“And don’t get me started on the decorations,” he said. “Come on. They’re gorgeous. Are ya kiddin’ me? The frickin’ wreaths. But I gotta say, you’re missing one thing. Lucky I never leave home without it. No applause, please. Just think of it as my humble contribution.”
I literally drooled as I watched his hands open a box, pull out a black cylinder the size of a soda can, attach it to a stand, set it on the floor, and press a button on it.
A light show erupted onto the wall, green and red stars zipping around. I rushed toward them. I wanted to kill them all, but so did everyone else at the party, and many of them were closer and reached the wall before me. From two rows back, I had to watch their impotent attacks, pouncing on the stars, leaping after them, batting, swatting, cupping, biting, but the stars kept moving, moving, unwounded. I could do better. Desperate for the chance, I pressed into the people in front of me.
Then two arms wrapped around my waist. I pushed and pulled at them and tried to wriggle free, but they didn’t budge. They lifted me off my feet and carried me outside, back to the rain and daylight, and set me down on the sidewalk. Away from the stars, I forgot about them. Dead leaves floating on the water rushing down the street gutter caught my eye now. I instantly wanted to kill their movement. I tensed, ready to pounce, but then more leaves floated by, and more, and more, and my head snapped from side to side, and I didn’t know which leaf to kill first.
Lou ducked his head into my line of sight. He no longer wore the gas mask. “Relax pup,” he said. “You’ll be cured in no time.” He brushed scrill off my face with his hand. Something wet but too warm to be rain touched my cheek, and a moment later I lost interest in the leaves. My brain felt like it had been released from a clamp. My obsession with movement was gone. I had my mind back, my reason, and I realized that Lou had just poisoned everyone at that party and given me the antidote.
“What was that?” I said.
“I call it Go-Fetch,” he said. “It heightens the prey drive. Come on.”
He marched up the sidewalk, and I followed him into a flower shop next door. No one was inside, I was surprised to see, and the flowers were all dead, naked stems in pots, brown petals strewn across the floor. An open duffle bag full of clothes and blond wigs was on the counter. Lou rifled through it and handed me a wig, a short-sleeve collared shirt, and a gas station attendant’s jacket with a patch sewed into the right breast that read “Doug.”
“Put these on,” Lou said.
“Why?”
“Blanche has infected the whole county and more. But she can’t be everyone at once, not yet anyway. Think of the population as her brain. Most of it is subconscious. If we dress like her, don’t draw attention to ourselves, she won’t see us.”
“The whole county?”
Lou nodded. “And more. She ran through the Coast Guard and the National Guard when they came to bring aid. Those guys could’ve taken shanikas all over the country by now, spreading her cackle.”
I hung my head. Humboldt County had a population of 135,000, all infected in a week, and there could be at least that many infected outside the county. If I succeeded in my mission, they would all die, all be regurgitated into the void. I would be a mass murderer. That many people, that many lives, were unfathomable to me, but sickening.
I drug my rain poncho over my head, slapped it onto the floor, and said, “Why aren’t you infected. That party was loaded with Blanche’s cackle.”
Lou pointed to a clump of scrill that had fallen off my body and splatted on the floor. “All that gunk I collected from you came in handy. After I lost you guys, I started noticing everyone suddenly had blond hair and wore old clothes. They smelled real strange too, so I checked some of my whorls. Turns out the smell was nemaloki. Not to mention everyone started acting like it was Invasion of the Bodysnatchers. I put two and two together and mixed your gunk in a spray bottle and boom, I got armor.”
“Do you have any more?” I finished putting on my disguise and transferred the bloom and otalith potion to my new pockets. “Em and Kaliah are waiting for me. I need to get them over the bridge somehow.”
Lou grinned, turned up his palms, and shook his shoulders. “Already done, Doughboy. They’re waiting for us on the north end of town. They told me the plan. Don’t worry. I can get us to the DMV, and you can do what needs to be done.”
“Do you know what that is?” I said. “It’s murder.”
“Hey, we can’t be having a world of bodysnatchers. You gotta do what needs to be done.”
“Do you have an empty bottle or a jar?”
Lou squinted one eye. “Who are you talking to? Do I have a bottle?” He scoffed, pulled an empty bottle from the duffle bag, and handed it to me.
I scooped scrill off my neck and plopped it into the bottle, took off my coat, and scraped the scrill off my arms. “This cures Nemaloki poison, right?” I said, holding up the blue substance. “We just kidnap a shanika infected by Blanche, put her in a room with me where Blanche can’t find us, and we harvest the scrill that pours off me, and we save everyone one by one with it.”
Lou shook his head as I filled
