Stung. Part 13

My head throbs with tension that has me clenching every muscle in my body, and I don't know if I can go much farther. I push sweat-crunchy bangs from my forehead and force my legs to continue forward.

The gla.s.s skysc.r.a.pers of downtown Denver reflect the brightening sky, glowing with the promise of a very near sunrise. In between the slender skysc.r.a.pers, a few blocks away, the wall loomsa"a muddle of stacked, rusty train cars and cinder-blocks.

Bowen pauses, and I almost walk into him before I realize he's stopped moving. I halt, wanting to fall to the dusty sidewalk and sit, but stay standing.

"Where are we?" I whisper, wobbling on unsteady legs. My voice is out of place in the quiet morning. Bowen tilts his face toward the sky. I follow his gaze and blink at a ma.s.sive, ornate gla.s.s skysc.r.a.per that seems to touch the blazing blue sky.

"Marriott," Bowen states, sticking his head through the frame of a gla.s.sless revolving door in the building's exact center.

"The hotel?" I ask, wondering if my sluggish brain heard him right.

"Yeah. You need rest. And sometimes there's water in the toilet tanks, in case we run out. And if we are really lucky," he says, looking at me with a gleam in his weary eyes, "we might find a room with a bed that hasn't been destroyed. You can sleep in comfort."

In spite of the terror of the night, I smile at the thought of sleeping in a real bed. Bowen smiles back, an expression that reaches his eyes and warms my exhausted body. A moment later his smile fades and he presses a finger to his lips. I cringe and twirl around, expecting attack. A hand softly squeezes my shoulder, and Bowen turns me back to face him.

"It's okay. You're safe. When the militia pa.s.sed the order to shoot raiders on sight, the raiders stopped coming out in daylight." He nods toward the remnants of the revolving door, presses his finger against his lips again, and tiptoes into the hotel.

Inside, sunlight glints off the gla.s.s-speckled marble floora"the gla.s.s from the revolving doora"and I find myself in a ransacked lobby. Faded, once-red furniture has been pushed to the sides of the room. The stuffing is spilling out of most of the pieces, and I see a rata"a rat!a"poke its head out of a hole in a sofa to watch us with beady eyes. Paintings hang crookedly on washed-out walls, and a layer of dust dulls everything.

In the lobby's center sits something out of my dreams. A dusty black grand piano.

A slew of music fills my head, resonates in the ugly minuscule sounds of this dead world. It turns into a haunting melody of snow and ice. Christmas music. At Christmastime I would dress in scarlet velvet trimmed with white lace and play the piano. This piano.

Child prodigy.

That's what my mother called me. That's what my teachers called me. That's the name my peers teased me with. That, and Fotard.

I can still hear my music theory teacher's voice: With those fingers, she's destined to be one of two things in this life. A surgeon or a musician. But who would want to be a surgeon?

My fingers could fly across the keys faster than human eyes could see, dancing to the music as they created it, brought it to life. If I wasn't doing homework, or spying on the boy across the street, or playing games with Jonah, I was sitting at the piano, filling myself with musica"with joy. Or sorrow, depending on the piece. On that day, right before I turned thirteen, it was foreboding that overwhelmed me as I learned Beethoven's Seventh. I'd studied the piece the night before, memorized the translated words of a poem that had been sung to the tune, the words of "Figlio Perduto"a""Lost Son"a"about a boy and his father going home, but the boy keeps hearing things and seeing things that his father cannot. And then the Erl Kinga"a fairy kinga"comes to steal the boy away into another world. Only, the father couldn't see the king.

"MY FATHER, MY FATHER, HE SEIZES ME FAST, FOR SORELY THE ERL KING HAS HURT ME AT LAST."

THE FATHER NOW GALLOPS, WITH TERROR HALF WILD,.

HE HOLDS IN HIS ARMS THE SHUDDERING CHILD;.

HE REACHES HIS FARMSTEAD WITH TOIL AND DREAD,.

THE CHILD IN HIS ARMS LIES MOTIONLESS, DEAD.

