The Devil's Alphabet

Chapter 19

FOR THE FIRST hour and a half of the service Paxton felt as if he were floating above the congregation: apart from the proceedings, immune, unmoved.

Reverend Hooke, dressed in a billowing dark dress that made her look strangely bulky, had started the service with a long prayer that expanded in a widening circle to take in all nouns. She prayed not only for Deke and Donna, but this church, this town, all the people of Switchcreek; she asked God to embrace the soldiers who surrounded them, the people in the nearby towns who feared them, and their fellow Americans across the country. She prayed for the victims in Ecuador and for people the world over who watched the suffering on their television screens.

She had no other sermon. There was no program, she said, no plan; the spirit would lead. Then she opened the pulpit to anyone who wanted to speak.

The first to come forward was an argo woman. She stood at the podium, between two huge caskets of dark gleaming wood. Like all argo necessities, they were custom creations. They’d been fashioned by Deke’s employees in the same shop where they’d created the argo-sized pews that this morning had been carried in to fill the front of the sanctuary. For once, the argos were not going to sit in the back.

Paxton found it hard to focus on what the argo woman was saying, or on what was said by the others who came after her. Most were argos, but people from other clades also felt called to say something. Sometimes they spoke only about Deke, sometimes only about Donna, but usually it was about the two of them as a couple, a partnership.

Donna’s beta cousin, the one who’d given birth only a few months ago, talked about Deke and Donna’s dream of having children. By now everyone knew where they’d been heading when they met the roadblock. The people in the pews around Pax, even the stone-faced betas, sobbed or wept silently, heads held still as tears ran down cheeks and into their collars. Pax sat impassively, wondering at the intensity of the emotion and at his own detachment. He should have tasted a little vintage before the service. He felt as if he were sitting in the middle of a burning house, breathing smoke like it was fresh air, unable to feel the heat.

His father would have been crying by now, Paxton was sure. Harlan had been stunned by the news of Deke’s and Donna’s deaths; during Paxton’s visits this morning and the day before he’d been incapable of saying more than a few words. Yet he wouldn’t come to the service. Aunt Rhonda said she would have allowed it, that her employees could have transported him, wheeled him inside, and guarded him, but Harlan refused. Pax knew that he was intensely embarrassed by his size and must have been petrified that he’d humiliate himself if the vintage struck during the service. The fact that the funeral would be held in his own church only made it more unbearable. “You go,” his father had told him, and it had been not so much a command as a plea.

The stories and testimonials went on and on. The church was packed as full as he’d ever seen it, and the doors were propped open so that the scores of people standing outside could hear. There were no reporters inside or out, no nonresidents at all—those had been bussed to an alternate quarantine site near Louisville, Kentucky. Already some of those reporters had been examined and declared clear of TDS-causing plasmids—whatever those were. Neither were there soldiers; they’d pulled back to their improvised headquarters at the Cherokee Hotel and to the newly reopened and fortified checkpoints. No one except the National Guardsmen had entered the town in three days.

Pax knew that he should stand up and speak for his friend. Who else here could tell about the boy he’d been before the Changes, before he’d become the Chief? The baseball fanatic who so loved a good game that he’d once broken a finger in the third inning and didn’t tell anyone until the next day. The shy daredevil who’d invented Hillbilly Bobsled. The artist who’d built a dozen birdhouses just because his crazy-ass father mentioned—once—that he liked to watch the blue jays squabble. Nobody who knew only the Chief would believe how scared Deke had been of his old man.

Reverend Hooke stood in silence, waiting for anyone else to step forward.

Pax gripped the pew in front of him and stared at his hand. He could pull himself up, walk to the front. But his hand would not unclench, and seemed to become something alien, a knuckled stump that did not belong to him. A foreign object attached to someone else’s arm. His body felt heavy as river stone.

And then the reverend nodded to a back row, and the moment passed. His hand fell into his lap.

Aunt Rhonda came slowly forward, an immensity in pink like a parade float: pale pink dress and jacket, a wide pink hat with a brim ringed with white flowers, pink eye shadow and lipstick. Her lilac perfume followed like a bridal train.

Rhonda stepped up on a hidden riser and regarded them over the podium. Her mouth was pursed, and her mascara had smeared darkening her eyes. It was the first evidence Pax had ever seen that the woman could cry.

He could no more concentrate on the words of her eulogy than he could anyone else’s, but he took note that her voice often trembled and at times broke, and that what appeared to be actual moisture made her eyes gleam. Performance or true passion? He couldn’t decide. Maybe a smart person could tell the difference. The people around him certainly seemed to be moved. Their tears flowed; they leaned toward her, rapt.

