Plague

Absurd. She was panicking. She was misreading. There was no way, none. Impossible, not this quickly.

Impossible, some cruel voice inside her said, as impossible as an impenetrable dome. As impossible as everyone over the age of fourteen disappearing. As impossible as coyotes who could speak.

As impossible as a boyfriend who could mock the laws of physics by raising a boat from the sea with nothing but a thought.

• • •

Little Pete’s fever was spiking again. Astrid had found a thermometer in the former nurse’s office at Coates.

Nurse Temple—Sam’s mother—she realized with a pang. Nurse Temple. This had been her workplace. Of course like everything at Coates it had been trashed—medicine cabinet emptied, glass doors smashed, sheets on the cot soiled, reference books tossed around for no apparent reason.

Someone had made a little fire of medical records. The ashes were scattered near the window.

A bird had built a nest on a high shelf and then abandoned the nest. There were pinfeathers wafting around on the floor, mixing with the ashes.

That’s how she’d found the thermometer, by noticing the feathers. There was no way it would be sterile, of course, but nothing had been clean in the FAYZ for a long time.

Little Pete registered 103.1. And his cough was worsening.

“What are you going to do, Petey? Are you going to let yourself die?”

Did he even know he might be dying? Little Pete knew nothing about viruses. How would he cope with an enemy he didn’t even know existed? He didn’t understand germs, but he knew he was hot. A breeze had started blowing. How long until he blew this roof off?

Astrid heard Orc bellowing out a song downstairs. She couldn’t watch him anymore. If he wanted to drink himself to death, why stop him? For the sake of his immortal soul?

Orc drunk was Orc dangerous. She had seen him looking at her with a strange, intense gleam in his eyes.

She realized she was crying. Let him kill himself. Wouldn’t she want to die if she were Orc? Didn’t she want to die herself?

It was all a macabre joke. The FAYZ: full of sound and fury and signifying nothing but death and despair. Why cling to this life?

She tried to imagine being out in the real world. She tried to call up pictures of her parents and her old house. Of course that house was burned to the ground. And her parents would hardly even recognize her, let alone their son.

No, that wasn’t true. They would recognize her and him and think they were still the kids they’d loved. Only gradually would they come to understand what monsters they were: grown as ugly inside as Orc was outside.

Maybe if the FAYZ ended, Orc might be restored to his normal form. But how would she ever be restored to hers? How would the girl who loved math and science, who could read all through the night, the girl of sweet romantic daydreams and big plans to save the world, how was that girl ever going to exist again?

“It ends with all of us dead, doesn’t it?” she asked Little Pete. “It ends when evil wins and we all surrender.”

The sad thing was, they were already lost, all of them.

She could see her own breath. The room was getting colder by the minute.

She stuck the thermometer in Little Pete’s mouth again. He coughed it out.

“Yeah, okay,” Astrid said. “Petey, I . . . I think if you can’t stop this . . . All of this . . . Petey, it has to end. There are kids dying of this cough. And it’s all because of this place you made, this FAYZ. You changed the rules and that has consequences.”

Little Pete did not answer.

She had not expected he would. There was a pillow. Press it down over his face. He wouldn’t even know, probably. He wouldn’t be afraid. He wouldn’t suffer. He would cross painlessly from life to death and down would come the barrier and in would rush the police and the ambulances and food and medicine. And no one else would die.

Mom. Dad. I’m alive. I made it. But Petey didn’t. I’m so sorry, but . . .

Astrid jerked back. She was trembling. She could do it unless Petey himself stopped her. She could. And she would never be caught. No one would ever reproach her.

“No,” she whispered in a shaky, uncertain voice. Then, stronger, “No.”

It should have made her feel good. Maybe in the past it would have. Maybe she would have congratulated herself for making the high and mighty moral choice. But she knew deep down inside that her choice would condemn many to death. No police and ambulances rushing in through the open barrier. Just more of the plague, more of the monsters, more suffering and death.

Astrid put her hands together, meaning to pray for guidance. But the words would not come.

From the recesses of her extraordinary memory she dredged up an old, old text. A fragment from a lecture she’d attended. From one of the ancient Greeks. Aristotle? No, Epicurus.

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.

Is he able, but not willing?

Then he is malevolent.

Is he both able and willing?

Then whence cometh evil?

Is he neither able nor willing?

Then why call him God?

There was only one god in the FAYZ. God was a sick, disturbed, unaware child on a filthy cot in an abandoned school.

“I can’t stay, Petey,” Astrid said. “If I stay here . . . I’m sorry, Petey. I’m done.”

Astrid shivered, rubbed her hands together for warmth— the breeze had grown downright chilly—and walked out of the room.

Down the hall.

Down the stairs.