The Devil's Alphabet

Chapter 18

“WE CANNOT BE late for the appointment,” Donna told him as they stepped down from the Jeep. “The egg-timer is going off.”

Deke laughed and plucked the plastic sacks from behind the driver’s seat. “They’ll keep warm for a couple more minutes. We’ll just drop this off and leave.”

The only other cars in the Martin driveway were the Reverend’s old Crown Vic and Paxton’s Tempo—no Prius in sight. He’d heard that Andrew Weygand had left town again, and it looked like he hadn’t come back—yet.

The house was looking better than it had in several years. The lawn had been cut sometime in the last week, and the tall growth that had been encroaching on the yard had been hacked back several feet. The old swing set had been dismantled and lay in a pile beside the driveway, next to the ancient plaid couch. Deke made a mental note to take care of those for him—Amos could haul them to the dump in the company truck.

The front door was open. Deke knocked on the frame and leaned in. “P.K.! You up?” It was 9:30 in the morning. He wasn’t sure what kind of hours he was keeping.

Paxton walked into the living room, drying his hands on a kitchen towel. “Hey, Deke. Hey, Donna.”

He’d lost more weight, and he hadn’t been fat to begin with. At the town meeting a couple weeks ago he’d looked too thin for a skip, but now he was gaunt, his head too big for his neck. If he’d been growing taller at the same time he was thinning out you’d have thought he was turning argo.

Pax motioned them in. He asked them how they were doing, if they’d like something to drink.

“We can’t stay,” Donna said. “We’ve got to run to a doctor’s appointment.”

“We just brought you some chicken and mashed potatoes, some greens,” Deke said. “Donna made too much last night and we thought you might be able to take them off our hands.”

Pax’s smile looked a little forced. “You didn’t have to do that. I’ve got plenty of food.”

“Not my food,” Donna said. “Why don’t I just put it in the fridge, then?”

Deke started to hand her the sack and Paxton quickly said, “I’ll do it.” He took it from Deke’s hand. “Are you sure I can’t get you a Coke or something?” He walked back into the kitchen.

Donna looked at Deke, reminding him that the clock was running. She was ovulating, and the doctors at UT were waiting with syringes to suck the eggs out of her. They’d agreed to try an expensive procedure that did something to the egg walls before they introduced Deke’s boys to the mix. The words “sperm” and “permeability” were used so often that Deke started calling the procedure “that spermability thing.”

Pax said, “I’m out of Coke, but I’ve got, uh, water.”

“No thanks,” Deke called. He walked through the living room—it was surprisingly clean—and stooped to get through the kitchen door.

Paxton closed the freezer door, then the fridge door. “So. Nothing serious I hope,” he said.

“The doctor?” Deke said. “Naw, just fertility stuff.” He squatted and was still taller than Paxton. “So I heard that that Weygand guy was hanging around a couple weeks ago.”

“He left to try to sneak into Ecuador.” Pax shrugged. “I haven’t heard from him since. He’s either in by now or dead.” Two weeks after the second outbreak, the Babahoyo quarantine was still in full effect. Nobody knew how many were dead in the country, how many had been transformed. Rhonda’s Helping Hands campaign had raised close to two million dollars even though it wasn’t the only relief fund going. No relief trip had been scheduled yet—she hadn’t gotten permission from either government to send a group of volunteers to the city.

Donna made a sound from the living room. Deke glanced back, then said, “Listen, I wanted to apologize.”

“For what?”

“I talked to Rhonda about what happened with Clete and them—what they did to you, how they tried to take your father.”

“That didn’t have anything to do with you.”

“Yes, it did. I should have seen it coming. I was supposed to be watching out for you and I—”

“Watching out for me. Really.” A tight smile. “Oh, but that’s right, you’re the Chief. That’s your job.”

“This is not about my job.”

“You’re the Chief, you’re on the town council, all the argos look up to you … You and the Reverend and Rhonda run everything.”

“Come on, P.K. …”

“Help me out here. How’s Rhonda doing it, Deke? Where’s she getting all this money? What is she doing with the vintage? Rhonda told me the smart people figure it out on their own. Now, I’m not that smart, but you’re the Chief; you must have worked it out by now.”

