Authors: Kenneth Oppel
Dead Water Zone (7 page)
S
OMETHING WONDERFUL
is going to happen.
His brother’s fevered words sounded in his head as he typed in the code word, calling up the second file. Monica crouched beside him and together they watched as the screen filled with light.
Day 1
I’ve decided that this is the only way to understand the effects of the dead water on human beings. No amount of computer-simulated modeling can match it. And I want to know. I want to experience it firsthand.
I’ve screened out all tramp elements and toxic traces from the samples I’ve collected. I took the
first dose at 0800, the second at 1400, and will continue at eight-hour intervals.
No discernible symptoms or observations so far.
“When I first saw him around the old boathouse, I didn’t think he was a stranger,” said Monica quietly. “I thought he must have been a Waterdrinker—some crazy who didn’t know better. You still see them around sometimes.”
Paul nodded, mute.
Day 2
Muscle pain. I’m assuming it’s an initial reaction to the dead water. Slight fever. Heart rate up. Am continuing the dosage. I’m frightened—should I stop, do more tests, take my data back to the university before going any further?
Some people could take the water, others couldn’t—that’s what Monica had told him. Which way would it go for his brother? Didn’t he know how dangerous it could be?
Day 3
I lifted things today I couldn’t have lifted before. At first, the objects seemed too heavy. But then, with some effort, it was possible. I felt as if I
was able to instruct my body what to do, redirect all my strength to the active muscles.
Paul thought of his nightmare—Sam, curling barbells, mysteriously strong.
Afterward, fatigue. I slept deeply for two hours. This is in accordance with my theory that the dead water acts as a metabolic accelerator, which fuels the body faster but also exhausts its energy reserves faster.
I continue to take samples from various regions of Watertown in the hopes of learning more about the dead water. Is there a source? What is its exact nature?
Day 4
A thrum. A buzz in my head. It’s always there in the background. It changes when you move, altering pitch with every motion of your body. It is sensitive to other things, too: when something enters your field of vision, when an object moves around you.
A bird flew into the boathouse through a window and panicked, swooping madly through the air. I watched until it flew close to me, and then my hands darted out with perfect timing and caught it gently. I don’t know who was more surprised—the bird or me.
“Do you have that?” Paul asked. “A sound in your head?”
“I’d never thought of it like that before. There’s a part of me that can tell when something’s going to happen. Say I step on a rotten piece of wood. I can feel it start to give before it actually does. Or when I pickpocket someone, I can tell when the person’s body has noticed, even before his brain has. But it always comes like a sound in my head.”
My eyesight has also improved dramatically. With my glasses on, things seemed slightly skewed at first; now everything is distorted. The lenses are overcompensating. I don’t need them.
You just left them behind, thought Paul. Nobody abducted you. You just discarded what you didn’t need. But your clothes, what about them?
I feel as if I’m being recalibrated, remade. I’ve been losing weight. My clothes barely fit. At first, this upset me, but now I can’t help finding it exhilarating and liberating! When I was younger, I thought what I wanted was to be bigger, heavier, with more muscle and fat to insulate me against the world. But now I see that weight works against
you, pulls you down to the earth. Refined to the bare essentials, with less weight, you can see, hear, feel things more intensely!
What was he doing to himself? Paul touched the keys, and more text climbed the screen.
Day 5
Waking, I was aware of my body as never before. I could feel every artery pumping blood out of my heart, every vein bringing it back. In my mind’s eye, I saw the configuration of my tissue and muscle, sinew and bone. With concentration I could sense my cells dividing, multiplying, feel the work going on within me, like a piece of miraculous machinery! Just lying still, listening to my body, I’m learning things—things no textbook or lab experiment could teach.
“He’s gone past us,” Monica breathed. “I haven’t felt those things, not ever.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah. I only got the water secondhand. He’s taking it directly. It’s bound to make him change, fast.”
Paul fought back the spasm of fear in his stomach. How far would Sam take this experiment on his own body?
