Shattered Sky

by Neal Shusterman

  But she’s not a shard.

  Damn it! He didn’t know why that should matter. He had seen how Michael and Lourdes had been so close in the dark days—just like he and Deanna had been—but once their parasites were gone, they no longer clung to one another with the same desperation. In the end, Michael had spurned Lourdes. Who’s to say that Dillon and Deanna might not have suffered the same fate had she survived?

  He had a dozen logical rationalizations, but none that made him feel any better.

  Let yourself love her, he told himself. Maddy is good for you. Learn to be still, and let yourself love her.

  Dillon didn’t leave her room until dawn, but he didn’t go back to his own room. Instead, he crept quietly up to the garden to watch the sun rise, turning the glass towers of Houston into spires of fire.

  Stillness. It was an amazing thing to Dillon. He had forgotten what it was like to have a barrier between his mind and a tumultuous world. Even a barrier of lead-lined crystal was better than no barrier at all. Perhaps this was a retreat worth lingering in for a few more hours. A few more days. Perhaps Tessic’s containment was the only containment he’d ever know.

  From the garden, Dillon went down to Tessic’s workshop, passing the sketches of towers and trains, until coming to Tessic’s desk. In the center of Tessic’s desk, Dillon left an olive branch he had taken from the garden. Then he returned to Maddy’s bed, pressed against her until he could feel her heartbeat, and finally released his resistance, letting stillness infuse him.

  22. CHAMBER OF HORRORS

  * * *

  DREW BRUSHED AN UNCOMFORTABLY LONG LOCK OF HAIR back from his face, then took a second Suprax and a third Vicodin in the hotel lobby before taking the elevator back to the room he shared with Winston. The antibiotic was a one-a-day deal, but he figured he could use all the protection he could get. As for the painkiller, he suspected he was developing an addiction, but it was worth it to numb the pain that now shot up his entire arm. He imagined his long, straggly blond hair and uneven facial growth already made him look like an addict.

  The Dallas Galleria Westin was supposed to be an upscale establishment, but the hotel’s infrastructure was in an accelerated decline. Only three of six elevators worked, the bell counter was permanently unmanned, the granite floors were unpolished and every corner bred forms of trash that no one bothered to remove. As service was the first thing to go these days, Drew found himself grateful for whatever services remained. Housekeeping, room service. Hotels were closing their doors at alarming rates, and once housekeeping decayed it was impossible to stay open for business. All else considered, the Westin was holding its own.

  As he rode up in the crowded elevator, he thought about the last few hours. Four hours of waiting at an understaffed clinic, on Halloween morning. Under other circumstances, it would have been hell, but instead it was a welcome respite from Winston.

  “That’s some infection you got there,” the doctor had said with the weariness of a man who had little desire left to practice medicine. He studied the curved line of dark stitches across Drew’s forearm. “How’d this happen?”

  Since Drew was already losing track of the lies he had to tell, he simply said, “Graverobbing accident.”

  The doctor chuckled, assuming it was just Halloween humor. Turned out the truth solicited fewer questions than any lie he could have told.

  The wound looked awful. Rings of purple swelled around the gash, and streaks of red shot all the way down his wrist into his palm, which was also swollen. “How bad’s the infection?” Drew asked.

  The doctor poked at his stitches gently, but not gently enough. Drew grimaced from the pain. “Looks like it goes pretty deep. Did the nurse take your temperature?” He looked at the chart to answer his own question. “101. Hmm.” He felt Drew’s glands, looked down at his throat, then returned his attention to the wound. “There’s an odd pattern to it,” the doctor commented. “Mottled rings around the trauma, as if . . .”

  “As if the flesh keeps dying and regenerating over and over?”

  The doctor raised his gaze to catch Drew’s eye, but only for an instant. “As if it wasn’t getting proper circulation.” And then he added, “Besides, flesh doesn’t regenerate the way you suggest.”

