The Conformity (31 page)

The first day's a bust—we must have taken the wrong route on Highway 10. We bunk down in an abandoned motel, all sharing the same room. I wanted to be with Jack, alone, but he insisted. Worried for Tap, he said—he shouldn't be by himself. I gave in but didn't like it. Because the sex is like a drug.
Sex is like a drug, uh huh uh huh, baby.
Know that's been sung so many times before in a bajillion different ways, but that's because it's true. Not just the physical sensation, the hushed breath and taste of his lips and him moving under me, or above me. It blots out higher thought, and all that's left is the urgency of my body, the urgency of his, and the rest of the world is gone away, remote. There's nothing that can dethrone me from that mindless seat of heaven.

But last night, we all bunked together and there was none of the mindless release. We piled under blankets and sleeping bags—with Tap on the other bed—with nothing to do but think about how fucked up our situation is. Pretended to watch television on the dead idiot box. Talked about the old shows we used to love back when electricity existed. Thought about our families. Jack was very quiet then.

Finally fell asleep, kept imagining a frozen little dead girl in the corner, holding a silky blanket and staring at me with white eyes.

Backtracking our route this morning, keeping the highway below our feet as we fly, and making our way east and then south.

They'll stay together, I think,
Jack says as we circle a small town that consists of a gas station, a weathered post office, a bar, and a trailer park.

Why do you think that?
I ask.
Why won't they just head off to wherever the hell they want to go?

They're members of the Society. They'll want to continue to be around people like themselves, right?
Jack says.

Tap's not scornful, but there is doubt in his mental tone.
There were Army and lab coats in the evacuees. They'll want to go home.

Well, sure,
I say,
but if they're all split up, it'll be because they're scared of the Conformity. If I was traveling in a large group, I'd worry that a soldier would be drawn to us.

I guess so,
Jack concedes.
But whatever. We need to find the Army vehicles and from there we can find Reese.

Maybe seventy miles south I spot the line of dull gray Jeeps and troop transports lolling on the side of the highway. We land long enough to determine that the vehicles are stripped of belongings and there's no one hanging around. At the next exit there's some indication that the evacuees came this way. Behind the Town Pump truck stop there's a huge steel building, the bay garage doors standing open but deserted. We land in a gravel parking lot, weapons ready. The parking lot sits surrounded by reclaimed lumber and the rusting hulks of thousands of cars, neatly stacked.

“Two big campfires over here,” I say. “Looks like they burned half a building.”

“And here's where they spent the first night. This would've been a bit over a week or so ago,” Jack says, pushing back the garage door all the way. It's a warehouse-like garage, concrete-floored and easily over five thousand square feet. There are wooden pallets arranged in a grid, one of which still has a tent on it.

“Looks like they made their own little campsite inside,” I say.

“They're close, then,” says Tap. “With no vehicles, they couldn't have gone far.”

“Some of the Red Team were with them,” I add. “The jocks like us, they probably would have flown the coop.”

“Yeah, I wouldn't have stuck around,” Tap says.

“I don't know,” Jack says slowly.

“What do you mean, ‘I don't know'?”

“Reese is with them. And the Bomb.”

“So?” Tap's natural surliness is returning.

“They're not gonna let themselves go unprotected, you know? In the testing—” Jack thinks for a little bit. “Did either of you go up against Reese in the Testing? Or the Bomb?”

“The Bomb did her stuff on me,” Tap says, and then whistles. “Ooof. Hurts so good. I don't think my boner went away for a month.” He shakes his head, shifts the weight of his M14 to his left hand, and adjusts his bandolier. “But I didn't get the Liar.”

“I got the Liar,” I say. “He made me think my hair was on fire. That my grandma was dead.”

“Then you both got off lucky. I was on the receiving end of both of them. Here's the deal—if there are two extranaturals to watch out for, it's those two. The only person who could probably withstand their power is the one person we can't talk to right now.” He looks around, walks over to the dead campfire, and kicks at a piece of lumber. “More than likely, the Liar will have taken control, unless the Bomb got to him first. We'll have to be super careful.”

“Why?” Tap asks.

“Because the Liar can convince us to do
anything
by just saying one sentence. He could tell us that he's the messiah, and we'd believe him,” Jack says.

“That's some serious bugfuckery, man.” Tap looks up at the sky. “We've got lots of daylight left. Let's do this.”

“Shouldn't we wait? We should scout out the situation first,” I say.

“Yeah, that's a good idea …” Jack says, rubbing his chin. “Once we spot them, maybe just one of us will go in, right? They might bugfuck one of us, but they can't bugfuck all of us.”

“Okay,” Tap agrees. “Who's it gonna be?”

“It should be me,” Jack says. “They know I'm …” He stops here. Rubs his chin again. He doesn't know how to describe his relationship with Shreve because boys aren't self-aware enough to be honest and just say
Shreve's my brother
. “Close to Shreve. And I can speak for him.”

“It should be Tap,” I say. Tap wheels on me, spluttering. “Or me.”

“Why?” Tap asks.

