Stranger Page 19

  I said, “Listen to me. I had to kill him; he—”

  “What’s wrong? Didn’t like the shape of his face?”

  “No, it’s not that. I had to kill him. Listen to me, I couldn’t stop myself.”

  “Listen to that,” Zak said, behind me. “The guy’s psycho.”

  Tony added, “Lucky we found out before he killed any more of us.” I heard a gun cock, and another muzzle pressed into the back of my neck. They were going to kill me there and then. In twenty seconds there’d be a splash of my blood right up that cinder block wall in front of me. The muzzle bit so deep into my neck it pushed my open mouth against the wall, grating my teeth against the blocks.

  Then Michaela’s voice came close by. Disbelief turned it to a whisper. “What on Earth possessed you, Greg? Are you crazy? Is that why those people kept you out of town in the cabin?”

  “No . . .”

  “The poor guy was innocent. You just—”

  “No,” I snarled into the cinder block. “Listen to me. I killed him because he was infected.”

  Zak spat. “Valdiva’s out of his mind.”

  “No, he’s not.” It took a second to place the softly spoken words.

  “Ben, you better tell them.” I panted as the muzzles pressed harder against my skin. I could almost hear fingers tightening ’round triggers.

  “Greg’s right when he says he couldn’t stop himself.” Ben spoke in a calm voice. “He’s been like that ever since I met him last year.”

  Zak’s voice: “What do you mean?”

  “Greg can tell when someone’s infected with Jumpy. I don’t know how he does it, but he knows before they start to display even the earliest symptoms.”

  “That guy looked like an ordinary Joe to me,” Zak snapped.

  “Didn’t he look edgy to you?” I said. “And isn’t irrational panic one of the first signs?”

  “Shit. You’d be panicking if you were in his shoes today, with a bunch of hornets making for you.”

  “It was more than that. He was panicked. He was losing control.”

  “So he was scared.”

  “Believe me,” I said, “I can tell when someone has Jumpy. It doesn’t always happen straightaway, but when I sat in front of him by the fire it hit me. I knew it. He was riddled with Jumpy. In a few days he would have tried to kill us.” They were quiet now, so I rammed home the point. “You know how it works. You’ve seen it before.”

  “But we’ve only got your word for it,” Michaela said. “Ben might be providing an alibi.”

  “You could always take a trip across the water to Sullivan and ask the people there,” I told her. “Only I don’t recommend it. They’re likely to shoot any stranger the moment they clap eyes on him these days.”

  Zak pressed the muzzle of the gun into my jaw. “We only have your word for it.”

  “He’s telling the truth.” This time it was Rowan, the thirteen-year-old, who’d had the presence of mind to wrap the baby in a towel when it was born.

  Tony said, “What makes you so sure?”

  “It was how Ronald acted. He’d been brave in the past. Once he’d climbed right into the top of a tree when I hid from some men who were trying to catch me. He got me out and he was always calm. But in the last few days he started getting frightened . . . like he was frightened of his own shadow. I didn’t think any-thing about it right up until now, but I’d never seen him getting panicky like that before, even when the hornets nearly caught us a few weeks ago and they killed Lana and Dean.”

  “There’s your proof,” Ben told them. “Let Greg go. He’s more likely to save your necks than harm you.”

  “Whoa. No, wait a moment here.” Zak didn’t remove the gun from my neck. “This is how I see it, tell me if I’m wrong, OK?”

  “OK.”

  “Greg Valdiva here has got some natural, in-built early warning system. He knows . . . or divines, somehow, when a person has Jumpy. And he knows before anyone else recognizes the symptoms, right?”

  “That’s right,” Ben said.

  “Then some kind of red mist comes down inside his head. Before he knows what’s happened he’s killed the infected person.”

  “Yes, it’s as involuntary as . . .” I pictured Ben shrugging as he searched for a suitable illustration. “. . . as involuntary as hitting your knee and triggering the classic knee-jerk reaction. It’s instinctive.”

  “Yes, yes, that sounds great. Greg here will screen any strangers we meet. If his instinct tells him that they’re infected then he executes them. If not, then we’re free to team up with them if that’s what everyone wants.”

