No point hiding now, I turned and sprinted down the middle of the street. I reached another narrow stretch, leapt onto a hood, and stomped over the roof, denting sheet metal. I leapt to the next hood, then the next, while the infected kept pace, occasionally peering up at me from under their umbrellas with grotesquely exuberant faces, like children experiencing a trampoline for the first time.
Then my feet slipped out from under me, and I landed on my back with the wobbly smack of denting metal. Faces crowded over me. They gave me compliments: “Amazing!” “Great job!” “Revelatory!” “An inspiration!”
Then they went silent for a moment before all speaking in unison, “Hello Charlie.”
Chapter 36
IWAS TAKEN NORTH, equal parts dragged, carried, and shuttled in a golf cart out of town and over the bridge, up Rio Dell’s Main Street, which mirrored Scotia’s Christmas decorations identically. They took me through a group of flying, hopping crows and pigeons into a green and beige building, where I was set on my feet in the middle of a party. Forty or so people in vintage clothes, with vintage hairstyles, talked in small groups or danced in front of a jazz band playing in the corner. A Christmas tree stood in the other corner, lights fuzzy around the edges from the haze of cigarette smoke that filled the room. Garlands hung from the ceiling. Food and alcohol sat on tables against a wall.
I tried to run, but my minders grabbed me. “Be still,” they said as a chorus.
A thick layer of blue scrill sprang from my skin and circulated in on itself. I felt it all over, but could only see it on my hands, which glowed faintly in the dim light.
A group of talking, drinking, smoking people parted, and Em’s old body walked between them toward me, wearing pearls and a green dress with a matching jacket. The band stopped playing.
This was no longer my little niece. But part of my mind couldn’t comprehend that. Seeing her, conjured memories and feelings in me—love. I felt love for a vessel that held the monster that had killed my sister. It warred with the molten hatred flowing through my mind.
Blanche. She smiled up at me through Em’s darling face. “I am so surprised right now. How did you get here?”
“Does it matter?” I said, looking at the finger sandwiches on the table, the first gluten I’d seen in days, and wondering if I could successfully graft to them
She frowned. “To me it does, but I guess I’ll have the answers soon enough.” She waved at the tables. “Do you want a drink? It’s Christmas Eve after all.”
The whole party looked at me like I was an especially adorable act in a children’s talent show. They horrified me. What about a defeated man touched them in that way? I’d failed Em and Kaliah and Zelda, the only people left in this world I cared about, and these people thought I was cute.
“What are they?” I said, curling my lip in disgust and indicating the party with a sweeping gesture.
“People,” Blanche/Em said. “From all backgrounds. Just people.”
“Infected by you.”
“With my cackle, yes. But they still have agency. I’ve just given them . . . perspective.”
I snorted.
She frowned. “Truth is relative, Charlie. It is only universal when perspective is universal.” Her lips tightened around her teeth, and she furrowed her brow. “That is what true grace is. And I will bathe the seven stomachs in it. And it will be glorious.”
“Truth is truth.”
Blanche/Em’s expression relaxed and turned doleful, and she shook her head. “Hardship has made you cynical. That’s a shame. You can be so much more.”
“Oh? You mean like a baker who puts your face on cakes?”
She clicked her tongue, then said, “The flood is already here and you’re still moored to the past. Let go and you will rise to heights you’ve never imagined. Cling and you will drown. You have so much to live for. You have no idea. Your mom was much more fertile than I ever was. You have brothers and sisters you’ve never met.”
I stared at her. She was playing some new game. I couldn’t trust anything she or my mom said.
“It’s true,” she said. “If you don’t want to be a part of this, if you don’t want to be a part of something great, you can live in Arampom with them, as a family. I’m shipping them there now. They are so much like you. You’d be surprised.”
I didn’t have the energy or desire to ponder the veracity of her claim. I was exhausted, defeated, dejected. Blanche had won and could do, say whatever she wanted. Eventually, Em and Kaliah would come into town looking for me, and Blanche would have them too. I wanted to lie down, give up, stop thinking. I almost wished I could be infected by Blanche.
But then a sound came through the PA speakers and filled the room: tink tink tink tink tink tink.
I looked over to the stage, where a man was tapping on a champagne glass with a fork in front of the microphone. Though he wore a gas mask around his mouth and nose and had blond hair now, I recognized him immediately by his square head and the way he stood, weight on one foot, head held high, exuding attitude. He wore a gray suit and fedora he probably thought made him look like Frank Sinatra. I was so surprised to see him I said his name out loud, “Lou!”
“Merry Christmas everybody,” he said, his speech muffled a little by the mask. “I’d like to propose a toast to a very special lady, Blanche Duluth, who’s made this a very special Christmas for all of us. Who needs Santa Claus when you got her, am I right? Ho ho ho everybody.”
Lou gestured with his hands while he talked as he always did, but something was different about his gestures now.
