Destination Unknown (10 page)

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Authors: Katherine Applegate

Tags: #Fantasy & Magic, #Science Fiction, #End of the world, #Juvenile Fiction, #Science Fiction; Fantasy; Magic, #Space travelers, #General, #Space flight

BOOK: Destination Unknown
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He wanted to run away. Should run away. There was no hope for Bill Weir. Was there? Where was Mo? Right there, steady, but grim. Olga? Of course, Mo’Steel’s mother stayed by his side.
“It’s some kind of worm,” Jobs whispered harshly, hoping Big Bill’s cries would keep him from overhearing.
“It’s nothing I’ve ever seen or heard of. Not that size, not that fast. Not as a human parasite.”
“Can you do anything?” Jobs pleaded.
“I’m not a doctor.”
“Mom, it’s a bug, right?” Mo’Steel said. “Maybe you could think about how to kill it.”
Olga Gonzalez drew her son and Jobs a few paces away. “Look, you need to understand it’s very unlikely that this parasite you saw is the only one. That leg may be riddled with them. I have nothing to work with. We have a microscope but we’d need full daylight for that even to work because we don’t have a light. No lab. No equipment.”
“It’s going to eat him alive,” Jobs said. “He’s conscious. He’s not in hibernation like Miss Blake’s dad. He’s feeling this. And it’s only in his leg — it could take a long time for him to die.”
“Maybe we cut off his leg,” Mo’Steel suggested. “We got Dr. Huerta’s scalpel and all.”
“That could kill the man,” Olga said. “Loss of blood, shock, infection . . . and any way, it might not stop the parasite. They may have advanced farther than you can see.”
“Mom, do we have any other choice?”
Olga looked hard at her son and called him by the name she had given him. “Romeo, this thing could kill all of us. I want to help this man, but you have to understand that the parasite could be capable of infesting anyone in contact. God knows what it is. It may not even be of terrestrial origin. This
could be an alien life-form. There’s no telling what it might do.”
“Oh, oh, help me,” Big Bill moaned. “Oh, help me. Oh, help me!” he shrieked, then subsided in sobs.
Jobs said, “Yago has that sword thing the Riders threw to Errol. May be better than a scalpel. Quicker, anyway. In and out fast.”
Olga shook her head. “Someone would have to sew up the arteries in his leg or he’d just bleed to death. Someone would have to get in there and do that, with all the risk involved.”
“I can do that,” a voice said.
Jobs was startled to see Violet Blake. He hadn’t noticed her joining them.
“My . . . my dad died from this,” Miss Blake said, assuming that clarified her motive.
“You could end up going the same way,” Olga said harshly.
“I’ll hold him down,” Mo’Steel volunteered.
“We don’t have any thread,” Jobs pointed out. “But we might be able to use optic cable to tie off the arteries.”
“Look, this is not the time or the place for self-sacrifice,” Olga argued. “That man is probably going to die anyway, no matter what.”
“We’ll have to get the sword from Yago,” Jobs
said. “Ms. Gonzalez, that would be better coming from you. Being an adult. We just need to borrow it. And some more light from the fire.”
Olga Gonzalez hesitated. “I can’t endanger all of us. I can’t endanger my son.”
“Hey, danger is my middle name,” Mo’Steel said, trying to josh her along.
Jobs could see she was hardening in her opposition. He knew what he felt and what he wanted to say, but putting it into words defeated him. He said, “Ms. Gonzalez, this is . . . We are all that’s left of the human race. We have to act like humans. Right?”
“We have to survive,” Olga said with finality.
“No, we don’t,” Violet Blake said. “We don’t have to survive, we have to be worthy of survival. I know you’re a biologist and maybe you see survival in purely evolutionary terms, but we’ve evolved beyond being just another bunch of primates, haven’t we? Isn’t human culture, human morality part of our evolution? Isn’t it part of what defines us as a species? If we give that up and start behaving like savages and survive by being savages, have we saved human life or just devolved into some lesser species?”
Jobs stared at her openmouthed. He was struck by intense jealousy, an out-of-place emotion, surely,
but undeniable just the same. He’d have given anything to be able to speak that way. He noticed Mo’Steel grinning at him.
“Maybe I should be reading more,” Jobs muttered under his breath.
Mo’Steel took his mother’s hand and held it gently. “Mom, you’ve never been able to stop me from doing stupid, dangerous stuff that was just about me squeezing the A gland. Now I’m trying to do what’s right. Don’t stop me now.”
“Okay, honey,” she said quietly. “Okay. I’ll get the sword, or whatever it is.”
When she was gone Jobs said, “That was a pretty good speech, Miss Blake.”
“Thank you.” She knelt beside Big Bill and used the lacy sleeve of her dress to mop sweat from his brow. “We’re going to try to help you, Mr. Weir.”
The only response was a bellow of pain, a noise so loud that Violet jumped back.
Jobs saw the worm. Or one of the worms, if there were several. It was half out of one hole and digging its way back into untouched flesh. Like a dolphin going in and out of the waves.
“It’s fine to be noble,” Jobs said to Mo’Steel, “but if that thing gets me . . . don’t let me live.”
“Don’t think about it, Duck. The Reaper can
smell fear.” He laughed and patted Jobs on the back. “You have to put your brain into some other place. Stay happy and the Reaper can’t find you.”
Despite himself Jobs laughed. “You just make this stuff up to fit the occasion, don’t you?”
“Pretty much.”
“So you’re scared?”
“’Migo, I am seriously scared.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“I’LL COUNT TO TEN SO YOU’LL KNOW WHEN IT’S HAPPENING.”
 
