In the shower, Eric, Curt, and Kent were hooting and splashing and bellowing all the standard witticisms: fuck you, fuck ya mother, I already did, fag, bite my bag, your sister’s a scag, she’s on the rag, et cetera. It was tiresome, and there was so much high school left before he could escape.
The water went off. Eric and the other two slapped wet-footed into the area of the locker room they considered their private preserve—seniors only, please—which meant Jared only had to suffer a brief glimpse at their bare butts before they disappeared around the corner. Fine with him. He sniffed his tennis socks, winced, stuffed them into his gym bag, and zipped it up.
“I saw Old Essie on my way here,” Kent was saying.
Curt: “The homeless chick? The one with the shopping cart?”
“Yeah. Almost rode over her and fell into that shithole where she lives.”
“Someone ought to clean her out of there,” Curt said.
“She must have busted open her stash of Two Buck Chuck last night,” Kent said. “Totally out cold. And she must have rolled in something. She had cobwebby crud all over her face. Fucking nasty. I could see it moving when she breathed. So I give her a yell, right? ‘Hey Essie, what’s up, girl? What’s up, you toothless old cunt?’ Nothing, man. Fuckin flatline.”
Curt said, “I wish there was a magic potion to put girls to sleep so you could bang em without having to butter them up first.”
“There is,” Eric said. “It’s called roofies.”
As they bellowed laughter, Jared thought, That’s the guy taking Mary to see Arcade Fire. That guy right over there.
“Plus,” Kent said, “she’s got all kinds of weird shit in that little ravine she sleeps in, including the top half of a department store mannequin. I’ll fuck just about anything, man, but a drunk-ass homeless bitch covered in spiderwebs? That’s where I draw the line, and that line is thick.”
“My line is totally dotted right now.” There was a wistful note in Curt’s voice. “The situation is desperate. I’d bone a zombie on The Walking Dead.”
“You already did,” Eric said. “Harriet Davenport.”
More prehistoric laughter. Why am I listening to this? Jared asked himself, and it occurred to him again: Mary is going to a concert with one of these sickos. She has no idea what Eric is actually like, and after our conversation on the bleachers, I’m not sure she’d believe me if I told her.
“You would not bone this chick,” Kent said. “But it’s funny. We ought to go by after school. Check her out.”
“Never mind after school,” Eric said. “Let’s cut out after sixth period.”
Whacking sounds as they slapped hands, sealing the deal. Jared grabbed his gym bag and left.
It wasn’t until lunch that Frankie Johnson sat down next to Jared and said the weird female sleeping sickness that used to be only in Australia and Hawaii had shown up in DC, Richmond, and even in Martinsburg, which wasn’t that far away. Jared thought briefly of what Kent had said about Old Essie—spiderwebs on her face—then decided it couldn’t be. Not here. Nothing that interesting ever happened in Dooling.
“They’re calling it Aurora,” Frankie said. “Hey, is that chicken salad? How is it? Want to trade?”
CHAPTER 5
1
Unit 12 of A Wing was bare except for the single bunk, the steel toilet, and the camera bulbs in the corners of the ceiling. No painted square on the wall for posting pictures, no desk. Coates had dragged in a plastic chair to sit on while Clint examined Kitty McDavid, who lay on the bunk.
“So?” asked Coates.
“She’s alive. Her vitals are strong.” Clint stood from his crouch. He unsnapped his surgical gloves and carefully placed them in a plastic bag. From his jacket pocket he took out a small pad and a pen and began to jot notes.
“I don’t know what that stuff is. It’s tacky, like sap, and it’s also tough, and yet it’s evidently permeable because she’s breathing through it. It smells—earthy, I guess. And a little waxy. If you pressed me, I’d say it was some kind of a fungus, but it’s not behaving like any fungus I’ve ever seen or heard of.” To even attempt to discuss the situation made Clint feel as if he were climbing up a hill made of pennies. “A biologist could take a sample and put it under a microscope—”
“I’ve been told that it’s a bad idea to remove the stuff.”
Clint clicked his pen, stuck it and the pad back in his coat. “Well, I’m not a biologist, anyway. And since she seems comfortable . . .”
The growth on Kitty’s face was white and gauzy, tight to her skin. It made Clint think of a winding sheet. He could tell that her eyes were shut and he could tell that they were moving in REM. The idea that she was dreaming under the stuff troubled him, although he wasn’t sure why.
Little wisps of the gauzy material unspooled from her limp hands and wrists, wafting out as if breeze-blown, catching onto the waist area of McDavid’s uniform, forming connections. Based on the way the stuff was spreading, Clint extrapolated that it would eventually create a full body covering.
“It looks like a fairy handkerchief.” The warden had her arms crossed. She didn’t appear upset, just thoughtful.
“Fairy handkerchief?”
“Grass spiders make them. You see them in the morning, while it’s still dewy.”
“Oh. Right. I see them in the backyard sometimes.”
They were quiet for a moment, watching the little tendrils of gauzy material. Beneath the coating, Kitty’s eyelids fluttered and shifted. What kind of trip was she on in there? Was she dreaming of scoring? Kitty told him once that she liked the prospect even better than the high—the sweet anticipation. Was she dreaming of cutting herself? Was she dreaming of Lowell Griner, the drug dealer who promised to kill her if she ever talked about his operation? Or was her brain gone, blacked out by the virus (if it was a virus) of which the webbing was the foremost manifestation? Her rolling eyes the neural equivalent of a torn power line shooting off sparks?
“This is fucking scary,” Janice said. “And that’s not a phrase I use lightly.”
Clint was glad Lila was coming. Whatever was going on between them, he wanted to see her face. “I ought to call my son,” Clint said, mostly to himself.
Rand Quigley, the officer on the floor, poked his head in. He darted a quick, uneasy glance at the incapacitated woman with the shrouded face before shifting toward the warden and clearing his throat. “The sheriff’s ETA is twenty or thirty minutes with her prisoner.” He hung there a moment. “Got the word about the double shifts from Blanche, Warden. I’m here as long as you need me.”
“Good man,” she said.