Fever Read online

  “Location Thirteen?” I repeat, shaking my head.

  “What is it?” Jack asks.

  “I was just wondering how many of these Locations you have. And if you couldn’t come up with some better names for them.”

  That gets a smile from Jack. “Numbers are more secure. It means people can’t guess anything about them from the name. As for how many… even I’m not sure. A lot. You saw the maps.”

  I nod. We looked at a map of possible shelters for people. A lot of the Locations would have been on it. “So,” I ask. “What’s so special about Location Thirteen? I take it you don’t have a Location set up just for the apocalypse.”

  Though in truth, most of the really solid ones were set up with just that in mind.

  “Location Thirteen is where you go when things turn odd,” Jack says. “When there’s a real crisis, or a major disaster… well, it’s time for Location Thirteen.”

  “That wasn’t where people went when the Others destroyed Location Six,” I point out.

  Jack brings the car around a corner, heading in the direction of the freeway. “That was bad, but it wasn’t the kind of thing I mean. And there were still plenty of other Locations to fall back on . Thirteen is where you go when things get very… .get verweird.”

  Jack can see flashes of the future. He can move faster than most people. He can touch me when there’s power pouring out of me without being burned. He can be healed by my power. What exactly qualifies as ‘weird’ for him? Aside from this whole situation, obviously?

  “So it’s the place where you all go when the situation gets so strange that you need help the other Locations can’t give you?” I guess.

  Jack nods. “Exactly. It’s not normally even a functioning Location. It’s just like a… backup, I guess. If you need other Faders, then normally you go to a different Location, but when things get too strange for that, it has to be Location Thirteen.” Jack sighs. “I guess there are going to be a lot of Faders there right now. I hope so, anyway.”

  “So we go to Location Thirteen too?” I ask. It seems like the only thing we can do now. We were meant to stop the apocalypse. We failed. I failed, because I wouldn’t let Jack shoot Wilson Hammond in cold blood. Now all we can do is try to deal with everything that happens afterwards. Try to stop it leading inevitably to the Fever.

  “We go to Location Thirteen,” Jack agrees. He’s still moving the car along cautiously. It’s a nice one, a family car with plenty of space in it, but I guess Jack is mostly used to sports cars and military vehicles. He probably doesn’t trust it yet. “Getting there could be the hard part, though.”

  “Why?” I ask. “Where is it?”

  “It’s not too far from Location Six, where we first tried to Fade you.”

  “The Nevada Desert?” I have a lot of memories of that desert. Not all of them are good. There’s the attempt to Fade me, the realization that my life to date had been a lie, the attack by the Others that resulted in the destruction of the base… it’s going to be hard going back. And not just for personal reasons, either.

  “Jack,” I point out, “it’s a long way to the Nevada Desert. If the entire country is like… like this, then how do we get there?”

  “It’s clear across the country,” Jack agrees, “but that can’t stop us, Celes. This car will do for now, but we’ll have to keep a lookout for something better to help us make the journey. A plane or a long range helicopter would be ideal, but for now, this car can at least get us moving in the right direction. It’s better than walking, and a lot better than staying still doing nothing.”

  Jack has a point there. We could just sit in Wilson Hammond’s tower, waiting for either the food to run out or the Beast within him to want us dead, but if we actually want to survivepant to su, if we want to do something useful, then the car is what we have for now.

  Jack keeps driving, the road still slippery with ash as we go along past houses and stores, a community center and a library. We still haven’t seen anyone in the street. Maybe there isn’t anyone left to see. What will we do if we’re the only ones left? No, I have to keep thinking that there will be more than that. Even if we came back to change things, I have to keep believing that there are other people out there.

  That’s when I see something that might just be a sign of them. A flash of light, reflecting off the car’s rear view mirror. For a second, I think it must just be the sun, or something reflecting off one of the windows of the buildings around us, yet this seems different somehow. Particularly when it comes again. It’s a flash of light, and it seems to be coming from one of the nearby buildings.

  “Jack?” I say. “Did you see that? That light?”

  Jack nods, and I can see from his expression that he’s already in that calculating space he goes to when danger might be near.

  “Yes. Normally, I’d say that we should keep going, because getting to Location Thirteen has to be our priority, but…”

  “But there might be people in there,” I finish for him. Despite everything, we can’t just abandon people in the middle of a ruined city like this. They might be hurt. They might need our help. They might also be able to help us.

  Jack swings the car around carefully, bringing it up to the curb by the building the light seems to have come from. It’s the old library, the doors of which are hanging open.

  “If there are people in there,” he says, “then they might have information about what has happened, but we need to be careful, Celes.”

  “I’ll be careful,” I promise him, hopping out of the car. “But Jack, it’s probably nothing. That, or its just ordinary people. We probably don’t have a lot to be afraid of.”

  Jack moves up beside me quickly. He puts a hand on my shoulder. “We don’t know what there is to be afraid of. That’s the point. We have a whole town that’s practically empty. We don’t know what happened to the people here during the apocalypse, and we really don’t know what might be in there. After something like this, even normal things are dangerous, Celes. People, animals… they’ll be scared, hungry, probably desperate. So we’re going to be careful.”

