“Some would be here,” Lorene said. “Dogs.”
Eli nodded. “Dogs, yes, maybe coyotes, wolves, any canine. I wouldn’t give much for the chances of cats either, and some snakes—maybe all snakes, rats, most rodents. Heaven knows what else.”
“What about the people?” Lorene whispered. “They’ll die, too. Four out of seven died here. Five, if you count Gwyn’s baby. Ten out of fourteen in your crew died. And what about Andy? How many more Andy Zeriams, Eli?” She had begun to cry. “How goddamn many?”
He got up and went to her. She pushed him away angrily at first, but then reached out and pulled him to her.
“What about the people?” she repeated against him.
After a moment, he put her aside and sat down next to Meda.
“What do you want to do?” Meda asked.
He shook his head. “Nothing. Just go on as we have.”
“But—”
“What else? You’re right about the kids. They are what they are. I’m right too. They can’t make it in the world as it is. But I’m not going to make a move to spread the disease beyond the ranch, here. Not even for them. We’ll have to bring people here now and then, but that’s all.”
“You’re talking about leaving everything to chance,” Meda said.
“No,” he told her, “not quite. I’m talking about stifling chance, doing every damn thing I can to keep the disease right here. Everything. And I’ll need all three of you with me.”
“But the kids,” Meda said.
“Yeah.” He sighed. “I couldn’t hurt them. Even without the three of you ganging up on me, I couldn’t have. But … in this one way, I can’t help them, either. Can you?” He looked from one of them to the other. No one answered. “What happens happens,” Eli continued. “I won’t make it happen. Dead people, dead animals, no more cities because we’d go crazy in cities. No more of a lot of things I probably haven’t even thought of.” He stared at the table for several seconds.
“It will happen, though,” he said. “Sooner or later, somehow, it will happen. And ultimately, I’ll be responsible.”
Present 28
KEIRA HAD JUST EATEN a large meal—overcooked, overseasoned, but filling. She was feeling well until the white-haired girl came to take her to her father. She was feeling well! She could not remember how long it had been since she had last felt truly well.
The car family had locked her in a walk-in hall closet. She had been in pain and Badger had demanded to know why. When she told him she had leukemia, he had shrugged.
“So?” he had said. “There’s a cure for that—some kind of medicine that makes the bad cells turn back to normal.”
“I’ve had that,” she told him. “It didn’t work.”
“What do you mean, it didn’t work? It works. It worked on my mother. She had the same shit you do.”
“It didn’t work on me.”
So he had locked her in the closet. Some of his people, ignorant and fearful, could not quite believe her illness was not contagious. Badger locked her away from them for her own safety. She had seen for herself how eager they were to get her out of their sight. She wondered what they would do if they knew what she and her family had really given them—what they were really doomed to. They would begin to find out soon enough. That was what Eli was waiting for. That was why he was keeping them boxed in. He did not have to do anything more than that to win. She had heard him talking about explosives, but then the car family had begun showing a noisy movie and the faint voices from outside were drowned.
Yet there were explosives. Eli would do anything necessary to stop the car people if they threatened to break free before they were ready to join him. He certainly would not let the friends they had called reach them. Keira did not know what would happen to her, but somehow she was not afraid. She sat on the closet floor with bound hands and feet, reading from cardboard boxes of old magazines. The lavish use of paper fascinated her. A one-hundred-and-twenty-page magazine for only five or six dollars. A collector’s item. Computer libraries like her father’s made more sense, occupied less space, could be more easily updated, but somehow, weren’t as much fun to look at.
The light in the closet was dim, but Keira preferred it dim. She thought she might not be able to tolerate it if it were normally bright. She was looking through an old National Geographic when the white-haired girl opened the door.
“Your father wants to see you,” the girl said in her low, throaty voice.
Keira looked up from her magazine, stared at the girl, wondered what it might be like to be her—dirty, knowing, tough, headed nowhere, but still young and not bad-looking. The girl’s dark-tanned skin contrasted oddly with her white hair.
“He might want to see my sister,” Keira said, “but I don’t think he wants to see me.”
“You the one he had the fight with?” the girl asked.
Keira did not hesitate. “Yes.”
“Doesn’t matter. He just wants to see one of you to make sure we haven’t shot you. Come on.” She unfastened Keira’s hand and leg restraints.
Keira started to refuse. She did not think the girl would force her. Then she realized that in spite of what had happened between them, she wanted to see her father—probably for the same reason he wanted to see her. Just to be sure he was all right. He had seemed so weak and sick when she saw him last. The organism seemed to be making her strong and him weak. That was all that had permitted her to get away from him when Rane made her realize what was happening.
It occurred to her that as things stood now, each time she saw him might be the last. The thought frightened her and she tried to reject it, but it had taken hold.
“All right,” she said, standing up.
The girl watched her intently. “Is he really your father?”
“Yes.”
“Is he part black, then, or is it just your mother?”
“My mother was black. He’s white.”
The girl nodded. “My mother was from Sweden. God knows why she came here. Got raped her first week here. That’s where I came from.”
