Daryl Gregory - The Devil's Alphabet

“Interesting touch.”

“It’s the Christian thing to do.”

He took a breath, then shook his head with a nicely calibrated display of regret. “I’m sorry, no.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s too dangerous. Emotions are running too high.”

“Among your soldiers or my people?”

“Both. I’m surprised at you, Mayor. We’ve talked about the need for calm.”

“My people will have firm instructions.” She nodded at the blue sheet. “They won’t do anything to your men, not look at them, not talk to them. This is a silent march-no one will even speak until we get to the checkpoint, at which point Reverend Hooke will say a prayer. You’re not against prayer, are you?”

“Mayor, it’s already abundantly clear that the argos cannot be controlled.”

“The same could be said for your soldiers.” A moment passed, and then Rhonda changed tactics. “Colonel, my people need this.” She let the weariness surface in her voice. “They need to express their grief. If you make it impossible for them to let off steam, this town will explode.”

“Mobs don’t let off steam, Mayor, they generate it.”

“The anger’s already there. My people know that this quarantine is a sham. And after today, the world will know it.” She brought out the document she’d copied this morning. “This will be coming out in The New York Times today. It’ll be on every news channel by the time we march.”

He put on his glasses and peered at the first page. “Why don’t you tell me what I’m looking at?”

“That’s a leaked CDC report, Colonel. The report was suppressed, but a few scientists are blowing the whistle. The rationale for this quarantine is full of holes. Not only has no one found a transmission method that would let these plasmid thingies hop from body to body, but it turns out-and this may come as a surprise to you, it certainly did to me-that all those cases the president talked about on TV, those cases of TDS plasmids showing up in unaffected people? Not one has panned out.”

“You don’t say,” the colonel said.

“No, sir, not a one. In fact, the only people who seem to have them, in Switchcreek or in Ecuador, are people who already have TDS.” Rhonda shook her head as if marveling at the impossibility of it all. “Isn’t that something? They’re an effect, not a cause.”

“The government’s never said that plasmids definitely caused TDS,” the colonel said. “Only that it couldn’t be ruled out. Besides, this is just the opinion of a couple of scientists. Other scientists say differently.”

“Yes, yes, the government managed to find their own scientists-and their own lawyers too-to give them a pretext for isolating us. But the jury can’t be out forever.”

“This won’t change anything,” the colonel said.

“Oh, I have no illusions that a couple of leaked reports are going to change the government’s position. I fully expect this quarantine to go on for as long as the public is petrified of getting TDS. But sooner or later, as the evidence keeps coming out, the public will realize that this quarantine isn’t protecting them, that it’s never going to.

“Hell, even if you killed every last charlie, beta, and argo in Ecuador, Tennessee, and across the planet, TDS is going to spread. Someday, I’m betting soon, we’ll turn on our TVs and there will be another outbreak. Then another one. And another. A new world is coming, Colonel Duveen. And then do you know where you’re going to be?”

“In a war zone?”

“Worse than that.” She leaned forward. “You’re going to be on the wrong side of history.”

He took off his glasses and set them on the desk. “That may be so,” he said. “But that doesn’t change this morning. No march, Rhonda, silent or otherwise. No service at the checkpoint.”

“Oh, hon, there’s going to be a march whether you want one or not. Your only decision is to figure out how you’re going to respond to it.” She glanced at her watch. “Well, I better get going. Oh, and afterward we’re having a breakfast at the church. You like biscuits and gravy, don’t you?”

“Are you inviting me?”

“You and as many of your men as you want.”

He chuckled. “I don’t think so. It’s a little difficult to eat through those breathers.”

“Well, we’ll think of something else, then. Maybe a softball game? If we’re going to keep our people from killing each other, I figure they should get to know each other.”

PAX CAME DOWN out of the trees at the western edge of a fog-wreathed field. In the distance, the orange, quavering sun struggled to rise over blue hills. The clouds glowed a score of shades between blue and violet.

A few hundred yards away were the first of the mobile homes that made up the improvised neighborhood of the Coop. He’d come in behind them, their white backs and small windows all alike. No one moved between the buildings. He aimed for the nearest trailer and set off across the field.

The frost-rimed grasses burned silver; they wet his shins and crunched beneath his shoes. So beautiful. He wondered if he would have noticed any of this if he hadn’t been riding a wave of chemicals.

He passed between two trailers on the outermost row and stopped. No one was outside. He thought about knocking at one of the trailers at random.

He walked on until he reached the innermost row of homes that faced the main drive. To his right was the big sheet-metal building at the center of the compound. As good a place to start as any.

Before he reached the building a door opened at a trailer in front of him and he heard the squall of a baby. A tall, older beta woman stepped out, holding a tiny child whose smooth, ruby head gleamed like a marble. The woman had taken two steps down from the front porch before she noticed him.

“Hi,” he said. “I’m looking for Reverend Hooke.”

She stared at him. He wondered if he’d known this woman before the Changes. Maybe she’d gone to his church. Maybe she’d been a friend of his mother’s.

She nodded in the direction Pax had been walking. “Elsa is two down,” she said.

“Thank you,” Pax said. “Good luck calming her down.” The baby’s cry sounded no different from that of any human baby.

He climbed the short steps to the reverend’s trailer and knocked. He put his hands in his pockets, huffed steam. The woman with the baby paced along the drive, not bothering to hide that she was studying him. He knocked again.

The door opened, and a beta woman dressed in a bathrobe looked down at him. The size of her belly, even through the robe, was apparent.

“Paxton?” the reverend said.

He looked up, embarrassed. “You know, I’d noticed at the town meeting and at the funeral that you were dressing differently, that you seemed… bigger. But I never took the next logical step.”

“You’re a man.”

“I suppose that’s why,” he said. “Or maybe it’s just me. I miss a lot of things.”

“Why are you here, Paxton? It’s awfully early.”

“I came to tell you that you can’t take the girls away. Sandra and Rainy.”

“How did you-?” She stopped, looked around, and saw the woman with the baby staring at them.

Pax said, “And I also came to tell you I know where you were the night Jo died.” The reverend’s face was as still as any beta’s, but he could feel the woman’s alarm. He said, “Do you want to do this out here?”

She pushed the door wider. “Come inside,” she said. “It’s cold.”

She walked across the small living room with a slight hitch in her step. Maybe the pregnancy was hurting her. Or maybe the limp had always been there and he’d never noticed.