“I don’t believe you!”
“I know. Nobody believes it at first. I didn’t.”
Rane walked away from him as he picked a tomato and began to eat. He never washed anything. Ate them as they grew out of the dirt. Rane had never seen food growing this way before, but it did not impress her. She wondered whether they fertilized it with the contents of the outhouse and the animal pens. It was just the sort of filthy anachronistic thing they might do.
She climbed some rocks—huge, rough rounded mounds of granite—and stood on top, staring down. To her surprise, she saw the road winding below. Then Stephen was beside her. She started violently to find him there in a space that had been empty a second before. He must have leaped up, almost the way Jacob would leap.
“We can all jump,” he said. “We can run pretty fast, too. You should remember that.”
“I wasn’t trying to get away.”
“Not yet. But remember anyway.” He paused. “Do you know how they caught me seven months ago?”
“You’ve only been here seven months?”
“I drove right into their settlement,” he said. “I’d gone to see my folks in Albuquerque and on my way home, I decided to do some exploring. I discovered a mountain road that wasn’t on my maps, and thought I’d find out where it led. I found out.”
“Why were you driving?” Rane asked. “You should have flown.”
“I loved to drive. It was a kind of hobby. I’ll bet your father has the same affliction.”
“Yeah. He has a Porsche and a Mercedes at home. He won’t even drive them outside the enclave.”
“A Porsche? You’re kidding. What year?”
She looked at him, saw excitement on his face for the first time and laughed. Something familiar at last. Car craziness. “1982 Porsche 930 Turbo. My mother used to call it his other wife. My sister and I figured it was his other kid.”
He laughed, too, then sobered. “It’s getting dark, Rane. We should go in.”
She did not want to go in—back to Lupe and Ingraham. Back to hands that made her cringe. Stephen’s hands did not make her cringe any longer.
“I don’t have a house, yet,” he said. “I have a room in Meda’s house.”
She could not look at him now. She had never slept with a man. The thought of doing so now with a stranger—even a likable stranger—confused and frightened her. The thought of conceiving a child in this place—if you could call them children—terrified her.
“Back to Lupe, then,” he said. He put his arm around her, and startled her by snatching her up and jumping off the rocks. They landed safe and unhurt amid stalks of corn. She thought she weighed at least as much as he did, but her weight did not seem to bother him.
“You’re not a screamer,” he said. “Good.” He set her on her feet.
“Am I like your wife?” she asked timidly as they walked back.
“No,” he answered.
“But … do you like me?”
“Yes.”
She looked at him uncertainly, wondering if he were laughing at her. “I wish you talked more,” she said.
Later that night, Lupe tied Rane to a bed.
“We don’t have bars yet,” Ingraham said. “You should have gone with Stephen.”
“Shut up,” Lupe told him. “Tying people up is no joke. Neither is trying to send a kid to bed with a guy she doesn’t even know. We gotta find a better way. I’m sick of this.”
Ingraham said nothing more.
Rane found no comfort in Lupe’s sentiment. Tied as she was, she had to ask even to go to the bathroom. And she could not sleep on her side as was her custom. She lay miserable and sleepless, twisting her wrists in the hope of freeing at least one. The twisting hurt enough to make her stop after a while. Then she tried to reach one of her wrists with her teeth. And failed.
By then she was crying tears of frustration and anger. She was totally unprepared for the sudden weight across her stomach that knocked the breath out of her. This time she would have screamed if she had been able to.
She caught her breath, feeling as though she had been punched, then saw Jacob dim and shadowy in the darkness above her.
“You can’t bite the rope,” he said. “Your teeth are too dull.”
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
“Nothing.” He stared down at her from the pose of a seated cat. “I came in the window.”
Rane sighed, closed her eyes. “I think I’m glad you’re here,” she whispered. “Even you.”
“Why don’t you like me?” he demanded.
She shook her head, answered honestly because she was too tired to humor him. “Because you look different. Because I’m afraid of you.”
“You are? Of me?” He sounded pleased. He also sounded closer. She opened her eyes and saw that he had stretched out beside her. She tried to draw away, but could not.
“You are afraid of me,” he said gleefully. “I’m going to sleep here.”
She could have called Lupe. She made a conscious decision not to. The boy was harmless in spite of his appearance, and he did not understand that what she feared was not him personally, but what he represented. Most important, she did not think she could stand to be alone again.
Sometime after midnight, when she had developed a headache from lack of sleep, he awoke and with unchildlike alertness, asked if her arms hurt.
“They hurt,” she said. “And I can’t sleep and I’m cold.”
To her surprise, he pulled her blankets up to her chin. “Bikers put a rope on me,” he said. “They pulled me and said, ‘Heel, heel!’”
Rane shook her head in disgust. Jacob could not help what he was. He did not deserve such treatment.
“Daddy hit some of them and they died.”
“Good for him,” Rane muttered. Then she realized she was talking about Eli, who might even now be raping Keira. Confusion, frustration, and weariness set in heavily, and she could not stop the tears. She made no sound, but somehow, the child knew. He touched her face with one of his hard little hands, and when she turned her head away angrily, he turned his attention to her right wrist.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
As though in answer, she found her wrist suddenly free.
