Plague (Gone 4)

Brittney yelled, “Help! Some—”

Orc had run until he was tired. That didn’t take long. He was drunk and dehydrated. Weaker than he should have been. More easily tired.

But despair drove him on, staggering and weeping and bellowing in rage through the night.

“Never wanted to be no guard,” he yelled at the closed and darkened houses. “Everybody hear that? I didn’t ask to be no prison guard!”

He stood swaying back and forth, big stone-fingered fists clenched.

“No one wants to talk to me, huh?”

He smashed one arm down on the roof of a car. The driver’s-side window had long since been beaten in so the door could be opened and the car could be searched. The trunk was open, too, and the recoil from Orc’s blow made it bounce.

“Need another bottle,” he muttered. Then louder, yelling at the darkened windows and locked doors, “I want a bottle. Someone give me a bottle so I won’t hurt anyone.”

No answer. The streets were silent.

He started crying again and brushed angrily at the tears. He started running once more, ran for a block and stopped, wheezing and threatening to topple over.

Then he spotted the boy. A kid. Maybe eight, maybe nine or ten, hard to say. The boy was walking bent over, holding his stomach. Every few feet he would stop and cough and then groan from the pain of coughing.

“Hey-ey!” Orc yelled. “You! Go get me a bottle.” The word “bottle” came out “bah-hull.”

The sick boy blinked and seemed only then to notice the monster in the street ahead of him. He clutched a stop sign to keep himself from collapsing.

“Hey. You, kid. I’m talking to you!”

The boy started to answer, then started coughing. He coughed and groaned and sat down.

Orc stomped over to him. “You ig, um, ig . . . ignoring me?”

The boy shook his head weakly. He made a gesture toward his throat, tried to speak, couldn’t.

“I don’t want to . . . ,” Orc began, but lost the thread of his speech. “Just go get me a bah-hull.”

The boy coughed in Orc’s face.

Orc swatted him with the back of his hand.

The boy hit the signpost so hard it rang. Then fell onto his back on the sidewalk.

Orc stared stupidly, expecting the boy to start crying. But the kid wasn’t moving. Wasn’t coughing.

Orc felt ice water flood his veins.

“I didn’t . . . ,” Orc started to say.

He looked around, feeling sudden, overwhelming shame. No one had seen him.

He tried to lean down and prod the boy with his finger, but the blood rushed to his head and he almost passed out.

“Whatever,” Orc said sullenly, and headed off again into the night.

But quieter now.

Chapter Thirteen

48 HOURS, 29 MINUTES