“Yes, I know. Stop, Simon, please.” Moaning, he rolled onto his belly, away from Kate’s eyes, her hunger, his thoughts. Simon was a spike in Peter’s right ear, like those needles they used on frogs back in . . . God . . . junior bio.
And look who’s the frog now.
Stunning but true.
The Rule mine had blown eight days ago, and when Peter wasn’t screaming or raving like a crazy person because of the bells, those damn bells in his head, those bong-bong-BONGs . . . when he wasn’t doing that, Peter was either awake and dreaming awful nightmares that clung like burrs—water and a dark fan of sea grass and the boat and eyes in stone—or he was awake and not dreaming but thinking, hard, the thoughts bubbling in the pressure cooker of his skull: Get out of here, Peter, get out, get out, got to get out! If he didn’t find a way out, his mind would go ka-BOOM. Nothing left but a drippy red socket.
Because there was something in there.
Yeah. For real. In his skull. This red . . . scuttling behind his eyeballs, spidering over the soft pink cheese of his brain. He thought maybe it had crawled in through an ear. Or boogered up his nose. He wasn’t sure. But he felt it all right. Sucker was growing.
He tried getting rid of it. Once, he used his shirt. He remembered only snatches: slowly strangling from his own weight; the raw pain of it; that wild, frantic moment when his vision blacked as he ran out of air and his lungs imploded; the knot so taut the noose sawed his skin like a length of fine piano wire. Another ten, fifteen seconds, he’d have cut through his carotids.
So, they took his clothes. Nowadays, he wallowed, naked as a baby, in his own filth, because they took his crap bucket, too. His fault, but taking the shot was worth it. The raw, primal satisfaction of drenching Lang—that traitor—with rank piss and runny shit . . . Oh Jesus, that was good.
But those bells were killing him. They were so damned loud. When he could think about it, Peter suspected the water. Good delivery system. When those first few muted clangs started up, Peter tried rationing himself. Just a swallow here and there, until his tongue was so thick it clung to the roof of his mouth and breathing got too hard. Eventually, Peter drank because he had to, and then the bells just bellowed. Shrieking at Finn—JESUS, GOD, WOULD YOU TURN THESE DAMN THINGS OFF?—only earned him cryptic mumbo jumbo: Don’t you find it fascinating, boy-o, that the people who call on God the most believe in God the least?
In quieter, more rational moments, Peter understood how tempting it was to see Finn as a crazy, broken-down old Vietnam vet turned militia leader: a creepily intelligent and sadistic son of a bitch with a bug up his ass about Rule; a guy who’d arranged an ambush seven weeks ago so he could take out his frustrations on Peter first. If that were the only truth, then Finn’s conclusions, his methods and experiments, would be much easier to dismiss.
But Peter had gone to college. Hadn’t graduated for . . . reasons, ones that had to do with eyes in stone and orange water. And Penny. And Simon. And that damn boat. He didn’t talk about any of that, not about college or the accident. Not even Chris knew. No point. But Peter had studied genetic rescue and evolution and endangered species. Once upon a time, he’d had big ideas and grand dreams, too. He was going to save the world. So, sometimes, Peter really understood where Finn was coming from. There was a ruthless logic to Finn’s madness that a true Darwinian might find very appealing.
Then, again: bong-bong-BONG.
Peter wasn’t exactly sane.
“So, when?” Simon pestered. “You’re just sitting on your ass.” This was the literal truth. “It’s a little more complicated than that,” Peter said, still trying to hold it together, keep it down. “Just give it a rest, Simon. Okay?”
“Who the hell’s he talking to?” That was the new guard, a jowly oldster with a hound-dog face and jug handles for ears in a standard, olive-drab uniform. Sidearm on his right hip, expandable baton in a cross-draw, slide side-break scabbard on the left. Jug Ears and the other duty guard were behind a plain wooden desk squared before a deep hearth in which a fire crackled, all the way down at the other end of the prison house.
A voice Peter recognized: “Beats the hell out of me.” The second guard, Lang—Traitor, Simon hissed, tear out his throat, pop his eyes, eat ’em like grapes—yawned hugely, stretched. “He’s always going on like that.”
Now, those guards had to be fifty, sixty feet away, and yet Peter heard all this, loud and clear, and despite the bells. He’d become like this bat, see, picking up sounds: the sssss as the residual water on a fresh log hissed and evaporated, the CREE-cree of Lang’s leather belt as he walked, even the squeak of boots over snow outside the prison house. Sometimes, he thought he actually heard other, very tiny voices inside his head. Nothing distinct but more of a hubbub like being in a crowded train station with a very high ceiling.
