Stranger Page 11

  As I moved down the bus, pushing aside empty ammo crates, I felt my own blood turn cold. The muscles in my stomach twitched, twisted. My back muscles clenched. That feeling came into me, coiling with a reptilian slowness inside my stomach.

  The boy was in the building. I sensed him running up the stairs. In my mind’s eye I could see those pale sneakers flickering up the darkened stairwell. I flung empty boxes aside as I ran to the front of the bus. Automatically I scanned the vehicle for a weapon. A pair of revolvers and an Uzi lay on a table behind the driver’s seat. They were rusty as hell. They weren’t even any use as a club. Instead I reached down to the skeleton of a guy who must have had the build of a heavy-weight boxer. I shook the army uniform he’d been wearing until one of his thighbones fell out. I tested its weight in my hand. This made a formidable baton. If need be I could break heads with this knuckley, bulbous joint.

  I climbed through the gaping front of the bus into the building. Furniture had been arranged to make a canteen. Tables covered with plates and stone-hard slices of bread dominated the room. Again I realized this must have formed part of a defensive position. The people of Lewis had built a fortress here to keep out their attackers.

  They’d failed, of course. Skeletons covering the floor with smashed skulls proved that.

  With the huge thighbone in my right hand I moved into the hallway. And, yeah, sure enough, I could hear the whispery echo of the kid’s feet as he climbed the stairs.

  I began to climb, too, taking stairs two or even three at a time. I glanced up to see the kid’s hands hauling him up by the stair rail. He was exhausted. And Christ, yes, I’d got the Twitch. My stomach muscles coiled themselves into knots. Back and neck muscles turned into rock-hard slabs. My fist tightened around the bone club so hard veins strained out through the flesh like a bunch of purple-skinned worms.

  “Wait!” I shouted. I knew why I needed him to wait now. Sweet Jesus Christ, that blood lust had come roaring down on me in an avalanche of sheer fury.

  “WAIT!” I bellowed the word. The kid gave a frightened gasp. Then he slipped onto his hands and knees on the stairs just fifteen feet above my head. He looked down through the stair rail at me. His brown eyes locked onto mine. Whether they burned in fear or hatred I don’t know.

  I heard my own voice come sliding through my lips with an ice-cold power. “Wait there.”

  Not running now, I climbed the stairs one deliberate step at a time. My fist tightened around the bone club, forcing muscle to bulge against the skin of my forearm.

  “Don’t move,” I told the boy. “Don’t you move.”

  With a sudden cry he scrambled away on all fours. Instead of climbing the stairs he made off down a hallway. I paused to hear the scuffling sound of his hands and knees against the floor. I heard his whimper, too. He was scared. Because now he knew my plan.

  Suddenly, with shocking clarity, I saw myself as he must have seen me. A huge shadowy stranger; ugly and beastlike. A monster from a nightmare was chasing him. There was cold fury in this terrifying man’s eye.

  By the time I reached the next floor I heard a door slam shut. He’d hidden himself in one of the deserted apartments. I moved slowly now. It still might be a trap. Who knows—his own kind waiting for me in those gloomy rooms? A door opened partway. I pushed it farther open with the end of the thighbone. A curtain sealed off the rest of the hallway. Using the club I slashed at it, bringing it down in a cloud of dust.

  My muscles had tangled themselves into a million knots. My whole torso ached. He was close. What’s more, I could near as dammit smell Jumpy in the air. The boy must have it bad. I burned to use the club now. I could feel the tension building inside me like a bomb.

  I walked back into the hallway, moving fast, allowing my own instincts to track the boy. I needed to kill. I needed to kill fast and bloody; smash this diseased carcass from the face of the planet.

  Hell, I’d never felt it as strong as this. It seemed the walls themselves were alive with the disease. I kicked a door open. Unmarked dust on the apartment floor sang out that he hadn’t scurried in there. I moved onto the next, my teeth grinding with rage. God, I was in the grip of this thing now. Instinct rode me like a howling demon. Child or no child—nothing could stop me now. Nothing on this fucking planet.

