Stranger Page 6

  “Sure, the disease was named. Officially it was Gantose Syndrome, then it became corrupted to Jumpy. But they don’t know what caused it, or what it actually is, never mind the question of how it could be cured.”

  “Does it matter now? No . . . it’s OK, Ben. I’ll pull it out of the water.” Good-natured Ben would sometimes try and help, but his hands would shake so much he’d shake the wet wood and spray water into our faces. He was good company, though, when I was out fishing for wood, so I always encouraged him to walk with me ’round the shoreline.

  And so he’d tell me his latest theory. “If you ask me, Greg, even if Jumpy is a disease it’s not caused by bacteria or a virus.”

  “It has to be one or the other, Ben. Even I know that you don’t get sick without some kind of infection.”

  “That’s not true. Your body can be invaded by something called a prion.”

  “A prion. What the hell’s that when it’s at home?”

  “A prion can’t even be described as being alive as such. Usually it’s referred to as an agent, but it seems to be capable of reproduction. What’s more, it’s far smaller than a virus. Even worse, it’s virtually indestructible and can’t be destroyed by heat. Prions have been transmitted using scalpels that have been sterilized.”

  “Then why haven’t these prions killed everyone off in the past?”

  “Because the diseases they cause are rare. And prions tend not to be harmful as a rule. We’ve all got them swimming about inside us, but as I said, they’re rarely dangerous. They just lie dormant all our lives.”

  “What’s the problem then? Don’t we all have benign bugs inside us?”

  “That’s true. Normally prions don’t bother us. But if they do turn nasty . . .”

  “I could see that big BUT coming.”

  “But if they do turn nasty,” he said, getting enthusiastic again, “they produce a substance called amyloid, which always forms in brain tissue, not in any other part of the body.”

  “Ah.” I saw where he was going with this. “If it attacks the brain, then it’s going to affect behavior.”

  “Bull’s eye. And prions are transmissible.”

  “You mean that these prions may be responsible for Jumpy?”

  “I do. And that it caused millions of people in South America to act in such a bizarre and unusual way.”

  “But simultaneously?”

  “Some diseases spread fast. You’ve ridden a bus in winter when half the passengers are sneezing and coughing.”

  “Have prion diseases spread as fast as this before?”

  “Not to anyone’s knowledge.” He gave a grim smile. “A tad worrying, isn’t it?”

  We talked on the beach as I collected wood that lake currents delivered to us with all the regularity of the old-time mailman. That had been my job of work for the last few months. For that I lived rent-free and took a weekly wage. Dollar bills in the outside world might only be good for starting campfires, but here in Sullivan they were still legal tender.

  Never going out farther than their statutory two hundred yards were half a dozen rowboats, each with two or maybe three guys fishing. They’d never go beyond the orange buoys that marked the two-hundred-yard boundary offshore. If you ask me, they’d die of a heart attack if you even suggested they fire up the outboard motors and ride the four miles or so across the lake to Lewis, which now sat there like a crusty black scab. Those old guys’d tell you they didn’t believe in ghosts. But get this: They were still scared of them.

  Fish jumped from the shallows. Birds sang in the woods. The sun climbed toward midday. The temperature soared with it, too.

  “It’s getting too hot to do this much longer,” I told Ben.

  He smiled. “Well, I know a place where we can find some cold beers.”

  “Show me that place, Ben.” I grinned. “It sounds like a good place to be.”

  Ben reached down into the water’s edge to grab a hefty branch that divided itself off into a mass of twigs.

  “Leave it,” I told him. “We’ve got enough for today.”

  “Kindling,” he panted as he hauled it in. It must have been heavier than it looked. “It’ll make good kindling.”

  I laid the hooked pole down onto the beach, ready to give him a hand, when he let out this cry of shock.

  “What’s wrong?” I saw that he was staring into the mass of twigs. His eyes had turned big and round in his face. His body had fixed into the same position, as if he couldn’t bring himself to move.

