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.”
“Gabriel—”
“From this point on, I’m doing it my way. No more of this negotiation bullshit. No more being careful. I’m going to find a solution for this problem, no matter what it takes. I’m going to create an antidote for everyone who is infected, and that antidote is going to kill those little Schistlings like the disgusting maggots that they are.”
“But you can’t just kill them!”
“And why the hell not?”
“It’s not that easy, and you know it. Killing the Schistlings won’t just miraculously cure everyone who has been infected. The collective consciousness would take its revenge, Gabriel.”
Revenge. Retaliation. The collective. The extermination of humanity, starting with the residents of Bright New Day, just like they’d promised him in the nightmare.
“They will have their retribution,” the slug continued. “If you try to kill them, they’ll rush forward with their plan, and there won’t be a chance of any other cure, no chance for the victims already infected, no chance of any civil negotiation, nothing but mass devastation. To get back at you, they’ll slaughter every single human who’s ever had your vaccine injected into their bodies. That’s billions of people, Gabriel. If you kill the Schistlings, they’ll kill everyone. You can’t do this.”
“Watch me.” Gabriel marched out of the room.
He was going to do it alone. But really, being alone was okay. He was used to it.
Chapter 39:
