Michelle stood up and stretched. As she looked at the neat little compound buildings, she jerked back. Staring out of several windows were the faces of children. None of them could have been older than nine.
“Jesus,” she whispered. How long had they been there? What had they seen?
Alicia strolled into the clearing followed by a little girl. The girl was wrapped in bandages. Her melonlike head was impossibly large for her tiny body, and she didn’t walk so much as stagger.
“I know you appreciated my survivor hospitals,” Alicia said. “I’ve been working on many things for my people. I’ve even been working on a little project for children.”
“For children.” Michelle was at a loss.
Alicia gave a belly laugh. “These children are building our nation. My project is making us strong. Some of my babies were born of rape, and abandoned in orphanages because they were the product of the mother’s shame. Instead of being outcasts they will be the defenders of the People’s Paradise. This is a great honor for them.”
“What you did last night . . .”
“A sacred rite. The children saw me bestow my gift. I give my Leopard Men power. I give my babies power.”
“You give them the virus.” Michelle was horrified.
“The gift. Not all of them are worthy, sad to say. But those who are . . .” Alicia beamed at the little girl in the bandages. “This is the Mummy. Would you like to see what she can do?”
A bubble began to form in Michelle’s hand. Take this insane bitch out. The world will be a better place.
“May I have your answer about Tom, please?”
“If you want him dead, kill him yourself,” Michelle answered.
Alicia pouted. “You disappoint me, Michelle. We could have been such friends. Baby, do her for me.”
The Mummy ran to Michelle and seized her arm. Her hands were tiny, her fingers wrapped in rags as dry as parchment. What is this? Michelle thought.
Then the pain hit.
Her body began to wither. Her throat felt as if it were closing up. And the Mummy’s bandages began to fill out, the fabric darkening with moisture, stretching.
Jesus, Michelle thought, suddenly frightened. She tried to yank her arm away, but the little girl held on like a terrier. Michelle kicked backward, sending her chair toppling over. There was a squishy thud as the Mummy hit the ground beside her, but she didn’t let go. Michelle grew thinner, weaker. My precious bodily fluids, she thought, giggling hysterically. The Mummy was growing as she shrank. She’ll outweigh me soon, she realized.
Michelle kept shrinking, her precious water draining away into the blobby monster on her arm.
A terrified shriek pierced through her fear.
Michelle sat up, and the world tilted. A corpse came lurching out of the building where Joey was being kept; a child, no older than the Mummy. Two more zombies followed. She recognized the guards who’d been posted at Joey’s bedside. Joey appeared in the doorway behind them. She looked wobbly, but her zombies were moving just fine.
Michelle heard Alicia Nshombo scream. She was staring down the road with horror on her face.
Michelle pressed her palm against the Mummy’s head. “Let go, kid,” she said in French, and then again in English. “I have no intention of dying today. Either we both get up, or I’ll be the only one getting up. Got it?”
The Mummy squeezed tighter. Michelle slid a wizened hand down her bandaged cheek and under her chin, then raised her face to look into the child’s eyes. They were black, shiny, devoid of any sign of humanity.
“I’m sorry,” Michelle said.
Then she loosed a stream of bubbles.
Water, blood, and brains burst over Michelle. She yanked the Mummy’s hand from her arm and pushed the tiny corpse away. Where she fell a puddle formed around her.
Alicia Nshombo was still screaming. Michelle struggled to her feet. Joey was staring into space with a beatific smile on her face. Hoodoo Mama was in the house.
Michelle’s arms were withered and wrinkled as an old woman’s. She was dizzy and shaking from the water loss. All she could do was watch. Shambling into the center of the camp were zombies. All of them were children. Dozens of them, scores of them, hundreds of them, green and grey and rotting. More were coming up around them, little fingers clawing up from the ground like rain lilies after a storm. The earth sprouted small heads and shoulders.
Leopards leapt upon the zombies, snarling, clawing, growling. They ripped the dead children apart, but for every one that fell there were a dozen more. The soldiers were emptying their guns, but bullets can’t kill the dead.