“They call us freaks,” Rhonda said. “They call us mistakes. They call us unnatural. But everyone in this room was blessed to know two giants. I’m not talking about their size. I’m talking about their spirit, their goodness, their courage. And what was their reward? The world cut them down, cut them down like the Old Soldier. That is the unnatural act. And that is the great mistake our captors have made.

“They thought they could contain them,” Rhonda said. “But Deke and Donna cannot be contained. We cannot be contained. We shall not be contained.”

Someone shouted an amen. Around Paxton people began to stand; the entire congregation was getting to its feet. Paxton rose with them, but he kept his head down and gripped the pew in front of him. People murmured and shouted. He’d never suspected that Rhonda could deliver a fire-and-brimstone sermon. But of course she’d been watching his father all those years.

At some signal he didn’t see, the argos in the front rows turned to face the congregation.

Pax recognized Amos, the one-armed man who worked in Deke’s shop, and a few others he’d either known before the Changes or had seen around town over the past few months. Most were strangers, gray-and white-skinned giants, some dressed in good suits, others in overalls and short-sleeved shirts and long cotton dresses.

And then they began to sing.

The first blast of sound rocked him back. The pew vibrated under his hands, traveled into his chest, buzzed the bones of his jaw.

He’d never heard so many argos sing at once, and never on their own; he’d only heard them in mixed choirs, taking the bass line in songs with the other clades. But this, this was something new, purely argo. New music that required previously unimagined vocal parts: Sub Bass, Deep Bass, Nether Bass, Double Mineshaft. He knew there must be more registers below his hearing, sub-foghorn frequencies that propagated miles through the Earth’s crust: Tectonic Bass.

The song went on for five minutes, ten, fifteen. The throb and thrum hammered him back into his body; he gripped the pew as waves of sound beat against his face and chest and thighs, chorus after chorus after chorus. He didn’t know what song the choir sang, but he sang with them, head back and mouth wide. He sang and he waited for the tears to come. He waited, teetering on the edge of that release, rocking in the embrace of that deep sound.

But no. He was dry. Dry as ancient skin, and the singing beat him like a hollow drum.

———

On the fourth day of the quarantine, soldiers brought him coupons.

Six masked national guardsmen knocked hard on his door at eight in the morning. Paxton came out in the T-shirt and shorts he’d been sleeping in. He couldn’t tell how old the men were, or if they were frightened to be knocking on doors that could be answered by testosterone-crazed sumo wrestlers or twelve-foot trolls or hairless women who didn’t need men to breed.

“Trick or treat,” Pax said. It was only ten days to Halloween.

If they were relieved that Paxton looked normal their masks hid it. A man at the front of the group held out his hand. “How do you do,” he said, his voice muffled. “I’m Colonel Duveen.”

Pax had heard of him. The Maximum Leader. Chief Jailer. “Are you sure you want to touch me?”

The man didn’t drop his arm. Finally Pax shook his hand. His gloved hand.

The other soldiers were spread out along the front lawn, and one of them faced the driveway. They held their rifles a little too at-the-ready for Paxton’s taste. He wondered if any of these men had been at the roadblock. If any of those rifles had fired at his friend.

“I’m personally visiting each resident,” the colonel said. “I want you to know that my door’s always open. The guard is here to help you all get through this.” He nodded at one of the soldiers and he—she?—handed Pax several small sheets of blue paper.

“You can use these at Bugler’s Grocery,” Colonel Duveen said.

“Use them for what?” Paxton asked. The unevenly cut slips looked like they’d been made on a photocopier.

“Food, home products, and medical supplies,” he said. “We’ll be ensuring regular delivery every few days.” The Bugler’s had been largely emptied in the first two days of the quarantine, instantly spawning a black market.

“For how long?” Pax asked. The government said that atypical plasmids had been discovered in the blood of changed people in Switchcreek, and supposedly in the veins of Babahoyo residents. He didn’t know what a typical plasmid was, much less an atypical one, and no one had been able to tell him how they would check for their absence.

“As long as it takes, son.”

“You realize nobody believes you, right?” Pax said.

“Pardon?”

“This is bullshit. This ‘epidemiological hot zone’ business—there’s nothing contagious, and you know it.”

Colonel Duveen didn’t move, but the soldiers behind him shifted their feet, adjusted the angle of their rifles. The tension escalated by several degrees.

