The Devil's Alphabet (37 page)

“Let ’em in,” Rhonda said to Esther. The woman moved aside and two National Guard soldiers in breathing masks stepped into the room. Rhonda thought she recognized the lead one as an assistant to Colonel Duveen, but she wasn’t sure.

Rhonda said, “You know, it would really help us if y’all wore name tags.”

“Likewise,” the assistant said.

“Young man,” Rhonda said sharply. “Do
not
mess with me.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He looked at the other soldier. “Colonel Duveen would like to see you—as soon as possible.”

“I bet he would,” Rhonda said. She took a few more copies of the document and tucked them into her bag. “Esther, keep running those. Make sure you hand one to whoever wants one, and make sure
everyone
has one of the blue sheets.” She nodded to the light blue, half-size instruction sheets stacked on the table next to Dr. Fraelich. Rhonda took an inch off the top of one stack and put those in her bag too.

“Good luck,” the doctor said.

Rhonda followed the Guardsmen outside. It was not yet full light, and the cold breeze teased at her fortress of hair. Everett stood beside the Cadillac, waiting. “I’ll take my own car,” she told the soldiers.

Evidently this was permissible. The soldiers got into the Humvee and Everett held open the Caddy’s passenger door for her.

“Did you get any sleep?” Rhonda asked him. He’d been on duty nonstop since the quarantine began, and last night she’d sent him out to the car to take a nap.

“You’re the one who should be resting, Aunt Rhonda,” the boy said. “You can’t keep burning the candle at both ends.”

“I’ll rest a little easier after today,” she said.

Everett followed the Humvee the three blocks to the Cherokee Hotel, which the Guard had commandeered as
their
headquarters. He hopped out to open her door. “You want me inside?” he asked.

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “Just keep the phone on in case the newspeople call.”

The soldiers were holding the door for her. Oh so polite. Rhonda walked up the front steps, patted the shiny, much-rubbed cheek of the wooden Indian by the door, and went inside.

The renovation project had been proceeding on and off for three years, whenever Rhonda had extra money to pour into it. When it was done it would be the world’s first hotel that could accommodate all three clades—and skips in wheelchairs to boot. The new ceilings were high enough for argos, the doors broad enough for charlies. For the betas she’d specified that the women’s restrooms outnumbered the men’s four-to-one. Before Babahoyo, people thought it was a waste of money—everyone who could use the new features were already residents in Switchcreek. But she’d always intended it as a model for the outside world to follow, and if not that then a political statement. And now that there’d been a second outbreak Rhonda looked like a visionary. Someday Ecuadorian clades would visit.

Colonel Duveen had made his office in the banquet room. The walls had been stripped to the studs, but the wiring was all in place and bare bulbs lit the big room. His desk was at one end of the room, ten yards from the desk of any assistant. Duct-taped cables snaked across the bare wooden floor.

The colonel didn’t look up from his papers until she was almost on top of him. Typical power gesture—she’d used it herself. She said, “It’s awful early for a meeting, don’t you think?”

He smiled and removed his glasses. “I appreciate you making time for me,” he said. In defiance of his own regulations, he wore no breather mask. His voice was soft, and his boyish haircut and earnest eyes gave him the look of a Mormon missionary. She’d found it hard to believe he’d served two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan—until she started working with him. He permitted no bullshit. She respected his competence and liked him because he didn’t underestimate her.

“Rumor has it,” he said, “you have something planned for this morning.”

“Oh, Colonel, I would have told you sooner, but it’s all been decided in such a rush.” She opened her bag and gave him one of the blue instruction sheets. “The march starts at eight-thirty a.m. Or oh-eight-thirty for you military types.”

He frowned at the sheet. “You want to walk all the way down to the north gate?”

“We’re putting in two little crosses there,” Rhonda said. “It’s a tradition around here—when someone dies in an accident, they put up a little white cross to mark the spot.”

“Those are for car accidents, aren’t they?”

“An accident is an accident,” Rhonda said.

“That’s it? Two crosses?”

“Two little crosses. As well as eight little flags—one for every fallen soldier.”

“Interesting touch.”

