Plague

“I can’t carry Lana to Clifftop,” Sanjit said. “But I can get her a place to lie down.”

Lana woke up long enough to say, “Urrhh. Wha?” And then her eyes rolled back in her head and Sanjit lifted her in his arms. Virtue brought him a couple of blankets and draped them over his shoulders.

He carried her up out of the basement, up through the hallway crowded with hacking, miserable kids, and out to the plaza.

Five unburied bodies lay there side by side. Mismatched blankets covered each one, corners tucked underneath, faces covered by chenille or satin or tartan wool.

They’d given the plague a name, a callous nickname. The SDC they called it: Supernatural Death Cough.

But at some point during the day they’d begun to notice that some kids were getting better, too. The flu was awful. But it wasn’t a death sentence to everyone who caught it.

They’d been unable to keep complete records, but according to Dahra’s hasty notes and frazzled memory about one in ten progressed to full-blown SDC.

Sanjit was struggling a bit to carry Lana, but he was unwilling to lay her down near the dead or within sound of the hacking coughs.

She wasn’t just going without sleep. She was going without love and hope. She was living with guilt for having failed to be Superwoman, having failed to kill the evil in the mine shaft, having failed to see what was happening to Mary.

He took her to the beach and laid her down on one of the blankets, which he spread on the soft, dry sand. She was lying on top of the gun in her belt, so he slid it out and lay it on her stomach. Then he covered her with the other blanket.

Her faithful dog had followed them the whole way and now Patrick snuggled beside her. He looked up at Sanjit, questioning.

She would almost certainly be safe here alone. No one wanted to hurt the Healer. And Patrick would bark if anyone came close.

But Sanjit couldn’t just leave her here all alone. So he settled into a sort of yoga sitting posture, sighed, and decided to await sunrise.

• • •

Albert did not resist. Maybe, he thought, a braver kid would have. But he wasn’t that kid. When Turk demanded to know where Albert’s secret stash was, Albert told him.

Simple as that.

Albert had wet himself. He had cried. Still was crying.

He was going to die. He knew that. They would figure out pretty soon that there was no safe way to release Albert.

They would know that. He knew it, so how could they not know it?

But he could negotiate, maybe. Maybe now that they had all his stuff, his stash of canned food and bottled water.

It didn’t look like much. It wasn’t, although it was untold wealth in the FAYZ. They had filled two small boxes with his things and filled their hoodie pockets as well.

“You got what you wanted,” Albert said, trying desperately but failing to keep the sobby quaver out of his voice. “Just go away. I won’t tell anyone.”

“Man, you were hiding cans of Beef-a-Roni,” Raul said. He was disbelieving. “You had three cans!”

“Take it,” Albert pleaded. “Take it all.”

Turk glanced at Lance. Even in his despairing, shattered state, Albert knew they weren’t quite sure just yet. Hope rose like a tiny flame inside him. Maybe. Maybe they wouldn’t.

“Look, you want food and water, right?” Albert pleaded.

“You have more?” Lance demanded angrily.

“Not-not-not here.”

“Not-not-not,” Lance mimicked.

“N-n-n-n-not h-h-h-here,” Watcher said, and laughed.

“So where is this other stuff?” Turk asked, and kicked him almost tentatively. It was enough, though, to send a breathtaking spike of pain up Albert’s leg from his broken knee. The knee was already swelling to twice its normal size. It was the worst of many agonies in his body.

“I don’t have anything else here,” Albert said. “But listen, I make more, right? I buy more. I control what gets made and picked and all.”

“Yes,” Turk said, mock-serious. “You’re a big man, Albert. Too bad you peed yourself.”

That set off another round of laughter.

“You think we’re stupid?” Lance demanded. “You think we’re just some stupid white boys who don’t know you can snap your fingers and have Sam or Brianna or one of those freaks come after us?”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Albert said. His jaw was quivering so bad he almost couldn’t speak. “I wouldn’t. Because if I did that, you’d, you’d, you’d tell people I cried.”

“And wet your pants.” Watcher seemed the most likely to let him go, but Albert knew the decisions were being made by Turk and Lance.

There was no pity in either face. Lance was aglow with hatred. Turk was less emotional.

“You know what we ought to do?” Turk suggested, laughing in anticipation of his punch line. “We ought to throw him in one of the slit trenches we dug for him.”

“No, no, don’t do that,” Albert begged. A dunking in excrement was infinitely better than being killed. “No, don’t, I’m begging you.”

Lance squatted down, brought his handsome, chiseled face right down to Albert’s level. “You just think you’ve got it all, don’t you? Yeah, it would be fun to see you wallow around in the crap like you made us do. But then you’d just climb out and next time one of us turned around, there’d be Sam Temple. Flash of light and zap, we’d be dead.”