Rise of the Poison Moon (25 page)

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Authors: MaryJanice Davidson

Tags: #Magic, #Fantasy fiction, #Dragons, #General, #Fiction, #Fantasy, #Spiders, #Shapeshifting, #Epic, #Good and evil

BOOK: Rise of the Poison Moon
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“Okay.”
“He told Gautierre to look after me. Even before the night Big Blue went up. I guess your dad saw something there, even before either of us did.”
Jennifer told herself she would not cry, she would not. But she blessed and loved Susan, and would forever, if only because Susan, too, had loved the man Jennifer loved best. “I, um, I forgot about your thing with green.”
Susan had worn a grass green jumper to school on the first day of fourth grade, had earned the name Grass Ass, and had been unable to shake said nickname for years. This resulted in a poisonous hatred of all things green, even salad, or twenty-dollar bills. Or poison moons.
“I’m glad you’re talking like an actual person instead of a weird scurvy robot.”
“Says the girl who shook me like a damn maraca to get her way. And if you go
near
my backpack again, I’ll tell your mom about the time you ate all the raspberries off the neighbor’s bushes and blamed my parakeets.”
“Don’t talk about those parakeets. I loathed them. Do you know how many times they pooped on me?”
“Not enough times, is how many. And I’ll talk about them, Ms. Ancient Furnace. And you’ll listen. That’s my price for broadcasting source information about
la luna verde
.”
“And don’t be showing off with Spanish all the time. I could have taken Spanish. I could have! I just had this dumb Ancient Furnace thing to do instead.”
“Buenos dias, los Estados Unidos! Me llamo Susan Elmsmith, y me amiga Jennifer es un estupida puta . . .”
CHAPTER 38
Susan
Welcome to day eight zillion in
Under Big Blue
, where things seem to get suckier and suckier.
Susan had found it was comforting to write web logs in her head. And the weirder things got, the more she wrote.
So she was writing a lot.
It was weird being back in the hospital. Actually, it was weird to be on the hospital roof—Jennifer seemed to like lurking up there, and Susan liked being able to see all around. It should have been nerve-wracking, all that space, but it was comforting instead.
“You would not even believe the ridiculous conversations that have taken place at this hospital lately,” Jennifer was saying, resting on her forearms and looking over the parking lot. “Slapping, whore-insulting, sex comparisons, dragon-slugging . . .”
“Sounds like I came back just in time.”
Without looking around, Jennifer reached out and squeezed Susan’s hand. “You did.”
Susan smiled. “I guess I didn’t handle Gautierre’s death very well.”
Jennifer turned to look at her. Her eyes were very big. “Who said you were s’posed to? He was one of the few nice things about being stuck in here; think I can’t relate to that? I’d give anything to be stuck under this shitheap with Eddie.” She paused. “When Gautierre died, holing up across town by yourself seemed pretty sane to me. It’s just, everyone needed you, is all. I needed you to know that.” A short pause, then she added, in a tear-choked voice unlike any Susan had heard from this, her oldest and dearest friend, “I needed you so bad.”
Susan said nothing. Another nice thing about friendship: often, you didn’t have to.
She rubbed her friend’s back, and they both pretended Jennifer wasn’t crying bitter, angry tears.
CHAPTER 39
Susan
“Okay, well, that was embarrassing and pointless.”
“Feel better, though, doncha?”
“Irrelevant!” the Ancient Furnace proclaimed, furtively wiping her wet cheeks on the sleeve of her denim jacket. “Also, I had something in my eye.”
“Yeah, like tear ducts pulling overtime.”
“I loathe everything about you,” said the Ancient Furnace, “so much. In fact—whoa.”
“Hmmm?” Susan raised her head. Jennifer was staring, almost
leaning
, forward. She looked like an English setter on point, eyeing a flock of delicious grouse. “What?”
“Something nutty-nut-flavored this way comes.”
It was Evangelina flying—more like lurching—toward the roof. When she got close enough, she simply gave up and crashed.
“Dr. Georges-Scales!” Susan screamed, running toward the exit door. She yanked it open and screamed into the cement throat of the stairway, “Dr. Georges- Scales, come quick, come quick, get up here
now
!”
She ran back to help, knowing there wasn’t a damn thing she could do—she had zero medical skills.
“Aw, geez, Evangelina, you’re all—” Jennifer was covered in her sister’s blood. “Lie still, you’re being all thrashy.”
Got them dead they’re dead almost all of them so hungry almost all full so dead so very dead
“Tell your story later,” Jennifer snapped. She seemed to be looking for the right wound to apply pressure to. There was a depressing array to choose from. “Preferably outside my head.”
Stop trying to save me.
“Mom! Mom, get up here!”
She can’t help almost dead almost full almost all of them are gone now and you can do the rest sister you could finish the job if you’re hungry enough yes you can
“Mom!”
I needed to feed needed to feed Mother let me go so I could feed
“So that’s where you’ve been—feeding off Ember’s gang? Helpful, I suppose. But Mom’s going to be pissed at you. And her.”
Owww that hurts.
“I have to apply pressure, or you’ll bleed to death before the angry surgeon gets here.”
You are kind. Stupid, but kind.
“High praise,” Jennifer muttered, trying to hold her sister’s guts in one place.
It will be the death of you.
“Thanks for the tender moment. Susan, see if you can stop that spurting over there.” Rubbing her hands over the black, gleaming scales, Susan found a spouting wound, clapped both hands over it, and leaned with all of her 137 pounds. A year ago, she would have been holding her vomit down. Now it was all too normal, save the creature herself.