Day 6
They’re looking for me. I’ve seen an unmarked helicopter circling Watertown. There are two men—one was at the lab when the City issued special security clearances for the project. They must have found something I left behind. I can’t believe I was so careless. What? Some scribbled notes retrieved and reassembled from the paper shredder? They can’t know very much—but enough to trace me here. What do they want? My findings? My findings destroyed?
I followed them one night as they moved nervously through Watertown. I felt like a wraith, sliding in and out of shadow effortlessly, pressing my body into alcoves, flat against walls. They have a picture of me and showed it to a punk in black leather. One of the men gave him money.
I can’t be interrupted now. I’m not finished yet. I’ve grown much thinner, much stronger and quicker, but that’s become almost insignificant. There’s something much more important to be done. But first I have to keep taking it into me. And I must find out where the primary source is.
Day 7
I go out only at night now. Daylight hurts my eyes. Too much stimulus. I can travel across Watertown alone, soaring across rooftops like a
dream. I never knew that the light changes throughout the night, the spin of the moon and stars. You can hear more clearly, too. Always the sound of the boats, night crews on deck handling metal and rope, voices drifting. I have listened to fish beneath the water’s surface, insects sleeping, the sound of the mist gathering in the night.
“So, it
was
Sam,” Paul whispered. But why had he appeared, only to run away? Twice. Why hadn’t he stayed to explain? And the inevitable conclusion: he didn’t want to see me.
Day 8
I think I’ve found the source.
Wandering deeper into Watertown, taking samples, I found a wide canal that encircles a kind of citadel island. The dead water is more potent here. The surrounding area seems deserted. Why?
I’m worried the helicopter men will track me to the boathouse if I wait any longer. I need somewhere safe to carry on the rest of my experiment undisturbed. It’s time to move on. I’m certain the source lies beyond that canal.
Paul hammered at the keyboard, but he’d reached the end. There were no more words.
“Rat Castle,” said Monica, in amazement. “No wonder Mom wandered around there. She must have been drinking from that damn canal.”
“Sam’s in there.”
“But Decks said—”
“Decks was wrong.”
“She might be there, too, then,” said Monica quietly. “With that much dead water in her, she could have jumped right across.”
Paul stood up quickly. “We’ve got to go there.”
Monica took a deep breath. “No. Not yet. It’s too dangerous.”
“But we’re wasting time!”
“Paul, I want to go, too. But it’s still light out. At nightfall Armitage’ll come and tell us what’s happening with Cityweb.”
“Sam hates his body! He’d do anything to change it, even if it might kill him.” He faltered for a moment. “Because he knows he’s going to die anyway.”
“But why?”
“It’s part of his condition. They say he’ll only live another twelve years maximum, probably less.”
“Oh.” She seemed to draw into herself, then said bitterly, “So he thinks he can heal himself with the water.”
Paul nodded. “When he called me, he was
scared. I think he wanted me to come here and stop him. Why else would he have called? I owe him this.” He studied her face, suddenly needing to tell her. “I let him down.”
“How?”
“The stupidest thing I’ve ever done. We weren’t the same afterward. And then he left for college and it still wasn’t fixed. Isn’t.”
“Tell me.”
“Lick it up,” Randy Smith said.
Pinned to the ground, Sam just stared back.
“Make him lick it up!” Randy shouted. Gavin and Peter grabbed Sam by the hair and forced his face toward the glistening puddle of Randy’s saliva.
“Randy, come on!” Paul shouted, but they held him tight.
“Shut up and watch.” Randy grinned. “This is for your viewing pleasure.”
They’d been ambushed on their way home from school. They’d been taking the secret route through the park for months, but Randy had found out and was waiting with a whole bunch of his friends.
Peter and Gavin dragged Sam’s face into the spittle, but his lips were clamped tight. He tried to raise a hand to wipe his cheek, but
they restrained him.
Randy prodded him in the ribs with his sneaker. “Forget it,” he said. “We like you like this. Don’t you think it suits him?” he asked the crowd. Laughter.
Paul looked around in revulsion. “That’s enough!”
Randy looked at him with interest. “You love it, Paul. Admit it, you love seeing this.”
Paul caught his brother’s eye, but Sam looked away.
“There’s not much to him, is there?” Randy said. “Let’s see how little there really is.”
