Chimera (37 page)

The stench hit him then, and he nearly threw up. He
fought to control himself. This was as bad as anything he'd seen in Afghanistan.
Maybe worse.

To one side of the bodies the blackboard had been
washed clean, then someone had written a final message there:

we did this

together

“What does that mean?” Chapel asked, though he knew
Julia was just as in the dark as he was.

“Four bodies, partially mummified. Their throats
were slit,” Julia said, and he could hear her fighting back her own urge to
vomit. “That's probably how they died. But—but there are other cuts, on their
arms; those are defensive wounds; they were—they fought, hard. They were
attacked with . . . with knives . . . Chapel, I can't
do this. I have to go outside.”

He started to nod, but then he heard something. A
creaking sound, as if weight was being applied to floorboards, just above his
head.

Julia must have heard it too. She swiveled around,
pointing the flashlight like a weapon. Chapel saw there was a balcony running
around the walls above them, a mezzanine looking down on the main floor of the
place. Something was up there, moving fast. It was out of the light before he
could get a good look, but—

“Chapel, someone's here!” Julia gasped.

CAMP PUTNAM, NEW
YORK: APRIL 14, T+46:52

Whoever it was, he moved too fast for Chapel
to get a good look at him, dashing out of the light almost before Chapel had
registered his presence at all. Julia tried to move the light to keep up, but
Chapel heard the sound of footsteps coming down an iron stairwell in the corner
of the room. He drew his sidearm and pointed it into the darkness, having no
idea what was coming for him.

“Over there,” he said, pointing at a corner of the
massive room. Julia swung the light around and it scattered over a pile of
folding chairs, some of them twisted and bent out of shape. A bird fluttered its
wings near the door, and Julia stabbed the light at it, even as the figure in
the dark came running right at Chapel.

He could hear its feet pounding on the squeaking
floorboards, hear it breathing heavily. He would only get one shot, once chance
to—

But before he could fire his weapon, it was on him,
knocking him sideways. His jaw stung and he knew he'd been hit, but everything
happened so fast he barely had time to drop his pistol and put his hands out to
catch himself before he hit the floor.

Chimera,
he thought,
which was impossible—all the chimeras had been accounted for. But the strength
in that hit, the speed with which the figure moved couldn't be denied.

He dropped to one knee, threw his artificial arm up
to protect his head, knowing it was futile. He hadn't been ready for this. He'd
thought he was safe here, that the place was deserted. That lack of planning was
going to get him killed. Would he end up hanging on the blackboard, his throat
slit, his feet turning black with congealed blood?

He had time to shout for Julia to run. Not that it
would make any difference.

In a second he would be dead, as soon as the
chimera hit him again.

He braced for it.

Waited for it.

Eventually he opened his eyes.

“He ran out there,” Julia said, pointing her light
at the doors of the auditorium.

Chapel squinted at the light. A starling hopped
across the debris there, turning its head from side to side.

“Did you get a look at him?” Chapel asked.

“His eyes,” Julia said. “When the light hit them,
they turned black. All black.”

Chapel grabbed his pistol from the floor, then rose
to his feet. “Okay,” he said. “Stay behind me. Point the light where I tell
you.”

She brought the light up under her chin, sending
deep shadows upward from her nose, obscuring her own eyes. But he could see the
terror in her face. “Chapel, maybe we should just go. Head back to the fence.
This isn't one of the chimeras you were supposed to track down, is it? Why would
they come back here?”

“If there are more of them—”

She lowered the light. “I know. I just—I guess I'm
just scared.”

“I am too. But we have to do this,” he told
her.

He led her to the door and out onto the lawn
between the buildings. The starling scampered out of their way.

Outside the starlight made everything silver and
gray. A chimera could have been hiding anywhere and they wouldn't have spotted
him until they were right on top of him. Chapel forced himself to hold his
pistol in a loose grip. The last thing he wanted to do was discharge it because
he was so jumpy his finger slipped.

