The Outside (21 page)

“You think Ginger succumbed to spiritual evil?”

I stared down at my shoes. “She wasn’t evil. I know that. But the science doesn’t explain everything. There is something of pure evil at work here . . . and also God. I have to respect that.”

Alex stared down at his hands. “I’ve seen Matt’s experiment work. For me, the proof is in the pudding. And it would give us another chance to live to see tomorrow. Objectively.”

“It will change us. Make us something else. Something not human. And if we are no longer human . . . what are we?”

“I don’t know, Bonnet. I don’t know what the human race is becoming. But it needs to survive, in some form. Even if that form glows in the dark.”

“It is too . . . I don’t know that I can. It is turning away from everything I believe in. It is accepting modern technology . . . embracing it on a terrifying level. This is beyond using a cell phone or wearing britches. This is . . .” I struggled to find the words. “This is something irreversible. Something that I fear would destroy my soul.”

“And that’s the thing that scares you the most, isn’t it?”

“
Ja
. Before . . . when I was at home, I didn’t feel ready to be baptized. I was not really afraid of being caught out. It didn’t seem real. Now . . .” Tears filled my eyes. “Now that I have been separated from my family, I don’t want it to be forever. I know that I will likely not see them again on earth. But I want to know them in heaven.”

Alex stared out at the lake. “There’s nothing I can say that will change your mind on that, Bonnet. It’s an article of faith. And I respect that.”

“But you don’t feel that way,” I said slowly.

“No. I don’t. I don’t know the condition of my immortal soul, if I have one. But I’m pretty sure that the gods won’t mind if I do the best I can to preserve the life I’ve been given.”

“I understand.” But a pain in my chest began to flower.

“I’m going to ask Matt if he will give me the algae juice . . . whatever it is.”

He reached over and squeezed my hand. The waves washed hypnotically toward me, singing their exotic siren call. He stood up and walked back down the dock. Fenrir followed him. They left me alone to stare out at the lake and contemplate the ache in my chest.

The way I placed my faith in God, Alex placed his in science.

And there was no middle ground in these things, whether our paths led us to the same place or to vastly different ends.

Linh’s sister Yen was infected. We could all see it, in her pallor and the flecks of red growing in her eyes. Linh had been told, and she wailed like a banshee. I wondered if the tears burned her ruined eye socket. She wore a bandage over that eye, seeping red. Her sister gazed at that stain hungrily.

Peter and the rest of the men came to take Yen away. Peter carried a rifle, his mouth set in a grim line. Linh followed in their wake, her face swollen, and seeming strangely silent.

Alex and I followed at a respectful distance. I don’t know if we watched because we wanted to measure the character of this group of people we’d fallen in with, or because we wanted to make sure that the dirty work was done. I pulled my coat close around me and shuddered.

When Yen saw that they were dragging her to the gate, she howled and writhed in the men’s grip. They were wearing heavy gloves, but she hissed and spat. She didn’t yet have the full strength of a vampire, but she was strong. She kicked one of the men in the gut, knocking the wind from him. Peter stood back, holding the rifle at his shoulder. He couldn’t get a clear shot at her as she thrashed.

I covered my mouth with my hand. I had hoped that he would not have to shoot her. That she would surrender and go quietly. I glanced at her sister. Linh watched with a dull glaze in her good eye, her hands slack at her sides.

The men flung Yen outside the gate. Like the gate in my community, this gate seemed so symbolic, only an arm and nothing to keep anyone in or out. Just faith.

Yen sprawled on the ground. She turned, snarling, her hair in her mouth. She crawled back but could not cross over. It was as if an invisible wall kept her from moving beyond, and she bloodied her fingers on the pavement, scrabbling at the edge of it, with a high-pitched keening.

“Your science cannot explain that,” I said to Alex.

He was silent. The men, panting, had backed off. Peter lowered the rifle, let it dangle by the strap from his hands.

But Linh moved forward, slowly, as if sleepwalking. At first, I thought she was following her sister. Then I thought that perhaps she’d been glamoured, that she felt the pull of Yen’s need through the gate.

In a burst of speed, she snatched the rifle from Peter’s grasp. She lifted it to her shoulder, advanced upon the gate.

