Agents of Dreamland(19)

“No, I’m not a cop. And the others are here, not far away.”

“It isn’t fair,” she says. “I’m his favorite. As soon as he found me, I was his favorite. Madeline said so. It isn’t fair that they’d go before me.”

“Who’s Madeline?”

“It isn’t fair at all.”

“Was she still at the ranch when we got there?”

“No,” the girl answers. “Madeline is the Sixteenth Trump. Madeline is the Tower. She went with him. She left me to watch over the others, and she went with him.”

“And where did he go? Where is he now?”

“Are they dead?” she asks him. “Did I kill them?”

The Signalman hesitates, weighing his lies, weighing consequences.

“I don’t think that I meant to kill them,” says Chloe Stringfellow. “I was angry, that’s all. I kept waiting for the television to call my name, but it was too busy talking to them. Like I wasn’t even in the room. Like maybe he’d made a mistake, bringing me there, and I was just some sort of accident. But that can’t be. Drew said, ‘You are the path unto deliverance. There are no accidents here.’”

“What if he lied to you? Have you thought of that? You have to have considered that possibility.”

She shakes her head very slowly, shrugs her shoulders, and licks at her lips. It seems to him as if her every movement requires tremendous effort, some force of will that’s almost beyond her.

“You have, haven’t you? In fact, that’s what you’re thinking right now, that maybe none of it was true. That maybe he used you. Maybe he used all of you.”

“No,” she says, so quietly that he almost misses it, and she shakes her head again.

“Why are you still protecting him, Chloe? That’s what I want to know. Look what he’s done to you. You trusted him, and he’s betrayed that trust. He left you there in that house to die. He got cold feet, and he ran. He left you—all of you—behind.”

“No,” she says. “Drew saved me. If anyone’s a traitor, it’s me, not him.”

The Signalman leans forward, resting his elbows on the knees of his cheap suit. “Your were abandoned,” he says. “Is that how our saviors treat us?”

“If you could have seen me before—”

“Are you really expecting me to believe you were worse off than you are now? This thing is eating you alive, you know that, right? It’s using you, just like Standish used you, taking what you are and changing you into something it needs. He isn’t a shaman, and this isn’t divine transformation. It’s a disease. A parasite.”

“You haven’t seen what I’ve seen.”

“That’s right, and I don’t f*cking need to,” the Signalman replies. There’s anger in his voice, bright and violent, that he’d not intended to show. It’s too early in the game for that. If he isn’t careful, he’ll blow the pantomime and lose her.

Don’t fool yourself. You’ve already lost her.

She looks up again, and whatever he was going to say next, he lets it go. There’s an ugly swelling on the left side of her face that wasn’t there a minute ago. The skin is taut, shiny, ready to split open.

The fungus spreads through an ant’s body, maturing inside its head—and this is where things really get interesting.

“You didn’t come here to help me,” she says. “You’re frightened. He told us, all the world will be frightened, until they understand. Fear is an affront to the messengers, and the heart of the passage is a release from the prison of our fears.”

“You were better off on heroin,” he replies. “At least it never promised you anything it couldn’t deliver.”

Chloe shuts her eyes, and she manages a crooked sort of smile.

“I wish you could see,” she sighs. “I wish I could show you.”

“Her BP is dropping,” says one of the white-coated men, his voice calm and smooth as vanilla ice cream, like the bastard sees this shit every damn day of the week. “Her body temperature, too.”

“Is she on anything for the pain?” the Signalman asks.

“No. Only the stimulants. Our orders were very specific on that point.”

“It doesn’t hurt,” she says, right on cue. “It doesn’t hurt at all.”

“She’s probably telling the truth,” says the other white-coated man. “The pathogen seems to be producing a compound that acts as a neurotransmitter and mimics endorphins, pretty much the same as morphine.”

Behind the Plexiglas, the girl lifts her right arm, and she points at the briefcase. The Signalman set it on the floor beside the metal folding chair. For the first time in more than twenty-four hours, he’d forgotten all about it.

“I know what’s in there,” she says, slurring her words. “The gift of Babylon the Great, Mother of All Prostitutes and Obscenities in the World. The lies by which she would deceive every living soul. He told us she was coming. He told us about her, about the diner in Arizona, about the filthy whore seducing you, hiding herself behind that name. The Immaculate Protector, the Sacristan. But you’re such a clever one. Surely you can see behind the demon’s mask.”