One of Us

by Craig DiLouie

  Fresh meat. New kids to entertain and annoy.

  The girl scowled at him. Her black hair fell over half her face, which sprouted foot-long whiskers. She ate her ice cream with giant clawed hands, holding the bowl close to her face while one big hand worked spoons like they were chopsticks. The kid on the right looked no older than maybe seven. Chocolate sauce smeared his cheeks. Six skinny arms sprouted from his torso.

  “You got all those arms and you still managed to get fudge all over your face,” Goof said. “You can’t have one of them hold a napkin?”

  The kid grinned. One of his arms slithered over his shoulder and pointed at an untouched sundae on the table. “You gonna eat that?”

  “Hell, yeah, I’m gonna eat it,” Goof said. “It’s mine. Don’t even look at it.”

  “You better hurry up, or it’s gonna melt.”

  Goof sat and spooned ice cream into his mouth. Closed his eyes in bliss. Wished Dog were here eating it with him instead of sitting in some jail.

  “What can you do?” the girl said.

  “How about you tell me your name, pretty lady.”

  “I asked you first.”

  “If you don’t tell me, I’m just gonna call you Gorgeous.”

  “I’m Pussy,” the girl said.

  “But of course you are,” Goof said, doing his best James Bond.

  “Everybody calls me Mr. Hand,” the other kid said. “What are you so sad about?”

  “I ain’t sad. I’m smiling.”

  The kid tilted his head. “Oh, yeah. Right.”

  “How old are you, anyway?”

  “Thirteen,” Mr. Hand said. “I stopped growing a long time ago.”

  “Where you from?”

  “Kentucky. Pussy here is from the same Home as me.”

  “So what can you do?” Goof said.

  “If it’s locked, I can open it,” the kid bragged.

  “Cool. What about you, Gorgeous?”

  The girl smiled, splaying her whiskers. She clenched her hand in a massive fist. “If it ain’t broke, I can break it. Are you broke?”

  “My face is upside-down. You tell me.”

  “So what about you? Let me guess. You make people laugh uncontrollably until they poop their drawers. They’ll drop you on Communist China and make the whole country crap itself to death.”

  Goof pictured it. “That would actually be awesome. Alas, no. I finish people’s sentences.”

  “You mean like you—”

  “Know what people are gonna say?” he finished, even including her Kentucky accent, which was spiced with more twang and less drawl. “Yup. That’s what I do.”

  She went back to scowling. “I thought this was a place for specials.”

  “Specials?”

  “Kids with special abilities.”

  “I’ll have you know I am a secret agent.” Goof chomped his sundae’s cherry. “I am very useful around here.”

  “I’m sure you are,” the girl said.

  “I can do something else, Gorgeous. Say something.”

  “Like what.”

  “Anything.”

  “How about your face is so stupid I want to—”

  “Drop my spoons,” Goof said.

  The spoons clattered on the table.

  Pussy stared at him with wide eyes.

  Goof laughed. He’d been right.

  He had guessed at it soon after he’d first come to this place. The Bureau man had told him he’d just earned himself—

  A hat, Goof finished.

  But that wasn’t what Shackleton was going to say. Goof had said it just to be funny. The next day, the man gave him a fedora. Every other day since. Just handed it over and said, Here’s that fedora you wanted, like it was perfectly natural to give somebody a hat every other day. Goof had a pile of them now.

  Two days ago, he’d tried again. Waited all day for the right opportunity. Then Shackleton said, Pretty soon we’re gonna have to—

  Let Jeff see the other kids in Special Facility, Goof finished.

  Today, he got his wish.

  Shackleton owned him. He owned Shackleton. He had an incredible secret hiding in plain sight. He was like a superhero whose public identity was being a superhero with different powers.

  Pussy’s head slowly pivoted toward Mr. Hand. “What you think?”

  The kid grinned. “Oh, yeah. He’s in.”

  “In what?” Goof said.

  “Can we trust you with something?”