“My teeth are sharp,” Jacob announced. He climbed over her and started on her left wrist. In seconds, it too was free.
“Oh God,” she said, hugging herself with aching arms and numb hands. She made herself reach out to the child. “Thank you, Jacob.”
“You taste good,” he said. “I thought you would. You smell like food.”
She drew her hand back quickly, heard his gleeful laugh. Let him laugh. He had freed her. How the hell a four year old could have teeth that cut rope was beyond her, but she didn’t care. If he had been a little less strange, she would have hugged him.
“Something is happening outside,” he said.
“What?”
“People moving around and talking.” He bounded off the bed and to the window. “They’re your people,” he said. He leaped silently to the high window sill, then down the other side.
Then even she heard the noise outside—a car starting, people running. There was shouting, and finally what must be happening penetrated her weary mind. Her people—her father and sister …
She got out of bed, taking time only to slip into her shoes and grab her pants and shirt. She threw both on over the thin gown Lupe had brought her from her luggage and she went through the window. She would have climbed through it naked if she had had to.
She got out in time to see the Wagoneer disappearing down the mountain road, stick people in hot pursuit. Her father had left her!
She took a few useless steps after them, then turned without conscious thought and ran in the opposite direction—toward the rocks she and Stephen Kaneshiro had stood on. Toward the road below where her father would almost certainly be passing soon. It occurred to her as she headed for the steep incline that she could be killed
. The thought did not slow her. Either way, the stick people would not tie her down again.
PART 3
Manna
Past 15
NOW ELI WOULD BECOME an active criminal as well as the carrier of a disease. Now, with the help of Lorene and Meda, he would abduct a man. He would take Meda’s father’s Ford and go to what was left of old U.S. 95. Meda knew 95 from State Highway 62 to Interstate 40. It was desolate country, she said. No towns, almost no private haulers on the road. Just a few daredevil sightseers, taking their chances among the bike packs and car families, and a few well-armed, individualistic ranchers.
Eli worried about taking Meda along. She was four months pregnant, and he worried about both her and the child. She was not an easy woman to become attached to, but the attachment had happened. Now he could not lose her. He could not lose her.
Meda had always been physically strong, had taken pride in being able to match her brothers at hard work and hard play. Now the disease had made her even stronger, and her new strength had made her overconfident.
She would not, she told Eli, sit at home, trembling and wondering whether her child’s father had survived. She intended to see that he survived—and, he thought, maybe get herself killed in the process.
Eli swung from anger to amusement to secret gratitude for her concern. There were still bad times with her—times when she cursed him and mourned her family. But these times came less frequently. Both the disease organism and the child inside her were driving her toward him. Perhaps she had even begun to forgive him a little.
Now she helped him plan.
“We can hide here,” she said, using an old paper auto club map. “There’s a junction. A dirt road runs into Ninety-five. There are some hills.”
All four of them sat clustered at one end of the large dining room table. Lorene, who was to have the new man if he lived; Gwyn, who was already pregnant again and in less immediate need of a man of her own; Meda; and Eli.
Covertly, Eli watched Gwyn, saw that she seemed at ease, uninterested in the map. A few weeks before, she would have torn the yellowed paper in her eagerness to take part and get a man for herself. Now, pregnant by Eli, she was content. The organism had turned them all into breeding animals.
“What do you think?” Meda asked him.
He looked at the map. “Damn lonely stretch of road,” he said. “Anyone working here?” He pointed to a quarry that should have been nearby.
Meda shook her head. “Too dangerous. What this highway really is at that point is a sewer. From what I’ve heard about city sewers, the only reason they’re worse is because they have more sewer rats. But the gangs here are just as dangerous, and the haulers … body-parts dealers, arms smugglers—that kind. The few holdout ranchers are dangerous too. If they don’t know you, they shoot on sight.”
“Dangerous,” Eli said. “And close. Too close to us here. I used to see lights from Ninety-five when I went out at night.” When he went out to kill and eat chickens to supplement Meda’s mother’s idea of three good meals. “I think I saw lights from State Highway Sixty-two, too. If we accidentally catch anyone important, I don’t want search parties coming right to us.”
Meda gave a short, bitter laugh. “People disappear out here all the time, Eli. It’s expected. And nobody’s important enough these days to search this country for.”
Eli glanced up from the map and smiled. “I am. Or I would be if anyone knew I was alive.”
“Come on,” she said, irritated, “you know what I mean.”
“Yeah. I hear bike gangs and car families can be damned vindictive, though, if they think you’ve hurt one of theirs. Let’s go up to I-Forty. If things are bad there, we could even go on to I-Fifteen.”
“That far?” Meda said. “Fuel, Eli.”
“No problem. We’ll take the Ford. With its twin tanks it can go just about anywhere within reason and come back without a fill-up.”
