Текст книги "Everfound"

Автор книги: Neal Shusterman

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

CHAPTER 35

Dark Cumulus

Any journey worth making is more meaningful made on foot. And crossing the desert is a time-honored tradition of any holy pilgrimage.”

This was Mary’s decree as they marched up from south Texas, keeping away from roads and other hints of civilization. It was, she decided, the best way to steer clear of the scar wraith. The path they cut took them north of San Antonio, and they began to pick up stray Afterlights that had scattered after the Neons had attacked the train. The collective afterglow of her army was a beacon attracting Afterlights for miles in all directions, and when her scattered flock realized that it was Mary, they came running. Not all of them found their way back, but their numbers increased every day.

Mary soon announced that her vapor of Afterlights had grown so large, they could now consider themselves a full-fledged cumulus. It was more than appropriate, because her cumulus was a storm of living light that continued to gather strength as it pushed ever forward—and this time Mary refused to rest for Afterlights who thought they needed to sleep.

They numbered more than five hundred by the time their relentless march reached Odessa, Texas.

Only now did Mary allow her children a rest from their travels. There was an old sports arena in Odessa that had been torn down when the new coliseum was built. The old arena was now the most substantial deadspot that the small city had to offer. With so many Afterlights under Mary’s wing now, it was a perfect-size space for a temporary respite, and an effective center of operations for her new skinjackers’ first mission. The trick was figuring out what that mission should be.

As it turned out, Moose was very helpful in this regard. While Moose had never been accused of being a genius, he was actually a whole lot smarter without Squirrel around, and more highly motivated by his loss than by his presence. He was very clever when it came to skinjacking reconnaissance. In other words, Moose gathered information and intelligence about Odessa and what sorts of marvelous things might be accomplished there by a motivated team of skinjackers.

Mary turned the arena’s press box into her center of operations. From here she could look out over the whole arena, and keep an eye on all her children. There was a fine basketball court below, and a few basketballs had even crossed with the arena when it was imploded. Now a spontaneous basketball game had erupted. Many Afterlights played, more were content to be spectators, and others began to spread out into the stands, finding their own particular patterns of behavior. Mary watched the repetitive games and conversations; comfort of familiarity taking root in this unfamiliar environment. It was all about habit, Mary knew. It was all about consistency. For this reason Mary was not at all surprised when Jackin’ Jill showed up in Odessa. She knew Jill was a creature of habit too.

“Of course you’re still one of us, Jill,” Mary said, giving Jill a warm welcoming hug. “I understand your pain, and I forgive you.”

Jill nodded but said nothing because she knew if she did, it would be a bitter accusation. Mary might forgive her, but she could never forgive Mary for having tried to send Jix down. She wished she could announce to Mary that the trick had failed, and that Jix hadn’t sunk, just to see the look on Mary’s face. It would almost be worth the fallout.

Mary took Jill’s silence for embarrassment at her emotional outburst back on the Corpus Christi dock. “Let’s forget the past,” Mary told her. “After all, I do owe you a debt of gratitude. I won’t easily forget that you were the one who first began reaping souls!”

Jill couldn’t meet her eye. It was not something she was proud of. Jill had done it for her own selfish reasons, of course, to secure her own position—first, within Pugsy Capone’s corrupt inner circle of Chicago hoodlums, and then, once Mary took over, she reaped to keep herself within Mary’s inner circle. Milos had accused Jill of enjoying reaping. Well, he was right. The stalking, the hunting, the adrenaline rush of a successful kill was as thrilling to her now as it had ever been. But Jix, with the slightest caress of her spirit, had redirected those energies. Jill was still a mistress of the hunt, with a strong taste for violent mayhem . . . but not for murder. She no longer craved the spilling of human blood, for it was all too easy. She was beyond that now; it was unworthy of her skills. But taking down Miss Mary High-and-Mighty—now there was challenging prey!

“So, is that what we’ll be doing?” Jill asked. “More reaping?”

“Yes and no,” Mary told her. “More like world building. You see, Jill, there are many places in this world that really ought to cross into Everlost so that eternity can preserve them.”

“World building . . .” repeated Jill.

“Yes. We’ll select places a bit more substantial than that sorry little playground Milos brought into Everlost. Of course, it goes without saying that any place that crosses will bring with it any number of souls—many of them youthful enough for us to reap into our protection.”