  “So,” Michaela said, “what’s the problem with that, Zak?”

  “The problem is, what if that little alarm bell inside his skull starts ringing when he sits down next to one of us one day? What if he starts killing us one by one?”

  Sighing, I shook my head. “I don’t feel it when I’m with you. With any of you, and that includes the people we found today with the exception of Ronald. He’s the only one infected.”

  “For now.” Zak sounded like a lawyer nailing his man in court. “But what if you sniff those symptoms on us? Or what if you have a foul-up day and think one of us is lousy with Jumpy?”

  “Zak, it doesn’t—”

  “Do you blow my head off? Then say, ‘Oops, sorry, my mistake, Zak.’ Yeah, right, that will make me feel pretty damn joyful when you leave a personal note of apology on my grave.”

  Ben said, “It doesn’t work like that.”

  “Says you. But don’t you see?” Zak was like the lawyer addressing the judge and jury again. “If we allow Greg to stay with us, won’t it to be like sitting on a ticking bomb? OK, we might be fine this week and next week, and next month, but there might come a day when Greg gets the feeling on him. . . . Do you know what I’m saying? We’re not going to know when we sit down to eat breakfast with him whether he’s going to say, ‘Pass the salt, please’ or, ‘Meet your maker. Boom.’ Can we handle that kind of uncertainty?”

  Michaela said, “Ben’s got a point, too. Greg here could be the best weapon we have. If he can detect Jumpy in people before they can harm us, that gives us another hatful of chances to survive.”

  Zak’s voice turned cool. “Until he sees Jumpy in you, Michaela, or you, Tony, or you, Ben.”

  Michaela stayed firm. “My vote is that Greg Valdiva stays.”

  “I say he goes,” Zak said. “Tony?”

  “Couldn’t we just disarm him?” Tony answered. “If he doesn’t have a gun he can’t hurt us.”

  I sighed. “If this thing comes down on me the way it does, I’d kill you with my bare hands.”

  “Shit.”

  “I can’t help it, Tony. It’s something inside me. It just won’t stop.”

  “OK,” Michaela said. “Greg’s unarmed now. Let go of him.”

  The mood of the people in the repair shop did seem calmer. Tony and Zak took the guns out of my neck and stood back. I turned ’round to look at those faces in the lamplight. Their eyes were as intense as light-bulbs. They stared back at me. I’d seen that expression in faces back in Sullivan. These people were frightened of that thing I had inside me that had the power to look into people and see the infection. They were fearful I’d see it in them. Now this bunch of accidental nomads had to decide what they did with me. Or to me.

  They thought it best that I wait outside while they put it to a vote. Whether I stayed. Or went. Or whatever . . .

  Michaela and Tony looked apologetic when I returned to the campfire to pile on more wood. Zak had been shrewd, thinking through the implications of what I’d got inside me. I believe he really was reluctant to take the hard line he had. But part of me agreed he was right: I was dangerous. If I detected any sign of Jumpy in man or woman I’d kill. Hell, come to that, I couldn’t stop myself killing. I’d be like a dog after a rat.

  A guard had been posted outside to watch out for any hornets happening by. But I did ask myself if they we
ren’t also keeping an eye on me while they continued their discussions behind the closed doors of the repair shop.

  I prodded the fire with a stick that sent a gush of sparks into the night sky, where they lost themselves among the stars. The air was warm; moths darted in toward the firelight. Some set their wings alight and spiraled, fluttering, to the ground. They were governed by instincts, too, something so deeply embedded in their insect bodies that they couldn’t stop flying toward a light. If it resulted in their being damaged or dying, that mattered absolute zero to them. Most creatures were governed by instinct. Birds migrated. Bears hibernated. At given times of the year different species mated. I was no better and no worse than they were. Instinct ruled me.

  A couple of hours later, close on midnight, the repair shop door swung open. Backlit by the lamps inside, I saw Michaela in silhouette. She stood, looking out at me, with a rifle in her hand. I guessed the band had reached a decision.

