Plague

“What are you talking about, Toto?” Sam asked.

Jack and Dekka came rushing up. “Whoa,” Dekka said.

“He knows what I’m talking about,” Toto told Spider-Man. “He guesses, he’s testing. ‘What are you talking about, Toto?’ he says. Right. He knows. He knows the demon.”

“I don’t work for anyone,” Sam said.

“Liar, liar, pants on fire. Someone sent you.”

“Albert, but—”

“They always try to lie, but it never works, does it?” Toto said.

Sam turned to Dekka. “I think our boy here has been alone for a long time.”

“He means I’m crazy.” Toto addressed Dekka directly, not Spider-Man, though he glanced back at the Spidey head and seemed torn between Dekka and the web slinger. “The truth teller, truth teller Toto.”

“Are you test subject 1-01?” Jack asked.

Toto didn’t seem to hear. But now tears were welling in his eyes. “One zero one. Yes. One zero two, what happened to her, do you want to hear?”

“Yes,” Sam answered.

“Should we say, Spidey?” Toto bared his teeth and snarled, “She used to live across the hall. Darla. She was eight. All her stuff was Hello Kitty. She could walk through walls. She didn’t want to stay, she wanted to go home, so she tried to just walk right through the wall to the outside and the guards tased her as she was going through and you know what happened?”

“Tell us.”

“He doesn’t want to know, not really, does he?” Toto asked Spidey. “He’s seen too many bad things, hasn’t he? But I’ll tell him anyway, which is that the Taser froze her halfway through the wall. She died. They had to bust out the whole wall to get her out of there.”

“Albert’s cat,” Jack said.

Sam nodded. They’d all heard the story of the teleporting cat that misjudged and solidified with a book inside it.

“They aren’t surprised,” Toto said. He tilted his head and shook it back and forth, vastly amused by some secret joke. “They know, don’t they?” he asked Spidey.

“Yeah, we know,” Sam said. He raised his hand, palm out, and fired a brilliant green beam at Spider-Man’s head. The fabric of the cowl caught fire and the Styrofoam within melted.

Toto’s pale face went paler. He swallowed hard and looked directly at Sam for the first time.

“Sorry, man,” Sam said. “But honestly we have all the crazy we can stand. And we don’t have all day.”

“Yes, he’s telling the truth, he’s in a hurry.”

“He’s still talking to Spider-Man,” Dekka pointed out. “He’s nuts.”

“Yeah, well, we’re all a little nuts, Dekka,” Sam said.

“No, he’s not nuts, the Sam boy,” Toto said and he shook his head back and forth. Then, slyly, he added, “Anyway, he doesn’t think he is.”

“We’re looking for a big lake. Lake Tramonto. You know how to get there?”

“We don’t know how to get anywhere,” Toto said. Suddenly he looked as if he might cry. “Where’s Spidey?”

“How long have you been here?” Sam asked impatiently.

It was Jack who answered. “A little more than a year. The start date for subject 1-01 was several months before the FAYZ.”

Sam thought it over for a few seconds. Wondering what to do. He couldn’t just dump the kid and walk away. Could he? Especially after he’d impatiently burned Spidey.

On the other hand, the very last thing he needed was another person to keep track of. And it didn’t look like this kid was going anywhere. Sam could always pick him up later. And in any case, if they found the lake then the whole town would probably be moving, and they’d pass this way again.

“Listen, Toto, I’m going to pretend you’re not completely crazy. I’m going to leave it up to you. So you either come with us and start acting at least a little bit normal, or you stay here. Your choice.”

Toto kept glancing back at the brown and black magma that had been the Styrofoam head. But in between he looked at Sam and Dekka and even Jack.

“What do you have to eat?” Toto asked.

“Dried fish. Cabbage. Artichokes.”

To Sam’s amazement Toto literally licked his lips. “You have some other things, too, but you don’t want to share. That’s okay. I’ve only had Nutella. Ever since.”

“You must have a whole lot of Nutella,” Dekka said, unable to conceal her greedy hope.

“Yes.”

“Show us,” Sam said. “Show us what you’ve got. Then we’ll go find this lake.”

Sam led the way outside. Jack and Dekka fell in beside him. “They knew, didn’t they?” he asked Jack.

Jack still had a fistful of papers scooped up from one of the desks.

“Yes,” Jack said, still fascinated, reading through printed sheets of data as he walked. “I don’t think they knew what, or knew what was causing it. But they knew.”

“What did they know?” Dekka asked.

“Whoever was running this place,” Sam said angrily. “They knew something was going on with kids in Perdido Beach.”

Jack caught up to him, grabbed his shoulder, and handed him a piece of paper. “A list of names.”

Sam’s eyes went directly to his own name, third on a list of five names. “Toto, Darla, me, Caine, and Taylor.” He shoved the paper angrily back at Jack. “Not all of the freaks, but some of us, anyway.”