The guys checked inside the store and I crossed the parking lot, which ended at the edge of a steep hill. A lake lay in the valley below with woods on the far side. I took a deep breath, letting the smell of pine and the rustle of cattails fill up my senses. Dusk was almost upon us and we still had miles to go and yet I didn’t feel like a girl with an impossible task ahead of her. Instead, my body and mind were humming as if the oxygen on this side of the wall were laced with caffeine.
The door to the abandoned store squeaked open. “I’ll check the pickup truck,” Everson said.
I was about to turn around when movement drew my attention to the bottom of the hill. Two large dogs were tussling in the reeds. One gave a low-pitched growl, which sounded like the noise my dogs made when we played tug-of-war. I had a creeping feeling, however, that these dogs weren’t fighting over a dish towel. I eased back slowly to keep them from noticing me.
“What’s with all the blood?” I heard Everson ask. The dogs below heard him too. Their heads snapped around and their growls deepened.
Oh crap! I spun back onto the asphalt, looking for Everson, who had the gun. He and Rafe stood frozen in place with their eyes locked onto something beyond the rusting pickup truck.
“Dogs!” I hissed, hurrying toward them.
“We know,” Rafe whispered and held up a hand.
I stopped just short of Everson, who was several feet behind Rafe. On the other side of the pickup, four mutts were brutalizing a bloody carcass.
The other two dogs scrabbled over the rise and started barking.
“Great,” Rafe muttered as the rest of the pack lifted their blood-soaked muzzles and glared at us. He glared back and I could have sworn that he was growling as well.
Everson took aim and fired. The shot ricocheted off the metal of the truck and hit the asphalt next to the biggest dog — a black mutt. The pack scattered.
Rafe spun around, eyes blazing. “You said you could shoot.”
Everson lowered the gun. “I wasn’t trying to hit it.” At Rafe’s incredulous look, he added, “What? I was supposed to open fire on all of them?”
“Yeah, Ace, that’s the idea.”
Everson rolled his eyes. “They’re gone and we’re only down one bullet.” He jammed the gun back into its holster.
“Were the dogs feral?” I asked, crossing my arms to stop them from trembling. “As in feral feral?”
“They wouldn’t have run if they were.” Rafe nudged a bloody bone with the toe of his boot.
“What was it?” I asked.
“Turkey.”
Everson leaned against the bed of the pickup. “You can tell that from a bone?”
“No. From that.” Rafe pointed to a chewed-up turkey head by Everson’s foot.
Everson scooted back, only to slip on gristle and land in a puddle of coagulated blood. With a yell of disgust, he shot to his feet and tried to wipe off his blood-coated hands with the hem of his shirt. He caught the glimmer in Rafe’s eyes. “You think it’s funny?”
“It’s a little funny.”
My mind reeled with the potential dangers. This situation could have been scripted for a freshman health class. “It’s not funny at all! What if he has an open cut? What if the turkey had Ferae?”
“Birds can’t get it,” Rafe said.
I knew that, but still … “There’s no running water over here. How is he supposed to wash off?”
“He could try using that.” Rafe pointed past me to the lake.
Everson and I skidded down the hill to the water’s edge where he washed his hands, but his blood-spattered clothes posed a bigger problem.
“Take them off,” I said.
Rafe sauntered down the hill. “You were just waiting for the chance to say that.”
“Shut up.” Everson tossed him the holstered gun and pulled off his shirt to reveal washboard abs.
I hadn’t been waiting for the chance to see him shirtless, but maybe I should have been. I cleared my throat so my voice didn’t come out squeaky. “We can find him new clothes. That’s easy, right?” I dragged my gaze away from Everson’s perfect chest to look at Rafe, but he was staring at the sky. I glanced up to see what had put the crease in his brow — the setting sun.
“We’re done traveling,” he said abruptly. “We need to find a place to hole up for the night.” Then he seemed to remember Everson. “Oh crap. You’re gonna bring them right to us.” With two hands, he shoved Everson backward into the lake.
“Bring what to us?” I asked.
Everson came up spitting mad, but Rafe pushed him down again, getting himself soaked as well. “Get the blood out of your clothes!” His tone made it clear this was no joke. Everson rubbed his pants down under the water.
