Wormwood Read online

  “Are you open to the possibility that there’s nothing we can do about it? That it may be too big to fight?”

  “Nothing’s too big to fight,” Rudy contended, an edge of defiance in his voice. “We may not win, but as long as my wife and family are alive, I’ll fight it.”

  Bud nodded, conceding the point. “Who did you plan on inviting to this discussion?”

  “The whole cul-de-sac,” Rudy answered. “Or at least the men — as many of them as will come.”

  “I might be able to help you out there,” Bud said, slowly warming to the idea. He picked up the map Rudy had unfolded on the table between them. “Who have you got left to talk to?”

  “The Dawleys,” Rudy said then pointed to the bottom of the sheet. “Also these last two bordering Kennedy. The Navaros and the Sturlings.”

  “What did Larry have to say?” Bud asked, leaning back, his blue eyes sharp again.

  Rudy hesitated, his face becoming fluid, undecided. He took a deep breath. “Larry doesn’t believe the danger will reach this far. He believes the government will arrive at a solution before it spreads this far west.”

  “And you don’t,” Bud concluded.

  “I suppose anything’s possible,” Rudy replied, “but I’m not counting on it.”

  A sardonic smile touched Bud Iverson. “I worked for the government for twenty years,” he confessed, though Rudy was already aware of this. “If they come up with a solution, it’ll be strictly by accident. At this moment, I’d say they’re far more concerned with digging foxholes and shredding documents.”

  Rudy looked a little closer at Bud. “Are you convinced the government is responsible?”

  “An interesting choice of words, but yes,” he nodded, picking up his tea, “almost certainly.”

  The two men gazed at one another then Bud reconsidered the map.

  “Mike and Pam are separated,” he reminded Rudy, tapping a blunt finger against the lot marked “Dawley”. “From what I’ve heard, he’s still in town though… What did you have in mind there?”

  “Perhaps I’ll speak to his son, Shane. He must be 17 or 18 — driving for at least a year. I’ll ask him to come to the meeting tonight instead of his father.”

  “All right,” Bud approved. “While you’re doing that, why don’t I tackle the last two? The Sturlings and the Navaros. I think I can get Don and Keith to come without starting a general panic.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” Rudy nodded. “I don’t know them very well. They would probably take the suggestion better coming from you.”

  “Well, I’ll do my best,” Bud assured him. “About three o’clock, you say?”

  “Yes, if that works out for everyone.”

  A flash of chrome and reflected sunlight cut through the window, streaking like a comet across the far wall. A trim, burgundy-colored Accord rolled to a stop in the Iverson’s driveway.

  “There’s Janie,” Bud said, regarding his daughter through the window. “Must be getting close to lunch.”

  5

  Rudy rang the Dawley’s doorbell and waited, standing in the recessed shade of the front step, the house itself grasping him in a loose embrace. To his ears it sounded vacant, or asleep. The light filtering through the textured glass panels that flanked the double doors was a gauzy shade of gray, the color of an old sock. No warm yellow or television flicker to be seen, so Rudy gave a halfhearted knock and then turned away, deciding no one was home.

  He was halfway down the walk when the latch clicked quietly behind him. He turned, shading his eyes with his hand. “Shane?” he said, questioning the pale face regarding him through the doorway.

  The boy nodded back at him, dyed black hair standing on end above a rim of eyeliner, as if he’d just tumbled out of bed. Skin so white it was edging toward transparency. A small silver hoop piercing the ridge of his right eyebrow.

  “I’m sorry,” Rudy apologized, thinking the boy looked ill, or on drugs. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  Shane shrugged. “I wasn’t asleep.”

  Rudy made his way back to the doorstep. “Is your mother home?”

  Shane shook his head. “She got called back to work,” he replied, eyeing Rudy as if he couldn’t quite figure out what this visit was about. The wary expression on his face suspected a complaint. A stereo playing too loudly or too late into the night.

  “Actually,” Rudy said, coming to an easy rest with his hands in his pockets, “it was you I wanted to talk to.”

  The suspicion deepened. “Oh yeah? What about?”

