Billy, do you hear me?
The childish rage did not so much answer him as it washed over him. Billy might understand what he was trying to do, if Alex could make him understand that his death was unavoidable. But how could you make a nine-year-old boy comprehend something like that? Death was not part of a child's life; even a grandparent's death was not altogether meaningful when you were that young. How could Billy ever have come to grips with the idea that he was going to die?
And he had been right. In point of fact, he had not died. His father had allowed him to be eaten away, to be changed into some half-human, half-alien monstrosity. But Alex hadn't understood what was happening. He had only wanted his son to live.
It wasn't fair. It just wasn't fair.
Son, what you don't understand is that I'm no different from you
.
Alex was pleading with him now. The colloid might take Billy away at any moment. He had to achieve some sort of rapprochement before that happened, because he might never get another chance to communicate with Billy.
I'm only a human being, just like you. I know I'm your father, but you have to understand that I wanted to stop what was happening, but I couldn't. I couldn't and it almost killed me. I love you, Billy. I always loved you and I always will. I love you now, son
.
Billy's rage flickered and died. Perhaps, even in this mutated form, he remembered the times Alex had nurtured him and taken him places and taught him things that a boy had to know to get along. This was his father, who had come at last to take him home.
I won't let you down, Bill. Hang in there, kiddo
.
But already Bill was fading, pinwheeling out of Alex's brain and into oblivion.
He was immediately replaced with another suspended soul. And this one was every bit as painful to Alex as the last. It was Sharon, the woman who had helped Alex recover from the mental wounds of war. The woman who loved him. The woman he had married. Billy's mother.
But this time he was ready. He projected love to his wife, and would permit himself no other emotion, no other thought. She was like the morning sun in her response, warm and hopeful. Her surprise at finding him in this most unexpected place only suffused her spirit with a luminescence that made him love her even more.
Sharon, I've found you again. I've dreamed of you so many times since you died, but I never thought I'd be with you again. I love you so much
.
And she loved him, too. There was no misunderstanding on her part. She, after all, had suffered their son's infection and death with him, and she had understood his anguish when she too became infected. She nearly drowned Alex in her love.
And she was taken away immediately.
Alex remained in his neurological prison, bereft. Somewhere outside this place, his vacant eyes shed tears. He felt them rolling down his cheeks. His face was hot despite the early morning chill. He had broken free of his prison!
But only for a moment . . . and then he was back inside.
He was exhausted. And yet he was certain that he could shore up his resources again. He was not defeated. He had not let them break him. Instead of being horrified by what they had revealed to him, he had expressed love to Sharon and Billy. The colloids had hoped to turn his love to fear, and better yet, to hate. Without even thinking about their intentions, he had expressed his honest emotions toward his wife and son, not as mutations, not as colloids, but as the human beings they had once been, and in some essential way, still were.
You'll have to kill me to win. I won't let you beat me
.
The colloid did not respond. Perhaps it was beginning to believe him. It was probably linking with other colloids, trying to devise a strategy to deal with his obstinacy. That would give him a little time to shore himself up.
They had tried their big guns on him, and they had failed. What could they do now? Torture him? What torture could have been as effective as bringing his loved ones back from the dead? No, he had won. He was almost certain of it.
Almost.
He must clear his mind, prepare for the last desperate siege. This was war, and the colloids had almost made him forget that single, overriding fact.
He still loved Sharon and Billy, something the colloids had never suspected. Nevertheless, his wife and son were part of the past, and Alex had obligations in the present. There were people who depended on him, uninfected people who needed him. It was his duty to get back to them, one way or the other, or die trying. He could not help Sharon and Billy anymore. He had reminded them of the past, when they were entirely human, and Sharon at least had seemed grateful for that. Billy, too, had felt something at the end of his forced visit. Alex was certain of it.
He yearned for more contact with his loved ones, but he knew it was no good. The colloids would only come up with some devious new way to use them against him. Perhaps Sharon and Billy were not dead in a physical sense, but they were dead to him. If not, then he would have to become like them. That was one thing he would never allow.
Do your damnedest
.
The colloid rose to the challenge. It revealed to him that he would never again communicate with Sharon and Billy, and that was merely the beginning. Jo, and all the other guerrillas would be consumed, and their souls—the colloids enjoyed the concept of the soul—would linger in an alien purgatory for what would seem an eternity.
The colloids had conquered their fear of neurological damage, and would soon infect every brain left on earth, no matter what its condition.
You're trying to frighten me, but you're only giving me strength. You wouldn't want to wipe us out unless you were afraid of us
.
What would it matter, when the last humans were gone from the Earth?
Never. We will never be driven from the earth. Even if you consume us all, there will still be a part of us living inside you. The seeds of your defeat have been sown in your own biology. You cannot win
.
Alex felt himself growing, battering at his prison cell door. He sensed the colloid's alarm at this unexpected turn, and he exulted in it.
I'm crazy, and you're gonna see how it feels to be crazy, too!
He gloried in the manic rush that seized him, the wild and reckless expansion that filled the tiny space in his brain and more. He was seeping through the prison, into the labyrinthine contours of the cortex, through the hypothalamus, spreading outward through the reticular activating system. Every neuron was charged by a firing synapse, one after another coming under his control once again.
He felt his own heart beating.
He felt his own lungs breathing.
He felt the electric charge fire along the optic nerve, and he saw once again.
The asphalt was hard against his buttocks. His back ached from sitting in the same position all night.
He was drooling. He closed his slack jaw and wiped away the spittle. Above him stood the mindless body of Tony Chang. Somewhere, hidden inside it, was a remnant of Tony as he had been, but would never be again.