“You’re being used,” Paxton said. He wanted to poke the man in his chest, dare him to fire. “How’s it feel to be occupying the town of your fellow Americans? Like it better than Baghdad?”

“If you have any questions about the supply program,” the colonel said smoothly, “just call the number on each slip of paper.” Then: “Have a good day.”

The squad backed away and climbed into a Humvee. The colonel climbed into the front passenger seat. As the vehicle pulled away, one of the soldiers near a side window took off his mask and wiped his forehead with his arm.

Hot zone my ass, Paxton thought.

At least the government hadn’t cut the cable or phone lines—yet. Most people in town were convinced a blackout was coming any day now. First the landlines, then the satellite and cell phone signals. The prevailing opinion was that once the town was completely isolated, the National Guard would quietly ship them off in small groups to a secret prison.

In the meantime, Paxton had no need to call anyone or leave town. He planned to work on the house, finish cleaning up the yard, visit his father.

And oh yeah, cut down on the vintage.

When he arrived at the Home he found that his father hadn’t left the bed since yesterday afternoon. He’d pissed himself hours before, and still needed to go. Pax worked the controls of the bed and helped him to his feet. Once he was upright Harlan could shuffle to the bathroom.

Pax was angry, but there was no one to complain to. Rhonda wasn’t in the building, and most of the staff hadn’t shown up for work. The two chub men who were on duty said that they hadn’t been working the night before.

Pax helped his father shower—soaking Pax’s shirtsleeves in the process—and then supported him as he dropped into the huge wheelchair. Pax put on one of Harlan’s huge T-shirts, then pushed him into the atrium and parked him in front of the big windows where the sunlight poured in.

Pax draped his damp shirt across the back of the chair next to him and sat, exhausted. Together they waited for the vintage to flow in like the tide.

There were no newspapers to distract them—Mr. DuChamp hadn’t received any new issues since the start of the quarantine—so they sat before the windows and looked across the foothills to Mount Clyburn. During the first quarantine, the hill the Home sat on would have been beyond the southern checkpoint, but Rhonda had somehow negotiated a new border with the National Guard. She made sure everyone knew that she held daily meetings with Colonel Duveen and had won concessions. She said she’d gotten the curfew moved from dusk to 9:00 p.m. She’d probably take credit for the coupons unless they turned out to be unpopular.

“The leaves are turning,” his father said. Pax nodded. Red and gold dotted the mountain and the tops of the highest hills, each tree a pixel.

After awhile Pax said, “Did I ever tell you about Hillbilly Bobsled?”

Harlan looked at him quizzically.

“It was something Deke thought of,” Pax said. “In the fall, when the gullies were full of leaves, Deke and Jo and me would cut up cardboard boxes and make sleds. After awhile the leaves would get packed down and you could really fly.”

“Like to scare me to death.”

“You saw us? You never stopped us.”

“Paxton, you may think my sole job as your father was to stamp out every joy in your life—”

“I never said that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

Pax started to reply, then stopped himself. He wasn’t here to fight. He took a breath, exhaled.

His right hand was trembling again. He moved his hands to his lap, left hand over the right. The tremor had shown up a couple days ago, coming and going at random. He felt as if he were losing ownership of his body. Nerves fired without permission, muscles twitched in response—a thousand conversations he wasn’t privy to.

“So you went to the funeral,” his father said. “A lot of people?”

“The whole town showed up,” Pax said. “So many people didn’t get in that they’re going to have an additional viewing tonight. The burial’s tomorrow morning. It was a good service, though. You would have liked it. A lot of people stood up to speak.”

“Did Elsa Hooke do a good job? What did she preach on?”

“She didn’t really preach.” His father frowned. He couldn’t understand why pastors would pass up the chance to bring the salvation message, especially at the golden opportunity of a funeral, where the unsaved were both in church and in a mood to contemplate the disposition of their souls. “Too many people wanted to speak,” Pax explained. “It was really Rhonda that delivered the sermon. People got pretty worked up. Afterward, folks were talking about a protest.”

“What kind of protest?” Harlan asked.

“I don’t think they know yet. Something after the burial.”

“Rhonda’s going to get more people shot,” he said.

“If we don’t stay visible, Dad, they’ll make us disappear.”

Harlan peered at him. “Who came up with that one?”

Pax looked away, annoyed. Was it so impossible that he could have thought of that on his own? After a moment he said, “It was on Rhonda’s blog.”

“Her what?”