  It does around Winston Pell, he wanted to say, but instead was silent, and endured a diatribe about cleanliness and maintenance of the wound. The doctor asked about other symptoms, then palpated his spleen. “Normally this kind of a bacterial intrusion would trigger an alarm in your immune system. The pus around the wound is actually a good sign . . . still . . .” He glanced once more at the chart. “Are you allergic to any prescription medications?”

  He redid the stitches, then gave Drew an antibiotic injection and the two oral prescriptions, then sent him on his way, with instructions to return if his fever wasn’t gone in two days.

  Now, as the hotel elevator rose, nearing the twenty-fifth floor, he could already feel his arm, which had grown mercifully numb, begin to ache again. He could feel the new flesh regenerating to replace the dying, gangrenous flesh around the wound—but not fast enough to battle the bacteria that had also begun to grow and reproduce at an unnatural rate. Winston’s broadcast of growth was not selective.

  Winston’s effect on Drew’s wound had been bearable before, but something had happened that day on the plane. Something had inexplicably changed him. It was a change for the worse as far as Drew was concerned, because the last thing Winston needed was an increase in power.

  Winston was exactly as Drew had left him that morning; curled up on his bed, curtains drawn. He slept while the TV flickered a god-awful 70s cop show on an off station. Drew’s bed was made, but only because he had done it himself before he left.

  Drew pulled the DO NOT DISTURB sign from the outside doorknob. “Dude, what good is maid service if you never let them in?”

  Winston groaned and stirred beneath his covers. Drew reached into the bag he was carrying and threw a 7-11 po’ boy at his head.

  “I’ve checked us out, so get your sorry black ass out of bed.”

  Winston glared at him. “Eat me.”

  “Another place, another time,” Drew said with a wink.

  Winston grunted, and rolled over, so Drew grabbed the covers with his good arm and tore them off. “I’m not kidding. We’re outta here.”

  “Why the hell would you go and do a dumb-ass thing like checking us out?”

  “A final act of sanity,” Drew answered. “Maybe you’ve grown used to it, but this room smells like roadkill in a rainforest.” Drew pulled on a peeling piece of wallpaper, revealing the flaky mildew that had taken hold of the drywall beneath. No doubt all the adjacent rooms were suffering from Winston’s effect as well. “Welcome to the petrie dish. A few more days and the mold in these walls is gonna demand the right to vote.”

  “You’re exaggerating.”

  “Am I?” He reached up, flicking up the ends of his shoulder-length blond hair, for Winston to see just how long it was. “I don’t think so.”

  “You look like Jesus,” Winston commented.

  “Well, I did come back from the dead once,” Drew commented, “but that’s old news.” He found Winston’s socks on the floor, and tossed them to him. “I don’t even want to know what’s growing in there.”

  When Winston began going about the motions of dressing, Drew went into the bathroom. “Better watch out,” he called to Winston, “this morning there was a bedbug under my pillow the size of a Volkswagen.” Drew studied his face in the mirror. He barely recognized himself anymore. “What the hell are we doing here?” he asked his reflection. He didn’t expect an answer, either from himself or from Winston. Four days ago, Drew had spirited a hysterical Winston out of the unfortunately ventilated airplane, and calmed him down enough to get him here. He wouldn’t discuss what had triggered that seizure on the plane—offered no explanation for the quantum leap in his power. It was, of course, just like Winston to keep such things to himself, but
with Tory’s ashes thrown to the wind, Winston had also lost all direction, all motivation. That was unlike him. Winston was always up to something in his own abrasive, antagonistic way. To see him beaten left Drew treading water. He couldn’t leave him like this, but being in Winston’s presence was poisoning Drew with an aggravated infection. At the very least, Drew wanted to point them both in some hopeful direction, but Winston wanted to do nothing but sleep. Now he cultured futility like bacteria, and it was contagious.

  Grabbing a can of shaving cream from the bathroom counter, Drew lathered up, as he had done every day for four days. He began with his face. His scant facial hair had come in fuller each day. Now he had straggly mutton chops that didn’t quite stretch to his chin. He shaved them off, losing every last bit of sideburn, and higher still, until the razor began to clog with longer hair. Even though the throbbing of his arm made it hard to concentrate on even this simple task, he found the slow, smooth strokes of the razor soothed him, provided him a Zen-like focus. The shaving ritual had begun to take on a monastic flavor. He cut away his long locks with scissors, then lathered his scalp, picked up a fresh razor, and brought it back and forth in short strokes, clear-cutting inch by inch until his entire scalp was shaven and smooth. He was getting used to the shaving ritual, and that frightened him.

  When he was done, he studied his shaven head in the mirror—a reflection as unfamiliar to him as the one he had first seen entering the room. The only thing that seemed the same were his eyes, glassy from his growing fever. He watched his reflection for a minute or two, until he could see his clean-shaven scalp begin to fill with fine peach fuzz. For an instant, a wave of anger overcame him; a sudden surge of hatred. He closed his eyes, inundated by it. It’s just the pain, he told himself. It’s just the fever. He didn’t go back to Winston until it subsided, but the undercurrent was still there.

  Winston, still in his underclothes, had made no move to get dressed. Instead he studied a particularly nasty spot of mildew on the wall near his bed. “We need Tory here,” he said longingly. “She’d sanitize the place. Maybe even kill the mold, too, who knows. Her power added to mine. It was really something, you know?”

  “Yeah, but she’s not here,” said Drew, with hostility he didn’t expect. “She’ll never be here. She’s fertilizing half of Texas by now, okay?”

  Winston turned to look at him. “You’re an asshole,” he said, and used it as an excuse to get back into bed.

  “That’s it, I’m outta here. You can lie there until you’re eaten alive by athlete’s foot for all I care.”

  “Close the door behind you,” was all Winston said.

  He would have left. He had every intention of it, but as he neared the door, he felt his legs go out. He landed on his knees, and gripped the doorknob, but only to keep himself from flopping to the ground. He could feel the fever in every joint. It had skyrocketed in the few minutes he had spent in Winston’s presence. Damn Winston. Damn him.

  He tried to get to his feet and complete his exit, but found he was just too dizzy. When he turned, he saw that, wonder of wonders, Winston had actually gotten out of his bed, but he kept his distance.

  “I had a life, you know?” Drew found himself ranting, grimacing through the chills and body aches. “I mean, yeah, friggin’ high school track, not very important, but it was my life, mine, and I was happy keeping my head in the sand like everyone else, pretending the world wasn’t falling apart.”

  Winston took a step closer. “Let me see your arm.”

  “Just stay away. The closer you are, the worse it gets.”

  Winston didn’t listen, and Drew didn’t have the strength to ward him off. As Winston came closer, the pain in Drew’s arm exponentiated. He could feel the pull of the stitches, smell the sickly stench of infection. He felt it would explode. The room now spun faster, the floor and walls switched places. A trap door sprung in his mind, and he found himself slipping away from consciousness. He offered no resistance.

  There was nothing to mark the passage of time. If he had dreams, they were lost. When he came to, he was on his bed, and the curtains were open. Winston was gazing out at the late afternoon sun, fully dressed. Their backpacks, that carried what little they had brought with them, were packed and resting on a chair.

  “The front desk already called,” Winston said, “wondering why we haven’t vacated the room.”

  Drew’s left arm felt curiously light and numb. He raised it to find the dressing around the wound was gone. So was the wound. No stitches, scar or discolored flesh, no hint that his arm had ever been wounded at all!

  “Winston . . .” Drew continued to stare at his arm. He turned his wrist, as if perhaps the wound could have switched to the other side. Although he did still feel a bit weak, his fever had broken as well.

  “Winston, how did you do this? You can’t heal a wound, or fight an infection.”

  “No, I can’t,” Winston said calmly.

  There was a pillowcase in the corner, overstuffed and tied closed with a shoelace. “What’s that?”

  “Towels, mostly,” Winston answered.

  “Mostly?”

  Drew got up to inspect it more closely. As he neared the overstuffed pillowcase, he could see there were some stains on it. Blood stains.

