“There are forces at work that I'm not in control of, and I realize that I am one to react to the moment. I can see the threads of the rug woven together in complex knots—yet I only see one section of it. And I am not the weaver. I am merely a thread that is pulled through the intertwining knots. You are master of yourself—does this include your life?” Letters, letters, letters on a wrinkled page, and just on X-Mas Eve. The writer had left it by GDI the other day.
She tilted her head slightly and put it away.
***
The town was peeled with plague once again. Sickness brought sickness, and Hayven had a special brand of stupid needed to foster it. Hers were infected, and many had passed through the Grave Mind in the past few days. Several times, a constellation of times, Smiles pressed fingers into neck and felt warmth but no answer in pulse. The disease clung to people even through death, and they’d keep dying. She disliked this.
The room was darting and shaking with exhaustion. The fire died low. The heat radiating from people’s skin right now served to heat the hall from the boards to the beams. Whatever the town caught this time seemed likely to wipe the population entirely—estimate: forty-eight hours. This sickness was tearing through people in a day, and no miracle saint, Nazi, or first-born fixation could protect them this time.
Through the rows of padded benches and makeshift cots that was now the Double Tap, Templeton drifted as a grim-faced ghost. He attempted to keep the spirits up, but his expression was murder when he thought no one was looking. Bessie’s bed was clean and empty in the corner by the never-used Franklin stove, where the couches were pushed to the side. She had died describing Jack and Caleb to anyone who would listen, about them telling her it was okay to let go. Feverdreams could be vivid. The dead man circled on.
Three times. Alexa had died and went through three times. Short of weapons or the black plating which often identified her, the woman’s eyes were perpetually wet and her hair a burred tangle. She had forced herself up against the wall of the Tap with some last defiance, but her face could have been carved from wood. For all intents and purposes, Alexa was no longer there. All of her limbs had the weight of mental death. Antigone still had not come out, zed or otherwise. No confusing them now. In the piecemeal moments where the Tap grew silent enough, her ears prickled at the roaring outside the walls. She kept listening for it—Stu’d have to be dragged in once he was spent. If he was spent.
Drenched bodies twisted their sheets. People she knew cried out or curled in, sometimes until the ropes Sparrow had provided tore open their skin: Daisy strained, insisting tightly in a somehow still-polite voice (passed out twice trying to tend to what was left of her family); Aladdin, tight-pantsed and purple vested, raging ever since She died (assaulted someone who had dealt with grief with a badly timed joke—the pants were either stuffed or he had another disease entirely); Easy, a bear in khaki but not using his force even now (wouldn’t stop trying to wander); Red Lynx, who for once had no one staring at his shirtless toned chest (believed he was a Genjian king since second death); Awl, finally free of knives and allowed a veil over her face for the lights (feral). Funny how in crisis, people either spread out or curled small. Where had Atreyu gone? ….Shit. The man was peaceful until he wasn’t and she didn’t have the ability to handle the latter. She didn’t have the energy to break any more legs, the priests couldn’t take any more confessions, the psions couldn’t calm one more, and Templeton and his like had been done and wasted for hours. They were waiting for the night to be even half done.
Three days ago the plague surfaced in the body of Mel House, and most of them had died twice if not more since, carrying with them the mentally wrenched state death brought. Their chances began to be obvious. No Blood Notes were left (what anyone was admitting), and even the grave robbers had stopped making pity deals and decided to study this particular development from afar. There were not enough people able to go into the Near Grave anyway. Krampus, Kringle, and Kringus had never came. Before the town had died fast enough anyway. Now they just tended to die and stay dead.
“It’s X-Mas,” they had whispered. Like a curse or a prayer. “It’s X-Mas.”
And then Jeanie had died.
Crowley flatfuck left town, unsurprisingly. Stepan never came back to get sick. Still hiding, always hiding. From his skin, his name, his allies. She had done what she could, there. The predictable faces what knew survival first and foremost were also notably absent. Smiles had never been given the choice. As a sawbones she was one of the first sick. The best hope of finding a cure was here.
They don’t plan to help you. She took off her hat and sink-filled it before splashing it back on her head. Her neck ran with black water. In here, the buzzing was less. Out there, one could hardly get shoulder room. Planned culling. The cure’s found already. Where are the others? Likely they’ll set fire to the building. They’ll… One would think, with all of her experience, she’d be better at ignoring voices in her head… Anyway, they couldn’t cool the room any more, or all of them would be at risk for hypothermia as well as fever. The hills were packed with snow in the corners and outside was brutal. Had been brutal for days.