  Twenty-nine

  Valdiva, kneel before the ditch. Bang . . . rifle bullet chews my brain. Zak pushes me into the ditch with the toe of his boot . . . Now you’re rat meat. . . .

  That scenario played out bright and clear, I can tell you, the moment Michaela stepped out of the repair shop. The others came, too, to form a line behind her. Wood in the fire snapped like pistol shots. Sparks climbed into the night sky. And it seemed all the stars in creation gazed down to see what would happen next.

  “What’s it to be then?” I asked her. “You going to give me to the count of ten before you start shooting?”

  “Greg . . .” She sounded pained. “No, nothing like that.”

  “Oh?”

  “But we do have to decide what’s best for the survival of our group.”

  “I’ve been sitting out here thinking through your options.” I spoke to the group as much as to Michaela. “I figure you’ve got three ways to go with this. One: Let me continue staying with you. But I don’t consider that viable. Two: Kick me out. Three: Put a bullet in my head.”

  “Greg—”

  “After all, if you do exile me I might come back looking for you.”

  “Now just you wait one minute, Greg.” Michaela’s eyes flared with anger in the firelight. “This hasn’t been easy for us. But we’ve got to decide what’s right. We’ve had strangers who’ve joined us in the past who have been infected. We’ve woken up in the night with them trying to hack out our brains. See!”

  I didn’t anticipate what she’d do next. She lunged forward, grabbed my fingers and pushed them into her hair on top of her head. “Feel that ridge of skin? That’s scar tissue where a sweet little fourteen-year-old girl tried to open up my skull with a wrench. Of course, first of all she was chatty, friendly and perfectly normal-looking, so we had to sit down and talk it through among ourselves. Yes, she was a stranger. Yes, she might be infected. But, no, there were no symptoms. And we weren’t so brutal, Greg, that we decided to turn her away to die of starvation out there. We took her in, fed her, but a week later she went crazy and attacked. Tony, here, had to put three bullets through her back to get her off me. She was like a wildcat.” Michaela spoke fast, angry and hurt all at the same time. A huge glittering tear swelled in her eye before rolling down her cheek. “So, you see, Greg, we didn’t make this decision lightly.”

  I took a breath to speak, but Ben held up his hand. “Listen to what they have to say, Greg.”

  I nodded. “OK. What’s the verdict?”

  Tony said, “We like you as a person—”

  “Oh, please . . .” Sarcasm ran deep in my voice.

  Again Ben spoke up. “Greg, hear them out.”

  “But if you continue living here among us it’s going to tear our group apart. Some of us won’t be able to accept the uncertainty. That one day you’re going to be our pal—”

  “The next our executioner.” This came from Zak. “But we realize that you’d be an asset to us. You’d be able to screen strangers for Jumpy.”

  “That’s why we don’t want you to leave.” Michaela looked at me. Her eyes, compassionate and yet . . .

  “You mean,” I said, “I’m like the old-time nuclear deterrent. Can’t live with me, can’t live without me. Well, that fills me with a warm, rosy glow, I can tell you. Many thanks. I feel like a leper . . . a leper with a sack full of marijuana at a dope fiends reunion party.” OK, so that comparison didn’t make a hat full of sense, but I was too angry to speak with any clarity, or logic, come to that.

  “So what we’ve decided is,” Michaela pressed on despite my scornful remark, “is that we’re going to stay here for a while. We’ve food to last a week, there’s a fresh water well in the back yard, we’ve got a roof over our heads and there aren’t any hornets close by.”

  “Sounds sweet. Go on.”

  She continued, “You might not go along with what I’m going to suggest next. You might tell us to go to hell, but we think it’s as fair as it possibly can be under the circumstances.”

  “Well?”

  “There’s a house about five miles down the road. It’s been burned out, but the garage is still in once piece.”

  “You want me to move in there?”

  “If you agree . . . then we can still be of use to each other, but you’d be far enough away to remove this sense of danger that some of us feel when you’re with us.” She paused. “What’s your answer, Greg?”

  I looked at the dozen or so faces watching me expectantly in the firelight.

  “It stinks,” I told them. “It stinks like a mountain of crap.” Then, sighing, I shook my head. “But until we can figure out something better I’ll go along with it. For now.”