Alex lifted his weary, sore body off the pavement and stumbled past the colloid master under whose weight Tony's body was bent.
One last sensation of the dying colloid that had tormented Alex passed fleetingly through his consciousness, guttered, and then was snuffed out. Its dark light was no longer within his body or mind.
Alex walked out onto the empty highway and watched the sun rise.
The wind whistled along the highway.
It took several minutes for Alex to remember where he was. And even then he didn't know how far he had walked. All he knew was that he was in the suburbs somewhere north of the city, and he had a long way to go back home. He felt very weak, though his spirits were high indeed.
He turned around, seeing Tony standing by the side of the road. The kid's spine was cruelly curved by the weight of the colloid, and he looked more dead than alive.
Still, Alex didn't shoot him. The colloid would have nowhere to go if its host died, and consequently would have no recourse but to attack Alex. If he just left it alone, perhaps he could walk away from it and return to the armory. It was also possible that the colloid would force Tony to attack him, of course. Alex thought it best to move away warily.
But Tony turned slowly toward the north and began to walk stiffly. Apparently there was more important business afoot than dealing with Alex.
Had the colloids written Alex off as a freak? Surely there were others besides him who had resisted them. He might never know the reason, but he suspected that the colloids considered him beyond the pale. If he were truly untouchable, then he would be able to strike at them in ways that they might never suspect. It was something to think about.
Just now, however, he could only think of food and shelter. His joints ached from exposure, and his hunger seemed to course through his entire body. He had never felt so frail and weak in his life.
He started the long walk home, the activity gradually warming him a little against the morning air. But after an hour or two walking on the deserted interstate, it occurred to him that he might be better off going cross country. He might even find something to eat in the ruins of northeast Philadelphia, though it was not likely. The scavengers had picked the city clean a long time ago.
Alex stepped over a guard rail and stumbled down the embankment, into the abandoned streets with their rows of tract houses. Most of the two storey buildings were still standing, miles from Center City, where the action had really gotten hot during the war.
Alex entered a house, finding it almost empty. The wooden floors had been eaten away by the weather, since the windows were all broken. The kitchen shelves were empty.
He left the house and continued in a general southwesterly direction. Every now and then he stopped to look in another house, or neighborhood store, and each time he was disappointed to find nothing to sustain him.
As the morning wore on, the sun warmed the streets somewhat. An occasional breeze chilled Alex. Most of the time, he was uncomfortable but all right. If he hadn't been so weak and hungry, he could have made good time. He estimated that it would take days for him to get back to the armory at this rate. He was very thirsty; if he didn't get a drink soon, he would keel over. But it hadn't rained in several days, and there was no sign of water anywhere. Alex didn't know how much longer he could keep going.
The wind picked up, snapping at Alex's face, but he thought he heard something between the gusts. A buzzing, droning sound . . . quite distant but coming closer all the time. It seemed familiar, but it had been so long since he had heard such a sound that it took him a moment or two to realize what it was.
A motorcycle!
Alex started toward it as quickly as he could. He crossed the street and walked behind some deserted rowhouses, and there it was, a chopped-down Harley-Davidson with a girl riding it.
Without hesitation, she barreled toward him and stopped not five feet in front of him. She lifted her goggles and let her raven hair stream behind her. She could not have been more than fifteen years old.
"Got any water?" Alex asked, the words coming more easily than he expected after his ordeal.
"Sure." She pulled out a bottle fastened to one of the chopper's struts and tossed it to him.
Alex managed to catch it. Lifting it in a toast, he drank long and deeply.
"You can drink the whole thing, if you want," the girl said. "I got plenty more back at my place."
"Thanks." Alex took another long draft.
"They're all gone, huh?" the girl said, glancing toward the east.
"Yeah," replied Alex, wiping his chin. "I watched the last one go."
"Shoulda shot the motherfucker."
"Like shooting the ocean."
"My name's Ronnie Carilli," she said. "What's yours?"
"Alex." He eyed the bike. "Where'd you get the gasoline to run that thing, Ronnie?"
"Down in South Philly. Scavengers raided the refineries, but they were too dumb to get the tanks the executives used to fill up their own cars. There's still a lot of gas down there."
Alex smiled.
"I don't know why I told you that."
"Don't worry. It'll be our secret."
Ronnie frowned. "Where'd you come from anyway?"
"I was . . . following them."
"Where'd they all go?"
"North. That's all I know."
"Maybe they'll go to Alaska."
"Maybe."
"Think they'll come back?"
"Not for a while." Alex finished the water, and said, "Do you know where I can get some food, Ronnie? I'm starving."
"Jump on, and I'll take you back to my place."
Alex nodded, and got on the back of the motorcycle. He held onto the strap as Ronnie revved up the engine with obvious relish and roared off to the south. She drove like a maniac, but that was all right. There wasn't any traffic to worry about.
Alex had assumed that Ronnie lived somewhere nearby. By the time they had crossed Market Street and were headed down 9th toward the old Italian Market, however, he realized that she was a South Philly kid, through and through. This girl had grown up in the neighborhood where her parents and grandparents had grown up, probably from the time that her ancestors had found their way here from Ellis Island. She had only been twelve when the colloids came, and had watched all of her loved ones die. Perhaps she had been a problem child, the victim of a disorder which had been her salvation while all those around her succumbed to the terrible disease from the stars.
Ronnie took him to a narrow street, little more than an alley off Passyunk. Alex was relieved when she cut the Harley's engine. He blew on his numb fingers and tried to hear what she was saying, deafened as he was by the wind and the cycle's powerful motor.
"This way." She led him up a flight of marble steps to an apartment house. The door was unlocked, and they walked into a spacious lobby. "Posh, huh Alex?"