“Well, Jesus, the way he talks to himself,” Jug Ears said, “it’s kind of spooky.”
Spooky. BWAHAHAHA. They didn’t know spooky. The bongbong-BONGs were spooky. Not sleeping, at all, was spooky. An old nightmare you saw while you were awake—orange blood in murky water and the boat and eyes that were holes in stone—that was spooky. Something growing electric red wings in your brain was spooky.
He watched as Lang’s hand crawled into an oily gray helmet of thinning hair and dug in for a good scritch-scritch. “Boss says they’re hallucinations,” Lang said as dandruff salted his shoulders. “They’re supposed to go away. He gets too loud, go ahead, give him a couple whacks. That’ll shut him up.”
“I’m not a hallucination,” Simon whispered. His voice always came from Peter’s blind spot on the right. Hoping to catch him out, Peter sometimes whipped around, but Simon danced away in a quicksilver sparkle. “I know that,” Peter said, although a very small, still sane part of his mind also whispered, Oh, riiiight.
“Where is the boss, anyway?” Jug Ears asked. “He’s been gone over a week.”
“You know I’m real,” Simon said.
“Shh,” Peter whispered. “Simon, please, be quiet. I need—”
“Last I heard, boss took a bunch of Chuckies. Wants to see how they do,” Lang said. “Said they learn faster when they go out in teams, especially once they got enough in them.”
“Uh-oh,” Simon said.
That got Peter’s attention. Enough in them? Of what? Lang and Jug Ears weren’t talking only about his fellow inmates. So who? Finn had different Changed? Different how? He thought about the bells. Thought about how well he heard things and the constant scrim of the old dream. Thought about the scudder in his skull. And Simon; I hear someone I know can’t be here. So what if—
“Well, Jesus, them and us together . . . that makes my skin crawl. And what happens with that stuff ? To their eyes? Like what’s going on with him?” Jug Ears hooked a thumb at Peter’s cell. “Scares the bejesus out of me. Like something out of a movie.”
Wait. What’s going on with me? His fingers traced the bone of his sockets and dragged over the soft hummocks of his closed lids. His eyes were so raw they might be weeping blood. Eyes, eyes in the dark, holes in stone. But I have real eyes. Unless I’m Changing, too, into something else. Unless Finn is—
“Yeah, but you’ll be glad when the time comes. Whole lot more of them. Better a Chucky eats a bullet than me,” Lang said.
“Maybe.” Jug Ears sounded doubtful. “But I’m telling you, the first time one of them looks at me crosswise? Blow its fucking head off. And what about these Chuckies here and the other holding areas? You got any idea what the boss wants with them?”
“Well, some he takes,” Lang said. “The ones he thinks are smarter, I guess. But what we’re going to do with all the rest . . . hell if I know.”
Finn has more Changed, and not just here. He’s divided them into groups: the ones he leaves alone, and then the ones he . . . drugs? Peter could see it. How stupid was it for him to believe Finn when the old bastard said they could handle only ten Changed at a time? It had been almost five months since things went to hell. Finn’s militia was in place long before. Finn was ready for things to fall apart. So he’s working with the Changed, on them somehow, not only taming a couple as pets. He wants only the smartest, the fastest, the best.
What Finn might want with these others, though, the ones in here with him, Peter couldn’t imagine. They weren’t food—well, not for the Changed, anyway, who killed but never fed on one another. So what was Finn up to with all these kids, a ton of whom were from Rule?
Another thought: He has me. He knows all about me. So did Finn know about Simon? About Penny? What if Finn was looking for them, too?
Relax, he won’t find them. No one knows where Penny—
“I don’t know,” Simon said. “Finn got you. What makes you think he can’t figure it out? You have to do something, Peter.”
“I’ve done what I can. I’ve kept you alive.” Peter’s overstressed brain felt as if someone had crammed it into a blender. “I’ve lost everything for you.”
“No,” Simon said—and damn if he didn’t sound like Finn. “You were lost when you decided the Zone was a good idea. You were lost the second you lied to the police, didn’t tell the truth about the accident and the boat and Penny.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” A shout boiled in his chest. Don’t, don’t, don’t, can’t scream. He bit the soft flesh of his cheek, really ground down. The pain was bright but not nearly enough, no sir.
Screaming doesn’t help. You scream, they hurt you, Lang kicks you, he beats you. But they won’t kill you. So this isn’t going to end until you— “Then do something, Peter,” Simon said. “Stop Finn. Make a move. Do something.”
“Shut up!” Snarling, Peter flung that left foot across his cell. “Shut up, Simon, just shut up!”