  6

  As morning peaked and fell toward afternoon, Rudy found himself sitting in front of the computer in his den, scanning the day’s headlines and finding them curiously lacking, as if someone had been busy deleting the day’s events before he had a chance to sit down.

  After last night’s video he expected something jarring: cities in smoke and ruin, panic and martial law, photographs of dead, gray faces. The lead story, however, was preoccupied with a highly publicized double-homicide in San Francisco: a striking brunette by the name of Patricia Brooks accused of waiting in her BMW outside a trendy bistro, then running down her husband and his mistress in front of dozens of shocked onlookers.

  The story didn’t mention either of the victims coming back from the dead to devour Mrs. Brooks, nor was there any mention of Wormwood in the next story: a utilities fraud investigation in Colorado.

  Frowning, Rudy scrolled up and checked the time signatures on the headlines and was surprised to find they were almost two days old. He clicked Refresh and the same page appeared, right down to the decimal point in the day’s stock market numbers.

  Of course they’re the same, he thought to himself, refreshing the page yet again. It’s a Saturday. The markets are closed. Yet he was willing to bet he wasn’t seeing Friday’s closing figures; the news site had simply stopped updating sometime after 1:47 on Thursday afternoon.

  A sudden image popped into his head: a computer terminal splashed with blood, the operator dead and gone off in search of his coworkers; the news no longer important. The news evident to anyone with two good eyes and a window.

  He tried another site and was rewarded with something a bit more current. Chicago was deep in the grip of the plague. There were also reports coming from Minneapolis, St. Louis, and Toronto.

  Slowly but surely it was spreading westward, moving like a great black curtain across the continent, dividing the land of the living from the land of the dead.

  There was a photo that had been intentionally blurred, pixilated into a mildly abstract pattern of blues and grays. A note beside the link to enlarge the photograph warned of explicit content.

  Rudy found that his hand was trembling on the mouse. It took him three tries to enlarge the photograph.

  A dead face gazed back at him through the new window, a face that, despite its decayed and mangled features, looked quite a bit like Frank Sinatra. The caption below the photo read: “Unidentified plague victim roams the streets of Philadelphia”.

  What the caption failed to mention, however, but was perfectly obvious, was that most of the man’s guts, including a long rope of soiled intestine, were dragging on the smoky thoroughfare behind him, begging to be stepped on or run over by the next passing car.

  Rudy stared at the former Mr. Sinatra (unidentified) for a long moment, a stark, icy horror settling over him like rigor mortis.

  He closed the window but the face stayed with him, hovering just out of reach, photographed with digital clarity in the stark light of day, roaming the smoky streets of Philadelphia, making its way steadily westward.

  Yellowseed. Wormwood.

  It stood in the doorway behind him, dragging its burden down the hall.

  This thing wearing Sinatra’s ruined face.

  7

  The plague made the national news again, though now the coverage was more distant, the footage taken from the air, out the sides of helicopters as they overflew badly-infected neighborhoods. Pi
eces of the United States were breaking away, crumbling to ruin in the lands east of the Mississippi, the disease spreading much faster now, faster than anyone anticipated. Smoke from burning cities rose in black plumes over the Atlantic, perfectly visible in satellite photographs. By night, the fires themselves were visible. The largest, in Mobile, roared over twenty square blocks. It looked like a vengeful star fallen to Earth.

  The sights had a sobering effect on Rudy’s guests. Larry contended that the satellite shots were fakes, computer-generated and therefore prone to manipulation, but even he shut up when one of the helicopters overflew a military base in North Carolina. There was a small, incredibly desperate war going on along its perimeter, hundreds (or perhaps thousands) of the infected massing outside its tall gates, creating breaches to pour through and spark sudden flashpoints.

  The men of Quail Street sat in the Cheng’s rec room, cans of soda or glasses of lemonade forgotten in their hands, and watched a company of infantrymen gun down scores of civilians before they were overrun and torn to pieces by the blood-frenzied mob. The cameraman, circling above this scene, began to break down into sobs, his lens zooming down, picking out gruesome details, trembling as he tried to lock on a small drama involving a wounded soldier trapped on top of a utility shed. Eventually the shed collapsed and the soldier disappeared, though his blood surfaced in places, like a blossom in the water above a shark attack.

