Disgust was leaking into me, a loathing for everything that had put me on this stage: Minerva, this band, the Stratocaster in my hands. The whole insane idea of fame and adulation and even music itself…
I wanted to throw it all away, to run from all these pointless complications and let the beast inside take over. To hide in some distant, shadowy place and gnaw on nothing but flesh and bones—perfectly sated, an animal.
But my fingers kept playing. The music held me there, balanced between love and hatred.
I stared down at the stage, not looking at Minerva, but I couldn’t keep her song out of my ears. It kept pouring from the amplifiers, echoing back and forth across the club, building like feedback in my head.
The cables at my feet were moving, shivering like dizzying snakes across the floor. I tore my eyes from them, glaring out into the darkness of the nightclub.
I saw it start out there.
A shape moved through the crowd, a swell of hands thrown up into the air, like a stadium wave carrying itself along, traveling toward us from the back of the club. It broke against the stage, shattering into wild cries of surprise.
The ground rumbled under my feet.
Then the swell appeared again, moving from right to left this time, carrying screams along with it. That’s when I realized this wasn’t something innocent, like upraised arms at a baseball game… Reality was bending before my eyes.
The floor itself was surging up, the bulge moving like a rat scurrying under a rug. More violent this time—the people in its path were thrown into the air, tossed up to fall into the outstretched arms of the crowd, like stage-jumpers.
My sharp ears caught a thin scream behind me, and I glanced back to see Alana Ray crying out, “No, no, no…,” unheard in the booming beat of the Big Riff. But she kept playing: the music had also captured her, locking her hands into their fluttering patterns.
The moving surge of floor turned again, growing stronger. As I watched, the ground began to split, the earth opening like a huge zipper, vomiting up black water and cracked pieces of concrete. A choking smell filled my nostrils.
It was headed toward the stage, but none of us stopped playing.
A few people began to scramble away from its path, trying to run through the crowd, but most were staring raptly up at us, too mesmerized by Minerva to move.
It was the enemy, of course, the same beast I’d seen down in the subway. She had finally called it up.
The Stratocaster burned my fingers, my whole body rejecting the music we were making, but still I couldn’t stop.
Screams filled the nightclub now. More of the crowd fought to scramble over one another for safety, trying to avoid the snapping maws of the beast. It grew closer and closer to us.
And then angels starting falling.
They dropped from the ceiling on thin filaments, cables that sparkled in the spotlights, descending toward the creature and onto the stage. One angel swung to the top of each set of amplifiers, swords flashing in their hands. They rappelled down the stacks, stabbing each speaker right in its center, every thrust bringing forth a high-pitched shriek from the equipment—a squealing counterpoint to the Big Riff.
Dozens of them dropped onto the beast and into the crowd, pushing people away. They brought the creature to a halt, hacking with swords and stabbing with long, telescoping spears. Its cries of pain joined the squawking of the amplifiers, until the music finally began to stumble…
Minerva’s voice faltered, and the spell was shattered.
I broke free, pulling the Stratocaster’s strap from my shoulder and grabbing the guitar by its neck, despising it with every fiber of my being. I raised it over my head and swung it down against the stage, smashing it again and again, its strings snapping, its broken neck twisting like a dying chicken’s. The guitar buzzed and squeaked out a last few tuneless notes, its death cries leaking from the surviving amps.
Around me, the others had ground to a halt. In tears, Alana Ray threw her sticks aside, kicking wildly at her paint buckets. Zahler just stood there openmouthed, staring at the battle on the nightclub floor. I couldn’t look at Minerva anymore.
Stepping back from the broken guitar, my hands bent into claws, I started to stomp at it with my boots. It peeped and squawked.
Then an angel landed on the stage in front of me, dressed in commando black, trailing a thin cable from her waist. She held a small object in one hand.
I recognized her: Lace.
