Parasite p-1 Read online

  “And what happens if you have another one? SymboGen is the only reason you’ve survived the last two.”

  “Maybe they’re over.” Maybe. Or maybe they’d started before my accident. I’d seen the traffic camera footage of the crash: one second, normal girl driving; the next, spasms and a total loss of control. It was terrifying, especially because I couldn’t remember it at all. “They’ve been tapering off.”

  “Have they? You could have been having attacks for months before your accident. You weren’t always open with us… before. You could have been very sick and still decided not to say anything, because you didn’t want us to know.”

  I took a deep breath, but I didn’t object. Everything I knew about Sally Mitchell told me that he was right. There was no point in arguing with the truth.

  “Apart from that… we still haven’t found a medical cause for your attacks.” He glanced away. I frowned. He kept talking: “So there’s no reason to believe it won’t happen again, and given the amount of damage the first one did—damage we’re still finding out about, and that you’re still recovering from—we have no way of knowing what the next one would do to you.”

  “So it’s my fault you can’t move against SymboGen,” I said. The bitterness in my voice surprised even me.

  Dad blinked. Then he shook his head, and said, “No. You’re a part of the greater whole, but it’s not entirely on you.”

  “I know, but…”

  “This morning you asked me whether I knew anything that I wasn’t sharing with you. There isn’t much. But one of the things I do know is that the behavior of the afflicted is starting to change. They’re starting to become aggressive. Your friend… this is the first I’ve heard of someone actually dying because they’d been attacked by someone who was sick. It may be because she didn’t try to step away. We very rarely react defensively to the people we love.”

  The first person I’d seen with the sleeping sickness had been a little girl, pursued by her mother. “Are we just hoping that no one else who gets sick has anybody around who cares about them?”

  My father grimaced. “No. But Sal, we don’t know enough to know what’s happening. Most of the people who get sick don’t turn violent. We don’t want people to start turning on their family members because they’re frightened—and this is already a terrifying illness. People you know and love seem to disappear before your eyes. It would be irresponsible of us to make that even more frightening.”

  “So you’re just going to say nothing, and let people like Devi keep getting hurt?”

  “We’re not suppressing any information. I’m sure the news will pick this up and start telling the world very soon, if they haven’t done so already. But we’re not going to make any official statements until we know more than we know right now.” He stood. “It’s a horrible solution. There are no good solutions left.”

  “Dad—”

  My father paused in the process of leaving the room. He looked back over his shoulder at me and said, quietly, “You know, Sal, I’m very glad I’ve had the chance to know you. You’re a good person, and you still surprise me.”

  I blinked at him, not sure what I could say to that. He took advantage of my brief silence and made his escape. I stared after him. Finally, I turned to Beverly, and asked, “Any thoughts?”

  She wagged her tail.

  Eventually, I got up and closed my bedroom door, and sometime after that, I managed to fall asleep. Sleep didn’t come easily, and once I found it, my dreams were full of darkness. Darkness, and the drums.

  I knew I was alone in the house as soon as I opened my eyes. There was a quality to the silence that spoke of emptiness, not stillness. Even Beverly was gone, although that might just mean that she was out in the backyard rather than warming my feet. I rolled over and squinted at the clock. It was almost ten. No wonder I was by myself. Everyone with a more respectable job had long since taken off.

  The stillness endured while I rolled out of bed and found my robe. I went padding out into the hall and toward the kitchen. Maybe there would be some leftovers from the previous day’s SymboGen-sponsored breakfast. It hadn’t poisoned any of us the day before. It wasn’t going to poison me now.

  The sliding glass door to the backyard was open, and there was a note on the fridge, where I would be sure to see it. It was held in place with a magnet shaped like a slice of watermelon, and was written in my mother’s characteristically careful print:

  Sal—

  Your father told me what happened. I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I hope you managed to get enough sleep, and that you’re feeling better today. Please just leave a note if you need to go and be with Nathan today. We’ll understand.

  Beverly is in the backyard, and I made sure that we left you some of yesterday’s goodies for your breakfast. You have to remember to eat. Your implant needs food as much as you do.

  Feel better, and call if there’s anything that you need.

  Love,

  Mom

  I smiled as I finished puzzling through the note. Then I took it off the fridge, folded it, and placed it in my pocket. It was good to know that I had family on my side, no matter what else might be going on in the world.

  Devi had thought she had family on her side, too. My smile faded. I got the remains of the scrambled eggs and sliced fruit from the day before, put them on a plate, and sat down at the breakfast table to eat. I barely tasted anything. I kept thinking of Devi’s face when she saw me coming into the office, the way she laughed, the way she always knew exactly what to say…

  The way she talked about her bulldog, Minneapolis, who was probably sitting at home alone and confused, wondering when her people were going to be coming back to get her. The mouthful of eggs I’d been in the process of chewing suddenly tasted like ashes. I forced myself to swallow, putting my fork down on the plate. I was done. I couldn’t eat anything else, or I was going to be sick. Even if my implant still needed food, I just couldn’t.

