The Waking Dark (34 page)

“What about football?” It hurt to talk. It
hurt.
“What about your whole life? You’re not this crazy.”

“Everything has changed,” he said in a faraway voice. “The red is here forever now. Everything is red.
I
am the red.”

He was exactly that crazy.

“I’m going to slice you open. First with this.” He tapped the blade of the knife against the crotch of his jeans. “And then…” He traced the blade of the knife lightly over her chest, up her neck, and across her bloody cheek, stopping at the corner of her lip with just enough pressure to draw a bead of blood. Gravel and twigs bit into her back, and she could feel something writhing against her neck.
Worms
and
maggots,
she thought,
getting
a
head
start.

“Don’t worry,” a familiar voice said from behind them. “He probably won’t be able to get it up.”

Jule wondered if adrenaline could make you hallucinate, because surely Ellie King hadn’t just appeared out of nowhere to taunt Baz about an impotence problem. Baz looked like he was thinking the same thing. But Ellie’s feet were real enough to make noise as they crunched against the leaves, her voice strong and unwavering. So not a wishful hallucination at all. For the second time that day: a savior.

“Nothing to be embarrassed about,” Ellie said. “Just a little problem – a
very
little problem. And just because it happened almost every time we —”

“Shut up,” Baz snapped.

“What’s wrong? Don’t like to remember those days?” Ellie taunted in a voice utterly unlike her own. It was like she’d been possessed. “It was so sweet, the way you had to call me a whore, just so you could get yourself in the mood.”

“I said
shut
up.
”

“And when it didn’t work – which was often – he cried. Did he tell you about that?”

Baz let go of Jule and turned away from her. Toward Ellie. She was smiling fiercely, radiating a white-hot fury.

“Shut your mouth.”

“Or you’ll shut it for me?” Ellie laughed. “Still think you’re the star of your own little S & M porn?”

Ellie wasn’t armed, and was possibly the only person less equipped to take on a football player than Jule – taller, maybe, but so thin and reedy she’d blow over in a tough wind. Jule scrambled to her feet. “Don’t,” she said. “You don’t have to do this.”

“I think I do,” Ellie said. “I think I should have a long time ago.” Baz was coming toward her now, the knife dangling at his side, his grip deceptively loose. Jule considered leaping on him. Two against one – they weren’t the worst odds. But it was two against one plus one knife.

“The Lord told me where to find you,” Ellie said. “He told me to warn you about what you’re going to find after this life. Salvation isn’t for everyone.”

“Stop talking, you crazy bitch.” But he didn’t do anything to
make
her stop. He seemed almost mesmerized, or maybe it was the shock of encountering a lunacy deep as his own.

“I used to wonder why you never told anyone about us,” Ellie said. “But now I get it. You knew if you told anyone about me, I’d tell everyone about you. And the things you made me do. How you couldn’t make it work unless I let you pretend to rape —”

“I said
stop,
” Baz shouted, and laid his hands on her.

“Take Cassandra,” Ellie told Jule, sounding unafraid. “Get her out of here.” Then she started screaming. “The baby killer is here! Come and get her!”

Baz shook her, rag-doll hard. “Have you lost your fucking mind?”

“Baby killer! Baby killer!”

There was a series of answering cries, and then the crash of Watchdogs heeding her call.

“Get her out of here,” Ellie said. “They’ll get here before he can do anything to me.”

“I wouldn’t count on it.” Baz punched her in the stomach. Ellie screamed and screamed and screamed.

They were coming. They were coming, and they were probably as crazy as Baz. There was no reason to think they’d stop Baz from doing whatever he wanted to do. But they were coming, and Cass was on the ground, and the pyre still stood at the center of town, and Jule told herself she was doing the right thing. She roused Cass from her stupor, slapping the girl once, then again, for good measure, dragging her to her feet, stumbling away into the brush. As the Watchdogs barked and Ellie screamed, she told herself this had everything to do with saving Cass and nothing to do with saving herself.

Once Cass was awake enough to make it on her own, at least to the point of putting one foot in front of the other, Jule turned back. The screams had fallen silent. She crept quietly and, because it couldn’t hurt, she prayed.

