“Alex?”
“Mmm?”
“Are we going to be okay?”
“Sure.” Alex hugged the girl closer, not out of affection but expediency. The less space between them, the warmer they’d be. Beneath them, their nest of leaves and debris crackled with a sound like dry cellophane. The debris shelter was warm, almost toasty from their body heat—captured as it was in a thick, three-foot mound of leaf litter. “We’ll be fine. Couple more days and we’ll be at the rangers. They’ll know what to do.”
They’d run as the sky fired with a startling, blood-red sunset, one that made Alex think of that really famous painting where the guy was standing on a bridge and screaming. They’d kept on running as that weird light faded, and then they’d run some more, stumbling on by flashlight until the only scents Alex picked up were of the forest and themselves. By then, with the moon not yet risen, the woods were black, and the going too treacherous for them to continue.
Ellie hadn’t wanted to eat. Really, Alex didn’t much blame her; she was pretty queasy, too—almost chemo-queasy—and wrung-out from the accumulated horrors of this terrible day. Clutching her useless iPod, Ellie watched as Alex threw together a debris shelter using pine boughs and deadfall. Somewhere along the way, the girl had vomited, and Alex used her shirt to get rid of the worst of the muck on Ellie’s face and parka. She managed to coax the kid into chewing the moist inner bark of a thin twig of white pine: It tastes like a sugar lemon drop, Ellie. Honest. Pines were famine food, too; the Ojibwa used to pound the dried pulp into flour, and Alex briefly considered then abandoned the idea. They were so not sticking around any longer than they had to.
But they would be in a world of hurt if Alex couldn’t find water, and soon. The stream was back the way they’d come, but there was no way she was retracing her steps, not with those kids out there. They just had to hope another stream intersected the trail, because, at this rate, the river was still three days out. Not good.
Now, Ellie asked, “What about food?”
“We’ve got Jell-O and the power bars.”
“But I ate one.”
“It’s okay, Ellie. You were hungry, it’s fine.”
“I stole it.”
She decided on a different tack. “When we get to the river, we’ll fill up our water bottles and catch a couple fish.”
“But you said fishing would slow us down.”
“Well, not necessarily. If we’re stronger, we’ll move faster. You’ve got the rod and lures, right?”
“Uh-huh.” Ellie’s voice was so drained of color it sounded transparent as glass.
“So we’re set.”
“What if they’re not biting?”
“They’ll bite.” Then she thought of something. “Your grandpa took you out of school to go hiking, right? So when were you supposed to go back?”
“To school? Um … Tuesday.”
Today was Saturday. “Which means you’d have to get back on Monday, latest. So, is there anyone at your house?”
“Just Mrs. Pierce. She lives next door and takes in the mail and does stuff with the lights.”
“So there you go. If you guys don’t show up by Monday, Mrs. Pierce will get worried. She’ll probably phone the rangers at the park entrance or maybe the station. I wouldn’t be surprised if the rangers know all about you by the time we get there.”
“Won’t anyone worry about you?”
“Sure, but not for a while.” It occurred to her then that without her watch, she might easily lose track of the days. One more thing to worry about. Maybe notch a stick …
“What if Mrs. Pierce doesn’t worry? What if it takes her a couple days?”
“Well, you worrying about her not worrying won’t help. Don’t sweat it. Come on, try to get some sleep.”
“I can’t.” A rustle as Ellie squirmed. “These leaves are itchy.”
“Try.”
“But what if … what if that girl … what if they …?”
“But how do you know?”
“Because we ran a long time and they didn’t come after us and now it’s dark. If they were going to chase us, they’d have done that already.”
Pause. “Why were they doing that? Why were they—”
“I don’t know.” Maybe the brain-zap made the kids go crazy, like the deer and the birds. But the birds were back to normal and so was Ellie, and eating people was way, way out there. Just thinking about it stroked gooseflesh from her skin and set her teeth. Had those kids killed that woman? They must have. She looked pretty old, like fifty or sixty, so between the two of them, taking her down might have been easy. Alex could almost see the movie in her mind, like one of those Animal Planet videos: the kids attacking, pouncing, swarming over the woman, tearing open her belly, ripping out her throat with their teeth.
God, just like animals. She shuddered at the thought. And what was with that stink? It smelled like … she didn’t know … roadkill, yeah, but it was a really old smell, too. No, old wasn’t the right word either.
