Twig

by wildbow

  “You remembered that bit, it seems.”

  I continued without letting him change the topic, lecturing. “It’s important for us to trust one another. When we get into a bad situation, and we have to make a leap of faith, we need to know that the other is there to catch us. Like with the Lambs, but it’s just you and me now.”

  “Okay, Sy,” he said. His tone was very tolerant. It reminded me of Mrs. Earles humoring one of the youngest children as they talked about their imaginary pets. “I will take your word for it. That you made up for all of the mockery, the little humiliations, the name calling, the poking, prodding, teasing, the fact that you looked up her skirt countless times—”

  “You can stop now.”

  “—and you did it while staying with her most nights over the course of month after month, and kissing her.”

  “Exactly.”

  In the silence that followed that, even with Jamie’s light tone and my very much enjoying the opportunity to boast, dull, vague thoughts rose up in the back of my mind. Moments with Lillian, the goodbye, the tears.

  I looked back to double check there was no pursuit, and the only figure I saw was Lillian’s.

  Black emotion battered and struggled against the box I’d confined it to.

  “Now that that’s settled,” I started. I was aware of the fact that my tone had shifted a little, that there would be discrepancies I would have caught, if I were the one listening and not speaking. I knew Jamie would notice too. “…We can change the subject. Focus on this.”

  “We’re heading east. In the direction of the Theater. If it’s airborne, it’s more likely to go down than to rise up. I can’t imagine a plague that scales cliffs,” Jamie said. “The plague started at the Marina. Based on the little incidents, it wasn’t heavy in the urban areas. Don’t walk so fast, Sy.”

  I slowed down.

  “Not just because my legs are tired. If I’m imagining this right, then we’re close to the bridge they’d be sending the wagons over.”

  I nodded.

  “Let’s take a detour,” he said, indicating a direction.

  “If you think we should.”

  He was more forward and aggressive than the old Jamie, so this cautiousness caught my attention. I was more than willing to play along, if he had reservations.

  We walked around a set of buildings, then Jamie indicated an alley.

  “Wait,” I said. “You suggested it wouldn’t climb?”

  “Yeah.”

  I pointed, indicating a set of stairs leading from the road to what might have been the upstairs half of a two-storey home that was divided into two apartments.

  “Not sure what you mean, but lead the way. Remember I can’t see much while I’m swaddled.”

  “Come on,” I said.

  My interest wasn’t the stairs so much as the railing. I peered back in the direction Sanguine had been shooting from, gauging the intervening cover.

  Would he have a clear shot?

  To what degree would it matter if he had an unclear shot?

  There were a row of these houses and apartment-houses, and they backed on what might have been a business, a taller, four-story building.

  I carefully led Jamie up the stairs that ran up between the buildings, then up onto the railing that bounded the stairs. From there, with the assistance of a windowsill of the taller building, we made our way onto the roof. The taller building gave us some cover.

  “Chance to stop,” I said. “Get the lay of the land.”

  “Yeah,” Jamie said.

  He pulled the jacket back and away, so he had a better view. I followed him, making sure he didn’t slide, and settled into position beside him, my arms folded at the peak of the roof.

  We could see the area that Jamie had wanted to avoid. Eight wagons were there, and beyond those eight wagons, there was a crowd. A hundred individuals or so that had been rounded up were now milling about. A few broke away and limped or staggered away with some purpose into the quarantined neighborhood, but others clearly had no place to go. They remained where they were, hunching over, enduring the pain, some moving rhythmically, rocking in place.

  Take it in in abstract. I might not be able to consciously spot the differences from one moment to the next and pick it apart for patterns, but my subconscious mind can. Look at this scene, look for the colors of it, the way the city is moving, the concentration of people…

  I let my eyes rove over the city proper. I looked for areas that had been bleached of color as the power was cut, stained with the red that was faintly prevalent wherever the afflicted were gathering in number.

  There. Another quarantine zone, closer to the theater. Too far away for me to see the red, but I could see how it was paler. I pointed.

  “It’s already everywhere,” Jamie said.

  It couldn’t be just these two spots. Up on the higher portion of the city, past the cliffs and behind Sanguine, it was possible, but I couldn’t see that area. In the other direction of the Theater, further down—The boatyard.

  “Jamie,” I said, my voice tight.

  He turned his head.

  “Is that—where are Candy, Drake, Chance and Lainie?”

  “They’re close,” Jamie said. “Close enough that they might have gotten caught and collected in that area.”

  The hundred or so people that had been dumped here weren’t the first deposit. I refocused on the group. Something had caught my attention, and I had no idea what it was, which forced me to look for it. Something off.

  There.

  Two people moved through the crowd. With the splashes of crimson that went with the various stages of the plague, I’d mistaken one of the figures for a victim. But when she moved, it was too smooth, too easy. Once I looked a little closer, however, I could see all of the details that were wrong.

  A woman, pale, with no eyes in the dark sockets. Her skin was hard, like a doll’s, made of bone or ivory, while the red growths at the side of her head, from her bottom lip down to her neck, shoulders, and torso, and possibly her legs were something like horn, tinted blood red by whatever substance they were made of. I couldn’t see her legs because she wore a dress that was hooked into what amounted to a corset of that crimson horn material, festooned with spikes of the horn-like material.