“It’s the Christian thing to do.”

He took a breath, then shook his head with a nicely calibrated display of regret. “I’m sorry, no.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s too dangerous. Emotions are running too high.”

“Among your soldiers or my people?”

“Both. I’m surprised at you, Mayor. We’ve talked about the need for calm.”

“My people will have firm instructions.” She nodded at the blue sheet. “They won’t do anything to your men, not look at them, not talk to them. This is a silent march—no one will even speak until we get to the checkpoint, at which point Reverend Hooke will say a prayer. You’re not against prayer, are you?”

“Mayor, it’s already abundantly clear that the argos cannot be controlled.”

“The same could be said for your soldiers.” A moment passed, and then Rhonda changed tactics. “Colonel, my people need this.” She let the weariness surface in her voice. “They need to express their grief. If you make it impossible for them to let off steam, this town will explode.”

“Mobs don’t let off steam, Mayor, they generate it.”

“The anger’s already there. My people know that this quarantine is a sham. And after today, the world will know it.” She brought out the document she’d copied this morning. “This will be coming out in
The New York Times
today. It’ll be on every news channel by the time we march.”

He put on his glasses and peered at the first page. “Why don’t you tell me what I’m looking at?”

“That’s a leaked CDC report, Colonel. The report was suppressed, but a few scientists are blowing the whistle. The rationale for this quarantine is full of holes. Not only has no
one found a transmission method that would let these plasmid thingies hop from body to body, but it turns out—and this may come as a surprise to you, it certainly did to me—that all those cases the president talked about on TV, those cases of TDS plasmids showing up in unaffected people? Not one has panned out.”

“You don’t say,” the colonel said.

“No, sir, not a one. In fact, the only people who seem to have them, in Switchcreek or in Ecuador, are people who already have TDS.” Rhonda shook her head as if marveling at the impossibility of it all. “Isn’t that something? They’re an effect, not a cause.”

“The government’s never said that plasmids definitely caused TDS,” the colonel said. “Only that it couldn’t be ruled out. Besides, this is just the opinion of a couple of scientists. Other scientists say differently.”

“Yes, yes, the government managed to find their own scientists—and their own lawyers too—to give them a pretext for isolating us. But the jury can’t be out forever.”

“This won’t change anything,” the colonel said.

“Oh, I have no illusions that a couple of leaked reports are going to change the government’s position. I fully expect this quarantine to go on for as long as the public is petrified of getting TDS. But sooner or later, as the evidence keeps coming out, the public will realize that this quarantine isn’t protecting them, that it’s never going to.

“Hell, even if you killed every last charlie, beta, and argo in Ecuador, Tennessee, and across the planet, TDS is going to spread. Someday, I’m betting soon, we’ll turn on our TVs and there will be another outbreak. Then another one. And
another. A new world is coming, Colonel Duveen. And then do you know where you’re going to be?”

“In a war zone?”

“Worse than that.” She leaned forward. “You’re going to be on the wrong side of history.”

He took off his glasses and set them on the desk. “That may be so,” he said. “But that doesn’t change this morning. No march, Rhonda, silent or otherwise. No service at the checkpoint.”

“Oh, hon, there’s going to be a march whether you want one or not. Your only decision is to figure out how you’re going to respond to it.” She glanced at her watch. “Well, I better get going. Oh, and afterward we’re having a breakfast at the church. You like biscuits and gravy, don’t you?”

“Are you inviting me?”

“You and as many of your men as you want.”

He chuckled. “I don’t think so. It’s a little difficult to eat through those breathers.”

“Well, we’ll think of something else, then. Maybe a softball game? If we’re going to keep our people from killing each other, I figure they should get to know each other.”

P
AX CAME DOWN
out of the trees at the western edge of a fog-wreathed field. In the distance, the orange, quavering sun struggled to rise over blue hills. The clouds glowed a score of shades between blue and violet.

A few hundred yards away were the first of the mobile homes that made up the improvised neighborhood of the Coop. He’d come in behind them, their white backs and small windows all alike. No one moved between the buildings. He aimed for the nearest trailer and set off across the field.