  I nod again. I think Jack’s overreacting, because with my powers, I have the tools to stay safe against most things, while Jack is an expert when it comes to violent situations. Maybe that’s why I agree with him though. He’s theing. He’ expert. He’s spent so long now keeping me safe that I’m not going to take risks when he says to be careful.

  We move a little closer to the open door.

  “If there are people there, what do we do?” I ask. “If they need help, then we have to at least try to help them.”

  Jack nods. “If there are people, then helping them is a priority.”

  I’d almost expected him not to say that. I’d thought that for Jack, the mission might come first so much that we’d have to abandon anyone we found. But that’s the thing with Jack. He can be completely hard and focused one moment, totally gentle the next. It’s part of why I care about him so much.

  “If we’re very lucky,” Jack says, “they’ll be able to help us as much as we help them. We have some supplies, but we’ll need more than this if we can’t find a better way to Location Thirteen than driving.”

  That makes a kind of sense. We move up to the doors together. Jack’s very careful not to stand directly in front of them. Instead, he steps to the side of the frame, like he’s expecting something to come out shooting at any moment. He even pulls me there with him when I don’t do the same. This close to him, I can smell the strong, masculine scent of him and feel the thrill of carefully controlled danger that comes just from being around him. Even the power within me flickers, the way it so often does when I’m near Jack. Everything about him calls to me when he’s like this.

  “What is it?” I ask him. “What do you see?”

  Jack’s precognition doesn’t reach far into the future. As far as I know, there isn’t anyone whose abilities do let them see very far. We thought that Johnny could, but it turned out he
was just remembering his time working with us in the future. Maybe the weight of human choices gets too much beyond a few seconds, the way you can’t predict the weather too far in advance because there are too many things going on.

  What I do know is that when it comes to things a few seconds ahead, Jack is pretty accurate. Especially when those few seconds are going to contain danger. It’s one of the things that makes him so good in a fight, because there isn’t anything unexpected for him.

  “What is it, Jack?” I repeat.

  “I’m not sure,” he says. “I just get the feeling that whatever we’re going to find in there, it isn’t going to be pleasant.”

  “Does that mean we shouldn’t go in?” I ask. “If there’s a threat…”

  Jack shakes his head. “Even if it’s dangerous, it’s still the first sign of living things we’ve had since we left the tower. It might be able to tell us more about what’s going on, no matter what it is. We need to go in.”

  FOUR

  Jack’s hand goes to the waistband of his pants and he pulls out a gun, a high caliber semi-automatic pistol that isn’t quite the same as the weapon Hammond’s men took from him.

  “I took it from the store in the mall,” Jack explains in answer to my questioning look, before slipping into the library. I don’t know if leading with a gun would be the right strategy normally, because if it turns out that there are ordinary people in here, then they’re more likely to panic when they see the weapon, but I trust Jack. I trust his senses. If he says that there is danger ahead, then there’s probably danger ahead.

  We head deeper into the library, past blank shelves of books, lit through a skylight in addition to the windows. That only seems to add to the shadows the book shelves cast, turning the place into a maze lit by dappled patches of light. We pad silently towards the far corner of the building, where it seems like the flashes we spotted came from. There’s another door there, with Reading Room over it in elegant lettering.

  There’s another flash of light, glowing beneath the door. At least, I think there is. It’s hard to tell, with the light and shadows of the library confusing things. It’s something, anyway, which is why we move over to that inner door. It’s already ajar, and this close to it I can smell an odd scent. Like copper and burning plastic, mixed in with burning paper and other things. Other things I know the scent of only too well, because it’s a scent that still comes to me whenever I think of all the people I’ve killed with my power.

  It’s the scent of burning flesh. A scent that comes complete with a scream, which cuts through the silence of the library before fading to a bubbling gurgle and disappearing completely.

  We’re through the door in an instant. Someone is in trouble, and that means that we can’t just stand by. Jack won’t, and I won’t. Not if there’s a chance to help someone. Except that as soon as we ge „t inside, it’s easy to see that it’s too late to help anyone here. On the floor, there’s a pile of charred remains, fire blackened fragments of bone sticking out of a pile of ashes, the remains of a plastic and metal chair melted in with that pile. Whoever this was, and I know from the speed of my own powers that it could be the person who screamed, we’re too late to help them. Far too late. I don’t even know if we’ll be able to help ourselves, because what’s standing over that pile of burned flesh…

  It’s larger than a human by a couple of feet, and there’s something vaguely reptilian about the way it moves as it sniffs the air. Yet there’s also something terrifyingly human about it too. The heart of it seems to be a human torso, and something that might once have been a human head, before horns rose up from it and it changed to accommodate a bestial maw. Ragged, leathery wings stick out from its back, while a long, reptilian tail reaches to the floor. It has scales that shimmer black and purple, like an oil slick, and when it turns to us, its eyes burn with a deep, fiery glow of power.