“That’ll have to do. Come on,” Rafe hissed, waving him out. “See that?” He pointed at a small cottage on the other side of the lake. “That’s where we’re sleeping tonight.”
“Why not pick one in town?” I asked, gesturing up the hill to the road. “Those are closer.”
“Because that one is boarded up.”
He was right. Big wood shutters covered the cottage’s windows as if someone had closed up the place for the winter.
Holding his shirt in one fist, Everson slogged onto the bank. At that moment, a faint rattling sound started up, as if dried seedpods were shimmying in a breeze. But the lake’s surface was still, and the cattails on the bank around us remained ramrod straight.
“What’s that sound?” I asked.
Rafe froze, listening, and his expression darkened. “A whole lot of nothing good. Go.” We took off, cutting through the tall reeds along the lake’s edge with Rafe leading the way.
As the sun sank toward the horizon, the lengthening shadows seemed to turn up the volume on the odd sound. Less of a rattle now and more like the hard, dry clicking of a hundred bead curtains being swept aside. The houses on the ridge seemed to quiver with the noise. I sloshed through the marsh and tramped over fallen logs, trying to match Rafe’s fast pace. But the clicking intensified to the point where I swore I could feel the sound waves bouncing off my skin. I glanced back. Up on the ridge, black smoke billowed out of a church spire.
I stumbled to a stop and turned to watch. “It’s on fire….”
“What is?” Everson paused beside me.
“Everything.”
Smaller wafts of black smoke rose from the houses, pouring from upper-story windows and holes in the roofs. High in the darkening sky, the undulating columns melded together to become one rippling, shifting mass. And suddenly, I knew — remembered — what I was seeing. “That’s not smoke….”
“Don’t stop!” Rafe yelled, but when he followed our hypnotized gazes, he froze midstride. “Oh, come on!” He swiped a fist at the growing black cyclone. “What is this, their spawning season?”
Everson shouted to be heard above the frenzied clicking. “Are they bats?”
I clamped my hands over my ears. “Weevlings.” The word alone triggered mental epilepsy, but making it worse was my father’s description of how the creatures would descend upon a cow like a smothering black shroud, only to fly off a moment later, leaving nothing but a skeleton. “Piranha-bats.”
Rafe shook off the trance first. “Go, go, go!” But it was too late. Moving with gang intelligence, the weevlings zoomed in our direction. “Scratch that, hit the ground!”
A musky smell pressed down on us two seconds before the clicking mass descended.
I dropped my bag and burrowed into the tall reeds between the guys. We dragged the stalks closed above us as the torrent of weevlings passed overhead. I couldn’t breathe, wouldn’t move. I might as well have been drowning. My muscles quivered from terror and lack of oxygen, but then Everson entwined his fingers with mine. The warmth and strength of his grip calmed me, and I took in small amounts of air until the weevling funnel swept over the lake and crested the trees.
“Go,” Rafe whispered. “Keep low and run.”
In the faili
ng light we sped for the two-story wooden cottage. A piercing howl tore out of the woods and I shuddered, knowing that the weevlings had descended upon some poor creature. The howl came again followed by agonized yowling and then finally — thankfully — silence.
We clattered onto the porch and Rafe motioned for me and Everson to stay put. No problem. Rafe approached the door. As he pulled out his tools for the lock, I scanned the sky for the black cloud. I’d left the messenger bag somewhere in the reeds by the lake but I wasn’t going back for it. Everson was still clutching his wet shirt.
There was a creak behind us, followed by Rafe’s “Okay.”
As I hurried past him through the now-open door, the light from outside caught the glimmer of spiderwebs. I stopped in my tracks.
“Give me a hand with this.” Rafe swatted the webs aside without so much as a flinch and pointed at a couch with rotting upholstery. “We don’t want anything bursting in on us while we sleep,” he said and got no argument from us. Together, we propped the couch against the front door and then Rafe dug into his knapsack for a flashlight. “Don’t open any door that might go to the attic,” he said. “In case you missed it, that’s where weevlings like to roost.”
“If fish don’t get Ferae, how can weevlings be part piranha?” I asked.
