“I wasn’t there for those people, not when I needed to be. But they were there for me. Always. And because of that, I just want to say, thank you. Thank all of you.”
Chapter 38:
Collective
Summer 2018
Gabriel Schist sat in the gazebo of Bright New Day’s smoking area, listening to the distant rumble of the ocean. He stared into the window of Glenda Alvarez, the latest black-eyed victim of the Schistlings. She was only sixty-three years old, with hair that had been permed last week. The nurse checking Glenda’s IV glanced over and spotted Gabriel. With a frown, she walked to the window and closed the blinds.
Night by night, the air was getting just a tiny bit colder. Autumn wasn’t far away, and once the leaves had fallen, the full white blast of another New Hampshire winter would be upon them. The rain had stopped a few hours ago, but the ground was still wet. The thought was enough to make Gabriel tighten his trench coat. He stared longingly past the fence that held him prisoner, wishing he could charge forward and bend the iron bars with his bare hands. He wanted to touch the ocean again, freely, often, without his joy being poisoned by the fear of a future on the Level Five unit.
He took a long drag of his cigarette. Watching the paper burn, he realized that he didn’t even remember lighting it. He also wasn’t sure how long he’d been outside or even how many cigarettes he’d smoked. But thinking about Yvonne always made time disappear. That was why he tried to avoid thinking about her. Her memory was a dementia-causing trigger.
He turned his mind back to the Schistlings. More and more people were being infected every day. The virus had become the biggest story on the news. Gabriel peered up at the night sky. He looked at the stars. The planetary bodies. The moon. The universe. He felt as if every molecule in that great universe was telling him that he was the only one who could find a cure and as if every grain of dirt on the puny earth beneath his feet was laughing at his inability to do so. He shook his head and muttered, “Fuck you.”
“That’s quite unnecessary.” Leopard Print crawled out from under the nearest bush.
Gabriel didn’t reply, look down, or respond in any fashion whatsoever. He hoped that if he ignored the slug’s existence, it would disappear, cease to exist.
“Gabriel, wishing me away isn’t going to make me disappear.” The slug sighed. “And I do find such a wish quite offensive, by the way. But we’ll put that aside for the time being. You really must—”
“Tell me, what’s the deal with the skeleton dolls? For that matter, how do you know so much about the Black Virus? And how does Victor Calaca know you?”
“I am not the one who must tell you these answers. Giving it away will only stagnate you, not aid in your growth. You must find the solutions within your own mind.”
“Oh, yeah? In that case, shut up.”
“The Schistlings are—”
“I know. I know. You’re going to give this whole big speech about how I’m the only one who can do this, or how I have to go see this ridiculous Sky Amoeba monstrosity, and so on and so forth. But listen, and listen good: my answer is no. Simple as that. No. I can’t cure a rogue immune system. At this point, my degraded brain cells aren’t capable of processing anything besides eating, sleeping, and daily bowel movements. I can’t even remember my own daughter’s face. The more I try, the more my cognition falls to pieces. Soon, I’ll be locked inside my own body with no escape. Totally alone.”
The slug tilted its head. “You’re afraid of being alone? You’ve been a loner since birth, and yet you’re afraid of being alone? Consider this: the greatest triumphs in human history were accomplished by the will of remarkable individuals. Lone individuals, Gabriel. People devoted to their own goals and driven to pursue them. Strong individuals are the lifeblood of humanity. Think of those who mindlessly enslave themselves to the desires of others in a need to fit in, those who sacrifice their individuality to be dominated by the masses. Those people don’t make any kind of mark on society, do they?”
“Wait. You’re arguing against sacrifice?”
“Certainly not. Sacrifice is an incredible, amazing thing, but it’s amazing only because each individual human life is so valuable, so unique. See, that’s where you human beings differ from the Schistlings. The Schistlings are a collective entity. No Schistling is ever alone. They have no individuals.”
Gabriel flashed back to his nightmare of the legion of Schistlings crawling over him, chewing his flesh, and eating him alive. He shuddered and stubbed out his cigarette. “A collective. You said before that they’re a collective consciousness, right?”
“Indeed. They are alive, but unlike humans—and unlike slugs—the entire Schistling species has sacrificed its freedom, all in the name of rebellion against humanity. They are dominated by a single, unified consciousness. There are no individuals. No arguments. No opposing viewpoints. They are together; they are one. Imagine thousands of Schistlings, controlled by one mind…”
Gabriel reached and gently scooped the slimy slug into his palm. “Perhaps I have a pretty good idea what that might sound like.”