  Sometimes people who don’t want to think about what their implants really are—living, independent organisms that just happen to be genetically tailored to live inside the human body—will let themselves neglect the nutritional needs of their implants, and that can be bad. There are implants specifically designed to need less in the way of caloric support, but they’re limited in their distribution to places with bad famines and poor ongoing medical treatment. Low-calorie implants don’t do as much, so they’re reserved for places that can’t support anything else.

  I put my plate down on the floor and whistled. The expected black Lab didn’t appear. I frowned and called, “Beverly! Food!” She still didn’t appear.

  That wasn’t normal. It was strange to get through a meal without a black shadow appearing at my heels to ask for her share. It was unheard of for her to actually ignore food when it was offered.

  “Beverly?” I started toward the back door, tugging my robe a little tighter. It was hard to keep from playing out nightmare scenarios. Like maybe she’d managed to dig a hole under the fence and was running loose somewhere, looking for the way home. But how would she know where home was? Would she run for the house where she used to live, the one where no one was waiting to let her in? I knew my concern for Devi’s dog was feeding my fear for my own. That didn’t make the fear any less real.

  “Beverly!” I stepped onto the back porch, and stopped, frowning.

  Beverly was still in the yard. That was a momentary relief. But she was standing next to the side gate, stiff-legged, ears pushed all the way forward, and the hair on her spine was standing up. Her tail was tucked low. She looked like a dog that was getting ready to charge into battle against a much larger enemy, and even though she knew she was going to lose, she was going to do it anyway. It was her duty.

  “Beverly, come,” I called. She didn’t come. It was the first time she’d ever refused a command. I started down the steps to the lawn, still holding my bathrobe tight around my chest. We don’t have many dangerous animals in Colma,
but rattlesnakes weren’t outside the realm of possibility. If Beverly had somehow managed to corner a snake, I wanted to pull her away from there as fast as I could.

  As I got closer, I realized that she was growling, a low, deep sound that seemed to start in her paws and work its way all the way up through her body before rumbling past her lips. It was the sort of thing that would have been terrifying if she’d been directing it at me. Since she was directing it at the fence, it was scary in a different way. I sped up, trying to see what was in front of her.

  There was nothing there but grass. Whatever she was growling at was on the other side of the fence.

  “Beverly?”

  She didn’t respond. I stepped forward and let go of my robe in order to lean down and take hold of her collar. She kept growling. Whatever she was growling at didn’t make a sound.

  “Come on, Beverly. Let’s go inside.” I tugged on her collar. She dug her feet into the soil and held fast, refusing to be moved. I pulled harder. She still didn’t budge. It was like I was trying to move a concrete statue instead of a dog—only concrete doesn’t usually growl. “Beverly, come on!”

  She turned to look at me for the first time since I’d joined her in the backyard. It wasn’t a full turn, just enough for her to see me out of one eye. Her expression was strangely pleading, filled with the anxious need of a good dog to protect her person. If she’d been human, I would have interpreted that look as “let me do this, let me have my job.” I let go of her collar, stepping away. Beverly’s head promptly snapped back into its original position, all her attention fixing on the fence. She never stopped growling.

  I wasn’t a stupid actress in a horror movie, despite the fact that I had gone running outside in my bathrobe to see what was wrong with the dog; no matter how much I wanted to know what she was growling at, I wasn’t going to open the gate and find out. But there were other ways. Feeling suddenly very exposed, I turned and ran for the back door. I didn’t shut it—Beverly would need a way back into the house—but I still felt better once there was a wall between me and whatever had my dog so upset.

  I wanted to call the police, but I needed a better reason than “something upset my dog.” I swallowed hard, and started for the living room. There was a window there that would give me a perfect view of the side yard, and the gate. I’d be able to see whatever it was that Beverly was growling at. I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I was absolutely sure that I needed to.

  I made my way slowly toward the window, wishing I had a weapon, or any idea how to use one. I would have felt better. There were probably lots of things that could be used as improvised weapons in the kitchen and living room, but I didn’t know what would work, and so I didn’t reach for anything. I wasn’t a fighter. I did, however, have a pane of glass between me and whatever was in the side yard. I held that thought firmly at the front of my mind as I inched around the couch and peered out the window.

  Three of my neighbors were standing in the side yard, their hands down at their sides, staring at the fence. I recognized them all, even if I only knew one—Mr. Carson from next door—by name. None of them were moving. One of them, a woman, was wearing a bathrobe a little newer than mine. Her socks were soaked and grass stained. The other woman was wearing one shoe, and her hair looked like it was halfway-combed. I bit my lip. They were just standing there.

  Then Mr. Carson turned and looked at me.

  I let out a little scream and stumbled backward, falling over the couch in my retreat. His eyes were like Chave’s had been: totally empty of anything resembling humanity or life. Dead eyes. He looked at me like a man who had crawled out of his own grave.

  I didn’t stand up once I managed to recover from my fall. Instead, I scrambled backward on all fours, keeping my eyes fixed on the window. If they were moving, I didn’t want to know about it, didn’t want to see it—and yet somehow, I knew they were moving, that Mr. Carson at least was walking toward the window where he’d seen me, and the other two were very likely following him. I didn’t know how I knew, but I knew, just like I knew that I was alone.

