Melt (Book 8): Hold

by Pike, JJ

  “I’ve always said that Christine and I make a great team. I’m more adventurous, she’s more conservative. We balance each other out. But this isn’t the time to hold off on the big ideas, Aggie. Millions of people are going to die if we don’t stop this. Millions.”

  She kept on walking. He wasn’t going to change her mind.

  The dogs had kept pace, too, though Reggie was flagging just a little bit.

  “Not all of them are going to die of the infection. That’s only a fraction of the populace. What’s going to kill them is the fallout or the food-chain collapses or wholesale poisoning of the planet.”

  They passed Hannah and Chloe. Michael didn’t acknowledge them any more than Aggie.

  “Best case scenario, MELT only kills the plastic. Let’s look at that one. Plastics across the world are broken down into their component parts and released into the soil or groundwater or ocean.” He wasn’t going to give up. She thought about telling him she’d have a word with her mom, but she didn’t want to lie. “What happens when the building blocks that create the plastics around us are released into the environment? Massive uptick in diseases. I can’t even begin to count how many. Your grandmother’s cancer? Tip of the iceberg.” Cheap shot. He lost points for making it personal in that way. “But that’s the best-case scenario and we know that’s not how it’s going to go. We already have evidence that MELT invades the body. We’re filled with nanoplastics...”

  She knew. She’d heard this lecture from Mom, many times.

  “It’s in our bones, our muscles, our blood. We have no idea when it’s going to be small enough to cross the blood-brain barrier, but they’re microns thick and getting smaller. They break down in the sun when they’re bobbing on the ocean.”

  They were almost back to the house and the hole in the ground. Aggie didn’t want him to know about the silver.

  “Take a look at that dog there.” He pointed at KC. “She has a hole in her back leg. That’s MELT acting on her. It’s eating the muscle.”

  Aggie stopped and checked Barb’s dog. He was right. She had a massive, open wound on her back leg. She couldn’t bear the idea that all the animals in the world were going to be eaten alive. It was too much. Humans? Well, they were humans. They could make decisions for themselves. But the animals? They relied on the humans to keep their world safe. Dogs especially. Someone had to make the world safe. For the animals. She was going to have to send her mother away, just when she’d decided she couldn’t.

  Aggie hated Michael Rayton with every cell in her body. Every.single.last.cell.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  When Alice woke, Bill was crouched over her, smiling. How many times had they done this? A hundred? Two hundred? More? She blacked out and he brought her round. It was too, too shameful. She’d truly believed she was done with that life, but apparently not.

  “You’re awake,” he said. “So’s Paul. Come on, he wants to see you.”

  He helped her to her feet. She patted herself down. Nothing broken. Not even a scratch. She was lucky in that regard. No cuts or scrapes or bruises. That was important for some reason, though she couldn’t place why. Her blackouts were a lot like seizures. There was a piece of memory that was eaten away by the misfiring brain. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation—having white space where your memories should be—but it was familiar.

  Alice couldn’t shake the idea that a very important thing had happened not long ago and there was an invisible lump of emotional garbage squatting in the middle of her chest but she was familiar enough with her post-blackout sensations to know that “things had been said” and she’d lost consciousness.

  New Alice was disappointed. Blacking out wasn’t the way to go. She wanted to be present, conscious, in the driver’s seat.

  Old Alice lit a cigarette and waited, in the cool, old way like Lauren Bacall or Sophia Loren. She knew the seal would break and Alice would remember everything. She wouldn’t be this “glass is half full” creature she was attempting to become once she realized what she’d done. She’d go back to being her old “glass is full of putrescence and terror” self in no time.

  The salt mines were such a great bug-out choice. The walls were rugged and thick, the striations made by the massive, stone-cutting machinery clearly visible from floor to ceiling. The salt was good for the lungs, too. There were salt spas all over the world. People with asthma, acne, and psoriasis flocked to salt rooms in Europe. Bill and Aggie had arranged it so they’d live in an underground paradise while the world outside fell apart. There were worse fates.

  Paul couldn’t sit, but he was conscious and able to talk. He grinned when he saw her.