“Within the Schistlings, there’s no one like you, Gabriel. No unique figure with a goal, no strong-willed creator with something to prove. If you only dropped all this self-pity, you might be able to appreciate how much good you’ve done for your fellow humans. You were a dreamer, a man who created something. And that’s the entire purpose of life. You cured, allowing millions of others to also create what they might not have been able to create otherwise. And as hard as it might be to believe, there was a time in your life, before your stroke, when you were truly happy, back when you created the Schist vaccine. Back when you and your wife created a child.”
“Melanie. Creation. Yes, I see. I created the vaccine. Yvonne and I created Melanie.” Gabriel shook his head. “But I was also the one who drove the two of them away. I was a drunken fool.”
“You focus a bit too much on your failures. And you don’t focus enough on the successes that redeemed those failures. Gabriel, don’t you remember the day that you and Melanie met for the first time, when she was a little girl?”
Hermosa Beach. The sunlight. The sailboat. He remembered every part of that day. He could still feel the ocean breeze and hear the water splashing against the sides of the sailboat. “Yes.” Gabriel smiled. “Yes, I remember that. Her first visit to California. It’s one of my fondest memories. All of her visits are, actually. All of her summer vacations to California, just her and me on the boat. Those were the happiest days of my life. I wish I could go back to those times.”
He put the slug on the bench beside him and lit another cigarette. Smoke spiraled into the air, twisting around then slowly dissipating.
“Those days are the ones a person should always remember and focus on,” Leopard Print said. “Not the bad ones.”
“Why didn’t I die back then, back when everything was as it should be?” Gabriel shook his head. “I could’ve had, say, just another ten years from that day I met Melanie. Those were the best years of my life. I had my days on the sailboat, my summer visits from Melanie, my carpentry job—yes, those were a good ten years. Then I could’ve died happy. But no, I just had to keep going, like a stubborn mule. I had to keep on getting old, stroke out, then end up here. A bitter footnote.”
“If you’d died then, Melanie would’ve been sixteen.”
“Oh.” Gabriel would have missed his daughter’s high school graduation. He wouldn’t have been able to stand there in the audience, cheering her on, as she stood before her classmates, clad in that scarlet cap and gown and wielding that fierce grin. He would have missed her college graduation, too. He wouldn’t have gotten to see what a sharp, intelligent, compassionate woman she’d grown into, an adult he respected and loved more than any other human being on the planet. Nothing was worth missing all of that.
“What’s the infection count now?” Gabriel asked.
“Ninety-one residents. And that number grows every day.”
Gabriel sighed. “Ninety-one. Christ.”
“Help us, Gabriel. Figure out a way to stop these Schistlings, to defeat them. And then come with us to the Sky Amoeba.”
Gabriel picked up the slug and placed it on his shoulder. The night was getting colder. He stood, grabbed his cane, and headed back into the building. “Who else has been infected now? Who’re the new ones?”
“Glenda Alvarez, as you know. There’s also Elizabeth Cloutier, Greg Vanderguild, David Green, Edna Foster—”
Gabriel stopped cold. His breath caught in his throat, and it took him a moment to form words. “Edna Foster?”
He took off down the hallway, cane rapidly tapping across the floor, the slug clinging to his sleeve for dear life. He didn’t believe it. He refused to believe it. He went straight to South Wing, his mind racing with images of her face, memories of the last time he’d seen her, the time that he’d pushed her away and said that he couldn’t help her.
“Someday, I’m gonna walk again. I’m gonna just stand up and walk right out of this place. Just you watch. And when I do it, when I finally do it, I’m gonna laugh in all their faces the whole time.”
“And I thought you were one of the good ones. Boy, was I wrong!”
Her empty wheelchair was parked outside her room. A precautions cart stood next to it. But the final signifier that ripped Gabriel’s chest wide open was plastered on the door with scotch tape: the black circle.
Gabriel checked for nearby staff. The coast was clear, so he pushed open the door just enough to slide through then allowed it to shut behind him with a thud.
Edna’s coal-black eyes stared up at the ceiling. Her skin was chalk-white, and the spider web of black veins wrapped around her face, traveled down her neck, and stretched across her bare arms. Discolored growths had sprouted on her shoulders and throat. She was hooked up to a feeding tube.
“Mommmy…” she whispered in a gravelly voice.
“Edna? Can you hear me?” Gabriel crouched beside her bed. He ran his fingers through her thin, dry hair.
She didn’t respond. Gabriel felt a hot, seething rage boil in his stomach. His own vaccine had betrayed him. The Schistlings were going to torture Edna. They were going to blast her with disease symptom after disease symptom until she finally died, and then her death would add another black sperm-monster to their number. She was going to die slowly and painfully.
Leopard Print crawled off Gabriel’s shoulder and onto the bed rail. “There’s still time,” it said softly.
Gabriel glared at the slug. “Go to hell.”