“So then . . . the new skinjackers are all with the program?” Jill asked.

“They will be,” Mary told her, “once they’ve had time to gain the kind of broad perspective that you and I have. But for now, there’s no real need to trouble them with details that might confuse them. That’s best left to those of us who truly know what we’re doing, don’t you agree?”

The skinjackers had been given the spacious privacy of the home-team locker room, perhaps to bolster their spirit of camaraderie. When Milos saw Jill, he folded his arms and put forth the most gloatingly superior smile Jill had ever seen.

“Well, well,” said Milos. “Look what the cat dragged in.”

Jill could have stomped his grinning head straight to the center of the earth, but somehow she managed to keep her cool. “You finally got an English expression right.” She would never, ever forgive Milos for capsizing the yacht, but the fact that she already despised him made it easier to mask how much more deeply she loathed him now. She was constantly fantasizing about all the ways she could end his existence or at least make him suffer. But she also knew she had to keep such dark thoughts to herself. Her job was to infiltrate and observe. She consoled herself with knowing that revenge would be more satisfying the longer she waited.

Milos introduced her to all the new skinjackers—including their star pupil, a fifteen-year-old in an ROTC uniform.

“This is Rotsie, from the Benson High fire,” Milos told her. “He is a natural at soul surfing and . . . what do you call it?”

“’Information retrieval,’” said Rotsie.

“Yes. He can go into a fleshie’s mind and instantly pull out any information he wants.”

“Pleased to officially meet you,” he said, respectfully shaking Jill’s hand. “I’m sorry about your friend—the one who drowned.”

“He didn’t drown,” Jill snapped. “He sunk. And anyway, it’s old news. What’s done is done.”

“We’ve been training for our first mission,” said one of the other skinjackers, a girl that seemed to be bleeding sparkles out of her nails and eye makeup, and who was given the uninspired nickname “Sparkle.”

“Mary had a vision,” another skinjacker said.

At the mention of Mary’s so-called vision, Moose, alone in the corner, grunted, but offered no follow-up.

“Right, Mary’s vision,” said Milos. “She has foreseen that this city’s gas main will explode, and take out several square blocks downtown.”

“Really?” said Jill.

“Yeah,” said one of the other boys. “So Mary wants to send us out before it happens, and stop it.”

Milos then gave Jill a secret wink out of view of the others. “Yes. We must ‘stop’ it.”

If Jill had blood, it would have boiled.

At dawn, on the first Monday of the new year, Mary and all her children waited in the streets of Odessa, all eyes on the natural gas plant, where the accident would occur.

“It’s a good thing we’re here,” Mary told them. “Gas explosions are terrible things. They kill thousands every year.”

“I’m glad you’re in charge again, Miss Mary,” said one of her tried and true Afterlights. “Milos actually had us make bad things happen instead of stopping them.”

“Don’t judge him too harshly,” Mary told the child. “Who could blame him for trying to save the living from their sorrow-filled world?” Then she turned to the others and spoke loudly enough for all of them to hear. “We may not succeed today in stopping the accident, for visions of the future are very hard to change. But if the cause is lost, at least we will be able to run in and save as many children as we can from the light.”

Then she sent forth Milos and the skinjackers to do everything within their power to make things “right.”

Milos led the way, making sure each of them knew their own small part of the plan. Moose and Jill, of course, were aware of the larger picture, but not how it all fit together. Only Milos and Mary knew the full extent of the operation, and how devastating this “accident” would be—how many hundreds would die, so that every youthful soul could be reaped. Knowing that she trusted him to pull this off meant everything to Milos, and as he marched into the plant, skinjacking the senior engineer, he smiled at everyone he passed, for he knew today would be glorious!

PART FIVE

Stealing Life

Philosophical Interlude with Arnie, the Grand Inquisitor

How easy is murder when one calls it by a different name? How much easier is it for the conscience to condone “reaping” than “killing”—and when one knows that death isn’t the end, does it stop the killing hand for fear of retribution, or does it simply make it easier to kill, because, if life continues, how can murder be murder at all?

“Kill them all, for the Lord knoweth them that are His.”^*That was the creed of the medieval crusaders, cutting down everyone in their path, the good and the bad, content in the knowledge that God would sort them out in the hereafter. They believed themselves holy warriors, bringing glory and reward with every bloody slash of their swords.

