Second Chance (39 page)

I just killed you
, he thought.

"What the fuck are you grinning at?"

Keith shook his head. "
Nothin
', Billy. Ain't
nothin
' funny 'bout a dead redneck."

"You know, Pete, you are fuckin'
weird
sometimes."

Don't crow
, Keith thought.
Not yet. You're not out of here yet
."Well, you know," he said, "I just lost somebody close to me."

Magruder's
face was softened by pity. "Yeah, I know. I'm sorry, man, I forgot. Sally was a
helluva
nice lady."

"She was indeed. Sometimes I guess I ain't myself."

"That Hastings was a real prick,"
Magruder
said, as though that observation was the epitome of sympathy and empathy.

"He was that," Keith agreed, and patted
Magruder's
shoulder. "Gotta find Al. You have a good few days off now."
Infect your family. Infect your friends
.

Die in pain.

Burn in hell.

He found Freeman at his desk, going over the results of Rose
Parmalee's
tissue and blood samples. "Pete," he said. "So how'd the days go? Get through them all right?"

Keith nodded. "Work's good for you. Makes you forget things." He walked over to Freeman's desk, sat across from him, sighed a sigh of death at the man sitting less than three feet away, saw in his mind the virus enter the air and spread like blood in water. "The woman's damn near dead. Might be by now. Better have the next shift check on her
soon's
they come in."

Freeman stuck out a lower lip. Keith imagined the virus germs landing on it, some pressing into his mouth, others drifting up his nostrils, into his lungs, still others settling on his eyeballs, riding the mucous membrane like tiny boatmen into his system. "I thought we might have hit on it this time. Shame. Dr. Goncourt will be sorry to hear it."

"When'll you tell him?"
Today. Please, today
.

"Today. Right after your shift leaves."

"When you do . . ."

"Yes?"

"Well, just give him my best. If he remembers me."

"He'll remember you. You impressed him very much . . . the day you joined us."

"It's everything to me, Al. I can't tell you enough what being here means to me. I feel as though . . . it's changed my life."

There must have been something in Keith's smile that made Freeman self-conscious, for he glanced away and cleared his throat, and as he did, Keith imagined a cloud of death floating out onto the air from the man's mouth. "Well, that's . . . I'm glad to hear it. You're a good worker. You'll, uh, be at the funeral tomorrow? Most of the men are coming. And their families."

"That's good. It's good for a community to share . . . their grief. But I don't know. I don't think I'll be there."

"Why not?"

"Well, you may not think it to look at me, but that little gal's death hit me hard. Frankly, Al, I don't know if I could stand up to
bein
' there."

"I think I see," Freeman said. "And I don't think there's anybody who wouldn't understand, Pete."

"Thanks." Keith looked at the clock on the wall, and stood up. "Almost time to get checked through. You remember now, please give my best to Dr. Goncourt."

Say my name. Let it come into his face on the breath of my name
.

"I'll do that, don't you worry."

"No worries. None at all."

Billy
Magruder
was first in line to be checked out. The two security men went over him carefully, patting him down everywhere a vial or a pack of tablets might be concealed. They were efficient and thorough, and Keith counted twenty slow breaths before they were finished with
Magruder
, passed him through, and turned to the next man in line.

Take your time, check their chests, their necks, come close to them, breathe slow and strong.

The air was shared, passed from one set of lungs to the next, drawn in, breathed out, passed along, and he wondered how long it would take them before the symptoms started to show, before they began to bleed and hurt. By that time he would be far away, beginning to bleed and hurt himself. But the sight of blood had never bothered him, pain had always been his lover, and his inevitable death, he knew, had only been postponed many times.

He talked to them as they finally patted him down, the last man in line, and they shared jokes and laughter and death in air.

Keith waited until midnight, then packed the few things he needed, left the rest, got in his car and drove away from Bone, Texas forever. He drove southeast again, to Houston. He drove and dreamed and wrote.

~*~

September 23, 1993
:

It's free, and so am I. Death's messenger now, spreading the gospel of plague to all the nations.

It was much easier than I thought it would be. Maybe I wouldn't have had to do what I did to my old friends. Still, they posed a menace that I could not allow to exist. I think, however, that I was already tempered to the necessary hardness. Still, in the long run, no harm was done. Death will take us all now.

But if I had not done what I did to them, might I have lost heart at the end? Maybe I wouldn't have unsealed my hood, kissed her, drawn in the fragrance of Rose. Or maybe I would have after all.

My words and thoughts are disjointed—back and forth, first thinking one thing, then another. I wonder if it's the virus, already scurrying into my brain cells.

No. Probably not. It's more logical to assume that it's the effect of the terrible choice I've made, the great responsibility I've assumed in condemning most of my species to death. Better this way, though, quickly, in weeks and months, no longer. Since it exists for four hours outside a host, and with wind speeds of 50 mph, it's safe to assume that people living more than 200 miles away from cities and towns will survive, and will eventually find towns of the dead in which even the virus is dead, with nothing left to feed on.

Or perhaps it will live in the rotting tissues, waiting for more people to come. I don't know. There's so much about it I don't know. But I do know that it kills.

Even if I changed my mind now, went back, confessed everything, it would be too late. The men have gone home, kissed their wives, hugged their children, who have gone to other towns. No. Far too late. So I'll spread it quickly and without mercy, the
Gaetan
Dugas
of the apocalypse.