  A door moved an inch across the hallway. In three paces I reached it. With a snarl in my throat, I kicked it open. Footprints now. I saw the chevron pattern left by the sneaker soles, moving deeper into the apartment. I followed them into a living room. A TV had been toppled from its stand. Long-dried blood stained a couch. Pictures hung at crazy angles on the wall. People had fought and died here.

  One more, I told myself . . . there’d be one more. Dirty bastard . . . dirty little diseased bastard. Getting a firm grip on the club, I followed the footprints in the dust to the far side of the room.

  Waves of revulsion flowed at me. This was strong. I’d not felt it like this before.

  I reached a door and put my hand on the handle. Because without a shadow of a doubt the Jumpy-riddled carcass of the boy must be cowering inside. I’d break that skull open. I’d paint the wall with his brains . . . I’d wear his blood on my face as a glistening red mask. I couldn’t stop myself now. I was in the grip of this thing now. I’d—

  Then I froze. Slowly . . . slowly . . . I looked back down to my right. The boy crouched on the floor behind an armchair. His chin was tucked down into his knees, his arms around his shins as he tried to compress himself into a tiny ball. Only his eyes looked huge and terrified as they stared up into mine.

  “I told you to wait.” I breathed. Although that wasn’t important now. I took a step forward and raised the heavy bone over my head.

  The kid made an easy target. That skull would scrunch easily as eggshell. Go on, Valdiva, break open the head; plunge that bone like it’s a big old wooden spoon . . . Stir his brains to cream. Do it, Valdiva. Do it. Do it!

  Easy, easy target. He was too scared to run, only . . .

  Only something wasn’t right.

  Something about the kid, but I couldn’t identify it.

  I told myself to get the job done. But somehow it didn’t feel right. Instead, that hairy old instinct of mine turned my head back to the door that I’d been drawn to. Just an ordinary apartment door made of wood. No window. It might lead to the kitchen.

  Ambush?

  I looked down at the dust on the carpet. Possibly an ambush, I told myself, only there were no footprints leading to the door. As we were on an upper floor, it seemed unlikely there’d be another way in.

  The kid sat there frozen. He merely watched me with those big glistening eyes that were scared as hell.

  “What’s in there?”

  He just stared at me, saying nothing.

  I repeated the question, my voice harder. “What’s in there?”

  This time he just gave a shake of the head. Either that was an I don’t know. Or an I do know, but I’m not telling.

  Slowly I reached out to touch the door. The moment my fingertips touched the wood the twitches came back into my stomach so strong I nearly doubled up. A poisonous loathing oozed through the door panel into my fingers. Jesus, what was with this place?

  For a second I stood there with every muscle in my body quivering like electricity ran through them. Then I moved. I raised the club and snatched open the door.

  I’d expected an explosion of movement from inside the room, but there was no movement. Instead, someone had done something strange to the room. A strange, strange something that made me stand and stare.

  There, hard up against the door, was a wall of what I can only describe as Jell-O. A pinkish wall of the stuff that stood quivering from the floor to the ceiling.

  No . . . this didn’t make sense. I touched it gently with the end of the thighbone. It wobbled, just like a bowl full of Jell-O would wobble if you lightly pressed your finger against it. Whatever the stuff was, it formed a smooth membrane that bulged out slightly now the door
that had supported it had been removed. Stunned, I couldn’t drag my eyes off that pinkish wall.

  I looked more closely. Like a big bowl of Jell-O, you could see through it. I saw objects suspended in the stuff like pieces of fruit in a dessert. Irregular in shape, they ranged from the size of a strawberry to as big as a basketball.

  Behind me the kid whimpered. I shot a look back to see him give a frightened shake of his head as he stared at me . . . or stared at that pink block that filled the room as completely as water in a fish tank.