“Now you’re just being an idiot,” Deke said. He sighed. “Rhonda was talking about Jo, P.K. She was the smart one.”

Pax waited. After a moment Deke said, “Rhonda’s been skimming the accounts. The TEMA grants, the school funds, especially the medical grants. Jo told me about it. She said she had proof. Copies of the grant forms, bank statements, e-mails. After she died I looked in the house for documents like that but didn’t find anything. I was hoping it was on her laptop.”

“Jesus, man, you knew all this, and you kept working with Rhonda?”

“I told you, I didn’t have the proof. But even if I did—listen, even Jo wasn’t ready to take action against her. What Rhonda’s doing is illegal, but it may not be bad for the town.”

“That’s crazy. If she’s stealing—”

“Pax, Switchcreek’s just a small town, and the clades could be wiped out at any time. Somebody’s got to do what it takes to guard the future.”

“You took her money,” Pax said.

“What?”

“Hey, that one stung,” Paxton said. “She paid you off, didn’t she? You work for her. So how much is she paying you?”

Deke lifted his hand and Paxton flinched.

“Jesus Christ, I’m not going to hit you,” Deke said. “I love you, man, but do you know how hard it is not to whack you upside the head when you say shit like that?”

“How you boys doing?” Donna said.

Deke hadn’t realized she’d come to the kitchen door. He rose partway out of his crouch and put his hand against the ceiling. “We better get going,” he said. “We’ll talk about this later.”

Donna waited until they’d left the Martin driveway before she said, “You don’t work for her.”

“I don’t know about that,” Deke said. “Who paid for this doctor appointment?”

“That money belongs to the clades—all the clades. You’ve always done the right thing by your people and by your friends. God knows Paxton should know that. And can I say one more time? I do not get you two.”

“He’s my friend, Donna.”

“Even when he talks to you like that?”

“That’s just the vintage. Or the lack of it.” He shrugged. “What can I say? He’s always going to be my friend. There’s no choice in it.” His friend was the P.K. he’d grown up with. That part of him still had to be in there somewhere—some essential piece that couldn’t be changed by drugs or time. “He has a good soul,” Deke said.

Donna made a sound and Deke said, “You don’t believe in the soul?”

“Honey, I believe in you and me. Everything else—”

Her words were drowned out by the roar of a helicopter. For a few seconds he’d been hearing the chop of helicopter blades, but as they reached the intersection of Piney Road and the highway a dark green helicopter thundered out over the treetops from the northwest and passed over them, heading toward town. A second helicopter flying at the same low altitude followed a few seconds later.

The new curse of Switchcreek: air traffic. The FEMA people had flown in and out several times in the first days of the Ecuador outbreak, and the news choppers from Knoxville had been constantly doing flybys. But these helicopters looked military.

“Any lower I’d have a haircut,” Donna said.

Deke turned north onto the highway, but a minute later he had to brake to a stop behind a blue station wagon he recognized. Ahead of the wagon, a green National Guard truck was parked astride both lanes of the highway, its rear wheels almost in the ditch. Maybe they were just trying to turn the thing around and had gotten hung up. Or maybe not.

Deke turned off the Jeep and got out. “Why don’t you wait here,” he told Donna. She didn’t bother to reply; she stepped out and walked with him toward the truck. When they reached the station wagon Deke ducked down to see the woman behind the wheel.

“Howdy, Mrs. Jarpe.”

“Oh, hello, Chief.” She was a chub woman in her sixties. Before the Changes she’d been the best piano player in town and maybe still was; he hadn’t heard her play in years. “They just pulled over in front of me and stopped. I’ve been sitting here and the truck hasn’t moved.”

Deke exchanged a look with Donna, then said to Mrs. Jarpe, “Maybe you should turn around and head back to town.”

“What? I’ll do no such thing. Just tell them to clear the road, Chief.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

He strolled toward the truck. In the cab were two soldiers masked like motocross riders in goggles and plastic breathers that covered their noses and mouths. From the other side of the truck came the sound of a man barking instructions.

Deke waved to the men in the truck. “Y’all need some help?”

The driver held up a hand. Deke and Donna stopped. Three other masked soldiers came around the hood of the truck with automatic rifles in their hands.

