until now, but I’d never seen him getting panicky like that before, even when the hornets nearly caught us a few weeks ago and they killed Lana and Dean.”
“There’s your proof,” Ben told them. “Let Greg go. He’s more likely to save your necks than harm you.”
“Whoa. No, wait a moment here.” Zak didn’t remove the gun from my neck. “This is how I see it, tell me if I’m wrong, OK?”
“OK.”
“Greg Valdiva here has got some natural, in-built early warning system. He knows… or divines, somehow, when a person has Jumpy. And he knows before anyone else recognizes the symptoms, right?”
“That’s right,” Ben said.
“Then some kind of red mist comes down inside his head. Before he knows what’s happened he’s killed the infected person.”
“Yes, it’s as involuntary as…” I pictured Ben shrugging as he searched for a suitable illustration. “… as involuntary as hitting your knee and triggering the classic knee-jerk reaction. It’s instinctive.”
“Yes, yes, that sounds great. Greg here will screen any strangers we meet. If his instinct tells him that they’re infected then he executes them. If not, then we’re free to team up with them if that’s what everyone wants.”
“So,” Michaela said, “what’s the problem with that, Zak?”
“The problem is, what if that little alarm bell inside his skull starts ringing when he sits down next to one of us one day? What if he starts killing us one by one?”
Sighing, I shook my head. “I don’t feel it when I’m with you. With any of you, and that includes the people we found today with the exception of Ronald. He’s the only one infected.”
“For now.” Zak sounded like a lawyer nailing his man in court. “But what if you sniff those symptoms on us? Or what if you have a foul-up day and think one of us is lousy with Jumpy?”
“Zak, it doesn’t-”
“Do you blow my head off? Then say, ‘Oops, sorry, my mistake, Zak.’ Yeah, right, that will make me feel pretty damn joyful when you leave a personal note of apology on my grave.”
Ben said, “It doesn’t work like that.”
“Says you. But don’t you see?” Zak was like the lawyer addressing the judge and jury again. “If we allow Greg to stay with us, won’t it to be like sitting on a ticking bomb? OK, we might be fine this week and next week, and next month, but there might come a day when Greg gets the feeling on him… Do you know what I’m saying? We’re not going to know when we sit down to eat breakfast with him whether he’s going to say, ‘Pass the salt, please’ or, ‘Meet your maker. Boom. ’ Can we handle that kind of uncertainty?”
Michaela said, “Ben’s got a point, too. Greg here could be the best weapon we have. If he can detect Jumpy in people before they can harm us, that gives us another hatful of chances to survive.”
Zak’s voice turned cool. “Until he sees Jumpy in you, Michaela, or you, Tony, or you, Ben.”
Michaela stayed firm. “My vote is that Greg Valdiva stays.”
“I say he goes,” Zak said. “Tony?”
“Couldn’t we just disarm him?” Tony answered. “If he doesn’t have a gun he can’t hurt us.”
I sighed. “If this thing comes down on me the way it does, I’d kill you with my bare hands.”
“Shit.”
“I can’t help it, Tony. It’s something inside me. It just won’t stop.”
“OK,” Michaela said. “Greg’s unarmed now. Let go of him.”
The mood of the people in the repair shop did seem calmer. Tony and Zak took the guns out of my neck and stood back. I turned ’round to look at those faces in the lamplight. Their eyes were as intense as light-bulbs. They stared back at me. I’d seen that expression in faces back in Sullivan. These people were frightened of that thing I had inside me that had the power to look into people and see the infection. They were fearful I’d see it in them. Now this bunch of accidental nomads had to decide what they did with me. Or to me.
They thought it best that I wait outside while they put it to a vote. Whether I stayed. Or went. Or whatever…
Michaela and Tony looked apologetic when I returned to the campfire to pile on more wood. Zak had been shrewd, thinking through the implications of what I’d got inside me. I believe he really was reluctant to take the hard line he had. But part of me agreed he was right: I was dangerous. If I detected any sign of Jumpy in man or woman I’d kill. Hell, come to that, I couldn’t stop myself killing. I’d be like a dog after a rat.
A guard had been posted outside to watch out for any hornets happening by. But I did ask myself if they weren’t also keeping an eye on me while they continued their discussions behind the closed doors of the repair shop.
I prodded the fire with a stick that sent a gush of sparks into the night sky, where they lost themselves among the stars. The air was warm; moths darted in toward the firelight. Some set their wings alight and spiraled, fluttering, to the ground. They were governed by instincts, too, something so deeply embedded in their insect bodies that they couldn’t stop flying toward a light. If it resulted in their being damaged or dying, that mattered absolute zero to them. Most creatures were governed by instinct. Birds migrated. Bears hibernated. At given times of the year different species mated. I was no better and no worse than they were. Instinct ruled me.
A couple of hours later, close on midnight, the repair shop door swung open. Backlit by the lamps inside, I saw Michaela in silhouette. She stood, looking out at me, with a rifle in her hand. I guessed the band had reached a decision.
Twenty-nine
Valdiva, kneel before the ditch. Bang… rifle bullet chews my brain. Zak pushes me into the ditch with the toe of his boot… Now you’re rat meat…
That scenario played out bright and clear, I can tell you, the moment Michaela stepped out of the repair shop. The others came, too, to form a line behind her. Wood in the fire snapped like pistol shots. Sparks climbed into the night sky. And it seemed all the stars in creation gazed down to see what would happen next.
“What’s it to be then?” I asked her. “You going to give me to the count of ten before you start shooting?”
“Greg…” She sounded pained. “No, nothing like that.”
“Oh?”
“But we do have to decide what’s best for the survival of our group.”
“I’ve been sitting out here thinking through your options.” I spoke to the group as much as to Michaela. “I figure you’ve got three ways to go with this. One: Let me continue staying with you. But I don’t consider that viable. Two: Kick me out. Three: Put a bullet in my head.”
“Greg-”
“After all, if you do exile me I might come back looking for you.”
“Now just you wait one minute, Greg.” Michaela’s eyes flared with anger in the firelight. “This hasn’t been easy for us. But we’ve got to decide what’s right. We’ve had strangers who’ve joined us in the past who have been infected. We’ve woken up in the night with them trying to hack out our brains. See!”
I didn’t anticipate what she’d do next. She lunged forward, grabbed my fingers and pushed them into her hair on top of her head. “Feel that ridge of skin? That’s scar tissue where a sweet little fourteen-year-old girl tried to open up my skull with a wrench. Of course, first of all she was chatty, friendly and perfectly normal-looking, so we had to sit down and talk it through among ourselves. Yes, she was a stranger. Yes, she might be infected. But, no, there were no symptoms. And we weren’t so brutal, Greg, that we decided to turn her away to die of starvation out there. We took her in, fed her, but a week later she went crazy and attacked. Tony, here, had to put three bullets through her back to get her off me. She was like a wildcat.” Michaela spoke fast, angry and hurt all at the same time. A huge glittering tear swelled in her eye before rolling down her cheek. “So, you see, Greg, we didn’t make this decision lightly.”
I took a breath to speak, but Ben held up his hand. “Listen to what they have to say, Greg.”
I nodded. “OK. What’s the verdict?”
