The Waking Dark

by Robin Wasserman

  “We’re working on it.” Her eyes rested on Cass.

  That was the reason for all the needles, Cass realized, and all the tests. She’d been their weapon; now she was supposed to be their cure. Except she’d failed. And now people were dead.

  “There’s nothing we can synthesize for a large population. Not yet. And in the meantime, the whole town —”

  “Milo,” Daniel said abruptly. And then, before anyone could stop him, he was gone, too.

  “Where the hell is he going?” Dr. Fiske said.

  “You just told him his eight-year-old brother is out there with a bunch of people who are about to go hard-core nuts,” Jule spit out. Cass thought that “about to” seemed generous. “Where do you think he’s going?”

  “Someone needs to go retrieve him,” the doctor said. “None of you are safe here. We have to get to the border, and over it, as quickly as possible. They’ll let you through on my word.”

  “You think he’s going to just trot back here and forget about Milo? On your say-so?”

  “Then we go without him.”

  “I take it back,” Jule said. “West, feel free to rip her head off.”

  Jule crept along Sixth Street and Court, looping her way circuitously toward the Ghent house, crawling through bushes and hiding behind trees. She felt ridiculous. It was hard to take seriously the thought that if she bumped into Leo Fletcher, the local butcher, he’d take after her with his meat cleaver. Or that Barbara Boone, upon spotting her passing beneath her window, would raid her husband’s Civil War gun collection and open fire. But humiliating or not, when she got the opportunity to crouch in a bush or duck behind a tree trunk, she took it. Jule knew, better than anyone, how a drug could wake the hidden monster. That there was always a monster.

  This wasn’t the smart move. They’d all agreed to wait a few hours, let the town’s panic and fury die down before trying to make it to the border. The smart move would be to get to the swamps, hide out on her own territory until it was time to meet the others. Or maybe ditch the others altogether, and go it alone, as she always did. Instead, here she was, sneaking back into the lion’s den with nothing but a gun she didn’t know how to use and a knife she didn’t want to. Here she was, because Daniel had been there when she needed him; because Daniel might need her, and no one ever did that; because Milo was a less irritating child than most. Because this was a good day to save someone.

  She didn’t have to apologize for what had happened to the parasite, or make amends, or repent, she assured herself. Surely even Ellie King would have to agree with that.

  But saving someone – that would be good.

  It was slow going, and she couldn’t afford slow. Conveniently, the mayor’s car lot was right on her way. So she picked out a likely-looking car – not so posh it would have cutting-edge security features, not so crappy it wouldn’t run – and smashed the window with a rock. She cracked open the paneling under the steering column, stripped the two red wires, twisted them together, touched them to the brown ignition wire while revving the engine, said a silent thank-you for Scott’s long-ago lessons, and was on her way. Too many of the roads were still impassable, and she had to drive several blocks out of her way, but she made it to Daniel’s house before he did.

  Staying true to his promise, Milo refused to let her in.

  She’d always been crap at waiting, especially when wired with enough nervous energy to power a city. And sitting on the porch staring out at the empty road left her too open to the worries crowding in, to the thought of what would happen if Daniel ran into the wrong person on his way, and the question of what she would do if he never arrived. So she decided to distract herself by having a look around.

  She started with the shed.

  The girl had a halo.

  Or it was just the sun.

  Of many things, the Preacher was no longer sure.

  “Come to save me, angel of mercy?” the Preacher said when she ripped off the duct tape. His fingers were numb, his stomach empty. More than anything, he wanted a drink. This was a long time to go without a drink.

  The angel stared.

  “Or maybe you come to kill me?” the Preacher said. “Same thing now, isn’t it?”

  The angel stared.

  “You a mute?” the Preacher asked.

  He’d given up on trying to get out of the knots himself. The rope was too thick, his son’s work too sure.

  He’d given up because of the things he wanted to do when he got loose. The things the devil wanted him to do, or maybe it was the Lord, or maybe the liquor.

  “I’ll kill them all,” he said. “You let me out of here, and I’ll bring down the wrath of God.”

  His own son had imprisoned him – his own son, doing the work of the devil.

  Or his son was on the side of the angels, saving his father from himself, as was his duty and his way.

  The Preacher was used to noise in his head, but now the noise was deafening. A man could drown in that noise. A man could lose himself.

  He really wanted a drink.

  The angel looked so sad, and in her sadness, she was beautiful, and he told her so. She reminded him of his wife, and he told her that, too, and that death would come for her and that death would soon come for them all and that maybe this was right and this was good.

  He told her that he was rotting from the inside out, and of all things, of this he was most sure, because this was the truth at the heart of his life.