“Her videos? She posts one every day.” With the cable and phone lines intact, Rhonda had been able to hold regular press conferences via phone, and she’d expanded her Helping Hands website to include a daily video message from Switchcreek. Harlan didn’t say anything. “Her website, Dad. Have you ever gone on the web?”

“Yes, I’ve gone on the web,” he said disdainfully.

Pax doubted if he had. “We should order high-speed Internet for the house—we already have cable.”

“We don’t need the Internet.”

“And fix up the living room. I’ve already started pulling up the carpets.”

“What?”

“Dad, they’re thirty years old and they stink. The floors are hardwood, so since we can’t get new carpets until after the quarantine I thought I’d refinish them.”

“Paxton …,” Harlan said quietly.

“I’ve never done it before, but I can ask people. I bet some of the argos at Alpha Furniture would know how.”

“Paxton, she’s not going to let me go home, no matter how clean or fixed up the house is.”

Pax glanced around. Rhonda’s office door was closed—he knew she wasn’t at the Home, but he still had to check—and no one else was in the atrium. “I’m going to force her,” he said.

Harlan pursed his lips, somehow expressing both pity and frank disbelief.

“Deke knew it,” Pax said, his voice low. “Jo knew it. She had proof Rhonda was ripping off the town. I’ll find it, and then I can—”

“Stop it, Paxton.”

“Are you telling me you don’t want out of here? Look what happened this morning, Dad. They’re not taking care of you. Things are falling apart.”

“That’s the first time that’s happened. I’ll get by.”

“You hate it here. I’ve felt what it’s like—” He almost said, Felt what it’s like to be you. “I know you’re dying to get out of here. I’ve been dreaming about it.”

“Your dreams told you this,” he said skeptically.

“You know what I mean,” Pax said. “Not dreams, exactly.” Some nights when he took the vintage, distances collapsed, the lines between self and not-self disappeared. He’d lie in the dark not knowing which bed, which body he inhabited. His father’s despair became his own.

“Oh, Paxton,” his father said. He looked disappointed—that particular frown that could wound Pax so effortlessly. “Every drunk thinks he’s found truth in a bottle.” He held up a big hand before Paxton could object. “Look at yourself, Son. You’re half-starved.”

“I’m fine. I admit I’m not eating all the fried crap I used to eat, but—”

“I want you to stop coming,” his father said. “Starting now. And when the quarantine is over, or whenever you can, I want you to go back home to Chicago.”

“You’re not doing this to me again,” Pax said.

“What are you talking about?”

“Come on.” He couldn’t stand it when Harlan played dumb. “You sent me away once. I’m not going to let you do it again.”

“I did that for your own good—I’m doing this for your own good.”

“You did it for yourself, Dad. You were petrified people would talk and you’d lose your church. You were ashamed.”

Harlan’s face reddened. “That didn’t have a damn thing to do with it. Do you even remember what you were like? You were the one who was—where are you going?”

“This isn’t happening,” Pax said, meaning the day’s vintage. He picked up his shirt that he’d laid over the chair back. “I’ll come back in the morning.”

“Sit your ass down.”

His father never swore, and he’d done it twice in ten seconds. Paxton put his hands in pockets but didn’t sit. He kept his face neutral and waited.

“Please,” Harlan said.

Pax breathed for a moment, thinking, and then pulled the chair over a few feet so that they could sit opposite each other.

“You were special,” his father said. The sun was in his face; he squinted and looked at the floor next to Paxton’s feet. “You’d been passed over. God had plans for you beyond this town. Nobody knew if the Changes would start again, or if they’d quarantine us again. Either way, if you didn’t leave here you’d be trapped.

“I was trying to save your life, Paxton. Your mother wanted you to go to college, get married to a nice girl, have children. You couldn’t have any of that here. And if the Changes came back and killed you, or turned you into something …”

Harlan shook his head, and looked up. Tears glittered in his eyes. Paxton sighed.

Somehow his father had recast everything from that year. It wasn’t his anger at Jo Lynn’s pregnancy, or his fear that his only son might be some kind of triple pervert who was fucking both Jo and Deke, or his dread that the whole town would find out and drive him out of his church … No, it was purely for the love of his son.

“I was only trying to spare you,” his father said. “All this … disease. This death.”

Pax leaned back. “Well,” he said quietly. “That didn’t quite work, did it?”

Jo had died anyway. Deke had died anyway. It didn’t matter if Pax was in Switchcreek or Chicago or halfway around the planet. His presence couldn’t protect them, and distance couldn’t protect him.