Mary Hightower, a girl from a more civilized age, needed no sword to do her holy work. Her weapons were much subtler. Her weapons were skinjackers, and the body of anyone on earth she wanted them to possess. And since her skinjackers could possess anyone, that made Mary Hightower the most powerful, and most dangerous person on earth, living or dead.

Was that a tap on your shoulder? Do you sense some unseen spirit whispering in your ear, announcing the end of everything you know? If you do, then Mary is close by, waiting for you with a loving smile, and her hordes are there as you fall, ready to catch you, and hold you, and keep you. Forever.

But not yet . . .

CHAPTER 36

Holding Patterns

On New Year’s Eve—the same night Mary first arrived in Odessa—Allie was arriving in Baltimore. Travel in Everlost took forever, but all it took for Allie to get from south Texas to Baltimore was a fleshie, a plane ticket, and a connecting flight. All it took to get Clarence into a first-class seat was a skinjacker who could provide him with cash, and an expensive suit to make him look the part.

Allie was never proud of using skinjacking as a method of stealing. But if there was anyone who needed a spiritual Robin Hood, it was Clarence.

“You make me feel like a person again,” he told Allie before they boarded that first plane. “I’m not sure that’s a good thing.”

Allie had skinjacked a well-dressed middle-aged woman who very well could have been Clarence’s wife. As Clarence no longer had any ID, she had to skinjack a couple of security guards to get him through. Easy as pie.

As they circled the airport waiting to land in miserable weather, the turbulence became so severe it nearly knocked Allie out of her host.

“Sorry to ruin New Year’s Eve for all you good folks,” the captain announced, “but I guess the old year is hurling hailstones at Baltimore. I promise to have you down before the ball drops.”

Allie could feel the tension filling the living—even the seasoned travelers. Allie felt tense as well, but it had nothing to do with the rattling of the jet. Her turbulence would start after they landed.

Time was of the essence, but the task was daunting. So Allie did something she rarely did. She took care of herself. After they landed, Allie skinjacked a wealthy woman with nowhere to go. Then she lavished upon herself and Clarence the finest New Years’ dinner Baltimore had to offer. Afterward they retired to their respective rooms in a penthouse suite.

But while Clarence slept, Allie did not. She opened the laptop of her host, and spent the night scouring the Web for information—and when old news reports proved insufficient, both she and Clarence hit the streets in the morning, hoping to dig up all the facts they could on the tragic tale of a Russian immigrant boy who was not entirely dead.

Vitaly Milos Vayevsky.

Born in St. Petersburg, Russia. Emigrated with his family to the United States at the age of eleven. Fell from the roof of a five-story apartment building at sixteen. A tree broke his fall. But not entirely.

He suffered massive internal injuries and a subdural hematoma that left him one step short of brain-dead. He spent more than a year in a long-term care facility, and then, when insurance and money ran out, the decision was made to take him off the machines that monitored his faint life signs.

Prognosis: grim.

The doctors gave him just a few weeks to live in such a nonresponsive vegetative state. His parents brought him home, for his mother was determined to make her son’s final days peaceful. However, those days turned to weeks, turned to months, turned to years. And now, in a bedroom, in a fourth-floor apartment, in a working-class neighborhood of Baltimore, the body of Vitaly Milos Vayevsky slept . . . while his soul journeyed in a world between life and death.

Each day, the drip, drip, drip of the intravenous feeding tube marked time for the family. His younger sister went off to college, graduated, married, and had a son that she named for him. Milos was an uncle, but he would never know.

From time to time, when the sight of him brought too much pain, his father would suggest they turn off the feeding tube so that he could quietly fade away. No one would ask questions, and maybe it would be best that way. Each time it was suggested, however, Milos’s mother would flatly refuse. This, she knew, was her penance; her punishment for allowing Milos to play with those boys on the roof that day. And so she would change the bedpan, and sponge him down, and clip his nails, and treat the bedsores, always holding on to the faint, faint hope that one day her boy might wake up.

Eight a.m. A Baltimore boulevard lined by low-rise apartment buildings, and covered with a fine dusting of snow that threatened to stick. Trash trucks already rolled down the street, pounding a week’s worth of waste in their hoppers, and collecting dry Christmas trees from the curb. It was the first Monday of the New Year, and at the very same moment that Mary and her horde waited in the streets of Odessa for a gas explosion, Allie and Clarence stood on a Baltimore street corner, on the brink of a very different mission.

