26
HUNTERS AND COLLECTORS
-MINERVA-
The smelly angels
took us all away.
I tried to explain to
them that I was fine—had been for weeks—and that Zahler, Pearl, and
Alana Ray weren’t even infected. But one look at sweaty, frothing,
guitar-smashing Mozzy convinced them we were all
insane.
That was the angels’
big problem: they thought they knew everything.
I could have run. I
was as fast and strong as them now—I could shatter bedroom doors
with a single blow, after all. With the angels busy protecting a
thousand bystanders and catching Astor Michaels and killing the
giant worm that I’d called up (okay . . . oops), disappearing would have been a
cinch.
But that would have
meant leaving Moz and the others behind, and we really were a band
now; I couldn’t let them be kidnapped without me. So I let the
angels stick me with their stupid needles. . . .
And woke up all the
way across the river in New Jersey. They’d put me in a locked room,
a cross between a cheap hotel and a mental hospital. Nothing to do
but watch the world fall apart on TV.
Smelly
angels.
“We’re very
interested in you, Minerva.”
“Really, Cal?” I
batted my eyelashes. He was kind of handsome—in a boring, clean-cut
way—and had a cute southern accent. Not as yummy as Mozzy, of
course, but I liked how Cal turned pink when you flirted with him.
“Then why don’t you let me out of here? It’s not like I’m
dangerous, after all.”
His eyes narrowed.
Cal never wore sunglasses, like the other angels did. They were all
infected, of course, and only sane because they took their meds.
The angels had a big pill factory out here. No skulls or crucifixes
on the walls, though—they were very
scientific.
But Cal was
different. He didn’t need pills and smelled a little bit like Astor
Michaels. Fellow freaks of nature.
“We can’t let you go
because we don’t know what you are,”
Cal’s girlfriend said.
I glared at her. Her
name was Lace-short-for-Lacey, and she’d stuck Mozzy with her
needle.
“But I’m cured. You can see that.” They’d tried to give me
their smelly angel medicine, but I was refusing it. Fresh garlic
was enough for me now.
Cal scratched his
head. “Yeah, you told us about your esoterica already. We’re
checking her out.”
“You be nice to Luz,”
I warned. “She knows things.”
“We know things too,”
he said.
Lace got all bossy
then, hands on hips and voice too loud. “We’ve been around for
centuries, cured a lot more peeps than Luz ever will. Your friend
might know a few folk remedies, but the Watch has this stuff down
to a science.”
“Science, huh?” I ran
one finger down the side of my neck, making Cal all squirmy. “So
what am I, then?”
Lace frowned. “What
you are is freaky.”
“We’ve been watching
Astor Michaels for a while now,” Cal said. “We knew he was
spreading the parasite, but this whole singing thing . . . It kind of caught us by
surprise.”
I didn’t say how the
worm had caught me by surprise too. I’d always felt it rumbling
when we played, but I’d never thought it would come visit.
Even humming made me
nervous now. Smelly underground monsters.
I shrugged. “Why
don’t you ask Astor Michaels about it, then?”
“He doesn’t know any
more than we do,” Lace said. “He’s just some record producer,
trying to find the Next Big Thing. He’s immune to the parasite’s
worst effects, but that’s more common than you’d
think.”
“I’m a carrier
myself.” Cal smiled, all proud of himself. He’d already come by my
room to explain how he was naturally immune and how he’d been a
badass vampire-hunter even before the crisis. Now he worked for
something called the Night Watch, which was run by someone called
the Night Mayor. Oooh! Spooky.
I batted my eyes
again. “Did you get up to tricks like Astor Michaels did, Cal? Were
you bad?”
“No.” He swallowed,
then Lace gave him a look. “Well, not on that scale. And never on
purpose . . .”
“Did you infect
her?” I asked, pointing at
Lace-short-for-Lacey. I’d seen them being all kissy through the
bars of my window.