“Whoa now,” Deke said, and put on a smile. “What’s going on, gentlemen?”

“Go back to your car, sir,” one of them said. He sounded young, like a teenager. He nodded at Donna. “Ma’am. Return to town and you’ll be—”

“Excuse me?” Donna said.

“We have a doctor’s appointment in Knoxville,” Deke said.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the kid said. “There’s a quarantine for the Switchcreek area now in effect. If you go home and turn on your radio you’ll hear complete information on the situation.”

Donna stepped forward. “Quarantine? Why? We’re not contagious.”

“Ma’am, there’s a quarantine in effect for—”

“Hell, we’ve been here for thirteen years as a tourist attraction,” Donna said. “You’re telling us that now we’re contagious?”

Deke put a hand on Donna’s shoulder and she knocked it away. “Explain to me,” Donna said to the soldier. She stepped forward and the men’s guns swung toward her like compass needles. “Come on, explain to me how it is that we’re suddenly contagious. It’s been two weeks since Babahoyo. We’ve had every news reporter on the planet walking around down here. Telemundo sent a reporter. Are they under quarantine, too?”

Deke could see over the top of the truck now. On the other side, twenty yards away, a dozen men were assembling a barrier made of plastic pylons connected to each other by metal pipes. One of the pylons was being filled with water from a hose running out the side of the truck. He’d never seen that before.

One of the soldiers noticed Deke and said something. The other men looked up, and froze. None of them were holding rifles. Then one of them reached for the sidearm on his hip. The rest of the men ran toward the truck. Toward their guns.

“Donna,” he said. “Let’s go.”

“I’m not going anywhere except Knoxville, right now.” She stepped toward the nearest soldier. “We’re going down this damn road, or I will know the reason why!”

“Donna—” He stepped in front of her to turn her around and he felt something bite him in the shoulder. He wheeled toward the soldiers, thinking—nonsensically—that one of them had thrown a rock at him. One of the soldiers yelled. Before Deke could say anything he was struck twice more, in the chest and in the arm. Only then did he take in the sound of the gunshots.

Donna roared—an almost subsonic shout that concussed the air like a bomb—then bent and leaped forward. She slammed into one of the soldiers and sent him cartwheeling away.

Automatic gunfire erupted—seemingly from everywhere. Donna planted one hand on the ground and spun toward another soldier. She seized both his rifle and an arm in one huge fist and yanked. The man’s arm popped from his torso. She tossed it away like a doll part and the man collapsed to the pavement.

Deke lost his balance and fell back on his butt. He looked down at his chest. Blood soaked his shirt.

No one understands what it’s like, Deke thought. All the little people thought that being an argo made life easy. Of course you get your way, look how big you are! Of course people respect you, you can break them in half! They didn’t understand how much discipline such a body required, how much restraint. His old human faults were still bubbling in his brain, riding his bloodstream. The Changes hadn’t erased fear and rage—Deke’s daddy had worked too hard pounding those into him for them to go away. Sometimes the urge to strike back, to kill, came on so fast it took everything he had to hold himself in check. Sometimes he didn’t have enough.

But it wasn’t just Deke—it was true for everyone in his clade. It was the secret they kept among themselves. Each of them knew that idiot strength waited like a boulder at the top of a steep hill. Every day, each of them had to decide not to nudge that rock.

Maybe the next generation of argos would be different. More peaceful souls. He hoped so.

He called Donna’s name, but she was beyond thinking now, moving fast. Another soldier collapsed under her fists. Those stupid, sexist bastards—they’d shot him first, even though it was Donna who was the larger of the two, the stronger, the more dangerous. They didn’t understand. She was a full-grown argo woman. And they had hurt her man.

More soldiers appeared around each end of the truck, and some under the truck, aiming their rifles up at them. Donna leaped to the nearest man. He screamed in fear, and the rifles burst into new applause.

God she was fierce, and so beautiful. But there were so many soldiers, and their weapons could shred metal. They would kill her. He pushed himself to all fours, grimacing. He hoped that she was wrong, that there really were such things as souls.

Then he heard her bellow in pain. A great weight inside him trembled, shifted, and suddenly tumbled down.

He ran to her side.