  Her heart leapt. Being a mother was the best thing she’d ever done even though she’d messed it up at every turn. She wouldn’t have traded it for the world.

  Petra was on the other side of him, holding his hand. Alice slipped her fingers through Bill’s and together they made their way to Paul’s bedside. Bill detached himself so she could sit beside Paul’s camp bed and have an unobstructed view of her darling boy.

  Alice stroked Paul’s face, careful not to lean too close. She’d been told he was susceptible to infection. By someone. Maybe? It was vague, but not to be ignored. She was grateful her glitching mind offered her at least some useful data. “How do you feel?”

  “Like a cement truck backed over me twenty-two times.” He dropped his head to his chest. Was he gasping or grinning? She couldn’t tell. “But the driver wasn’t sure I was a properly-rendered jam-splat, so he revved up and did another twenty-two gut-flattening rounds of ‘squash the human’ just to be sure.” He looked to Bill. “I know you can make a jam joke out of that one for Midge.”

  “You have to call her Margaret, now.” Three people—Petra, Bill, and Nigel—all said it at the same time.

  “Where is she?” Paul looked towards the door of his cave-turned-chamber.

  Nigel looked to Petra. “Want to see if we can bring her?”

  There was a debate about who could and couldn’t be moved. Alice didn’t interrupt. She hadn’t been around enough. She didn’t get a say. She let the sweet, if somewhat bizarre, domesticity of the scenario wash over her while Petra and Nigel helped Dr. Fred set up a camp bed for Margaret the other side of the room. She didn’t recognize the camp beds. Aggie must have gotten them from Jim and Betsy. How wonderfully practical her middle daughter was. They still hadn’t had that talk.

  Talk.

  There’d been a talk. She knew that. The lump in her center shifted. There was a struggle going on, though it was barely part of her conscious mind. Old Alice was begging New Alice not to let it happen.

  Old Alice was “too tired” and “done with this” and “not wanting to go over it again” while New Alice was urging her to “try one more time” and “see if it doesn’t make a difference” and “buck up and get with it; she blacked out and that’s unacceptable; she needs to deal with this NOW.” Odd how New Alice had adopted Old Alice’s tone. She’d always berated herself, internally, for her failings, big and small. Why stop now?

  Midge was chatting to her “litter bearers” as she called them. “Mom! I’m a queen. I get carried around everywhere now. Please meet my humble servants…”

  The room eddied and flowed around Margaret, the children gabbling and joking, the doctors conferring, Mimi and Bryony playing catch in the corridor. Bill was in the corner by himself. She caught him reaching into his pocket and turning something over.

  The garbage in her center shifted one last time, then detached and floated away. It hadn’t been garbage at all. It had been a scab which covered a gaping hole. She was the garbage. She the festering wound. She the one who’d ruined it all.

  She’d broken Bill. No one should be allowed to do that.

  The noise in the cave fell to a low buzz.

  Bill pulled a worry doll out of his pocket. A pretty little Guatemalan worry doll. You put them under your pillow and they took your worries away while you slept. They were l
ike magic.

  And like magic, the door that led out now opened in. The doll might have erased her worries and shut them behind a thick, wooden door, but once opened a door works both ways.

  Back they came, the nightmares she had never vanquished.

  Fran. Guatemala. Mateo.

  Alice stood, pressing her hand against the wall to steady herself.

  No. That wasn’t right. Bill. Guatemala. Mateo.

  Unthinkable, but true. Bill had gone to Guatemala and killed her rapist. She wanted to slap him, thank him, kiss him, hide, die.

  Fran had released MELT into the world because Bill had killed Mateo. This was an act of revenge.

  The end of the world as we know it, brought on by revenge.

  TEOTWAWKI, foisted on all of humanity courtesy of Francesca, my assistant, whom I didn’t suspect for a single second. Fran, whom I trusted. Fran, who stayed close. Fran, who knew all my movements, neuroses, even my secrets. Fran, who would have known who Steven McKan was to her. How galling.

  Her mortal enemy had spawned a child who’d made a home in her bosom.

