OFFICER CATSHITT TOOK MY PHONE. AND BEFORE HE SWITCHED IT OFF HE WIPED IT, RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY EYES. EVERY TEXT, EVERY MAIL, EVERY NOTE.
THEY DIDN’T UNDERSTAND ANYTHING. THEY DIDN’T EVEN TRY TO UNDERSTAND. AS SOON AS I TOLD THEM I HAD BEEN COMMUNICATING WITH PEOPLE ON THE OUTSIDE THEY WENT INTO HYSTERICS. IF THEY HAD THE JIM JONES KOOL-AID ON HAND THEY ALL WOULD’VE BEEN LINED UP FOR A CUP. NOW THAT I’VE CALMED DOWN, I WONDER IF I SHOULD HAVE ANTICIPATED THIS.
THE MOST UNIQUE CHARACTERISTIC OF THE FUNGUS IS THE WAY IT BONDS WITH THE MIND. DOCTOR SOLZHENITSYN IN NOVOSIBIRSK HAS SHOWN THE SPORE IS DENDRITIC IN NATURE AND COMPATIBLE WITH THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE BRAIN. OXYTOCIN TELLS DRACO INCENDIA TRYCHOPHYTON IT HAS FOUND A SAFE ENVIRONMENT. THE FUNGUS, IN TURN, STIMULATES FLOCK BEHAVIOR TO PRESERVE ITS OWN WELL-BEING, THE SAME GROUP-THINK THAT MAKES A CROWD OF SPARROWS TURN ON A DIME. THE ’SCALE IS SO OVERPOWERING, IT CAN TEMPORARILY ERASE EVEN FUNDAMENTAL NOTIONS OF PERSONAL IDENTITY. OTHER PEOPLE’S IDEAS SEEM LIKE YOUR OWN, OTHER’S PEOPLE’S NEEDS SEEM MORE IM PORTANT THAN YOURS, ETC. WE REALLY ARE LIVING IN THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, IT’S JUST THE ZOMBIES ARE US.
ALL THIS MAKES SENSE, GIVEN THE NATURE OF OYXTOCIN, WHICH BRINGS COMFORT TO THOSE WHO PARTICIPATE IN TRIBAL BEHAVIOR. I’M NOT PART OF THIS STUPID CHRISTING TRIBE WHICH IS WHY I’M SMOKING ALL THE TIME AND GETTING NO CHEMICAL BENEFIT FROM THEIR IDIOTIC DAILY SINGALONGS. IT ALSO EXPLAINS WHY EVERYONE WAS SO EAGER TO TURN IN THEIR CELL PHONES (YES, FUCKFACE TOOK ALL OF THEM, NOT JUST MINE). THE ’SCALE HAS THEM ALL ADDICTED TO SOCIAL APPROVAL.
I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW WHY THE FIREMAN CAN STEER THE ’SCALE INSTEAD OF BEING STEERED BY IT. NO ONE IS MORE ALOOF THAN HIM. I WOULD KILL TO KNOW HOW HE CAN SET FIRE TO PARTS OF HIMSELF AND NOT BE HURT.
I’M NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO WANTS TO KNOW WHAT HE KNOWS, EITHER. I WAS DOWN ON THE BEACH THREE DAYS AGO AND HEARD THEM OVER ON THEIR ISLAND, YELLING AT EACH OTHER. WHATEVER HE KNOWS, HE WON’T TELL SARAH STOREY, AND BOY OH BOY IS SHE PISSED.
IF SHE TEARS HIM A NEW ASSHOLE, IT’S TOUGH SHIT FOR MR. ROOKWOOD. THIS INFIRMARY IS ALL OUT OF ASSHOLE PATCHES. AND EVERYTHING ELSE.
4
She swatted her thigh with the notebook and looked out the window. Goosedown flakes of snow floated about, couldn’t decide if they wanted to fall or rise. Camp was a snow globe and some God-child had given it a shake.
Harper had been awake for fifteen minutes and still wasn’t sure if it was morning or afternoon. The light was diffuse and gray, as if the whole world were hidden under a bedsheet. She sat on the edge of Father Storey’s cot. Every once in a while he would draw a sudden, startled-sounding breath, as if he had just read something terrible in the newspaper. The obituary of a friend, maybe. His own obituary.