  “I never understand why people ever ask that question.”

  “Because if we can’t, we got a problem.”

  “You can trust me with your life.” Goof raised two fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

  The girl leaned on the table. “We’re fixin’ to bust out of this place.”

  “Now you’re being funny.”

  “You want to work for Shackleton the rest of your natural born days?”

  “No,” Goof said. “But they’ll stop us.”

  “Who will? The fat man? He can’t run ten yards.”

  “They got to have more guards for a place like this. We can’t fight them all.”

  “It ain’t just us three,” Pussy told him. “We ain’t the only ones here.”

  “More specials? How many we talking?”

  “A whole lot,” Mr. Hand said.

  Goof thought about it. He didn’t mind rocking the boat, but this was more like trying to capsize it. If they failed, things wouldn’t be easy around here anymore. Special Facility would go from being a virtual prison to the very real kind. But if they succeeded, he’d be free. He could go home.

  With enough specials, they could do it. If they fought together all at once, it might just work. If it didn’t, he could plant the idea in Shackleton’s mind that he had nothing to do with it. After all, he’d just found out he could talk his way out of anything.

  “So?” Pussy said. “You in or out?”

  Goof smiled. He very much wanted in. “You bet.”

  If the BTA wouldn’t go to Huntsville to help, deputized mutagenic asset Jeffrey Baker would.

  He was going home to rescue Dog.

  Thirty-Two

  Amy left her house for school, swinging her new book bag. She thought about showing it to Sally and burst into tears. Every day, it was the same. She went to school expecting to see her friend at her locker, in health class, at dinnertime. Then Amy would remember: She’d never talk to her friend again.

  She’d never get the chance to ask her what was wrong.

  Sally had seemed so sad and troubled in her final days. Amy was so occupied by her own life that she hadn’t asked. Not really asked the way a friend does. Now she’d never know. Sally had taken all her troubles to the grave.

  She stood in the road crying. When she was done, she wiped her face, took a few ragged breaths, and started walking again.

  A peaceful morning. Birdsong and insect buzz. The sun struck the fields with an energizing light. Everything was going back to normal. She was alive and loved and on her way to school. A single moment breaks the world. A thousand moments heal the wound. Every step took her closer in time to healing.

  Thinking that, Amy smiled a little for the first time in days.

  A truck rattled past. The man behind the wheel raised his index finger. She waved back and kept walking.

  Enough moments go by, and anything seems possible again.

  A passing car slowed and rolled to a stop. Mr. Benson looked over from behind the wheel. “Morning, Amy.”

  “Morning, Mr. Benson.”

  “I’m heading to the school. You want me to drive you?”

  Amy thought about Bowie. Her smile died. Panic welled in her chest, up her neck, flooded her brain.

  “Are you okay?” he said, looking baffled.

  She took a deep breath. He ain’t Bowie, she told herself. Bowie’s dead and can never hurt you again. They ain’t all the same. You take people one at a time. Mr. Benson is one of the good ones. He’s a good man, like
Jake.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I’ll share a ride with you.”

  “Happy to take you.”

  She got into the car and took another deep breath. “You live around here?”

  “No, I live up on the hill.”

  “What are you doing all the way out here this morning?”

  The health teacher blanched. “I was staying with a, uh, friend last night.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Well,” he said.

  “Come on, Mr. Benson. You teach sex ed. We all know people do it.”

  He laughed. “A woman who works at the Home. She just quit. Wants to move back to the North. I don’t know why I just told you all that.”

  “It’s good to talk when you’re upset.”

  “Maybe her going is for the best. It hasn’t been easy. She, uh, well.”

  “She ain’t White.”

  Mr. Benson frowned. “Are you psychic or something?”

  “Only two women work at the Home. Both are Black. And this road is a shortcut to the school from the Black part of town.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “I remember there were a big scandal about it,” she said. “Women being allowed to work around the plague kids.”

  “I remember, too.”

  “So you’re seeing one of them.”

