The Missing (35 page)

buried those rabbits at all.

“Un,” he said with a mouth full of well-greased steel: one.

His parents’ ghosts were watching him from the cor- ner of the room. Photo negatives without color, they were dark where they should have been light. Neither smiled. The veins in Miller’s neck were swollen, like his rage was about to burst them wide open. Felice held his hand like a little girl clinging to her dad. They were dressed for a night at the golf club. Her fur coat was made from rabbit husks.

He took the gun from his mouth. He didn’t want them here to witness this. He wasn’t trying to protect them, he realized; he just didn’t like them. “Get out of here,” he said. “You’re dead.”

He and his old man locked eyes. Miller glowered, like he wanted Danny to flinch. Danny pulled the trigger. The recoil pushed him into the stairway wall where he’d been sitting all night, guarding the door. “Oooph!” he said. He looked up at the wall, and his parents’ ghosts were gone. All that was left was a badly aimed bullet hole about three feet off the ground, and Danny smiled for the first time in days, so glad that the hole was in a wall, and not his head.

He got up, lifted the lock, and opened the door to the soft light of the midmorning clouds, like a mole rising up to the sun.

A

n hour later he’d combined what ingredients he could find left in the kitchen, and made pancakes

cut with Rose’s Lime juice to quiet the rumbling in his belly. Then he summoned the courage, and went into the dining room to find and bury his mother’s remains. But the room was empty, and all that was left was some blood on the floor. His face crumpled. They’d taken her during the night. He was outraged. He was also re-

lived.

He looked out the window. His yard was still, and so were the neighbor’s yards to either side. Then he walked down his driveway to the front yard. Miller’s body was gone, too. The man had probably expected to live to one hundred. At his funeral, he’d probably thought he’d get a twenty-six-gun salute, a college named after him, and an open-bar cocktail party at the club. And then, after all the bad shit he’d done, all the deals he’d made with the wrong kinds of people, in the end he still died, just like everybody else. The taste of disgust was bitter on Danny’s tongue, like ashes, and he wept a couple of angry tears.

From the town below, small fires burned. It looked

like most had started last night, and were now on their last embers. The valley smoldered in the afternoon mist. He walked back up the drive. It was time to go.

Except for the dent in the passenger side door that Aran had left there, his mother’s car was in good shape. He got inside and turned the engine. It hummed smoothly. Gas was low. He’d need to find some. His stomach was still growling. He’d need food, too.

He drove slowly, looking for signs of life. He didn’t see any. The stores on Micmac Street were empty. Win- dows were broken, and stupid things like air condition- ers and Persian rugs bled from their holes. At the supermarket, all the food was gone. The meat, the pro- duce. Even the ice cream had been emptied from the freezers. Danny grabbed some Bubble Yum. They could bill him. Last month he’d grown more than an inch, and half the time his knees hurt so much from this year’s growth spurt that it hurt to walk. He knew he should be grieving, but he was also thinking about ba- con and eggs.

No fuel was left at any of the three gas stations. Even the diesel had been broken into, and what remained from the tanks lay evaporating against blacktop. He decided to take his chances, and tried to enter I–95. A Humvee blocked the ramp. As he neared it, the soldier in the passenger seat rolled down his window. “Turn around or we’ll shoot!” he shouted through a bullhorn. Danny slowed but didn’t stop. The town was in ruins; where did this guy expect him to go?

Then the back window rolled down and Danny stopped. An automatic was pointed in his direction. “Turn around immediately!” the soldier shouted.

Danny put the car in reverse, but apparently, that wasn’t good enough. “Pop-pop-pop!” The sound rang in his ears. He pushed down on the gas and drove back-

ward until he spun off the ramp, and was back on Mic- mac Street. His rearview mirror was gone, and it took his a second before he realized that it had been shot off. They hadn’t been shooting into the air; they’d been shooting at him!

The only other way out was through Bedford. He turned onto the road, unnamed, that had bridged the two towns since they’d been built. There were soldiers here, too. He stopped near where their truck was parked and rolled down his window. Two men in green slickers holding machine guns walked toward him, and in his mind he said a silent prayer that consisted of two words:
Don’t shoot
. The man looked into his eyes and then, without speaking, waved him along.

He sped down the road. Thick trees surrounded him on the left and the right.
I’ll see you in the woods,
James had said. Was he still out there? Was that where the rest of them were hiding, too? He entered the empty town of Bedford. In his mind’s eye, he saw his parents’ ghosts, too. They stood on the corners, shaking their heads at all the things he’d done wrong.

