Part 6 (1/2)
”And Yuri dove into a concrete pool the wrong way and broke his neck on the incline,” Devon said. ”Tam was bitten by a snake while hiking with her family, and the hospital they carried her to was out of antivenom. Andrew Billings-he was one of our older members-he went in for routine surgery and died three days later from a staph infection. And you remember the big storm they had on the west coast a couple of weeks ago? Mario went surfing in it. It was a stupid thing to do, and everyone was begging him not to, but he said the waves were 'too rad to resist,' so he did it anyway. Never came home. And then there's Samara. You remember the E. coli thing last week, out in Idaho? She was the first victim.” He looked at Rita. ”That's seven. Who am I forgetting?”
”Mike.”
”Oh, yeah.” Devon shook his head grimly. ”Guy had a run-in with a swarm of bees. He was deathly allergic. Of course he always carried epi on him, but the doctors said there was so much venom in his system he never had a chance.”
”Africanized bees?” I asked.
”It happened in Canada, so I doubt it.”
Normal bees rarely stung human beings. Generally people only got swarmed like that when they disturbed a hive. And people who were allergic to bees were fastidiously careful about never doing that.
The more I learned about this situation, the more bizarre it got.
”There've been other deaths,” Rita said. ”Outside our circle.”
”All of them DNA orphans?”
She nodded.
”Someone's killing us off one by one,” Devon said grimly. ”And they do it in a different way every time, so that no one will make the connection. That's why we wanted to talk to you live, instead of by email. To warn you about it.”
My head was spinning. Bees. Snakes. Germs. Drunk drivers. Teen recklessness. What kind of organization had the power to orchestrate deaths like that? And why would they do it? Were we really the product of some secret scientific experiment, like one of the discussion threads had suggested, and now the people responsible for our existence were trying to erase all evidence of their work? It seemed pretty far-fetched to me, but compared to the alien abduction idea it sounded downright reasonable.
And of course there was one thing these two didn't know about. A thing that sent chills down my spine, now that I suspected its true significance.
I told them about Miriam Seyer. How my brother had caught her casing our house. How she had come to my school to buy my art, then started questioning me about my dreams. It seemed an unlikely coincidence that someone just happened to start stalking me the same time all this was going on, but try as we might we couldn't fit the pieces together. Had the other kids been approached before they died?
I sketched Seyer's face on a napkin for them. It was hard to do; my hands were trembling now. It wasn't every day you were told you might be on someone's. .h.i.t list. When I handed it over to them they stared at it for a long time, and I knew they were committing every detail to memory.
”So,” I said, trying to sound calmer than I felt. ”What happens now?”
Devon hesitated. ”We trade phone numbers and addresses, so that we can talk to each other offline. No more meaningful discussions online. It probably would be safest if we all quit the group. Though, then we wouldn't be able to keep an eye on things.” He paused. ”I should come meet your mother in person, so that if someday you need to get away from your house for a while I can offer you a safe place to stay without everyone getting all paranoid about it.”
Jeez. I hadn't even considered the possibility that I might have to flee my home. ”What makes your place any safer than mine?” I demanded. ”The fact that you haven't caught anyone casing your place doesn't mean you're not being watched.”
”My folks own a cabin out by Front Royal. It's a last resort, but I can get the keys to it if I need to.”
Would it really come to that? Running away from home so that our families would be safe, hiding in the woods so that a mysterious cabal of murderers wouldn't be able to find us?
”What about your dad?” I asked, my voice shaking slightly. ”You said he knows the truth about us. Did you tell him about the killings?”
Devon hesitated. ”Yeah, I told him. He said I was reading too much meaning into purely random accidents. And that if there was any trouble heading our way he would hear about it in advance, and he had enough friends in high places to make it go away.” A shadow crossed his face ”That said, he did arrange to have our security system upgraded. Not very rea.s.suring.”
Rita stared at me. ”Are you going to tell your mom?”
For a moment I was silent. There were so many discordant emotions colliding in my head at that moment that I felt strangely numb. Love, fear, hope, desperation, despair . . . not the kind of mess you could sort out over lemonade at IHOP.
”I don't know,” I said softly. ”Are you going to tell yours?”
She snorted. ”Yeah. Right. Like fostermom would give a d.a.m.n if I disappeared.”
Devon pushed a napkin toward me; it had a number and address on it. I wrote down my own and gave a copy to each of them. The act was strangely liberating. We would be proactive, take control of our fates, rather than just wait for unnamed enemies to strike.
As I headed up front to pay for my drink I saw that Devon was leaving a really big tip on the table.
Mom didn't get home until late that night; evidently the Koontz monster had put her in charge of closing. By the time she finally arrived I'd been pacing around nervously for so long that I'd worn a rut in the carpet, and Tommy-who fluttered about me like a crazy moth all that time-had offered every bribe at his disposal to get me to tell him what was going on. But this story would be hard enough to tell one time; I didn't want to have to do it twice.
Shortly after eleven o'clock Mom arrived. She looked exhausted-mentally and physically-but as soon as she saw me she knew that something was wrong, and that became her top priority. She sat me down in the living room and asked me what had happened.
So I told them both everything. Because when you get to the point where you're talking to strangers about running away from home in order to stay alive, it's time to come clean. Mom took it all pretty calmly, but it was clear that she had her doubts about the global teen-murdering conspiracy. So I took them to the computer to show them the death notices online. To my horror, I saw that two more had appeared since our meeting in IHOP. One was for a kid in Montana who had run into an angry bear while taking out the garbage. The other was for an older guy in Perth, Australia. Car accident. Those must be the easiest to arrange.
When she was done reading I sat there in silence, waiting for the axe of judgment to fall. A knot in my chest was making it hard to breathe.
”Tomorrow,” my mother said quietly, ”first thing in the morning, we're going to the police.”
I felt a wave of relief so powerful it made me dizzy. ”They're not going to believe us,” I whispered. ”They'll think we're crazy.”
”Hush.” She pushed back a stray lock of hair from my face. ”I'm not going to tell them about the bears and the bees and how a global conspiracy of scientists is targeting my daughter and her friends because of their genetic code. To be honest, I'm not yet sure how I feel about all that myself. But I am going to tell them that a strange woman is stalking my children, and that I'm afraid for your safety. They'll listen to that. I'll make them listen.”
I fought the urge to cry. ”Thanks, Mom.”
She looked at Tommy. ”They'll want to question you about what you saw. You good with that?”
He nodded. There was a spark of pride in his eyes now, crowding out the fear. The crazy little kid with the video games was needed to protect his family.
”C'mon,” she said, taking my hand in hers, patting Tommy on the back to set him in motion. ”Let's make this place safe for the night.”
We made the rounds of the house together, window by window, door by door, making sure that every possible entrance was securely shut, and that everything that could be locked was locked. It wasn't so much an act of protection as a ritual of purification, banis.h.i.+ng malign influences from our home.
And it seemed to work, for when I climbed into bed, my heart wasn't pounding any more, and the knot in my chest was gone. The last thought I had before I fell asleep was gentle and rea.s.suring. It's going to be all right, I told myself. Everything's going to be all right.
7.
MANa.s.sAS.
VIRGINIA.
THE BLACK GLa.s.s PLAIN beneath my feet is hot. So hot! I have to walk quickly if I don't want my feet to burn. The doors are back, but now they're made of metal, and they're round, like bank vault doors. A dry heat radiates from them, sullen and stifling.