Chimera (Parasitology) (31 page)

Fishy stopped after the second jump, taking a few breaths, before he said, “The doors were tied shut from the outside. We couldn’t chain them—it would have been too obvious that we were using the place for permanent storage, instead of closing
the place off like terrified suburbanites. Aside from that, it would have made the place a death trap if anything had ever gone wrong. Start a fire, watch everybody die when no one could get close enough to deal with a padlock.”

“Did someone cut the rope?” I asked, following his words to their obvious and horrifying conclusion. Sherman had been a part of Dr. Cale’s family, once. He probably knew where the bowling alley was, and it wasn’t like he would be above that sort of treachery, if he thought that he had something to gain from it.

To my surprise, Fishy laughed. It was a low, rueful sound, packed with regrets. “Oh, man, that would almost be better, you know? We could have some DLC about spies and traitors and maybe get some pew-pew going. But no. Something chewed through the rope. Probably a squirrel.”

“What’s DLC?” I asked blankly.

“Downloadable content,” he said, and tensed, and jumped again. I followed him. There were no other alternatives.

The shelves had been positioned so they were never more than about four feet apart, creating aisles that could hold a shopping cart but were still narrow enough to force consumers to fully engage with the material goods around them. Most physical stores had changed their designs as Internet retailing took over an increasing share of the market. Not places like Kmart. They had a working formula, one that was built on low prices, impulse buys, and narrow aisles.

I was starting to feel like we might actually reach our destination when Fishy stopped jumping, his shoulders suddenly going limp. I crept closer, squinting to see through the darkness, and realized what had happened.

We were on the edge of the women’s clothing section, a vast, open space broken only by the silver skeletons of the racks that had once held discount scrubs and polyester trousers. There
were no shelves here for us to use as higher ground. There weren’t that many sleepwalkers, either—the main concentration was still a half-dozen shelves back, trying to figure out where we had gone—but that would change soon.

Soon didn’t mean immediately. “I can get us through this, but you have to trust me,” I said. “Can you trust me?”

“I guess it’s my turn,” said Fishy. “What do I have to do?”

I told him.

Climbing down from the shelf without making any noise would have been impossible without the metal clamps to lend stability to the enterprise. As it was, I held my breath until my feet were back on the dirty linoleum floor, and only started breathing easy when Fishy was beside me, looking tense and unhappy in the gloom. I couldn’t fault him for that. He’d seen me walk among the sleepwalkers without being devoured, but he knew that I was half one of them, while he was just a human, heir to all the sins of his forefathers, including the mad, brutal science that had put him into this situation.

Silently, I slipped my hand into Fishy’s, tangling my fingers with his, and began walking toward the back wall. There were a few sleepwalkers here, full-bellied and too lazy to have joined the exodus when the doors were first opened. I breathed slowly in through my nose and out through my mouth, trying to fill as much of the air as possible with the taste of my pheromones.
Friend
, I thought fiercely.
Friend, friend, do not eat us, for I am your friend, and he is mine.
It was a complicated thought—too complicated for my primitive chemical messengers to convey—but I hoped it might seep through, at least a little. At least enough to let us get away.

There was a soft, fleshy sound as Fishy opened his mouth like he was going to say something. I turned to him and shook my head fiercely.
No
. No, do not speak, do not remind the cousins that you’re something they aren’t; do not give them
cause to notice you, to fall upon you in a living wave and take you for their own. Anything “other” would be seen as food, and as a threat to their survival. I was not “other”: I had my pheromones to protect me. If I could keep Fishy as an extension of myself, and not a being in his own right, he might have a chance.

I couldn’t see his expression, but I heard his teeth click together, and I was content. We continued walking.

The sleepwalkers around us were stirring, rustling in the dark as they turned toward us and the disruption we represented. I kept my breathing slow and even, filling the air around me with pheromones. The wall was a gray ghost in the distance, a haven that might offer no salvation at all, but was at least something for us to strive toward. I felt better about the idea of dying while I was
doing
something than I did about the idea of dying while holding perfectly still, frozen in my own failure.