The kids smelled … wild. They were wild. They were like zombies—only alive instead of coming back to life. Or maybe they had died and then …? No, no, that couldn’t be right. Could it? God, she didn’t know. All she knew was their electronics had fried and so had their brains. The brain-zap hit them all: the animals and these kids and her and Ellie. Until now, she’d thought that she was the only one who’d changed—a stupid assumption, but she just hadn’t had anything to go on. Hell, she’d never stopped to consider that the zap might cover a big area: not just the mountain but the valley, too. The mountain was, what, five miles back? So, if the zap was a circle, say, with a radius of five miles, square that and times pi and …
Oh my God. Her breath caught. Eighty square miles? The Waucamaw was huge, almost four hundred square miles. If she was right, that zap hit a fifth of the wilderness—a lot of land. And how many people? This far north, the fall colors were past peak by a good week, which meant that tons of tourists already had come and gone.
And what was with those kids? They’d changed in a way that was different from her.
Or maybe not. She remembered how Ponytail Blonde had tested the air. What if their sense of smell sharpened, too? What if that’s the first step?
Her restless mind strayed back to those gunshots. For the first time, she considered that maybe the question wasn’t what those guys had been shooting at, but who.
Was that going to happen to her? God, she’d put a bullet in her head first. But what if she didn’t notice until it was too late? Worse, what if she didn’t want to stop the change? What if she didn’t care?
“Alex?” Ellie’s voice floated out of the dark. “Is what happened to those kids going to happen to us?”
Hearing her thoughts come out of Ellie’s mouth thoroughly creeped her out. “No,” Alex said automatically. “It’s been too long. It would’ve happened already.”
Liar. The voice was small, only an inner whisper misting through her mind. You don’t know anything for sure. You’ve changed, and you’re still changing. You’re smelling things—and you’re smelling meanings. That zap was only this morning, and look how far you’ve come since then. Look how fast those kids changed. Maybe what happened to them hasn’t caught up to you yet.
Go away, you. She couldn’t worry about this now. She didn’t want to worry about it ever. All she wanted was to close her eyes and not dream at all; to wake up in her own bed and see that this was all a really bad nightmare or something.
“Come on,” she said, “go to sleep. We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”
“But I’m scared to go to sleep,” Ellie said. “What if I don’t wake up like me?”
“We’ll be okay.”
“How do you know? Maybe we’re going to die.”
“No, we’re not. Not today.” It was another automatic response, a little bit of the gallows humor—or reality—she’d adopted over the past two years. “And not tomorrow either.”
A pause. “I’m sorry about Mina. She wouldn’t leave. I couldn’t get her to come.”
“You did the best you could,” Alex said, though she doubted this was the case. The kid hated that dog.
“Do you think she’ll be okay?”
“I don’t know, Ellie. She seems like a pretty smart dog.”
“Maybe she’ll go wild.”
“Maybe. I don’t know how fast dogs go wild.” If they’re starving, maybe very fast. But that was her voice now, not this other whisper.
“Grandpa said there are lots of wild dogs in the Waucamaw already. He says that people leave them here because they think they’re doing the dogs some big favor by setting them free, only a lot starve and the ones who don’t go wild.”
“I don’t think worrying about Mina will help.”
“Oh.” Silence. “I wish I could do it all over again.”
“Do what?”
“Everything. I wish I had been nicer to Grandpa,” Ellie whispered miserably. “I wish I’d been nicer to Mina. Maybe if I’d been better, my mommy wouldn’t have gone away.”
She wasn’t exactly sure what to say. “Your grandpa said your mom went away when you were really little. It couldn’t have been anything you did. You were just a baby.”
“Maybe. Daddy had some pictures, but he didn’t like looking at them because they made him sad.” Ellie was quiet a moment. “I don’t even remember what Daddy looks like anymore. He’s all blurry. He made me mad, too.”
“How come?”
“Because he went away when I told him not to. He said he had to because it was his job.”
Alex knew what this was like. “Sometimes when you’re sad, it’s easier to be angry.”
“Do you get mad at your parents?” asked Ellie.
Alex’s throat balled. “All the time,” she said.
Ellie fell asleep not long after, but tired as she was, Alex couldn’t relax. Her mind churned, and she was restless, jumpy, her legs a little herky-jerky. The feeling reminded her of the time Barrett tried a med that was supposed to make her not puke during chemo—Reglan, was it? She couldn’t remember; she’d been through enough drugs over the past couple of years to keep a small army of pharmacists in business. The problem with meds was that even the ones that were supposed to take care of side effects had side effects. Like the way Reglan made her all twitchy, with a horrible, total-body sensation of ants swarming over her skin. So she’d been a total spaz and nauseous, which sucked.
The distant cry of a coyote came then, a sound like the squeal of a rusty hinge. Maybe she should keep watch. There were animals, after all, and those two brain-zapped cannibal kids. Who knew what—who—they might have in mind for dessert. Yeah, maybe a quick turn around their camp. Better than lying here, ready to jump out of her skin. Reaching for her Glock, which she’d taken off along with her fanny pack before bedding down, she winced at the sharp, harsh crackle of leaves, but Ellie didn’t stir.