Clarence wore a long cashmere coat, looking like a million bucks. His stylish leather gloves hid the burns on his left hand, and protected Allie from his touch. While his retro fedora didn’t exactly hide his facial scars from the living world, it cast them behind a bold new fashion statement. Beside him Allie inhabited a FedEx delivery girl, whose flimsy coat did not protect her from the cold. She held a small package.

“I know I’m here for moral support,” Clarence told Allie. “But I wish there was something more I could do.”

Allie offered him a slim, shivering smile. “It’s all right,” Allie told him. He had been invaluable in tracking this place down, but she knew from the beginning that she’d have to go in alone.

“Do you want to tell me what’s in the package?” Clarence asked.

Allie looked at the small package in her hands. She had gone to a lot of trouble to secure its contents, and she didn’t really want to talk about it. “Tools of the trade,” she told him. “Does it really matter?”

“I guess not,” Clarence said. “I’ll be waiting for you when you get back.”

Allie found the first step forward was the hardest, but the next was easier. One step at a time, she made her way down the street in the borrowed body of the delivery girl and went to the front door of an apartment building she wished she never knew existed.

Mrs. Vayevsky always jumped at the sharp, loud buzz of the apartment intercom. Who would be buzzing up at this time of the morning? She reached to the intercom and pressed the button, leaning close as she spoke.

“Da? Who is it?” Perhaps her husband had forgotten his key. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time . . . but an unfamiliar voice came back at her through the squawk box.

“I have a delivery for the Vayevsky family.”

Delivery? The woman thought, Since when do they deliver at eight in the morning? “Fine. I buzz you. Apartment 403.” She concluded it must be a late Christmas gift from overseas. Relatives back home never seemed to remember that getting packages halfway around the world took many weeks.

She waited by the door until she heard footsteps reach the fourth-floor landing, then opened before the knock.

“For the Vayevsky family?”

The delivery girl stepped in, which surprised the woman. FedEx always lingered at the threshold. The intrusion unsettled her, but then perhaps this girl was just new. She handed the package to Mrs. Vayevsky.

“Do I have to sign?”

“That won’t be necessary,” said the girl.

Then suddenly Mrs. Vayevsky felt her mind spinning into an unfamiliar place. Her hands now held the small package, yet it felt as if she didn’t have control of her own hands or any other part of her body anymore. Something is wrong here, she said in Russian, but only in her mind, for her lips couldn’t form the words.

Then another voice in her head said something in very clear English,

“Sleep.”

Mrs. Vayevsky felt herself obeying the command, spiraling away from consciousness into sudden slumber.

Allie took full control of Mrs. Vayevsky, and as she did, the delivery girl collapsed to the ground. Allie had knocked the girl so deeply unconscious, nothing could jar her awake. Allie gathered the sleeping delivery girl, and tried to put her into a chair—but now, in the body of Mrs. Vayevsky, Allie found picking the girl up very hard to do. The woman had knee troubles, she had back troubles, she was weak and worn and carrying a little too much weight. In the end, the best Allie could do was to drag the girl across the floor, and prop her up against a wall.

Allie estimated Mrs. Vayevsky to be in her mid-fifties. She had salt-and-pepper hair, and lined, careworn eyes. Allie had thought she might be a bit younger, but perhaps she had gotten old before her time because of the things she had been forced to endure.

Allie straightened up her stiff back and had a look around. The furniture was modest; worn but still livable. A TV with color issues played a morning talk show. Allie turned it off. A hallway led off toward three bedrooms.

First the master bedroom came into view, with a queen-size bed that had not yet been made. The second bedroom had been converted into a sewing room. And the third bedroom sat behind a closed door at the end of the hallway.

Allie took a deep, shuddering breath, reached for the knob, turned it, and then slowly pushed the door open.

The curtains were half-closed and a wide swath of morning light cut across the room. There were pictures on the wall, each one featuring a smiling boy whom Allie recognized, although the pictures all showed him younger. There was a desk clean of all dust which held several books between marble bookends: Catcher in the Rye, Ender’s Game, and all three Lord of the Rings volumes. It proved that this room once belonged to a very real, very normal boy, before that boy became what he became.