Fishy’s breathing was starting to get unsteady. The stress of the moment was getting to him. That was fascinating, in an objective sort of way: Normally, Fishy was the one who never got upset about anything, cocooned in the soft unreality of his delusion. But here, he was being forced to live through something slow and terrible, knowing that the end could come crashing out of the dark at any moment, and that there would be nothing he could do about it. He was as captive in the real world as I was, and he didn’t like it.

One of the sleepwalkers moaned. The sound was small and inquisitive, and was answered by another moan, from the other side of us. They knew we were there. Whether they were holding off because my pheromones were working or because they weren’t hungry yet was anybody’s guess. I kept breathing slowly in and out, but I picked up my pace, and was relieved when Fishy did the same. If we could just get to the wall…

What? If we could get to the wall, then what? I was leading
us there because Fishy had been leading us there, but he’d never told me why, and I’d been so wrapped up in the moment that I hadn’t asked. It felt foolish now, not to know where I was going or what I was going to do when I got there, but foolishness was a luxury for hindsight. Foresight was all too often based on instinct and on fear, and those were things that left very little room for introspection.

As we got closer to the wall, I saw something wonderful: a door, a slice of darker gray cut out of the haze around it. Better yet, it was a
real
door, with a doorknob, not one of the swinging doors that connected to the stockrooms. Sleepwalkers didn’t understand doorknobs. The odds were good that whatever was on the other side, it was a form of safety.

Unless it was locked.

Fear knotted and unknotted in my stomach, making it difficult to continue my slow, rhythmic breathing. What if we had come this far, only to find the door was locked? We’d never be able to make it back to the relative safety of the shelves. The sleepwalkers were becoming too agitated, and even breaking into a run wouldn’t get us out of their reach before they could lunge. This was our one way out, and I had no way of knowing whether it would work.

Fishy squeezed my hand. I glanced to the side. He was holding something up; something that gleamed in the faint light.

A key. He had a key.

I swallowed the urge to laugh in relief, and just kept breathing in and out until we reached the wall. The sleepwalkers were getting more active, shuffling and shambling and making those little inquisitive moaning noises, but they weren’t rushing us yet. That was all going to change when Fishy turned the knob. My pheromones were confusing the issue, making it difficult for them to tell whether he was an uninfected human—and hence easy, uncomplicated prey—or another sleepwalker. They
didn’t understand concepts like “loyalty” on a rational level, but I had to think they ate humans before they ate their own kind because they knew, in some deep way, that eating your own kind was bad. They still turned to cannibalism when it was convenient or when supplies were low, but it wasn’t a preference the way it could have been without the pheromones and the vague understanding of the swarm versus the individual.

When Fishy turned the knob, however, he would be doing something no sleepwalker understood well enough to do spontaneously. After that, we would be “other,” and things that were “other” were subject to attack. So we moved slowly toward the door, knowing that as soon as we reached it, we would have to start moving very quickly indeed.

Something brushed my ankle. I kept breathing in and out, not allowing myself to look down or back. It could have been a piece of forgotten clothing, still dangling on its rack. It could have been a sleepwalker’s fingers, inquisitive and questing through the gloom for a better sense of the intruders. As long as it didn’t grab me, as long as I could keep moving forward, it could be ignored—could even be forgotten.

That was my life. I moved through dangerous places, among dangerous things, and as long as they didn’t grab me and force me to stay with them, I did my best to ignore, to forget, because anything else would be the end of me.

We had reached the wall. Fishy let go of my hand and stepped forward, feeling for the knob, for the little indentation of the keyhole. It seemed almost quaintly old-fashioned, this door that locked with a key and not a magnetic swipe card or a fingerprint scanner. But if it had been something more modern, we would have had no way of getting out of here: We would have been trapped, and in even more trouble than we already were. Quaintness had its advantages.

Fishy found the keyhole. The key slid in with a click, and he
turned it, and then the door was swinging inward, a dark hole in an already dark space, revealing absolutely nothing. Whatever was on the other side was too far from the front of the store for even the watery light that we had been enjoying so far. Fishy looked back at me, visible more in contrast with that utter blackness than anything else.