I turned to run, to escape her and everything else: this band, this music, the monstrous thing we’d called up. But after a few steps, before I’d even reached the edge of the stage, she’d caught up with me, grabbing my arm and spinning me around, her needle flashing in the spotlights.
I felt a pinprick at my neck, then her arms supporting me.
“Say good night, Moz,” Lace said.
The sound of my own name almost made me vomit, and then nausea and pain melted into darkness.
PART VI
THE TOUR
There has never been a better time for a pandemic.
Airplanes can carry people across the globe in a single day, and half a billion people fly every year. Cities are far larger and more crowded than at any point in history.
The last great disease was Spanish flu, which appeared at the end of World War I. (Pandemics love wars.) It spread across the planet faster than any previous disease. Within one year, one billion people were infected, a third of the world’s population. Its spread was so frighteningly quick that one U.S. town outlawed shaking hands.
And all this was before airplanes could fly across oceans, before most people owned a car. These days, any pandemic would travel much, much faster. We’ve got it all these days: dense cities, instant transportation, and all the wars you could want. For the worms, that’s motive, means, and opportunity.
When the last days come, they will come quickly.
NIGHT MAYOR TAPES
END HERE.
26. HUNTERS AND COLLECTORS
— MINERVA-
The smelly angels took us all away.
I tried to explain to them that I was fine—had been for weeks—and that Zahler, Pearl, and Alana Ray weren’t even infected. But one look at sweaty, frothing, guitar-smashing Mozzy convinced them we were all insane.
That was the angels’ big problem: they thought they knew everything.
I could have run. I was as fast and strong as them now—I could shatter bedroom doors with a single blow, after all. With the angels busy protecting a thousand bystanders and catching Astor Michaels and killing the giant worm that I’d called up (okay… oops), disappearing would have been a cinch.
But that would have meant leaving Moz and the others behind, and we really were a band now; I couldn’t let them be kidnapped without me. So I let the angels stick me with their stupid needles…
And woke up all the way across the river in New Jersey. They’d put me in a locked room, a cross between a cheap hotel and a mental hospital. Nothing to do but watch the world fall apart on TV.
Smelly angels.
“We’re very interested in you, Minerva.”
“Really, Cal?” I batted my eyelashes. He was kind of handsome—in a boring, clean-cut way—and had a cute southern accent. Not as yummy as Mozzy, of course, but I liked how Cal turned pink when you flirted with him. “Then why don’t you let me out of here? It’s not like I’m dangerous, after all.”
His eyes narrowed. Cal never wore sunglasses, like the other angels did. They were all infected, of course, and only sane because they took their meds. The angels had a big pill factory out here. No skulls or crucifixes on the walls, though—they were very scientific.
But Cal was different. He didn’t need pills and smelled a little bit like Astor Michaels. Fellow freaks of nature.
“We can’t let you go because we don’t know what you are,” Cal’s girlfriend said.
I glared at her. Her name was Lace-short-for-Lacey, and she’d stuck Mozzy with her needle.
“But I’m cured. You can see that.” They’d tried to give me their smelly angel medicine, but I was refusing it. Fresh garlic was enough for me now.
Cal scratched his head. “Yeah, you told us about your esoterica already. We’re checking her out.”
“You be nice to Luz,” I warned. “She knows things.”
“We know things too,” he said.
Lace got all bossy then, hands on hips and voice too loud. “We’ve been around for centuries, cured a lot more peeps than Luz ever will. Your friend might know a few folk remedies, but the Watch has this stuff down to a science.”
“Science, huh?” I ran one finger down the side of my neck, making Cal all squirmy. “So what am I, then?”
Lace frowned. “What you are is freaky.”
“We’ve been watching Astor Michaels for a while now,” Cal said. “We knew he was spreading the parasite, but this whole singing thing… It kind of caught us by surprise.”
I didn’t say how the worm had caught me by surprise too. I’d always felt it rumbling when we played, but I’d never thought it would come visit.
