Inhuman

18

I dropped my bag and burrowed into the tall reeds between the guys. We dragged the stalks closed above us as the torrent of weevlings passed overhead. I couldn’t breathe, wouldn’t move. I might as well have been drowning. My muscles quivered from terror and lack of oxygen, but then Everson entwined his fingers with mine. The warmth and strength of his grip calmed me, and I took in small amounts of air until the weevling funnel swept over the lake and crested the trees.

“Go,” Rafe whispered. “Keep low and run.”

In the failing light we sped for the two-story wooden cottage. A piercing howl tore out of the woods and I shuddered, knowing that the weevlings had descended upon some poor creature. The howl came again followed by agonized yowling and then finally — thankfully — silence.

We clattered onto the porch and Rafe motioned for me and Everson to stay put. No problem. Rafe approached the door. As he pulled out his tools for the lock, I scanned the sky for the black cloud. I’d left the messenger bag somewhere in the reeds by the lake but I wasn’t going back for it. Everson was still clutching his wet shirt.

There was a creak behind us, followed by Rafe’s “Okay.”

As I hurried past him through the now-open door, the light from outside caught the glimmer of spiderwebs. I stopped in my tracks.

“Give me a hand with this.” Rafe swatted the webs aside without so much as a flinch and pointed at a couch with rotting upholstery. “We don’t want anything bursting in on us while we sleep,” he said and got no argument from us. Together, we propped the couch against the front door and then Rafe dug into his knapsack for a flashlight. “Don’t open any door that might go to the attic,” he said. “In case you missed it, that’s where weevlings like to roost.”

“If fish don’t get Ferae, how can weevlings be part piranha?” I asked.

“Because they’re bats that have been infected with fish DNA, not the other way round,” Everson said.

“This area is the only stretch that I’ve come across them,” Rafe said. “But I’ve never seen a swarm that big. If they keep breeding like that, they’ll be everywhere before too long. And won’t that be fun?”

Musical notes suddenly banged behind us. We whirled to see an old piano. Rafe grinned at our alarm. “Mice. What, don’t you have them in the West? Or were they stopped at the wall like the other vermin? Tuck your cuffs into your socks when you sleep. Keeps them from crawling up your pants.”

“What if they bite?” I searched the shadows for infected mice.

“Mice don’t get Ferae….” Rafe said. “No rodents do. Same with squirrels and rabbits.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. Ask the geek.”

Everson shrugged. “They’re resistant to rabies too.” His pants were still dripping with lake water and he was bare chested.

I shivered, thinking again of the puddle of blood that he’d landed in. “We should find you some clean clothes.” I plucked Rafe’s flashlight from his hand and headed for the staircase with Everson beside me.

“If he gets grabby, give a shout,” Rafe called after us.

Everson shot an annoyed glance over his shoulder. “She doesn’t have to worry about that.”

“Why not?” Rafe asked. “You don’t think she’s pretty?”

“No, I — Shut up.”

Rafe’s laugh followed us up the stairs.

A tingle ran down my back. Rafe had been trying to bug Everson — I knew that — but the way he’d said it … it had almost sounded as if Rafe thought I was pretty. And Everson had nearly admitted it too.

It doesn’t matter, I reminded myself. As soon as I did the fetch, I’d never see either of them again. Anyway, pretty was relative. Life was hard on this side of the wall and people here looked older than their years. Of course I seemed like a clean, shiny doll to Rafe. And Everson? He’d been locked up in his mother’s house until he joined the patrol. The only girls he knew marched around in military fatigues. So, there was no reason for me to be feeling giddy right now. Or flattered. None at all.

The majority of the towels in the hall closet were piles of fluff, shredded from generations of mice nesting in them. Luckily, a couple on the top shelf were usable. Everson stood in a kids’ room, complete with bunk beds, rubbing down his chest and arms like he wanted to scrape off a layer of skin. I didn’t blame him. Anyone who’d grown up in the West post-exodus had been schooled on how to avoid disease. Coming in contact with blood — huge no-no. Okay, so it was bird blood. But what if Rafe was wrong about the dogs? If even one of them had Ferae, then there could be infected saliva mixed in with the turkey’s blood.

“I’ll do your back,” I said, taking the towel from him. He might miss a spot, and besides, the task would keep me from thinking about how close we’d come to being eaten alive. Which brought it to a total of two close calls for me today.

What was I doing in the Feral Zone? I didn’t belong here. I should be back home debating between doing homework or going to a movie with Anna, whom I suddenly missed so much my insides hurt. If I didn’t make it home, Anna would never know what happened to me; I seriously doubted that Director Spurling would fill her in.

