Blightborn (13 page)

Jorge Cozido grabs the finger with his one good hand (the other is bundled up in rags and tape) and shoves Boyland—who’s larger than he is by a good bit—backward.

“Leave the girl alone,” Jorge mumbles.

Wanda can’t believe it. Neither can Boyland, apparently, because he breaks into braying laughter like a tickled mule. “Sorry, what? You’re . . . you’re protecting the girl now?”

“I’m not protecting; I’m just saying maybe you ought not to go pushing around a girl who can’t push you back.”

“I can push him back,” Wanda says in a small voice that nobody seems to hear.

More laughter. “This is . . .” Boyland wipes his eyes. “This is priceless, priceless like a day of rain. Mr. Cozido, I think we all know you like to whup up on your wife and boy.”

“If I had a daughter, I’d do different.”

“That why you beat on the other two? Your wife gave you that squealer of a son instead of a pretty little daughter?”

Jorge sniffs, pulls a small tin flask with a cork. “My son might as well be my daughter. Just the same, you touch this girl again, I’ll bust you up like an old dry cow pie. Make you swallow a couple teeth.” He takes a swig of whatever’s in the flask. Wanda can smell it. Makes her eyes water.

Boyland takes a step closer.

“That a threat, old man?”

“Less a threat, more a promise.”

The mayor’s son puts up two fists and storms forward.

Just then a loud, shrill whistle cuts the air.

They all turn. There, coming up out of an old, half-burned farmhouse, is someone Wanda doesn’t recognize. A hobo, by the looks of him. Dirty denim overalls and falling-apart shoes. But what’s striking is that half of his face is wrapped up. Whatever’s beneath those rags is some kind of injury, and it’s fresh: pink fluids stain the mask.

“The hell are you?” Boyland asks.

“You little mice looking for a trio of boys?” the hobo asks.

“Little mice?” Boyland asks. “Who you calling—”

“Yes!” Wanda says. “We’re looking for three boys.”

Boyland throws her a treacherous look as the hobo speaks. “Three boys scurried through here last night. They took what little I had. They burned me . . . burned my face.” As the man
speaks, Wanda sees the pink fluids spreading, now joined with yellow. His words sound pained, every utterance a croaked agony. “I know where they’re going.”

“So tell us,” Boyland says, puffing out his chest.

“I can do better than that. I’ll
show
you.”

RATS IN THE CORN

IT TAKES MORE THAN
an hour to get there, and by the time they do, the scowbarge is already loaded up and hovering out over the corn, higher and higher, the green light from the hover-panels underneath glowing brighter and brighter. It drifts upward, a gravitationally irrational brick—

This, then, is the Provisional Depot.

Their goal sits right in front of them. And all Cael can think about is the burning itch under his shirt. The leaf. The stem.
The Blight
.

He can’t let them see his hands shaking. He keeps pulling his shirt down as if it might suddenly fly up, give them a show.

Don’t think about what’s underneath that shirt. Eyes forward, McAvoy. The goal is right in front of you. You mess this up, you won’t ever see Merelda again. Or Gwennie. Or Pop or Mom or anybody.

But the itch beneath his shirt is maddening. What’s worse is the itch in his mind. Like a rash from blister-ivy in the back of
his brain. An itch that’s impossible to scratch except by acknowledging it, and that’s the last—
the very last
—thing he wants to do.

Come to me, Cael. . . .

For now the three of them lie on their bellies atop a clay berm right where the corn starts to die out—killed by a radius of chemicals, no doubt, or maybe by a buried layer of plasto-sheen.

Down in a shallow valley sits a spare, cement building. A warehouse of sorts. Gray concrete with a black-shingle roof lined with solar panels. All around the building are crates and boxes, pallets and drums. Every bit of it exposed. No fence. No guards. Just a series of tall silver poles every ten feet or so. Cael shakes his head.

“Like a dang pie on a windowsill,” he says, his voice low.
Itch itch itch
. “Like they
want
us to stick our thumb in.”

Rigo rolls over onto his back. Wheezing. Still, he manages to say, “Gotta be . . . protected somehow.”

“Rigo’s right,” Lane says. “Doesn’t add up. That building’s probably thick with provisions. Provisions Heartlanders want. Food and fuel and drink. It can’t just be . . . out in the open like that.”

“Sure looks like it is.”

“Go get a rat.”

Cael cocks an eyebrow. “We don’t need to be messing around with rats right now, with Rigo—” He doesn’t finish his sentence. Though Rigo doesn’t even seem to hear.

“No, seriously, I want to test something out.”

“It’s okay,” Rigo murmurs. “I like just lying here. Go. Rat. Yeah.”

Cael grumbles, and slinks off into the slashing corn to find a rat.

Pressure pushes in at Cael’s temples. Rigo’s hurt. Some hobo is out there hunting them. And he’s got what may very well be the Blight.

Don’t think about it. Just think about the rat.

His hands shake as he takes a small knife at his belt. Cuts an ear of corn off the stalk—the stalk tries to pull away, shuddering and shaking like the train trestle when the auto-train passed over—but eventually he cuts through it and is able to unwrap the rough husk.

With the knife he cuts into a few kernels. Lets some of that corn juice come out. Milky white beads. Sweet smelling.

He chucks the ear onto the dirt.

It’s then he thinks:
I can take a look
.

He draws a deep breath. Makes sure nobody is behind him—no Lane, no Rigo, no Eben, nobody. He rolls up his shirt gingerly, and reflexively he closes his eyes as if he doesn’t want to see even though he knows he
has
to look. He feels the fabric snag on something—the leaf, the stem, the Blight.

He pulls the shirt higher.

Then he tucks his chin to his chest so he can see it.

The leaf is as green as algae atop the water in an old drainage pond. Bright. Alive. Greener than corn leaves.