“It’s still paranoid schizophrenia,” Rhodes had whispered against her ear that morning. All the medics were sick, and it was only an hour after dawn. In complete darkness, in a hole in the ground, they headed toward a slash of light where the curtain parted. “It’s the kind that’ll stay unless you get treated, Smiles. I don’t have the energy right now…” No one did, apparently. Like she was going to believe it. This game against her wouldn’t end. Rhodes would kill her as much as anyone, more likely because--
Smiles viciously lashed at her own thoughts, for almost trying to pull out of the doctor’s arms. Of course no one had energy. Of course everyone was exhausted. Headsick. Irrational, her own self. The two of them were the only thing holding each other up as they dragged themselves out of the morgue. To pull away was to fall. A metaphor? “You’ve got depression,” she forced after a moment of close examination. “Will you still be able to work?” They needed this research and they needed a cure. They needed one twenty-eight hours ago. The wind gusted freezing, and both of them flinched momentarily before staggering on. Wolfram and Tommy worked as morgue vultures despite the risk, and soon stronger arms (and accented swearing) helped them back to the Tap.
“Will you?” Rhodes asked dully, and the sawbones didn’t answer.
Pheebee was on her last hours; Smiles felt strange echoes every time she glanced at the girl shivering under blankets in a semi-conscious state. The fever did not mix well with the consumption eating Penelope Beatrice Anastasia Mia Kishi Taracova Takamatsu Jaina Fisher (Anne Jai)’s lungs. Her death would come unless they manufactured a cure in the next thirty minutes. Timers chased the sawbones’ thoughts. Corbin: three hours. Jayce: seven. Alia: two, and the redhead still tried to get water to people. Rat: just out of the morgue, had a good time before she sunk down again. Everyone had become accustomed to timing, at this point.
The doctors and scientists had already made two cures what only delayed the inevitable. There were almost no Merican faces now, and there had been no zed. To no surprise of Rasputin the Grave Mind seemed to exist in actual shock at this point. Going through, there was only the sound of screaming.
Cecelia drifted past with her brow furrowed as she replaced wet towels with new wraps of snow. Her thick waves of dark brown hair went free and the beginning mark of her accension curled elegantly around one eye. Flushed but determined, stony, Cecelia continued as she had since the start of this. It was difficult to see what the priestess thought. An actual threat. Knew too much. She’s been waiting to kill you. How often does she talk to Attica? They’d be working together. It would be easy to end this first. She doesn’t expect it.
The sawbones inwardly grimaced, but emotion oozed out under the bandage. Self-control. To ride these waves, as Alexa said, required practice, though it felt nothing like waves, sailing, or swimming. It did feel a little like drowning.
“For fuck’s safe, another! Ding!”
Wolfram entered the front door hunched forward and dripping, a Yorker hat pushed low across his face. About one hundred voices shouted at him to either keep it open or close it. Pigeon drooped in his arms like a length of sea-rope being dragged off the side of a ship. With his military coat and graying hair, he looked more like some great snow-dusted crow than a pigeon now. How many times had the two of them been pulled into this building barely breathing, sprinkling the floors with tiny prints of red or digging their nails into the edges of benches while someone set a bone? Seemed it was the two of them, always dying but never dead. Until now. Typical to life.
Tommy was nowhere to be seen. Soon she’d check the roads outside for collapsed martyrs again. Hayven, bewildering. Why are they pretending? They won’t get anything from--
The old bird was gathered up into her arms, and she nested him into the padded blankets. This was next to blood-drenched Sparrow, who had been screaming at anyone who so much as looked at him, and Scraps, young and blonde and sturdy, whose broken questions about Eddie stifled most other attempts at conversation amongst the crippled ill. Most.
Harvey limped around like a kicked dog, muttering frantically. “I could have left. I could have, really? Who cares? Two-Smiles did it, or fucking Rosemary! But I just had I just had to try to be a hero. ‘Way to go Harvey, oo hoo hoo, because it’s not like anyone even appreciates it!’ They’ll all say thanks Yossarian, thanks Barnes, thanks Smiles, thank you Rosemary and Rasputin, and who gives a SHIT about anyone else. Everyone’s going to die and I never asked for this. Why should I even have tried? Where did it GET me? I never should have come to this town…”
“Thank you, Harvey…” Scraps whispered, brushing his arm with her fingers.
The Vegasian cast her a stricken look.
Dross had to be fully restrained and often broke the ropes, some shell shock running through him. Whatever he saw now and then, it wasn’t here and he fully intended to kill it. Though Amaroq had been helping with the violent ones the past day, he now leaned against the posting board heavily. Not for much longer.
“Tend to… my family first…” Pigeon said, gasping as she shoved a shirt stuffed in snow on his head. Penelope Carter rushed by, at this point a mask of determination. The bird isn’t convincing. You won’t--
“Are you waiting for Smiles to give a shit about any of us? Good fucking luck.” Sparrow growled. His strangely expressive face stretched with gored scabs, normal. The chunks of dark hair missing were not. He finished with a cruel snort of laughter. With his teeth showing and grief-crazed eyes, he looked like a Hate.
Stop. Don’t think. Concentrate on what’s going to be done. I’ll check first row again. After I will go to second row. I will see if there are any meals to take to the medics. I will check on Stu. I can’t hear him. This is important.
Flushed, she tried to wipe her face of sweat and was surprised to find a mask in the way and the rest of her arm smeared black and white. Her eyes worried at it for a few moments, quietly bewildered.