  Mateo Hernandez had directed the better part of thirty years of Alice’s life and now, here he was, directing the end of the world from beyond the grave.

  Alice blinked and was outside in the Humvee. She blinked again and the gas gauge was on empty. There were papers in her hand: K&P documents, records, numbers, compounds, names; in an envelope in the back were her children’s inoculation records, but that had to be a dream. She couldn’t read. English wasn’t her first language. Language wasn’t her first language. She blinked and she was back at the mine. Blinked twice more and was on Indigo, Agatha’s mare. Another blink and she was in a field. Another and she was almost at Betsy’s house. She hadn’t said goodbye. She hadn’t done any of the things she wanted to do.

  She’d walked away because now she knew the bald, harsh truth.

  She was the font of poison, the bell that tolled, the harbinger of death. She’d brought this down on them. She, and only she, could make it right.

  Aggie took Indie from her. “Mom, you rode her too hard. Look at…”

  Maggie-loo bounded to Alice’s side. She’d been waiting all this time. Alice rubbed her head and scratched her ears and told her what a good girl she was. Talking to a dog was always easier, but she shouldn’t take the easy road. Hers was a different path, now.

  She wrapped her arms around Aggie and squeezed her tight. “Sorry. I was awful. I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you.”

  She released her daughter and took stock. There was a lot to do. She wasn’t sure where to start. She needed to find Baxter.

  The Professor was in the kitchen, glued to a computer, reams of paper strewn around her. A fully annotated response to MELT, complete with maps and equations.

  “Right. Yes. Shut down the grid.” She nodded at Alice. It was her version of a smile. The professor was a happy camper. “Dr. Zhang has been kind enough to walk me through some of his theories on how to halt MELT. If you have a moment I’m going to head to the garage and apply some electricity to the corpse…”

  Alice had visions of Frankenstein and his monster, but that couldn’t be what the Professor meant. She couldn’t work it out. She didn’t have enough brain power to intuit what Christine meant. She was here to deliver a message and needed to get on with her task.

  “Fran did it,” she said.

  Christine removed her headphones. “You look pale, Alice. Are you sick?”

  “Fran did it. All of it. She was the traitor, not Michael. She released MELT.” She couldn’t say the rest.

  She released MELT because of me. I am become death.

  Christine stood, her eyes narrowing. “That’s not possible.”

  Alice shrugged. “You should never have trusted your gut. You’re not a gut person. You’re a logician. You should have applied the scientific method to your investigation.” It was a whole sentence. Perhaps her brain was going to return her to the present. “We need to move. We have to close down Indian Point. We’re immune. We should go.”

  Christine didn’t follow her out the door.

  Maggie-loo did. Maggie-loo followed her everywhere. She had a shadow. How ironic that she have a creature that was the best mankind had to offer as her familiar now that she understood she, herself, was the worst. She kissed her dog and thanked her. “I wish I was worthy of your loyalty and love, Maggie-loo. I’ll do my best. I promise.”

  Jim and Betsy were on the back porch.

  Aggie had tied Indie to a tree, supplied her with a bucket of water, and joined them. The trio was crouched down on the ground.

  She should thank Betsy before she left. Betsy had taken her children in and tended to them when she and Bill were off doing their thing.

  The closer Alice got to the huddle, the more outlandish the scene. There was a voluminous fuzzy carpet between them. No, not a carpet. A furry, fluffy, soft creature. As she rounded the bottom step she realized what she was looking at. A dog. Just when you didn’t think things couldn’t get any worse, a dog had been hurt.

  Betsy was in charge. She directed Jim to hand her this and fetch her that. Alcohol, scalpel, plastic wrap, bandages. Alice had no idea how much time passed. It was closing her out of certain scenes. She got to see fragments and nothing more.

  Dog. Infection. Surgery. Tears.

  In the corner, in the rocker, a woman sat and prayed. “Barb?” Now Alice knew she was hallucinating. Barb couldn’t have made it out of Manhattan. Or ended up here. That was madness. She deserved no less. If madness was her penance, so be it.