Sam started to struggle again. Paul couldn’t bear the panic in his eyes.
“Randy, that’s enough, damn it!” he yelled. He struggled with all his might, but the three boys holding him only clamped down tighter.
“Paul, you’ve always wanted this,” said Randy.
Gavin and Peter were ripping Sam’s shirt. Paul watched, mesmerized. They pulled away the tattered fabric, exposing Sam’s pale chest. Then they dragged his naked, firepole arms over his head so that he looked even skinnier, skeletal.
“Look at his arms!”
“His chest’s weird!”
“His jeans,” Randy said.
“No,” Paul mumbled. “No!”
When they were finished, Sam was stripped down to his underwear, lying on his side, his knees pulled up to his chest.
“Sam, you okay?”
Sam stood up, his back to Paul, and dragged his jeans on. He arranged the tatters of his T-shirt over his shoulders and walked away.
“Sam.” Paul followed at a slight distance. “Sam, I tried.”
Sam kept walking.
“They held me back.”
“There was nothing you could’ve done,” said Monica.
He wanted to believe her. Nothing he could have done. But he’d come too far with the truth now. “I told Randy Smith where we’d be. I told him to wait there for us.”
She didn’t say anything.
“I didn’t plan it, not really.” He studied her face, trying to decipher the look in her piercing eyes. “He was so pleased to be going away to college, so happy to be leaving Governor’s Hill. It shouldn’t have made me so angry, but I felt like he’d forgotten all the things I did for him, taking care of him. None of it was important to him anymore.”
“So how did it happen?”
“I was in the locker room after swim practice one day, and Randy was there, and they started baiting me about Sam. Usually it’s like flashes of dark colors in my head. But this time, I just started agreeing with them. And the more they went on, the angrier I got—not with them but with Sam. I just blurted out about our secret way home from school. He was going to wait there for us. He’d give Sam a scare, that was all, maybe a few shoves. That was our deal.”
“Randy broke it. Not you.”
“Well, I was an idiot to believe him, wasn’t I? Paul—who suddenly trusts the enemy.” The enemy.
You love this, Paul. Admit it, you love seeing this.
And somewhere deep inside him, a very quiet voice had replied, Yes, I do.
“Did Sam know it was you?”
“No. But he still blames me. When I came down here, I was hoping I could somehow fix things between us.” He combed his fingers restlessly through his hair, suddenly assailed by doubts. “But it’s been so long now. Maybe he doesn’t want me here at all; maybe I just imagined it to make myself feel important. How can I convince him to stop taking the water? What would I say?”
Monica stood and lit an old oil lantern hanging from the ceiling.
“I don’t know what I’d say if I found my mom.
I’d probably be angry as hell. Leaving us like that. Aw, who knows what I’d say.” She flung out her hands in a gesture of contempt. “I’d ask her some things, I guess. Why’d she keep on drinking the water? She knew it was making her crazy, but she kept on anyway!”
She sat down beside Paul, her body rigid, looking fiercely at the wall.
“Maybe I wouldn’t have anything to say at all,” she went on more quietly. “What it really came down to is simple—she was more interested in drinking the dead water than sticking around. She wasn’t even much of a mother. I’m still looking though. Stupid, isn’t it?”
Paul took her cool hand in his. He’d never simply touched someone out of sympathy before, and it surprised him. He could feel her cat’s pulse beneath her pale skin. In the warm light from the lantern she was like something from a fairy tale, thin and airy, with dark, streaming hair. Had he really thought she was ugly?
She turned to him with a quizzical look, and he almost lost his nerve. He could pull back his hand. But he didn’t want to, and he felt as if some disconnected part of him was making the decisions.
He awkwardly curved a hand behind her slender neck and kissed her on the mouth. He felt
clumsy; he was probably doing it wrong. But she tasted warm and salty as she kissed him back. He encircled her with his arms and felt her pickpocket’s hands pressing into his back. All at once it seemed so obvious that this should be happening, and he was laughing quietly, and she was, too. He drew back to look into her face, brushing his fingertips over her cheekbones and eyebrows.