The Calm Before The Swarm (9 page)

Anders turned down the alley to his right. It
was covered since it once served as the valet entrance to an
upscale hotel. Where once uniformed bellhops stood sentry with
gold-gilded dollies and valets in burgundy vests waited behind
velvet ropes there were now heaps of humanity huddled together for
warmth, buried in newspapers, towels, and blankets to the point
that they looked like piles of refuse themselves. The front doors
to the hotel were hidden behind sloppily-mortared walls of cinder
blocks. The empty building ratted inside while the people shivering
against the storm outside did the same.

Eyes opened and peered out from beneath trash
covers, leering up from beneath wool caps pulled down nearly to the
bridges of their noses, at the sound of the limping footsteps
crossing from the snow onto the merely iced cement. Those who
recognized Anders, those who weren't so stoned they couldn't move,
arose from the ground and scattered like roaches into the shadows,
willing to brave nature's wrath rather than be tempted by Anders's
proposition. They all knew him... what he did.

"I have..." Anders said, doubling over and
grabbing his stomach. He felt something warm drain into his shorts
and down his leg. "I have three thousand dollars."

More faces appeared from where they were
hidden in plain view, newspapers and blankets shuffling and
sloughing off to confirm that he had their undivided attention.
Usually, this was the point where one of the hardly-conscious
zombies would trade his life for the cash to buy enough smack to
overdose on anyway.

Anders fell to his knees and tried to puke,
though this time the dry heaves brought only a strand of mucus and
saliva to slap the ground.

"Will it be quick?" a woman's voice called
from somewhere against the wall behind the others.

"Mommy, no," a smaller voice whispered.

"Shh!"

Anders crawled forward and groaned as he
rolled over onto his rear end, his head lolling back against his
shoulders. He tried to remain focused and conscious.

"No," he said plainly.

There was a moment of silence in which Anders
feared he would need to crawl through the bodies until he found a
junkie on his last legs to put out of his misery. He abhorred the
prospect of giving such a terrible gift, but his was a power that
brought life and hope to the desperate. That was enough to outweigh
the fact that for each life he saved, another must be taken. Every
disease he removed from the dying needed to be transferred into
another body before it consumed his own. Hope was a dangerous
thing, but it was infectious. And right now, as the world came down
around their ears, it was the most valuable of all commodities.

"How long...?" the woman called. "How long will
it take?"

"Hours... days...weeks...There's no way of knowing
for sure."

"Does it...hurt?" she asked, rising to her
feet. A small child grabbed her hand, gloved in a dirty sweat sock,
and fought in vain to pull her mother back down out of sight.

Anders locked eyes with the woman across the
shadowy alley.

"Yes."

"Please, mommy."

"It's okay, sweetheart," she said
unconsciously. She focused on Anders. "Can you help my child find a
better place to live? A better life?"

"Mommy!" the child screamed, but her mother's
ears were deafened to her plight.

The woman stepped forward, her daughter
wailing and pawing at her the whole while. Her straw-colored hair
poked out from beneath her ski cap, crisp with frost. Her cheeks
and the tip of her nose were bright red, her eyes sunken into pits
of despair. She wore a wool overcoat that appeared to be of little
warmth as she visibly shivered.

"Can I trust you to see that my child is
safe?" she asked, her brittle lips cracked and bleeding.

Anders could only nod.

The woman searched his eyes for sincerity.
Walking over bodies able to sleep through the bitter cold thanks to
enough heroin to fell a horse, she strode up to Anders and stood
before him.

"How does this work?" she whispered.

When he looked up into her eyes, tears
streamed down her cheeks.

The little girl ran to her mother's side and
wrapped her arms around the woman's leg.

"Perhaps you...would like to rethink
your...decision," Anders rasped. He knew that if she didn't decide
immediately he would have to crawl over and take one of the zombie
junkies to rid himself of the disease.

"No," the woman said firmly, though her jaw
quivered and her lips pursed. She slipped both hands beneath her
child's chest and pried her away. "Someone...please..."

An older man, gray and haggard like a Viking,
stepped out of the darkness and walked over to her side without
looking directly at either of them.

"C'mon, honey," he said, wrapping his arm
around the small girl's chest and lifting her from the ground.
Though she swung her arms, kicked her legs, and screamed loud
enough to rip the sky, the man managed to keep both arms around her
so he could carry her down to the end of the alley.

"Do you swear you will make sure my daughter
finds a better life?"

Anders broke eye contact and nodded.

"Swear it to me."

"Your child...will no longer know
suffering."

"Will you take her tonight?"

"Tonight?"

"Please...I can't stand the thought of her
watching me die. She's been through more than enough in her short
life."

Anders stared at her again, his eyes
lingering within hers, and finally nodded.

The woman fell to her knees before him,
wiping the tears from her cheeks.

"Make sure she knows how much I love her."
She had to stifle a sob.

"Come closer," Anders whispered.

The woman leaned over his legs until their
face were a scant foot apart.

"Just do it," she said. "Please."

"Closer."

She leaned even farther across him until he
was able to raise a trembling hand to her chin. He turned it gently
to the side and whispered into her ear.

"Thank you."

"For what?" she asked.

"For restoring my faith. For giving
me...hope."

She turned and looked him in the eyes,
confused.

"Reach into the left...left inside pocket of
my...my jacket."

She slid her hand between the flaps of the
trench coat and felt around with a shaking hand until she found the
pocket and reached inside.

When she recognized what her hand was wrapped
around, she drew in a sharp breath.

"Show no one," he whispered. "Take...take your
daughter and go."

"Why---?"

"Go."

She pulled the money out and stuffed it into
her pocket, rising quickly to her feet.