  It wasn’t pleasant to see. It made me think of blood that had set into a translucent gel. And yet it was compelling. I found myself looking not just at it but into it, like I was searching for something I knew would be there. Something hidden . . . and for some reason it was important that I find it. And the smell of it? Boy, did it stink! Jesus H Christ, it did. A kind of raw blood smell that’s disgusting and kind of interesting all at the same time. The pink stuff was hot, too, like touching someone’s face when they’re running a fever.

  I peered at the objects suspended there. Damn. This stuff had a glossy surface; I could even see my own face reflected there. Only distorted, until the mouth looked too big for the head and—

  Hell, that wasn’t my reflection.

  One second I registered a severed head floating there.

  The next a pair of eyes suddenly blazed from the head as the eyelids snapped open.

  The next second the head lunged forward at me. The face pressed hard against the membrane, splitting the skin, exposing a slime-covered nose and eyes and a wide-open mouth that lunged at my exposed throat.

  Fifteen

  The boy stood at my side as we watched the apartment building. Whatever that thing in the room had been I don’t know. But it was gone now. Flames jetted from the windows of the apartment on the seventh floor. Black smoke coiled against the sky, painting a grim smear there.

  I waited for a good hour, half wondering—hell! halffearing—that somehow the pink mass would escape. But it stayed there, to be cremated by the fire I’d started. What’s more, it was hard to dislodge the image of the face lunging from that godawful red muck at my throat. A sheer reflex action had spared me from its champing jaws.

  All I could say for sure was that the head had once belonged to someone human. What it was now, God alone knew. The head looked as if it had belonged to a man of around forty. The features were distorted. The mouth had somehow grown out of proportion to the face. Its eyes were swollen things that bulged grotesquely from the sockets. Yet the skin had a slick newborn look to it, covered with a pink gel.

  From the fire came popping noises as timbers caught hold; windows cracked with a sudden snap! Later came another sound. It might have been simply air escaping from a confined space, but I swear I could hear a thin-sounding cry. You could believe it came from someone burning up with pain. The cry grew louder. More agonized. Higher in pitch. Then as quickly faded.

  Once I was sure the fire would consume the building—and what it contained—I turned and walked away. The boy followed.

  “Are you alone?” I asked him.

  Not replying, he trudged along the street with his fists pushed down into the pockets of his jeans.

  “Do you speak English?”

  Still no reply. His face expressionless. He merely stared straight ahead.

  “Quite a fire we made back there,” I said. “It’s going to turn the whole building into a pile of ash.”

  He suddenly stopped walking; then, as if remembering something unpleasant, he said, “Hive.”

  “Hive?” I looked at him. “What do you mean by hive?”

  “Can’t you hear me?” His face flushed an angry red. “I’ve told you . . . hive!”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you—”

  But I was talking to thin air. He’d gone. Once more he’d run like Satan himself was after his ass.

  Only this time I saw that he ran toward a group of people who stood at the junction of the street. They weren’t moving, but they were taking a close interest in me. I noticed, as well, that they were armed.

  The kid ran straight at them to stand alongside a guy who carried a pump-action shotgun. My instincts had nearly steered me wrong with the kid earlier, and maybe I was a fool to put my trust in gut instinct again, but I put my hands out at either side of me to show that I wasn’t carrying a gun. Then I moved slowly for-ward. I figured the time had come to speak to someone.

  Sixteen

  “We can’t give you food.”

  The girl with black eyes told me this as we sat by the fire that crackled away like crazy in the yard of a house. When I say she had black eyes I don’t mean that she’d been in a fight. No . . . it was the color of the irises. They were this pure onyx black. A lustrous, glossy black. Believe me, I’d not seen eyes like those before. I found myself staring as she talked to me. But then, there was something pretty compelling about her. She had a thin waif face and a body to match. Her clothes were clean, considering, while her long hair was as glossy and as dark as her beautiful eyes. I put her age at around eighteen.

  “We lost what was left of our food two days ago. The last place we were staying got jumped by a bunch of hornets. We were lucky to escape with our skins.”

  “Hornets?” I shook my head, not understanding.