Even humming made me nervous now. Smelly underground monsters.
I shrugged. “Why don’t you ask Astor Michaels about it, then?”
“He doesn’t know any more than we do,” Lace said. “He’s just some record producer, trying to find the Next Big Thing. He’s immune to the parasite’s worst effects, but that’s more common than you’d think.”
“I’m a carrier myself.” Cal smiled, all proud of himself. He’d already come by my room to explain how he was naturally immune and how he’d been a badass vampire-hunter even before the crisis. Now he worked for something called the Night Watch, which was run by someone called the Night Mayor. Oooh! Spooky.
I batted my eyes again. “Did you get up to tricks like Astor Michaels did, Cal? Were you bad?”
“No.” He swallowed, then Lace gave him a look. “Well, not on that scale. And never on purpose…”
“Did you infect her?” I asked, pointing at Lace-short-for-Lacey. I’d seen them being all kissy through the bars of my window.
“No,” he said in a tiny voice. “My cat did.”
“Your cat?” I blinked. “Kitties can do that?”
“Felines are the major vector,” Cal said. “The parasite hid in the deep-dwelling rat population for centuries, until the worms drove them up to the surface…”
As Cal went on with his parasite-geek lecture, which he loved to do, I remembered back to before I got sick. As the sanitation crisis had settled over our street, Zombie started spending a lot of time outside. And every night he’d come home and sleep on my chest, breathing his cat-food breath into my face.
That was how I’d gotten sick? From Zombie?
That meant that Mark wasn’t such a dirty dog after all. He hadn’t given the nasty to me; I’d given it to him…
“Oops,” I said softly.
I wondered where Zombie was now. I always left the apartment window open so he could visit his little friends, but Manhattan looked pretty bad on TV. The whole island had been sealed off by Homeland Security, like that was going to keep the parasite from spreading.
Cal had explained to me how clever the parasite was: it turned infected people horny, hungry, bitey—anything to pass on its spores—and made them despise everything they’d loved before. That’s why I’d thrown away Mark and my dolls and my music, why Moz had smashed his Stratocaster to bits. The anathema, as Cal called it, pushed infected people to run away from home and head to the next town over, and the next town after that…
It wouldn’t be long before the whole world had it.
There were full-scale riots in most big cities now, blood-thirsty maniacs running around doing vile things—and not all of them were infected, you could totally tell. Schools were shutting down, the roads were choked with refugees, and the president kept making speeches telling everyone to pray.
No shit.
But the news never mentioned cat food supplies, not that I ever saw. So what was Zombie eating now? He didn’t mind birds and mousies, but he always puked them up.
“Anyway,” Lace said, noticing I wasn’t listening. “We don’t really care how you got the disease or how your voodoo friend cured you. This is about your songs.”
I smiled. “They make the ground rumble. Want me to sing one for you?”
“Um, not really,” Cal said, then he frowned. “That worm was probably just a coincidence anyway. But certain people around here are interested. They’ve been listening to recordings from that night, and they want to know where you got those lyrics.”
“You need my help? But I thought you had this stuff down to a science.”
Lace took a slow breath. “Maybe what happened that night wasn’t strictly science.”
Cal turned to her. “What do you mean by that?”
“Dude! You saw what happened! That shit was…” Her voice faded.
“Paranormal?” I looked down at my fingernails, which needed a manicure. They were still growing faster every day, even though I was cured. “Okay. I’ll tell you everything I know… if you let me see Mozzy and the others. I want us to be together. We’re a band, you know.”
“But the other three tested parasite-negative,” Cal said.
“I told you they would.”
He frowned. “Yeah, I guess you did. But if we let you see them, you can’t do anything that would compromise their health.”
“Eww! I wouldn’t kiss any of them.”
“Kissing’s not the only vector.”
I tried not to roll my eyes. Anything to get out of this smelly room. “Okay, I promise not to share my ice cream.”