One thing that had been true in the summer of Harold Cross was even more true now. The infirmary was out of asshole patches and everything else. She had disinfected Father Storey’s trepanation with a splash of port and had treated John Rookwood’s mauled arm with a weak dose of good intentions. She wasn’t sure good intentions always paved the road to hell, but they for sure weren’t the highest standard of medical care.
She stood on the chair and reached up to put Harold’s notebook behind the ceiling panel. Some little movement or gesture at the edge of her vision caught her attention. She looked around and discovered she and Father Storey had company that morning.
Nick was in the cot closest to the door, sheets pulled to his chest. His hair was a pretty black tousle. He gazed at her as if he had forgotten how to blink. He must’ve crept in while she was asleep and quietly settled into the first empty bed.
She pushed the notebook up out of sight, deciding to act as if this were a perfectly normal thing to do. When the ceiling tile was back in place she climbed down off the chair and stood at the foot of Nick’s cot. Harper moved her hands carefully, using what he had taught her so far to ask why he was here.
He reached for the notepad and pen he carried with him everywhere he went, and wrote: My stomach hurts. Allie walked me over. She had to come to the infirmery anyway because she’s stashioned here today. Harper sat beside him on the cot, took his notepad, and wrote: Have you been vomiting? Diarrhea?
He shook his head. She suspected anxiety for Father Storey, not food poisoning.
What do you mean, Allie is stationed here? Harper wrote and passed him his pad and pen.
She’s in the other room, Nick scrawled.
Harper raised her shoulders in an exaggerated shrug, hands out, palms turned up: Why?
Allie’s here for protecshun. Aunt Carol wants to make shure granddad is safe. What did you just stick in the ceiling? Before she could formulate a reply, he added, I promise if you tell me I won’t SAY A WORD. She had to smile at that. Of course he wouldn’t.
Just some notes I’m keeping, she said, which was true, even if it was leaving out a detail or two.
Notes on what?
If you don’t ask about that, she wrote, I won’t ask if you really have a stomachache.
He smacked the heel of his hand into his forehead, a gesture he must’ve picked up from television. She didn’t judge. Harper sometimes felt she spent half her life playing Julie Andrews in the movie version of her life. The problem with role models is they teach you roles.
Harper used her finger-spelling to say S-L-E-E-P.
He nodded and said, “You too, right?” Speaking in silence, hands moving precisely through the air, as if he were adjusting the gears of an invisible machine.
“I go,” she said with her own, less fluent hands. “Be soon back.”
“Be careful,” said Nick’s hands.
Allie was in the waiting room, curled on the couch. Not asleep, not reading—just lying there with the knuckles of one hand pressed to her lips. She blinked and glanced up. For a moment her eyes were unfocused and she seemed to look upon Harper without recognition.
“Nick says you’ve been stationed here.”
“Looks like. You’ve got Ben and Aunt Carol thinking someone in camp might be out to kill Granddad. I think that’s nuts—everyone knows it was that guy the Mazz—but I don’t call the shots.”
“And Ben does?”
“He’s just doing what Aunt Carol wants. And she wants Granddad safe. You can’t blame her. Someone did try to kill him. Aunt Carol wants you to stay here from now on, too. So there’s always medical staff on hand, in case he has a seizure or whatever.”
“Am I going to start eating here, too?”
Harper was joking, but Allie said, “Yeah. She was really upset when she heard you wandered off yesterday to get something to snack on and left him all alone. His heart could’ve stopped. Or someone could’ve walked in and put a pillow over his face.”
“I can’t stay here. Not full-time. As a matter of fact, I have to step out right now. John’s pretty banged up. I want to head over to his island and get a compression bandage and a brace on him.”
Harper was not carrying either item but was counting on Allie not to notice, and she didn’t.
“Can’t,” Allie said. “Even if you were allowed to leave the infirmary, it’s the middle of the day. No one goes out during the day.”
“What do you mean, even if I was allowed? Is that from Carol? Who put her in charge?”
“We did.”