Jobs heard heated words coming from the main camp. Burroway’s loud, grating tone. Wylson Lefkowitz-Blake sounding imperious, but less sure of herself than before. Olga demanding.
In a moment, though, Olga returned carrying the sword. For the first time Jobs looked closely at it. It was curved, almost a scythe. It was perhaps three feet long, very broad, the inside edge was ornate, decorated with cutouts and filigree. There was what might be writing all over the blade. The hilt was never meant for a human hand; it had a clumsy angle in the middle and was too short overall.
“Here’s our scalpel,” Olga said dryly. “The edge seems quite sharp. I suggest the cut be made about eight inches above the knee. That won’t leave him much of a leg, but we have to remove all the affected
portion of the limb. There’s no point doing this unless we do it right.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t know that I have the strength to handle this thing, or the eye-hand coordination.”
“I can do it,” Jobs said.
Olga nodded. “Okay. Romeo? Take Mr. Weir’s shoulders, hold him down, don’t let him jerk free. I’ll try to hold his other leg, I’ll sit on it, I guess. Miss Blake, you stand ready with the ‘thread.’ Jobs, you know what to do.”
When Mo’Steel and his mother were in place, Violet Blake spoke to Big Bill. “Mr. Weir, we’re going to amputate your leg and try to save you. I’ll count to ten so you’ll know when it’s happening.” She turned away and mouthed the words
On three
to Jobs.
He understood. Big Bill would think he had another seven seconds before he needed to panic or try to break free.
“One . . .” Violet said.
Jobs felt an urgent need to throw up.
Later,
he told himself.
Throw up later.
“Two . . .”
Jobs raised the sword.
“Three . . .”
Jobs took careful aim and brought the sword down with all his might.
Jobs breathed.
Mo’Steel stood up and kicked the detached limb away.
Violet Blake moved in to begin suturing the wound. Then she began to scream. She leaped to her feet. She held her right hand out before her, screaming at it.
Jobs saw the worm as it drilled its way down into her index finger. Mo’Steel bounded across the prostrate man and grabbed Violet’s wrist. He closed his strong hand around her fingers, leaving only the index finger extended.
“Jobs!” he yelled.
Jobs swung the sword on pure reflex. The blade stopped less than an inch from Mo’Steel’s face.
Mo’Steel hauled Violet back and threw her violently into the grass. Jobs yanked Olga to her feet and dragged her away.
Big Bill cried piteously, quietly, “Oh, god, oh, god, it’s still here. I can feel it. I can feel it,” just before he lost consciousness.
Olga snatched a branch from the fire and blew out the flame leaving only an ember at the tip. She
told her son, “Hold her hand. Hold it still,” and quickly pressed the coal-hot tip to the stump of Violet Blake’s finger.
Violet screamed and fainted, and Jobs missed catching her. She slumped to the ground.
“Back away, back away,” Jobs yelled.
They dragged Violet with them, dragged her through the grass and stopped only when they were twenty yards from the hysterical, now-awake Bill Weir.
And then, from the main camp came a new sound, like nothing Jobs had ever heard, a collective moan, a cry of fear and disbelief.
Outlined against the fire a dark form seemed to float through the air. Human? No human moved like that.
And yet with growing dread Jobs realized that he recognized the form, knew what face he would see when at last the shape was close enough.
Billy Weir floated, moved without benefit of muscles, simply floated through the air. He still stared, blank, as though blind, still showed no expression on his vacant face.
He floated with his limbs all limp, with his head upraised, till he was above Big Bill.
Big Bill was shrieking now, shrieking like a lunatic thing, his voice no longer human.
And it seemed to Jobs as though a shadow extended down from Billy Weir to his adoptive father. The shadow enveloped them both. For a heartbeat Big Bill was silent. And then Billy Weir screamed.
Jobs thought at first it was Big Bill again, but no, this voice was different, raw, hoarse, but at least an octave higher, a young voice screaming in pain.
Then silence.
Billy Weir sagged, fell to the ground.
Jobs ran back to him, ran and grabbed his nerveless arms and pulled him away, dragging him back from Big Bill.
He stopped, panting, shaking.
Big Bill was silent. And Jobs knew the man was dead.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“TEN’S ONLY A MAGIC NUMBER IF YOU GOT TEN FINGERS.”
 
