Revelation (18 page)

“Yeah,” Anna said. “It was the farms that got hardest hit, like I said. We rescued a lot of the farmers. Many were left behind.”

I squeezed her hand. “Are
you
alright?”

“I don’t know,” she said, after a moment. “I’m still trying to decide that.”

“I can’t imagine what it must have been like. Did the gangs make it out alright?”

“Yeah,” Anna said. “Makara, Char, and Marcus hold the reins, for now. The fact that they were
right
is giving them some leverage with the gang lords. Who knows how long that will last, though? Rey and Jade want to go their own way, and Cain is thinking of going with them.” Anna sighed. “None of them understand that we can’t be fighting each other right now.”

“They’ll probably agree to work together,” I said. “At least for now. Without unity, they can’t have L.A. Now, out of their home, they have no choice but to press on.”

“I hope you’re right.” She leaned down, kissing me on the cheek. “I was afraid you’d never wake up. At first, we thought you were dead. Your pulse was so slow. You should have seen how worried Makara was.”

I laughed. “I don’t believe you.”

“It’s true.”

“Where is everyone?” I asked.

Anna was looking at me, not answering. Something had changed. Even in the darkness, I could tell that she had tensed.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

A sudden fear clenched my chest.

That was when Anna screamed.

Before I knew what was happening, she rushed to turn on the lights. I was blinded, and covered my eyes with my arm, so as to shield them.

Footsteps sounded from the corridor. Michael slid open the partition, running into the room.

“What the hell is going on?” Michael asked.

Anna was crying. Crying at
what
?

It wasn’t long before I got my answer.

“His eyes...” Anna said. “He’s turning.”

I turned my head to the side. I knew I was in the clinic, and if that were so, on my right there would be a mirror. I faced myself toward it, not daring to open my eyes.

Then, slowly, I opened them, and wanted to scream myself.

Anna was right. My eyes were completely white.

***

I stared at my reflection dully for a moment, wondering how it had happened. But the image didn’t lie. My vision wasn’t any different than what I was used to, except perhaps my sensitivity to light was sharper. Looking at the reflection in the mirror was like being stared at by one of
them
. The eyes – I couldn’t think of them as
my
eyes – stared back at me empty, vacant. There was no doubt. Like the crawlers, like the dragons, like the Wanderer – I was infected.

No wonder Anna had screamed. No wonder she had run.

Michael still stared at me, his expression shocked.

Samuel and Makara were next to run into the room. I kept my head turned. I wanted to hide. I didn’t want any of them to see.

“What’s going on?” Makara asked.

I dreaded what would come next. I didn’t want anyone to know, neither her, nor Samuel, nor anyone else. Anna’s reaction was enough pain for a million lifetimes.

I knew, however, that I would have to face this sooner or later. I turned my face upward, and opened my eyes.

Everyone gasped.

“I’m infected,” I barely managed.

No one said anything for what seemed an eternity. I heard Char and Marcus speaking outside the door, their enmity now forgotten. I wondered who would be the first to draw their gun.

Samuel suddenly took charge. “Makara, find us a spot to land. Now.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere! Just hurry. Bring the army to a halt. Anna, call Ashton. Tell him to drop everything and come here.

Anna didn’t move.

“Go!
You want to help him, don’t you? There might still be time.”

She ran out of the room.

Time? There was no time. Once infected, there was nothing now preventing me from becoming a Howler. All the same, wouldn’t I have transformed by now? Anna said it had been two days since the spire. Usually, it took no more than two hours for someone to turn.

What the
hell
had happened to me?

With Anna and Makara gone, Char and Marcus entered and stood against the wall, saying nothing, ready for anything. I sat up in bed, shaking my head. I was glad that both of the women were gone. For some reason, they were the last ones I wanted to see me like this. My gaze first found Samuel, who just looked at me as if to confirm that what he saw was real.

“Holy cow,” Michael said. “She wasn’t kidding. White as a Howler’s, only the rest of you is normal.”