“Thanks.”

Everson’s voice startled me. He started to turn but I put a hand to his shoulder, stopping him. As I inhaled, trying to calm myself, I studied the wall of his back before me — his muscles and sinew were in perfect rippling condition, not shredded by weevlings, and his skin, faintly tanned and smooth, was wholly intact. Not a cut or scratch on him. Nowhere the virus could have entered his bloodstream. I heard him inhale sharply, almost a gasp, and realized that I’d dropped the towel and was tracing my fingertips across his back. Lifting my hand was like prying a magnet from metal. I wanted to touch his skin, to run my palms over every silky inch of it. But I gave myself a mental shake and folded my arms across my body. “You don’t have any cuts.”

“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice hoarse as he turned.

He was standing just inches from me, half dressed. If I’d found his back appealing with those perfectly delineated muscles, his chest was even more tempting to touch. Heat rushed to my face. I scooted back and tightened my ponytail. “I’m fine,” I said, and headed for the closet. “Let’s find you something to wear while your pants dry.”

I flung open the closet doors, grateful to have something else to focus on. Finding clothes to fit him wasn’t going to be easy.

“This will work.” He pulled a blanket from the bottom bunk.

A sudden banging in the next room made me jump. “It’s Rafe,” Everson explained. “He came upstairs with an ax a few minutes ago.”

Following the noise, I found Rafe in the master bedroom chopping up a chest. He’d taken out the clothes and left them on the floor. Squatting, I nudged through the pile with Rafe’s flashlight. I wasn’t going to risk sticking my hand into any rodent nests, even if they didn’t get Ferae. The clothes, all sweaters and T-shirts, had belonged to a petite woman. I scooped up a black tank top and gave it a sniff. The scent of cedar filled my nose, which was about as good as it got when it came to old clothes.

I threw the tank over my shoulder and checked out the queen-sized bed. Dusty but sturdy. I panned the flashlight across the water-stained, buckling ceiling and hoped the roof didn’t collapse while we slept. “Want me to start a fire?” I asked.

Rafe paused to consider me. “You know how?”

I shot him an evil look and bent to collect the wood that he’d chopped. “I am Mack’s daughter.”

Downstairs, I found matches on the mantel and got a fire going in the fireplace without any problem at all. The flickering light pushed back the shadows in the living room. I moved closer, drawn by the warmth of the flames and the rich smell of wood smoke. After a few minutes, Everson came down, carrying his wet clothes. He’d found some baggy gym shorts to put on and had the blanket draped over his shoulders. When he was done hanging his clothes on a chair near the fire, I thought he’d join me on the floor, but no, he headed for a dust-covered desk.

“Before you forget,” he said over his shoulder, “tell me which strains of Ferae were in Moline.”

Right. The missing strains — the whole reason he’d come. And it was an admirable reason, I reminded myself. “You want me to name the different types of manimals that live there?” I asked, twisting to face him.

He stopped rifling through the desk drawers and glanced back at me. “Manimals?”

“A person with Ferae who hasn’t reached stage three,” I said, remembering Dr. Solis’s description of the stages of the disease — incubation, mutation, and psychosis.

“That’s smart, making distinctions.” With a pad of yellowing paper and a pencil in hand, he swung the chair around, ready to work. “I want to start a list of the strains we’ve come across so far.”

“Sure,” I said and then described every manimal I’d seen, starting with Sid. When I’d exhausted my memory, Everson cozied up to the desk and began listing the possibilities for the unknown strains based on the details I’d given him.

The fire had warmed me up enough that I ducked into a closet and exchanged my muddy line guard shirt for the black tank. Back in the living room, Everson was wholly absorbed in his task and Rafe was nowhere to be seen. I entered the dining area, which was connected to the main room, and panned the flashlight over the photographs that crowded the walls. Generations of a family, from sepia pictures of immigrant grandparents to colorful shots of a family piled together on the porch steps of this very cottage. Father, mother, three kids. Happy.

Another photo showed the same family members knee-deep in the lake, laughing, their arms entwined. My vision started tunneling. What were the chances that they were all still alive today and together?

Miniscule.

I flipped through the dust-covered mail piled on the dining room table — mostly bills — and then unfolded a yellowed newspaper dated eighteen years ago. The headline: “Containment Fails.” I scanned the article, reading the quotes from the top scientists of the time. “The transgenic virus was accidentally released into the ecosystem and has wreaked havoc within the human and animal populations.” And, “We have been brought low by genetic contamination and yet we never saw it coming. We worried about chemical and nuclear pollution, which turned out to be insignificant by comparison, even though one brought on global warming and the other resulted in waste so toxic it stays lethal for thousands of years.”