  “We don’t advertise it,” he said. “Meaning I hope you’ll keep it to yourself.”

  “I will.”

  “Some folks don’t take to the idea of it. Mixed-race couples, I mean. Attitudes about it are softening a little, but you know. Old ways die long and hard.”

  “You ain’t hurting anybody,” Amy said. “I don’t care.”

  “That’s how it should work.”

  “You might could go with her up North.”

  Mr. Benson laughed again. “I might could. So how about you? How are you doing?”

  “Mama says take it one day at a time. That’s what I’m doing.”

  “And how’s that going for you?”

  “Sally’s gone,” she said. “The rest of us have to keep going.”

  “That’s all we can do. Like you said, one day at a time.”

  He said this absently, his mind troubled not just by Sally’s passing but by his own problems. Amy didn’t want to bother him further, but he was an adult. Smart, too. She wanted to ask him something.

  “You love somebody, you do anything for them, don’t you think?”

  “You really want me to leave, don’t you?”

  “No—”

  “I’m just kidding, Amy. If she asks me, I’ll consider it.”

  “Actually, I was asking, you know, generally. Ain’t that what you do when you’re in love? Love them whole, and keep no secrets from them?”

  “That’s how it’s supposed to work. Of course, it don’t always.”

  “And you do anything for them, don’t you,” Amy said.

  “As long as it isn’t something stupid. That’s the tricky part. And here we are.”

  Mr. Benson turned the wheel and drove into the school parking lot. He parked in a faculty spot. She jumped out and collected her book bag.

  “Thanks, Mr. Benson. See you in class. I hope things work out for you.”

  “Nice talking to you, Amy. And thanks for the kind thought.”

  Amy went to her locker and stowed her bag and the books she didn’t need for her first few classes. In homeroom, she avoided chitchat to work on algebra problems as she still had a mess of classwork to catch up on. She stood for the Pledge of Allegiance, idly wondering if the plague kids went through the same ritual every morning. Then she headed to her first class thinking about Jake.

  Today, she was going to talk to him. She’d made up her mind in the car.

  She was gonna tell Jake everything.

  Sally’s death had taught her life is full of chance. Anything is possible, including getting killed before you really lived. Amy wanted to live her life to the fullest. A true life. That meant taking risks.

  She loved Jake, plain and simple. Love was about trust, taking chances, giving everything and holding nothing back. It wasn’t enough for her to have a normal life. Amy wanted the life she chose and the love she believed in. A love in which she didn’t have to lie to protect herself. A life in which her man loved her back as she was, flaws and all.

  She believed Jake did and would.

  In health class, she passed him a note when Mr. Benson’s back was turned. He scribbled on it with his pencil and slipped it back to her. She waited until the teacher turned away again and read it.

  Yes, we can talk after school. Everything okay?

  Amy nodded, looking at Mr. Benson as he described the female reproductive system he’d drawn on the chalkboard. He was teaching how babies were made.

  Several rows ahead, Archie Gaines turned around and stared. Not at her this time. He directed his intense gaze at Jake. She wondered what was going on in his mind, how he was coping with everything he’d seen. Sally murdered, his daddy mauled by a monster.

  Archie’s face stretched into a wide grin.

  The bell rang. Time for dinner. She collected her books and joined the stream out of class, glad to be away from that strange smile. Jake fell into step alongside her.

  “Troy asked me if it’s okay if he maybe likes Michelle now,” he said.

  “Oh.” Amy wasn’t sure what the rules were on that. “What’d you say?”

  “I told him he might wait until Michelle was maybe ready to like him.”

  “She’s still broken up about Sally.”

  “What about you? Is that what you wanted to talk—”

  Jake staggered as a hand shoved him from behind. He wheeled with a growl.

  “Hey monster lover,” Archie said.

  “Stop being a jerk, Archie Gaines,” Amy said.

  Jake stepped into the boy’s space. “What do you want now?”

  “I was just wondering what you thought of your creepers now after the dog boy killed Sally.”