“I have no idea what happened,” I said. “I had a dream, where I found the Wanderer, and his eyes were the same way. Maybe I’m more like him than the Howlers.”

I remembered something the Wanderer had told me – not in the dream, but when we were in the cave, on the way to the Great Blight. He said he had gotten lost in the Great Blight, and that he became...different. His eyes had been clouded then, as well – yet not completely so, as mine were now. But in the dream, they had been dead white

“Well, you haven’t turned,” Samuel said. “It’s been two days since we were all knocked out by that spire. You were in a deep sleep the entire time. Maybe the spores affected you differently. The thought that you would turn never came to any of us.”

I still didn’t know what Samuel was talking about. Why me? As far as I was concerned, we had
all
been affected by the spores. Was I the only one with whitened eyes, the only one that was turning?

Beneath me, I felt the ship veer and dip to the ground below. Makara was landing.

“What do you remember, Alex?” Samuel asked.

Everyone waited for me to speak. Marcus slid shut the clinic’s partition door behind him. As I watched the brothers, something seemed different between them. During my sleep, they had come to some sort of understanding. I guess being attacked by an army of crawlers was enough to do the trick.

“I remember flying to the spire, and you guys collecting samples,” I said. “That’s it. Then, nothing. I found out about Vegas from Anna, before she...”

I couldn’t make myself go on. Everything felt broken with her, now. I had no idea how long I had left in the world. Samuel just needed whatever information I could give him, if I didn’t make it through this.

“As you said, the spire released some sort of spore that knocked everybody out,” Samuel said. “None of us woke until morning, but you stayed out. You were still alive, but in a coma so deep I didn’t know if you were ever going to come out of it. I kept those thoughts to myself, however. Anna, though...she never left your side.”

I didn’t want to think of Anna. I didn’t blame her for screaming at me. I would have done the same. That realization didn’t make the pain go away, however. It just made it worse.

“When we came to our senses, we flew away from the spire,” Samuel went on. “Makara decided we needed to destroy it. I didn’t argue.” Samuel shook his head.
“Gilgamesh
shot off a couple missiles at the spire. It went down easily enough.”

“What happened then?” I asked.

“Well, it didn’t change your state. Your eyes stayed closed, and you stayed in your coma. But everything else changed. As soon as that spire went down, all hell broke loose. The swarm – dragons, crawlers, birds, behemoths, and other monsters besides – they came out of nowhere. Many had been buried in the fungus, dormant. We took off for Vegas, the swarm on our tail. We had to get the city population moving before it was attacked.”

For a minute, my changed eyes were momentarily forgotten as I focused on Samuel’s story.

“What happened next?” I asked.

“The swarm attacked Vegas. They didn’t stop for anything. The farms were the first struck, but luckily we had time to move everyone behind walls, taking a large supply of food and water while we were at it.”

“Yeah, Anna told me as much.” I turned to Michael. “Glad to hear your family is alright.”

Michael gave a single nod, but said nothing.

“That night, and for the rest of the next day, we fought. The gangs gathered, such as they could, against that storm. It didn’t matter who was who anymore. We were all just fighting for survival. We battled over the next two days, trying to let anyone who couldn’t fight get a good head start. Finally, at the last minute, we turned and fled. The city was gone. We left by the west gate last night, leaving that city to its fate. The swarm is still in the city. There are people there. I guess they won’t be people for long.”

Those words chilled me. Two days, and it had all gone to hell. Now, we had a force of two thousand people out in the middle of the desert, in the dead of winter. Food, water, and supplies were low. We had to make it to Los Angeles under these conditions, and not only that, but conquer the city.

It seemed impossible. And it was even more so for me, if the virus had its way with me. I would never live to see how it all turned out.

“You said killing that spire caused all this?”

Samuel nodded. “It appears so.”

Then, a thought came to me. Maybe the spire wasn’t directing the Blighters, as we thought. Maybe it was holding them back. Protecting us, even. Calming them. However, that thought didn’t make any sense. Or maybe the Blighters had been so angry to see their spire fall that they had to attack. That was the likeliest option. Only...

