“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 people. 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.
She continued down the slope with greater care. She did not have Eli’s or Jacob’s ability to move in complete silence, but she moved as quietly as she could, missing the rock and sand she could have knocked loose, avoiding the dry plants that would crackle underfoot, quieting her own panting.
She paused briefly to listen. The wind, now blowing toward her from her father, brought her the sound of his uneven footsteps. He was limping slightly. His breathing, though, was even, not labored. She marveled for a moment that she could actually hear his breathing over such a distance. The organism had given her a great deal. It must have given him something too. How else could he survive being shot and losing so much blood? How else could he keep going? If only something could be done to stop it from killing so many people while it helped others.
She became aware of a low rumble behind her. Looking back, she saw a truck—a big private hauler—probably carrying something illegal if it were daring to use a map-identified sewer. She dove for cover as the truck came over a rise. Perhaps the driver was in his living quarters and would not see her or her father. Perhaps. But what driver would leave his rig on automatic in a sewer? He would be at the wheel. And his truck would be armed and armored to fight off gangs and the police.
The truck rumbled past her, not even slowing in spite of the fact that the rock she had crouched behind was not large enough to conceal her completely. Unmoving as she was, perhaps the driver had seen her as just another lump of rock.
But up ahead, beyond the hill that now concealed her father, the truck slowed and stopped. Frightened, she walked toward the truck, then ran toward it. People traveling legitimately did not stop to pick up strays, did not dare. Her father had told her of a time when a person could stand with his thumb held in a certain position, and cars and trucks would stop and offer rides. But Keira could not remember such a time. All her life, she had heard stories of strays being decoys for car families and bike gangs. Real strays were people with car trouble and without working phones or people thrown out of cars by friends who suddenly became less friendly. People who picked them up might be only dangerously naive or they might be thieves, murderers, traffickers in prostitutes, or, most frighteningly, body parts dealers—though according to her father, involuntary transplant donors were more likely to come from certain of the privately run, cesspool hospitals. But for a freelancer, strays were fair game.
Keira ran, not knowing what she would do when she reached her father and the hauler, not thinking about it. All she could think was that her father might be shot with a tranquilizer gun and loaded onto a meat truck.
Suddenly, as she ran, there was an explosion, then several explosions. For a moment, she stopped, confused, and the ground shook under her feet.
The ranch house. Eli had done what she had feared he would do: triggered his explosives, blown up the car people—even the white-haired one who had been kind.
And Rane? Had she gotten out? Was that why Eli had decided to settle things? Or was it because Keira and her father had escaped so easily? Eli almost certainly did not have enough people to surround the house and fight the new gang. Were two escapees all he was willing to risk?
Black smoke and dust boiled up over the hills. Keira stared at it, frightened, wondering. Then she heard the hauler start and saw it begin to pull away.
Again, she ran toward her father, pushing herself, fearing to find nothing where he had been. Instead, she found her father half-crushed by the wheels of the truck. His legs, the whole lower half of him looked stuck to the broken pavement with blood and ruined flesh. He could not possibly be alive with such massive injuries.
Her father groaned. Keira dropped down beside him, sickened, revolted. She could barely look at him, yet he was alive.
“God,” he whispered. “My God!”
Weeping, Keira took his hand. It was wet with blood and she touched it carefully, but it was uninjured. Clutched in it was a piece of blue cloth—a bloody sleeve, not his own.
“I did it,” he moaned. “Oh Jesus, I did it.”
“Daddy?” She wanted to put his head on her lap, but she was afraid she would hurt him more.
“Ke
rry, is that you?” He seemed to be looking right at her.
“It’s me.”
“I did it. Jesus!”
“Did what?” She could not think. She could hardly talk through her tears.
“He was looking for my wallet … or something to steal. He hit me deliberately … had to swerve to hit me. Just wanted to steal.”
She shook her head in disbelief. She had never heard of haulers running people down to rob them. Car families were more likely to do that. But in a sewer, anything could happen.
“I grabbed him,” her father said. “I couldn’t help it, couldn’t control it. He smelled so... I couldn’t help it. God, I tore at him like an animal.”
So like the blue sleeve, the blood on his hand was not his.
He had spread the disease.
“Please,” he pleaded. “Go after him. Stop him.”
“Stop who?” Eli asked.
She had not heard him coming. Enhanced senses or not, she stood up, startled. Then she saw her father’s bag in his hand. She knew how utterly useless it would be and she broke down.
Crying, she permitted Eli to take her by the shoulders and move her aside. He knelt where she had been. When she was able to see clearly again, she saw that he was holding her father’s bloody hand. She felt something happened between them, a moment of nonverbal communication.
Then, with a long, slow sigh, her father closed his eyes. Eventually he opened them again widely. His chest ceased to move with his breathing. His body was still. Eli reached up and closed the eyes a final time.
Keira knelt beside her father, beside Eli. She looked at Eli, not able to speak to him, not wanting to hear him speak, though she knew he would.
“He’s dead,” Eli said. “I’m sorry.”
She knew. She had seen. She bent forward, crying, all but screaming in anguished protest. With her eyes closed, she could not imagine her father dead. She did not know how to deal with such an unimaginable thing.
Eli took off his shirt and covered the most damaged parts of her father’s body. Blood soaked through at once, but at least the horrible injuries were hidden.