Butler, Octavia - Clay's Ark

So like the blue sleeve, the blood on his hand was not his. He had spread the disease.

"Please," he pleaded. "Go after him. Stop him."

"Stop who?" Eli asked.

She had not heard him coming. Enhanced senses or not, she stood up, startled. Then she saw her father's bag in his hand. She knew how utterly useless it would be and she broke down.

Crying, she permitted Eli to take her by the shoulders and move her aside. He knelt where she had been. When she was able to see clearly again, she saw that he was holding her father's bloody hand. She felt that something happened

between them, a moment of nonverbal communication.

Then, with a long, slow sigh, her father closed his eyes. Eventually he opened them again widely. His chest ceased to move with his breathing. His body was still. Eli reached up .and closed the eyes a final time.

Keira knelt beside her father, beside Eli. She looked at Eli, not able to speak to him, not wanting to hear him speak, though she knew he would.

"He's dead," Eli said. "I'm sorry."

She knew. She had seen. She bent forward, crying, all but screaming in anguished protest. With her eyes closed, she could not imagine her father dead. She did not know how to deal with such an unimaginable thing.

Eli took off his shirt and covered the most damaged parts of her father's body. Blood soaked through at once, but at least the horrible injuries were hidden.

Eli stood up, took her hands, and drew her to her feet. Her hands tingled, almost burned where he touched her. Confused, she tried to pull away, but somehow her desire to pull away did not reach her hands. They did not move.

"Be still," he said. "I just went through this with your father. His organisms 'knew' something mine want to know. So do yours."

That made no sense to her, but she did not care. She was not being hurt. She did not think she would have noticed if he

had hurt her. She was still trying to understand that her father was dead. Eli kept talking. Eventually, she found herself listening to him.

"When we've changed," he said, "when the organism 'decides' whether or not we're going to live, it shares the differences it's found in us with others who have changed. At least that's what we've decided it's doing. We had a woman who had had herself sterilized before we got her-had her tubes cauterized. Her organisms communicated with

Meda's and her tubes opened up. She's pregnant now. We had a guy regrow three fingers he'd lost years ago. You . . .

There's no precedent for it, but I think you may be getting rid of your leukemia. Or maybe the organism's even found a way to use leukemia to its advantage-and yours. You're going to live."

"I should die," she whispered. "Dad was strong and he died."

"You're not going to die. You look healthier than you did when I met you." "I should die!"

"Jesus, I'm glad you're not going to. That makes up for a lot." She said nothing.

"Kerry?"

"Don't call me that!" she screamed.

"I'm sorry." He put his arm around her as soon as he could free his hands from hers-as soon as the organisms had finished their communication. How the hell could microorganisms communicate anyway, she wondered obscurely.

Eli answered as though she had asked the question aloud. Perhaps she had. "We exchanged something," he said. "Maybe chemical signals of some kind. That's the only answer I can come up with. We've talked about it at home and

nobody has any other ideas."

She did not understand why he was talking on and on about the organism. Did he think she cared? Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the column of smoke from the ranch house and she thought of something she did care about.

"Eli?" "Yeah?"

"What about Rane?"

Silence.

"Eli? Did she get out?" More silence.

"You blew up the house with her inside!" "No."

"You did! You killed my sister!"

"Keira!" He turned her, made her face him. "I didn't. We didn't."

She believed him. She did not understand why she believed so quickly, why watching him speak the words made her know he was telling the truth. She resented believing him.

"What happened to her?" she demanded. "Where is she?" Eli hesitated. "She's dead."

Another one. Another death. Everyone was dead. She was alone. "The car people killed her," Eli said.

"How could you know that?"

"Keira, I know. And you know I'm not lying to you." "How could you know she was dead?"

He sighed. "Baby . . ." He drew another breath. "They cut her head off, and they threw it out the front door." She broke away from him, stumbled a few steps down the road.

"I'm sorry," he said for the third time. "We tried to save all of you. We ... we work hard not to lose people in the middle of their conversions."

"You're like our children at that stage," another voice said.

She looked up, saw that a young oriental man had come over the hill behind her. The man spoke to Eli. "I came to see if you needed help. I guess not."

Eli shrugged. "Take her back to the camp. I'll bring her father."

The man took Keira's arm. "I knew your sister," he said softly. "She was a strong girl."

Not strong enough, Keira thought. Not against the car family. Not against the disease. Not strong at all.

She started to follow the new man back to the ranch house, then stopped. She had forgotten something-something important. It must have been important if it could bother her now. Then she remembered.

"Eli? she said.

He was bending over her father. He straightened when she spoke.

"Eli, someone got away. The hauler who hit my father. He was headed north." "It was a private hauler?"

"Yes. He got out and tried to rob my father. My father scratched him."

"Oh, Jesus," Eli whispered. He sounded almost the way her father had at the end. Then he turned and spoke to the other man. "Steve, tell Ingraham. He's our best driver. Give him some grenades. Tell him no holds barred."

The man called Steve went leaping up the slope as agilely as Jacob could have.

"Jesus," Eli repeated. Somehow, he managed to lift her father and carry him back as though he were merely wounded, not half-crushed. He had fashioned a kind of sack of his shirt. Keira walked beside him, hardly noticing when a car sped by down on the highway.

Up the hill, Steve-Stephen Kaneshiro, he told her-joined her again. He brought her food and she ate ravenously, guiltily. Apparently nothing would disturb her appetite.

Stephen kept her away from the ruin of the house. He stayed with her, silent but somehow comforting. He found an empty car and sat with her in it. Eli's people had apparently driven away or killed all of the second, uncontaminated group of car people. Now they were cleaning up. Some were digging a mass grave. Others were loading their newly appropriated cars and trucks with whatever they thought their enclave could use.

"Take a couple of radios," Stephen told a woman who passed near them. "I think for a change we'll be needing them." The woman nodded and went away.

Jacob found Stephen and Keira sitting together in the car. Without a word, he climbed into Keira's lap and fell asleep. She stroked his hair, accepting his presence and his youth and thinking nothing. It was possible to endure if she thought

nothing at all.

Sometime later, Ingraham returned. He had driven all the way to the edge of Needles, but found no private hauler. Everyone had gathered near him to hear about his chase. When they had heard, they all looked at Eli.

Eli closed his eyes, rubbed a hand over his face. "All right." He spoke so softly, Keira would not have heard him without her newly enhanced hearing. "All right, we knew it would happen sooner or later."

"But a private hauler," Stephen said. "They go all over the country, all over the continent. And they deal with people