  The noise in his head was calling for blood, and so he did what he always did when the noise got too loud, and fixed his mind on his wife, who was dead, and his sons, who still lived, and the man he once was, who would have died to save them.

  “I’m sorry,” the angel said, then closed the door and returned him to the dark.

  When Daniel finally got there, Jule was waiting on the porch.

  “Milo’s safe,” she said.

  He didn’t ask how she’d gotten there first or why she was there at all, just blew past her, into the house, and scooped his brother into his arms.

  She watched him squeeze Milo unbearably tight and kiss the boy’s forehead and try not to cry, and when the moment had passed, she filled them in on the plan, the laying low and the rendezvous point and the getting across the border. She didn’t ask Daniel about what she’d seen in the shed. There was comfort in knowing that she wasn’t the only one who’d done things this week, things she wouldn’t want to admit. And there was comfort in knowing that Daniel was tougher than he looked. That he could do what needed to be done.

  After looking in the Preacher’s eyes and hearing the death in his voice, she had no doubt it had needed to be done.

  They had two hours to wait. They locked Milo in the house, just in case, and they waited together on the porch, watching the road and the trees in case someone came for them, and wondering how a place that seemed so peaceful could be anything but.

  “Do you believe her? The doctor?” he asked. “Is any of this possible?”

  “Do I believe there’s some magic crap in the ground that turns people evil? Of course not. Whatever it is, they brought it in. Or they made it. Whatever. But the rest of what she said? What she said it’s doing to us…?” She thought about her stepfather, her uncle, Baz. The townspeople crowded around Cass, begging for fire. “Yeah, I believe it.”

  “I don’t know. The idea that a drug could make good people suddenly want to do terrible things…”

  Spoken like someone who hadn’t crossed paths with very many drugs, Jule thought. “Or it just gives them permission to do all the terrible things they’ve secretly always wanted to do,” she said. Of course it would make the perfect weapon: Imagine the possibilities for stealth warfare, plausible deniability. Step back and watch the enemy destroy itself.

  “People aren’t like that. Not most of them.”

  “Not most of them. All of them.”

  “And what about the ones who are fighting it?” he said. “That Jason kid seemed okay.�
�

  “Seemed. You trust that?”

  He didn’t answer.

  You couldn’t trust your own father, she almost said. But she didn’t.

  “I don’t even trust myself,” he said finally. “This immunity thing – if she’s wrong about that…”

  It hurt to breathe, thinking about Milo inside the house waiting for them to save him. Trusting them. “I know.”

  Daniel examined her face. She forced herself not to fidget under his gaze. It wasn’t that it made her uncomfortable – not the way she usually felt when men watched her, at least. Their gaze was a demand; Daniel’s was a question. “Has something —” He stopped and course-corrected. “Do you feel like you’re not immune? Like something’s different?”

  “You think they feel like something’s different? I think the only difference is they’re having fun.”

  “Then we’re probably safe, since I don’t think there’s any danger of that. But…”

  “Say it.”

  “If you were feeling weird, or if weird stuff was, I don’t know… happening…”

  She thought about the knife that she couldn’t seem to let go of, and the way it kept finding its way into her hands. She thought about what she’d seen in the shed. Maybe she wasn’t the only one who was going a little crazy.

  Or maybe he’d conclude that she wasn’t immune after all, and was a danger to him and his brother and all things good and wholesome, and would do what needed to be done.

  “No weirder than usual.”

  Daniel shook his head. “This is crazy. All of it.”

  Before Jule knew it, she was laughing, and Daniel looked at her like she was the crazy one. Then he started laughing, too. They sat there on the porch, shoulders heaving with laughter, and so she didn’t have to confess that laughing was just something that happened when she was too frightened to cry.

  Eventually the laughter drained away, and so did their words. They sat together quietly, and waited, and then, finally, it was time.

  Jule and the others had agreed to meet in the swamps by the trailer park. It was out of the way, off the town’s radar, a mile from an isolated stretch of Route 8, and native ground for Jule, which would give her the advantage, if it came to that. It was pretty clear why the doctor was so determined to help them get out of town, and there was something unnerving about being so obviously used as currency. Jule allowed herself a moment to wonder whether life in a town full of burgeoning psychopaths would be better or worse than life as a lab rat, but even in the best of times, she lived by a simple motto: Anything’s better than Oleander.

  So she led the two brothers to the edge of the property, where she’d parked the stolen car.

  Milo took in the smashed window and the wires poking out of the steering column. “You gonna hot-wire it?” he asked, like she’d just told him she could fly.

  “Of course she’s not,” Daniel said. “It’s not as easy as it looks in the —” He broke off as the engine roared to life. “Do I want to ask how you know how to do that?”

