“Let’s hear it,” Edie said.
“If you’re inclined to doubt how much our government’s willing to risk for us, after everything we’ve seen—even for Ken here, and Feingold—then you might think it’s less of a risk to sneak in on our own. I know some guys who worked for my old boss. They got me out here the first time. They’d smuggle us in for the right price.”
“How much?” Berto asked.
“You were just saying you could afford an evac.”
“I know what I’m getting with a government-sanctioned evacuation.”
“OK, ballpark? A hundred thousand a head.”
Edie laughed. It was all so predictable. “Well, that’s it for me. And Violet. Andy, I guess I know how much you’re charging for your contact.”
“Maybe you don’t,” Andy said. “Maybe I’m charging three hundred thousand.”
“How do we even get the credits to them?” Ken asked.
“They have the tech out here for a transfer.”
“I think the way forward’s pretty obvious,” Ken said. “We use the satellite phone. And if they don’t come to get us after a few days, we use your contact, Andy.”
Andy smirked. “It don’t work like that, bub.”
“Why not?”
Violet spoke up from across the room. “Andy. Can you turn the lights off for a moment?”
“Lights? Why?”
“There’s something outside I’m trying to get a better look at.”
Andy went to the wall plate and tapped the screen. The lights lowered, leaving only a dim band around the room’s baseboards, reminding Edie of the aisle in a movie theater.
Violet was standing in front of the western bank of windows, and now that the lights were out, the object of her gaze was clear: a bright blaze of orange light. How far away it was Edie couldn’t guess. It might have been a very big light very far away, or it might have been a smaller light quite close. She joined Violet at the windows and peered out, trying to fix on the source. She felt the others gathering close, doing the same.
“What is that?” Berto asked.
Violet’s voice was dull. “Home,” she said.
“Ruby City?” Andy said. “Jesus. Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.”
“How do you know for sure?” Ken said.
“It’s the right direction,” said Andy. “We’re about an hour northeast of it here. Jesus, it looks like a bomb went off.”
Ken again: “What does this mean?”
“It means I vote for getting smuggled in,” Violet said. Her eye was very bright in the low light—damp with tears that she roughly wiped away. “If someone’s willing to pay my tab.”
Twenty-Three
Perhaps an hour passed before Marta regretted turning down Edie’s offer of assistance. When one of the frenzies, as Andy had called them, set in, caring for Wes became a job for two—or a job for one person with more strength and wherewithal than Marta possessed. He paced, ground his teeth; tears leaked out from the corners of his pinched eyes. He hadn’t made a violent move toward Marta (yet), but he was keen to hurt himself, at one point throwing his infested arm against the wall over and over, so that Marta finally broke down and gave Wes the first two tranquilizers of the stash of ten Andy had given her. Were there more pills? He’d been cagey. “Ten should be enough. Give him more than that in a twenty-four-hour period and you might do him more harm than good.” But how long would this go on? A day? Three? If she ran out, would someone come and bring more? Would they do it if Wes were trying to gnaw his own arm off through the biceps?
Now he was resting on one of the beds. Marta dipped a washcloth into the large basin of water Andy had filled for her and blotted Wes’s sweaty brow with it. He let out a shuddering, slow breath. His eyes were still closed. Now that she’d showered, Marta was uncomfortably aware of Wes’s stench—the smell made worse by the wild tang of his sick-sweat. She rolled her chair back, putting some distance between them, and tore the wrapper end off an energy bar with her teeth, bolting down a few fast bites and finishing with a slug of bottled water. Just enough to quiet her stomach’s rumble.
“Would you like some water?” she asked Wes.
His mouth twitched. “Maybe,” he said finally. “Hold on.” A few minutes later, he sat up and propped his pillows up behind his back. “OK, I’ll have some now.”
She handed him a cup with a straw in it, aiming the end of the straw at his mouth. He took it from her irritably. “I’ve got it,” he said. His Adam’s apple bobbed. He moved to set the glass down on his bedside table, and his hand shook so badly that the rest of the water went all over him. “Fuck it all,” he muttered. It was the first time she had heard him curse.
“If there’s anything I can do,” Marta said, “please tell me.”
“I don’t know why you’re even in here,” Wes said.
“Because you shouldn’t have to do this alone.”
He shrugged. “I’m doing it alone either way. Now I’ve got to worry about hurting you.”
“You’re not going to hurt me,” Marta said firmly, though she wasn’t convinced this was true. “I’m here to help contain things when you—you know. So if it helps you feel better, think of it as protecting the others.”
His eyes fluttered shut again, and he winced. “I feel them. Like this army on a march inside me. And I hear their voices. Yeah, I know. Ticks don’t have voices. I don’t suppose they have thoughts, either. But I hear them. In my head.”
“I’m sorry,” Marta said. “That sounds awful.”
“If I get through this, I’m going to stop talking and let you complain to me. For as long as you want. I guess I owe you a few weeks’ worth at this point. Don’t I?”
“You don’t owe me anything,” Marta said. “You’re my friend, Wes.”
“Friend,” he mused. “I’ve never really had one, Marta. Not really. I’m glad you’re my friend. It was worth all of this, maybe. To make a friend.”
“For me, too,” she said. She took his hand and squeezed it. He returned the squeeze . . . and then he bore down. She felt the bones in her hands moving, popping, and she yanked free of him with a little yelp of pain and confusion. His face was bleached of color. The tendons in his neck surged outward as he threw his head back against the pillow, grinding his sweaty crown against the Egyptian cotton pillowcase, and silent tears rolled down into the cups of his ears. Under the thin sheet covering him, his entire body stiffened so hard that Wes emanated a vibration.
“Do you think it’s happening?” Marta asked. She was terrified.
He nodded—one quick dip of the chin.