“How did she die?” Lana asked. “Did she have a lot of pain, like Darnell?”
“Yes. Yes, Lana. She had a lot of pain. She screamed and screamed until the things left her head and crawled into mine. Then we put her out of her misery.”
The forest seemed to fall deathly silent at that last remark, and Mark’s breath froze in his lungs. He sensed Alec moving behind him but Lana shushed him.
“We?” she repeated. “What do you mean, Toad? And what’re you talking about when you say things crawled into your head?”
Their friend pressed his hands against his head. “How can you be so stupid? How many times do I have to tell you? We! Me and the things in my head! I don’t know what they are! Do you hear me? I… don’t… know… what they are! You stupid, stupid kid!”
A wail escaped from his mouth, inhuman and piercingly loud, rising in pitch and volume. Mark jumped to his feet and took a couple of steps backward. It seemed as if the trees shook with the sound exploding from the Toad and every last creature within a mile fled to safety. There was only that one awful noise.
“Toad!” Lana yelled at him, but the word was lost in the shrieking.
The Toad was seesawing his head back and forth with his hands as he continued to scream. Mark looked at his friends even though he couldn’t really see their faces-he had no idea what to do, and neither did Lana, evidently.
“That’s it,” he barely heard Alec say as the man moved forward and past Mark, bumping him along the way. Mark stumbled, then got his balance, wondering what the former soldier had planned.
Alec walked straight at the Toad, then grabbed him by the shirt and yanked him to his feet, dragging him deeper into the woods. The screams didn’t stop, just became more hitched and sporadic as he sucked in breaths and struggled to break free. Soon they were lost in the shadows of the trees, but Mark could hear the scraping of the Toad’s body along the ground. The sound of his wailing faded as they got farther away.
“What is that man up to?” Lana asked tightly.
“Alec!” Mark yelled after him. “Alec!”
There was no response, just the continued cries and shouts of the Toad. And then they ceased, abruptly. Cut off as if Alec had thrown him into a soundproof room and slammed the door shut.
“What the…,” Trina breathed behind Mark.
Soon there were footsteps marching back toward them at a determined pace. For a second Mark panicked, thinking the Toad had somehow broken free and hurt Alec, gone completely insane, and was coming back to finish off the others. Thirsting for blood.
But then Alec appeared out of the dark gloom of the trees, his face hidden in shadow. Mark could only imagine the sadness that must have been stamped in his features.
“I couldn’t risk him doing anything crazy,” the old man said, his voice surprisingly shaky. “I couldn’t. Not if this has something to do with a virus. I… I need to go wash myself in the stream.”
He spread out his hands before him, looking at them for a long moment. Then he marched off toward the brook nearby. Mark thought he heard him sniffle just before he vanished back into the trees.
CHAPTER 17
After all that, they were supposed to go back to sleep. Dawn was still hours away.
No one said a word after Alec had done… whatever he’d done… to the Toad. Mark thought he might explode, so confused was he by what had transpired over the last half an hour or so. He wanted to talk. But Trina turned away from him when he faced her. She slumped to the ground and curled up with a blanket, stifling some sobs. It broke Mark’s heart-they’d gone several months without tears, and now it was happening all over again.
She was an enigma to him. From the beginning she’d been stronger, tougher and braver than he ever was. At first it had embarrassed and shamed him, but he loved it in her so much that he got over it. Yet she also wore her emotions on her sleeve and wasn’t scared at all to let them all out in a good cry.
Lana went about her business silently, eventually lying down next to a tree on the outskirts of their small camp. Mark tried to settle into a comfortable position himself, but he was wide awake. Alec finally returned. No one had anything to say, and the sounds of the forest slowly came back to Mark’s awareness: insects and a soft breeze through the trees. But his thoughts still spun wildly.
What had just happened? What had Alec done to the Toad? Could it really be what Mark thought? Had it been painful? How in the world could things be so messed up?
At least he had the small blessing of a dreamless sleep after he finally drifted off.
“This virus from the darts,” Lana said the next morning as they all sat, zombielike, around a crackling fire. “I think there’s something wrong with it.”
It was a strange statement. Mark looked up at her. He had been staring at the flames, going over the events of the night before, until she’d spoken, and he was suddenly back in the present.
Alec voiced his thoughts bluntly. “I think there’s something wrong with most viruses.”
Lana gave him a sharp glare. “Come on. You know what I mean. Can’t you all see it?”
“See what?” Mark asked.
“That it seems to be affecting people differently?” Trina asked.
“Exactly,” Lana responded, pointing at her as if she were proud. “The people who were hit by those darts died within hours. Then Darnell and the people who’d helped the ones who were shot took a couple of days to die. Their main symptom was intense pressure in their skulls-they acted like their heads were being squeezed in vises. Then there’s Misty, who didn’t have symptoms for several days.”
Mark remembered the moment they’d left her all too well. “Yeah,” he murmured. “She was singing the last time we saw her. Curled up in a ball on the ground. She said her head hurt.”
“There was just something different about her,” Lana pointed out. “You weren’t there when Darnell first got sick. He didn’t die as fast as the others, but he started acting strangely really quickly. Misty seemed fine up until her head started hurting. But something was off up here with both of them.” She tapped on her temple several times.
“And we all saw the Toad last night,” Alec added. “Who knows when he got it-if he had it as long as Misty, or just got it from being with her when she died-but he was crazy like mad cow disease.”
“Show some respect,” Trina snapped at him.
Mark expected Alec to retaliate or defend himself, but he appeared humbled by the rebuke. “I’m sorry, Trina. Really I am. But Lana and I are just trying to assess our situation as best we can. Figure things out. And the Toad was obviously not lucid last night.”
Trina didn’t back down. “So you killed him.”
“That’s not fair,” Alec said coolly. “If Misty died that quickly after her symptoms hit, it’s fair to say that the Toad was going to die also. He was a threat to all of us, but he was also a friend. I did him a mercy and hopefully bought us another day or two.”
“Unless you caught something from him,” Lana said tonelessly.
“I was careful. And I immediately scrubbed myself clean.”
“Seems pointless,” Mark said. He was sinking farther into the doldrums with every second. “Maybe we all have it and it just takes longer to kill you depending on your immune system.”
Alec shifted up on to his knees. “We’ve strayed from Lana’s point. There’s something wrong with this virus. It’s not consistent. I’m not a scientist, but could it be mutating or something? Changing as it jumps from one person to the next?”
Lana nodded. “Mutating, adapting, strengthening-who knows. But something. And it seems to take longer to kill you as it spreads, which-contrary to what you’d assume-actually means the virus is more effectively spreading. You and Mark weren’t there, but you should’ve seen how quickly those first victims went. Nothing like Misty. It was bloody and brutal and awful for an hour or two, but then it was over. They convulsed and bled, which only helped it to spread to more human incubators.”
Mark was glad he’d missed it. But considering what he’d seen Darnell go through at the end, those people might’ve been lucky that it had happened so fast. With way too much clarity, Mark recalled the sound of the boy