I remembered my dream, such as I could. Those dragons had rescued me, for some reason. It wasn’t just a silly dream. It was real. There had been a message there – a message from the Wanderer. What was he trying to say, aside from the fact that my eyes were white now, like his?
That
had been real enough. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any answers. Answers were what we needed, but I didn’t see any way to find them. The Wanderer, wherever he was, was not about to walk into our camp and explain everything.

If my eyes were white, like theirs, did that mean I was somehow part of the xenoswarm? I didn’t know who I was anymore. Maybe I wasn’t even fully human. I didn’t understand why all this was happening, why it had to be me. I remembered the Wanderer, and his prophecy. It all hinged on me, somehow. Those were his words. What did my current state have to with
that?
If I was going to die before I had the chance to play my part, what good was any of it?

“I’m not going to turn,” I said, with sudden realization. “While I was asleep, I dreamed about many things. But it was more than a dream. I learned things about the virus, about xenolife, even about where it all started. Even though I learned all this, there is still so much I don’t know. Somehow, I have to find out.”

Samuel and the others said nothing, merely staring at me. I had no idea if they believed me or not. Maybe they thought I was crazy.

I went on. “I met the Wanderer. He took me to Ragnarok Crater, and showed me what was going to happen to the world if we failed. Showed me what has already happened to a thousand other worlds before ours.”

“This has happened before?”

I nodded. “You were right about the dragons. They aren’t from here. They’re from somewhere else. Somehow, the xenovirus still has genetic information taken from other planets. The dragons are one example. The xenofungus is another.” I looked at each person in turn. I could tell that my eyes were throwing them off. Those hardened, grizzled men had difficultly looking into them. “There is more to this than we think,” I said, ignoring the fear I saw. “When you guys killed that spire, it unleashed something.”

I paused as the ship slowed its descent, falling toward the ground at a steady rate. We were about to land.

“Go on,” Samuel said.

“I don’t even know what I’m saying,” I said. “I just think that whatever happened to me is different from the Howlers. Different from all the other monsters we’ve fought. After all, the Wanderer had the same eyes as me, and he wasn’t a Blighter. Do you remember?”

Samuel said nothing, only looked at me. I could not discern what he was thinking. He looked to the side, unsure what to say.

Char and Marcus just sat, listening.

“Are you two good now?” I asked. “I haven’t seen you throw punches at each other in the past five minutes.”

Char hesitated a moment before answering. A slight smile came to his lips. A large, black welt swelled under his right eye, right above the marred side of his face. “It’s a work in progress, but the attack on Vegas is giving me a new perspective. Seeing all the gangs fighting together instead of with each other for once is something I thought I’d never see. As far as what happened back then, with the dam...well, it’s a long story. It was wrong. Hopefully, Marcus and I can come to terms about that.”

“What happened to the Reds?” I asked.

Marcus shook his head. “That attack never ended up happening, as you can imagine. The Great Blight changed all that. I assume they are still back in Vegas. Either that, or they went off on their own.”

Samuel turned back to face me. “Whatever happened at the spire, just seeing and speaking to you now, you are clearly not a Howler. Something else happened, something we can’t explain, yet.”

They all paused, looking at me. In unison, all of their eyes widened in surprise.

“What?” I asked. “What’s happening?”

Marcus pointed to the mirror. “See for yourself.”

I hesitated to turn. Looking in that mirror the first time had left its scar, a scar I didn’t want to reopen.

When Char nodded at me, a thin smile on his face, I turned, and looked.

My eyes had resumed their usual brown color.

Chapter 16

I didn’t feel any different, but there was no doubt. Reflected in that mirror, my eyes looked as normal as they ever had been.

I got up from the bed. I was still dressed in my clothes from two days before, though my boots had been taken off. I stared in the mirror, looking for any sign that my eyes had been white just a moment before. But there was nothing. They looked completely normal.

“What the hell...?”

“I don’t know,” Samuel said. “We’ll keep an eye on it.” He paused. “Pun not intended.”