Clay's Ark (11 page)

He drove on, praying that he would see Rane, that he would have a chance to pick her up. But he saw only stick people-

menacing, utterly terrifying in their difference and their intensity. In the moonlight, they seemed other than human. One

refused to move from the car's path, apparently trying to make Blake swerve and hit a house or a huge rock.

Blake did not swerve. No experienced city driver would have swerved or slowed. At the last possible instant, the

"victim" leaped aside and clung to the rock like an insect.

Something that moved like a cat, but was too big to be a cat, ran alongside the car briefly, and Keira screamed.

"Don't hit him," she said. "Don't hurt him!"

The car accelerated, leaving the running thing behind.

"What the hell was that?" Blake asked.

"Be careful," she said. "Remember the rocks Eli had to dodge around."

He remembered. It was impossible to speed past those boulders. On the other hand, it was very possible that Meda's

people in the mountains above could start rockslides that would close the narrow road entirely if he crept along slowly.

As though in answer to his thought, he heard a rumbling from above. Praying as he had not since childhood, he drove

on, managed to swerve around one boulder just in time to see a rockslide beginning ahead.

He pushed the accelerator to the floor, sped past the slide area as the first rocks came down. Twice the car was hit by

rocks big enough to shake it, but Blake managed to stay on the road. He did not slow down until he came to a sharp

curve around which he thought he recalled a rock.

There was a rock. Many rocks. Another slide had blocked the road with a steep hill of loose rocks and dirt. Blake had

no time to think. The car would climb the slide or it would not. It was a Jeep, after all, antique or no.

The car struggled for traction in the loose dirt and rock, then shuddered heavily as something landed on its roof. The

something made an indentation they could see inside the car.

Suddenly Keira pushed her door open. Blake grabbed for her, not understanding. His hand just missed her as she leaned

out. Then he saw what she had seen-a small, bloody face hanging upside down from the cartop.

"Rane!" he shouted. He leaned across Keira, indifferent for the moment to the way Keira bruised almost at a touch. He

caught Rane's arm, pulled her down and into the car across Keira, then slammed the door and locked it as something

else began tearing at it.

Blake hit the accelerator and the car leaped onto the loose dirt and rock. For an instant, the wheels spun uselessly,

throwing out sand. Then they round traction and the car lunged up the slide. A rock bounced off the windshield,

chipping it slightly. Another hit the top, doing no important damage.

Blake reached the crest of the slide, rolled down it, and sped on down the mountain. Minutes later, they were in open

desert. Keira and Rane, still tangled together, both hurting, both silent with terror until they looked around and saw that

they had left the mountains and their captivity behind. Then they hugged each other, Rane laughing and Keira crying.

Rane's bare arms and her face had been cut and bruised somehow. If she had not been contaminated before, she was

now. Blake worried, but said nothing. Contamination had probably been inevitable from the moment of capture. Its

effects did not have to be inevitable, however. The disease could be studied, understood, stopped, or at least controlled-

and it had to be. The disease was only a disease. It was the willing human carriers intent on spreading it that made it so

deadly.

Blake relaxed in his seat and surveyed the damage to the car. Nothing terminal. Nothing that would stop him from

reaching civilization and getting medical care. He wondered why Eli's people had not shot him, or at least shot at him.

Bullets would have been more effective than rocks. But then, it was like Eli to hold back. He had saved Rane from

Ingraham, held off contaminating Keira-probably for as long as he could-even tried bloodlessly to avoid a fight with

Blake, though he could probably have broken Blake's bones with no effort.

"How did you get free?" Keira was asking Rane. "Did you have to hurt someone?"

"I was tied up for the night," Rane said. "Jacob let me loose. He didn't like me, but he couldn't stand the thought of

anything being tied up. Then you two broke away and everyone was too busy chasing you to watch me. I almost killed

myself running and falling down that goddamn mountain."

"Jacob?" Blake said. "Isn't that one of Meda's sons?"

The girls looked at each other, then at him warily. "You know about Jacob?" Rane asked.

"Only that Meda has a son by that name."

"He's her son and Eli's." There was an odd pause. For the second time in twenty-four hours, Rane seemed unwilling to

say what was on her mind. "Have you seen him?" she asked.

"No. But I don't imagine he would be normal. Not after what the bag told me about Meda."

". . . he isn't."

"What's he like?"

"You saw him," Keira said softly. "He ran alongside the car for a few seconds. That was him."

Blake frowned, gave her a quick glance. "But that was ... an animal."

"Disease-induced mutation. Every child born to them after they get the disease is mutated that way. Jacob is the oldest

of eleven."

Blake glanced at Keira. She was not looking at him, would not look at him.