  Winston can’t fight an infection, thought Drew, his art is growth, and regeneration. The regeneration of flesh. And bone. Drew reached for the shoelace to open the mouth of the bag, but Winston grabbed his arm, before he could.

  “I’m asking you not to look inside,” Winston said. “I’m asking you not to question what I did. Not unless you really want to hear the answer.”

  Drew looked at the back of his left hand—his perfect left hand. It was a bit pale—substantially less tanned than his right hand. Drew felt a brief instant of nausea, but chased it away. “Trick or treat,” he said. This was a little bit of both, perhaps.

  “I think I saw that bedbug you were talking about,” Winston said, grabbing the pillowcase with one hand, and his backpack with the other. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not hang much longer.”

  They left the key in the room, the bloody pillowcase in a Dumpster, and drove out into the melee of All Hallow’s Eve.

  THE STRANGENESS OF THE times only fueled Halloween. Usurped from the children, the holiday had fallen even further into the hands of adults. This year, the parties began early, for people were, now more than ever, eager to lose themselves in masquerade and alcohol. For those not satisfied with partying, the streets offered other recreation. It was amazing the things that would burn.

  Winston saw eerily costumed commuters in the cars around them as he and Drew attempted to leave downtown Dallas. He supposed the fetid state in which they left their hotel room qualified as a particularly macabre Halloween prank. With nowhere else to go, and most roads clogged with partygoers and traffic accidents, Winston drove them to Cowboys Stadium, where the Packers played the Cowboys in an under-attended game. Winston was not surprised by the lack of attendance. Since random acts of violence were no longer isolated incidents but a veritable plague, attending any large public gathering was taking one’s life into one’s hands. The most die-hard sports fans were leaving their season tickets in the drawer. “All part of the big picture,” Dillon would say—as if the hammer on every gun was just a cog in some cosmic Rube Goldberg machine.

  Winston and Drew didn’t watch the game. Instead they stood on the abandoned top concession circle, looking out over the parking lot and suburban Dallas beyond, counting the plumes of smoke.

  “Hell night,” Winston explained. The fires had begun even before the sun had set, and now, as the last light of dusk slipped from the sky, the night was aglow with distant pockets of flame.

  Drew shook his head. “They don’t do this in Southern California.”

  “They will this year.”

  Winston glanced at the space around them. The entire concession level was closed, and lit only by the stadium lights spilling through the
access tunnels that led to the stands. Most everything else on the level was cast in shadows. It was as good a place as any to privately bring Drew up to speed. Winston told Drew everything that he had kept from him. All that he knew, or at least all he thought he knew.

  Rather than being distressed by the news of the three intruders, Drew appeared relieved. Perhaps knowing the face of doom was better for him than waiting for it in the dark.

  “And these three . . . phantoms you’re talking about—you think they’re looking for you?”

  “No,” answered Winston. “They’re not looking for me. That’s the problem.”

  “Three ghouls out there, and they’re not looking for you. Maybe I’m a moron, but I don’t exactly see that as a problem.”

  Winston sighed. “It means that whatever they’re up to, I no longer figure into their equation. They’ve completely dismissed me.”

  “So, you think there was a point when you did mean something to them?”

  “I know there was.”

  “You were a threat to them?”

  “Not just me,” Winston said. “Dillon, Lourdes—Tory and Michael as well. Maybe even Deanna.”

  “Fear of the dead?” asked Drew.

  “Fear of their recovery,” Winston answered.

  “But you’re not a threat anymore?”

  Winston shook his head. “We’re nothing to them now. I can sense it.” Winston gave Drew a few moments, watching him piece it all together.

  “They had to make certain one piece of the whole was destroyed forever,” Drew concluded. “So they sent Briscoe to destroy Michael’s remains, but he failed, so he went after Tory instead!”

  “And the moment Tory’s ashes were scattered to the sky,” added Winston, “it was safe for the three to enter this world.”

  Drew pursed his lips, shaking his head. “There’s still something that I don’t get. You’re not a threat to them, yet your powers increased the moment they arrived. Why?”