“No,” he said in a
tiny voice. “My cat did.”
“Your cat?” I
blinked. “Kitties can do that?”
“Felines are the
major vector,” Cal said. “The parasite hid in the deep-dwelling rat
population for centuries, until the worms drove them up to the
surface. . . .”
As Cal went on with
his parasite-geek lecture, which he loved to do, I remembered back to before I got
sick. As the sanitation crisis had settled over our street, Zombie
started spending a lot of time outside. And every night he’d come
home and sleep on my chest, breathing his cat-food breath into my
face.
That was how I’d
gotten sick? From Zombie?
That meant that Mark
wasn’t such a dirty dog after all. He hadn’t given the nasty to me;
I’d given it to him. . . .
“Oops,” I said
softly.
I wondered where
Zombie was now. I always left the apartment window open so he could
visit his little friends, but Manhattan looked pretty bad on TV.
The whole island had been sealed off by Homeland Security, like
that was going to keep the parasite
from spreading.
Cal had explained to
me how clever the parasite was: it turned infected people horny,
hungry, bitey—anything to pass on its spores—and made them despise
everything they’d loved before. That’s why I’d thrown away Mark and
my dolls and my music, why Moz had smashed his Stratocaster to
bits. The anathema, as Cal called it, pushed infected people to run
away from home and head to the next town over, and the next town
after that. . . .
It wouldn’t be long
before the whole world had it.
There were full-scale
riots in most big cities now, blood-thirsty maniacs running around
doing vile things—and not all of them were infected, you could
totally tell. Schools were shutting down, the roads were choked
with refugees, and the president kept making speeches telling
everyone to pray.
No shit.
But the news never
mentioned cat food supplies, not that I ever saw. So what was
Zombie eating now? He didn’t mind birds
and mousies, but he always puked them up.
“Anyway,” Lace said,
noticing I wasn’t listening. “We don’t really care how you got the
disease or how your voodoo friend cured you. This is about your
songs.”
I smiled. “They make
the ground rumble. Want me to sing one for you?”
“Um, not really,” Cal
said, then he frowned. “That worm was probably just a coincidence
anyway. But certain people around here are interested. They’ve been
listening to recordings from that night, and they want to know
where you got those lyrics.”
“You need my help?
But I thought you had this stuff down to a science.”
Lace took a slow
breath. “Maybe what happened that night wasn’t strictly
science.”
Cal turned to her.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Dude! You saw what
happened! That shit was . . .” Her voice faded.
“Paranormal?” I
looked down at my fingernails, which needed a manicure. They were
still growing faster every day, even though I was cured. “Okay.
I’ll tell you everything I know . . . if you let me see Mozzy and the others. I want us
to be together. We’re a band, you know.”
“But the other three
tested parasite-negative,” Cal said.
“I told you they
would.”
He frowned. “Yeah, I
guess you did. But if we let you see them, you can’t do anything
that would compromise their health.”
“Eww! I wouldn’t kiss
any of them.”
“Kissing’s not the
only vector.”
I tried not to roll
my eyes. Anything to get out of this smelly room. “Okay, I promise
not to share my ice cream.”
“Cal,” Lace said. “If
she really wanted to infect them, she could have already.” She
turned to me. “But Moz is still dangerous.”
“I can handle Mozzy.
He just needs his tea.”
“He’s getting better
stuff than tea,” she said. “But he’s still in bad shape. It’s not
pretty.”
I snorted. “I’ve been
tied to a bed in a nuthouse, screaming and trying to bite my
doctors’ fingers off. And then locked in my room for three months,
hating myself and eating dead chickens raw. Don’t talk to
me about pretty, Miss
Lace-short-for-Lacey.”
The two of them
looked at each other all seriously, then argued for a while longer,
but I knew that eventually I’d get my way. They wanted to know
about my songs real bad.
And like Astor
Michaels always said, you had to keep the talent
happy.