Steadfast(60)

Faster, she thought. I must work faster. Or else the One Beneath will begin to doubt me.

This was hard, given what Elizabeth had done for His sake. But that was what it meant to be the servant of the One Beneath. His rules were as harsh as His instruments. His followers were born and shaped by blood.

“Faster,” she whispered, holding her hand up to the sky. A flick of her fingers was enough to summon her crow. It alit upon her wrist, cobweb eyes unblinking.

Elizabeth curled her hand around it. She felt the brief flutter of its wings against her palm, and tried to remember what it had been like to feel afraid. The heart beat faster; that much she could recall. Even now the bird’s tiny heartbeat pattered against her fingertips.

Then she sliced in deep with her thumbnail, swiftly enough that she was able to touch the heart before it stopped beating.

Verlaine was in the hospital when it happened.

As much as she wanted to be there for Uncle Gary, she had come to hate the hospital the past few days. The smell of stale air and disinfectant seemed to have burned its way into her nose, and the fluorescent lights made everyone look as sick as the three people connected to life support in this room. She’d been trying to get comfortable in a plastic chair for hours, to no avail.

And yet she would live like this forever if it meant they hadn’t yet lost Uncle Gary.

She tucked her feet under her in the chair and adjusted herself yet again. Now she was angled to look out the window. The view wasn’t much—a bleak, gray sky over the parking lot—but at least it made a change.

Then the clouds . . . twisted.

The movement wasn’t gentle, like clouds stirred by the wind. Instead their shapes shrank and clenched as though they were being wrung out by unseen hands. From every tree and wire, countless black birds swirled up at once, darkening the sky so that the weak sunlight dimmed almost to dusk. Verlaine shuddered, knowing this was Elizabeth’s work.

But the horror only hit her when she heard Uncle Gary cry out.

It was a shout of pure mindless pain, and as she sprang from the chair to go to him, she saw his body begin to thrash. “A seizure!” she shouted. “Help, someone, he’s having a seizure!”

Then the other two patients in the room began seizing as well—and alarms sounded from up and down the hall. Verlaine realized every single person struck down by the dark magic was in agony, all of them at once.

She’s killing them, every one of them, right now, oh, God, I need Nadia and she’s gone, there’s nothing we can do—

“Somebody, help!” This time her voice was a scream.

The next hour was a blur of nurses running and CDC guys hovering and Uncle Dave dragging her out of the hospital room. She wanted to collapse in his arms, but he was crying so hard that she felt she had to hold him up. No time for her to fall. Verlaine had to be strong.

By the time a doctor came out to talk to the throngs in the waiting room, people were miserable and angry and wretched. Despite Verlaine’s worst fears, nobody had died; they’d all stabilized back to the same coma state as before. Whatever pain Elizabeth had inflicted on them hadn’t been fatal.

She’s keeping them, Verlaine realized. Like fireflies trapped in a jar. She’s keeping all those people so she can torture them again and again, to build her bridge for the One Beneath.

The only end to Uncle Gary’s pain would come when Elizabeth had made him hurt so much he couldn’t take any more, or when she’d brought about the end of the world.

Uncle Dave was staying behind, so she left. Numbly Verlaine walked out into the cold, not even bothering to fasten her coat. Misery knotted her up from the inside, so much that it felt odd to even stand up straight.

Still, she had to do something useful. Something helpful. Right now she couldn’t battle the One Beneath or Elizabeth, or even help Nadia, so that left getting something for her and Uncle Dave to eat. So Verlaine lined up at one of the CDC supply trucks to get their house’s rations. It wasn’t that long a line—most people had a few days’ worth of groceries to fall back on—but she and Uncle Dave hadn’t been shopping since Uncle Gary’s collapse. The only one in their house with food remaining was Smuckers, and even now Verlaine wasn’t miserable enough to start eating Meow Mix.

After she took the sack of food, she began trudging back home. Gas rationing had begun, which meant she couldn’t fill the land yacht up until tomorrow; she had to hoof it today.

Verlaine didn’t mind that—she felt as though she were beyond caring about anything—until a couple of guys fell into step behind her.

“Hey,” one of them said. “Hey.”

She tried to ignore this. In a town as small as Captive’s Sound, nobody was a total stranger, but these guys were unfamiliar. They worked down at the dock, she thought.

“Hey, gray-haired girl. Hey, come on, talk to us.”

“I’m busy,” Verlaine said without turning around.

“Those rations you got there? Government chow? It sucks, huh?”

It did suck. The food the CDC handed out was like the stuff she’d sometimes put aside for a church food drive, then take back because it seemed cruel to foist it off on poor people: brick cheese, rice, beans, pasta, and lots of canned food, usually food you didn’t even want when fresh, like beets. Verlaine figured it was better than nothing, but that was all it was better than.