"Thank you," she whispered, and turned away.
Her pace hastened with every step, and with one final glance back
over her shoulder, she snatched her child from the large man's arms
and disappeared around the corner onto the street.

Anders rolled over onto his stomach and tried
to push himself to all fours, but with as badly as his arms were
shaking, he could barely lift his head from the ground. Reaching
forward with clawed fingers, he tried to grip the icy cement,
tearing the skin from his fingertips and prying his fingernails
from the cuticles. He left bloody smears as he dragged himself
toward the unconscious addicts abusing the valuable space beneath
the overhang. They had one foot in the grave already. All he had to
do was pass the disease into one of them and...

He awoke on his belly, a pool of blood
expanding around his mouth. Be it from the cold or the rapidly
metastasizing tumors that riddled his body, he could barely feel
his arms and his legs could only flop uselessly on the ice. He had
waited too long...too long...

They would find his corpse in the alley with
all of the others and would bury him beneath an unmarked placard.
He would no longer be able to take the sickness from the dying. His
message would die with him.

No.

The woman and her child. They would continue
to pass along the only thing he found worthwhile in this dying
land, the one thing the world needed more than anything else...

Hope.

Anders closed his eyes.

"Thank you, sir," a tiny voice said.

He barely had the strength to open them back
up.

The little girl stood by his side. She
couldn't have been more than seven or eight, yet her eyes were
hardened well beyond her years.

He tried to forge a smile. His trembling hand
reached for the hip pocket of his coat.

The girl knelt and removed his wooden case
from his pocket for him, holding it tightly in both hands.

"How does it work?" she asked.

"Directions..." he whispered. "Inside..."

He closed his eyes and drifted into the
afterlife while the child opened up the wooden case. At first she
saw nothing, but she turned it over and over in her hands until she
managed to decipher a faded inscription. Bringing it close to her
face so she could read it, she crinkled her brow.

Hope demands sacrifice
.

Closing it back up, she stuffed the box into
her pocket and knelt beside the man. She leaned over and placed a
gentle kiss on the side of his bloody face.

"I understand," she whispered.

A tear fell from her chin onto his cheek as
she rose and ran back down the alley to where her mother waited for
her on the street.

BURIAL GROUND

Andes Mountains

Northern Peru

October 11
^th

9:26 p.m. PET

The screams were more than he could bear,
but they didn't last long. Panicked cries cut short by wet, tearing
sounds, and then finally silence, save the patter of raindrops on
the muddy ground. From where he crouched in the dark recess of the
stone fortification, hidden from the world by a screen of tangled
lianas and the sheeting rain, he had listened to them die.

All of them.

The signs had been there, but he and his
companions had misinterpreted them, and now it was too late. It was
only a matter of time before they found him, and slaughtered him as
well.

Hunter Gearhardt donned his rucksack
backward, and wrapped his arms around its contents. He'd managed to
grab a few items of importance once he'd recognized what was about
to happen, and he needed to get them out of the jungle. More
bloodshed would follow if he didn't reach civilization. With their
inability to access a signal on the satellite phone, there was no
other way to deliver the warning. It was all up to him now, and his
window of opportunity was closing fast.

His breathing was ragged, too loud in his
own ears, his heartbeat a thudding counterpoint. He couldn't hear
them out there, but they had attacked so quietly in the first place
that the silence was of little comfort. They were still out there,
stalking him. There was no time to waste. He needed to put as much
distance between himself and his pursuit as possible if he were to
stay alive long enough to get down off the mountain. And even then,
they knew this region of the cloud forest far better than he
did.

He wished he'd had the opportunity to find
his pistol, but it would have been useless against their superior
numbers. His only hope was to run, to reach the river. From there
he could only pray that he would be able to survive the rapids and
that they wouldn't be able to track him from the shore. It was a
long shot. Unfortunately, it was also his only shot.

Tightening his grip on his backpack, his
muscles tensed in anticipation.

Through the curtain of lianas, the rain
continued to pour, creating puddles in every imperfection in the
earth and eroding through the steep slope ahead, which plummeted
nearly vertically into the valley below. If he fell, they would be
upon him in a flash. And that was only if he didn't slide over the
lip of the limestone cliff and plunge hundreds of feet through the
forest canopy to his death.

Hunter drew a deep breath and bolted out
into the night. Narrowing his eyes against the sudden assault of
raindrops, he focused on the rocky path that led down toward the
river. The ancient fortress wall flew past to his left, a crumbling
twenty-five foot structure composed of large bricks of chiseled
obsidian nearly consumed by the overgrowth of vines, shrubbery, and
bromeliads. Every footfall summoned a loud splash he could barely
hear over his own frantic breathing. The mud sucked at his boots as
though he were running through syrup. He barely managed to stay
upright long enough to reach the path, little more than a thin
trench between rugged stone faces. The ground in the channel was
slick and nearly invisible under the muddy runoff. His feet slipped
out from beneath him and he cracked his head on a rock. His
momentum and the current carried him downward onto a flat plateau
dominated by Brazil nut trees draped with vines and moss.

The roar of the river became audible over
the tumult of rain. He was so close---

A crashing sound from the underbrush to his
right.

He glanced over as he crawled to his feet
and saw nothing but shadows lurking behind the shivering
branches.

More crashing uphill to his left.

He wasn't going to make it.

Willing his legs to move faster, he sprinted
toward the edge of the forest and the cliff beyond. The waterfall
that fired from the mountain upstream was a riot of mist and spray
that crashed down upon a series of jagged rocks. Hopefully, there
was enough water racing through now thanks to the storm to have
raised the level of the river above them. Either way, he'd rather
take his chances with broken bones than the hunters that barreled
through the jungle, leaving shaking trees in their wake.