The Conformity (25 page)

“She called the Conformity,” I say. “If you hadn't—”

Madelyn laughs. “Don't try to comfort me. I don't feel one bit of guilt about plugging her in the eye. Hell, I wanted to shoot that self-righteous bitch
before
the shit hit the fan. The world was kind enough to provide me a reason to do it.”

It feels good to laugh. But eventually, it sinks in that we're laughing about death and our laughter fades. Madelyn shrugs, trudges to the door, and opens it, and we all file out into the snow-wreathed parking lot in the gray half-light of an overcast, snowy day. Our earlier tracks have already become soft and indistinguishable from everything else.

“So, how's this gonna work? I don't know how to fly.”

“It's not something you learn, really. It's something you
are,
” Ember says.

“Well, I ain't it. So?”

“I guess I'll have to carry you. Piggyback,” I say.

Madelyn looks dubious. “You can't weigh but a buck fifty. The chubby one can carry me,” she says, and chucks her head at Tap.

“My name's
Tap
, lady. Tee, ay, pee. Got it? And I'm not chubby.”

“Who gives their kid a verb for a name?”

Tap points. “His name's Jack!”

“Touché, kid. Touché. I think we'll get along just fine. But someone better strap me to the boy. I'm not gonna just hold on to him for dear life. We've got some leashes and ropes in my clinic.”

After we've literally tied her to Tap's back, he says, “I'm gonna have to get used to this. There's a big weight differential here.”

“Watch it, chubs,” she responds.

Tap looks at me, then Ember, then spits. “You fuckin' guys.”

Then he leaps into the air and rises, halting at first, then faster.

Faintly, I hear laughter. Madelyn peals, “And
away we go!
”

twenty-nine

CASEY

“We've got to go,” Shreve says, pushing himself up and standing. For the past hour he's taken in sips of water and cold, freshly untinned tomato soup and not much else. The fire has died so low.

I need to understand. It's hard to just turn the reins over to him without even questioning why. Yes, we wouldn't be alive now but for Shreve, but I can't, I won't, follow blindly.

“Why, Shreve? Why can't we wait at least until Jack and the rest of them come back?”

“It's coming. The Conformity. It can't sense us yet—it can't sense
me
yet—but it will soon. Even if I'm running silent.”

Shreve moves his arms and cracks his back like an old man waking, trying to stretch out the kinks. With the water, he's lost the hard angles in his face but he's still weak.

“What about the others?” I ask. “Jack and Tap. Ember. The ghosts, Dani and Kicks—”

Shreve perks up. “I didn't dream that?”

“You mean you didn't send them?”

His face clouds, and he thinks for a long while, standing there like he's lost something, his keys or his phone, and he's trying to puzzle out where he might have put them. Everything's become strange now, after the Conformity, and there's a disconnect between the urgency of our situation and the everyday normalcy of our bodies' habits: it's almost as if we should act more desperate than we truly are. The world is in jeopardy, yet Shreve looks simply like he's forgotten his keys.

“I thought they were a dream. And I thought of Reese. We'll need him before the end. But we can't wait here for them to find us. They could be dead and
will be dead
if I try to contact them. Or anyone else.” He shakes his head. Holds his open hands before his face.

“Won't the Conformity target them if it can't sense you?” I ask.

“If it gets near enough to sense them, sure.” Then he shakes his head. “If it's not nearby, I don't think so. But it can see me from far away. It's always been tied with Quincrux, and I've been marked by him. It's like …” He pauses here, thinking. “It's like I'm a beacon.”

“You're a challenge,” I say, thinking about Shreve. “You draw people to you the same way it draws people in.”

The look on his face is disturbed, brow furrowed. “Like I'm a Conformity, myself?”

“Yes,” I say, taking his hand with my invisible one. “You joined us, all of our minds.”

“It wasn't to create some kind of … of … collective.”

“I know,” I say.

He's quiet for a long while. “It's been so long since I've just been
me,
me solely. But I know this.” He turns to stare at me, his face so intense I feel like something in him is about to break. “We've got to go. Now.”

Negata says, “I found a stable yesterday. Enough horses for us to ride. But where do we go?”

“To where it all began,” says Shreve. “We go east.”

The snow's stopped falling, and the world stands hushed as we make our way down the mountainside, following Negata. Shreve's too weak to carry anything, so the pack-mule duties fall to Negata and me. We've rigged hobo bindles out of the slats from beds and bedsheets. Not a lot of food, but we have enough of the canned stuff from the lodge's larder to keep us for a while. A single small pan to melt snow. Matches. A small can of lighter fluid we found under the sink.

Before we leave I rummage through the last of the armaments from our hasty flight from the campus—two M9 pistols, multiple grenades on bandoliers, and an M14 with three full magazines. I offer Negata the M14, and he just shakes his head. Negata's a strange one. Shreve stands looking at me and then shrugs. “I'd carry it, but I never managed to get to any weapons training.” He grins and looks sheepish. “Quincrux and Ruark weren't really keen on the idea of me with a gun. I was looking forward to shooting stuff.”

“It's not that great, really,” I say and hand him one of the M9s. “Don't stick it in your pants or you might shoot your dick off.” I grin. “We wouldn't want that.”