The sleepwalkers were moaning louder now. They knew we weren’t their kind, that we were enjoying the fruits of a civilization that wasn’t theirs to claim. We were out of time. I nodded, once, and followed Fishy into the dark.

T
he door slammed behind us. Fishy put a hand on my shoulder, like he was verifying my location, and then pulled it away as he turned to feel for the door and make sure it was locked. There was always the chance that we’d encounter a sleepwalker that was particularly high-functioning and capable of mimicking what it had witnessed, even if they hadn’t thought to try the door before we opened it. Their unexpected flashes of intellect were part of what made them so dangerous. There was no one way that they behaved.

There was a click, and Fishy said, voice dripping with relief, “Okay. That’s got it. We’re locked in.”

“Okay,” I said, and inhaled, checking the air for any signs of pheromone trails or traces. I wasn’t a perfect sleepwalker detector—I would have needed more opportunities to hone my
skills, and since those were also opportunities to get disemboweled, I was mostly content not to seek them out. It was still better than nothing.

All I smelled was dust, and gently decaying cardboard, and the curious stillness of a room that had been sealed off for so long that it might as well never have existed.

“I think we’re alone,” I said. Then: “Where
are
we?”

“The loading dock,” said Fishy. “It connects to the storerooms, but those doors were locked when the store was closed down. There shouldn’t be any direct route for the sleepwalkers to take from where they are to where we are.”

“That’s good,” I said. The darkness was absolute, which was starting to soothe my jangled nerves. Being born an eyeless creature that was never meant to see the light of day had left me with a strange affinity for the dark, one that was shared by my sleepwalker cousins. It was rare for me to find pure darkness that wasn’t also dangerous. “Do you know how we’re supposed to get out of here?”

“There’s a door to the outside on the other side of the dock,” said Fishy. “If we walk slowly and watch our steps, we should be able to get there without twisting our ankles or anything.”

I blinked into the darkness. Then, almost reluctantly, I started to laugh. Fishy joined in, and for a minute or so it was just the two of us, alone in the dark, laughing at the sheer relief that accompanied our survival.

Finally, we calmed and quieted. Fishy’s hand sought mine in the darkness and clasped it tight. Then, together, we began walking away from the door.

It was soothing, moving through the dark like that, trusting my feet to carry me and my outstretched hand to warn me before I walked into anything dangerous. I had a human’s body and a tapeworm’s world, and it was a beautiful reversal of the way I usually had to live. Fishy kept hold of my hand, allowing
me to lead. He recognized that I was more confident in the dark than he was, even if he didn’t fully understand the reasons why.

Bit by bit, we crossed the cavernous span of the loading docks, stopping when my fingers found the opposing wall. “We’re here,” I said, and my voice was very small in the vastness of space, and very loud in the silence, all at the same time. “Fishy?”

“Just a second. Stay where you are.” Fishy let go of my hand. I felt immediately adrift, unmoored from the anchor that had been keeping me from floating away into the darkness. I pressed my palm against the wall, using that as a touchstone, something that meant the world had limits and was thus still real.

Fishy’s footsteps moved away from me, but not very far. Then there was a click, and a rectangle of blinding light opened in the wall of the world. I moved toward it, squinting, my eyes filling with hot, aggravated tears. But I wanted that world, I
needed
that world, brightly lit and painful as it was.

Fishy waited for me, his own eyes as stunned and tear-filled as my own, and we stepped together into the light.

It was a dramatic transition for a mundane place: We stepped out of the loading dock and onto a short metal staircase so drenched in rust that it was probably a health hazard. The railing was barely bolted on, and wobbled under my questing hand like it was going to give way at any moment. The pavement back here was in worse shape than the parking lot: It was basically potholes and gravel, stitched together by the jaunty, jutting shapes of weeds, forcing their way through cracks and up into the sun.