  “Do you even have to ask? I’m a Prevette.”

  She hated reminding him, and proving that she was just like the rest of them after all.

  But he grinned. “Lucky for us.”

  This is crazy, West thought as they snuck out of the trailer and crawled their way across town, like criminals, like rats. This is crazy, as they hiked out to the trailer park and then past it, forging through overgrown weeds and past culverts of sewage in search of the landmarks Jule had described, the scarred weeping willow and the lakelike thing in the shape of a comma. His ribs hurt more with every breath and his bruised face throbbed, but the pain in his leg drove out everything else, stabbing him with every step. It was all crazy: the idea that the town had gone mad; the thought that Cass had nearly been killed; the news that Cass was innocent; the fact that he was taking his cues from Jule Prevette, that he was in league with Oleander’s fallen saint and son of a preacher man, that he was fleeing the only home he’d ever wanted. But there was the crimson cast to the sky; there were his parents. It explained too much not to be true. It explained everything, except…

  “How would we know if we weren’t immune?” he asked the doctor.

  “You are.”

  “But if we weren’t… I mean, would it cause, like, hallucinations? Or something?”

  “Are you having hallucinations?”

  “Of course not,” he said quickly.

  What he was having… whatever the thing that called himself Nick turned out to be… hallucination wasn’t the word for it. He had no word for it.

  He refused the word ghost. Better to be crazy than to start believing in that.

  Unfortunately, you couldn’t help what you believed in.

  “But if we were?” Ellie put in. “Seeing things? Or hearing… voices?”

  “Inoculation doesn’t always confer complete immunity,” the doctor admitted as they penetrated the woods. “Think of it like an allergy shot. You might not be deathly allergic anymore, but you might still have a light reaction… a rash, a scratchy throat. Nothing to worry about.”

  “Sure,” West said. “Nothing at all to worry about.”

  It had seemed so real, speaking with Nick’s voice, touching him with Nick’s fingers.

  Urging him to do things Nick would never want him to do.

  Except he hadn’t really known Nick at all, had he? So who was he to say?

  The thought led him to Jason, who was, according to this woman, a lost cause. But Jason had only aimed the gun; he hadn’t shot it. Was he still himself? West didn’t know him well enough to make that call. But he seemed like someone Nick could have cared about. He seemed aware that something in him had broken, and like he was trying to piece it back together.

  West slowed his pace to put some space between himself and the others, to give himself the space to think. But Cass dropped back with him, and brushed her fingers across his swollen cheek. “What happened to your face?” she asked quietly. “What happened to you?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  She let it go; that was their way. “I wanted to say thank you,” she told him.

  He looked at his feet. “You should thank Ellie.”

  “I will. But I should thank you, too. For today and… before. In the shed.”

  West shrugged.

  “Why’d you do that?” she asked. “When you knew what I did.”

  “It wasn’t your fault, Cass.”

  “Does that matter? I did it.”

  “Because you couldn’t help yourself.”

  “How do you know?”

  He couldn’t; he didn’t. “What about Grace?” he asked instead.

  “What about her?”

  “That stuff supposedly makes you kill everyone in sight, right? But you didn’t touch Grace.”

  Cass shrugged. “Maybe she didn’t get there in time.”

  “Or somehow maybe you managed to fight it – to stop yourself in time.”

  “But if I did… it wasn’t in time,” she said. “It wasn’t soon enough.”

  He started to argue, but she shook her head, and made a face he recognized from before, the expression that had appeared when she was too polite to simply ask him to stop droning on about football or farming. The expression that said Please. Spare me.

  He did.

  “And you still haven’t answered my question,” she said. “Why did you help me before? Before you knew?”

  West didn’t know what to tell her. How was he supposed to explain when he wasn’t sure himself? “We were friends,” he said. “Simple as that.”

  “Were we?”

  “Of course we were. Are. Why would you even ask that?” But he knew why: because of all the things he’d never told her and the things she’d known better than to ask, because of the nights they’d spent not talking and not touching, because he’d liked her as much as he was able to, but no more.

  “It’s funny how we’ve all known each other since we were in di
apers,” she said. “But then sometimes it feels like no one knows anyone, not really.”

  “Cass, look, I’m sorry if —”

  “I guess that’s why I liked it. With you, I mean. It felt like we could know each other without really knowing each other, and that was okay, you know?” She laughed softly. “That doesn’t make any sense. But I wanted to say it.”

  “It makes sense,” he said. And even though they were tramping through a swamp on their way to face down armed military determined to pen them in with a town full of crazy, he smiled. “Sort of.”