Parasite

  “Is everything all right?”

  The backlighting made it impossible for me to see the expression on my father’s face, but he sounded sincerely worried. I sighed, wiping my eyes again, and said, “No. Not really.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Maybe.” I sniffled.

  My father took that as an invitation. He walked into my room and pulled out the desk chair, sitting on the edge. This close, and without the light shining from directly behind him, I could actually see the concern in his eyes. “What happened?”

  “We were asleep when Nathan’s phone rang and woke us both up. His… his research assistant’s wife caught the sleeping sickness. Her name’s Devi. The research assistant, I mean, not the wife. Devi brought her to the hospital for treatment, and the EMTs let them stay together because what would be the harm, you know? The sleeping sickness is pretty passive. Only it wasn’t passive when Chave caught it. She was attacking people.”

  “And Devi’s wife did the same thing,” said my father. It wasn’t a question.

  I nodded. “She did.” I was crying again. I wiped my cheek and said, “She went for Devi. They didn’t expect it, and Devi didn’t move back in time, and she… and she…” I stopped talking and just cried. It was all I could do. To his credit, my father leaned forward and put his arms around me, holding me until the tears tapered off. When I pulled away, he let me go.

  I don’t think I’d ever loved him more than I did in that moment.

  “Did Devi die?” he asked, very quietly.

  I nodded, biting my lip to keep myself from starting to cry again. That was the last thing I wanted to do.

  My father sighed. “You know there are things about my work that I’m not allowed to talk about. It’s always been that way, since before Joyce was born.”

  “I know,” I whispered.

  “No, you don’t. Because I forget sometimes you don’t have—you don’t remember all those years of being told you couldn’t ask me about my job. You lost those memories in the accident, and we’ve all come to terms with the fact that they’re not coming back, but sometimes I still catch myself treating you like you ought to know when you can’t ask me things. That’s why I was so short with you this morning, and I’m sorry.”

  “You’re still not telling me anything.”

  “I know.” He shook his head. “It’s difficult, Sal. Heck, even things like this are difficult for me. The Sally Mitchell who grew up in this room would never have let me past the doorway. If she’d been careless enough to get caught crying, she would have locked me right out in the hall when she realized it.”

  I frowned. Sometimes hearing about the woman I was before the accident made me want to punch myself in the nose. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It’s not your fault. My oldest daughter was a wild girl from day one, and we never did learn how to see eye to eye on much of anything other than how many times I could ground her.” My father shook his head. “As for what you asked yesterday, it’s… complicated. Yes, we know some things that aren’t being discussed with the public, but we’ve been able to share most of that information with the medical community. We have reason to believe that some other people know a great deal more and are sharing a great deal less, which, as you can imagine, is making us all just a little bit unhappy.”

  “You’re talking about SymboGen, aren’t you?”

  He smiled a little. “You’re a smart girl. A little naïve sometimes, but that’s to be expected with the amount of experience you’ve got to go by. Yes, I’m talking about SymboGen. They aren’t the first corporation to turn public health into a stockholder concern, but they’re definitely the one that’s causing me the most grief right now. And not just because they saved your life, which makes it politically difficult to cut ties with them.”

  “But you’re the government. Can’t you make them tell you what you want to know? If people are getting sick, doesn’t that mean SymboGen is doing something wrong?”

  To my surprise, he shook his head. “There’s something called ‘burden of proof’ that even the government has to respect. Thus far, we haven’t been able to prove that SymboGen knows anything, or that the current epidemic is in any way related to them or to their business. SymboGen is a very powerful corporation, and if we overstep too soon, we might find ourselves unable to get any answers out of them at all.”

  I looked at him blankly. “But you’re the government,” I repeated.

  “We’re the government, and you know what the most powerful weapon against the government is? Money. SymboGen has lots and lots of money, and they know how to spend it. Their lobbyists are extremely influential, and if we move against them before we are absolutely sure we have a case, we could find ourselves in a lot of trouble. I could lose my job. We still wouldn’t have any answers. And you…” He stopped, looking uncomfortable.

  I might not understand politics, but I understood that expression. “I could find myself needing to choose between SymboGen and my family. But I pretty much have a clean bill of health at this point, don’t I? It’s been over a year since my last incident…”

  “And what happens if you have another one? SymboGen is the only reason you’ve survived the last two.”

  “Maybe they’re over.” Maybe. Or maybe they’d started before my accident. I’d seen the traffic camera footage of the crash: one second, normal girl driving; the next, spasms and a total loss of control. It was terrifying, especially because I couldn’t remember it at all. “They’ve been tapering off.”

  “Have they? You could have been having attacks for months before your accident. You weren’t always open with us… before. You could have been very sick and still decided not to say anything, because you didn’t want us to know.”

  I took a deep breath, but I didn’t object. Everything I knew about Sally Mitchell told me that he was right. There was no point in arguing with the truth.

