Repulsion (Compulsion Book 2)

by Perrin Briar

“And of course, your real job is working directly for me,” Rafael said.

  Siren nodded using everything in her power not to leap for Rafael and strangle him.

  “You know, I owe you a debt of gratitude,” Rafael said.

  Siren snapped her neck around.

  “How?” she said.

  “I’m sure you don’t realize it, but you helped me that night I found you and Quinn,” Rafael said. “I had never liked Greer much, there was something about him, like he was higher and mightier than the rest of us. I could never quite put my finger on out what it was. Until you told me, that is.”

  Rafael looked out at the dim room thoughtfully, and took a drink of wine.

  “Sometimes you need someone to point out something that in retrospect, should have been obvious,” Rafael said, draining his glass and handing it to a guard.

  The guards were putting away the glasses and empty bottles. Then, Rafael leaned so close to Siren that she could smell the wine in his mustache.

  “I know what you are,” he said, almost in a whisper, “but no one else does, and I want to keep it that way.”

  He looked into her eyes.

  “I know what you can do,” he said. “I was there when you stopped the Raiders from firing on us, remember?”

  He leaned back. Siren remained motionless.

  “I wasn’t sure I could let you stay here,” he said. “On the one hand, you could be a great asset with your power. On the other, you could be dangerous. To me. To our community.”

  Wrinkles formed in his forehead and his stern eyes bore into her.

  “How can I trust you?” he said.

  Rafael sat back in his big padded chair and crossed his legs. He motioned to the guard for another glass of wine.

  “I don’t know what you want me to say, Rafael,” Siren said, looking him directly in the eye. “I am here, and that says something. Maybe we’ll get to know each other and you’ll trust me more over time.”

  “I am sure that is true, Siren,” Rafael said. “I want it to be. And I have found a way to deal with that in-between time.”

  He took the fresh glass of wine from the guard, set it on a small table between them, and reached into his pocket, producing a clear plastic bag. He showed it to her. It contained a shriveled, dry, red leaf.

  “Rizena,” he said. “All you have to do is crush it into a drink.”

  He crushed the leaf into fine particles in the plastic bag, then poured it into the glass of wine.

  “This is a very powerful herb,” he said. “It takes effect almost immediately. It is safe, but dulls the mind, so it will keep you out of mischief.”

  He picked up the glass and handed it to her. As he did, he motioned for two guards to come over. Siren looked at the wine with a real sense of fear.

  “Trust goes both ways, Siren,” Rafael said. “But use your reason. You’re far too valuable for me to just dispose of you. Perhaps one day you’ll come to aid me and the others here. I know you said you would. But right now it’s hard for me to know where your true loyalty lies. Until I do, I can’t afford to let you to ‘get under anyone’s skin,’ if you know what I mean. Controlling people’s impulses? That won’t do. At least not unless I know you’ll use it to my advantage.”

  He glanced at the wine glass.

  “I suggest you drink it,” he said.

  His lips were tightly pursed under his mustache, furrows forming in his brow again.

  “I’ll be less useful to you with my ability dulled like this,” Siren said.

  “It won’t be dulled, once I know I can trust you,” Rafael said.

  Siren peered into the brew in her hands. She couldn’t bring herself to drink it.

  “Failure to comply would not be good for our relationship, Siren,” Rafael said.

  His gaze remained intense for a moment. Siren hesitated. Then he suddenly seemed nonchalant.

  “Bill,” he said to a guard. “What was the name of that scientist from a few weeks back? Oh yes—James. Very sad. James and I were getting along so well.”

  Rafael looked over at Siren.

  “He’s passed away now,” he said, shaking his head. “What a waste.”

  Rafael stood. He and the two guards surrounded Siren, looking down at her, very serious again.

  “I would hate to lose another friend,” Rafael said.

  Siren felt as if a dark coldness had surrounded her. They were serious about carrying out violence against her. There was no option. Rafael would be expecting her to Compel him, now more than any other time. It would not work.

  Siren drank the glass of wine, coughing after draining it.

  “It’s good to have you on board, Siren,” Rafael said, smiling. “I think we will get along just fine.You’ll take this once a day, in front of me, until I am satisfied. Trust takes time, and nothing should be left to chance. I trust you understand.”

  Siren stood up and walked away, hoping to get a little more air. She walked slowly, though what she really wanted was to run to the nearest bathroom and throw up the noxious drug she had just taken.

  The emotions of the guards and Rafael and the other people in the room were slipping away, replaced by a cold hard emptiness. Like when she was on the road alone, but this was different. The emotions would come back for a few seconds, then drift away again like waves on the seashore, slowly receding to low tide.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  LIGHT stimulated Siren’s dry closed eyes. She opened them. A pool of soft grape jelly with gentle ripples appeared. She blinked. Then blinked again. The grape jelly began dissolving into a purple painted ceiling. The ripples became the blades of a ceiling fan directly above her.

  The room was dim, just light enough to make out the color. It was Siren’s room, the same one she had lived in the first time she stayed in Whitegate. Probably a large candle was burning, or a kerosene lamp turned down low. Siren tried to turn her head to see, and felt pain. She breathed in a little, then a pretty round face appeared above her.