Bedford’s Main Street was empty. Shop windows were broken. It looked a lot like Corpus Christi, and he suddenly got the idea that from now on no matter where he went, everything would look like Corpus Christi. The whole world was haunted now. The dead, the infected, the living, they all shared the same real estate.

Danny wiped his eyes and sniffled. His parents’ ghosts were watching him. His innocent brother (but had he ever really been innocent?) was dead, too. In his place a monster had risen.

There was only one way to make the ghosts quiet, and there was only one cure for his little brother.

I’ll see you in the woods.

He pulled off Main Street, and parked at the picnic area near the woods. It was getting late. Four o’clock. The days were shorter, and sunset wasn’t far off. He took a deep breath, touched the gun in his pocket, and went hunting.

The deeper he walked, the more the cord of adrena- line inside him unwound. He was tired, not from walk- ing, but from shaking, from being ready to run for so long now that the blood rushing through his veins at twice its normal speed felt natural.

The sun got lower in the sky. Everywhere were fallen trees. His instincts told him to turn around, but he couldn’t leave his brother. Not again. The boy was all alone, and for once Danny would do right by him.

After a bit, the trail opened up into a clearing. Dead animals surrounded the periphery. He could make out the empty pelts of rabbits, deer, and even the mammoth antlers of a moose. He dry-heaved only once before step- ping over their bodies and heading for the center. He was high with his own adrenaline. He’d been mainlining it for so long that he could have run a marathon.

He bent down and touched the ground. It was black and cold and wet. He got to the center of the clearing. From a distance they looked like a single clump, and as he closed in he saw that there were hundreds, maybe thousands, of them heaped atop one another. They stank like garbage.

It hit him suddenly, and the cord of terror sprang up- right in his belly and twisted. It filled the empty spaces inside him. He was shaking. Not just his hands: his whole body. His mother, Miller, Lou McGuffin, the doctor in the hospital; they were dead. Hundreds. Thou- sands. Maybe millions. Dead.

Some of the bodies faced the dirt, as if even in dreams they were trying to lick the blood from the

soil. He made a fist and squeezed three knuckles into his mouth. He pushed his hand in so hard his teeth hurt, and that helped a little. It gave him the strength to come closer.

He walked on tiptoe. He had to piss all of a sudden but he didn’t want to unzip his pants in front of these things. He didn’t have control anyway. He let loose and his jeans got hot: This was the nest.

In the center of the bodies lay his old teacher Lois Larkin. Her hair was gone now, and she didn’t look the same. All her soft edges had become angles. The rest of the bodies were pointed toward her, like they were pro- tecting her. She was the leader, of course. As Miller Walker’s son, he knew a leader when he saw one.

He was drawn to her. He wanted to protect her, too. An eye opened in his mind, and he felt it watching him. He walked toward the Lois thing. He thought maybe he’d lie down next to her and wait for dark.

That’s right, Danny,
she whispered sweetly.
I’ll take care of you.

As he climbed the pile of bodies, he tripped over someone’s waist. It was Ryan Simpson, the cop who’d once tried to bust him for driving underage. The gun in his belt fired and he jumped. The bullet shot straight down through the edge of his shoe and into Ryan’s head. He was bleeding (his little toe, maybe?), but only a little. He was afraid the scent of blood would wake them up. It would make them hungry. The gun was so hot it burned his hip, but he didn’t bother to move it. Instead he stuck his hand into his mouth. All four knuckles. He bit down as hard as he could. That helped a little, but not much.

His mom, his dad, Lou McGuffin, Dr. Rossoff at the hospital who had begged for mercy. They were all dead. But maybe they were lucky.

OPEN YOUR MOUTH WIDE, DANNY,
she com-

manded, only her voice wasn’t feminine anymore.

PULL THE TRIGGER
.

Danny backed away. “No,” he mumbled through his knuckle sandwich. He sucked on his fingers in there, and that felt good. He wanted to swallow himself a lit- tle. That way he could hide inside his own stomach.

PULL THE TRIGGER!
she hollered, and her voice was hoarse wheezing, loud and legion.

“No,” he said, even though he knew it would win if he talked to it, just like Miller. Never argue with a madman.