“Because they’re bats that have been infected with fish DNA, not the other way round,” Everson said.
“This area is the only stretch that I’ve come across them,” Rafe said. “But I’ve never seen a swarm that big. If they keep breeding like that, they’ll be everywhere before too long. And won’t that be fun?”
Musical notes suddenly banged behind us. We whirled to see an old piano. Rafe grinned at our alarm. “Mice. What, don’t you have them in the West? Or were they stopped at the wall like the other vermin? Tuck your cuffs into your socks when you sleep. Keeps them from crawling up your pants.”
“What if they bite?” I searched the shadows for infected mice.
“Mice don’t get Ferae….” Rafe said. “No rodents do. Same with squirrels and rabbits.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. Ask the geek.”
Everson shrugged. “They’re resistant to rabies too.” His pants were still dripping with lake water and he was bare chested.
I shivered, thinking again of the puddle of blood that he’d landed in. “We should find you some clean clothes.” I plucked Rafe’s flashlight from his hand and headed for the staircase with Everson beside me.
“If he gets grabby, give a shout,” Rafe called after us.
Everson shot an annoyed glance over his shoulder. “She doesn’t have to worry about that.”
“Why not?” Rafe asked. “You don’t think she’s pretty?”
“No, I — Shut up.”
Rafe’s laugh followed us up the stairs.
A tingle ran down my back. Rafe had been trying to bug Everson — I knew that — but the way he’d said it … it had almost sounded as if Rafe thought I was pretty. And Everson had nearly admitted it too.
It doesn’t matter, I reminded myself. As soon as I did the fetch, I’d never see either of them again. Anyway, pretty was relative. Life was hard on this side of the wall and people here looked older than their years. Of course I seemed like a clean, shiny doll to Rafe. And Everson? He’d been locked up in his mother’s house until he joined the patrol. The only girls he knew marched around in military fatigues. So, there was no reason for me to be feeling giddy right now. Or flattered. None at all.
The majority of the towels in the hall closet were piles of fluff, shredded from generations of mice nesting in them. Luckily, a couple on the top shelf were usable. Everson stood in a kids’ room, complete with bunk beds, rubbing down his chest and arms like he wanted to scrape off a layer of skin. I didn’t blame him. Anyone who’d grown up in the West post-exodus had been schooled on how to avoid disease. Coming in contact with blood — huge no-no. Okay, so it was bird blood. But what if Rafe was wrong about the dogs? If even one of them had Ferae, then there could be infected saliva mixed in with the turkey’s blood.
“I’ll do your back,” I said, taking the towel from him. He might miss a spot, and besides, the task would keep me from thinking about how close we’d come to being eaten alive. Which brought it to a total of two close calls for me today.
What was I doing in the Feral Zone? I didn’t belong here. I should be back home debating between doing homework or going to a movie with Anna, whom I suddenly missed so much my insides hurt. If I didn’t make it home, Anna would never know what happened to me; I seriously doubted that Director Spurling would fill her in.
“Thanks.”
Everson’s voice startled me. He started to turn but I put a hand to his shoulder, stopping him. As I inhaled, trying to calm myself, I studied the wall of his back before me — his muscles and sinew were in perfect rippling condition, not shredded by weevlings, and his skin, faintly tanned and smooth, was wholly intact. Not a cut or scratch on him. Nowhere the virus could have entered his bloodstream. I heard him inhale sharply, almost a gasp, and realized that I’d dropped the towel and was tracing my fingertips across his back. Lifting my hand was like prying a magnet from metal. I wanted to touch his skin, to run my palms over every silky inch of it. But I gave myself a mental shake and folded my arms across my body. “You don’t have any cuts.”
“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice hoarse as he turned.
He was standing just inches from me, half dressed. If I’d found his back appealing with those perfectly delineated muscles, his chest was even more tempting to touch. Heat rushed to my face. I scooted back and tightened my ponytail. “I’m fine,” I said, and headed for the closet. “Let’s find you something to wear while your pants dry.”
I flung open the closet doors, grateful to have something else to focus on. Finding clothes to fit him wasn’t going to be easy.
“This will work.” He pulled a blanket from the bottom bunk.