Surprise on Shreve's face is a wonderful thing, it happens so rarely. “No, we wouldn't want that.”

Negata's a fine guide, taking us through the firs and pines, on and off roads, his slight figure moving silently through the trees. The snow makes some of the walking hard, and my feet are so cold it hurts to think.

All the world is hushed except for Shreve's labored breathing. After two hours of steady walking except for small breaks, we come upon a level pasture ringed in barbed wire and snowdrifts, some of them up to our thighs. The ground here is churned and brown, and fifteen or twenty horses stand steaming in the paddock, their winter coats furry. Beyond them is an open field with cattle and maybe goats walking on brown paths through the snow. It's dreamlike, this little farm nestled in a mountain pasture.

I took riding lessons when I was a girl and had both my arms. Now the sense memory of all that comes rushing back—Mom and Dad's smiling faces watching me, the smell of hay and manure, and the heat of sun on my arms. The creak of leather and the ache in my legs from posting.

I hope Mom and Dad are okay. And Jayson. Everything happened so fast, and I haven't even had time to think much about my family. But now it all comes crashing back in on me at the sight of the horses steaming in the cold, the red-brown barn at the far end of the paddock. The dreamlike pasture beyond. Everyone I love could be dead. They could all be part of the Conformity. When it's not right in your face, it's so easy to forget your own personal stake out there. Your loved ones could be lost.

“Hey,” Shreve says, putting his hand on my shoulder, right above the stump. “You okay?”

So many people think tears are a weakness or an annoyance. But if you can weep without fear, you find they're a strength. I let the tears stand on my cheeks and say, “Just remembering the world before all this.”

Shreve grows still. His breath plumes in the air, and he says, “We'll get it back. Maybe not exactly. But we're going to get something worth having back.”

Negata holds two strands of barbed wires apart and quickly slips through. Then he turns and holds them for us.

“I hope you're right,” I say, and follow.

As we get near the barn, squishing and squelching through the half-frozen mud of the horse paddock, a man exits the shadows of the building and walks forward to meet us with a pitchfork in his meaty hand. He's been spreading hay, maybe. He's thick, blocky. With his head uncovered, it's easy to see he's bald with the barest hint of a neck—one of those guys who, due to their baldness, you think's older than he really is. He could crush boulders in those hands.

“Can I help you?” he asks. His tone is open and genial, and now that we're closer, I can see that he's got bright eyes and laugh lines.

“I don't know,” Shreve says, shaking his head. “We need your horses.”

The man puts his hands on his hips and looks at us closely. “Is that so? You're a motley crew to be coming onto my land, bold as love, and asking for horses. A boy, an unarmed man, and a one-armed girl with an assault rifle slung over her shoulder. This a robbery?”

Shreve puts out his hands, gesturing for everyone to be cool. “Of course not. No. But we need them. We're …” He stops, thinking. Since he's awoken, some of what made Shreve Shreve has gone. He's less assertive. Kinder, really. Vulnerable.

“You're what?” The man smiles, and I realize he's enjoying the conversation. He's probably not seen anyone since the Conformity arose. Close to the land, the fields. The end of everything might not have affected him much.

“We're on a mission,” I say, moving forward to stand near Shreve.

“Oh, ho! A mission? That sounds important.”

“We're going to stop what's happening. We're going to save the people caught up in the …”

“The aliens?”

Funny, but when he says it like that it startles me. Aliens?

“It's not aliens,” Shreve says. “But
it
is alien, if you get me. And we're going to stop it.”

The man chuckles. “I don't get you. Way I figure it, big balls of … whatever … floating over all the major cities, destroying everything. Sounds like aliens to me.”

He's got a point. And to him, it's probably easier to understand the workings of the entity and the state of the world by slapping a label on it. There's a comfort to labels. There's false but satisfying comprehension.

“Whatever,” Shreve says, waving a hand to brush away his misunderstanding. “The point is, we're going to stop it, but we need faster transportation.”

“Where you going to?” the man asks, genuinely interested.

“Maryland.”

The man whistles in response. “Ah. Where the first one appeared. That's a far piece to travel. You'll never make it on horseback. Hell, with this snow, you'll never even make it to Montana.” He sucks his teeth and thinks. “I'd be hard-pressed to give you one horse, let alone the six or seven you'll need, just to get them killed.” He thinks for a moment. “Not even considering the nutjobs out there or the aliens, it's gonna take you two or three months to get where you're going.”

The surprising thing is that he's already calculated what it will take for us to make the journey. Which means there's a possibility.

He looks at us in turn and shakes his head slowly, shifting his grip on the pitchfork. “World's all jiggered up, that's for sure. And you folks seem in earnest, but I'm sorry, I just can't give away my ponies to anyone who asks for them. But let me share with you some of my breakfast, if you would, and we can part as friends.”

I look at Shreve and can see his jaw working. Something hard is setting in him. His eyes take on that intense, wolfish cast, and I'm worried he's going to use his power.

But he doesn't. He points to me and says, “You called her one-armed. But she isn't. Are you, Casey?”

I understand now. I shake my head and say, “No, I'm not. I have two arms. One is very special.”