  “Oh, my God . . .” he gasped, then lost his balance to fall back onto his butt on the shingle.

  “Ben?” I bent down to look into the tangle of sticks that still dripped water. “What’s the matter, it’s only a head. So what’s the problem, buddy? You’ve seen three of those today.”

  “Not like this one I haven’t.”

  “Why, what’s so different about it?”

  “Take a look for yourself.” He swallowed hard, as if his breakfast threatened to come storming back. “And while you’re about it: Count the eyes.”

  Eight

  ******************

  THIS IS A

  ***WARNING***

  ****************************

  Following a meeting May 15, the

  Caucus has implemented the

  following emergency ruling with

  immediate effect:

  STRANGERS

  No more strangers are to be

  admitted into Sullivan.

  Report any outsiders you see

  approaching the island by road or

  by boat.

  If you see anyone on the island you

  suspect might be a stranger

  REPORT IT!

  Be aware that anyone giving food or

  shelter to a stranger

  will be punished.

  Any such punishment will be severe.

  Be warned.

  OFF ISLAND TRAVEL

  All travel off island is strictly

  forbidden.

  TAKE THESE MEASURES

  SERIOUSLY

  THEY HAVE BEEN MADE TO KEEP

  OUR COMMUNITY SAFE.

  Caucus Order 174, May 15

  We read the notice stapled to the post by the jetty. I saw more of those yellow sheets of paper fixed to trees on the road that lead up to the town.

  “The Caucus is getting jittery,” I told Ben.

  “They’re not the only ones.” He still looked pale after seeing the severed head caught up in the branch he’d pulled from the water. “The whole world’s in meltdown.”

  I’d only seen the head for a moment before it slithered from the fork in the branch and sank out of sight. Hell, it looked weird. Sickeningly weird. I was happy to see it vanish again, believe me, but Ben had shouted to me to pull it out with the hook (but on no account to touch it with my bare hands; something I wouldn’t have done for all the tea in China anyway). Showing as a gray ball through the clear water, the head came to a rest on pebbles on the lake bed. I must have disturbed it as I splashed into the shallows because in a moment it rolled away. Soon I couldn’t even see it, never mind hooking the thing out. Ben had called me back, telling me that the lake bed plunged down a good fifty feet there into an underwater ravine. The head was gone. Sweet Jesus, I was pleased to no end it had gone, too.

  Even so, I still had a sharp mental image of it as it lay there wedged into the fork of the branch. A man’s head, it had only just started to decompose; that meant it had to have come from someone who’d been alive and well until a few days ago.

  I use the word well loosely . . . very, very loosely. Because there was something about the head that just wasn’t right. The hair had been long, the face heavily bearded. A bread bandit, I figured. The eyes were closed. You could have fooled yourself that the guy was only sleeping (if it hadn’t been for the strings of raw meat hanging down where the neck should be). But what took your breath away, and what horrified Ben so much that he cried out, was that a s
ickening bulge of brown flesh came out of the side of the face where the cheek should be. Set in that were two wide blue eyes. And those eyes seemed somehow alive. They stared right into mine. Then a second later the head slipped from the branch and back into the water, where it now lay fifty feet beneath the surface. Thank God.

  Usually Ben would be full of ideas about anything new or unusual. This time he kept silent. As we walked back all he did was swallow in a queasy way.

  This piece of yellow paper at least took his mind off what he’d just seen.

  “It’s because of the stranger. . . .” I thought for a moment he was going to say that stranger you killed. Instead he said, “It’s because of the stranger who arrived recently.” He wiped his mouth, as if the taste of his own vomit was still on his tongue. “The Caucus decided that because he wasn’t a bread bandit and he was from this part of the country, the disease must have infected North Americans.”

  “They believe he really was infected?”

  “You know,” he said firmly. “You saw it in him. God knows how you do it, but you knew he’d got it in him.”

  I sensed a creeping cold in my blood. “I might have been wrong.”