~*~

Keith Aarons left his car in the Houston Intercontinental Airport parking lot, locking the keys inside it. Then he went to the international terminal and walked around for an hour, asking the waiting passengers questions about flights in different languages, trying to make them understand by coming closer and speaking directly into their faces, breathing the gift of death on wings to England, France, Japan, Germany, India.

Then he took his two pieces of baggage, and bought a ticket to Los Angeles International Airport. He planned to sleep on the plane so that he would be rested when he landed in L.A.

Part IV

Chapter 36

The next day, while Keith Aarons spoke to hundreds of international travelers at one of the world's busiest airports, Woody Robinson left the hospital. He balanced on one crutch to keep pressure off his healing right leg as he got into the car, and talked to his children all the way home.

Peter told him about the soccer games he had missed while he was in the hospital (Peter's team had won one, lost the other), and Louisa begged to be allowed to stay over at her friend Megan's the next weekend. He agreed gladly, happy to have some way to make up to them the nightmare that had occurred a few days before.

'They're resilient," Tracy told him later, as they sat on the deck overlooking the ocean. "They were so good the night it happened, did exactly what I told them. Didn't doubt it was an accident for a minute." She kept looking at the ocean, and felt for his hand. "I'm glad you're home. I've been scared."

"Of what?" he asked, knowing.

"That he'd come back. For me and the kids."

"I almost wish he would come back. Give me a chance to . . ."

He let it trail off, and she looked at him. "To kill him?”

“Maybe. How's Frank doing? Hear from him?"

"They've still got Judy under observation. It must be a terrible place. Frank's lawyer hasn't been able to get her out. The man she . . . attacked is doing all right. Frank's just this side of a basket case. He blames himself. I think."

"You think?"

She shrugged. "He said he should've seen this breakdown coming. But there was something else. Something he didn't tell me."

"You think he knew it was Keith?"

"I didn't mention it. Neither did he."

"How about Diane?"

"I finally talked to her yesterday. She sounded so strange. Very cool, but with . . . an edge. Almost like she didn't care."

"I don't think they've loved each other for a long time." He leaned over and kissed her, bumping his crutch so that it clattered to the wooden deck. "Everyone else is okay? Nothing's happened to Curly or Eddie or Dale?"

"No, I talked to all of them, and they're okay.
Curly's
taking it real seriously. He even hired a bodyguard."

"We have to do something. I don't know what, but something. Will you get me the phone? I want to call Curly."

A strange voice answered the phone, and put Curly on. "That was my bodyguard, Jocko," he said.

“Jocko?" Woody laughed in spite of himself. "Seriously?”

“Nah, his name's Kevin, but I think a bodyguard ought to be called Jocko or Bruno or something. He doesn't mind."

"You haven't seen anything of our . . . friend?"

"You mean Keith? No."

"It's him, Curly. It really is him. He came here the other night, tried to make me
 
. . . well, let's say I wound up hurting myself instead."

Curly was quiet for a long time. "Tracy didn't give me the details, just that you had an accident. Son of a bitch. You're sure it was him?"

"I can still hear his voice, still see him. He said something about . . . about doing the world."

"
Doing
the world? What's that supposed to mean?”

“I don't know. Unless—"

"Like with gangsters, you
do
somebody, you—"

"Kill them."

"Yeah." Neither one spoke for a while. "Damn. Talk about your delusions of grandeur. He's one sick puppy. You think he was serious or just bragging or what?"

"I don't know. God only knows what he's capable of. Stealing a nuclear device, setting it off in New York or L.A. or someplace? Trying to start World War Three? I just don't know. How else would you do the world?"

"But would Pan do something like that?" Curly said. "I mean, that's kind of the ultimate pollution. Out of character, huh? But then he's
gotta
be nuts to begin with."

"Maybe. But from everything I've read about him, there's a terrible logic to his insanity."

"I almost wish he'd show up. I'd shoot his ass. Or Jocko would."

"I know. I told Tracy the same thing. But I don't think he'll come back. It was almost like he was getting ready, preparing himself for something."

"The mind boggles. What the hell is it?"

"I don't know. But you can bet your ass we'll find out before too long. We and a lot of other people."

~*~

That evening after the kids were in bed, Tracy brought Woody a beer. A CD of Stan Getz ballads was playing softly. She had been thinking about Keith Aarons and Pan most of the day, feeling sicker by the minute. "I have a question," she said as she sat on the carpet near his chair.

"What?"

"Do you think . . . that we could send Keith back?”

“Send him back? You mean to the past?"

"I just wondered if it was possible. Send him back the way we . . .
you
brought him here. I know it would be hard to find him, maybe impossible. But if we did somehow, could we send him back?"

"And leave him there?"

She nodded. 'Then come back without him, and it would all be as though Pan had never been.
Keith
would have lived, but no longer than he had—what should I say—been intended to?"

Woody was long in answering, and it took great patience not to push him. "I . . . think it could work. If everything was the same. It worked before. I don't know how, but it did. You're proof of it.

"
If
it did. And then we came back. Things would be different again. Because when Keith died . . . I died with him."

"So we'd have a
third
world," Woody said. "One in which there was no Pan because Keith had died, but
you'd
be there. And Peter and Louisa." He smiled. "The best of all possible worlds."