Shocked, Keira spoke the first words that occurred to her. “But why didn’t she have an—” Keira stopped, glanced downward. There was something wrong with asking someone why she had not been aborted. She wondered why the girl would tell her such a secret, shameful thing.
“She couldn’t make up her mind,” the girl said unperturbed. “She wanted to get rid of me, then she didn’t, then she wasn’t sure, then I was born and it was too late. She kept me ’til I was fourteen, though. Then she went nuts and when they took her away to cure her, I left.” The girl sighed. “After that, life was shit until I got adopted into the family. How old are you?”
“Sixteen,” Keira told her.
“Really? How old is he?”
Keira looked at her sharply. The girl looked away. For a moment, Keira hated her, wanted to get away from her. Her rage surprised her, then shamed her because she could not help understanding its cause: jealousy. The girl had slept with Blake—as Keira herself almost had. His scent was on her like a signature. For a moment Keira wondered how she could distinguish such a thing. His scent… Yet there was no doubt in her mind, and she was almost stiff with jealous rage.
Then came the shame.
“Forty-four,” she said slowly. “He’s forty-four.” Neither she nor the girl said anything more. The girl let Keira in to see her father, then minutes later, let her out again. Only then could she look at the girl and realize her father needed an ally among the car people. The girl liked him and she could be useful to him in ways Keira certainly could not.
“Forty-four isn’t old,” Keira said as the girl took her back to the closet.
The girl glanced at her. “What’d you do? Decide it was okay for me to fuck him?”
Keira jumped. Not for the first time, she was grateful she was not as light-skinned as Rane. Nothing made Rane blush. Everything would have made Keira blush.
“I just thought you
liked him,” Keira muttered.
“What if I do? He’s your father, not the other way around.”
Keira tried once more. “Did you bring him the blanket?” she asked. “And food?” She had seen an empty plate on the floor near him.
“Yeah, so what?”
“Thank you,” Keira said sincerely. She went back into the closet, waited to see whether the girl would put the cuffs back on her. But the girl only looked at her, then closed the door. Keira waited for the soft click of the lock, but did not hear it. Moments later, she heard the girl’s footsteps going away.
Keira was almost free. With her enhanced senses, she might be able to slip out of the house, escape.
Alone.
But the white-haired girl had given her a choice she did not want—to challenge the car family by attempting to escape, to desert her own family, or to remain in dangerous captivity. Here, she certainly could not help her family. At any time, Badger might decide to kill his captives, rape them, use them as shields, anything. He had kicked her father almost into unconsciousness for no reason at all. He and his people were unpredictable, ruthless, and, worst of all, cornered. What would happen when they began to realize they were sick as well?
And whatever they decided to do, how would her staying affect them? Would it stop them from doing harm? Of course not.
But if she escaped, the gang might take their anger and frustration out on her father and Rane. She hooked her arms around her knees, pulled her knees up close to her chest. There she sat miserably as though she were still bound, still locked in.
Each time she thought of her father, her mind flinched away, then fastened onto him again, forcing her into memories of the thing that had almost happened—into confusion, fear, shame, loss, desire …
Then she would remember the way Eli had looked at her, the feel of his body along the length of her own and inside her, hurtful, but good somehow. That would not happen again. Meda would be there and Keira’s father would not. Eli would steer her toward someone else; he had warned her. That hurt, but it could not matter.
She listened intently for several seconds, heard the movie end, heard the shooting flare up and die down. Down the hall, people were making love—or the ranch women were being raped. She had heard a little of that before and did not want to hear more. There were people wandering around, talking firing occasionally at targets they probably could not see. Someone was talking about eating raw meat.
The words made her mouth water. Her hunger was not painful yet, but it would be soon. Nothing else was hurting her body now, but hunger could change that quickly. If she waited much longer, let herself be locked in again, she could starve. The car gang would not understand. It might ignore her. This closet could become her tomb.
She grasped the knob, turned it slowly, noiselessly. She heard nothing nearby—not even breathing.
Yet the instant she opened the door, something small, silent, and incredibly quick leaped into the closet with her. Only her speeded-up reaction time saved her. Her moment of confusion and terror passed so quickly, she was able to keep herself from screaming. Instead, she shut the closet door quickly, quietly, and turned to face Jacob.
He was naked and trembling. Before she realized what he meant to do, he leaped again, this time at her.
To her amazement, she caught him. He was heavy, but she had no trouble holding him. A few days before, she did not think she could have lifted him from the ground, let alone caught him in midair. He clung to her, utterly silent, but clearly terrified.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered, hugging him and rubbing his trembling shoulders. She was surprised to realize how glad she was to see him—and how frightened she was for him in this deadly place. “Jacob, you could get hurt! You could get—” She stopped. “You have to get away!”
“You do, too,” he said. “Nobody knew where you were in the house so I came to find you. Everybody from home is outside.”
“Do your parents know you’re inside?”
“No!” He drew back from her a little, his trembling quieted. “Don’t tell them. Okay?”
“I won’t tell them a thing. Just let’s get out of here. How did you get in?”
“There’s a room with a hole instead of window glass. You were in there before. It smells like you—and like other people.”