My fingers pounded the keys, the song consuming me, haunting me, making me feel as if I were the one being stolen away by the Erl King's magic.

Dad's voice bellowed into the music room, military fierce. "Quiet!"

My hands jerked off the keys, my toe released the pedal, and I stood from the glossy black bench, shocked.

The television boomed from the other room, turned so loud the windows rattled. I closed the piano, pushed the bench in, and followed the noise.

Jonah and Lis sat on the sofa, leaning toward the television, their eyes wide. Dad sat in his wheelchair beside the sofa, square hands resting on the wheels, attention glued to the TV screen.

I glared at my family. No one had ever yelled at me to be quiet before. I was a prodigy, after all. "Why can't I play thea""

"Shhhh!" they hissed as one. Lis glanced at me, and without speaking a word, I knew something was wrong. She held up her hand and I clasped it and stared at the television, too. And the more I heard, the closer to the television I leaned.

"Because of the direness of the situation, we thought it best to speed matters along," said a man in a gray suit. He stood alone at a podium in front of a group of reporters. The reporters wore white masks over their mouths: the kind doctors and surgeons wore to avoid spreading disease. "If we didn't step in, bees would already be extinct and that would potentially lead to worldwide famine, possibly even the extinction of the human race."

"So, you're saying you fixed the bee problem? Honeybees are no longer on the endangered species list?" a woman from the crowd asked the man in the suit.

The man looked away from her, straightened his red tie, and looked right at the camera and stared, as if staring directly into our family room, staring into every room in America. "Yes. We found a solution," he said, his eyes fastened to mine through the plasma screen. "We have already genetically modified honeybees."

On the bottom of the screen, words zipped by. Flu death toll at a new high. Over fourteen thousand known deaths with thousands more expected. Hospitals too full to admit new cases. Entire East Coast advised to stay indoors. West Coast predicted to follow.

"So, you're saying, in the midst of this monumental flu epidemic, we finally have something to celebrate?" another masked reporter asked.

The man in the suit tugged at the collar of his white shirt, swallowed, and looked down. Slowly, he placed his hands, palms down, on the podium. "No," he said, unable to meet the camera with his eyes. "We modified the bees. But the GenMod bees a they killed the other bees. All of them."

Another reporter chimed in, "Well, that's okay, right? As long as they reproda""

"They're the cause of the flu," the man blurted.

"What?" Lis said, dropping my hand. "How can bees be causing the flu?"

The reporters burst into a flood of questions, raising their hands, trying to be heard over each other.

The man in the gray suit coughed into his balled fist before saying, "We genetically modified the bees' sting to be more powerful, more deadly to its predators. Unfortunately, we discovered that when a human being is stung, the bee's venom causes flu-like symptoms, followed by aggressive behavior and then death. The bee flu is highly contagious, spreading through bodily fluidsa"something as simple as a cough makes the germs airborne."

Jonah's face drained of color. "The bees? That's why so many people have died? Because of your stupid bees?" he yelled at the television. Lis grabbed my hand once more, holding it tight.

The man, his face turning a sickly shade of green, tugged on the collar of his shirt again and pointed to a reporter who stood frantically waving his hand. The reporter tore the surgical mask from his mouth. "So kill them! Exterminate them!" he cried, his voice rising to near panic.

"We tried," the man muttered, eyes full of misery, shoulders slumped.

"And?"

He looked right into the camera again. Right into the eyes of America. "We modified them to withstand all known pesticides. We have come up with a new pesticide that kills them, but it is worse than the bee flua"a last resort. We're not sure if anything will survive its effects."

"They're going to kill the whole country," Dad whispered, knuckles white from his grip on his wheelchair wheels.

"Use the pesticide!" a reporter yelled. More join in, chanting, "Pest-i-cide! Pest-i-cide!"

"Wait!" The man at the podium raised his hands over his head. "There's hope. We've manufactured a vaccine, a sort of antivenin derived from the bees. There's only a limited supply, so a"

Chapter 23.

"Fo?" Bowen is in front of me, his hand shaking my arm. "Are you all right?"