  “You’ve not been wrong yet.”

  “Yet.”

  “The town’s put their faith in you. You’ve got some instinct that tells you when a person’s infected.”

  “And so they turn a blind eye when I hack some poor bastard to pieces. I don’t want to kill, Ben. I just find myself doing it, but it’s like I’m watching it all happen from across the street. Why don’t they just put anyone arriving in town in quarantine until they’re sure? They don’t have to wait until I’ve passed fucking judgment on some poor fucking stranger.” I began to feel angry again. That anger always lurked below the surface . . . as soon as I started to think or talk about what I’d done it came shooting out of me in flames of bloody red.

  Ben was quick to try and calm me. “Greg. We’re lucky to have you. You’ve saved our necks.”

  “Lucky?” I gave a sour-sounding laugh.

  “Sure. Before you turned up we’d let anyone in who came to town, bread bandits as well as our own countrymen. But we didn’t know what was in the blood of the bread bandits or what was in their brains. We’d give those people food and lodging. They’d be completely normal, completely sane. But then . . .” He clicked his fingers. “One day, they’d snap. One Chilean guy said he was a doctor. He was polite, charming even. But one night he went downstairs, grabbed a carving knife and cut the throats of the family he was lodging with. Now you’re here, Greg. You’ve got a nose for who’s infected. Somehow you can see it in them, but we can’t. You’re our best early warning system.”

  “Yeah, right . . . but now I’ve killed a guy who’s an American. Who might have been born just down the road.”

  “And that means the disease has spread. We know it can infect our people.” Ben nodded back at the yellow notice. “That means the town has got to be more security conscious. From now on nobody comes onto the island. No one leaves.”

  “And that means suddenly our world has gotten a whole lot smaller.” I looked ’round. “We’ve turned the place into a prison.”

  He shook his head. “Not a prison. A fortress.”

  “Either way, nobody’s going anywhere, are they?”

  We headed off to Ben’s apartment, where he’d left some beers in the icebox of the refrigerator. Even though the electricity had been cut at midnight they were still cold enough to raise the hairs on the back of your neck. He also maintained a store of rechargeable batteries. So we sat there listening to Hendrix hurl those amazing guitar sounds out into the cosmic hereafter while we poured the beautifully cold beer down our hot and thirsty throats.

  For a long time we didn’t say much. Suddenly a whole army of question marks had come marching over our mental horizons. They were dark, menacing. And I found myself thinking: Why had the disease suddenly spread to our own countrymen? Had it infected us here in Sullivan? If it had, when would we see the first symptoms? Or would it be only me who recognized the disease in people? If that was the case, how long would it be before I used the ax on a neighbor? Or even Ben, sitting there on the sofa, listening to Hendrix’s guitar calling out to eternity?

  I swallowed the beer in big, hard gulps.

  There was another question, too. A weird, twisty one. One that lurked in the background but seemed every bit as sinister as the rest. What had gone wrong with that human head we found tangled up in the branch? How could it bud an extra pair of eyes? Questions, Valdiva. Questions. Questions.

  We’d been in Ben’s apartment barely an hour before the siren started. Its phantom wail cut into the room like the bad news it was.

  When the siren called, able-bodied men and women were expected to collect weapons, to assemble at certain points in the town, to be ready for Trouble with a capital T. On account of his shaky hands, Ben wasn’t in the guard—the idea of him handling a rifle with those twitchy fingers put the fear of God into the guard sergeants. Even so, he came along. He often wrote articles for Sullivan’s (increasingly) slender newspaper; with a change of hats he moved from stock clerk to reporter. In ten minutes I was sitting in the back of the a pickup barreling with half a dozen others in the direction of the wall. Which was a “misnomer,” as Ben would have said, for a twenty-foot mass of steel fencing and barbed wire running the entire width of the isthmus and cutting the island off from the outside world.

  A guy in an engineer’s hard hat shouted to the half dozen or so of us in the back of the pickup that outsiders were aiming to break in.

