—WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY, “INVICTUS”
86
A VOICE SAID, “YO, MONKEY-BANGER . . . you going to sleep forever?”
Benny’s first reaction was surprise. In his dreams he was dead, killed by Brother Peter or eaten by zoms. Or gored by a white rhino. Or shot by Preacher Jack.
But dead in any case.
His second reaction was confusion. Not at being alive, but at who was talking to him.
That wasn’t the right voice. It wasn’t Joe, and it wasn’t any of the girls. It wasn’t even Brother Albert.
Whose voice was that? It sounded like . . .
He carefully, tentatively opened one eye.
He was in a hospital bed. Metal tubing for the frame, stiff white sheets, the pervasive smell of antiseptic with other, nastier smells buried beneath it. Electric lights in the ceiling.
There was a chair beside his bed and a figure sitting in it. Thin, angular, and impossible.
“Ch-Chong?” stammered Benny.
“What’s left of him,” said his friend. Louis Chong looked like a stick-figure version of himself. He was wrapped in a blanket, cradling a cup of steaming tea between his palms. His skin was a dreadful shade of gray-green. His hair was freshly washed and combed back from his face. “Welcome back from the land of the dead.”
“How?” pleaded Benny. “How are you—I mean—”
“You guys saved me,” said Chong.
Benny had to reach deep into the shadows that clung to his memories. He had only a vague idea where he was—the infirmary at Sanctuary—and an even vaguer idea of how he got there. The most recent memories that were sharp and clear involved the hidden bioweapons lab built into the baked rocks of Zabriskie Point. He remembered Dr. McReady, the mutagen . . . and Archangel.
“The . . . pills?” he asked tentatively.
“The pills,” Chong said, nodding. “Nix and Lilah told me how you found Dr. McReady and brought her back here.”
Benny lay on his side, and his body did not seem to want to move. He raised his head and looked around. Most of the staff were sleeping in their beds, but a few ragged-looking nurses were working to clean them up. One was helping a newly recovered soldier to his feet. No one screamed or thrashed.
“Archangel really works,” said Benny. “God . . .”
“It was weird,” said Chong slowly. “I could feel the stuff in the pills working right away, but it was like someone was throwing buckets of water on a brush fire in my head. Every second was another bucket. How long before I stopped wanting to do crazy things to people—like fricking eat them? Hours, man. And even longer before I could actually say that to Lilah so she’d untie me. But that was all last night.”
“Last night? What time is it—?”
“Past six in the morning now. Best I can tell, you’ve been out of it since around ten last night. So about eight hours.” He sighed. “Been a long night, man.”
“Do you . . . do you remember what happened after Riot brought you here?” Benny paused. “Do you remember being . . . um . . . sick?”
A shadow passed across Chong’s face. “I remember all of it. Every last minute. Getting shot with an arrow . . . the ride here on Riot’s quad. The changes. God . . . the hunger. I even remember you coming to visit me in my cell.” He touched his temple. “It’s all up here for me any time I want to look at it.”
He spoke in the ironic, amused tone he always used, but it was clear that demons had taken up residence in the house of his memories, and Benny wondered if they could ever be exorcised.
“Hey, man,” he said, “we found the cure, right? Let’s focus on that. . . . ” His voice trailed off as pain flickered behind Chong’s eyes. “What is it?”
“Benny . . . about that. Those pills . . . they’re not really a cure. They’re a treatment. I’m still sick. If I take the pills I’ll still be me, more or less. But if I stop, I go back to being that thing you saw in the cage. That’s how it’s going to be. Unless they come up with a real cure, something that gets this out of my system forever, I’ll always have to take medicine. And . . . I’ll always have to be really careful. This is contagious, y’know?”
Benny swallowed a lump the size of a fist. “And . . . Lilah?”
“She knows. We have to be really, really careful. We can touch and all, and we can kiss. But for anything else . . . Jeez, Benny, this is crazy. I love her, man,” said Chong, wiping at his eyes. “I love her more than anything, but I don’t want to make her sick.”