“Jack, you're the only big gun we have here. If Tap or I go in and don't come back, you can go in blasting.”

“I'm not going to attack other members of the Society.”

“Why not? If the Liar uses his ability on me, he's
attacking
us. There's no difference.”

“No difference? You don't
die
when he uses his ability on you. No, it has to be me. If I don't come back with him, you find Shreve.”

“How?” I say.

“Scream your head off.” He looks grim. “You're the strongest of us, Ember. You're a bugfuck yourself. If you scream into the—” He searches for the right phrase, but I already know what he's talking about. “The space between all of us. The Irregulars.”

“The ether.”

“You scream there, Shreve will hear,” Jack says.

He's right. And that makes me afraid. Because if Shreve can hear, what else will be listening?

thirty-five

JACK

Smoke passes into the sky in a gray diagonal from a cluster of houses by a small river, choked with ice floe. I can see figures moving among the houses, chopping wood. Carrying things.

I'll investigate,
I say, waving Tap and Ember away.
You two hang back. I'll holler if I'm in trouble.

I land in the drive of the largest house. It's much bigger than it looked from the air—a rich person's getaway home on a trout stream in the Rockies. Probably well stocked.

A guard yelps when he sees me standing there, looking up at the massive front of the home. He's sitting in a folding chair on an upper gallery of the house, one of those built-in patios that you see in ski lodges and rich folks' homes. There's more plate glass in this building than on a skyscraper. Good view of the mountains and valley. Didn't see me coming, though.

“Halt!” the guard hollers, lifting his rifle.

“I'm a member of the Society,” I say, raising my hands. I don't recognize the man pointing the gun at me. He seems familiar, but I can't remember anything about him. “I was part of the team that led the Conformity soldier away. Who's in charge here?”

“Doctor Hemming. Stay there. I'll get him.” He backs up to the sliding glass door behind him and slides it open, disappearing inside. Within moments three more gunmen are on the gallery, dressed in fatigues. Army guys. One I recognize from the campus. They've got me covered. From the corner of my eye I notice a bit more movement at the corners of the house.

I raise my hands high. “I'm unarmed!”

“I know who you are, Jack,” a voice says from the gallery. A small, mousy woman moves to the railing of the gallery and looks down at me. Tanzer.

“Did you want something?” she asks. “I'm sorry, but we can't offer you anything—we are trying to conserve food and ammunition.”

“I don't need anything from you,” I say, craning my neck to get a better look at her. “Just some information.”

“You can ask. I'll do my best to answer.”

“Can you get your guys to lower their weapons?”

Tanzer smiles, but it's brittle and insincere. “Jack, I know what you can do. I ran your testing, though you may not have known that. And to my knowledge, your abilities don't allow you to stop—or dodge—bullets. So, I'm sorry, no. We can't let down our guard.”

“Uh, did something happen? You know me. I'm not violent.”

She laughs. “I doubt I've ever met anyone with
more
capacity for violence than you.”

Well, that's not the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me. I can feel my back tighten, and before I know it my hands are balled into fists.

She says in a quieter voice, “I don't mean to taunt you, Jack. I'm sorry, but things have gotten … difficult.”

“How so?”

“When the extranaturals took control—”

“Who?” I say. It's rude to interrupt, I know. But this is important. “The Liar?”

“Yes. He took control of what's left of the Red and Green Teams and told us we'd be better off waiting here. Of course, he was right.”

“You sure he wasn't, uh, lying to you?”

“No, I can't be sure. But I don't
think
he was. He just explained that they'd be able to move faster without the Army or research personnel.”

“What about you?”

“I'm just an administrator. A tech, really, with low-level telekinesis. I can lift a few pounds and float it around. There are a few other folks like that here. Non-flyers. Non-bugfucks. Low-watt bulbs, you know?”

Right. I know the type. Extranaturals whose abilities wouldn't be good for much more than parlor tricks.
Or being subsumed by the Conformity.

“You know which way the Liar went when he left you?”

“No.”

“You mean you didn't see which way?”

“No, I have no idea. I can remember them leaving but …” Her face clouds and her forehead scrunches up. “I'm sorry, I can't remember.”

“Okay,” I say. Reese got to her. “Listen, we're working on the Conformity.”

“Working on it?”

“Working to defeat it.”

She looks incredulous. “You have a plan?”

For a moment everything stills and I can feel my heart hammering in my chest. I can feel the surge of blood in my veins. I've got nothing.

We've got nothing.

Our plan is to get the Liar and bring him to Shreve. That's it. What kind of plan is that?

“Okay,” says Tanzer simply, after I've been silent a few seconds. “Do me a favor, will you?”

“Uh, okay.”

“Make sure you're far away from here when you try to kill yourself.”

What's wrong?
Ember asks when I rejoin them in the sky.

We're idiots. That's what's wrong,
I say.

I get varying degrees of mental alarm from them. There's a wide field below us with a small barn, so I descend and go inside, pulling an MRE from my backpack. I don't want to make a fire, so I just sit down on a bale of hay and open the MRE and begin to eat, not even paying attention to the flavor. It's salty and meaty. That's all I know.