She got close enough to hear the murmurs of the Watchdogs. Through the branches she caught a glimpse of Ellie’s golden hair, and the stocky arm encircling it.

“It’s all right, my child. You’re safe now,” the deacon’s voice said. “You’re with us now, child. All your sins will be forgiven.”

There was a low complaint from one of the players, and the deacon boomed, “Not this one. Consider her under my protection. The Lord has plans for her.”

Jule was caked in dirt, her hair matted with blood and sweat. Blood streamed from the wound on her cheek. It hurt to blink, it hurt to talk, it hurt to breathe. Baz would have killed her. She was sure of that, as sure as she’d been of anything. All those things he’d promised to do, make her scream, make her beg, make her hope and pray for death, he would have done, and then he would have slit her throat with her own knife. Baz would have killed her, but Ellie had rescued her, and now Jule was going to leave her behind.

Jule couldn’t fight anymore. Not now, not while she was still bleeding, while Baz had her knife and her scent and the taste of her blood. She was too afraid to lose.

She peered through the branches. Ellie was smiling. Deacon Barnes was nuts in his own special way, but Ellie was like his wayward child. He wouldn’t let the Watchdogs touch her. Not with the Lord watching. She was safe for the moment, Jule assured herself. Safe from Baz, safe with the deacon, who would keep her safe for his God. Jule could slip away with the semblance of a clear conscience. Ellie had saved her; the deacon had saved Ellie. Maybe this was how the day would continue, a chain reaction of unexpected gifts. A happy ending.

None
of
you
are
safe
here,
the doctor had said, and Jule believed it. So maybe she should have known better.

The shadows lengthened and the shouts quieted. Night was a bad time to search the woods and, as if one catch had satiated the hunger for the hunt, the Watchdogs faded away.

Daniel and Milo had made it safely to the edge of the highway hours before. They crouched in the bushes, Milo’s pale moon of a face more pinched with worry than an eight-year-old’s should be, watching the soldiers who stood before them and the acres of woods that lay behind. There were shouts in the distance, and, more than once, he thought he heard a scream. What if they’d all gotten caught, or worse?

What if he was the only one left?

“I’m tired,” Milo whispered.

Daniel shushed him.

“But when can we go home?” Milo said.

“I told you, we’re not going back.”

“Ever?”

“Ever.”

“But what about Dad?”

What
about
Dad, who – unless he managed to untie himself or, in his first brush with the kind of luck the universe had always denied him, attract the attention of someone willing to do the job for him – would languish in that shed indefinitely. But he’d be back before his father could starve to death, he told himself. If he made it back; if he made it out.

There was no alternative. Milo was the important one. And if it came to the worst, he’d have to forgive Daniel for saving his life.

Presumably, Daniel would find a way to forgive himself.

He brought his finger to his lips. “Remember, quiet.”

Beyond the woods, a barbed-wire fence stretched across the deserted highway. Two tanks awaited anyone foolish enough to venture over it, and before them stood armed soldiers, gas masks hiding their faces. Daniel couldn’t fight that. Not on his own, not with the others. If the doctor was wrong, if the soldiers wouldn’t let them cross… Daniel clung to Milo and thought about going back. He wouldn’t do it, not until he had to.

He would wait. For as long as it took, he would wait.

They trickled in one by one, first West, then the doctor, then Jule, half dragging a dazed-looking Cass. Daniel hugged the two girls, surprised by how relieved he was to see them. Milo hugged everyone.

“Let’s do this thing,” Jule said. She was bleeding from a nasty cut across her cheek, but wouldn’t say what had happened. “I’m ready to get out of this hellhole.”

“Shouldn’t we wait for Ellie?” West asked.

“Ellie’s not coming.”

Daniel swallowed. “Is she…?”

“The deacon showed up. He promised to protect her.”

“And if he’s lying?” West said. “We should go back.” Daniel held Milo’s hand, wanting to believe Jule. Wanting to go forward.

“She came for me,” Cass said softly.

