KEIRA HAD JUST EATEN a large meal—overcooked, overseasoned, but filling. She was feeling well until the white-haired girl came to take her to her father. She was feeling well! She could not remember how long it had been since she had last felt truly well.
The car family had locked her in a walk-in hall closet. She had been in pain and Badger had demanded to know why. When she told him she had leukemia, he had shrugged.
“So?” he had said. “There’s a cure for that—some kind of medicine that makes the bad cells turn back to normal.”
“I’ve had that,” she told him. “It didn’t work.”
“What do you mean, it didn’t work? It works. It worked on my mother. She had the same shit you do.”
“It didn’t work on me.”
So he had locked her in the closet. Some of his people, ignorant and fearful, could not quite believe her illness was not contagious. Badger locked her away from them for her own safety. She had seen for herself how eager they were to get her out of their sight. She wondered what they would do if they knew what she and her family had really given them—what they were really doomed to. They would begin to find out soon enough. That was what Eli was waiting for. That was why he was keeping them boxed in. He did not have to do anything more than that to win. She had heard him talking about explosives, but then the car family had begun showing a noisy movie and the faint voices from outside were drowned.
Yet there were explosives. Eli would do anything necessary to stop the car people if they threatened to break free before they were ready to join him. He certainly would not let the friends they had called reach them. Keira did not know what would happen to her, but somehow she was not afraid. She sat on the closet floor with bound hands and feet, reading from cardboard boxes of old magazines. The lavish use of paper fascinated her. A one-hundred-and-twenty-page magazine for only five or six dollars. A collector’s item. Computer libraries like her father’s made more sense, occupied less space, could be more easily updated, but somehow, weren’t as much fun to look at.
The light in the closet was dim, but Keira preferred it dim. She thought she might not be able to tolerate it if it were normally bright. She was looking through an old National Geographic when the white-haired girl opened the door.
“Your father wants to see you,” the girl said in her low, throaty voice.
Keira looked up from her magazine, stared at the girl, wondered what it might be like to be her—dirty, knowing, tough, headed nowhere, but still young and not bad-looking. The girl’s dark-tanned skin contrasted oddly with her white hair.
“He might want to see my sister,” Keira said, “but I don’t think he wants to see me.”
“You the one he had the fight with?” the girl asked.
Keira did not hesitate. “Yes.”
“Doesn’t matter. He just wants to see one of you to make sure we haven’t shot you. Come on.” She unfastened Keira’s hand and leg restraints.
Keira started to refuse. She did not think the girl would force her. Then she realized that in spite of what had happened between them, she wanted to see her father—probably for the same reason he wanted to see her. Just to be sure he was all right. He had seemed so weak and sick when she saw him last. The organism seemed to be making her strong and him weak. That was all that had permitted her to get away from him when Rane made her realize what was happening.
It occurred to her that as things stood now, each time she saw him might be the last. The thought frightened her and she tried to reject it, but it had taken hold.
“All right,” she said, standing up.
The girl watched her intently. “Is he really your father?”
“Yes.”
“Is he part black, then, or is it just your mother?”
“My mother was black. He’s white.”
The girl nodded. “My mother was from Sweden. God knows why she came here. Got raped her first week here. That’s where I came from.”
Shocked, Keira spoke the first words that occurred to her. “But why didn’t she have an—” Keira stopped, glanced downward. There was something wrong with asking someone why she had not been aborted. She wondered why the girl would tell her such a secret, shameful thing.
“She couldn’t make up her mind,” the girl said unperturbed. “She wanted to get rid of me, then she didn’t, then she wasn’t sure, then I was born and it was too late. She kept me ’til I was fourteen, though. Then she went nuts and when they took her away to cure her, I left.” The girl sighed. “After that, life was shit until I got adopted into the family. How old are you?”
“Sixteen,” Keira told her.
“Really? How old is he?”
Keira looked at her sharply. The girl looked away. For a moment, Keira hated her, wanted to get away from her. Her rage surprised her, then shamed her because she could not help understanding its cause: jealousy. The girl had slept with Blake—as Keira herself almost had. His scent was on her like a signature. For a moment Keira wondered how she could distinguish such a thing. His scent… Yet there was no doubt in her mind, and she was almost stiff with jealous rage.