“And there are more people on Forty and Fifteen,” Lorene said. “Real people, not just sewer rats. I could get an honest hauler or a farmer or a city man.” She sounded like an eager child listing Christmas possibilities. In a moment, Eli would have to make her hear herself. Left on her own, she could do a lot of harm before she realized what was happening to her.
“The Ford’s been to Victorville and back without fuel problems,” Gwyn said lazily. She was from Victorville, Eli knew. Christian had met her there, where she had worked with her brothers at their mother’s roadside station. She shrugged. “I don’t think we’ll have a fuel problem.”
Meda looked at her strangely, probably because of her lazy tone, then spoke to Eli. “I assume you want to use Ninety-five for going and coming.”
“We can use it for going,” he said. “If you think it’s worth the detour.”
She shook her head. “Car families set up roadblocks. Armored tour buses and private haulers just bull their way through, but cars get caught. Especially one car alone.”
“We’ll use this network of dirt roads, then. I like them better anyway. You know the best ones?”
She nodded. “In good weather, some of them are smoother than Ninety-five, anyway.”
“And the dirt roads will give captives the idea they’re more isolated than they are. They won’t be able to prowl around and find out the truth the way I did until they’ve made it through the crisis period. After that, they won’t care.”
“Are you sure they won’t?” Meda asked. “I mean … this is our home, but some stranger …”
“This will be his home.”
Lorene giggled. “I’ll make him feel at home. You just catch him.”
Eli turned to look at her.
“You know,” she said, still laughing, “this is the kind of thing you always read about men doing to women—kidnapping them, then the women getting to like the idea. I think I’m going to enjoy reversing things.”
Silence. Meda and Gwyn sat staring at Lorene, clearly repelled.
“We won’t touch him,” Eli told Lorene. “We’ll leave it to you to give him the disease.”
Lorene’s smile vanished. She looked from Meda and Gwyn to Eli.
“He might die on you,” Eli continued. “If he does, we’ll get you another one.”
She frowned as though she did not understand.
“We’ll get you as many as necessary,” he said.
“You don’t have any right to make me feel guilty!” she whispered. Her voice rose abruptly. “This is all your fault! My husband—”
“Remember him!” Eli said. “Remember how it felt to lose him. Chances are, you’ll be taking someone else’s husband soon.”
“You have no right—”
“No, I don’t,” he said. “But then, there isn’t anyone else to say these things to you. And you have to hear them. You have to understand what you are—why you feel what you feel.”
“It’s because you killed—”
“No. Listen, Lori. It’s because you’re the host, the vehicle of an extraterrestrial organism. It’s because that organism needs new hosts, new vehicles. You need to infect a man and have children and you won’t get any peace until you do. I understand that. God knows I understand it. The organism is a damned efficient invader. Five people died because I couldn’t fight it. Now, it’s possible that at least one person will die because you can’t fight it.”
“No,” Lorene whispered, shaking her head.
“It’s something we can’t forget or ignore,” Eli continued. “We’ve lost part of our humanity. We can lose more without even realizing it. All we have to do is forget what we carry, and what it needs.” He paused. She had turned away, and he waited until she faced him again. “So we’ll get you a man,” he said. “And we’ll turn him over to you. You’ll give him the disease and you’ll care for him. If he dies, you’ll bury him.”
Lorene got up and stumbled out of the room.
Present 16
WHEN BLAKE AND MEDA had gone, when Ingraham had led Rane away, Eli and Ke
ira sat alone at the large dining room table. Keira looked across at Eli bleakly.
“My sister,” she whispered. Rane had looked so frozen when Ingraham led her out, so terrified.
“She’ll be all right,” Eli said. “She’s tough.”
Keira shook her head. “People think that. She needs to have them think that.”
He smiled. “I know. I should have said she’s strong. Maybe stronger than even she knows.”
A woman carrying a crying child of about three years came into the house. The child, Keira could see, was a little girl wearing only underpants. She had a beautiful face and a dark, shaggy head of hair. There was something wrong with the way she sat on the woman’s arm, though—something Keira could not help noticing, yet could not quite identify.
The woman smiled wearily at Eli. “Red room,” she said.
He nodded.
The woman stared at Keira for a moment. Keira thought she stared hungrily. When she had gone into a room off the living room and shut the long sliding door, Keira faced Eli.
“What’s going on?” she said. “Tell me.”
He looked at her hungrily, too, but then leaned back in his chair and told her. No more hints, no more delays. When he finished, she asked questions and he answered them. At one point, the woman and child came out of the red room and Eli called them to him.
“Lorene, bring Zera over. I want you both to meet Kerry.”
The woman, blond and thin, came over with her hungry eyes and her strange child. She looked at Keira, then at Eli. “Why is there still a table between you two?” she asked. “I’ll bet there’s no table between that guy and Meda.”
“Is that what I called you over here for?” he asked, annoyed. “Don’t you want to brag about your kid a little?”
Lorene faced Keira almost hostilely.
Keira and the child had been staring at each other. Keira roused herself, met Lorene’s suspicious eyes. “I’d like to see her.”
“You see her,” Lorene said. “She’s no freak. She’s supposed to be this way. They’re all this way.”
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