Allie continued to let her eyes move around the room. Concert posters on the wall. Trophies on shelves. She forced her eyes to look everywhere but at the center of the room. Then, when she had nowhere else to look, she zeroed in on an intravenous stand which held a bag of milky fluid. She lowered her eyes from the bag and followed the tube which snaked down into an arm. The hand at the end of that arm was bent back at the wrist, with fingers that curled in on themselves, fully atrophied from years of disuse. Then she took a deep breath and raised her eyes to see his face.

Allie gasped at what she saw.

In the bed lay a sallow-faced, sunken-cheeked man. Not a boy, but a man. Beard stubble covered him, four or five days of growth, for regular shaving was not a priority under the circumstances. His lips were stretched, his mouth slightly open, and above his pale forehead, his hairline had begun to recede.

Allie’s first instinct was to think that there had been some mistake, that this couldn’t be Milos—yet she knew it had to be. While Milos had remained sixteen in Everlost, his comatose body had not. He had been in this coma for almost eleven years. Milos was a man pushing twenty-seven.

She had to look away, and when she did, she caught her own reflection in a mirror. But it wasn’t her reflection, it was that of the woman whose body she had stolen. The woman whose son now lay in the bed before her.

Allie looked down to the package in her trembling hands. Before she could change her mind, she ripped the package open and pulled out the syringe.

If someone had told Allie that she would commit a premeditated act of murder, she would not have believed it. She would have spouted off all the reasons how she could never be capable of such a thing—that no matter how dire the circumstances, she would find a better way. She was so naive, so arrogant to think that the laws of necessity and unthinkable circumstance could not apply to her. She could tell herself that this was an act of mercy, but that would be a lie. This was an act of war. An act of terrorism. It was nothing less than an assassination.

If I do this, Allie told herself, I am no better than Mary. I will have sunk to the worst possible place a person can go. After this moment, I will be a cold-blooded killer and it can never be taken back.

So the question was, did Allie Johnson have the strength to sacrifice all that was left of her innocence if it meant she might save the world?

The answer came to her like a burst of courage from a wellspring deeper than she knew she had inside herself.

I would sacrifice everything I am, everything I believe, to save the living world.

And so, with tears filling her eyes, she took the cap off the syringe, found a vein in Milos’s arm, and injected a massive dose of poison into his withered body.

Mrs. Vayevsky opened her eyes to see the delivery girl looking down at her.

“Are you all right, ma’am?” the delivery girl said.

Mrs. Vayevsky was now lying on the couch with no memory of how she got there. She sat up feeling weak and light-headed. “What happened?” she asked. “Have I fainted?”

“You’re fine,” the delivery girl said. “I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.” She offered Mrs. Vayevsky the faintest of smiles and a glass of water, which she drank with a shaky hand. “You should rest,” the delivery girl said and she clasped Mrs. Vayevsky’s shoulder a little too hard, for a little too long. “I’d better be going now.”

“The package . . . ,” said Mrs. Vayevsky.

The delivery girl pointed. “It’s on the table there. Like I said, there’s no need to sign for it.” Then the delivery girl left, quietly closing the door behind her.

When Mrs. Vayevsky felt strong enough to stand, she went to the table to find the package had already been torn open. Had she done that before she fainted?

Inside, of all things, was a Russian nesting doll. Its familiar shape—like a squat bowling pin—and brightly painted surface, made her smile. It was the kind of simple wooden toy she had played with in her youth, a reminder of a much simpler time. On the outermost shell was the painted figure of an old man, but each shell opened to reveal a smaller, younger man inside, until finally in the very center was a wooden baby no larger than her pinky. The gift came with no card, no return address, no clue as to who sent it, or why. All the same, she knew exactly where it needed to go.

She headed to her son’s room and set all six shells of the nesting doll side by side, smallest to largest, on Milos’s desk, admiring the colors and the workmanship it had taken to create the lacquered figurines. Then, when she turned to glance at the bed, her expression changed.

Without even touching him, she knew. Without holding a mirror to his lips to check for breathing, she knew.

She sat in the chair beside the bed, wrapped her arms around her chest, and began rocking back and forth, sobbing his name over and over. She wailed with the deepest grief she had ever known . . . and yet somewhere within that grief was secret gratitude that after so many years, she had finally been given permission to cry.