Then came the shame.
“Forty-four,” she said slowly. “He’s forty-four.” Neither she nor the girl said anything more. The girl let Keira in to see her father, then minutes later, let her out again. Only then could she look at the girl and realize her father needed an ally among the car people. The girl liked him and she could be useful to him in ways Keira certainly could not.
“Forty-four isn’t old,” Keira said as the girl took her back to the closet.
The girl glanced at her. “What’d you do? Decide it was okay for me to fuck him?”
Keira jumped. Not for the first time, she was grateful she was not as light-skinned as Rane. Nothing made Rane blush. Everything would have made Keira blush.
“I just thought you liked him,” Keira muttered.
“What if I do? He’s your father, not the other way around.”
Keira tried once more. “Did you bring him the blanket?” she asked. “And food?” She had seen an empty plate on the floor near him.
“Yeah, so what?”
“Thank you,” Keira said sincerely. She went back into the closet, waited to see whether the girl would put the cuffs back on her. But the girl only looked at her, then closed the door. Keira waited for the soft click of the lock, but did not hear it. Moments later, she heard the girl’s footsteps going away.
Keira was almost free. With her enhanced senses, she might be able to slip out of the house, escape.
Alone.
But the white-haired girl had given her a choice she did not want—to challenge the car family by attempting to escape, to desert her own family, or to remain in dangerous captivity. Here, she certainly could not help her family. At any time, Badger might decide to kill his captives, rape them, use them as shields, anything. He had kicked her father almost into unconsciousness for no reason at all. He and his people were unpredictable, ruthless, and, worst of all, cornered. What would happen when they began to realize they were sick as well?
And whatever they decided to do, how would her staying affect them? Would it stop them from doing harm? Of course not.
But if she escaped, the gang might take their anger and frustration out on her father and Rane. She hooked her arms around her knees, pulled her knees up close to her chest. There she sat miserably as though she were still bound, still locked in.
Each time she thought of her father, her mind flinched away, then fastened onto him again, forcing her into memories of the thing that had almost happened—into confusion, fear, shame, loss, desire …
Then she would remember the way Eli had looked at her, the feel of his body along the length of her own and inside her, hurtful, but good somehow. That would not happen again. Meda would be there and Keira’s father would not. Eli would steer her toward someone else; he had warned her. That hurt, but it could not matter.
She listened intently for several seconds, heard the movie end, heard the shooting flare up and die down. Down the hall, people were making love—or the ranch women were being raped. She had heard a little of that before and did not want to hear more. There were people wandering around, talking firing occasionally at targets they probably could not see. Someone was talking about eating raw meat.
The words made her mouth water. Her hunger was not painful yet, but it would be soon. Nothing else was hurting her body now, but hunger could change that quickly. If she waited much longer, let herself be locked in again, she could starve. The car gang would not understand. It might ignore her. This closet could become her tomb.
She grasped the knob, turned it slowly, noiselessly. She heard nothing nearby—not even breathing.
Yet the instant she opened the door, something small, silent, and incredibly quick leaped into the closet with her. Only her speeded-up reaction time saved her. Her moment of confusion and terror passed so quickly, she was able to keep herself from screaming. Instead, she shut the closet door quickly, quietly, and turned to face Jacob.
He was naked and trembling. Before she realized what he meant to do, he leaped again, this time at her.
To her amazement, she caught him. He was heavy, but she had no trouble holding him. A few days before, she did not think she could have lifted him from the ground, let alone caught him in midair. He clung to her, utterly silent, but clearly terrified.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered, hugging him and rubbing his trembling shoulders. She was surprised to realize how glad she was to see him—and how frightened she was for him in this deadly place. “Jacob, you could get hurt! You could get—” She stopped. “You have to get away!”
“You do, too,” he said. “Nobody knew where you were in the house so I came to find you. Everybody from home is outside.”
“Do your parents know you’re inside?”
“No!” He drew back from her a little, his trembling quieted. “Don’t tell them. Okay?”
“I won’t tell them a thing. Just let’s get out of here. How did you get in?”