  “Hornets. You know?”

  I shrugged.

  “Bread bandits?”

  “Oh, right.” I nodded.

  Now she shook her head. “Have you been in hiber-nation? No one’s called the bad guys bread bandits in months.” Her face there in the firelight never broke into a smile once. In fact the whole party wore grim expressions. She continued with a nod at the boy. “He got so shaken up that he ran off the moment we got here. We’d been looking for him for hours when we saw the pair of you in the street.”

  “Has he told you what happened?”

  “He said you found a hive in an apartment. That you torched the place.” Her lips gave a little twist, the closest to a smile I’d seen on her face. “Good work. The filthy bastard deserved it.”

  A guy of around twenty in a cowboy hat picked up on the conversation. “What we don’t understand is why there weren’t any hornets guarding it. They don’t usually desert a hive.”

  I frowned. “You’re losing me again. Hive? What is this hive? The kid used the word after we set fire to it.”

  “Sweet Jesus, you have been out of circulation.” The girl pushed another piece of wood into the flames. “Where did you say this town was where you lived? On the moon?”

  Yeah, she was joking. But still not smiling.

  I shrugged. “We keep to ourselves.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “But it sounds like a nice place to be,” chipped in one of the others. “You say you’ve got electricity? Clean water? Food?”

  “We must have gotten lucky.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “I’m going to get a hold of a handful of dirt from your town and keep it in my pocket.” The kid gave a grim smile. “Maybe some of your luck will rub off on me.”

  “A decent meal would be pretty good right now.”

  “Pretty good? We’d be in damn heaven.”

  I’d got questions that could do with buddying up with some answers, but suddenly this dog-eared group of people around the fire started shooting one-liners at each other.

  “Give me beefsteak with mayonnaise.”

  “Mayonnaise?”

  “I don’t know why. I just want to eat mayonnaise. I haven’t tasted it in months.”

  “Give me the beefsteak. A couple of pounds medium rare would work some magic for me.”

  “With a dozen beers.”

  “And an order of fries.”

  “Golden fries.”

  “Give me a loaf of bread. That’s all I need right now.”

  “Coffee and a cigarette. It’s weeks since I had a cigarette.”

  “You don’t smoke.”

  “I
did once. Until the crap hit the fan.”

  “See? Every apocalypse has a silver lining. If you don’t smoke you’ll live to be a hundred.”

  “Yeah. Live to a hundred in some shack with nothing to eat but dirt and leaves, and nothing to drink but ditch water.”

  “Wait,” I said, breaking into their fantasy food orgy. “Tell me more about these hives.”

  “Do you mind, man?” The guy sounded annoyed. “We were talking about food.”

  “Seeing as we don’t have the real thing,” added the black-eyed girl.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “But there’s something been happening in the outside world. Something important that I don’t know anything about. Listen, I find a room full of pink goo that has body parts floating in it that are still alive like . . . like fish in a damn fish tank! In my book, that’s important!”

  “And so is mayonnaise.” The guy in the cowboy hat growled, angry now. “Or do you think we’re all going to get fat dining on fucking fresh air?”

  “No, I’m sorry, but—”

  “Sorry my ass, you—”

  Another broke in, “We take you off the street, give you protection, give you a place by the fire we made, and you get ticked off when we talk about something we want to talk about.”

  The boy spat on the ground. “Yeah, we never have enough to eat. You don’t know what it’s like to be so hungry you feel as if your brains are on fire.”

  I spoke as patiently as I could. “All I want to know is, what are these hives you’re talking about? Should I be warning the people in the town where I live?” Some might have said I should warn my people. But Sullivan wasn’t my people. I didn’t like nine tenths of them. I bore it no allegiance. Yet I knew young children still lived in the town. And then were was Ben and a few others who were decent, including Lynne’s husband and daughters. As for the rest, well, damn them. I didn’t give so much as a flying fuck.

  “You really want to know about the hives?” The girl looked at me with those eyes that were like black jewels.