Waves of dizziness poured over Michelle. She was so thirsty. Dazed, she had trouble trying to remember what she needed to do now.
Adesina. She staggered to her feet.
Some of the soldiers dropped their guns and fled into the jungle. Michelle held her palms up. She thought about Adesina in the pit. All the dead children. About how horrible it must have been for them to be torn away from their families, dragged to this place, and injected with the virus that would kill most of them, maim some, and leave only a few . . . like her.
And something in Michelle shifted. Something in her broke and her energy surged.
With methodical calm, she created small, extremely dense bubbles and sent them hurling through the air at the nearest soldiers. They screamed and clutched their chests. Blood poured from their wounds. The zombies moved in on the rest, ripping and tearing as they went.
Michelle saw Alicia Nshombo surrounded by zombies. Alicia’s face elongated as she dropped to her hands and knees. Her body grew larger, and fur erupted from her skin. Her teeth grew into fangs. She gave a roar that felt to Michelle as if it were echoing in her own chest.
Okay, Michelle thought. Wasn’t expecting that. World’s fattest leopard.
Joey’s zombies flowed around her. None looked older than fourteen or fifteen. Most hadn’t reached puberty. They surrounded the leopard, piled on top of her, and began tearing and ripping at her with small dead hands. Alicia gave a howl, slashed this way and that. She almost broke free, but one of the zombies grabbed her tail and yanked her back. She screamed again, and this time the sound was almost human. Then she fell silent.
That was when the other leopards vanished. In their places sprawled confused, naked men.
Michelle sat down hard on the ground. It was wet. Mummy. Or what was left of her.
“Jesus, Bubbles, what did you do?” Joey ran to Michelle and dropped to her knees. “Wasn’t there a kid here? Had hold of your arm?”
The world was spinning crazily again. Michelle closed her eyes. “I tried not to die.”
Joey gave a primitive wail. “You fucker! You didn’t have to kill her! I was helping you!”
Michelle swallowed. God, she was thirsty. It was worse than waking up from the coma. “I didn’t have any choice. It was me or her.”
“You didn’t have a choice? You’re the Amazing Bubbles! Nothing can hurt you!”
“She could. She was.”
“She was just a kid!” Joey was screaming.
“Not anymore. I looked in her eyes. And you know what, Joey? Shit happens to little kids. Even if they’re loved and protected, shit happens. All. The. Time. Welcome to reality.” Michelle pushed herself up from the ground. “I told her to stop. Sometimes kids get so broken they aren’t really kids anymore. But if you want to hate me, knock yourself out.”
Joey slapped Michelle’s arm. Then she slapped Michelle’s face. It didn’t take more than a few slaps for her to wear herself out. “You fucker. You fucker. You fucker,” she cried over and over.
“Yep, that’s me,” Michelle said. Unsteadily, she made her way through the carnage of zombies, leopards, soldiers, and pieces of Alicia Nshombo to one of the compound’s buildings.
Inside she found a sink. She opened the tap, leaned over, and put her mouth up to the faucet. Warm water poured into her mouth. She gulped it down until some of the dizziness had passed.
Then she went back outside. She had to find Adesina.
Southwest of Bunia, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
The flatbed truck lurched forward with the grinding of gears and a gout of oily, black smoke. Wally shifted his weight, eliciting a creak and groan from the suspension beneath the cargo bed. The truck stank of goat innards. And its best days were long in the past, which reminded Wally quite a bit of Mr. Finch’s airplane.
That, in turn, reminded him of Jerusha. He wondered if she got the kids to Tanzania, if she were safe, if he’d ever see her again. He cast a long glance up and down his rust-pitted body, and decided he already knew the answer to that last question.
The truck’s oversized tires chewed up the muddy road, leaving ruts the size of small lakes. The mud was a deep, rich brown, and when it splashed on Wally it looked like a rain of caramel or butterscotch. Even in spite of the mud and the constant bouncing, this was the most comfortable he’d been since heading out overland.
