Helix: Plague of Ghouls (42 page)

“But no problem at the liquor store,” the Padre said, offhandedly. “You’d think they’d have gone there first.”

“There probably wouldn’t be a problem at the pet store, either,” Two-Trees said. “If the animals go crazy when you people walk in, they’d probably go crazy when our suspects walked in too.”

“Which means they wouldn’t risk
working
there,” Bridget pointed out. “And yes, I do think it’s the people of Elmbury—the citizens, not the visitors—who are setting us off.”

Foster opened her mouth to argue, but nothing seemed to come to mind.

“The point is, we can’t go back to the hotel,” Bridget said. “At least, Ishmael can’t.”

“No matter how badly Ishmael needs a pair of shoes,” Ishmael said. “She’s right. I can’t risk it. I seem to be fine outdoors, but for the love of God, someone, please, get me my shoes.”

“You might not be able to wear them,” Bridget said. “Anything that was in that hotel room would have pheromones on them. Someone’s going to have to do a load of laundry with their nose plugged.”

“And we still need a place to set up shop,” Foster added. “I’m waiting on a shipment from the medical supply store—the needles, the centrifuge, the DNA sequencing kits . . . I need electricity, access to the internet—and we need to get in contact with Gil. I need his help.”

“But we can’t go back to the hotel,” Bridget insisted. “Think about it—what if it was housekeeping that pooted those pheromones? All of our rooms would be compromised.”

Two-Trees was staring at the tops of his shoes. “There is a place you could go.” His expression was guarded, maybe a little angry. “If it’s still standing.” He looked at Buckle. “But we’ve still got to deal with
him
.”

Ishmael grunted. “Little choice now. Bring him with us.”

“VAMPIRES SUPPOSEDLY HAVE
these human slaves,” Bridget was saying, “people who could do stuff during the day for their vampire masters.” She shuffled the cards and bridged them. “Investments during banking hours, property deals, whatever. Then the vampires get up in the night, flit around sucking blood from people, then go back and sleep it off. Can you think of any creature more pathetic than a vampire? I mean, what’s the point of being immortal if you can’t even do your own damned banking?”

Foster snorted a laugh and picked up her cards.

“God, I feel useless out here,” Bridget said.

Ishmael stood before the boarded up window, looking between the slats across the abandoned property and into the trees. The cobbled walkway had been mossed over. Firewood rotted where a burnt barn had once stood. Inside the old cabin, load bearing timbers were so rotted no one could risk scavenging for supplies upstairs, or even in the kitchen, where the floor had fallen into the root cellar. Everywhere, memories of the ’70s and ’80s rusted, unravelled, and went mouldy: feathered blonde hair on the cover of an old TV guide, small empty cans of vintage Coca-Cola, a crocheted granny-square blanket made of black and orange acrylic wool. Near an upended La-Z-Boy chair was an eviscerated pillow with a picture of ET embroidered on one side. Near the back screen door there was a Pepsi can with the skeleton of a small snake stuck in the pull tab. Rotted window sills were littered with the corpses of potato bugs. Old LP sleeves were stuck together with mildew—Bryan Adams, Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Cash, and Bachman Turner Overdrive. No turntable to go with them, and no electricity to power the turntable anyway. The back porch was the sturdiest construction left standing. In another ten years, the roof would cave in. In another twenty, the timbers would all be gone. In fifty years, someone would stumble across the old place and declare it an archaeological find.

And in all that time, Anders Jewell Anderson will still be playing backgammon with the younger lycanthropes, and history would have forgotten all about the six of us.

For all that, Ishmael wasn’t uncomfortable with his surroundings. Tiger Dogs were accustomed to desolation. At least these ruins had interesting things to look at between crises.

“What about Ferox?” Foster asked.

“Ask her yourself in a few hours,” Bridget said. “If we ever find her.”

“No, I mean . . . how is she doing? Really.”

