Dust (20 page)

“What do we tell the others?” I asked. “They must realize something’s up by now.”

“Maybe,” Linc said, “they realized it weeks ago. Months. Right?”

Renee, smelling of confusion and worry, kept her eyes on her feet. Billy liked to wander around hoo-country too, what did he know, what had Ben? Not a damned thing, that I could tell, nor did they really want to. Poor Ben. Poor crippled blinded stupid Adriana. Poor Florian, coming apart in a spill of dust like sand shaken from a shoe. Poor things in the cornfield, poor Lisa, sick to death, begging for death. What had Jim really done, what did he really know, what did he really want with me and my remnants? Why was Joe so sure I could fight Teresa, knowing her plague-strength, knowing it all along—or had he changed his mind, actually looked where he was asking me to leap, when he saw what happened to Ben? He hadn’t seen that coming. I knew he hadn’t. Distracted, I stumbled over a tree root and Linc cut in on my thoughts with a laugh.

“Remember that movie?” he asked.

“What movie?”

His voice oozed false hoo joviality, a cut-rate Bela Lugosi: “‘They’re coming to
get
you, Bar-buh-rah.’ ” Then he faltered, his eyes fearful, a palm resting on his newly broken collarbone. “Jessie, what’s happening?”

A graveyard, a car that wouldn’t start, an old farmhouse, a gas pump bursting into flames. A local station showed it every Halloween, overexposed black-and-white with bad makeup and worse acting, and I remembered all the rumors that some of it wasn’t acting or makeup at all—some of it was real footage, the start of the real ’68 Pittsburgh massacre caught on film by a few foolhardy hoos, and when nobody wanted to watch or admit the actual truth they threw in some junk about Venus probes and radiation and made a monster movie. But those were only rumors, like Joe’s stories that Teresa had an eye on me, and Jim’s of a strange new sickness burning up out of nowhere, and Rommel’s of new speed and flesh and strength all down to one particular beach, one particular lab.
What’s happening
, the female lead pissed and moaned when she finally made it to safety in the farmhouse,
what’s happening?

And do we try and find out, really try—or do we do like we all learned when we were alive, when we’d be driving down the sulfurously lit roads and see human-shaped shadows huddled by the roadside, ravaged faces of those we’d buried years ago illuminated in the headlights, and just look away and pretend they’re nothing? Retch and run away when they hold out a hand?

“I don’t think anyone but us really cares to know,” I said. “Including the Rat.”

Renee gripped my shoulder tighter and Linc slipped an arm through mine. I felt foolish slowing my steps for them, marching abreast and intertwined like we were dancing our way to Emerald City (speaking of stupid movies I’d hated), but glad at the same time, protected from some shapeless, sulfurous shadow behind us, inside us, that I couldn’t and wouldn’t name.

Back at the park I could smell agitation and anger in the air, thick and heavy as grease. Since when did we need Billy’s permission to scupper? I bared my teeth for another fight as he staggered up to us, Sam and Mags tight-lipped and tense behind him. Joe was nowhere in sight.

“So where the hell have you three been?” Billy demanded. “Did
you
do it? No, what the hell am I saying, Saint Linc would never prank like that. Ben’s gone,” he said, waving his gas-puffed hands. “Gone.”

“He disintegrated? Already?”

“No, Madam Curie, I said he’s gone. He was just lying there, stone dead, and now he’s not and there’s no trace of him anywhere, ash or otherwise, and if someone—something—carried him off, we’ve got no clue where.” He grinned, a wet tarry smear of fury. “Goddamned Sam, falling asleep at the—”

“Don’t you start on me,” Sam snarled, hands curled into bony fists. “If you’re too busy stuffing your face to pay attention to what’s in front of you—”

“What’s in front of
me
? You fell asleep right next to him, you senile bag of maggots, and you just let them take him!” Billy let out a rumbling, swampy belch and cobra-spat at Sam. “Hears nothing, sees nothing, as much good on watch as a deer skeleton—”

“Boys, boys,” Mags cut in, mechanically weary; this must have been going on for hours. “Jessie, we’ve been looking and looking, and not even a smear of ash. Sam didn’t hear anything, and Billy and I were off hunting.”

“Where’s Joe?”

“Off searching the woods—he thinks maybe Ben was just stunned, woke up and wandered off. Now, I know doornaildead when I smell it, but your boy’s an optimist.”