He looks at the corn—

It can’t be
.

The corn is leaning away from him. Nothing dramatic, just a gentle tilt in the other direction—as if it sees what’s under his chest and doesn’t want to be anywhere near it.

Hiram’s Golden Prolific is scared of the Blight.

Scared of
him
.

He swallows a hard knot. Takes a few deep breaths. Wonders what Gwennie would think of him. He knows Pop would be okay, and Pop might even be able to help him. But though Gwennie’s as sweet as pie, he knows she’d recoil because, hell, who wouldn’t?

A pinprick of guilt comes with the thought:
Wanda wouldn’t. Wanda would hold your hand and kiss your cheek and say something awkward but sweet because that’s what she is. Awkward but sweet
.

“I’m such a dirt ball,” he says with a sigh.

Again he looks back at the leaf and stem.

It has to go.

He takes the knife, and he brings the blade against the stem and presses his thumb against the green, as if he’s about to cut into a parsnip. The stem is cool. Smooth. Just touching it, he can feel it throbbing with a kind of energy. Vibrating a kind of . . . rhythm. A life signal.

He winces and jerks the blade upward.

It slices through the stem.

Hot pain like a string of firecrackers goes off in his heart, down every limb, lighting up his brain like Eben Henry’s burn barrel.

Lips trembling, teeth chattering, he looks down. Sees the leaf and stem there in the dirt. Bright red blood trickling from the stem. And down his chest in a zigzagging line.

He quickly folds his shirt back over it. A little blood bleeds through.

There. That’s done.
Blight’s gone
.

That’s what he tells himself.

Then Cael lies down in the dirt and waits. Slingshot in hand.

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

Lane arches an eyebrow. “Talk about what?”

“That thing you told me.”

“What thing?”

“About the . . . not-liking-girls thing.”

Lane sniffs. “I like girls fine.”

Rigo groans, moans, rolls his eyes. “I’m dying over here, and you’re playing games. Never mind.”

“Fine, fine. Yes, I like boys. No, we don’t need to talk about it.”

“I just thought—”

“Well, you thought wrong.”

“You didn’t tell Cael.”

“No, I did not. Any other facts of life you feel like reiterating? Sky’s blue. Dirt’s dry. Life’s hard.”

“Why didn’t you tell him?”

Lane sighs. He thinks about giving some aloof and evasive answer—stick and move, duck and dodge—but Rigo’s like a little kid. He’ll just keep asking.
Why, why, why, why
. He’s a nattering grackle.

Instead, Lane tells the truth, or most of the truth anyway: “Cael wouldn’t get it. He’s . . . simple. Not stupid—don’t gimme
that look—just simple. For him things are the way things are, and that’s mostly okay until it pisses in his eyes. If all this hadn’t gone down he’d have been half content to settle down with Wanda—or Gwennie, if we’re talking fantasyland here—and pop out a litter of squall-babies and put the Empyrean leash around his own neck every day as he tottered off to work at the processing plant. Cael doesn’t see things beyond his own two eyes. Like I said, he’s simple.”

“The hell’s that mean?”

Lane turns around and finds Cael standing there in the corn, a shuck rat hanging limp in his hand, the rodent’s collar wet with red. Some of the beast’s blood stains his shirt, too. He scowls and repeats, “The hell’s that mean, I’m simple? I heard you talking about me. What’s your problem, Moreau? You got something you wanna say?”

Damnit! Just cover your tracks, Lane.

“Lord and Lady all a-mercy,” Lane says, trying not to splutter or stutter. “I’m just talking about how you feel about the Sleeping Dogs—”

“You’re gonna keep ringing that bell, huh?” Cael comes and kneels down next to them. “You still got stars in your eyes for those raiders?”

“They’re not raiders. They’re freedom fighters and—”

“Save it for another day, Lane. You had me go fetch a rat, so I went and fetched a rat. Can we get on with it?”

Lane’s shoulders slump, losing a little bit of tension. Cael didn’t hear most of that conversation.
Good.
Lane feels his cheeks starting to go red.

He tells Cael, “Fling the rat down there. Make sure it goes between two of those posts.”

“Mind telling me what that’s supposed to do?”

“Jeezum Crow, Cael, let a guy have his surprises. Throw it.”

Cael shakes his head, then grabs the rat by the tail and pauses. He chuckles as if he just thought of something else. Then suddenly he’s pulling out the slingshot and stuffing the rat’s wadded-up body into the pocket.

“You’re a sick boy,” Lane says.

Cael shrugs, winks, and draws back the rat-shot—

Thwap
.

The rat-ball flies high in an arc—

Tumbling through the air—

It lands dead center between two of those metal poles.

The two poles spark. A sonic pulse flashes between them, a warbling sound that leaves their ears ringing. The rat carcass lies there on the other side, stretched out and kinked up. Even from here they can see how the pulse deformed it. Probably broke all its bones.

“Twisted that rat up good,” Lane says. “If you hadn’t killed it, that sure as King Hell would have.”

“Shit!” Cael says. “Sonic fence.”

“Sonic fence,” Lane repeats, happy to be back to the mission at hand. “Any idea how we get past it?”

Rigo lifts a sweat-shellacked brow. “I do. I think we have a key.”

They both give him a quizzical look.

He holds up the visidex and offers a weak smile.

SCRATCHING AT THE DOOR

THE WIND FILTERS
through her hair as the boat zooms over the stalk-tops, the fringe tickling the underside of the yacht, but Wanda isn’t present in the moment. She’s thinking instead of that night out in the pollen drift with Cael and his crew. That was the night, she thinks, that she fell in love with him. Even though he wasn’t nice to her and even though he lied to her to get her family’s boat, he was so
in command
of everything. He knew what he wanted, and he was high-bound to get it.