Contagious (36 page)

“But I
want
McDonald’s!”
Mommy took a step back. She was scared. She
should
be scared—Daddy was gone, but Chelsea could make Mr. Jenkins use the spanky-spoon just as well as Daddy had.
Mr. Jenkins pulled out a cell phone. “Give me a second, Chelsea. I’ll Google it and see if I can find one, okay?”
Chelsea nodded. “And I want ice cream bars. Lots of them.”
“I saw a party store not too far from here,” Mommy said. “I could go grab food there.”
“Found one,” Mr. Jenkins said, looking up from his phone. “It’s a couple miles from here.”
“Go get me McDonald’s, Mommy. I want McDonald’s.”
“Your mother shouldn’t go,” Mr. Jenkins said. “This is a bad neighborhood. It’s nighttime. A woman on her own out there . . . won’t do well.
I’ll walk, but it’s two miles away, so might take me an hour and a half.”
“Can you take Mister Korves’s motorcycle?” Chelsea asked.
Mr. Jenkins shook his head. “No, I don’t know how to ride.”
“Then walk,” Chelsea said. “And make it fast.”
Mr. Jenkins nodded rapidly.
“Do you have enough money?” Mommy asked.
“I’ll find an ATM,” he said. “I’ll stock up. We’re going to be here for a few more days.”
“Two more,” Chelsea said. “Two more days, and then the angels come. Now get going, and don’t you
dare
forget the ice cream.”
Mr. Jenkins ran off, his fat shaking with every step. Mommy ran out behind him before the Winnebago door could even close. They did what Chelsea said, and that was as it should be.
They
all
did what she said—all but one.
Chelsea closed her eyes and spread her mind, reaching out. Where was he? Where was the boogeyman? Was he thinking of her? Was he
afraid
of her? If not, she would
make
him afraid.
She found him, but she couldn’t connect. Something was blocking her. Chauncey.
What are you doing, Chauncey? Are you stopping me from scaring the boogeyman?
I told you not to connect to him .
And I told you you’re not the boss of me.
Chelsea, the destroyer is not a toy.
He has stopped the angels four times.
If he finds you, he will kill you.
When you connect to him, you risk everything.
Chelsea felt angry. Not just at the boogeyman but at Chauncey.
No one can tell me what to do. Not anymore.
Chelsea waited for him to reply. He didn’t. Instead, hundreds of images smashed into her brain like rapid-fire visual lightning. Images of the boogeyman burning hosts, strangling them, hitting them,
killing
them.
Chauncey, stop it.
She started to shake, yet the images kept coming, images of soldiers shooting dollies, stabbing them, stomping them. Pretty dolly bodies smashing, purple stuff squishing out in long, gloopy jets.
Chauncey, no!
She couldn’t breathe, yet still the images came. Images of gates, beautiful gates, exploding, disintegrating, breaking into tiny pieces and the pieces rotting to blackness. She felt that pressure in her bladder again . . .
Okay, I won’t contact him. I promise!
The images stopped.
Chelsea took a deep breath. The boogeyman, he wasn’t a game at all. He was death. For-
real
death, not movie death.
Now you understand . If you connect with him, you bring death upon your people.
She ran her hand down to where her bathing suit went. The front of her pants was a little damp. Chauncey had caused that, but it wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t the one who killed, who burned, who destroyed. He wasn’t the one who had made her pee her pants a second time.
It was the boogeyman’s fault.
And sooner or later, she would make him pay.
NO MEANS NO
Another dark night at the ruins of Clan Jewell. Cold as shit. Again. Dew hated the cold. He, Margaret and Perry stood in what had once been the Jewells’ kitchen. A bright half-moon lit up the snow in a silvery light. Barely an inch of fluff already covered most of the blackened remains, a layer of white sitting on top of cindered chunks of wood and warped appliances.
They stood there, out there in the cold, because Perry still refused to go inside the trailer. He wouldn’t go near the hatchlings.
“Perry, they’re locked in individual cages,” Margaret said. “They can’t get to you.”
She had changed; Dew could hear it in her voice. So much anger in her now, so different from the Margaret Montoya he’d met months ago. She’d been devastated after Amos’s death, but now? Now an unhealthy dose of rage brewed in her little chest.
“There’s no way they can get out of those cages,” she said.
“It’s not . . . not that,” Perry said. His words sounded strained, broken, as if he had to work to complete a sentence. He stood still, but his upper body bobbed slightly back and forth.
