Daryl Gregory - The Devil's Alphabet

His father would have been crying by now, Paxton was sure. Harlan had been stunned by the news of Deke’s and Donna’s deaths; during Paxton’s visits this morning and the day before he’d been incapable of saying more than a few words. Yet he wouldn’t come to the service. Aunt Rhonda said she would have allowed it, that her employees could have transported him, wheeled him inside, and guarded him, but Harlan refused. Pax knew that he was intensely embarrassed by his size and must have been petrified that he’d humiliate himself if the vintage struck during the service. The fact that the funeral would be held in his own church only made it more unbearable. “You go,” his father had told him, and it had been not so much a command as a plea.

The stories and testimonials went on and on. The church was packed as full as he’d ever seen it, and the doors were propped open so that the scores of people standing outside could hear. There were no reporters inside or out, no nonresidents at all-those had been bussed to an alternate quarantine site near Louisville, Kentucky. Already some of those reporters had been examined and declared clear of TDS-causing plasmids-whatever those were. Neither were there soldiers; they’d pulled back to their improvised headquarters at the Cherokee Hotel and to the newly reopened and fortified checkpoints. No one except the National Guardsmen had entered the town in three days.

Pax knew that he should stand up and speak for his friend. Who else here could tell about the boy he’d been before the Changes, before he’d become the Chief? The baseball fanatic who so loved a good game that he’d once broken a finger in the third inning and didn’t tell anyone until the next day. The shy daredevil who’d invented Hillbilly Bobsled. The artist who’d built a dozen birdhouses just because his crazy-ass father mentioned-once-that he liked to watch the blue jays squabble. Nobody who knew only the Chief would believe how scared Deke had been of his old man.

Reverend Hooke stood in silence, waiting for anyone else to step forward.

Pax gripped the pew in front of him and stared at his hand. He could pull himself up, walk to the front. But his hand would not unclench, and seemed to become something alien, a knuckled stump that did not belong to him. A foreign object attached to someone else’s arm. His body felt heavy as river stone.

And then the reverend nodded to a back row, and the moment passed. His hand fell into his lap.

Aunt Rhonda came slowly forward, an immensity in pink like a parade float: pale pink dress and jacket, a wide pink hat with a brim ringed with white flowers, pink eye shadow and lipstick. Her lilac perfume followed like a bridal train.

Rhonda stepped up on a hidden riser and regarded them over the podium. Her mouth was pursed, and her mascara had smeared darkening her eyes. It was the first evidence Pax had ever seen that the woman could cry.

He could no more concentrate on the words of her eulogy than he could anyone else’s, but he took note that her voice often trembled and at times broke, and that what appeared to be actual moisture made her eyes gleam. Performance or true passion? He couldn’t decide. Maybe a smart person could tell the difference. The people around him certainly seemed to be moved. Their tears flowed; they leaned toward her, rapt.

“They call us freaks,” Rhonda said. “They call us mistakes. They call us unnatural . But everyone in this room was blessed to know two giants. I’m not talking about their size. I’m talking about their spirit, their goodness, their courage. And what was their reward? The world cut them down, cut them down like the Old Soldier. That is the unnatural act. And that is the great mistake our captors have made.

“They thought they could contain them,” Rhonda said. “But Deke and Donna cannot be contained. We cannot be contained. We shall not be contained.”

Someone shouted an amen. Around Paxton people began to stand; the entire congregation was getting to its feet. Paxton rose with them, but he kept his head down and gripped the pew in front of him. People murmured and shouted. He’d never suspected that Rhonda could deliver a fire-and-brimstone sermon. But of course she’d been watching his father all those years.

At some signal he didn’t see, the argos in the front rows turned to face the congregation.

Pax recognized Amos, the one-armed man who worked in Deke’s shop, and a few others he’d either known before the Changes or had seen around town over the past few months. Most were strangers, gray-and white-skinned giants, some dressed in good suits, others in overalls and short-sleeved shirts and long cotton dresses.

And then they began to sing.

The first blast of sound rocked him back. The pew vibrated under his hands, traveled into his chest, buzzed the bones of his jaw.

He’d never heard so many argos sing at once, and never on their own; he’d only heard them in mixed choirs, taking the bass line in songs with the other clades. But this, this was something new, purely argo. New music that required previously unimagined vocal parts: Sub Bass, Deep Bass, Nether Bass, Double Mineshaft. He knew there must be more registers below his hearing, sub-foghorn frequencies that propagated miles through the Earth’s crust: Tectonic Bass.

The song went on for five minutes, ten, fifteen. The throb and thrum hammered him back into his body; he gripped the pew as waves of sound beat against his face and chest and thighs, chorus after chorus after chorus. He didn’t know what song the choir sang, but he sang with them, head back and mouth wide. He sang and he waited for the tears to come. He waited, teetering on the edge of that release, rocking in the embrace of that deep sound.

But no. He was dry. Dry as ancient skin, and the singing beat him like a hollow drum.

On the fourth day of the quarantine, soldiers brought him coupons.

Six masked national guardsmen knocked hard on his door at eight in the morning. Paxton came out in the T-shirt and shorts he’d been sleeping in. He couldn’t tell how old the men were, or if they were frightened to be knocking on doors that could be answered by testosterone-crazed sumo wrestlers or twelve-foot trolls or hairless women who didn’t need men to breed.

“Trick or treat,” Pax said. It was only ten days to Halloween.

If they were relieved that Paxton looked normal their masks hid it. A man at the front of the group held out his hand. “How do you do,” he said, his voice muffled. “I’m Colonel Duveen.”

Pax had heard of him. The Maximum Leader. Chief Jailer. “Are you sure you want to touch me?”

The man didn’t drop his arm. Finally Pax shook his hand. His gloved hand.

The other soldiers were spread out along the front lawn, and one of them faced the driveway. They held their rifles a little too at-the-ready for Paxton’s taste. He wondered if any of these men had been at the roadblock. If any of those rifles had fired at his friend.

“I’m personally visiting each resident,” the colonel said. “I want you to know that my door’s always open. The guard is here to help you all get through this.” He nodded at one of the soldiers and he-she?-handed Pax several small sheets of blue paper.

“You can use these at Bugler’s Grocery,” Colonel Duveen said.

“Use them for what?” Paxton asked. The unevenly cut slips looked like they’d been made on a photocopier.

“Food, home products, and medical supplies,” he said. “We’ll be ensuring regular delivery every few days.” The Bugler’s had been largely emptied in the first two days of the quarantine, instantly spawning a black market.

“For how long?” Pax asked. The government said that atypical plasmids had been discovered in the blood of changed people in Switchcreek, and supposedly in the veins of Babahoyo residents. He didn’t know what a typical plasmid was, much less an atypical one, and no one had been able to tell him how they would check for their absence.