  She dragged an red-horn axe behind her that seemed too large for her narrow, bone-doll arms to lift. Even the people who seemed to be furthest into the disease were working to move away from her. She was eerie and intimidating. Even from a distance, I had a sense of why. She moved in a way that didn’t suggest muscle.

  “Do you see her?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Jamie whispered. “She has a friend.”

  A friend.

  I was annoyed that Jamie had spotted the friend first. I was glad that I spotted him a moment before the woman revealed him, taking hold of him by the collar and dragging him off his seat on the wagon.

  From the back, it was hard to see. When he was dragged around and faced our general direction, I could spot the alterations. It was as though someone had taken a caustic chemical and poured it on him. Flesh had melted, with large holes opened in face, shoulder, and ribcage. Something was within his chest cavity, and it had tentacles, reaching up through his neck—I could see the shadow and light as the tentacle reached up through the damaged throat—and out of his mouth and one eye socket. Others embraced his body.

  The cigarette he’d been sitting on the wagon to enjoy dropped from his mouth, and it was one of the tentacles that caught it out of the hair, passing it to his fingers, so he might raise it back to his mouth. He carried a backpack, something closer to what a soldier would have than what a student might. Rugged, and heavily packed.

  “Lillian said that red was a good indicator of iron,” Jamie said.

  “The Iron Maiden?” I asked.

  “That’s what I was thinking.”

  “What about the man?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Jamie said. “What are they doing
?”

  As we watched, Iron Maiden dragged the man to the center of the road. People naturally backed away from them. The man put in as little effort as was humanly possible in following along, letting himself be dragged. The Iron Maiden let go of him, and he was so slack that he landed in a sitting position in a puddle.

  The man pulled the pack off and gathered things from within. I couldn’t make out what it was until it was assembled.

  He produced some special kind of match, one that produced a lot of smoke, then touched it to the assembly.

  The stand he’d put together was a guide, to keep a small rocket in position. More smoke billowed, and then the rocket launched skyward.

  A hundred feet up, it split in two.

  Two hundred feet up, it detonated, with two poofs of black smoke staining the already darkening sky, the one closer to us and the pair first, then the other, off to the west.

  The pair remained there, Tentacles swaying in the breeze as he sat there smoking, his other hand jammed into the coat of his winter jacket. Iron Maiden was rigid and utterly still. Both stared skyward.

  A red streak crossed the sky, from the cliffs, over our heads, and then over the pair’s heads. A cloud of red expanded in its wake.

  Sanguine.

  Iron Maiden looked down at Tentacles. Her mouth moved, but in a funny way.

  “I can’t lipread her,” Jamie said. “But the man—”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Tentacles said something.

  “He doesn’t want us to stay, he thinks they’re here,” Jamie recited.

  Iron maiden said something else.

  The rain from the dark, expanding cloud reached the pair and began to fall around us. There were a few moments of a simple light drizzle, then downpour.

  “Can’t lipread anymore,” Jamie said.

  If I had to guess, and if the Iron Maiden didn’t have augmented eyes or something, then the downpour would hamper them more than it hampered us. The appearance of the Iron Maiden was stark, very white and very red. I could still make out her silhouette in the cold rain.

  Tentacles, a little less so.

  They had to have special passes, some level of guarantee that they weren’t affected by the plague. They could pass through the quarantines. Sanguine, I presumed, couldn’t, but he was capable of reaching us from where he was.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Jamie said. “Sanguine was that way.”

  I nodded. Sanguine hadn’t moved far.

  We slid down the slope of the roof, and I went first, dropping down to the railing to better help Jamie.

  As he came down, however, his leg caught on something, and it didn’t serve to slow his descent. He skidded on the rain-slick shingles, slid right past the gutter I’d used as a handhold, and fell, hard, crashing into me.

  For a long few seconds. We remained utterly still, lying in a heap, waiting for some cue or sign that we were being pursued. My hand remained close to the explosives.

  A moment later, we were up on our feet, moving. Down the stairs, through the spaces between buildings.

  The texture of the city was changing under the rain. The puddles became mud, and the mud became something thicker that pulled at my boots. If I hadn’t known better and been able to feel the rain itself, I might have thought that it was raining sludge.

  Our path slowed as we exited one area, and found ourselves staring at a trio of afflicted. They, in turn, were hanging back, staring at another afflicted. As they saw us, they fled, ducking their heads down as if they were ashamed. Their clothes looked nice enough for them to fit in among the most upper class of Radham, but the bodies within were stained with red and what looked like veins standing out against their skin, their expressions contorted as they endured the ongoing pain.

  They scurried off, and we ventured out into the street. Jamie slowed as he turned his head back to look at the fourth afflicted.

  It was a young man, twenty or so, and he knelt on the porch in front of a house, legs sort of splayed out, while his body hunched forward. Both hands were against the door, one of them weakly rising, then falling, banging on the surface.

  The windows inside all had the sheets and the quarantine symbols.