  The slap of Mr. Carson’s palms hitting the window was one of the loudest things I’d ever heard. Beverly came racing into the living room, barking madly, and threw herself up onto the couch. Her paws left muddy prints behind them, standing out boldly against the pale tan cushions. She kept barking, her ears flat against her skull, her attention fully focused on the window.

  Beverly was inside. That meant that there was no longer anything between the gate and the open back door.

  Sheer terror forced me to my feet, and I ran for the back door, not allowing myself to look at the window. At least one of them was there. If all three of them were there, I might be fine. I might—

  The woman in the bathrobe was on the back porch. I screamed again and grabbed the handle, yanking on the heavy glass door. There was a moment when I thought that it wasn’t going to move. Then it slipped into position on the track, allowing me to pull it shut before the woman reached me. I fumbled with the lock, snapping it into position. Her hands hit the glass, palms first. Then she stopped. Completely. She was still breathing, but there was no other movement; she might as well have been a statue.

  A statue with dead, dead eyes.

  “Oh God oh God oh God,” I gasped. My heart was hammering against my ribs, and the sound of drums was in my ears again. It was almost loud enough to drown out Beverly’s barking. I wanted to close the curtain and shut out the sight of the woman’s empty stare. I couldn’t make myself move. In that moment, it was like my body had decided that it was no longer interested in working in tandem with my brain.

  Maybe this was what it felt like for Sherman and the others when the sleeping sickness first caught hold of them. Like they had suddenly become observers in their own lives, completely unable to make their bodies respond to their commands. Maybe this was how it was forever. Maybe they never got to stop watching—

  The woman at the back door raised one hand before slapping her palm deliberately back against the glass. I jumped, startled into motion. Her dead gaze never wavered. Beverly was still barking, and the hammering drumbeat of my heart was still thunderous in my ears.

  I looked into the woman’s dead eyes and knew that whoever she’d been a few hours before, she wasn’t that person anymore. There was no experience or identity in her eyes; they weren’t just dead, they were empty. Everything that made her who she was had been drained away, replaced by some set of instincts I didn’t understand. Instincts that had, for whatever reason, drawn her and her companions to my yard.

  She slapped the door again, her palm pressing white as a snail’s belly against the glass. I took a step backward. Even that small motion felt like a victory. See, it said, you aren’t like them. You still move when you want to move. You’re still you, and not anything else. The thought helped me take another step. The woman kept slapping the door, each movement slow and deliberate. I didn’t take my eyes off her as I kept backing up, finally reaching the table where I’d left my phone.

  Picking it up, I hit the voice recognition switch on the side—a helpful leftover from the days when I’d been speaking but not yet capable of reliably reading the controls on my own phone—and said, “Dial Dr. Steven Banks.”

  The words surprised me. I’d been intending to call the police right up until I spoke. At the same time, calling Dr. Banks made perfect sense. If SymboGen knew things about the sleeping sickness that they weren’t sharing, maybe they’d also know how to make the people around my house go away. The police wouldn’t have that information. I didn’t want anybody getting hurt.

  “Dialing,” said the phone politely, switching itself to speaker in response to my command. The sound of ringing followed.

  A man I didn’t know picked up the line, saying, “Dr. Banks’s office. Dr. Banks is in a meeting right now, may I take a message?”

  “No, you can transfer me to him,” I said. “This is Sally Mitchell. It’s an emergency, and even if you’re new, you
still have a card with instructions telling you what to do if I call. Please. Put me through to Dr. Banks.” It wasn’t the politest greeting ever. I didn’t feel like I had time for much politeness. Not with the dead-eyed woman pawing at my back door and staring at me like I was the answer to a question she was no longer fully capable of asking.

  “O-of course, Miss Mitchell,” stammered the man on my phone, sounding stunned. “I’ll put you right through.”

  “Thank you,” I said distractedly. I’m not sure he heard me. The phone clicked, and the sound of his breathing was replaced by the sweet acoustic guitar hold music of the SymboGen communications system.

  I waited, none too patiently, and listened more to Beverly barking than to the music. As long as she was still barking, the man was still outside. Hopefully the second woman was there with him, and not exploring some other avenue into the house. I shivered a bit, despite the fact that it was a perfectly warm day. If she got inside, I didn’t know what I would do.

  The phone clicked. “Sally?” said Dr. Banks. He sounded concerned but not panicked. If anything, there was a note of relief in his voice, like he’d been waiting for the day I would call him voluntarily for a very long time. “What’s wrong? You gave Jeff a bit of a scare.”

  “I’m having a bit of a scare myself right now, Dr. Banks,” I retorted. “I’m alone in my house with my dog, and three people with that sleepwalking sickness are here. One of them is at my back door. She keeps hitting the glass.” It seemed like such a small thing when I said it out loud like that, but it was impossible for me to properly articulate how horrible every little smacking sound was. Her palm was starting to look more red than white when she hit the door, like the repeated impacts were irritating the skin. If it hurt her at all, she didn’t show it. Her expression remained exactly the same, as blank as it had been the moment she appeared on the porch.