He looked forward, directly across the lawn. The
little church stood there. It looked more intact than the other buildings—some
of its windows hadn't been broken, and the paint on its door hadn't peeled or
been scratched off. Of all the buildings on the lawn it looked most like a place
where someone might find shelter from the elements.

He whispered when he spoke to Julia. “I want you to
turn the light off. We're going to the church. When I get to the door, we'll
stand to one side of it. I'll cover the door with my weapon. When I say
‘freeze,' you turn on the light and shine it inside. Okay?”

“Okay,” she whispered back.

They moved forward faster now. If Chapel was wrong
about this, they might both be dead. The chimera could be lying in wait anywhere
on the lawn, ready to spring up and attack them. It was the best idea he had,
however.

The door of the church was raised up on a narrow
porch. Two steps went up to the porch. Their feet sounded on each step, but
there was nothing to be done about that. On the porch Chapel pressed his back up
against the front wall of the church and Julia did the same. He checked his
weapon, made sure it hadn't been decocked when it fell from his hand. Then he
nodded to Julia and swung around to point his pistol inside the church door,
into the darkness inside.

“Freeze!” he shouted, though he could see nothing.
Almost instantly the light burst into life behind him. Its beam speared inside
the church and lit up a carved wooden crucifix on the far wall. The eyes of the
figure on the cross had been blackened with a permanent marker.

At first Chapel thought he'd made a terrible
mistake, that the church was empty and the chimera was probably right behind
him. But then something moved among the pews inside, and he swiveled around to
cover it with his weapon.

The chimera stood up very slowly, his black eyes
wide in the light. He had a full, bushy beard, and his long hair was tangled up
in the rags of a shirt he wore.

“Put your hands up!” Chapel demanded, expecting the
chimera to jump right at him. At least this time he had a chance to shoot before
he got knocked down and slaughtered.

Amazingly, though, the chimera obeyed him. Both
hands came up and lifted above the chimera's head. Chapel kept his eyes on the
chimera's face, looking for any sign he was about to be attacked.

“Chapel,” Julia said, “his hands!”

Chapel glanced upward and saw what she meant.

The chimera had no fingers.

CAMP PUTNAM, NEW
YORK: APRIL 14, T+47:01

The chimera started to lower his hands, as if
he were ashamed of them.

“Keep them where I can see them,” Chapel told him,
and the chimera obeyed.

This made no sense. Based on what he'd seen for
himself and what Ellie had told him, chimeras were impulsive and aggressive,
unable to bear any kind of frustration or anger. This one acted like a human
with a gun pointed at him.

“Chapel, he's terrified. Don't be such a man,”
Julia said.

“Seriously?”

“Look at him. He's half starved and he's
shivering.” Julia took a step forward. Chapel held out his free arm to stop her.
At least she didn't run over and give the chimera a hug. “What's your name?” she
asked.

The chimera looked at Chapel as if for permission
to answer. When it didn't come, he said in a halting voice, “I'm Samuel. Are you
going to kill me?”

“No,” Julia said. “No. We're not going to hurt you
at all. We're just trying to be careful. When was the last time you ate,
Samuel?”

Now that he knew to look, Chapel saw the chimera's
cheeks were sunken, and he was much smaller than the chimeras he'd seen outside
the camp. His wrists were like sticks coming out of the sleeves of his tattered
shirt.

“It's been a while. They used to throw food to us
over the fence but . . . now I just get what I can catch, and
it's not easy,” Samuel said. “I can find some mushrooms, sometimes. But
sometimes they make me throw up, and that's worse than eating nothing. There's
tree bark, and every now and again I catch a fish. I have a net.”

Julia lowered the light and Chapel expected Samuel
to bolt, but he didn't. Julia rummaged around in her purse for a while, then
brought out a half-eaten protein bar. “Here,” she said, but Chapel stopped her
from walking over to hand it to the chimera.

“Throw it to him,” he said instead.

She tossed it underhand. He might be half dead with
starvation, but Samuel was still a chimera. He caught it effortlessly between
his two palms and tore the wrapper off with his teeth. He shoved half of it in
his mouth all at once.