Carefully, moving slowly while our eyes adjusted, we descended the stairs and started toward the front of the building, our feet crunching with every step. We were maybe halfway there when another sound caught my attention. I stopped
dead. Fishy, thankfully, followed my lead, and I listened as hard as I could, trying to figure out what was wrong.

Tires, moving on gravel. Moving slowly, like whoever was driving didn’t want to attract unnecessary attention. But we didn’t use any of the vehicles during the day. It would have been too big of a risk, given USAMRIID’s presence in the Bay Area. If we needed to get out one of the cars, we did it at night, when we’d be harder to spot via a simple visual inspection. So who was driving around in our lot?

The sound was getting closer. I had an instant to decide what I was going to do. I turned, grabbing Fishy’s hand, and ran back toward the back of the Kmart. The door to the loading dock was ajar. I hauled Fishy up the metal steps and swung it open, diving through into the safety of the dark. Then I let him go and spun around to push the door most of the way shut, leaving it just slightly cracked, like it had been left that way by the people who had abandoned the store in the first place.

“What—” began Fishy.

“Shhh,” I said, and pressed my eye to the crack, and waited.

Only a few seconds had passed when the Jeep came around the corner. It was moving slowly, so that its occupants could scan the area without coming to a stop. I didn’t recognize the woman in the passenger seat. She was wearing a snood of some sort over her hair and holding an assault rifle; her eyes were cold. She didn’t scare me half as much as the driver. He was familiar. He was my darkest fear, come back to haunt me.

Sherman kept his hands on the wheel, head moving slightly from side to side as he looked for stragglers. For a terrible moment I was afraid he was going to notice the open door to the Kmart and stop the Jeep, but he rolled on by, still searching the open areas. I pulled back and scrambled away from the light, pulling Fishy with me, until we were safely cocooned in the darkness. If Sherman came back to look for us, he’d have very little trouble finding our hiding spot… but there was no
place left for us to go. Not unless we wanted to flee back into the Kmart, where the sleepwalkers were waiting.

Fishy squeezed my hand. His fingers were shaking. Whether he believed any of this was real or not, he understood that some things were worth being afraid of. That just made me feel worse. If the man who didn’t believe the world existed was scared, I should probably have been vomiting with fear. As it was, I just felt numb. Utterly, perfectly numb.

The sound of Sherman’s Jeep driving back the other way drifted through the open door. I didn’t move. We had no weapons—
I
had no weapons; Fishy might have had a gun in his holster, I hadn’t asked or checked—and we couldn’t just release the sleepwalkers, not without putting ourselves and our friends in even more danger.

I don’t think it was squirrels that cut the rope,
I thought, almost frantically, and clapped a hand over my mouth to keep my terrified giggles inside. My guts were churning, filled with hot terror and cold anger, until everything was warm and nauseating. I forced myself to keep breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth, blowing softly against my fingers, until I realized that Sherman might be able to pick up on my pheromones. Then I moved to breathing purely through my nose, trying to pretend it was enough, and that the narrower airways weren’t leaving my skin feeling tight and ill-fitting, stretched too harshly against my bones.

What was Sherman
doing
here? How had he known to look for us at the bowling alley? What was he hoping to accomplish by letting the sleepwalkers out of their comfortable prison? At least my third question was answered easily enough: He’d been looking for a distraction, and had probably been counting on a bigger one than he actually got. He couldn’t have anticipated my interference with his plan.

That should have made me feel good. It just made me feel more afraid. Sherman was out there, and we were hiding in here, and
neither of us was brave enough to go and see what was really going on. Either he would lose, and we would emerge to find our friends relieved and delighted by our survival, or he would win, and we would need to stay free in order to save them. The only thing we could do now was wait.

Waiting burned.

The seconds ticked by, stretching like taffy, and everything was silence, except for the endless pounding of the drums in my ears. It would have been easier to wait if I’d dropped down into the hot warm dark, where time had no meaning and nothing could touch me, but I would also be unaware of my surroundings, and unable to defend myself or run if Sherman’s people found our hiding place. My choices were either sitting in terrified darkness or sinking into comforting oblivion, and while they were both terrible, my current position seemed a little bit less bad.