Off searching the woods, I thought, remembering the tarry disintegrating mess of Ben’s arm, or tracking Ben to kill him, like those cornfield hoos, kill what was left of him for his own good? The mere thought of trekking all over the park or back to the cornfield to try to find out made me sway with exhaustion, but as my father used to say about med school, fortune favors the sleepless. “I’ll go help him look,” I said.

Mags shook her head. “No, you’re tired, dear heart—you can stay. Stay and explain why you’ve been acting so innocent face-to-face and then sneaking around talking to hoo-scientists, kissing up to the Rat, behind our backs like a little pissant ’maldie bitch.” Her hand clutched the back of a wrought-iron bench, twisting it into new designs. “Or like Teresa.”

I smiled, the bright sunny smile we always flashed before fights. I couldn’t take another fight, I’d collapse and Mags knew it. “Guess Joe’s been telling you some stories.”

“Joe’s got nothing for anyone but a shitload of stories,” said Linc, trying to angle himself between me and Mags like he could shield me. “He never did. You’re a fool if you listen to—”

“Joe said you knew something about what Teresa and them were up to, and were keeping it to yourself.” Sam’s voice was dry and punctilious, his expression sympathetic. He’d never liked Mags. “He keeps saying you know stuff and you’re keeping all the rest of us out of it—”

“Out of what?” I snarled. “Out of what? If I’m such a sneak, I’d like to know what I’m hiding.”

“Don’t play cute,” Billy hissed, circling. “If you think we’re that stupid—”

“Why don’t you leave her alone?” Renee shouted, yanking at the remains of her hair. “You think you’re so tough? Well, we just killed two Rat Patrollers without any of your help, ones just like Teresa. We did. You can ask them. And we can do it again!”

We
killed them, kemosabe? We? That was just downright cute—but it did stop Mags and Billy in their tracks. Mags shot a glance at Linc, who nodded confirmation. “So spill it,” she said. “And explain how you could go up against . . . that, when you don’t stink like Teresa stinks or have new flesh like she does.”

“Why the hell should I?” I threw myself onto the grass next to the bench. “You’ve got Joe to set you straight, don’t you? What do you need me for?”

“Are you going over to the Rat?” Mags demanded. Her eyes were tired and scared, sunk deep in the moldy folds of her face like dried-up currants in old dough. “He said you were, you and Teresa. And that the Rat Patrol’s already changed over, like Teresa has—”

“And that some hoo-scientist somehow helped cause it all,” Sam added. “And that you snuck out to be with him. To help him. Like his little lab rat.”

My stomach twisted like Rommel was punching me all over again. So, Renee wasn’t the only spy around here. Shouldn’t surprise me. Shouldn’t throw me off. Just what did Joe see and hear, the night I found my brother again—and why feed me those stories about the Rat, why tell me how they’d changed over? Because he knew me, better than anyone did. Because he knew I’d want to investigate, knew I’d end up smack against a rejuvenated Rommel and Ron and all-else without their numbers, muscle, energy. Just like he’d been pushing me so hard to challenge Teresa, knowing all along how much stronger she was now. Which made something in my chest wind itself tight and snap, snap as it went around and around, each revolution a new little jolt of fury. Mags just stared at me, almost timid beneath the smear of bravado. I got up again and started doing a tiger pace in front of the gazebo, too angry to lounge around.

“The answer’s yes and no,” I said. I had to force the words out, with the rat-a-tat snapping, snapping all inside me so it was hard to talk. “So just keep your mouths shut until I’ve finished.” And then with Linc and Renee as backup chorus I told them everything, starting with the woman Florian and I saw drop dead—and then vanish without a trace, just like Ben—and ending with Adriana flat on the church floor. Halfway through Sam shuffled off into the trees, returning with some squirrels; he was testing me, I knew, making sure I could still eat real flesh without getting sick, but I was too hungry to care. Linc and Renee devoured my leavings and drifted off in mid-narrative, huddled together half asleep.

“Well, damn,” Billy finally said, laughing like his old self, “hell of a family affair you got tangled in, isn’t it, Jessie?” He sighed. “Florian would’ve known what to do. Prob’ly seen all kinda crap like this. I miss that old heap of bones.”

I felt pathetically grateful that even brutal, unsentimental Billy had been thinking that. “He didn’t know what to do about that woman. Neither of us did.”

“And so Joe’s a damn liar,” Mags said, close to an apology as I’d ever get, and spat at the gazebo steps. “Half-liar, quarter-liar. There’s a shock. He know all about this?”