The men began to pursue her.

“No,” Peter said. “Let her go.”

Linh moved the slide back on the rifle, held it to her good eye. She looked down the barrel at her sister, hissing, on the street. I didn’t understand the language that they spoke, but I knew that Yen was pleading by her tone, knew that Linh said something soothing.

And then the loud crack of a rifle shot obliterated her soft words.

Yen fell backward on the pavement, her forehead blossomed in a red smear. Linh held the rifle out to her side, her gaze fixed on her sister, her back turned to us. Peter snatched the rifle away.

Linh stood there at the gate for a long time after, unmoving.

It was done.

***

“This is irreversible,” Matt said.

“It’s what I want,” Alex said. “It’s my only hope of getting north in one piece.”

The two men stood in the kitchen. Matt was sterilizing metal syringes in a pot of boiling water. I stood in the shadows, watching.

“I don’t know what it will do to you, long term,” Matt warned. “It could make you sterile. Give you cancer, or worse.”

“Nothing is worse than that.” Alex jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at Outside.

“If you’re willing, then, I want to try something different.” Matt went to the refrigerator and pulled out a dish of something that looked like mold. He unfolded plastic wrap on the top.

“Is that . . . the algae?” Alex asked. It looked faintly grayish green, floating on a pool of clear liquid.

“This isn’t the original culture . . . it’s a colony of it. I want to see if we can create separate colonies that can thrive, if we can perhaps take the cultures beyond the gate. Give the immunity to vampirism to other people.”

Alex nodded. “And I get to be your guinea pig. I figured that you guys had a motivation for letting us in.”

Matt shook his head. “Well, we try to be good Samaritans, but I wouldn’t pass up a chance to see if we can go beyond what we’ve done.”

I found my voice. “I don’t like the idea of you being part of an experiment.”

Alex reached out to me, took my hand. “I know, Bonnet. But I gotta try.”

I lowered my head. I had no choice but to accept this. He let my hand go.

“What can I expect?” Alex asked, rolling up his sleeve.

Matt fished a syringe out of the boiling water with a pair of tongs. “Well, it sucks, to be honest. I won’t lie to you. It’s painful. The algae and recombinant virus DNA will invade your cells. It will hurt like nothing you’ve ever felt. You’ll vomit, shake. It’s a lot like going through drug withdrawal.”

I could see Alex hesitate. He rocked back and forth on his toes as Matt drew up some of the fluid from the bottom of the dish with the syringe.

“Still want it?” he asked.

Alex stuck his arm out. “Yeah. Load me up, doc.”

The bright silver needle slipped underneath his skin. I heard Alex hiss in pain. The contents of the syringe disappeared slowly.

Matt nodded, withdrew the needle. “It’s done.”

Alex rubbed his arm, flexed his elbow.

I looked away. There was no going back.

***

Becoming an angel is not like I pictured it.

The Bible told me that angels are luminous shining beings, sitting at the foot of God. I believed that they bask in the direct love of God. There is no need for them to prove themselves. They have eternal love and eternal life.

Humans are not that fortunate.

Alex went to bed with a fever and stayed there.

I sat beside him with a bowl of cool water and a sponge. I bathed his hot face as he tossed and turned. I watched as cramps racked his body, stroked his hair as he retched into a bucket. He grew pale and his eyes sunken. Water would not stay down.

“You know, Bonnet,” he said. “I thought about forcing you to take the serum.”

My brow narrowed. “You wouldn’t—all that talk of respecting strength and self-determination?”

His sweaty hand crept toward mine like a spider. “But all that seems like nothing when you’re considering life and death. I want you to live.”

“I want you to live too.” And I wasn’t so sure that he was going to.

Three days later, he was still suffering. His skin was loose, and sweat plastered his hair to his forehead. He was freezing, teeth chattering. He’d grown delirious, babbling about bonnets and vampires and Dracula when his eyes were open. When his eyes were shut, his breathing was faint and shallow. His pulse was light and thready. Once or twice in the night, I thought he’d stopped breathing, only to hear him start again with a rasp.

I looked over his head at Matt standing in the doorway.

“Is this normal?” I demanded of him.