“So how are you faring?” “Smiles okay?” She would have jumped. Templeton and Kit, murmuring and chiming. He always had a way of popping up. Of course he did… Instead, she nodded mutely. Ellie sent a letter saying she’d be in town soon, hopefully to take the burden of Kit. The kid had been working nonstop for three days, and though uninfected the exhaustion threatened to take her.
“Would you accompany me for a brief moment outside, then, Smiles?” he asked a little too kindly. He knew of her state right now. Outside, alone? They weren’t ill, a threat. I’m not a fool, she almost informed him, but the words were swallowed with bitter taste.
“Why don’t you bring Mr. Pigeon along as well?”
They stood on the icy ramp by the side entrance, with two squares of orange light to see by from the door windows. Vertigo. When had she moved? From the tree line across the field a lonely figure watched cloth-mouthed and regal. A single X-Mas tree glowed behind her from CBGB’s front porch, and Rosemary watched sadly. Marcus had put his foot down this time—the Van Buren family would not lose another, not when its queen was pregnant.
Pigeon began to slip from the sawbones’ arms, and Smiles slung his barely conscious form over the railing. Both of them used it liberally to remain upright, despite her one hand remaining firmly on a knife. No one could convince her to relinquish the one protection she had. Paranoia, schizophrenia, whatever they called it— she wouldn’t leave herself helpless, especially not now. They could tear her apart like wolves any moment.
“We’ve made another cure,” the dead man said, and very deliberately. He held up a vial in the dim air, murky liquid with a slick of light reflected across the glass.
“Help him first.” Unsurprisingly, Pigeon protested this decision. They’re trying to kill you. They know what you are. This is their quiet way to do it without a fuss.
“It’s safe. No need to worry,” he insisted calmly. The dead man injected it into Pigeon, Itai, whatever existed in the man’s head now, but cures were not worked in seconds. Nor were murders, necessarily. Dead. Him too? Didn’t think he’d be willing to kill his own butler. She shook her head again, feeling anxiety rip through her. Headsick. That was all. Not real feeling, just an illusion. But wasn’t her reasoning sound?
“Talk to me. Why not?” he asked brightly, as if she were playing a joke on him. How did he still have the energy? (Because he had to.) She couldn’t voice the why. It made sense (It did. It had to.) but trying to make it into words… she…
“There are other people who need it more,” she repeated numbly. It was another deflection and they both knew it. It really was unacceptable.
“It’s not like you to act like this, you know,” he said conversationally, sitting next to her on the railing with a small smile. He left his bag, where his weapon was, a few feet away. “You’re much cleverer than that. The Grave Mind left something in your head, and I don’t think you want it there either…” He clapped his hands together as if everything was settled. “First, though, we have to get this blasted sickness out of you.” There was just the faintest hint of urgency, just a hint of what must be tearing through him. His next words struck as more serious, quieter. “If you die again, there isn’t a coming back. You can’t let it win.”
Smiles gripped the rails and forced herself to focus on the stars. “During the brain locusts…” she stated monotone, despite her seething head. “You could have killed me then. You didn’t.” She had asked why, then and other times, and he said he was selfish. Such a Templeton answer…
“Frances, please… I need you to trust me, just this time...”
She needed to turn her thoughts off. The knit green band peeked out at his wrist as a reminder. Her hand accepted the syringe. “I do.”
Smiles pushed her sleeve and drove in the needle.
Euphoria scraped the lines of her veins and icy air burst her lungs—taller than the sky, deeper than the tree roots—as she leaned into an injection she knew too well. The syringe glittered at an angle where she could see the color now, a sickly, misty red indistinguishable from blood except in texture. This would do nothing for a fever, but it didn’t matter. The feeling rose, consuming any thought of reason, running through her like blinding lines of lightning. She buzzed with happiness, and everything was absolutely alright forever. It had been so many years since she had really felt, really existed. Everything was so wonderfully okay.
“I couldn’t stand to see you pain like this…” came his voice, whipping vivid across her ears and eyes.
The majority of her absolutely rejected this happening, was absolutely free and fine, but some small voice scratched at the back of her skull: …Fuck. Was it all for nothing?
***
Of course, then it stopped, and the bled man’s face faded to blackness and the sound of chirping birds in the rafters. It had been fourteen months and six days since she had had a dream like that, and the flushing of a toilet downstairs woke her.
Tangled in her own blankets, groggy and grit-headed, she opened her eyes to the quiet attic where she made her home. X-Mas morning rested in the happy murmurs from downstairs; never a needle, never a plague, only a night and a nightmare. Sunlight puddled in a small spot inches away from her chin, illuminating the letter on the floorboards like a small sun thrown to the floor. With a slow hand, she gouged her thumbs into the crooks of her elbows and did not move otherwise. The light crept off the letter, splashed onto the floorboards, and crawled on away.
“I am merely a thread that is pulled through the intertwining knots,” the letter said. “You are master of yourself—does this include your life?”
No, Alexa. Not all the time. Her gaze trailed to something beside the letter, a little black button with a white question mark.
(Thank you, Josh Harrison, for giving my character a dream. I took it and ran. : ] )