“There’s a room with a hole instead of window glass. You were in there before. It smells like you—and like other people.”
“A room with a hole?”
Distantly, Keira heard shooting and running feet. It sounded like fighting within the house. Car people fighting among themselves.
Jacob glanced toward the door. “They were hurting her,” he said. “She’s got a gun and shot one of them. Now she’s shooting more.”
“Who?”
“Your sister. She’s getting away.”
“Is she? My God, let’s go!”
“Your father’s gone, too, I think. I smelled the room where he was back at home. His same smell was in the room with the hole.”
God, while she had sat worrying about leaving them, they were leaving her. She opened the door, crept out of the closet, still holding the boy.
“I’ll show you where the hole is,” he said. He squirmed against her, leaped soundlessly to the floor, sped down the hall toward her father’s room. Of course the hole would be there. But how had her father broken out the glass?
And Rane. Was she all right? Could she make it alone? Keira turned, crept back up the hall to the family room. This room adjoined the kitchen and the dining room. From the hall door of the family room, Keira could see car people crouched behind the counter, occasionally looking around or over it into the kitchen. Keira could see over the counter and into the kitchen, could see Rane sitting at the back door, cradling an automatic rifle. For an instant, Rane’s eyes met Keira’s. Then Jacob was tugging at Keira’s dress.
“Go!” Keira whispered. “Get out!”
“You come too,” the boy pleaded. “The whole house smells like blood. People are dying.”
Rane began firing again, and people did die. Keira saw one of them raise his head at the wrong time and get the top of it blown off.
Terrified and repelled, Keira snatched up Jacob and fled. Doctor’s daughter that she was, sick as she had been, she had never seen anyone die before. She ran almost in panic, reached her father’s bare room and looked around wildly.
“There!” The boy pointed to another door. The bathroom—no bigger than the closet she had been shut in, but it had a window.
She ran into the bathroom, shut the door and locked it, then lifted the boy to the windowsill. He was over it and down in an instant. She pulled herself up after him, no longer marveling at the return of her strength, no longer marveling at anything. She had to get out of the house, get back to Eli and safety. Her father was probably already safe, and Rane soon would be.
She dropped to the ground and ran.
Keira ran through the rocks, hoping they would conceal and protect her as she circled around the house. She was halfway around and already aware of the distinctive scent of Eli’s people when she recognized another familiar scent. The new scent confused her for a moment because of its clarity. She was so utterly certain it was her father’s that for a moment she thought she had actually seen him.
The wind favored her. It blew toward her from Eli’s people and across the path of her father. She looked down the slope through the rocks. Her nose told her this was the way her father had gone—away from the house and Eli’s people, toward the highway.
Of course.
Her enhanced sense of smell led her to spots of his blood, some of them still wet on the rocks. In one place near a brown wedge of rock, blood had actually pooled—an alarming amount of blood. Before finding this, she had thought she would go on to Eli and say nothing about her father. Jacob, running ahead and back to her like an eager puppy, might notice the scent and he might not. If he spoke of it, she would have to admit what she knew, but perhaps by then her father would have made good his escape. She would have let him escape, even knowing what that would mean to Eli and his people. This was all she could do for her father. And in his way, he was not wrong. He was taking the long view, trying to prevent a future epidemic. Eli and his people were trying to live from one day to the next, trying to raise their strange children in peace, trying to control their deadly compulsion. Eventually, inevitably they would fail. They must have known it. If not for the blood, Keira would have deliberately permitted that failure to happen now.
But the blood was there, slowly drying in a natural depression in the rock. Her father had been hurt, needed help. Eli had the medical bag, maybe even had it with him here to treat his own people. He should not be able to use it, but Keira suspected he could—and her father might die before he could reach other help.
She turned aside to follow the blood trail. The next time Jacob raced back to her, approaching in utter silence, and concealed except for his scent until the last instant, she stopped him.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ll take you to where Daddy is.”
“You go,” she said. “Tell him my father’s hurt and I have to find him. Tell him to send someone after me with my father’s bag. Okay?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now go. And be careful.”