“And look where that got her,” Jule snapped. There was something in her face, in her voice. It reminded Daniel a little too much of the Jule who’d shown up on his doorstep the night before, and he wondered what had happened in the woods.

“Enough,” the doctor said. “I’m going now. You want to go, it’s now or never.”

They looked at each other, and Daniel wondered if the others were feeling it, the sense that the decision should be unanimous, as if they had somehow become part of a whole. Jule watched him, waiting – then, like a gift, nodded first. “I think we have to.”

Daniel nodded, too, and Cass, her face bloodied and her eyes glazed, murmured something that sounded like agreement. West hung his head for a long moment, then, slowly, raised it. “We go,” he said.

Daniel took Milo’s hand and started toward the highway, but Jule clamped down on his arm. “No. Let
her
go. We’ll watch from here. Where it’s safe.”

“You’re safe with me,” the doctor said. “Trust me, I —” The snarl on Jule’s face stopped her cold. “Point taken.”

This time, the doctor came through on her word. She strode out of the woods and faced the soldiers and the tanks, hands in the air.

“No one passes through, ma’am,” the smallest soldier shouted to her. “You’ll have to go back. It’s for your own safety.”

“I’m Dr. Cheryl Fiske. Access #78634. I’m inoculated. And I have Subject Four with me, along with four of the R8-G exposed carriers.”

“That means nothing to me,” the soldier said.

“I should hope not. Which is why you’re going to radio back to your base and ask them to put through Colonel Franklin. You tell him who I have and what I can deliver, and he’ll tell you what to do.” She spoke like someone used to giving orders, and the soldier was apparently enough used to following them that he did so.

“Frying pan, meet fire,” Jule murmured.

Lab rats, that’s what lay in store for them. Daniel had no illusions. Not the best way to begin a new life. But
a
way. Beyond the borders of Oleander, away from his father,
away.
And Milo had nothing scientists would care to study, which meant at least he would be safe.

From their perch in the tall grass, they could see the soldier speaking into some kind of headset, nodding at whatever he heard. His voice carried on the wind.

“Yes, sir. Dr. Fiske. Yes, sir.” He put down the radio for a moment. “He wants to know whether you’ve apprised anyone in the quarantine zone of the situation.”

“No,” she said. The soldier relayed this to his superior. “But if I’m stuck in here any longer, I might have to.”

“Understood,” the soldier said, and repeated this into the radio as well. “He wants to know about the subjects?” he added. “Where are they?”

Daniel tensed.

“Somewhere safe,” she said. “Waiting for my signal.”

“And do they know about —”

“They know what they needed to know,” she said. “Nothing more.”

Daniel’s mind boggled at the prospect of more. What was left?

The soldier put down the radio. “He says well done.” Then, almost casually, like scratching an itch, he raised his weapon and shot her in the head.

Daniel’s hand was across Milo’s mouth before the shot’s echoes faded away, just in time to muffle the boy’s scream. Cass was out again, either from shock or concussion. West was cartoonishly slack-jawed, and Jule grabbed Daniel’s forearm with a vise grip that seemed stronger and tighter than a girl her size should have been able to muster. He was glad of it, not just of the contact, but of the pain. It gave him something to focus on. Something other than the body on the ground with the hole in its head and the blood and… brain matter – was that what they called it on TV? – leaking away.

The soldiers had already started rolling the body in a tarp. “We taking her back with us?” one of them called.

“You heard her, she’s inoculated,” he said. “No use to us. Dump her in the woods.”

They stayed very, very still. Daniel held Milo wrapped in his arms, trying to stop the boy’s trembling and warm his clammy skin. The soldiers dragged the body to the edge of the woods and, on the count of three, slung it into the trees.

“Forty-eight hours on shift,” one complained. “Even Uncle Sam doesn’t make you do that kind of overtime.”

“Uncle Sam doesn’t pay you enough to retire in the Caribbean,” the other said. “I’ll stick with GMT.”

“I’ll tell you, though, I’m not going to miss this hellhole.”

“Who would? These suckers would probably thank us if they knew. At least we’re putting them out of their misery.” They both laughed. “Two more days till final containment, and then it’s mai tais and bikinis from here to the horizon.”