“Maybe,” I said, “but not from me. I don’t think he’s changed—”

“Hell, I could’ve told you that—he ain’t anything like them new freaks, they got flesh to burn. He’s withering up like Sam here. Like Florian.” Billy let out a single disconsolate toot of gas, pulling himself to his feet. “You, though, you and Linc and the ’maldie—”

“Yeah, you know what, don’t you start with that.” I flourished my arm for him, for anyone to sniff for confirmation. “Don’t you start. I’m still rotten.
I
don’t stink of disease. I don’t have it.”

“You wouldn’t stink,” he said, Mags grunting in agreement. “Not at first. Not right away. Later on, though—”

“Later what?” I took a step toward him, watching his eyes narrow with a strange new wariness, Mags brace her soft, swollen feet against the grass. “What later? You see me. I don’t smell. I still eat like us.”

“They can eat like us,” Mags said. “If they have to. And anything else too. Plants, scraps, garbage, dead meat. They can eat anything.”

“And hip-hooray for them. I still eat like us, still talk like us, walk like us, smell like us, look like us—”

“You don’t fight like us.” Billy was growling now, the angry, confused sound of an undead not knowing if that little flicker of light was a firefly or a lit match. “You don’t fight a goddamned thing like us, you couldn’t have killed that, you’d be lying in a brain-stomped heap if you were still—”

“Sorry to fucking disappoint you!” My voice was high and almost shrill, like I’d been caught sabotaging a hunt, throwing a fight, and needed to lash out to save myself. “Maybe I’m just a good goddamned fighter, okay? Maybe we got lucky. Maybe Carny and Adriana just weren’t working it tonight, they were off their game, maybe they were hurt and Rommel threw them to us on purpose to finish them off, I don’t know, all right? I’m not sick! I’m not changed, I’m me! They’re them! And Linc is right, you know he’s right, Joe’s nothing but a lying backstabbing—”

My hand slid of its own accord into my pocket and grabbed at the pearl-gray lake stone, clutching it, clenching it in my fingers as I tried to settle myself down. My teeth were grinding, sharp points sliding up against blade-edges as I clenched my jaw. Billy didn’t answer. Mags gazed at her feet, the ground, like I’d just embarrassed her. Sam just stood there. Linc and Renee had barely stirred, hearing us; he had his head buried in her shoulder, she was already snoring. Angry as I was, the sight made my last vestige of energy drop away.

“I need to sleep,” I said, turning my back on them all on purpose; I lay down next to Renee and closed my eyes. Someone else, Sam from the dry bones of him, lay down beside me back to back. As we drifted away I heard Billy and Mags mumbling, their voices muted and far off like I was a kiddie back in my hoo-bed, parents in the next room.

“—did eat the whole thing,” Mags muttered. “They all did. Maybe she’s right, you know Adriana was all talk and that other one, what’s-his-name, could’ve—”

“Could you fight that and live? I know they don’t look it, but something must’ve changed. At least in her. Joe said so, he said—”

“Joe, the liar.”

Billy snorted. “But he ain’t all lies, is he? She said it herself, he ain’t all wrong. Yes, and no.”

“I don’t care yes or no, Joe’s always lied. Always. Whenever he thought he’d get something out of it. Jessie ain’t like that.”

“It don’t matter what she’s like, it matters what she
is.
”

Mags made a little whistling sound between her teeth, the sound she always let out when Billy was running her nuts. “Sweet William, sir, Joe’s a liar, that hoo-scientist sounds a liar, the Rat are all scum-stinking liars. She don’t know what’s really happening. They don’t know. We don’t know. Nobody does. Nowhere.”

“Yeah, well, whatever’s happening, I ain’t hanging around to turn into a half-hoo freak. From now on, we keep our bags packed.” He laughed. “Don’t care how strong Teresa’s now, though, when I find her we’re knocking out her teeth and then we’re working her over. Slow.”

“Slow, and painful.” Mags laughed her old, rollicking chuckle. “Bad as we can make it.”

“Tell ya, Mags, I’ve been out around that cornfield plenty of times and I never saw—”

“I ain’t going anywhere near it.” Mags’s voice was sharp and fearful, pushing a suicide away from his gun and pills. “Not ever again. You watch yourself.”

“I am watching. Never said I was going back, did I?”

“Lookit Sam, sleeping like he didn’t already spend the whole night snoring. Useless sod.”

“Wish he’d gone up, ’stead of Florian.”