  As we got closer still, I could hear him.

  “Mom. Dad. Let me in. Mom.”

  He pulled away, as if he was going to fall and lie down in front of the door. He couldn’t. The veiny, ivy-like growths on his hand had reached out, extending, and worked their way into the wood of the door. Bright red buds studded the growth, but had yet to unfold into proper flowers.

  We should leave him behind, I thought. I touched the ring, then reaffirmed the thought. Even with conscience in mind, this was all too dangerous and unpredictable. There’s not much we can do.

  I looked at Jamie, and my mind nearly changed. Jamie had more conscience. He had to live with his decisions for his particular definition of forever.

  Then I started thinking about Jamie slowing down, complaining about his legs, the fall from the roof.

  I had suspicions about what was happening, and those suspicions made the dark, horrific feelings inside of me struggle against their confines, reaching out to choke my throat and my heart, as if they could do the same sort of damage to me that Tentacles’ tentacles had done to him.

  But if I asked Jamie, and then I thought about dealing with this person, in the light of the idea that Jamie might be sick?

  That would be different. Harder to sell, maybe.

  “Sy,” Jamie said. His voice got the afflicted’s attention.

  The tone, the timing, it was like he was asking me to save the young man.

  “Where are the spots?” I asked.

  “The arm,” the man said, voice thin. “It happened so fast.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  My eye roved over the door itself. It was hard to make out in the rain, but there were stems extending from the area surrounding where the hand met the wood.

  Not just from afflicted to afflicted, but afflicted to environment.

  I bent down, reaching, and I collected my knife. I double checked we weren’t being followed.

  In the afflicted’s eyes, I could see a war of emotion. Fear was a big one. Hope was another.

  I strongly suspected that hope was that I would sever the bond between him and the door, freeing him.

  “Jamie,” I said. “You’re going to have to walk me through this.”

  “You’ll get infected. We don’t know you’re safe.”

  “If I’m not, I’m not,” I said. And if you are infected, like I suspect, I’m either going to get answers or I’m going to go to pieces anyway.

  “That’s not very convincing,” Jamie said.

  “Work with me,” I said. I turned to the guinea pig. “Just—”

  “Sy,” Jamie said. He grabbed my shoulder, pulling me back and away. The darker emotions flared, the abandonment, the fear, and in the wholeness of each of those emotions, I felt very far from human.

  I realized I was pointing the knife at a very still Jamie.

  “Work with me,” I said, very firmly. “And stand back.”

  Jamie nodded slowly.

  I looked at the victim. “As for you…”

  The confused hope in his eyes became fear and confusion as I touched the blade to his shoulder, instead of the ropy growth.

  “…Try not to make too much noise while I’m cutting. There are people out there who would interrupt us, and you don’t want me to stop halfway.”

  Previous Next

  Cut to the Quick—11.10

  “If you really want to do this,” Jamie said. “We’re going to need tools.”

  “We’ve got what we have,” I said. I used my knife to cut open my patient’s jacket sleeve so I could peel the jacket back and away.

  “I don’t understand,” the patient said, his voice small. “My whole arm?”

  “It’s not your arm anymore,” I said to the patient. To Jamie, I sai
d, “Work with me here.”

  His expression was dead serious, his voice calm, almost pacifying, “I’m working with you, Sy. I just don’t understand what’s motivating you here. If it was a child, I could almost understand, but—”

  “If you don’t tell me where to cut, I’m going to guess,” I said.

  “Expose the collarbone,” Jamie said. “Start at the midway point, cut to the shoulder.

  “That far back?” I asked.

  “After you’ve sterilized the blade and the site.”

  “I don’t have anything for that,” I said. “We’ll get him treatment after.”

  If the infection doesn’t extend well past the localized site, I thought.

  As I drew the knife across the line of the collarbone itself, to the shoulder. My patient jerked, and his eyes widened as blood welled out. “Don’t look.”

  “I can hear what you’re saying, even if I don’t look,” the man said.

  “Shush,” I said.

  “We’re looking for the major veins and arteries here. We’re going to need to tie them off.”

  “Oh, okay,” I said. “I know where the important ones are. I don’t have anything to tie them with, though. Do I dig now?”

  “Don’t you know what you’re doing?” my patient asked me. “What’s going on?”

  “Quiet,” I told him. “Stop asking questions, you won’t like the answers. I have no earthly idea what I’m doing, but between my friend and I, we’re the only chance you have at getting better here.”

  “What?” my patient asked.

  “Don’t cut now,” Jamie said. “We’re going to leave the collarbone alone for now. Cut from the top of the shoulder, across the mid-point of the shoulderblade, far enough under the armpit without cutting the muscles and structure there, then around at the front, so it forms a full circle. Skin deep.”

  I nodded, visualizing the steps.

  Halfway through the process, my patient lashed out involuntarily with his free hand. I stumbled back.

  “You cut something important,” he said, panting. He had a wild look in his eyes. “The pain, I’m sorry.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Raise your arm as much as you can.”

  He did. I returned to the cutting site, beneath the armpit. This time, however, I used my fingers and not the knife.