  “Apart from that… we still haven’t found a medical cause for your attacks.” He glanced away. I frowned. He kept talking: “So there’s no reason to believe it won’t happen again, and given the amount of damage the first one did—damage we’re still finding out about, and that you’re still recovering from—we have no way of knowing what the next one would do to you.”

  “So it’s my fault you can’t move against SymboGen,” I said. The bitterness in my voice surprised even me.

  Dad blinked. Then he shook his head, and said, “No. You’re a part of the greater whole, but it’s not entirely on you.”

  “I know, but…”

  “This morning you asked me whether I knew anything that I wasn’t sharing with you. There isn’t much. But one of the things I do know is that the behavior of the afflicted is starting to change. They’re starting to become aggressive. Your friend… this is the first I’ve heard of someone actually dying because they’d been attacked by someone who was sick. It may be because she didn’t try to step away. We very rarely react defensively to the people we love.”

  The first person I’d seen with the sleeping sickness had been a little girl, pursued by her mother. “Are we just hoping that no one else who gets sick has anybody around who cares about them?”

  My father grimaced. “No. But Sal, we don’t know enough to know what’s happening. Most of the people who get sick don’t turn violent. We don’t want people to start turning on their family members because they’re frightened—and this is already a terrifying illness. People you know and love seem to disappear before your eyes. It would be irresponsible of us to make that even more frightening.”

  “So you’re just going to say nothing, and let people like Devi keep getting hurt?”

  “We’re not suppressing any information. I’m sure the news will pick this up and start telling the world very soon, if they haven’t done so already. But we’re not going to make any official statements until we know more than we know right now.” He stood. “It’s a horrible solution. There are no good solutions left.”
>
  “Dad—”

  My father paused in the process of leaving the room. He looked back over his shoulder at me and said, quietly, “You know, Sal, I’m very glad I’ve had the chance to know you. You’re a good person, and you still surprise me.”

  I blinked at him, not sure what I could say to that. He took advantage of my brief silence and made his escape. I stared after him. Finally, I turned to Beverly, and asked, “Any thoughts?”

  She wagged her tail.

  Eventually, I got up and closed my bedroom door, and sometime after that, I managed to fall asleep. Sleep didn’t come easily, and once I found it, my dreams were full of darkness. Darkness, and the drums.

  I knew I was alone in the house as soon as I opened my eyes. There was a quality to the silence that spoke of emptiness, not stillness. Even Beverly was gone, although that might just mean that she was out in the backyard rather than warming my feet. I rolled over and squinted at the clock. It was almost ten. No wonder I was by myself. Everyone with a more respectable job had long since taken off.

  The stillness endured while I rolled out of bed and found my robe. I went padding out into the hall and toward the kitchen. Maybe there would be some leftovers from the previous day’s SymboGen-sponsored breakfast. It hadn’t poisoned any of us the day before. It wasn’t going to poison me now.

  The sliding glass door to the backyard was open, and there was a note on the fridge, where I would be sure to see it. It was held in place with a magnet shaped like a slice of watermelon, and was written in my mother’s characteristically careful print:

  Sal—

  Your father told me what happened. I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I hope you managed to get enough sleep, and that you’re feeling better today. Please just leave a note if you need to go and be with Nathan today. We’ll understand.

  Beverly is in the backyard, and I made sure that we left you some of yesterday’s goodies for your breakfast. You have to remember to eat. Your implant needs food as much as you do.

  Feel better, and call if there’s anything that you need.

  Love,

  Mom

  I smiled as I finished puzzling through the note. Then I took it off the fridge, folded it, and placed it in my pocket. It was good to know that I had family on my side, no matter what else might be going on in the world.

  Devi had thought she had family on her side, too. My smile faded. I got the remains of the scrambled eggs and sliced fruit from the day before, put them on a plate, and sat down at the breakfast table to eat. I barely tasted anything. I kept thinking of Devi’s face when she saw me coming into the office, the way she laughed, the way she always knew exactly what to say…

  The way she talked about her bulldog, Minneapolis, who was probably sitting at home alone and confused, wondering when her people were going to be coming back to get her. The mouthful of eggs I’d been in the process of chewing suddenly tasted like ashes. I forced myself to swallow, putting my fork down on the plate. I was done. I couldn’t eat anything else, or I was going to be sick. Even if my implant still needed food, I just couldn’t.

  Sometimes people who don’t want to think about what their implants really are—living, independent organisms that just happen to be genetically tailored to live inside the human body—will let themselves neglect the nutritional needs of their implants, and that can be bad. There are implants specifically designed to need less in the way of caloric support, but they’re limited in their distribution to places with bad famines and poor ongoing medical treatment. Low-calorie implants don’t do as much, so they’re reserved for places that can’t support anything else.

  I put my plate down on the floor and whistled. The expected black Lab didn’t appear. I frowned and called, “Beverly! Food!” She still didn’t appear.

  That wasn’t normal. It was strange to get through a meal without a black shadow appearing at my heels to ask for her share. It was unheard of for her to actually ignore food when it was offered.

