the helicopter’s engines.
“I am sorry, Bannerman, do you copy me?” Vikram asked from the next crewseat over. “I will repeat. Doctor First Lieutenant Desiree Sanchez is requesting that she be allowed to euthanize some of the victims, so she can dissect them. I am as discomforted as you, but I think it is the only way to—”
“I copied you the first time, and I still won’t allow it.” Clark peered down at the unlit streets of Lost Hills, California. He couldn’t see a damned thing. The pilot wore NODs to see in the dark but the passengers had to make do with their naked eyes. The town looked deserted. The people were scared, sure, he didn’t blame them. He didn’t see any vehicular traffic at all, though. What was going on? There were supposed to be people down there for him to interview, people who might have seen the blonde girl as she came through. Clark had gotten a truly lucky break—traditional channels had actually turned up something useful. The Kern County Sheriff’s office had flipped the girl’s description on a trivial shoplifting investigation at a local convenience store. The owne
r had described one of the thieves as blonde, maybe forty years old with a black tribal tattoo of a sun with wavy rays on her stomach. The Sheriff had recognized the description of the tattoo from the APB. The girl had been in Kern County, maybe a day or two before at the very most. It was Clark’s best lead.
“Bannerman, Captain, I must implore you! Destroying a few of the specimens may be the only way! What if by doing this she finds a cure?”
“And what if she doesn’t? How do I explain to the families that their dad, their grandma, their twelve-year-old son had to have his head cut open while he was still alive because we thought it might help other people with the same illness, except it turned out not to help at all? Let her use the bodies those SWAT butchers at the hospital gave us.”
Vikram stared at him. In the dark cabin his eyes gleamed with frustration. “Their heads were all shot to pieces. Not much use when studying a brain ailment.”
Clark grimaced in distaste. He stared through the polycarbonate canopy of the Blackhawk at the square shadows of buildings below. “Okay, get the lamp on that structure,” he demanded. The pilot flipped a switch.
In the overwhelming white light of the Blackhawk’s main search light everything was the same flat gray, distinguishable only by ultra-black shadows blasted away by the lamp. The infected swarmed across the broken windows of a feed store like enormous maggots, their faces slack as their twisted hands reached upward to try to snag the helicopter.
One of them held a broken piece of bone. He threw it hard and it bounced off the metal skin of the helicopter with a resonating clang.
Breath puffed out of Bannerman’s lungs. Not in surprise, not anymore, no, this was just nervous exhaustion. Jesus, he though. Another one. Another town overrun. That made six in California, three each in Utah, Wyoming, and Texas, twelve in Colorado. More of them, certainly, that he didn’t even know about yet. The infected had taken over the streets of Lost Hills. “Did we receive any kind of distress call from this place before it went down?”
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