Fishy was still shaking slightly behind me, the tremors passing from his hands into mine, and then all the way down to my bones. I was listening as hard as I could for footsteps crunching on gravel, but the more upset I became, the louder the drums pounded, until it felt like they were the only things in the world. Normally, I loved the drums, loved the comforting mortality that they represented. Now, I would have done anything to make them stop, just long enough to let me
hear
.

I started counting silently, trying to give myself something to do, something that would distract me from the unknown dangers outside. When I reached a hundred, I paused, trying to decide whether that had been enough, and then resumed counting. I needed more. I needed to
know
that the danger was past, and that we hadn’t been hiding in here for nothing.

When I reached five hundred, I paused again, trying to shunt the drums to the back of my awareness and listen to the world outside. There was nothing: only silence. Slowly, cautiously, I uncurled my legs, noting the pins and needles that shot through
them in protest. It hurt to move. That was a good sign, under the circumstances. I wouldn’t be able to run as fast, but if I had to run, I had already lost. I needed to hurt like this. I needed to know that I had been still long enough to save myself.

“Are you sure?” Fishy’s voice was a whisper that seemed loud enough to shake the world.

I nodded, and then realized that he wouldn’t be able to see the gesture through the dark. “I think so,” I whispered back. “We can’t stay hidden here forever.” And there was the truth of the matter. Hopefully we had stayed hidden long enough… but nothing living thrives concealed for more than a short time, even during a crisis. We had to move.

Inch by inch, we moved toward the door. My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it, and the answering drums echoed in my ears, making it difficult to hear anything else. Fishy was right behind me, and I couldn’t tell whether he was allowing me to take the lead, or whether he was too frightened to step in front of me. It could have gone either way. His comfortable delusion was wearing thin, and whatever he did to sustain it for himself, he needed to do it soon, or risk losing his veneer of unreality completely.

When we reached the door, I pressed my eye to the opening, squinting against the light, and scanned the lot for signs of movement. There was nothing, not even a breeze. Everything was still.

Pockets were wonderful things. Even in this new world, where money and cell phones were useless affectations, we found things to keep in them. I fumbled in my left hip pocket until my fingers found a smooth stone that I had picked up to show Juniper. Slowly, I pushed the door farther open and tossed the stone out into the parking lot. It slid across the gravel, rolling and clattering, before coming to a stop some ten feet away. I held my breath.

No one came.

Still moving slowly, I straightened up and pushed the door open wider, increasing both my frame of view and the amount of light flooding my abused retinas. Everything took on a teary, blurry halo. I squinted through the pain, still looking for motion, and found nothing. We might not be alone, but this lot, at least, had been checked and abandoned by our attackers.

“Come on,” I said to Fishy, and stepped outside.

Together, we crept around the edge of the building, stopping every five feet or so to listen for footsteps or tires, anything that would indicate that the danger was returning. A crow called somewhere in the distance; another crow answered, shriller and farther away. Leaves rustled. But nothing had the distinct sound of a human or a human’s machines. We were alone.

Fishy took a deep breath. I stopped and looked back, waiting to see what he was going to say. The pause was almost a relief. We were less than five yards from the corner of the building; even at our current glacial pace, we would be there soon, and we would have to face whatever had happened to our friends.

“I think you should wait here,” he said.

I blinked at him.

“You’re a playable character, and I’m NPC support,” he said. “It’s obvious that we’ve just been through a major cutscene, and this is probably kicking off a pretty big quest for you. We don’t need you to go first and get killed when it would just mean playing through the whole Kmart jumping sequence again. Although I guess there could have been an autosave somewhere in there.”

I had never been a video game player. I blinked at him again before saying, hesitantly, “Okay.”

Fishy looked relieved, some of the old cockiness coming back into his eyes. He was reasserting his video game reality now that we were moving again. He needed this to make it all the way real, and keep the edges from slipping out of his grasp. “Wait here,” he said, and walked past me, still slowly, but faster
now, like he had made an important decision and no longer wanted to wait around to see what the consequences would be.