One leg burned where the bullet wound had become infected; the dents in his other leg still ached where the crocodile had bit him. His feet were solid orange with rust. Nicks, scratches, and even claw marks covered his arms, legs, and torso. The rust was deep enough in places that when he stuck a fingertip in, he felt something warm and squishy inside.
He pulled out his last S.O.S pad and set to work, doing triage on his crumbling skin. He cast his gaze into the forest while he scrubbed. Sure enough, twenty or thirty feet past the edge of the road, Ghost kept pace with the truck, her toes dangling just inches from the ground. She still clutched the knife handle, though Wally had destroyed the knife.
He hoped the driver wouldn’t see her. Getting this ride was the first break he’d had in two days, and he needed the rest. Cripes, did he ever need the rest.
The smaller villages, like this one, had no electricity. No radios. No telephones. He’d eventually figured that out after a long session of intercultural charades; the villagers had spent a lot of time staring at the clanking metal man and his strange gestures. They didn’t run from him, though. If anything, he had the sense they knew what he was doing, and secretly approved of his mission. Maybe they’d heard about the Nyunzu lab, and the barge. They seemed to think he was pretty okay. Especially after he pantomimed fighting a Leopard Man. They’d loved that. Hence the ride.
He didn’t know how far this fella planned to take him—certainly not all the way to Bunia—but every mile Wally didn’t have to walk was a small blessing.
Wally scrubbed until there was nothing left of the S.O.S pad but a handful of fuzz. His feet looked a lot better, and he’d buffed out some of the worst pits in his arms, legs, and torso. The spots he couldn’t reach, those were what worried him the most. He dozed off . . .
. . . and woke when the truck skidded to a halt. Wally slammed his forehead on the cab of the truck, cracking the rear window. “Ouch. Hey, sorry about your truck, guy.”
But the driver had already jumped out, and was running back down the road. Great. Wally stood, expecting to find Ghost floating in the middle of the road.
She wasn’t. But the road was blocked with an armored personnel carrier and three leopards (two spotted, one black). A fourth Leopard Man stood atop the carrier, in human form, behind a machine gun.
Rats. He should have expected this. The PPA knew where he was; he’d seen a helicopter earlier in the day. By now, they probably had all the roads to Bunia blocked off.
The machine-gunner raked the truck. A line of holes perforated the hood. The windshield shattered. Rounds pingpingpinged across Wally’s chest. He made a mental note to try to make sure the Committee found the driver somehow and got him a new truck. “You guys again. Don’t you leopard folks ever learn?”
He vaulted over the cab. The leopards reared back. Wally hit the ground hard, sending up a spray of mud that drenched the cats. They hissed, shaking their heads to clear their eyes.
Wally took advantage of the momentary distraction to close with the APC, rendering the machine gun useless. The gunner couldn’t aim at him as long as he stood next to the vehicle. Wally placed a hand on the armor, ready to disintegrate the whole thing, but then he thought better of it. Why not drive to Bunia in a PPA vehicle?
The leopards surrounded him, one in front and one each to his left and right. The gunner pulled his sidearm. He emptied a magazine on Wally’s head, arms, and shoulders. It hurt. A lot. Rivulets of blood trickled down his body, from a dozen different spots.
“Okay, now you’re asking for it, pal.” Wally gave the APC a violent shove. It tipped up on one set of wheels, just short of flipping over, before landing back upright with a ground-shaking crash. The gunner fell off.
The leopards chose that moment to pounce. One landed on his back, the others raked his arms. Wally jumped and fell backward, body-slamming the leopard on his back. They landed with a splash, a crack, and a yelp.
Wally caught a flash of white in the foliage. Ghost, watching from the sidelines. She looked . . . terrified.
But then he was at the center of a maelstrom of fur, claws, and fangs, and couldn’t see anything. The remaining leopards dodged his punches and kicks. When he turned to deal with one, the other put new gouges in his rust.
He had finally caught one by the throat and was squeezing hard, when the leopard shimmered into the form of a man. The giant cat scratching at Wally’s shoulder also turned into a man. A very confused and very silly-looking man. Wally saw panic in their eyes. He dropped the first guy, who fell to the ground with both hands to his neck, and planted an iron elbow into the second fellow’s stomach. They crawled away, past their comrade whose legs Wally had crushed. He, too, had reverted to his human form.
