Stranger

Fourteen

Ghost be damnned. That kid was meat and bone.

“Wait!” I called as I ran after him. “Stop. I won’t hurt you!”

Wouldn’t I, now? That kid might be dirty with the Jumpy virus or whatever the hell it was.

“Wait!”

The kid didn’t wait. He ran hard, kicking aside human skulls, scrambling ’round torched cars, raising dust with his flashing feet.

He was in a hurry all right. Maybe in a hurry to tell his own people that he’d found a weird-looking stranger who’d sat on the bench staring into space. His own kind might be just a bunch of survivors who’d wandered into town. Or they might be bread bandits. If that were the case they’d do their darnedest to rip me to pieces. Either way, my gut instinct told me to catch the kid.

So we ran through the dead streets. Our footsteps came thudding back to us from the ruins like a heart-beat. The walls had a gray bone look to them now as dawn began to leech up over the city.

For a ten-year-old he was a fast runner and had gotten a good start, but I was gaining on him now. Another twenty seconds and I’d catch him.

What then, Valdiva?

I felt my stomach muscles get a little twitchy. Now, if I did get that knotting sensation in my guts; if instinct yelled loud and clear that the kid had Jumpy, then I knew what I’d have to do.

The kid was slowing. He’d got a hand pressed into his side where the stitch jabbed him good and hard. He couldn’t run for much longer. I closed in fast. Now I was maybe thirty yards away.

He took a sharp left. A wrecked school bus stood nose to nose with a truck. I saw the kid pull up sharp when he saw he couldn’t run any farther. He glanced back at me. I had a vivid impression of a white face framed with a shock of wild, dark hair. When he saw me barreling toward him he began to climb through the bus’s ripped-out flank. There was a chance he could scramble out the other side. Then he’d have the advantage.

I checked to see if I could squeeze ’round the end of the bus, but, no, it had been rammed up tight against the wall of an apartment building. Maybe people here had used it as a last line of defense before the bread bandits overran them months ago.

With the kid out of sight I began to suspect I’d lost him. Then he’d be free to tell his people that they’d got a stranger in their midst. I piled into the bus after the kid, scattering the bones of a skeleton still wearing a silver sheriff’s badge. This had been a fortress, all right. The windows on the far side of the bus had metal plates welded across them. That meant the kid couldn’t get out that way.

Just when I thought I’d got him cornered I saw him climbing out the front where the windshield had been.

What’s more, the way led straight through a window of the apartment building.

Damn. That kid’s a slippery fish.

“Wait… just wait; I only want to talk to you…”

But all I saw were the soles of the kid’s sneakers disappearing into the building as he scrambled out of the bus.

I paused, thinking. That might be the bread bandits’ lair… He might have led me into an ambush. There might be twenty guys waiting in there. I listened, trying to pick up any sounds that weren’t drowned out by my own panting as I caught my breath.

As I stood there my muscles gave a twitch in my stomach. It might be nothing but the sudden exertion. Or it might be instinct kicking in, twisting my stomach into knots. That’s the way it always started. A moment later the shutter would come down inside my head. Then that overwhelming, overpowering urge to kill would come. I killed strangers with that evil little bug in their veins. As simple as that. And believe me, it got bloody. Bloody as hell. But that was the way it was. Amen. There was nothing I could do about it.

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.