  Amy gasped.

  “I could have sworn we’d settled this the hard way once already,” Jake said.

  “Meet me after school at the dogwood and we’ll settle it for good.”

  “We’ll do that.”

  Archie winked at Amy. “See you around, honey.”

  “Kiss my go-to-hell,” she told him.

  At dinner, Jake sat glum and distracted. A fight was nothing compared to waiting for the fight. Troy and Michelle weren’t much help, lost in their own emotions. They all picked at their food in the midst of the cafeteria roar.

  Amy sipped milk through her straw and set it down. “What are you gonna do?”

  Jake shrugged. “Try to talk to him. If that don’t work, I reckon I’ll wing it.”

  “I don’t think he’s right in the head,” she said. “Not anymore. He’s changed somehow. I think seeing what that plague boy did to Sally messed him up.”

  “He’s had it rough. He has to understand we lost a friend, too. We’re all grieving.”

  “I get the impression he don’t want to listen. He just wants to fight somebody, and you happen to be handy. You still might have to do it.”

  Jake’s eyes blazed with sudden anger. “I don’t care about fighting. If it happens, I’ll do it, and half of me won’t even know I’m doing it. It’s like I’m watching it happen. I get weirdly calm when I fight. The fight don’t scare me, it’s the fact I’m fighting does. Does that make any sense?”

  “I think so. Is that what’s got you out of kilter?”

  “It’s more than just Archie. The murders have got the whole town riled up. My charity work for the Home has been put on hold indefinitely. People are going out there and taking shots at the plague kids. The whole thing sucks.”

  “They killed our friend,” Michelle said.

  “They didn’t do anything,” Jake said. “One boy did, and he’ll get what’s coming to him. We didn’t have to declare war on them. We push enough, they might declare war back. A lot
of people could get hurt.”

  “The plague kids have been nothing but trouble for me and mine since I first laid eyes on them,” Michelle said. “I’d gladly see them all disappear to get Sally back.”

  “So you’re on Archie’s side?”

  “Hell, no,” she said. “I hope you kick his ass.”

  Jake laughed. Amy loved the sound of it. Even Michelle smiled.

  The bell rang, ending dinner. She gave him a peck on the cheek that thrilled her as much as it did him and ran off to science class blushing. In Science, she watched Archie eyeball Jake, who stared at his fists clenched on his desk. The clock ticked on the wall. God, it was like that old movie High Noon.

  The thing that struck her the most was neither of them looked happy about what was about to happen after school. If they were so darn miserable about it, why were they dead set on doing it?

  And boys thought girls were dumb. Sometimes, boys acted like stupid idiots.

  At last, the bell rang in the final class of this never-ending day. Excited kids flooded the halls, chasing freedom out the door. Amy followed Jake to his locker and watched him toss his books inside. Nothing to weigh him down.

  “If he pulls a knife or something, you run,” she said. “Don’t be a macho man.”

  “He ain’t gonna pull a knife,” he said. “If he wants a fair fight, I’ll give him one. A fair, pointless, stupid fight.”

  Troy and Michelle joined them. They all trooped out of the school together and across the freshly mowed lawn toward the old dogwood tree at the edge of the football field. The rain had stopped. It was a beautiful day.

  Michelle sat on the grass and hugged her knees. “How long are we supposed to wait?”

  “Maybe it’s a setup,” Troy wondered. “His idea of a joke.”

  “I doubt it,” Jake said.

  “If he brings Dan and Earl, I got your back.”

  “I’m still holding out hope it won’t come to a fight. We was best friends once.”

  “Look out,” Michelle said. “Here he comes.”

  Amy squinted in the sunlight. Archie marched across the football field. He came alone. She and her friends waited as he closed the distance with long strides.

  “He looks loaded for bear,” Jake said. “All y’all hang back.”

  He stepped forward to parley. “So what did you want to talk about?”

  Archie walked up to him and punched him in the face with a sickening sound like a hand slapping meat.