“A room with a hole?”
Distantly, Keira heard shooting and running feet. It sounded like fighting within the house. Car people fighting among themselves.
Jacob glanced toward the door. “They were hurting her,” he said. “She’s got a gun and shot one of them. Now she’s shooting more.”
“Who?”
“Your sister. She’s getting away.”
“Is she? My God, let’s go!”
“Your father’s gone, too, I think. I smelled the room where he was back at home. His same smell was in the room with the hole.”
God, while she had sat worrying about leaving them, they were leaving her. She opened the door, crept out of the closet, still holding the boy.
“I’ll show you where the hole is,” he said. He squirmed against her, leaped soundlessly to the floor, sped down the hall toward her father’s room. Of course the hole would be there. But how had her father broken out the glass?
And Rane. Was she all right? Could she make it alone? Keira turned, crept back up the hall to the family room. This room adjoined the kitchen and the dining room. From the hall door of the family room, Keira could see car people crouched behind the counter, occasionally looking around or over it into the kitchen. Keira could see over the counter and into the kitchen, could see Rane sitting at the back door, cradling an automatic rifle. For an instant, Rane’s eyes met Keira’s. Then Jacob was tugging at Keira’s dress.
“Go!” Keira whispered. “Get out!”
“You come too,” the boy pleaded. “The whole house smells like blood. People are dying.”
Rane began firing again, and people did die. Keira saw one of them raise his head at the wrong time and get the top of it blown off.
Terrified and repelled, Keira snatched up Jacob and fled. Doctor’s daughter that she was, sick as she had been, she had never seen anyone die before. She ran almost in panic, reached her father’s bare room and looked around wildly.
“There!” The boy pointed to another door. The bathroom—no bigger than the closet she had been shut in, but it had a window.
She ran into the bathroom, shut the door and locked it, then lifted the boy to the windowsill. He was over it and down in an instant. She pulled herself up after him, no longer marveling at the return of her strength, no longer marveling at anything. She had to get out of the house, get back to Eli and safety. Her father was probably already safe, and Rane soon would be.
She dropped to the ground and ran.
Keira ran through the rocks, hoping they would conceal and protect her as she circled around the house. She was halfway around and already aware of the distinctive scent of Eli’s people when she recognized another familiar scent. The new scent confused her for a moment because of its clarity. She was so utterly certain it was her father’s that for a moment she thought she had actually seen him.
The wind favored her. It blew toward her from Eli’s people and across the path of her father. She looked down the slope through the rocks. Her nose told her this was the way her father had gone—away from the house and Eli’s people, toward the highway.
Of course.
Her enhanced sense of smell led her to spots of his blood, some of them still wet on the rocks. In one place near a brown wedge of rock, blood had actually pooled—an alarming amount of blood. Before finding this, she had thought she would go on to Eli and say nothing about her father. Jacob, running ahead and back to her like an eager puppy, might notice the scent and he might not. If he spoke of it, she would have to admit what she knew, but perhaps by then her father would have made good his escape. She would have let him escape, even knowing what that would mean to Eli and his p
eople. This was all she could do for her father. And in his way, he was not wrong. He was taking the long view, trying to prevent a future epidemic. Eli and his people were trying to live from one day to the next, trying to raise their strange children in peace, trying to control their deadly compulsion. Eventually, inevitably they would fail. They must have known it. If not for the blood, Keira would have deliberately permitted that failure to happen now.
But the blood was there, slowly drying in a natural depression in the rock. Her father had been hurt, needed help. Eli had the medical bag, maybe even had it with him here to treat his own people. He should not be able to use it, but Keira suspected he could—and her father might die before he could reach other help.
She turned aside to follow the blood trail. The next time Jacob raced back to her, approaching in utter silence, and concealed except for his scent until the last instant, she stopped him.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ll take you to where Daddy is.”
“You go,” she said. “Tell him my father’s hurt and I have to find him. Tell him to send someone after me with my father’s bag. Okay?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now go. And be careful.”
The boy bounded away, leaping among the rocks as though they presented no obstacle at all. Her children would do that someday. They would have four legs and be able to bound like cats, and they would be beautiful. Perhaps she was already pregnant.
Somehow, when she found her father, when Eli helped him, he had to be convinced to stay and be quiet. He had to be! Living day to day, free on the desert was better than being a quarantined guinea pig in some hospital or lab, better than watching Jacob and Zera treated like little animals, better than perhaps being sterilized so that no more children like them could be born. Better than vanishing.
She ran down the rocky slope with new speed and agility she hardly noticed. It seemed she could always see a place for her feet, always find a handhold when one was necessary. She felt as secure as a mountain goat. Once she stopped to examine the body of a red-bearded, balding man. He was not one of Eli’s people, not one of Badger’s. Most likely, he was one of the new group Badger had called. He was newly dead of a broken neck. Her father’s scent was especially strong near him, and she realized her father had probably killed this man. It was even possible that this was the man who had wounded her father—though she saw no gun. Perhaps her father had taken it. That would mean she had to be careful. If he were wounded and armed, he might be panicky enough to shoot without waiting to see who he was shooting at.
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