The thing’s eye blinked in his mind, and then every- thing started to itch. His ears, his skin, his blood. He itched in the places he couldn’t reach. He tried to reach them anyway. He took his hand out of his mouth and scratched inside his ears so hard they hurt. He was cry- ing again, but this time he didn’t talk. He backed away. That’s when he spotted the boy. A hairless cherub folded inside Lois Larkin’s arms. He looked peaceful.

He looked innocent, like all the problems inside his broken brain had been cured. He looked happy.

Danny felt the gun on his hip. He crouched down on top of bodies. He reminded himself of Miller’s head on a post (
The king is dead
—
long live the king!
), and Fe- lice’s open-eyed terror, and the rabbits that had once been white. He
had
to do this. He owed it to the mem- ory of the boy James had once been to do this. His par- ents’ spirits would never rest unless he did this. He crawled across the bodies. He lifted the gun. The insides of his ears itched so bad he wanted to tear them off.

PUT THE BULLET IN YOUR CHEST, DANNY BOY. YOU DESERVE A LONG REST.
The thing

shouted so loud that his head swelled.

Breathing through his mouth so he wouldn’t have to

smell them, he climbed over their arms, legs, and swol- len necks. The half-formed ones made cracking sounds as their brittle bones broke. They were like snakes, shedding their skin. Changing . . . into what?

He stopped only once to vomit. But even vomiting here, on these things, made him feel vulnerable. They’re wood, he told himself. Soft kindling. The thing inter- rupted him:
WHEN THEY TOOK HER TO THE LOONY BIN SHE SAW YOU WAVING. SHE KNEW IT WAS YOU, BUT SHE DIDN’T WANT TO BE YOUR MOTHER ANYMORE
.

“Stop,” Danny whispered as he bent over his broth- er’s body. He didn’t want to look at it, but he had to. He pulled James’s ice cold hand free from Lois’s flat breast, and rolled him on his back. The bodies (wood!) he was kneeling on weren’t stable, and he tumbled a little, and scrambled to regain his balance.

James’s brows were gone. In their place was trans- parent skin and thickened bones. His wounded shoul- der had healed now, good as new.

“You’re not my brother,” Danny whispered as he pointed the gun against James’s temple, so this time he didn’t miss. Yes, he decided, his real brother was a sweet kid. Misunderstood, but sweet. The kind of kid who’d turn out fine, once somebody bothered to give him a little attention. The trigger was half-cocked when the thing screamed at him:
TRY IT BOY, AND I’LL STRING YOUR ENTRAILS ACROSS YOUR CAR LIKE CHRISTMAS LIGHTS. I’LL LET YOUR BROTHER EAT YOUR SWEET MEATS.

Danny was leaning on top of Lois Larkin’s shoulder. It cracked. Broke maybe. Then he giggled, which he knew meant he was losing his wits.

I’LL WRITE THE CORPUS CHRISTI WEL- COME SIGN WITH YOUR BLOOD.

Danny stopped. He didn’t notice the itching. He didn’t care about the pile of bodies he’d scrambled atop. He was pissed off. Pissed off enough to wonder: If you kill the leader, do the rest get set free?

Danny redirected the gun, and aimed it at Lois Lar- kin’s face.

His chest convulsed. He was crying and giggling at the same time. The thing’s eyes opened inside him, and showed him all it had done. The civilizations it had toppled. The hunger it engendered, that fed on itself without end, until the infected were engorged like fat- ted ticks, and the survivors watched their skin turn to bones. In the end they all died, because there was noth- ing left to consume.

Danny was laughing. He couldn’t help it. He turned the gun on himself. Lou McGuffin. He was tougher than Lou McGuffin. He’d show his mom how tough he could be. Fuck the toothbrush to the heart. He’d shoot himself in the head! He was still laughing. He couldn’t stop. He laughed so hard he forgot to breathe through his mouth. He smelled the rot. After a while, he stopped laughing.

He backed away. One knee after the next, over soft wood, until he was with James again. He didn’t think about it this time. He pointed and pulled the trigger once, twice, three times. It happened so fast he didn’t see the bullets slash through his brother’s chest. Only saw the boy ricochet, like he’d been punched.

Mom and Dad and God and James forgive me
, he prayed silently as his bowels let go with a long gasp of air. James opened his eyes and snarled, and Danny knew the lie he’d told himself. Virus or no virus, his brother hated him. He’d always hated him. Danny’s heart broke a little bit, knowing that.