A sudden banging in the next room made me jump. “It’s Rafe,” Everson explained. “He came upstairs with an ax a few minutes ago.”
Following the noise, I found Rafe in the master bedroom chopping up a chest. He’d taken out the clothes and left them on the floor. Squatting, I nudged through the pile with Rafe’s flashlight. I wasn’t going to risk sticking my hand into any rodent nests, even if they didn’t get Ferae. The clothes, all sweaters and T-shirts, had belonged to a petite woman. I scooped up a black tank top and gave it a sniff. The scent of cedar filled my nose, which was about as good as it got when it came to old clothes.
I threw the tank over my shoulder and checked out the queen-sized bed. Dusty but sturdy. I panned the flashlight across the water-stained, buckling ceiling and hoped the roof didn’t collapse while we slept. “Want me to start a fire?” I asked.
Rafe paused to consider me. “You know how?”
I shot him an evil look and bent to collect the wood that he’d chopped. “I am Mack’s daughter.”
Downstairs, I found matches on the mantel and got a fire going in the fireplace without any problem at all. The flickering light pushed back the shadows in the living room. I moved closer, drawn by the warmth of the flames and the rich smell of wood smoke. After a few minutes, Everson came down, carrying his wet clothes. He’d found some baggy gym shorts to put on and had the blanket draped over his shoulders. When he was done hanging his clothes on a chair near the fire, I thought he’d join me on the floor, but no, he headed for a dust-covered desk.
“Before you forget,” he said over his shoulder, “tell me which strains of Ferae were in Moline.”
Right. The missing strains — the whole reason he’d come. And it was an admirable reason, I reminded myself. “You want me to name the different types of manimals that live there?” I asked, twisting to face him.
He stopped rifling through the desk drawers and glanced back at me. “Manimals?”
“A person with Ferae who hasn’t reached stage three,” I said, remember
ing Dr. Solis’s description of the stages of the disease — incubation, mutation, and psychosis.
“That’s smart, making distinctions.” With a pad of yellowing paper and a pencil in hand, he swung the chair around, ready to work. “I want to start a list of the strains we’ve come across so far.”
“Sure,” I said and then described every manimal I’d seen, starting with Sid. When I’d exhausted my memory, Everson cozied up to the desk and began listing the possibilities for the unknown strains based on the details I’d given him.
The fire had warmed me up enough that I ducked into a closet and exchanged my muddy line guard shirt for the black tank. Back in the living room, Everson was wholly absorbed in his task and Rafe was nowhere to be seen. I entered the dining area, which was connected to the main room, and panned the flashlight over the photographs that crowded the walls. Generations of a family, from sepia pictures of immigrant grandparents to colorful shots of a family piled together on the porch steps of this very cottage. Father, mother, three kids. Happy.
Another photo showed the same family members knee-deep in the lake, laughing, their arms entwined. My vision started tunneling. What were the chances that they were all still alive today and together?
Miniscule.
I flipped through the dust-covered mail piled on the dining room table — mostly bills — and then unfolded a yellowed newspaper dated eighteen years ago. The headline: “Containment Fails.” I scanned the article, reading the quotes from the top scientists of the time. “The transgenic virus was accidentally released into the ecosystem and has wreaked havoc within the human and animal populations.” And, “We have been brought low by genetic contamination and yet we never saw it coming. We worried about chemical and nuclear pollution, which turned out to be insignificant by comparison, even though one brought on global warming and the other resulted in waste so toxic it stays lethal for thousands of years.”
On the next page was a photo of Ilsa Prejean promising that her corporation’s manufacturing facilities, which had built Titan’s enormous indoor labyrinths, would now put their efforts toward constructing a quarantine wall. She looked absolutely wrecked in the photo and no wonder: The caption underneath read “Mother of the Plague.” An awful label, and also ironic — Ms. Prejean was clearly pregnant in the photo. It was hard to believe that she’d once been as beloved as Walt Disney. My dad said the Titan labyrinth parks were incredible and that he’d spent way too many weekends in his youth trying to work his way from the fiftieth floor down to the first. He said that often he’d happen upon a beautiful or fascinating room within the maze and end up spending the whole day in it.