“We have to get out of here, right now,” Olga said. “Those things could be capable of moving across the ground. Once they’re done with Mr. Weir . . .”
Violet Blake heard the words but as if from far away. The pain in her hand was unlike anything she had ever experienced. She would not have believed that a single finger could possibly cause so much agony.
She held her wounded hand with her free hand, using tattered, decaying bits of her dress as a bandage. The blood wouldn’t stop. But there was no way to tie a tourniquet, the finger had been lopped off right at the base.
She would have liked to try and sew up whatever vein was producing the endless flow of blood, but she knew she didn’t have the nerve for that. The cauterization had been only partly successful.
There was no one to help her. They had dragged the once more prostrate Billy Weir back toward the fire, but they’d been stopped by a solid front presented by Yago, D-Caf, Anamull, Burroway, and the psychiatrist, T.R.
“Wylson says you’re quarantined,” Yago said. “The worms could be in you.”
Violet wanted to scream at him. But the truth was, her mother and the others had been right, the fearful ones, the safe ones, they’d been right and she and her idealistic compatriots had been dangerously wrong. And now even her own mother believed she was contagious.
“The point is we all have to get out of this area,” Olga said through gritted teeth.
“Suddenly you discover prudence,” Burroway drawled. “A little late, I should say.”
Olga erupted. “We’re not asking to mingle with you people, we’re saying, move. Move! Move now! You want to play gotcha? Do it later.”
That seemed to get through. It got through to Violet. She could swear she felt the worms crawling up her legs. She had seen the one in her finger. She had seen it and felt it and known the terror and the pain of it.
Burroway, having gotten off his snide remark,
seemed unsure how to proceed. It was Violet’s mother who made the call. “Okay, we move out. We follow the river.”
“We should go back to the ship,” Jobs said. “There are more Wakers there.”
“And maybe more worms,” Burroway argued.
“We can’t just go off and disappear and leave those people,” Jobs argued. “Not to mention the ship. There’s a lot of useful things there still. We need tools. We need to make weapons. We need to figure out what happened to all those people who just disappeared. And we have to be there to help the Wakers.”

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