The boy bounded away, leaping among the rocks as though they presented no obstacle at all. Her children would do that someday. They would have four legs and be able to bound like cats, and they would be beautiful. Perhaps she was already pregnant.
Somehow, when she found her father, when Eli helped him, he had to be convinced to stay and be quiet. He had to be! Living day to day, free on the desert was better than being a quarantined guinea pig in some hospital or lab, better than watching Jacob and Zera treated like little animals, better than perhaps being sterilized so that no more children like them could be born. Better than vanishing.
She ran down the rocky slope with new speed and agility she hardly noticed. It seemed she could always see a place for her feet, always find a handhold when one was necessary. She felt as secure as a mountain goat. Once she stopped to examine the body of a red-bearded, balding man. He was not one of Eli’s people, not one of Badger’s. Most likely, he was one of the new group Badger had called. He was newly dead of a broken neck. Her father’s scent was especially strong near him, and she realized her father had probably killed this man. It was even possible that this was the man who had wounded her father—though she saw no gun. Perhaps her father had taken it. That would mean she had to be careful. If he were wounded and armed, he might be panicky enough to shoot without waiting to see who he was shooting at.
She continued down the slope with greater care. She did not have Eli’s or Jacob’s ability to move in complete silence, but she moved as quietly as she could, missing the rock and sand she could have knocked loose, avoiding the dry plants that would crackle underfoot, quieting her own panting.
She paused briefly to listen. The wind, now blowing toward her from her father, brought her the sound of his uneven footsteps. He was limping slightly. His breathing, though, was even, not labored. She marveled for a moment that she could actually hear his breathing over such a distance. The organism had given her a great deal. It must have given him something too. How else could he survive being shot and losing so much blood? How else could he keep going? If only something could be done to stop it from killing so many people while it helped others.
She became aware of a low rumble behind her. Looking back, she saw a truck—a big private hauler—probably carrying something illegal if it were daring to use a map-identified sewer. She dove for cover as the truck came over a rise. Perhaps the driver was in his living quarters and would not see her or her father. Perhaps. But what driver would leave his rig on automatic in a sewer? He would be at the wheel. And his truck would be armed and armored to fight off gangs and the police.
The truck rumbled past her, not even slowing in spite of the fact that the rock she had crouched behind was not large enough to conceal her completely. Unmoving as she was, perhaps the driver had seen her as just another lump of rock.
But up ahead, beyond the hill that now concealed her father, the truck slowed and stopped. Frightened, she walked toward the truck, then ran toward it. People traveling legitimately did not stop to pick up strays, did not dare. Her father had told her of a time when a person could stand with his thumb held in a certain position, and cars and trucks would stop and offer rides. But Keira could not remember such a time. All her life, she had heard stories of strays being decoys for car families and bike gangs. Real strays were people with car trouble and without working phones or people thrown out of cars by friends who suddenly became less friendly. People who picked them up might be only dangerously naive or they might be thieves, murderers, traffickers in prostitutes, or, most frighteningly, body parts dealers—though according to her father, involuntary transplant donors were more likely to come from certain of the privately run, cesspool hospitals. But for a freelancer, strays were fair game.
Keira ran, not knowing what she would do when she reached her father and the hauler, not thinking about it. All she could think was that her father might be shot with a tranquilizer gun and loaded onto a meat truck.
Suddenly, as she ran, there was an explosion, then several explosions. For a moment, she stopped, confused, and the ground shook under her feet.
The ranch house. Eli had done what she had feared he would do: triggered his explosives, blown up the car people—even the white-haired one who had been kind.
And Rane? Had she gotten out? Was that why Eli had decided to settle things? Or was it because Keira and her father had escaped so easily? Eli almost certainly did not have enough people to surround the house and fight the new gang. Were two escapees all he was willing to risk?
Black smoke and dust boiled up over the hills. Keira stared at it, frightened, wondering. Then she heard the hauler start and saw it begin to pull away.
Again, she ran toward her father, pushing herself, fearing to find nothing where he had been. Instead, she found her father half-crushed by the wheels of the truck. His legs, the whole lower half of him looked stuck to the broken pavement with blood and ruined flesh. He could not possibly be alive with such massive injuries.