“I'm afraid that's all I have. The other half was
my breakfast two days ago,” she said, glancing at Chapel.

“That was when the fence came down,” Samuel said,
nodding. “When Ian and the others left, to follow the Voice.”

“The Voice—” Chapel began, but Julia put a hand on
his arm to stop him.

“Samuel, what happened to your fingers?” she
asked.

“Frostbite. Six winters ago,” the chimera said, his
mouth full of granola and molasses. “I got in a fight with Mark, which—no
fooling—I won, I totally killed him, but I was beat up pretty bad. I fell asleep
in the snow and didn't wake up for three days. When I did wake up, I couldn't
feel my fingers or my toes. Ian cut them off for me with an axe, so I didn't die
from rotting.”

Jesus,
Chapel thought.
The fence would already have been closed off by then. There would have been no
medical care in the camp at all. Samuel was lucky to have lived through that. If
he hadn't been a chimera, maybe he wouldn't have.

“That must have made it hard to fight, afterward,”
Julia said, her voice calm and soothing. Chapel realized she must be using the
same voice she used when she spoke to dogs and cats.

“Sure did. Some of the others, they picked on me;
they would beat me up just for fun because I wasn't a threat anymore. But Ian
stopped that. He took me on as a mascot. He protected me and made sure I got
some food, though not as much as the others. That's how come I'm so small.”

Another chimera. Impossible—they'd all been
accounted for. Hollingshead had said as much in his briefing. There had been six
detainees when the fence came down, two who were killed in the escape and four
who made it out.

No—wait. Hollingshead had said there were seven,
but that the seventh was presumed dead. Why he'd been presumed dead had been
something Chapel didn't need to know.

“Why are you still here?” Chapel asked. “If Ian
liked you so much, why didn't he take you with him when he left? Or later, you
could have just walked out on your own.”

Samuel shrugged. “Where would I go? I don't know
nothing about the world. I know the camp pretty good, but that's it. And anyway,
the Voice didn't want me.”

“You mean the Voice didn't tell you who to kill?”
Chapel asked.

“Yeah. The Voice said I was useless. It told Ian to
kill me before they left, and he said he would. I got so scared. But Ian just
took me out to the baseball field, that's a ways north of here. He told me what
the Voice said, and that he wasn't going to do it. He said the Voice wasn't like
Miss P, or like the doctors, and he didn't have to do what it said. That he was
his own master. He cut me a little, and wiped my blood on his hand, so he could
show the others and tell them he'd killed me. Then he told me to run into the
woods and hide until they were gone. I did what he said. Ian was like Miss P. I
always did what he said. I'm a good boy.”

Miss P had to be Ellie Pechowski. Their teacher.
Chapel was certain the doctors he meant were Helen Bryant and William
Taggart.

“You heard this Voice?” Chapel asked. “It spoke to
you?”

“Sure,” Samuel said, licking the wrapper from the
protein bar. “It spoke to all of us. You want to see it?”

See
the Voice? “Very
much so,” Chapel told him.

Samuel went over to the church's altar and picked
something up, using both hands. Chapel knew how hard it could be to manipulate
small objects with one good hand. He could imagine it must be much harder with
no fingers. But Samuel held the object easily, then tossed it toward Chapel.

He managed to catch it with his free hand. “Give me
some light,” he told Julia.

She shone it on the object he held. It was a
cellular phone, a cheap prepaid model with a black case. One side was badly
scuffed. Chapel tried to turn it on, but the battery was dead. He put it in his
pocket.

“Hey, you can't have that! That's the Voice!”
Samuel said, and took a step toward them.

Chapel raised his pistol. Samuel's face contorted
and his fingerless hands shook and Chapel wondered if he would finally revert to
form, change into one of the violent, aggressive chimeras he had met before.

But slowly, and with visible effort, Samuel calmed
himself down. “I get it,” he said. “You're like Miss P, too. Or Ian. I'll do
what you say. I'm a good boy.”