  Barb opened her eyes and smiled at her friend. “Alice. I was hoping I’d see you one last time.”

  The last time she’d seen Barb was in a high rise in Manhattan. She’d insisted she was going to save the animals, like Doctor Doolittle or Saint Frances. She’d been cradling a dead baby. Alice looked up and down the porch a couple of times but didn’t see a bundle that could be baby Charlotte. At least that horror was over. “You made it.”

  “I did better than that, my friend. I left Manhattan, traveled upstate bypassing most of the major cities, but managed to collect a pack around me.” She pointed towards the road that led from Jim and Betsy’s back to their house. Dogs of all shapes and sizes sat at the edge of the property. They were oriented in Barb’s direction. Barb had said God told her to save the animals. Seemed they’d gotten the memo too.

  “I hope you don’t mind…” Barb pulled Alice close and gave her a hug. “I’m going to stay at your place.”

  Alice had no place. Her cabin had been burned to the ground and their house in New Paltz was inside the hot zone.

  “I buried Charlotte,” Barb was whispering, “where the silver lay. It’s a place of hope. I think I’ll add some flowers in the spring. She would have liked daffodils when she grew up. Daffodils and, once I build us a house, some lilacs. Even those who don’t make it out of their babyhood have a trajectory. Hers was a life not lived, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t have an arc. A trajectory. I’m going to help baby Charlotte hit all those high points, even though she’s moved on.” She winked at Alice like they were conspirators. “You’re the same. There’s a trajectory not lived. But there’s time. You’ll find your way. Aggie will help you. This is all going to turn out the way it’s supposed to. Mark my words. You’re going to be alright.”

  Barb was such a loveable nutjob. Alice had no answers for her. If only she knew what had been done in her name she wouldn’t believe it could end well. I am become death.

  “She’s done,” said Betsy, wiping her hands down her shirt. “I don’t know if it will work, but I tried to make sure we had good margins. She’ll be sleepy for a while longer. Oh, hi Alice. I didn’t see you there. We’ve decided to take a more proactive approach. If there’s only one lesion—and KC only had the one, we did a full body check—we’re cutting them out. It’s a new procedure. I’m not a veterinarian, but I am a veteran.” She laughed. It was too fast. She was still popping p
ills.

  Jim looked to Alice, his face creased with worry.

  “She’ll be fine,” said Alice. “Bind her foot and titrate her down.”

  “Alice is correct. She’s going to be fine.” Barb was very sure of herself. It was a prediction, not an opinion. She spoke as if she had access to the source. Why not? Let people take some comfort. What did it matter if they had hope? Alice herself had a main line to evil incarnate; why shouldn’t Barb have the opposite?

  There were some small things she could do before she left.

  She could reinstate Michael Rayton as a working scientist. Someone to be listened to. Someone Christine could trust. Poor man. He’d been through so much. What malevolence must have filled Fran’s veins for her to knowingly frame a man? A man she was intimate with. The legacy of Mateo Hernandez had a lot to answer for.

  Michael was by the well by himself, scribbling notes in one of Betsy’s cute little notepads.

  “Christine needs your help.”

  Michael shrugged. “I’ve been trying to help her since this thing blew up. She’s not going to listen to me. This is why we need you, Alice. I’m sorry it has to be this way, but it does. You’re the bridge between me and her.”

  She was more than that, but she couldn’t say it out loud. I am become death.

  He wasn’t going to like what she was about to tell him. Fran had betrayed her, but she’d been sleeping with Rayton so the cut was going to be of a more personal kind. Stick to the facts. Don’t elaborate. Just tell him the horrible, plain facts and move on. You have work to do. “Fran was Eloise Farmanday.”

  Michael shook his head. “Doesn’t fit.”

  “She messed with the anagram.” How did she know that? Bill must have told her. Poor Bill. She’d left him carrying the can. Again.

  “Messed with it, how?” Michael was on his feet and in her face. Like she had any answers. She barely knew how she was moving. She walked away from Michael while he puffed and stomped, railed and berated himself. They were all at it, blaming themselves for having been hoodwinked.