Your friend is proud that she doesn’t have to vomit.
“We’re all proud of her for that. Stop squirming. Also, stay out of our heads.”
Susan shared Jennfier’s view on telepathy: it was so creepy to hear someone else in your brain.
You. Sister’s friend. You mourned the boy I saw the boy alive they hurt him but not after I killed them all almost all of them dead but a few alive the boy you mourn.
The rush of words confused Susan, but she heard
boy
and
alive
just fine.
“What?”
“Are you talking about Gautierre?” Jennifer, in her surprise, loosened her grip and got an arterial spray in her eyes for her trouble. “He’s—ack, your blood is the worst! Who has black blood? Honestly!”
“Is he alive?” Susan pressed. “Gautierre Longtail, my boyfriend—he’s alive?”
I said so. Sister, stop trying to save me.
“Move!” someone said, and it seemed to Susan that about a hundred people had rushed to the roof with Dr. Georges-Scales. “Get me some light! Hand me that—no, the other one. Be still, Evangelina.”
Easier and easier not to move almost dead they are almost all dead
A nurse pulled Susan back, and she stumbled. Then the medical personnel closed ranks, and Susan couldn’t see Evangelina anymore. But she could sure hear her—and talk to her.
Where is he?
she asked.
Where the water stinks.
How many left?
Three. Maybe four. Only the stump-tail is healthy enough to fight.
Is he okay?
He so wants to die.
That was enough for Susan, she backed away from the flurry of activity, slipped into the stairwell, and took the stairs down three at a time.
CHAPTER 40
Susan
Alive.
Gautierre was alive.
She—Susan Elmsmith, would-be TV journalist and dateless wonder, Prisoner of Big Blue and much-put-upon best friend of the Ancient Furnace—had been mourning a live boyfriend.
What a colossal waste of time! Also: he had a lot of nerve letting his sorry self get captured by the likes of that horrible, psychotic, pseudomaternal
thing
, Ember Longtail.
Once she realized exactly what Jenn’s crazy-spooky half-sister had been saying, Susan had immediately gotten down from the roof, made her way through the lobby (mentally marveling that shock had stiffened her limbs, so she marched like a run-down robot), and headed home. Not her latest apartment, but her actual house.
She hadn’t been there in over a year, and it certainly had seen better days: a white, two-story “3 BR, 2 BA” Cape-Cod-style house with yellow shutters. The lawn was an ugly yellow, almost sidewalk-to-sidewalk dandelion remains. It was a good thing her dad must be spending most of his time at the air base; otherwise, he’d weep bitter tears to see the state his lawn had come to.
Yes, Dad, you’re better off outside Big Blue. We’d all be battling bad guys and trying not to croak under a freakin’ poison moon, while you’d be raiding hardware stores for cases of Weed Git Out.
Back when the last winter had approached, she’d been here to raid the pantry and haul away anything that could be used for food or medicine or split ends—the baby aspirin she’d outgrown a decade ago, the can of Nacho Cheese Soup that dated back to her dead mother’s precancer days.
Nothing from the basement, though.
Nothing from the reloading bench.
At the time, it had made sense. Reloads weren’t as safe as regular ammo. With the odds stacked as they were after Big Blue arrived and plenty of new ammo available at the time, she hadn’t wanted to add to their troubles by supplying scared green kids with ammo that might or might not work. But things were different now.
Everyone else had their own fish to fry, what with stopping Skip and fixing the moon, so no one would be available to stop her or talk her out of this. Talk her out of it? Chances were nobody’d even notice she was gone. Which would be intensely irritating 99.9 percent of the time, but not so much right now.
She was an innocent, a normie. Not the heroine. Good for a humorous quip, or a pithy observation.
“Now, good for Sucky Sundays.” She hurried into the backyard toward the gazebo, where a spare key had been hidden longer than she’d been alive. Even now, she thought of the key before a more expedient solution, like a brick through the dining-room picture window. “I cannot believe those Sucky Sundays are gonna save my boyfriend’s life.”
The basement, always gloomy and gross, was even more so after so long unattended. As she came down the steps she could hear mice scurrying. Mice. Prob’ly be reduced to trapping and eating them if they couldn’t get out of Big Blue anytime soon. Mice Surprise. Filet de Mice. Mice on a shingle.
Yergh.
She tried the light switch at the door—nothing. Blown fuse, probably. She rummaged through her backpack, hauled out the flashlight, flicked it on, and left the bag open as she approached the reloading bench.
Even here there was dust and dirt everywhere. Dad would have a nervous breakdown if he could see it. She flicked the beam over the reloading press, the trays, a stack of empty ammo boxes, then trained it on what she had come for—well, on
some
of the things she had come for.
She checked a couple of the boxes to be sure. Dear Old Dad was as methodical as he was distant, and everything was as expected.
She began raking the boxes into her open backpack.
CHAPTER 41
Susan
Susan pulled her scooter up to the entrance of the sewage-treatment plant. She hadn’t exactly been shocked to hear from Evangelina that Ember’s gang were holed up in the sewers beneath Winoka.
If movies and books have taught us anything,
she told herself as she pulled the keys out of the ignition,
it’s that villains are drawn to dank underground caverns and, let’s not forget, the smell of shit.

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