The frost-rimed grasses burned silver; they wet his shins and crunched beneath his shoes. So beautiful. He wondered if he would have noticed any of this if he hadn’t been riding a wave of chemicals.

He passed between two trailers on the outermost row and stopped. No one was outside. He thought about knocking at one of the trailers at random.

He walked on until he reached the innermost row of homes that faced the main drive. To his right was the big sheet-metal building at the center of the compound. As good a place to start as any.

Before he reached the building a door opened at a trailer in front of him and he heard the squall of a baby. A tall, older beta
woman stepped out, holding a tiny child whose smooth, ruby head gleamed like a marble. The woman had taken two steps down from the front porch before she noticed him.

“Hi,” he said. “I’m looking for Reverend Hooke.”

She stared at him. He wondered if he’d known this woman before the Changes. Maybe she’d gone to his church. Maybe she’d been a friend of his mother’s.

She nodded in the direction Pax had been walking. “Elsa is two down,” she said.

“Thank you,” Pax said. “Good luck calming her down.” The baby’s cry sounded no different from that of any human baby.

He climbed the short steps to the reverend’s trailer and knocked. He put his hands in his pockets, huffed steam. The woman with the baby paced along the drive, not bothering to hide that she was studying him. He knocked again.

The door opened, and a beta woman dressed in a bathrobe looked down at him. The size of her belly, even through the robe, was apparent.

“Paxton?” the reverend said.

He looked up, embarrassed. “You know, I’d noticed at the town meeting and at the funeral that you were dressing differently, that you seemed … bigger. But I never took the next logical step.”

“You’re a man.”

“I suppose that’s why,” he said. “Or maybe it’s just me. I miss a lot of things.”

“Why are you here, Paxton? It’s awfully early.”

“I came to tell you that you can’t take the girls away. Sandra and Rainy.”

“How did you—?” She stopped, looked around, and saw the woman with the baby staring at them.

Pax said, “And I also came to tell you I know where you were the night Jo died.” The reverend’s face was as still as any beta’s, but he could feel the woman’s alarm. He said, “Do you want to do this out here?”

She pushed the door wider. “Come inside,” she said. “It’s cold.”

She walked across the small living room with a slight hitch in her step. Maybe the pregnancy was hurting her. Or maybe the limp had always been there and he’d never noticed.

She eased herself into a chair, and he sat down opposite her. After a moment she said, “I’ve seen you like this before, Paxton.”

Right, the night his father baptized him. Rebaptized him. “I apologize,” Pax said. “I took an awful lot of vintage a while ago.”

“You were with the girls?” Her anger was clear. “Where? At your house? Tommy’s been looking all over for them.”

“They’re safe,” he said. “I found them in the woods outside Jo Lynn’s house. They ran away because Tommy was going to kidnap them.”

The reverend made a disgusted noise. “He’s not
kidnapping
them. Did the girls say that?”

“They don’t know what he’s doing. All they know is that Tommy’s going to—”

“This is not Tommy’s idea, Paxton. It’s something we all agreed to—Rhonda, Deke, and I. Rhonda called it genocide insurance.”

“Genocide? What are you talking about?”

She sighed. “We’re smuggling members of our clades out of Switchcreek, just in case the government tries to …” She made a vague gesture. “… take measures against us.”

“You think the army’s going to
kill
you all?”

“We all thought Rhonda was being paranoid when she raised the idea years ago. We never thought—
I
never thought—there’d be another quarantine, and even if there was, I didn’t think we’d be threatened with that. But after Deke was killed …” She exhaled heavily. “We can’t take the chance. We can’t let the government make us disappear. If something happens at Switchcreek, the clades need to survive. So we have to get a few of us out. The first group will have two families from our clade, a handful of charlies, and two argo couples.”

“But that’s suicide—the roads are blocked, there are soldiers everywhere—”

“This plan existed well before the quarantine, Paxton. They’ll be hiking out of Switchcreek to a rendezvous several miles away. At that point they’ll be met by six vehicles, and they’ll scatter—every car in a different direction.”

“That’s crazy! What if a helicopter—”

“We have it covered, Paxton. The National Guard will be busy with the march.”