  “Beverly?” I started toward the back door, tugging my robe a little tighter. It was hard to keep from playing out nightmare scenarios. Like maybe she’d managed to dig a hole under the fence and was running loose somewhere, looking for the way home. But how would she know where home was? Would she run for the house where she used to live, the one where no one was waiting to let her in? I knew my concern for Devi’s dog was feeding my fear for my own. That didn’t make the fear any less real.

  “Beverly!” I stepped onto the back porch, and stopped, frowning.

  Beverly was still in the yard. That was a momentary relief. But she was standing next to the side gate, stiff legged, ears pushed all the way forward, and the hair on her spine was standing up. Her tail was tucked low. She looked like a dog that was getting ready to charge into battle against a much larger enemy, and even though she knew she was going to lose, she was going to do it anyway. It was her duty.

  “Beverly, come,” I called. She didn’t come. It was the first time she’d ever refused a command. I started down the steps to the lawn, still holding my bathrobe tight around my chest. We don’t have many dangerous animals in Colma, but rattlesnakes weren’t outside the realm of possibility. If Beverly had somehow managed to corner a snake, I wanted to pull her away from there as fast as I could.

  As I got closer, I realized that she was growling, a low, deep sound that seemed to start in her paws and work its way all the way up through her body before rumbling past her lips. It was the sort of thing that would have been terrifying if she’d been directing it at me. Since she was directing it at the fence, it was scary in a different way. I sped up, trying to see what was in front of her.

  There was nothing there but grass. Whatever she was growling at was on the other side of the fence.

  “Beverly?”

  She didn’t respond. I stepped forward and let go of my robe in order to lean down and take hold of her collar. She kept growling. Whatever she was growling at didn’t make a sound.

  “Come on, Beverly. Let’s go inside.” I tugged on her collar. She dug her feet into the soil and held fast, refusing to be moved. I pulled harder. She still didn’t budge. It was like I was trying to move a concrete statue instead of a dog—only concrete doesn’t usually growl. “Beverly, come on!”

  She turned to look at me for the first time since I’d joined her in the backyard. It wasn’t a full turn, just enough for her to see me out of one eye. Her expression was strangely pleading, filled with the anxious need of a good dog to protect her person. If she’d been human, I would have interpreted that look as “let me do this, let me have my job.” I let go of her collar, stepping away. Beverly’s head promptly snapped back into its original position, all her attention fixing on the fence. She never stopped growling.

  I wasn’t a stupid actress in a horror movie, despite the fact that I had gone running outside in my bathrobe to see what was wrong with the dog; no matter how much I wanted to know what she was growling at, I wasn’t going to open the gate and find out. But there were other ways. Feeling suddenly very exposed, I turned and ran for the back door. I didn’t shut it—Beverly would need a way back into the house—but I still felt better once there was a wall between me and whatever had my dog so upset.

  I wanted to call the police, but I needed a better reason than “something upset my dog.” I swallowed hard, and started for the living room. There was a window there that would give me a perfect view of the side yard, and the gate. I’d be able to see whatever it was that Beverly was growling at. I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I was absolutely sure that I needed to.

  I made my way slowly toward the window, wishing I had a weapon, or any idea how to use one. I would have felt better. There were probably lots of things that could be used as improvised weapons in the kitchen and living room, but I didn’t know what would work, and so I didn’t reach for anything. I wasn’t a fighter. I did, however, have a pane of glass between me and whatever was in the side yard. I held that thought firmly at the front of my mind as I in
ched around the couch and peered out the window.

  Three of my neighbors were standing in the side yard, their hands down at their sides, staring at the fence. I recognized them all, even if I only knew one—Mr. Carson from next door—by name. None of them were moving. One of them, a woman, was wearing a bathrobe a little newer than mine. Her socks were soaked and grass stained. The other woman was wearing one shoe, and her hair looked like it was halfway-combed. I bit my lip. They were just standing there.

  Then Mr. Carson turned and looked at me.

  I let out a little scream and stumbled backward, falling over the couch in my retreat. His eyes were like Chave’s had been: totally empty of anything resembling humanity or life. Dead eyes. He looked at me like a man who had crawled out of his own grave.

  I didn’t stand up once I managed to recover from my fall. Instead, I scrambled backward on all fours, keeping my eyes fixed on the window. If they were moving, I didn’t want to know about it, didn’t want to see it—and yet somehow, I knew they were moving, that Mr. Carson at least was walking toward the window where he’d seen me, and the other two were very likely following him. I didn’t know how I knew, but I knew, just like I knew that I was alone.

  The slap of Mr. Carson’s palms hitting the window was one of the loudest things I’d ever heard. Beverly came racing into the living room, barking madly, and threw herself up onto the couch. Her paws left muddy prints behind them, standing out boldly against the pale tan cushions. She kept barking, her ears flat against her skull, her attention fully focused on the window.

  Beverly was inside. That meant that there was no longer anything between the gate and the open back door.

  Sheer terror forced me to my feet, and I ran for the back door, not allowing myself to look at the window. At least one of them was there. If all three of them were there, I might be fine. I might—