What the heck just happened?
The gunner ran out from behind the APC. Apparently he had reloaded, because he squeezed off a volley of shots while his comrades retreated. Wally charged him, grabbed his hand, and crushed the gun into a useless ball of metal. His opponent fell to his knees, screaming like a banshee.
Wally cuffed him alongside the head, knocking him out. Silence descended over the empty road. Well, it was mostly silent, except for the sobbing.
Sobbing? Did I miss one? Wally looked around, but all the Leopard Men either were unconscious or had retreated. No, the crying came from nearby. From the roadside.
From Ghost.
“It’s okay,” said Wally. He saw how she stared at the Leopard Men. “You’re safe. They can’t hurt you now.” Her feet, he noticed, were touching the ground.
The knife handle fell from her fingers. She grabbed a fallen branch, ran across the road, and started to beat the guy sprawled at Wally’s feet. Her bawling—loud, inconsolable—evoked one of the horrors Wally and Gardener had witnessed in Nyunzu: a Leopard Man handing a syringe to a little boy, forcing him to infect another child with the virus.
“Hey, hey. Don’t do that.” Wally gently took the branch away. She fell to her knees, hitting the dead man with tiny fists.
He wrapped her in his arms and held her until she cried herself to sleep. It took a long time.
Kisangani, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
Adesina was in the second pit Michelle searched.
At first, Michelle had thought the pit held nothing but body parts. Then she saw something moving in the corner. She started trembling. But then she made herself jump into the pit. Immediately she sank up to her waist in the decaying remains. She waded over to where the movement had been and started digging. Soon she was completely covered in the foul-smelling, rotting flesh.
But what she finally uncovered wasn’t a sweet little girl. It wasn’t even the feral child who had haunted those dreams. What she found was a hideously repulsive sluglike creature, encased in a shiny filament cocoon.
She knew it was Adesina.
Michelle tried not to think about how she didn’t want to touch Adesina now. But when she finally grabbed the thing around its middle, it was as if she’d b
een flipped into one of her pit dreams.
Adesina is there with her, the dream Adesina, the way she was before the wild card had changed her. Adesina can feel Michelle’s revulsion, and in turn Michelle feels Adesina’s sorrow. It staggers her for a moment.
Michelle gathered herself and carried Adesina back to the compound, cradled in her arms. Joey glared as she walked up.
“This is Adesina,” Michelle said. And then the cocoon began to pulse. A chunk of it fell off and Michelle almost dropped it. “Go get me a towel,” she said to Joey. The cocoon moved again. Michelle tried not to be grossed out, but she hated bugs and wormy things.
A few seconds later, a leg emerged from the cocoon—and then another. After that, the head started out. It was covered in a shiny, viscous fluid. Michelle thought it was nasty. Joey was thrusting a towel at her. Michelle plopped on the ground and started dabbing at Adesina’s head. Now that she had something productive to do, she could shove her gut reaction aside.
And as she patted away the fluid, she saw that Adesina’s face wasn’t an insect face at all. It was the face that Michelle knew from her dreams.
A moment later, there was a wet sound and the rest of Adesina’s body slid from the cocoon. The husk fell off Michelle’s knees and she kicked it away. She kept gently drying Adesina’s body. Adesina started shaking and wriggling. A pair of small wings unfurled from her back. She pushed herself up on her legs, wobbly at first. She was the size of a small dog. Michelle didn’t know what to do now. Part of her was still not wild about the insectyness of Adesina, but then there was that sweet face she knew so well. She was torn.
Adesina raised herself up onto her back legs and put her front legs on either side of Michelle’s face. Amazing warmth and happiness spread through Michelle. Then Adesina said, “Thank you.”
Tears began to pour down Michelle’s face and she reached out and touched Adesina’s cheek. “You’re welcome,” she replied. “I’m so sorry. . . .”