"Jacob's beautiful, really," she continued. "The way he moves-catlike, smooth, graceful, very fast. And he's as bright as

or brighter than any other kid his age. He's-"

"Not human," Blake said flatly. "Jesus, what are they breeding back there?"

The girls looked at each other again, shifted uncomfortably, sharing some understanding that excluded him. Now

neither would face him. Suddenly he wanted to be excluded. He drove on in silence, suspicion growing in his mind. He

concentrated on putting distance between himself and those who would certainly follow-though he could not help

wondering whether what followed was really worse than what they carried with them.

PART 2: P.O.W.

PAST 11

Within a day of Christian's collapse, Eli had seven irrational people huddling around him. They had no idea what was

happening to them, but they knew they were in trouble. They were cftmbative, fearful, confused, lustful, driven, guilt-

ridden, and utterly miserable.

They huddled together, not knowing what to do. They were fearful of going near outsiders with their painfully

enhanced senses and their odd compulsions, but Eli was one of them. More, he was complete. He smelled right to them.

And he could see their needs clearer than they could. He could respond to them as they required, offering comfort,

sternness, advice, brute strength, whatever was necessary from moment to moment.

He found comfort in shepherding them. It was as though in a very real way, he was making them his family-a family

with ugly problems.

Meda found both her brothers and her father after her, and she, like them, was alternately lustful and horrified. Her

father suffered more than the others. He felt he had gone from patriarch and man of God to criminally depraved pervert

unable to keep his hands off his own daughter. Nor could he accept these feelings as his own. They must be signs of

either demonic possession or God's punishment for some terrible sin. He and his sons were badly frightened.

His wife and daughters-in-law were terrified. Not only were they unable to understand the behavior of their men, but

they were confused and embarrassed by their own enhanced sensory awareness. They could smell the men and each

other as they never had before. They kept trying to wash away normal scents that would not vanish. They spoke more

softly as they realized the substantial walls no longer stopped sound as well as they had. They discovered they were

able to see in the dark-whether they wanted to or not. Touching, even accidentally, became a startlingly intense sensual

experience. The women ceased to touch each other. They also ceased to touch the men except for their own husbands.

And Eli.

They all developed huge appetites as their bodies changed. Worse, they developed unusual tastes, and this frightened

them.

"I'm so hungry," Gwyn told Eli on the day her symptoms became undeniable. She gestured toward a pair of chickens-

part of the Boyd flock of thousands. This pair were scratching and pecking at the sand in the shade of the well tank.

"Suddenly, those things smell good to me," she said. "Can you believe that? They smell edible."

"They are," Eli said softly. It had been necessary for him to supplement his diet with one or two of them or with several

eggs every night when the family was asleep.

"But how could they smell good raw?" Gwyn said. "And alive?"

Living prey smelled wonderful, Eli knew. But Gwyn was not ready to face that yet. "Go raid the refrigerator," he told

her. "Maybe Junior is hungry."

She looked down at her pregnant belly and tried to smile, but she was clearly frightened.

He did what he would never have done before this day. He took her arm and led her back to the house to the kitchen.

There he saw to it that she ate. She seemed to appreciate the attention.

"Something feels wrong," she said once. "Not with the baby," she added quickly when Eli looked alarmed. "I don't

know. The food tastes too sweet or too salty or too spicy or too something. It tasted okay yesterday, but now . . . When

I started to eat, I thought I was going to be sick. But that's not right either. It's not really nauseating. It's just ... I don't

know."

"Bad?" he asked, knowing the answer.

"Not really. Just different." She shook her head, picked up a piece of cold fried chicken. "This is okay, but I'm not sure

the ones running around outside wouldn't be better."

Eli said nothing. Since his return to Earth, he knew he preferred his food raw and unseasoned. It tasted better. Yet he

would go on eating cooked food. It was a human thing that he clung to. His changed body seemed able to digest almost

anything. It tempted him by making nonhuman behavior pleasurable, but most of the time, it let him decide, let him

choose to cling to as much of his humanity as he could.

Though certain drives at certain times inevitably went out of control.

Meda brought him her symptoms and her suspicions not long after he left Gwyn.

"This is your doing," she said. "Everybody's crazy except you. You've done something to us."

"Yes," he admitted, breathing in the scent of her. She had some idea now what she was doing to him just by coming

near.

"What have you done?" she demanded.

"What do you feel?" he asked, facing her.

She blinked, turned away frightened. "What have you done?" she repeated.

"It's a disease." He took a deep breath. He had never imagined that telling her would be easy. He had already decided to

be as straightforward as possible. "It's an extraterrestrial disease. It will change you, but no more than I'm changed."