  Hanging on to the sides, slipstream zithering his hair, Ben looked at me. “It looks as if we’ve got our first invasion,” he called.

  Nine

  Some invasion. The trucks skidded to a stop fifty yards from the gate in clouds of dust. We climbed out with the guard sergeants telling us to take it nice and easy; to stay back until the “threat had been quantified.” Jeez. Why don’t those guys speak so you can understand them?

  There, under a cloudless blue sky, the wall ran from left to right, cutting across the highway and single rail-road track. Both ends of that mountain range of barbed wire ended in the water at either side of the land bridge. The guards’ officers—in real life a butcher, a cinema manager and a retired police chief— moved toward the gate. Someone handed me a shotgun and a handful of shells that I stuffed into my shirt pockets. I squinted against the glare of the sun. Through the monster of a steel gate I saw the invasion force.

  Hell. Misnomers were thick as dog shit in a municipal park. Well, let me tell you, the invasion force consisted of a family in a sedan. The car was glossily clean.

  It couldn’t have come far. Two of the car’s occupants climbed out, leaving a young woman in the passenger seat. She stared out at us, her eyes pumped full of anxiety.

  The two who came forward to the gate were a man in his thirties and a boy of around eleven. Like the car they were clean; the man had shaved recently. Both were unarmed.

  The stranger talked to the officers at the gate, though I noticed the three officers hung well back— you don’t know what filthy little microbes are peeling themselves from the strangers, do you, boys? I even saw one of them take a glance at the flag to see which way the breeze was blowing. The truth of the matter was, there was no breeze today. The lake was as flat as a mirror.

  Curiosity got the better of us. We moved forward to hear the conversation.

  “You’ve got to,” the stranger was saying . . . hell, not saying, pleading. He wanted something so bad it hurt.

  “I’m sorry.” The cinema manager indicated a sign painted on a five-by-five board. “No one’s allowed in.”

  “But my wife’s pregnant. She needs to be where she can get medical attention.”

  “What’s wrong with the place you’ve just come from?”

  “We’ve been living in a cabin up in the hills.”

  “Go back there. You’ll be safe.”


  The man shook his head. “There’s no one else there. She needs a doctor to look at her. Besides, we’re running short of food.”

  “Got a rifle?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Hunt, then. Catch food. The woods are full of wild game.”

  “But don’t you understand?” The man sounded angry now. “My wife is seven months pregnant. She’s not been well lately. She needs a doctor.”

  At that moment the woman pulled herself from the car, using the door to lever herself upright. “Jim, tell him about my brother.”

  “OK, Tina, just you take it easy.” He looked at the boy. “Mark, go look after your Mom while I talk.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the retired police chief spoke now in that polite but firm voice he must have used a million times before in his career. “You’re going to have to turn your car around and leave the island.”

  “What goddam fucking island?” The stranger’s patience had reached burn out. “It’s not an island. It’s a fucking town at the edge of a fucking lake. . . .”

  “Jim,” the woman pleaded, “Don’t get mad at them. They’re just being cautious.”

  “Tina, OK. Sit back in the car.”

  “They don’t know us, Jim. For all they know we might be—”

  “Bread bandits? Hey, guys. Do we look like bread bandits?”

  “No,” replied the old police chief, “but you can’t—”

  “Then let us in. Please.”

  “Sorry.”

  “But you can see my wife isn’t well.”

  “We’re taking no chances.”

  “But do we look South American? We’re from a place that’s three hours’ north of here.”

  “What place?” asked the ex-chief.

  “Golant, just off Route 3. Look, I’ve got a driver’s license that—”

  The ex-chief gave a regretful sigh. “Sorry. No can do.

  We’ve reached a decision to seal this town off from the outside. We can’t risk contamination.”

  “Contamination! Do you think my wife and my son and my unborn child can contaminate you?”

  “Jim,” called the woman from the car. “Tell them about my brother.”