“Nothing’s normal around here,” he said. “But . . . it hasn’t been this bad before.”

“Do something!” I insisted.

“There’s nothing to do. Just wait . . . and hope he survives it.”

Furious, I lay next to Alex in bed. Fenrir was draped across his feet, watching him with worried eyes. I closed my eyes and prayed in the darkness, prayed that Alex would survive, even though he had turned his back on God’s plan for his human form.

I was pretty sure that even if he did survive, God would not accept him into heaven, no matter how much he might repent for it later. The only lifetime he would have was this one, here on earth.

And that made me angry. Angry that he would leave me. That he had somehow pushed me aside.

I drowsed, listening to his breathing. I slept with my hand on his chest, feeling his heart and rib cage move.

I dreamed strange dreams of glowing, wingless angels with sharp teeth that could sever bone. No matter how far I ran, I couldn’t escape them. They followed me wherever I fled, in darkness, in daylight, on ground sacred and profane.

Perhaps it was the sudden stillness that jolted me awake.

I opened my eyes to stare at Alex. I could see tiny blood vessels shining a phosphorescent green, a fine and blotchy webbing beneath his skin.

His breath shuddered under my fingers, and I saw the artery in his neck push light from his chest to his head. The light had spread beneath his tattoos, sharpening their black outlines in the darkness.

I pulled my hand away. He seemed alien to me. Unreal. Tainted.

His eyes opened. They glowed in the darkness.

Not so different from vampire eyes.

***

Alex had emerged from the grip of the serum. Alive, but changed.

He and I sat on the bench at the end of the dock, watching the gulls wheel overhead in the cold sunshine. The sky was clear and blue and the lake calm. Black ducks bobbed and fished in the rills of waves. A blue heron paced along the edge of the dock, opening his wings to the sun.

Alex and I sat at opposite ends of the bench. Fenrir sat on the ground between us, though he leaned against Alex’s leg. I knit my hands together. I felt that everything was leaving me. Without Alex, there was nothing left.

“What’s it like?” I asked at last.

He shrugged, the movement constricted by his hands in his pockets. “No different from how I felt before, now that I’m past the assimilation sickness.”

I glanced sidelong at him. “Really?”

He squinted at the distant horizon, and I could tell he was thinking. He took a hand out of his pocket and wiggled his fingers, examining them as if he hadn’t really looked at them before. I didn’t think that he would lie to me.

“It’s subtle. But I feel a bit lighter. A bit more at peace. I think that probably has to do more with the decision being done than any actual biological effects. But I feel . . . hopeful. Hopeful that some of us might survive this. That there might actually be a future.” He blew out his breath. “But it’s gonna be hard. It’s going to be beyond what any of us expected. Something completely crazy happened. But this might allow us to continue to exist.”

“You would take the serum north?”

He nodded into his coat. “Yeah. Matt says that the daughter cultures will grow all on their own. They just need cool temperatures and darkness. If there’s a chance that I could bring this to my parents, or, or . . . whoever’s left . . . I feel like I have to.”

“I understand.” But I also understood that I couldn’t go with him, not like I was now. Vulnerable. I had lost the
Himmelsbrief
, and I was just meat now. I had no choice but to stay here.

“A bunch of the others are going to take cultures, go out, try to find others and give them the serum.”

“It sounds like missionary work.” Plain people didn’t do such work. We believed in conducting life according to God’s will, according to the
Ordnung
, and teaching only by example.

“In some way, yeah. Perhaps, eventually, there will be enough of us to survive as a species.”

I looked down at my hands. I didn’t want to never see Alex again.

“You could do that too, you know. Take the serum back to your community.”

I can’t say that I hadn’t thought of that, but I figured it would be a useless errand. “It’s against every belief we have. It’s tampering with God’s creation. Railing against God’s will.”

“There’s a myth from ancient Egypt about how the souls of the dead are judged by Ma’at, the goddess of justice. The heart of a deceased person is weighed against a feather. If the heart is pure, lighter than the feather, then its owner is allowed to enter the afterlife.”

“That’s a lovely story.” I felt my jaw tighten. “But I don’t think it’s Ma’at who will be judging me.”