  “Run,” Jack says softly, as though hoping that keeping calm will be enough to keep it from attacking. It isn’t. The creature’s eyes fix on us, and it seems almost to smile before it crouches to lunge at us. “Run, Celes!”

  I leap back as the creature pounces, barely making it through the door to the reading room. Jack is already there, and I know that without the kind of speed we both possess, we’d be dead right now. Not that it isn’t still an option. Jack fires two shots through the gap of the door, the noise of them deafening after the silence of the library. They don’t do anything except buy us a second in which to close the reading room doors.

  Which start to glow with power…

  “Keep running, Celes!” Jack insists. “It’s coming through.”

  We sprint along the rows of books, but when there’s a crash behind me, I can’t help looking back for a second. The creature is there, standing in the ruins of the doors it has just destroyed, staring at us. At me. When it runs, it runs with the speed of something that isn’t built like a human, and its roar of anger has nothing to do with a human throat.

  I push over the nearest bookcases, hoping to slow it down, then sprint for the door using every ounce of extra speed I have. Jack and I skid out of the door, pausing to close it even though the last one didn’t slow the creature for long. Even a few seconds is something. Right now, we need all the time we can get.

  “The car,” Jack says. “Run for the car, Celes.”

  I don’t need him to tell me that again. I sprint for the car, leaping in at the passenger side while Jack takes the driver’s seat. He works the key we took from the car lot’s office, trying to get the car to start, the engine coughs, not revving yet. Werevving

  Behind us, the doors to the library glow with power. They won’t last for long. They don’t last for long. They burn to ash in seconds, falling away from the hinges that hold them like powder to reveal the creature behind them. It steps out into the street, blinking in the light, looking around for us until its eyes fix on us in the car.

  Finally, Jack gets the car to start.

  The creature lets out another inhuman sound and runs at the car in loping strides, but Jack hits the gas, and even with the layer of ash on the road, he manages to speed away. The creature hits the ground where the car was, clawed hands digging into the road like it’s butter.

  Jack pushes the car to its limit in the next few seconds, so that there’s a brief point when I’m sure I see the speed reach ninety. I glance back and see the creature watching, not chasing, obviously having decided that catching us would be too much of an effort.

  “It’s okay, Jack,” I say. “You can slow down.”

  Jack glances back and slows a little, though he’s still doing more than the speed limit would be on a street like this. He doesn’t stop until we’re well clear of the library. Almost all the way to the freeway.

  “That was close,” he says. “Too close. Shooting that thing didn’t even seem to slow it down.”

  That obviously bothers him. I don’t think Jack likes the idea of an enemy he doesn’t know how to kill if he needs to. I know I don’t like the idea of an enemy Jack can’t kill. If that creature had managed to get hold of us, how long would we have lasted? I don’t think it would have been able to burn us, but it still had claws and teeth. It was still too strong to fight.

  “Jack, that creature…” I want to avoid this, but I know I can’t. We need to talk about it, and we need to do it now. “It burned the doors. It burned whoever that was back there. It has the same powers I do. What does that mean, Jack? Where did it come from?”

  Jack shakes his head. “I don’t know, Celes.”

  “Is it connected to me somehow? Am I the same kind of thing it is?” I can feel those questions gnawing away at me. Because if it’s something so terrifying and mindlessly evil, what does that make me?

  “You’re nothing like that thing,” Jack says.

  “I have the same powers.”

  “You’re nothing like it,” Jack repeats, reaching out for me. “You’re not a monster, and you never will be.”

  Trust J
ack to guess what’s scaring me. How can he know though? How can he know that one day I won’t end up like that thing? What if I’m just the first stage on whatever path leads to it?

  “You have to trust me, Celes,” Jack says. “I don’t know what that thing is, but I know you aren’t it. You care too much about the world and the people in it. All that cared about was killing.”

  I nod, knowing that he’s right, even though there are still so many doubts nagging at me. “There’s so much we don’t know,” I say. “Where did that creature come from, Jack? Does it have something to do with Hammond?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” Jack says. “It could be up to Hammond. It could be from the future. It could even be something from the past. We don’t have enough information to make a guess, except that it seems to have a violent streak.”

  I think about all the ash in the town. Some of it has to be from the fire that was raining from the sky when we went into the shelter, but how much of it is from that creature, or others like it? How many people has it killed?

  “There might be others like it,” I say. “There might be dozens of them. Hundreds. There might be whole armies of them.”

  “Or there might just be a few,” Jack says.

  I nod. I don’t like being like this. Not knowing what’s going on. “What we need is more information.”

  “If we can get it,” Jack agrees. “But it isn’t the main priority. The priority is to get to Location Thirteen. If we’re lucky, the Faders there will know more about what has happened in the past couple of days.”

  “As well as how to stop those things,” I say.

  Jack nods. “Let’s hope so. If there are more of them, then they could potentially wipe out every human out there.”

  “But we know it doesn’t work out like that, don’t we?” I say.

  Jack shakes his head. “You know we can’t take that for granted. We came back to change things, so we have to believe that things can change. If they can, then they can change both ways.”