She cradled the gun. Its solidity was reassuring, and so was its scent: gun oil, the faint metallic char of burnt powder. The holster smelled like comfortable shoes mingling with just the tiniest whisper of sweat—a scent that was not hers; she knew that.
Oh, Dad, tell me what to do. Her throat tightened. Would he understand if she had to use the gun? Would her mother? Because if Alex changed even more—if she got like those kids—she’d have to take control, do something before it was too late. Anyway, it wasn’t like she’d never thought of suicide. Call her crazy, but suicide was a way of taking charge and fighting the monster, an alien invader she’d never thought of as remotely belonging to her in any way. Killing herself before it could finish its work was sticking her thumb in its eye, a way of depriving the monster of its final victory. Now, though, she and the monster might be inseparable, one and the same, and that changed everything.
I’ll be the monster. If I use the gun, I won’t be taking it out. I’ll be killing me.
Then she had another, even more horrible thought. What if she was all right, but Ellie changed? Could she shoot a little kid?
God, this was all so messed up! She burrowed out of the shelter fast, winking against the burn of tears. After the warmth of the shelter, the slap of the chilly forest air set her teeth, and she stood a few moments, shivering in the dark, her throat working. The rasp of her breaths seemed very loud, and she clapped a hand to her trembling lips to catch a sob. Stop this, stop this! She had to get ahold of herself. She had to deal. She was the only one who could. Ellie was just a little kid, so it was up to Alex to get them out of this. She just didn’t have time to feel sorry for herself—
She gasped.
Time. The airplane. The plane. That’s what had been bothering her all day: that feeling like a toothache, that thing about time. The airplane hadn’t come back, and it always came back at the same time, every day.
She hadn’t heard the airplane on its return trip.
She ticked through the possibilities. Maybe the plane had crapped out and could no longer fly. Or maybe she’d just missed it. There’d been a lot going on. Maybe the plane’s engines wouldn’t carry into the valley, or it had altered its flight path. Maybe it didn’t fly back to its home field on Saturday nights. Maybe it came back on Sundays.
Or what if the plane had been airborne when the zap happened? Would the plane crash? She thought back over the time frame of that morning. The plane passed overhead at 7:50. The zap happened at 9:20, ninety minutes later, give or take. Where would the plane be then? That depended on its speed, right? It might’ve landed before the zap. Or maybe not. If the plane crashed, would she hear it? She thought not.
But assuming she could hear it and the plane a) hadn’t crashed and b) flew a regular Saturday afternoon route, then either she’d missed it in all the excitement—or the plane could not fly, and if that was true, then this thing was way bigger than eighty square miles.
There were two ways to figure this out. She could wait for morning, get herself oriented, and listen for the plane. If it flew over or near the valley, she would hear it. If she didn’t hear it, that didn’t necessarily mean anything bad, but she’d still have a lot of questions.
Or …
One thing about being really far away from other people and cities: no light pollution. Even with a moon, she should be able to spot planes even high overhead. First, she had to find a break in the trees. Now that her eyes had adjusted, she could make out her immediate surroundings: a murky patchwork of moth-eaten splotches of gray at her feet, the blacker forms of trees rearing up from the forest floor, glimmers of moonlight that shone through gaps in the forest canopy as dull, silver coins. The moonlight was a little off. Not as bright as she expected. Too gray. Weird. In the four days she’d been on the trails, the moon had been waxing. The last time she’d noticed, the moon was, what, three-quarters full? Well, maybe the moon was setting.
A splash of silver-gray light glimmered off to her right, which meant a large break in the trees, and she moved that way, slowly, one hand in front of her eyes to ward off low-lying branches, pausing every few paces to listen, wincing at the rustle and stir of the forest with every step. Twice, feeling a little foolish, she even sniffed, registering cold leaf rot and soggy wood but no roadkill reek—nothing that translated as wild or dangerous. So that was good.
The gap in the trees was as big around as a house, and she stood in the center, her head back and her left hand raised to block out the indirect light of the moon leaking from behind a veil of pine. The stars were a little off: not hard and glassy the way stars were in fall and winter, but hazier, like summer stars. Well, that was strange. Stars always seemed brighter this time of year, not only because the view was different but because cold air held less moisture and the Earth was turning from the Milky Way. With fewer visible stars in the sky, the ones that were left were easier to see and appeared brighter. But this sky looked fuzzy, the stars not glassy but gauzy silver burrs.
Now why should that be? The rusty cry of a coyote sounded again, though she barely heard. Instead, frowning, she turned a slow circle, her eyes gliding over the night sky and those strange stars—and then the moon.
No. Her heart jerked in a sudden, painful lurch, and her mouth fell open. She was so stunned, she forgot to breathe. No, it can’t be.
But it was.
The moon was blue.