Ishmael scavenged through an old desk in search of anything that could be salvaged, like scissors or a letter opener. He didn’t need any new weapons, since one good sneeze was all it took to make him break out in whiskers, but it was better than sitting around playing pinochle or whatever it was Foster and Bridget were up to.

“Last I knew, she was having a tiff with Dep,” Bridget said.

Who has false starts?

And why is Ahab bald?

“She can hold her own, though,” Foster said. “In fur and out of it. There was this one time . . .”

Ishmael found books in one corner, and when he drew nearer, he saw that most of them had thin spines but were long, like the LP sleeves. He tilted his head. There were only three titles, but many copies of each book. He pulled one out.
Sister Whitehair and the Broken Smoke,
by H. Red Cloud. He pulled out another one.
Sister Whitehair and the Bone Fish Man
, by H. Red Cloud. The last was called
Sister Whitehair and the Trickster
, by H. Red Cloud and Hector-Younger Two-Trees. Grinning, Ishmael pulled the book all the way out. Its spine and opening edges were dented and freckled with mild, but the interior was in perfect condition, if it smelled a bit musty.

Pictures by H. Red Cloud Two-Trees
, the interior said.
Story by H. Red Cloud Two-Trees and his grandson, Hector-Younger.

He’d have to tease the living hell out of Two-Trees for this. At the back of the book, they even had an early 1970s “making of” picture of tiny Hector Two-Trees in a black wig with giant rabbit ears, and otherwise wearing nothing but a pair of brown Adidas shorts with a fluffy brown tail pinned to it. At the other side of the picture, a white haired man in a t-shirt stood behind an easel with a paint brush and palette, halfway through finishing a painting that matched the cover.

There was a break in the chatter. The women played on in silence, while the Padre slipped between the broken door and the frame, headed outside for air that didn’t smell like dry rot. Ishmael stayed inside and read the book co-authored by his new favourite human.

The story was about a young girl who was shunned by her people for having white hair, and about a boyish trickster named Wenabozho. In an earlier book, she’d been very sad that she was the only person in her band who had no colour. The Trickster, feeling sorry for her, gave her a gift of magic paints, so instead of having no colour, she now had them all. She didn’t need any solid surface to paint on, either; she could even paint in the air. On page 4, she painted a butterfly and it came to life. On page 5, she painted a bird in one panel, and in the next panel, the bird was perched on her paintbrush, singing. The creatures were only shimmering illusions, but they seemed as alive as the real thing.

One spring, according to Red Cloud’s story, Sister Whitehair’s village was plagued by a hungry demon with a bone flute. He’d sit outside someone’s
wiigiwaam
and play, making the sleepers inside come out and dance all night long, while he went in and ate all their food. The sleepers would dance all the following day, too, until the victim collapsed of hunger. This happened night after night for so long, that the band was famished. They were so hungry their legs were like sticks, and their arms were like reeds. The chief called the young men together and sent out his fastest warrior to fight the evil spirit where it lived beside the lake, but that young man was gobbled up before he could reach the shore. Then the chief called the strongest warrior, but he was gobbled up before he made it halfway down the forest path. Finally the chief called forward his bravest warrior of all, but as soon as he’d told the young man what to do, the evil spirit came to the chief’s tent and gobbled up the warrior right before their eyes.

The people of the village said it was because Sister Whitehair was a witch, and evil spirits came to her because they were in love with her. They begged the Chief to do something about Sister Whitehair and her family. The Chief agreed and made plans to bind up Sister Whitehair and her whole family and throw them into the lake to drown, to appease the good spirits and to ward off the bad.

Sister Whitehair begged the Trickster to help her village fight the monster, or to make their warriors stronger and faster, like Bear or Wolf. So the Trickster came to the village to talk to the chief and the elders. “You must help us kill the Dancing Spirit,” they said. The Trickster laughed. “That old spirit? He’s harmless. Why, even the least of you could defeat him, if she put her mind to it.”