  “Bess?” Siren said, recognizing her old friend.

  As she spoke she felt a hoarse dryness in her throat.

  “Shhhh,” Bess said. “Don’t talk just yet.”

  The round face disappeared, returning a few seconds later.

  “Drink some water,” Bess said.

  Siren raised her head, Bess’s hand behind it, and took a sip from the cup held in front of her. The water tasted good, like she had not had a drink in days. Siren was sore from head to toe, but especially her neck. She must have slept twisted. And something else was different.

  She closed her eyes for a moment and felt for the emotions that normally filled her mind. They were present, but muted, like faded colors compared to the vividity she was used to. She could not Pull any of them with the ease to which she was accustomed. It was an excruciating effort for a very small effect. Rafael had chosen his poison well.

  “Just keep still and rest,” Bess said, touching Siren’s forehead with a damp cloth.

  The coolness felt good on her skin. The look on Bess’s face relaxed a little. Siren knew it was okay to speak.

  “What happened?” Siren said.

  “You fainted,” Bess said. “In the church.”

  “How long was I out?” Siren said.

  “A few hours,” Bess said, looking at her knowingly. “It’s three in the morning.”

  Siren could believe her. Her eyelids felt heavy and it was dark outside. She turned on her side and took Siren in.

  “How could you let Rafael take over?” she said. “How?”

  “He promised what we all wanted,” Bess said with a sour face. “To be safe. To not be hungry.”

  She put the cloth in a bowl by Siren’s bed and leaned against the foot of the bed.

  “Besides, not all of us voted for him,” she said.

  Siren nodded, considered this statement, and adjusted her pillow. She leaned up so she could face Bess.

  “If we’re going to survive, we need to work together
,” Siren said.

  “We worked together before, and look where that got us,” Bess said.

  “Rafael will try to keep us divided,” Siren said. “And when the Raiders come, they will take everything.”

  Bess knew what she meant when she said everything.

  “Rafael isn’t the best leader,” Bess said. “Nobody likes him. But he’s providing what he promised—food and safety. That’s more than anyone else has done.”

  Siren felt, with regret, her inability to persuade. She felt the absence of something she had never been without, especially considering the advances she had made recently. This must be what the rest of the world felt like, without Compulsion. Suddenly the futility of her situation struck her. How could she convince the people to stop following Rafael if she couldn’t Compel them?

  “Anyway, you shouldn’t be worrying about these things now,” Bess said, adjusting Siren’s pillow and covers. “Go back to sleep. Get some rest. You’ll be right as rain in the morning.”

  Bess smiled, then walked to the corner of the room and blew out the small candle.

  Siren wanted to consider their conversation, to run the information through her mind, but she was already exhausted, and began to drift to sleep.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  QUIET. Too quiet.

  Quinn approached consciousness with an apprehension of the unusual silence around him. No chirping of crickets, or fluttering of bird’s wings. Not even rustling in the wind. His shallow sleep had ironically been interrupted by quietness. He opened his eyes.

  A figure, cloaked in shadow, stood over him.

  Quinn shuffled back and leapt to his feet, almost losing balance and pitching over the side of the large rock. He wasn’t going to make it down this way. He’d have to confront the figure face to face. Not his strength.

  But the man standing opposite him hadn’t moved. Then he stepped toward him with his hands outstretched.

  “Quinn, it’s me,” the man said.

  Quinn’s fear dissolved. Greer stood before him, a quizzical, amused look on his face.

  “Mighty strange way to take a nap,” Greer said.

  “Keeps me out of sight,” Quinn said.

  “I’ll say!” Greer said. “I almost stepped on you!”

  They embraced for a long moment. It was awkward, but called for at that moment.

  “Where have you been?” Quinn said.

  “At the office,” Greer said. “Let’s rustle up some breakfast and I’ll show you.”

  They started walking. Greer looked back at Quinn, bemused.

  “I never thought you were dead,” he said. “Even you’re not stupid enough to fall for death.”

  A DRIVEWAY met the main road. A small wooden sign, painted white with orange letters, said: ‘Agriculture Extension Office.’

  Down the quarter-mile white gravel driveway was a cinder block building the size of a small residential house. Beside it, an ancient truck was parked. It had letters painted on the side indicating it was to be used by a county agent.

  Inside, Quinn and Greer sat at a table in a kitchen area eating bacon and eggs and drinking coffee. Quinn looked around the room. The wood paneling, or fake paneling, on the walls must have been at least fifty years old. The floor was bare concrete. There was a medium sized wood stove that was probably the only heat source in the building.

  On another wall was a large sink and a high table for food preparation. An electric fan with huge blades hovered motionless over the table where they sat. There were windows on every wall, but most of them were smallish, except the one over the sink. As the sun rose outside, the room was a curious gray with streams of pale yellow light coming in.

  “They used to have these in every county, manned and everything,” Greer said.

  He had been regaling Quinn with the history of the building in which he lived.