“Perry,” Dew said, “you got to sack up.”
Perry shook his head. Shook it
violently.
Made him look like a retarded dog.
“Look,” Dew said. “Something is blocking you, but if you’re close to the triangles, you can hear?”
Perry nodded. “Yeah, when I was standing right there, I could hear them. I could hear
her.
”
“That’s the point,” Dew said. “We don’t know where the next gate is, Perry. The Jewells have to be there. If we find them, we find the gate. Chelsea talked to you. You have to go back in there and see if she makes contact again.”
“You have to do this,” Margaret said, her voice tight and cold. “We are
not
going to have let that woman die for nothing.”
Perry shook his head again. His eyes remained wide, his nostrils flaring with each breath.
“Perry,” Margaret said, “you’ve fought through so much. Tell me why you’re afraid of this little girl.”
“She’s not a little girl anymore,” Perry said. “She’s something else. She can . . . she can make people do things.”
“We’re with you, kid,” Dew said. “We’ll be right there, okay?”
“The answer is
no,
Dew,” Perry said. “You have to stop asking me to go in there. You just have to.”
“Those hatchlings are in their own little cages,” Dew said. “They can
not
get to you. You need to stop being such a pussy and—”
Dew never saw Perry’s hand. Not even a blur. One second he was shaking and nodding like a rabid Saint Bernard, the next Dew felt a cast-iron vise on his throat and his feet dangled a foot off the ground.
“You don’t get it!” Perry screamed. “You just
don’t
get it!”
Dew clawed at Perry’s fingers, trying to isolate one, to bend it back and break it, but even the kid’s
fingers
were strong. Dew couldn’t pry one free.
Margaret grabbed Perry’s arm. She might as well have swung from a tree limb for all the effect she had. “Perry! Put him down!”
Perry shook Dew.
Shook
him. Dew’s vision blacked out for a moment, then came back—he only had a few seconds left. He kicked out, clumsily, trying to get his actions under control. One foot connected, but he’d kicked Margaret, not Perry.
She grabbed at her left thigh and fell to the ground. Dew suddenly found himself down there as well, coughing and spitting. Perry was so big, so strong, so
fast.
Dew now knew it had been nothing but dumb luck he’d won that fight.
“I’m not afraid of what
she’ll
do to
me
!” Perry screamed. “I’m afraid of what she’ll make
me
do to
you
!”
Dew rolled onto his back and looked up. Sooty snow melted into the seat of his pants. Perry was bent over him, staring down with insane eyes. Saliva flew when he talked.
Perry jabbed his finger repeatedly into his temple, punctuating his words.
“Don’t you get it? They
rewrote
my fucking
brain
! And when I go near those triangles, I can
hear
her. She’s fucking powerful, man. I don’t want you to end up like Bill. She told me to
kill
you!”
Dew hawked a loogie and spit. It came out thick with blood. “So why didn’t you?”
Perry didn’t say anything. The insanity slowly left his eyes.
“Why?” Dew said. “If she’s so powerful, why didn’t you kill me when she told you to? Why didn’t you kill me just now?”
“Because . . . because you can take me. You can beat me up.”
Dew laughed, but the pain in his throat changed the laugh to a cough.
“Kid, you could have broken my neck just now. You didn’t. So if this little girl has control over you, why am I still alive?”
The insane look faded away completely. Perry stood straight, stared at Dew for a few more seconds, then turned and walked away.
Margaret rose to her knees. Her hands held her left thigh, and her face was wrinkled with pain. “You kicked me.”
“Sorry,” Dew said. “My aim was off. I can’t imagine why.”
Dew slowly got to his feet, then reached down and helped Margaret up.
She let out a long breath. “Jesus,” she said. “You’re not the most sensitive guy in the world, are you?
You need to stop being such a pussy?
Did you really think that was going to motivate him somehow?”
“He’s a guy,” Dew said. “That kind of thing usually works with us.”
Margaret shook her head. “Can’t you men ever just
talk
something out?”
“You’re right, women are so much more logical,” Dew said. “Maybe I should have shown him my boxercise technique.”
Margaret rolled her eyes. “Fine. You’ve got me there. But hear me, Dew. Marcus and Gitsh are in the trailer mopping up Bernadette’s blood. You
will
get Perry to go in there and talk to those things, or that woman died for nothing.”
She pointed her finger in Dew’s face. “Do you understand me?”