I blink away the memory and look at him. "The bees?" I whisper.

"Bees? What about them?"

"Are they dead?"

Bowen nods. "Yeah. They used some newly invented heavy-duty pesticide after they realized the vaccine was worse than the flu. Only problem was, it killed everythinga"bugs, birds, cattle, small animals, trees, gra.s.s, crops, even some people. That's why everything is dead."

My brain starts to freak out and I begin to tremble. My eyes search for a distraction, anything to take my mind off the bees, and lock on the piano. "I played the piano," I whisper, staring at the grand piano, swaying with the remembered pulse of music.

"I know," Bowen says, his voice drawing my gaze to his face. His eyes grow far away, clouded over with memory. "I could hear you from my bedroom if I opened the window. That's why I was always sick in the winter. My window was always open. And on summer nights when my dad was home yelling at my mom, I'd get my sleeping bag and pillow and put them on top of his semi, so I could fall asleep to your music. Remember in third grade? You hit me in the face with your backpack when we were walking home from school?"

A smile tugs at the corners of my mouth. "Yeah. I remember you called me Fotard and said playing the piano was stupid. So I stomped on your foot and then hit you."

He smiles. "Your mom made you write an apology letter to me, but you were too scared to deliver it, so you had Jonah bring it to my house. It said something like, *I'm sorry I hit you, but if you don't stop teasing me about piano, I'll hit you again.' Did you know that when Jonah delivered the note he told me if I ever talked to you again, he and his friends would beat the c.r.a.p out of me?"

My mouth falls open in surprise. "My brother stood up for me? Is that why you never talked to me again? Because of Jonah?"

He shrugs. "That and you were always walking around with your nose in the air, always acting better than everyone else."

"I was not!" I snap, indignant.

He takes a step closer to me, so that there are only a couple of inches of air separating us. "The only reason I teased you in the first place a" He pauses, brushes my bangs out of my eyes, and I am painfully aware of the lack of s.p.a.ce between us. "I teased you because I didn't know how else to talk to you."

"Oh," I whisper, at a loss for words.

He grins and puts a finger to his lips, nods toward a door at the far end of the lobby.

We pa.s.s the piano, and I reach toward the dusty keys.

Bowen's hand clamps around my wrist. "No. We don't know if this place is safe. Come on." He slides his fingers from my wrist to my hand and loops them in mine.

With my hand in his, held safe, it seems like everything will be okay. I tighten my fingers in his, and we cross the silent lobby to a stairwell filled with sunlit windows and littered with dead mice and bugs, which crunch beneath my shoes. We go up and up and up, my legs growing weaker and weaker with each step. When we get to level fifteen, Bowen pauses, letting go of my hand. There's a little window on the door leading to floor fifteen. Bowen peers through it and puts his hand on the doork.n.o.b.

"Don't make a sound," he whispers, and turns the k.n.o.b, slipping through to the fifteenth floor. I follow and we creep down the dim hallway, past door after doora"all closeda"until we come to one that is barely cracked open, number 1513. Bowen presses his ear to the metal and closes his eyes. I count to thirty before his eyes open. He shakes his head and goes to the next door, 1515, also open a crack, and presses his ear to it. I wait again, adrenaline pumping, and after a solid sixty seconds, he pushes the door. It swings silently open with a breeze of warm air. Before the door comes to a stop the gun is on his shoulder, pointing into the bright room.

"Wait here," he whispers, and walks into the room. Balanced on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet, he swings his gun from side to side, finger on the trigger. Poised for attack.

A sickening panic settles over me as I watch him disappear around a corner. He's not wearing a Kevlar vest, yet he's the one at risk. The seconds draw out as I wait for him to come back. Or get attacked. Or shot. As I wait to lose the only familiar thing in this world, I can't breathe.

He steps back into view and motions me in as he sets his gun on a mattress hanging halfway off a box spring. I step inside, but instead of shutting the door behind me, I stride over to Bowen and throw my arms around his neck, holding him close and pressing my face into his shoulder. He stiffens beneath my touch, and I remember.