  Home is a garage with one window, a lawn mower and an open-topped Jeep so old that the dirt crusting the bottom could be pure Danang delta mud. Zak, Ben and Michaela delivered me to the place the morning after I blew off the stranger’s head. They left me with supplies, my rifle, plenty of ammo and instructions that they would call on me—not the other way ’round, you’ll note.

  Zak shook my hand. “Sorry it has to be this way, Greg. But you have to be a walking time bomb.” He smiled in a good-natured way. “We’ll see you soon.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Don’t be a stranger.” I meant it, too.

  In the back of my mind I still harbored a suspicion they’d quietly leave without telling old Greg Valdiva, the guy with the Twitch that might just turn out fatal— for you.

  Ben’s hands shook. I half wondered if he’d offer to camp out here with me, but this was the wrong side of paradise. The house, which had been burned to its foundations, lay at the edge of dark forest that looked sinister enough to be the lair of any number of murderous demons. In a dried-out swimming pool human bones lay in tangled heaps. A place of breathtaking beauty it wasn’t.

  After they’d carried my gear into the garage, said some complimentary things about my new home (in the way I suspect parents spoke when depositing their kids in new rooms at college) they climbed onto the bikes and fired them up.

  Michaela called me closer to speak to me. She rested her hand on my forearm as she spoke in a low voice so the others wouldn’t hear above the sounds of the Harley motors. “Greg, they’re frightened of you. And this is all new to them. Give them some time to come ’round to the idea of what’s inside you.” She squeezed my arm. “Listen to me; they’re going to realize soon that you’re special, and that they’re going to need you.”

  I gave that you-might-be-right-you-might-be-wrong kind of shrug. “Drive carefully, Michaela.” Then I called out to the others, “See you soon, boys.”

  Ben saluted and Zak waved his cowboy hat.

  As they rode away into the misty morning light I found myself wondering if I’d ever see them again.

  Thirty

  “Twat!”

  The ancient profanity erupted from my mouth as the wrench I was using to slacken the nuts on the Jeep slipped and my knuckles slammed into the wheel arch. “You sonnafabitch. You twat!”

  After three
days of waiting for hornets to find me (not one showed) I’d finally gotten bored enough to start work on the Jeep. I figured if I could get the machine roadworthy it might come in useful. Also, it gave me something to do. Those summer evenings alone had started to stretch out to something little short of infinity.

  So, welcome to the Valdiva home. The garage was clean, dry and rat and bug free. I rigged up a bed in the corner. Rummaging through boxes at the back, I uncovered a barbecue and charcoal that served as a stove. I also found a hammock that I strung between a couple of trees not far from the bone-rich swimming pool. A box full of paperbacks provided light entertainment. They were mainly old thrillers, but what the hell?

  When I became too restless to work on the Jeep or lie reading in the hammock I walked miles through the woods. There were no sign of any hornets, or anyone else come to that. In fact there was something eerie about the forest. I guessed it was ancient woodland where there’d been no tree felling to speak of. They just seemed to go on forever. Densely packed trees, thick canopies of branches overhead that roofed you in so completely you wouldn’t even catch a glimpse of sky. I walked deeper and deeper into them. It was almost dark beneath that ocean of leaves. Silent, too. A silence so strong you half believed you could reach out and sink your fingers into it.

  Every so often the breeze would catch the leaves. Then there’d be hissing sounds. A thousand snakes sliding out of the earth all around you. At least that’s the image the hissss put into my mind.

  The strange thing is, there was something compelling about the forest. It hypnotized you. Pulled you in. You longed to walk deeper and deeper and lose yourself there. Never come back. Never see the outside world. But keep walking among those trees, with that whispery hissss all around you . . . everything still . . . peaceful. I recalled that some Native Americans said the Wendigo haunted forests. That was the spirit of the forest. The Wendigo had the power to creep into your brain. Slowly it possessed you. Once it had control you suddenly ran away into the wilderness. Never to be seen again.

  That forest did it to me. Maybe there was something in the old Wendigo legend after all.