Her father groaned. Keira dropped down beside him, sickened, revolted. She could barely look at him, yet he was alive.
“God,” he whispered. “My God!”
Weeping, Keira took his hand. It was wet with blood and she touched it carefully, but it was uninjured. Clutched in it was a piece of blue cloth—a bloody sleeve, not his own.
“I did it,” he moaned. “Oh Jesus, I did it.”
“Daddy?” She wanted to put his head on her lap, but she was afraid she would hurt him more.
“Kerry, is that you?” He seemed to be looking right at her.
“It’s me.”
“I did it. Jesus!”
“Did what?” She could not think. She could hardly talk through her tears.
“He was looking for my wallet … or something to steal. He hit me deliberately … had to swerve to hit me. Just wanted to steal.”
She shook her head in disbelief. She had never heard of haulers running people down to rob them. Car families were more likely to do that. But in a sewer, anything could happen.
“I grabbed him,” her father said. “I couldn’t help it, couldn’t control it. He smelled so... I couldn’t help it. God, I tore at him like an animal.”
So like the blue sleeve, the blood on his hand was not his.
He had spread the disease.
“Please,” he pleaded. “Go after him. Stop him.”
“Stop who?” Eli asked.
She had not heard him coming. Enhanced senses or not, she stood up, startled. Then she saw her father’s bag in his hand. She knew how utterly useless it would be and she broke down.
Crying, she permitted Eli to take her by the shoulders and move her aside. He knelt where she had been. When she was able to see clearly again, she saw that he was holding her father’s bloody hand. She felt something happened between them, a moment of nonverbal communication.
Then, with a long, slow sigh, her father closed his eyes. Eventually he opened them again widely. His chest ceased to move with his breathing. His body was still. Eli reached up and closed the eyes a final time.
Keira knelt beside her father, beside Eli. She looked at Eli, not able to speak to him, not wanting to hear him speak, though she knew he would.
“He’s dead,” Eli said. “I’m sorry.”
She knew. She had seen. She bent forward, crying, all but screaming in anguished protest. With her eyes closed, she could not imagine her father dead. She did not know how to deal with such an unimaginable thing.
Eli took off his shirt and covered the most damaged parts of her father’s body. Blood soaked through at once, but at least the horrible injuries were hidden.
Eli stood up, took her hands, and drew her to her feet. Her hands tingled, almost burned where he touched her. Confused, she tried to pull away, but somehow her desire to pull away did not reach her hands. They did not move.
“Be still,” he said. “I just went through this with your father. His organisms ‘knew’ something mine want to know. So do yours.”
That made no sense to her, but she did not care. She was not being hurt. She did not think she would have noticed if he had hurt her. She was still trying to understand that her father was dead. Eli kept talking. Eventually, she found herself listening to him.
“When we’ve changed,” he said, “when the organism ‘decides’ whether or not we’re going to live, it shares the differences it’s found in us with others who have changed. At least that’s what we’ve decided it’s doing. We had a woman who had had herself sterilized before we got her—had her tubes cauterized. Her organisms communicated with Meda’s and her tubes opened up. She’s pregnant now. We had a guy regrow three fingers he’d lost years ago. You … There’s no precedent for it, but I think you may be getting rid of your leukemia. Or maybe the organism’s even found a way to use leukemia to its advantage—and yours. You’re going to live.”
“I should die,” she whispered. “Dad was strong and he died.”
“You’re not going to die. You look healthier than you did when I met you.”
“I should die!”
“Jesus, I’m glad you’re not going to. That makes up for a lot.”
She said nothing.
“Kerry?”
“Don’t call me that!” she screamed.
“I’m sorry.” He put his arm around her as soon as he could free his hands from hers—as soon as the organisms had finished their communication. How the hell could microorganisms communicate anyway she wondered obscurely.
Eli answered as though she had asked the question aloud. Perhaps she had. “We exchanged something,” he said. “Maybe chemical signals of some kind. That’s the only answer I can come up with. We’ve talked about it at home and nobody has any other ideas.”
She did not understand why he was talking on and on about the organism. Did he think she cared? Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the column of smoke from the ranch house and she thought of something she did care about.
“Eli?”
“Yeah?”
“What about Rane?”