The elders turned to the chief. “He means that we have to send Sister Whitehair. She doesn’t stand a chance! This is our opportunity to get rid of her once and for all!” So the elders dressed her up like a little warrior and sent her to the edge of the lake, where the evil monster lived. Thinking only about the safety of her people, the little girl marched off to certain doom.

Ishmael read all of this with a growing smile.

“So that makes you what, a hundred and two?” Bridget asked.

Ishmael’s attention wandered.

“A hundred and two years since full infection,” Foster answered. “We have no idea how old we were when we were infected. For all I know, we could have been ninety-nine human years old, and had the odometer reset back to nineteen, post-infection.”

If Anders Jewell Anderson is older than A. Hab, why does he look younger?
The question was still bothering him: why
was
Haberman bald? Was he shaving his head, like he said, or did he simply stop growing hair?
Which is the antithesis of being a lycanthrope. No matter what variant you’ve got, growing hair is the hallmark of the condition.

Another question came to mind, one that Angie Burley had asked him.
You ever seen him in his furry pyjamas?
Haberman was an intensely private man when it came to anything bodily-related. He had a private washroom, soundproofed, far at the back of the house. He never left his room without donning a three piece suit, no matter the weather. Shorts were an abomination, no matter who wore them. He was the Old World Gentleman Soldier, and the New World CEO.

Ishmael had confronted Haberman once, a year after Bridget was brought over. He’d been at his wits’ end, and he was tired of Haberman demanding answers. Who was the rogue hyena? Where was he? Six victims in as many months, all on Canadian soil. Why couldn’t Jay catch him? Why couldn’t Ishmael? Two of Wyrd’s best trackers, months of intensive hunting, a hundred thousand dollars spent in bribes and travel expenses, and the hyena aberration was still on the loose. Ishmael, who’d never seen Haberman in his “furry pyjamas”, asked if Haberman was the aberration in question. He’d lost a tooth in that fight. Haberman didn’t need to change; he had a way of knocking a therianthrope out cold before he even thought to change skins. If not for Harvey and his dogs, Ishmael would never have believed Haberman was a lycanthrope at all. But it was Chloe who confirmed it. Haberman was a classic type, brown and black with no seasonal changes in coat, bipedal and tailed, with yellow eyes and hairy palms, the whole nine yards. She’d dated him during the Edwardian period, before Haberman met his beloved wife, who died a few years later from the Spanish Flu, presumably before the lycanthropy kicked in.

And what has any of this got to do with Halo County?

“Dep came to me a couple of days before we left,” Bridget said. “Looking for advice on women.”

“Really,” Foster asked. “Even during his false starts?”

“I figure because of his false starts.” She asked for a six. Foster didn’t have one. “You ever wonder why I remembered my kids? Why I remember so much of my pre-infection life?”

Foster said she hadn’t given it much thought.

“It was Ishmael’s idea,” Bridget said, as if Ishmael wasn’t in the room. “He knew I’d lose my memories, my . . .
me
-ness. So he set me up in this camper way out the middle of nowhere, where I could change and scream and rage and hunt. But first, he had me record a videotaped message of myself, and keep a mirror near the TV. Every time I started having a little change, I was supposed to play the tape, listen to the sound of my own voice,
see
how my face was changing,
remember
why I was changing, and why I wanted to change. Live, so I could wreak vengeance on the man who turned me, that kind of thing.” She shrugged. “And it worked. Sort of. Toward the end, I didn’t feel like Claire—uh, the old me. I’d become my own sister, just like my cover story would say. He built me a history, electronically, gave me a new diploma, a certificate of adoption, the names of adoptive parents, everything. And he kept tabs on my kids for me while I was . . . indisposed.”

Foster was looking at him, Ishmael could feel it. He busied himself even farther away.

“So when Dep started feeling like he was losing something—honest to God, I didn’t think he was having his false starts yet—I got out my phone and made him record a message to himself, and then made a copy that he could watch whenever he wanted,” Bridget said.