Clay's Ark (30 page)

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.

Eli stood up, took her hands, and drew her to her feet. Her hands tingled, almost burned where he touched her.

Confused, she tried to pull away, but somehow her desire to pull away did not reach her hands. They did not move.

"Be still," he said. "I just went through this with your father. His organisms 'knew' something mine want to know. So

do yours."

That made no sense to her, but she did not care. She was not being hurt. She did not think she would have noticed if he

had hurt her. She was still trying to understand that her father was dead. Eli kept talking. Eventually, she found herself

listening to him.

"When we've changed," he said, "when the organism 'decides' whether or not we're going to live, it shares the

differences it's found in us with others who have changed. At least that's what we've decided it's doing. We had a

woman who had had herself sterilized before we got her-had her tubes cauterized. Her organisms communicated with

Meda's and her tubes opened up. She's pregnant now. We had a guy regrow three fingers he'd lost years ago. You . . .

There's no precedent for it, but I think you may be getting rid of your leukemia. Or maybe the organism's even found a

way to use leukemia to its advantage-and yours. You're going to live."

"I should die," she whispered. "Dad was strong and he died."

"You're not going to die. You look healthier than you did when I met you."

"I should die!"

"Jesus, I'm glad you're not going to. That makes up for a lot."

She said nothing.

"Kerry?"

"Don't call me that!" she screamed.

"I'm sorry." He put his arm around her as soon as he could free his hands from hers-as soon as the organisms had

finished their communication. How the hell could microorganisms communicate anyway, she wondered obscurely.

Eli answered as though she had asked the question aloud. Perhaps she had. "We exchanged something," he said.

"Maybe chemical signals of some kind. That's the only answer I can come up with. We've talked about it at home and

nobody has any other ideas."

She did not understand why he was talking on and on about the organism. Did he think she cared? Out of the corner of

her eye, she saw the column of smoke from the ranch house and she thought of something she did care about.

"Eli?"

"Yeah?"

"What about Rane?"

Silence.

"Eli? Did she get out?"

More silence.

"You blew up the house with her inside!"

"No."

"You did! You killed my sister!"

"Keira!" He turned her, made her face him. "I didn't. We didn't."

She believed him. She did not understand why she believed so quickly, why watching him speak the words made her

know he was telling the truth. She resented believing him.

"What happened to her?" she demanded. "Where is she?"

Eli hesitated. "She's dead."

Another one. Another death. Everyone was dead. She was alone.

"The car people killed her," Eli said.

"How could you know that?"

"Keira, I know. And you know I'm not lying to you."

"How could you know she was dead?"

He sighed. "Baby . . ." He drew another breath. "They cut her head off, and they threw it out the front door."

She broke away from him, stumbled a few steps down the road.

"I'm sorry," he said for the third time. "We tried to save all of you. We ... we work hard not to lose people in the middle

of their conversions."

"You're like our children at that stage," another voice said.

She looked up, saw that a young oriental man had come over the hill behind her.

The man spoke to Eli. "I came to see if you needed help. I guess not."

Eli shrugged. "Take her back to the camp. I'll bring her father."

The man took Keira's arm. "I knew your sister," he said softly. "She was a strong girl."

Not strong enough, Keira thought. Not against the car family. Not against the disease. Not strong at all.

She started to follow the new man back to the ranch house, then stopped. She had forgotten something-something

important. It must have been important if it could bother her now. Then she remembered.

"Eli? she said.

He was bending over her father. He straightened when she spoke.

"Eli, someone got away. The hauler who hit my father. He was headed north."

"It was a private hauler?"

"Yes. He got out and tried to rob my father. My father scratched him."

"Oh, Jesus," Eli whispered. He sounded almost the way her father had at the end. Then he turned and spoke to the other

man. "Steve, tell Ingraham. He's our best driver. Give him some grenades. Tell him no holds barred."

The man called Steve went leaping up the slope as agilely as Jacob could have.

"Jesus," Eli repeated. Somehow, he managed to lift her father and carry him back as though he were merely wounded,

not half-crushed. He had fashioned a kind of sack of his shirt. Keira walked beside him, hardly noticing when a car

sped by down on the highway.

Up the hill, Steve-Stephen Kaneshiro, he told her-joined her again. He brought her food and she ate ravenously,

guiltily. Apparently nothing would disturb her appetite.