I am his greatest fear.

But then his arm loops around me, backpack and all, and he turns his face into the side of my neck, his breath on my skin, his touch leeching the panic from my muscles.

After a long minute he pulls away and looks at me, his eyes devouring mine. Without taking my arms from his neck I stare up at him.

"What was that for?" he asks.

"Watching you walk into the room, I thought of how I would feel if anything happened to you." My voice trembles.

Bowen studies my face, his eyes moving from my eyes to my mouth and back again. "How would you feel?" he asks, his voice a whisper.

"I've already lost everything that I love. You're all I have left." My face starts to burn as I realize what I've almost said. That I love him. I hide my face against his shoulder, too embarra.s.sed to meet his eyes.

"You're just tired." He gently pries my arms from his neck. "You'll feel different after some sleep," he adds without meeting my eyes.

I know sleep won't make a difference, but I don't tell him. He steps from me and pushes the bare mattress back onto the box spring.

The room is covered in a layer of dust. The window is broken, and the curtains that once covered it are in a mouse-eaten pile on the floor. Bowen slips his arms out of his backpack and sets it beside the bed. I do the same, dropping my backpack to the floor with a clunk, and stretch my tight shoulders.

"Sleep," Bowen says, taking the sleeping bag from my backpack and unzipping it. "I'll keep watch." He spreads it over the mattress, and I lie down. Next, he riffles through his backpack and brings out a can of something and a water bottle, then steps in front of a mirror affixed to the wall above a dust-coated dresser. Opening the water bottle, he splashes the left side of his head, the side with four vertical lines shaved into it. Next he squirts mint-green gel out of the can and rubs it over the four lines until it turns white and foamy. From his belt he takes a knife and drags it through the foam. The knife leaves bald skin in its wake.

"What are you doing?" I ask, climbing from the bed to stand beside him, staring with fascination.

"Shaving," he answers, never taking his eyes from his reflection.

"I see that, but why?"

"I'm not part of the militia anymore. I'm on their most-wanted list, right up there with the raiders." He looks at me and touches his injured shoulder. "I'm on the shoot-to-kill list. I can't go back."

"Well, then, what are you going to do?" I ask, wondering if he can hear the hope in my voice. If he can't go back, maybe he'll run. I want to run with him. And never come back. And be with him forever.

He sighs and splashes water over the pale bald patch above his ear. "After I get you safely to the lab, I'll try to survive on my own. Try to make it to Wyoming."

Mention of the lab makes my hope turn hard and cold, makes the soft flesh in the creases of my elbows hurt. I fold my arms, pressing on the fading bruises. "I don't want to be the lab's guinea pig. Let me come with you. We'll survive together," I plead, my voice quiet with desperation. "I'm good with a gun. I'll learn to keep up. I'll help you survive, become your ally."

Bowen shakes his head. "Too dangerous," he says, wiping his knife on the edge of the dusty dresser, leaving a glob of shaving cream and hair.

I grit my teeth and glare at my tattoo, hating it more than I've hated anything in my life. It is a representation of everything Bowen hates and fears. Which means me.

"I don't think I'm going to turn into a beast, though," I say, still staring at my hand. "And if I start to feel signs of it, I'll leave. I swear. Please. Don't take me to the lab. Take me with you." I look up from my tattoo and stare at his reflection in the mirror as he slips the knife into a black sheath attached to his belt.

"It's not too dangerous for me. It's dangerous for you. What if I can't protect you?" He won't look at me. He turns and climbs onto the bed, knees bent, back pressed against the headboard. He picks up his gun and balances it on his knees. I climb onto the other side of the bed and curl up on my side, my arm beneath my head, my back to him, and stare out the broken window.

"I'm willing to take that risk," I murmur. "Because I don't want to leave you, Dreyden. I'd rather take my chances on the outside. With you."

He shifts, the mattress sagging beneath his weight, making me roll into him. When he speaks, his mouth is right above my ear. "I shot my mother in the head. It took me two tries to kill her," he whispers.