  When they’d seen enough, Rudy switched off the set.

  “Good Christ Almighty,” Keith Sturling swore, rubbing his eyes as if the images wouldn’t go away. As if they were burned in with phosphor, glowing even in the dark. He was a lieutenant in the National Guard and the sight of a base collapsing like wet cardboard had shaken him badly.

  Larry looked numb, shell-shocked, the ice in his lemonade melting against his palms.

  Bud was gazing at the darkened television, as if he were still receiving a signal from North Carolina, or perhaps having trouble disconnecting himself from what was happening there.

  Don Navaro, who Rudy hadn’t met until that day, took out a cigarette and put it between his lips. He reached for his lighter, realized he was in someone else’s house, then tucked the cigarette away.

  “Go ahead and smoke;” Rudy told him, “at least unless no one else minds. My wife may have something to say about it later, but I’d rather that everyone was at ease here, focused on the problems we’ll likely be facing.” He paused, pacing from the bookcase to the fireplace. “I think what we just witnessed is on its way here. It may show up tomorrow, or next week, or perhaps a month from now, but it’s coming.”

  “Bullshit,” Larry growled, setting down his glass as Don set fire to the tip of his Winston.

  “Go ahead, Larry,” Rudy invited, giving him an encouraging gesture. “I didn’t call this meeting to ram my views down everyone’s throat. I want to hear what you have to say.”

  “This is all just a hoax!” Larry asserted, rising to his feet. “It has to be! There is no plague!”

  “We just got through watching a massacre on the fucking television,” Keith Sturling frowned. “How the hell can you stand there and say it’s a hoax?”

  Larry turned, the high red marks blazing on his cheeks again. “How many people have you seen killed on television? You don’t believe they’re actually dead, do you?”

  “This is the news were talking about, man; not the fucking movies!” Keith shot back, his voice rising. “Pull your head out of your ass!”

  “It’s the same process!” Larry contended, shouting right back. “Just because Dan Rather reads it off a teleprompter doesn’t mean it’s the truth!”

  Keith opened his mouth to return another salvo but Bud got up from his chair, stepping between them. “Let’s just discuss these things calmly now, shall we, and not forget we’re guests in this house.” He smoothed back a lock of iron-gray hair that had fallen over his brow. “I’m sure we’ll all get a chance to air our views. Now,” he exhaled, turning toward Larry, “let’s start with the basic assumption that what the news is showing us is, indeed, actually happening. Larry, you seem to have a unique stance on all of this, so why don’t we start with you.”

  “What’s the use? You all seem to have your minds made up against me.” His jaw shifted. “I didn’t come here to be shouted down or laughed at.”

  “Then maybe you ought to explain your position more clearly,” Bud suggested. “Despite what we just saw on television, you maintain it’s a hoax. Can you tell us why you’re convinced of that?”

  Larry Hanna looked at the faces of his neighbors; faces that he passed and waved to, day in and day out, for almost six years; all staring back at him now as if he’d suggested the Earth might really be flat after all. He considered walking out, wishing them luck in their grand paranoia, but the trouble with that was he couldn’t walk far. They were, after all, his neighbors; he couldn’t pick up his house and walk away with that as well.

  So he sat down again, ready to receive the stones of their derision.

  “I can’t accept that these are dead people, and that’s what it all comes down to,” he said with a sigh. “If death is no longer a reality — which, taxes aside, is the only real absolute we have — then where does that leave us?”

  “Standing hip-deep in a pile of shit,” Keith Sturling said softly.

  Larry ignored the remark, the root and depth of his distress becoming evident now. “Think about it,” he implored, looking at each of them in turn. “Where does it leave us? If that…” he pointed at the darkened TV screen, “is what waits for us after we die, what does that say about God?” He shook his head, angry. “That He’s abandoned us? That He’s stopped listening? I mean, what other conclusion can you come to?”

  Rudy quietly cleared his throat. “You may be taking this, well…” — he hesitated, searching for words that wouldn’t offend or sound condescending — “too metaphysically. It’s shaky at best to start second-guessing God; assigning Him motives. From what I’ve gathered, this all started with a fallen defense satellite, which makes it more or less our doing. God had no part in it.”