“Cal,” Lace said. “If she really wanted to infect them, she could have already.” She turned to me. “But Moz is still dangerous.”
“I can handle Mozzy. He just needs his tea.”
“He’s getting better stuff than tea,” she said. “But he’s still in bad shape. It’s not pretty.”
I snorted. “I’ve been tied to a bed in a nuthouse, screaming and trying to bite my doctors’ fingers off. And then locked in my room for three months, hating myself and eating dead chickens raw. Don’t talk to me about pretty, Miss Lace-short-for-Lacey.”
The two of them looked at each other all seriously, then argued for a while longer, but I knew that eventually I’d get my way. They wanted to know about my songs real bad.
And like Astor Michaels always said, you had to keep the talent happy.
27. FAITHLESS
— PEARL-
The Night Watch stuck me, Zahler, and Alana Ray in one of their “guest rooms,” a little cluster of cabins at the forested edge of the compound. We were free to go where we wanted in the compound, except the hospital where Moz was, but outside our door a tall fence stretched in both directions. Razor wire coiled down its length, reminding us that we were prisoners; not because they wouldn’t let us out, but because outside was too deadly for us now. Special Guests all over again.
There wasn’t much to do except watch the world end on TV.
Thanks to jet planes, overcrowded schools, and the sheer six billion of us all crammed together, the disease was spinning out of control. It hit critical mass in New York City in that first week we were out in Jersey, spreading faster than anyone could contain, conceal, or comprehend what was happening. The talking heads all went lateral, of course, blaming terrorists or avian flu or the government or God. All nonsense, though at least they’d stopped pretending this was just a sanitation problem. But none of them seemed to get that the world was ending.
Sometimes they’d interview people in small towns, where everything was weirdly normal, the disease invisible so far. They were all smirking at New York, like we’d had it coming. But the boondocks wouldn’t be fun for very long. Credit cards, phones, and the Internet were already starting to fail. Hardly anyone was making contact lenses, movies, medicines, or refined gasoline anymore. Even in the smallest towns, they
’d miss all that infrastructure when it was gone.
Ellen Bromowitz had been right: there weren’t going to be any symphony orchestras for a while. No celebrity interviews in magazines, no album cover photo shoots or music videos. And the biggest hit on local radio these days was “Where’s the National Guard Camp Nearest You?”
No way to get famous.
Of course, now that I knew the scale of what was happening, becoming a rock star seemed less important. In fact, it seemed just plain stupid, unbelievably self-centered, and nine kinds of deluded.
I’d seen this coming. Even back when all I’d had to go on was Min’s craziness and Luz’s strange tales, I’d understood somehow that the world was about to break. So what had I done? Tried to escape reality by becoming famous. As if the world couldn’t touch me then, as if bad things didn’t happen to people with record deals. As if I could just leave all the nonfamous people behind.
What a joke. A sad, demented joke.
So that was me now: depressed and deflated in New Jersey, shell-shocked that our first gig had turned into a bloodbath, that the world was crumbling, and that my lifelong dream had turned out to be the Taj Mahal of shallow.
I never wanted to go onstage again, never wanted to play another instrument… and just when I’d finally thought of a really fexcellent band name.
How’s that for annoying?
Every morning the Night Watch brought in truckloads of peeps—parasite positives—they’d captured the night before. They treated as many as would fit in their hospital, an empty elementary school they’d taken over. Hundreds of them, reborn as angels, trained on the assembly field every day. Their swords glittered like a host of flashbulbs popping in unison.
An army was building here.
Cal said that in all of human history, this was the fastest the infection had ever spread—those jet planes again. And what nobody but the Watch realized yet was that the worst part was yet to come. The creature that Min had summoned, the worm, was one of thousands rising up to attack humanity. Just like Luz had said, the sickness was merely a sign that a great struggle was about to begin.
The Last Days p-2 Page 18