Stephen kept her away from the ruin of the house. He stayed with her, silent but somehow comforting. He found an

empty car and sat with her in it. Eli's people had apparently driven away or killed all of the second, uncontaminated

group of car people. Now they were cleaning up. Some were digging a mass grave. Others were loading their newly

appropriated cars and trucks with whatever they thought their enclave could use.

"Take a couple of radios," Stephen told a woman who passed near them. "I think for a change we'll be needing them."

The woman nodded and went away.

Jacob found Stephen and Keira sitting together in the car. Without a word, he climbed into Keira's lap and fell asleep.

She stroked his hair, accepting his presence and his youth and thinking nothing. It was possible to endure if she thought

nothing at all.

Sometime later, Ingraham returned. He had driven all the way to the edge of Needles, but found no private hauler.

Everyone had gathered near him to hear about his chase. When they had heard, they all looked at Eli.

Eli closed his eyes, rubbed a hand over his face. "All right." He spoke so softly, Keira would not have heard him

without her newly enhanced hearing. "All right, we knew it would happen sooner or later."

"But a private hauler," Stephen said. "They go all over the country, all over the continent. And they deal with people

who go all over the world."

Eli nodded bleakly. He looked years older and agonizingly weary.

"What are we going to do?" Ingraham asked.

Meda answered him. "What do you think we're going to do? We're going home!"

Eli put his arm around her. "That's right," he said. "In a few months we'll be one of the few sane enclaves left in the

country -maybe in the world. He shook his head. "Use your imagination. Think of what it will be like in the cities and

towns." He paused, reached down and picked up Zera, who had sat at his feet and was leaning sideways against his

right leg. "Remember the kids," he said softly. "They'll need us more than ever now. Whatever you do, remember the

kids."

EPILOGUE

Stephen Kaneshiro waited until he began to hear radio reports of the new illness. Then he put on his gloves and drove

with Ingraham into Barstow. From there, by phone, he tried to locate his wife and son. He had been with Keira until

then, had seemed content with her, but he felt he had a duty to bring his wife and son to relative safety, though they

must have given him up for dead long ago.

Eli warned him that no one knew what effect the disease might have on a young child. Stephen understood, but he

wanted to give his family what he felt might be their only chance.

He could not. It took him two days of anonymous, sound-only phoning to discover that his wife had gone back to her

parents and recently had returned with them to Japan.

He came back to the mountaintop ranch and Keira. Her hair was growing in thick and dark. She was pregnant-perhaps

by Stephen, perhaps from her one night with Eli. Stephen did not seem to care which any more than she did.

"Will you stay with me?" she asked him. He was a good man. He had helped her through the terrible time after the

deaths of her father and sister. He did not excite her as Eli had. She had not known how much she cared for him, how

much she needed him until he went away. When he came back, all she could think was: No wife! Thank God! Then she

was ashamed. Sometime later she asked the question.

"Will you stay with me?"

They sat in their room next to the nursery. Their room in Meda's house. He sat on the bed and she on the desk chair

where she could not touch him. She could not bear to touch him until she knew he did not plan to leave her.

"We'll have to cut ourselves off even more than we have so far," he said. "I brought new weapons, ammunition, and

foods we can't raise. I think we're going to have to be self-sufficient for a while. Maybe a long while. You and I

couldn't even have a house. Not enough wood."

"It doesn't matter," she said.

"San Francisco is burning," he continued. "I bought a lot of news printouts in town. We haven't been getting enough by

radio. Fires are being set everywhere. Maybe uninfected people are sterilizing the city in the only way they can think

of. Or maybe it's infected people crazy with their symptoms and the noise and smells and lights. L.A. is beginning to

burn, too, and San Diego. In Phoenix, someone is blowing up houses and buildings. Three oil refineries went up in

Texas. In Louisiana there's a group that has decided the disease was brought in by foreigners-so they're shooting

anyone who seems a little odd to them. Mostly Asians, blacks, and browns."

She stared at him. He stared back expressionlessly.

"In New York, Seattle, Hong Kong, and Tokyo, doctors and nurses have been caught spreading the disease. The

compulsion is at work already."

She thought of her father, then shook her head, not wanting to think of him. He had been so right, so wrong, and so

utterly helpless.

"Everything will be chaos soon," Stephen said. "There have been outbreaks in Germany, England, France, Turkey,

India, Korea, Nigeria, the Soviet Union. ... It will be chaos. Then a new order. Hell, a new species. Jacob will win, you

know. We'll help him. And Jacob thinks uninfected people smell like food."

"We'll have to help him to help ourselves," she said.