  “Oh, but He should,” Larry replied, the broken sadness in his eyes deep enough to drown in. “I’m not the kind of Christian who thinks God should step in and solve the world’s problems — make the Seahawks win on Sunday or tie a nice rainbow of peace around the Middle East — but this has to be an affront to Him. It has to be. If the walking dead don’t make Him sit up and take notice, He might as well be gone, or dead.”

  He looked down at his hands, empty and useless.

  “I can’t put my faith in a god like that.”

  “So what do you intend to do?” Bud Iverson asked. “Fold up like a cheap suitcase and march Jan and the kids out to the street to be slaughtered? Is that any better than a lost faith?”

  Larry put his head in his hands, shaking it slowly, vehemently, as if he still refused to believe he’d have to make such a choice. That buying plywood and .22 shells were tantamount to throwing 33 years worth of Sundays down the drain. “God help me, I don’t know,” he admitted.

  “Larry,” Rudy said softly. “Listen to me. The issue of God aside, we may not have much time. Every hour, every minute that we sit here debating, the shelves at the hardware stores and the supermarkets are going to get thinner and thinner. People are going to see what’s happening back east and start to panic. Some of them will pack up their families and leave town, head out to less populated areas to try to get away from it, but most of us will probably stay in our homes and dig in.

  “Now it’s my suggestion, for whatever it’s worth, that you take care of your wife and your two sons, take care of yourself, and let God worry about His own plans. It may be that He’ll surprise us all in the end — who’s to say? — but we’ll have to keep ourselves alive long enough to see it. There are more ways to commit suicide than pills or a gun to your head… sometimes just giving up is enough. Do you hear what I’m saying?”

  Larry looked up sobe
rly and nodded.

  “Good.” Rudy picked up his lemonade and took a long drink, as if clearing his palate. He set the glass down and let his eyes roam over the faces of his neighbors. “Now what I’m proposing is simple enough: we pool our resources and protect one another’s backs, when and if this thing finally shows. We buy supplies — canned food, bottled water, guns and ammunition, whatever we need to get ourselves through this — and we stick together as a group to keep it from marching up Quail Street.”

  “Look,” Keith Sturling spoke up, “I don’t mean to rain on your parade, but I just saw a U.S. Army base overrun with those things.” He glanced around the circle and came back to Rudy. “How do you expect to hold them off here, using rakes and shovels, when they couldn’t keep them out with an entire armory at their disposal?”

  A murmur of assent greeted this. Don Navaro snubbed out his cigarette, nodding.

  “He’s right. All I’ve got is an old shotgun and a hunting rifle. That’s not going to last long against a mob like that,” he said, gesturing toward the television.

  Rudy held up his hands, palms open, as if surrendering. “Look,” he said, “I don’t pretend to know any more about this than you, but what I do know is I’m not going to give in without a fight. It may well be our fate to be overrun after firing a few futile shots, but I’ll go to whatever awaits me knowing I fired them. On the other hand,” he continued, “what we saw on television is just one perspective of what’s happening on that base.” He nodded at Keith. “How many men are inside that base that the helicopter can’t show us, holding their own against the attack?”

  “I don’t know… a hundred, five hundred?” Sturling shrugged and conceded the point. “But how long can they hold out? And what’ve they got left to return to once it’s over?”

  Bud rose to field that one, his tone snappish, impatient. “I don’t think all of you understand what’s happening here. This isn’t a choice between balling Miss America or winning the lottery, and choosing not to play isn’t an option. This disease, when it comes, isn’t going to play by any sense of fairness. It’s going to be ugly. It’s going to be death or survival, and if that weren’t bad enough, there seems to be a big gray area in the middle that sends you back to play for the other team once you’re dead, which means that if it happens to you, you’re going to be doing your level best to tear apart everything you’ve come to love and cherish. That means friends, family… maybe one or two of us as well. Get that through your goddamn heads. What Rudy’s talking about here is a choice between sticking together or going it alone. There are no odds or guarantees in that, but if it helps think about this: if by chance you do get infected, at least you know you’ve got someone beside you to put you back down; and from what I’ve seen, that’s no small blessing.”