  “Even the counties that had almost nothing but farms and ranches,” he said.

  Quinn did not care about the history of the agriculture extension service. They had been talking around the true subject of their interest, not wanting to face it, to make it real.

  “Where in hell did you get bacon?” Quinn said.

  Greer cocked his head.

  “Well, there’s all kinds of bacon, son,” he said.

  A look of disgust crossed Quinn’s face as he heard this, as if he had never eaten prairie dog meat.

  “You should leave here,” Greer said as he took Quinn’s plate. “It isn’t safe.”

  Quinn stiffened.

  “It’ll never be safe unless we do something,” he said. “In fact, it won’t last another winter.”

  “That’s no longer my concern,” Greer said. “They voted me off the council.”

  Greer scraped the dishes into a bucket and stacked them by the sink.

  “Based on lies!” Quinn said. “Come back and tell the truth, and they’ll come back to you.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Greer said. “I made a deal with the devil. No one could trust me after that.”

  He sat near the stove and crossed his legs, looking at it.

  “Now the devil’s gone and there’s nothing left,” he said.

  “You’re left,” Quinn said.

  He thought of Siren, and how she would be able to see Greer’s emotions and steer him in the right direction.

  “Not anymore, son,” Greer said. “If Whitegate goes, it goes. People will move on to another place where things can work.”

  “Things work where people make them work,” Quinn said. “We could do that here. You could, with help from me and Siren.”

  Greer raised his eyebrows.

  “So you did find her,” he said.

  “And she came back,” Quinn said. “It took some time and some doing before I gained her trust. Now Rafael’s got her.”

  He wondered if Siren was having better luck than he was having with his stepfather.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  ON THE WESTERN edge of town stood the once proud Whitegate school. It had replaced the 1950’s-era building downtown and consisted of a class-A building designed by one of Amarillo’s most gifted architects.

  Its ultramodern façade featured a magnificent curved roofline topping a glass atrium that faced south, made to catch the strong Texas sun from the east and west, all day long. It overlooked a terraced lawn and fountain that hid underground parking for teachers and staff.

  It was a small building to support the small student population. At the time it was built there were less than two hundred students from Whitegate and the surrounding smaller towns and farms. But at the dawn of the outbreak it was the site of a gruesome attack of Grayskins that left many parents, students, and others dead. Their mutilated bodies decomposed in place for days, and by the time the town had recovered, the site was considered unfit for any useful purpose.

  As Whitegate returned to a new kind of normalcy, and time became available for educating its children, Bess set up shop in the original Whitegate school, which had spent the previous fifteen years as a town storage building.

  Now she made do with a pair of classrooms, and continued to clear rubbish from the rest of the building during times when the children were otherwise occupied, or in the early mornings, when there was light, before they arrived.

  When Siren was not needed in the classroom, she sometimes performed this work as well. But she preferred being with the children whenever possible. It reminded her of the childhood she had once had, the childhood that had been terminated by the outbreak. It reminded her of innocence, though few children were truly innocent in this time. They had seen too much.

  Age, not Grayskins or Raiders, had ravaged this classroom. Its floor creaked, its ceiling sagged. There were only a few functional desks. Most of the children had to sit cross-legged on the floor. Even though the morning air was fresh and brisk outside, it was warm in this room, as most of the windows had been painted shut permanently years ago. Perhaps some city worker saw it as a security measu
re.

  One attempt had been made to open one of the windows, and it had been completely destroyed in the process. It was now covered with black plastic. The holes in the plastic and cracks around the sides were the only ventilation in the room. The air smelled of dust and children.

  At the front of the room was a large blackboard that was still in excellent shape. There was an abundance of chalk, since the city had, for some reason, kept cases of it even after the school converted to whiteboards when the new school was built. At the back was a large terrarium with an open top.

  “Did everyone eat breakfast today?” Bess asked.

  She was such a good teacher, Siren thought. She truly cared about her students as if they were her own children. Even in a community where food was shared, some parents did not or could not ensure their children were fed properly. Not anymore, anyway.

  “Who didn’t?” Bess said. “Come here, I have something for you!”

  Siren was not tired, but she did not feel like doing anything. She sat near the door, ready to help if needed, but not volunteering, and not really having any ideas about what to do. The rizena had lasted twelve hours, and she had no doubt it would affect her the rest of the day, until she reported to Rafael for her daily dose. Hopefully she would make it to her bed this time before passing out.

  She reached out to the kids, to Bess, to anyone else in the community. She Sensed them faintly still, but mostly felt frustration. Worst of all, her mind was so clouded that she could not reason a solution to her problem, a way out of Rafael’s trap. Unless he suddenly began to trust her, and stopped forcing her to take the rizena, she might not be able to overcome the fuzziness in her mind and help free Whitegate from Rafael and the Raiders.

  Siren shook her head, trying to bring herself back to the classroom, where Bess was now motioning the children together for some sort of science demonstration in a large glass container near the windows in the back of the room. Siren stood up and walked back to join them.

  “Okay kids, gather around the terrarium,” Bess said. “I have something to show you.”