Silence.
“Eli? Did she get out?”
More silence.
“You blew up the house with her inside!”
“No.”
“You did! You killed my sister!”
“Keira!” He turned her, made her face him. “I didn’t. We didn’t.”
She believed him. She did not understand why she believed so quickly, why watching him speak the words made her know he was telling the truth. She resented believing him.
“What happened to her?” she demanded. “Where is she?”
Eli hesitated. “She’s dead.”
Another one. Another death. Everyone was dead. She was alone.
“The car people killed her,” Eli said.
“How could you know that?”
“Keira, I know. And you know I’m not lying to you.”
“How could you know she was dead?”
He sighed. “Baby …” He drew another breath. “They cut her head off, and they threw it out the front door.”
She broke away from him, stumbled a few steps down the road.
“I’m sorry,” he said for the third time. “We tried to save all of you. We … we work hard not to lose people in the middle of their conversions.”
“You’re like our children at that stage,” another voice said.
She looked up, saw that a young oriental man had come over the hill behind her.
The man spoke to Eli. “I came to see if you needed help. I guess not.”
Eli shrugged. “Take her back to the camp. I’ll bring her father.”
The man took Keira’s arm. “I knew your sister,” he said softly. “She was a strong girl.”
Not strong enough, Keira thought. Not against the car family. Not against the disease. Not strong at all.
She started to follow the new man back to the ranch house, then stopped. She had forgotten something—something important. It must have been important if it could bother her now. Then she remembered.
“Eli?” she said.
He was bending over her father. He straightened when she spoke.
“Eli, someone got away. The hauler who hit my father. He was headed north.”
“It was a private hauler?”
“Yes. He got out and tried to rob my father. My father scratched him.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Eli whispered. He sounded almost the way her father had at the end. Then he turned and spoke to the other man. “Steve, tell Ingraham. He’s our best driver. Give him some grenades. Tell him no holds barred.”
The man called Steve went leaping up the slope as agilely as Jacob could have.
“Jesus,” Eli repeated. Somehow, he managed to lift her father and carry him back as though he were merely wounded, not half-crushed. He had fashioned a kind of sack of his shirt. Keira walked beside him, hardly noticing when a car sped by down on the highway.
Up the hill, Steve—Stephen Kaneshiro, he told her—joined her again. He brought her food and she ate ravenously, guiltily. Apparently nothing would disturb her appetite.
Stephen kept her away from the ruin of the house. He stayed with her, silent but somehow comforting. He found an empty car and sat with her in it. Eli’s people had apparently driven away or killed all of the second, uncontaminated group of car people. Now they were cleaning up. Some were digging a mass grave. Others were loading their newly appropriated cars and trucks with whatever they thought their enclave could use.
“Take a couple of radios,” Stephen told a woman who passed near them. “I think for a change we’ll be needing them.”
The woman nodded and went away.
Jacob found Stephen and Keira sitting together in the car. Without a word, he climbed into Keira’s lap and fell asleep. She stroked his hair, accepting his presence and his youth and thinking nothing. It was possible to endure if she thought nothing at all.
Sometime later, Ingraham returned. He had driven all the way to the edge of Needles, but found no private hauler. Everyone had gathered near him to hear about his chase. When they had heard, they all looked at Eli.
Eli closed his eyes, rubbed a hand over his face. “All right.” He spoke so softly, Keira would not have heard him without her newly enhanced hearing. “All right, we knew it would happen sooner or later.”
“But a private hauler,” Stephen said. “They go all over the country, all over the continent. And they deal with people who go all over the world.”
Eli nodded bleakly. He looked years older and agonizingly weary.
“What are we going to do?” Ingraham asked.
Meda answered him. “What do you think we’re going to do? We’re going home!”
Eli put his arm around her. “That’s right,” he said. “In a few months we’ll be one of the few sane enclaves left in the country—maybe in the world.” He shook his head. “Use your imagination. Think of what it will be like in the cities and towns.” He paused, reached down and picked up Zera, who had sat at his feet and was leaning sideways against his right leg. “Remember the kids,” he said softly. “They’ll need us more than ever now. Whatever you do, remember the kids.”