He was alone. The sole surviving member of the Switchcreek Orphan Society. Hell, he was the fucking president.

“You have to understand,” his father said, the words slurring. “Nobody knew. I was only trying, trying to …” The smell of vintage charged the air.

“I know, Dad,” Pax said. He stood and walked to retrieve the extraction kit.

When he finally heard the banging at the front door he thought the soldiers had returned. It was 9:30, a half hour past the official curfew. Pax put down the mallet and scraper and turned off the radio. The hallway was a mess; the carpet had come up cleanly enough, but the ancient rubber backing had disintegrated into something like tar and had glued itself to the wood. It had taken him hours to scrape the living room, chipping away at piece after piece. He’d slowed as he tired, and so the hallway was taking as long as the front room.

He walked to the living room, rubbing his palms on his jeans. The banging stopped, and suddenly the front door pushed open.

“Jesus Christ, Tommy, Pax said. The beta man stood in the doorway, holding the handle. “It’s after curfew. You nearly gave me—”

“Where are they?” Tommy said.

“Where’s who?” Pax said, though he knew perfectly well who he meant. “And what the hell are you doing barging into my house?”

Tommy walked across the room, put his head through the kitchen door. “Sandra! Rainy!”

He turned, marched toward Paxton. “Are they in the bedrooms? They better not be in the bedrooms.”

“The girls aren’t here,” Pax said, and stepped aside as Tommy went past him. “I haven’t seen them in weeks, not since the town meeting.” He realized that he hadn’t seen them at Deke’s funeral either, though they might have been there. Much of the day had been a blur.

Tommy opened his father’s bedroom door, then the guest room. When he reached for Paxton’s childhood bedroom Pax grabbed his arm. “That’s enough, Tommy.”

Tommy spun and seized Pax by the throat. His grip was incredibly strong, much stronger than those thin beta arms suggested. His lips pulled back to reveal small white teeth. Then he began to march Pax backward down the hall.

Pax backpedaled, prying at the man’s fingers, and then he stumbled over the radio and Tommy thrust him away, sent him sprawling to the floor.

“You have no idea what it’s like,” Tommy said, breathing hard. “To love them this much. To feel as helpless as this.”

Pax sat up, coughing.

“I feel sorry for you,” Tommy said. “When I was like you, I felt nothing for anybody else. I couldn’t even see the point of feeling anything.” He bent, picked up the mallet at his feet. It was a big chunk of metal on a wood handle that Paxton’s grandfather had owned, a tool too primitive to wear out. “Becoming a beta saved me. Becoming a father saved me. Suddenly I could see the future—it became real. Generations of grandchildren stretching out in an unbroken line, clear as day. More real than you are.”

“The girls aren’t here,” Pax said. “I don’t know where they are.”

“Tell the truth.”

“Search the fucking house! I told you, I haven’t seen them since the meeting.”

“They weren’t at Jo’s house,” Tommy said. “This is the only other place they’d go.”

“Then maybe you don’t know them as well as you think you do.”

Tommy stared down at him. The mallet twitched in his hand. Then he crouched and leaned in so that their foreheads almost touched. Even this close, inches away, his eyes were empty, his face as indifferent as a wall.

“You won’t be seeing them again, Paxton,” he said quietly. “You won’t be able to find them. You won’t be allowed to even look for them. There’s too much that depends on them. If you even got within the same state, I’d be forced to kill you. Without a second thought.”

Tommy rose to his feet, the mallet still in his hand. “I wanted to warn you. I owe the twins that much.”

He walked to the living room. Pax sat very still.

A moment later he heard a double clunk—the mallet dropping to the floor—and then a few seconds after that the sound of Tommy’s Bronco starting.

He waited a short while longer, and then Paxton pushed himself to his feet. He went into the kitchen, opened the junk drawer, and found the flashlight. Dead, of course. He shook out the corroded batteries and replaced them with the D-cells from the radio; a few shakes and the light came on.

He grabbed his car keys, walked to the front door, then turned back to the kitchen. The bag Weygand had left for him was still on the kitchen table. He picked it up, then quickly added to it a couple cans of soup, a box of Saltines, and a small plastic jar of Peter Pan peanut butter.

He looked at the freezer door, then opened it. On the top rack were two old vials and the six fresh ones he’d extracted this morning—the most he’d ever had at one time. The father load.

Pax tucked one of the plastic tubes into his front pocket, and left the house before he decided to open it.