On the next page was a photo of Ilsa Prejean promising that her corporation’s manufacturing facilities, which had built Titan’s enormous indoor labyrinths, would now put their efforts toward constructing a quarantine wall. She looked absolutely wrecked in the photo and no wonder: The caption underneath read “Mother of the Plague.” An awful label, and also ironic — Ms. Prejean was clearly pregnant in the photo. It was hard to believe that she’d once been as beloved as Walt Disney. My dad said the Titan labyrinth parks were incredible and that he’d spent way too many weekends in his youth trying to work his way from the fiftieth floor down to the first. He said that often he’d happen upon a beautiful or fascinating room within the maze and end up spending the whole day in it.

I’d never been to a Titan labyrinth park. The company closed their theme parks in the West to focus their efforts on building and maintaining the quarantine line. And all the parks in the East had been long since abandoned.

I set aside the newspaper and glanced up to find Everson turned in his seat, watching me. He ducked his face to consult the yellow pad in his hands. “I have a question….” He flipped a page and then another, and finally looked up with a sigh. “I can’t remember what it was.”

“Well, we’ll be here all night,” I said lightly.

“Yeah, about that … Thanks. I wouldn’t be here at all if it weren’t for you.”

I stiffened. “I didn’t force you to come. Just the opposite. I told you to go back to Arsenal.”

“That wasn’t sarcasm,” he said, smiling. He leaned back against the desk and propped himself on an elbow. “I’ve wanted to see the Feral Zone for I don’t know how long, but it always seemed like this impossible thing. Like something I’d do someday … maybe. But you? You just showed up on Arsenal and did it — crossed the bridge. And knocked out anyone who tried to stop you,” he added ruefully, though throughout the rest of it, his expression seemed … admiring?

That couldn’t be right. He was not only a line guard, but the line guard who’d disapproved of me putting my dad’s well-being over the rest of the country’s.

“Same thing in Moline,” he went on. “I was excited to get that far — to finally see stage two ferals up close — and I wouldn’t have gone any farther if you hadn’t hijacked our jeep and” — he swept his hand forward — “blazed the way.”

He was different in the Feral Zone. Warmer, more relaxed. Or maybe this side of him only came out when his guard fatigues came off. Whatever the reason, I liked this new version of him. “So … you’re thanking me for being a bad influence?” I asked with amusement.

“The worst,” he agreed with a straight face, though his eyes held a smile. He then turned his chair back to the desk and his attention to the list.

“You’re welcome,” I said, hoping I didn’t come off breathless. Though that’s I how I felt — like my chest had been pumped full of bubbles. And all because Everson had made me sound bold in his take on the events. In reality, I’d been stymied and scared. But why let facts get in the way of a good feeling?

I pushed through the swinging door into the kitchen to see what I could scrounge up foodwise. The cabinets held dishes and glasses that were neat but dusty. The sliding doors on the opposite wall probably hid the pantry — the most likely place to find preserved food. As I crossed the kitchen, my flashlight beam glinted off cans stacked on the floor beside a long board. I plucked one up. Peaches.

I rifled through the drawers and found what I guessed was a can opener, though I’d never used such an old-fashioned tool in my life. I even figured out how to operate it without having to ask for help. The peaches didn’t look spoiled. I picked up a fork and speared a chunk. It smelled like heaven and tasted even better.

On my second bite, I considered the cans on the floor and the board beside to them. A pantry shelf maybe? But why would someone remove it? With the can of peaches in hand, I slid open the pantry door. Yahtzee! Shelves lined with dry goods filled the shallow space. Boxes, jars, cans … a sealed tin of baking mix looked especially promising.

I stepped back to check out the bottom shelf, but it was missing. In its place lay a small, hairy creature in stained overalls. He was curled on his side with his back to me, shivering. His silver fur gleamed in the flashlight’s beam.

I stumbled back with a gasp, right into the pile of cans, sending them every which way. The noise startled the little manimal into action. He leapt to his feet, only to slam into the shelves above. Cans and boxes tumbled across the floor. A bag landed on his head and burst open with a poof of white.

The flour-covered creature tore past me. His hunched body and long arms looked powerful, though he only came up to my chest. When he flew through the swinging door into the dining room, I sagged against the counter. His body was simian — like the chimpacabra — but his frantic escape had come off as pathetic, not scary. Not that I was taking any chances. I waited for the boys to show up, which they did in under a minute. Everson slammed through the swinging door with a “What happened?” just as Rafe clattered down the back stairs, ax in hand.

I exhaled slowly. “We’ve got company.”