So much anger in those eyes. She didn’t even look like Margo anymore. This was a new woman, one he’d helped create.
“I understand,” Dew said. “I’ll get through to him.”
Margaret walked back to the trailer, leaving Dew alone in the burned out, snow-covered kitchen.
TWO ALL-BEEF PATTIES
Rome sat slunk down in the driver’s seat of his Delta 88. The car was turned off, but even if it had been on, it would have been cold as hell because the heater hadn’t worked in months. His eyes were just high enough to look out the driver’s-side window, across Orleans Street, at the fat man with the red beard walking along a waist-high fence. Wasn’t even a sidewalk there, just a snow-covered grass strip, the fence, then trees on the other side. White guy in the wrong neighborhood, at night, carrying a big white McDonald’s bag in each hand.
“Are you kidding me?” Rome said quietly. “Doesn’t this motherfucker know where he’s at?”
In the passenger seat, Jamall shook his head. “He must not. White guy walking
here
at night
?
Alone? After hitting an ATM? It’s like he
wants
to get robbed.”
“Hope he got some Big Macs,” Rome said. “I’m hungry.”
The man wore jeans and a long-sleeved plaid shirt. Not only did he seem oblivious to his surroundings, he also seemed oblivious to the cold. Every four steps or so, his breath shot out in a big white cloud that lit up from the few working streetlights.
“I’ll tell you what,” Rome said. “Somebody has a
serious
fucking hankering for McDonald’s.”
They’d been watching an ATM on Mack Avenue, looking for an easy mark. This guy had walked up on foot and taken out money. Looked like a
lot
of money. Rome and Jamall then watched him go into McDonald’s. Five minutes later he’d walked out with the two big bags. The man turned south on Orleans and had been walking for fifteen minutes straight. Rome even drove a block past Orleans, to St. Aubin, then several blocks south to get ahead of the man, then cut back on Lafayette and finally up the other side of Orleans. Here the street was barren, a parking lot on one side, the long stretch of trees on the other. He’d parked and they’d waited, seeing if the man was stupid enough to keep walking down such a deserted area.
He was.
It just didn’t get any easier than this. And that made Rome nervous. “Am I missing something?” he asked after the man had gone a half block past the Delta 88. “For real, this guy is
alone
?”
“He’s just going straight,” Jamall said. “Not even enough sense to walk on a main road. Dude must be in a hurry.”
“No one here,” Rome said.
Jamall nodded. “No one. You said you wanted a sure thing, man. It don’t get more sure than this. We gonna do this, we gotta move. Let’s go get paid.”
Jamall and Rome got out of the car and left the doors slightly open. That wouldn’t give them away, because the dome light didn’t work. They pulled their guns, Rome a simple .38 revolver, Jamall his fancier Glock. They ran across the empty street and came up on the man from behind.
He heard them, because he turned—and when he did, he found two guns pointing at his face.
“Gimme your wallet!” Rome said. He held the .38 in his right hand. His left he held out, palm up.
The man just stared at him.
Jamall made a show of pulling back the Glock’s slide, then pointed it at the man’s face again. “You give my man that wallet, or it’s your ass. And put them bags down—we’re takin’ those, too.”
The man turned to stare at Jamall. White as a sheet, big red beard—he couldn’t possibly look more out of place. Had to be a tourist or something like that. Or maybe a retard, because he didn’t look scared. Not even a little bit.
“No,” the man said.
Fury crossed over Jamall’s face. Rome got nervous. Jamall didn’t like it when people told him no. Especially white people. Rome chanced a quick look up and down the street. No one there, but this was already taking too long.
“I’m only gonna tell you one more time,” Jamall said. “Put down those bags and give my boy your wallet. If there’s enough money in it, I won’t kill you.”
“No,” the man said. “I can’t. I still have to get ice cream bars. Chelsea will be mad if I don’t come back with ice cream bars.”
Jamall took two steps forward and put the barrel of the gun on the man’s forehead.
“I don’t give a fuck about your ice cream bars,” Jamall said. “Put down the motherfucking bags.”
The man knelt a little and set the bags on the snow-covered grass, then stood. He
still
didn’t look scared. Rome didn’t like this shit, not at all. Usually people crapped their drawers when you pulled a gun on them. This guy looked like he’d had a gun to his face so many times it bored him. Fuck the money, Rome wanted out of there.
The man reached back with his right hand.
“That’s it,” Jamall said. “Real slow, gimme that wallet.”