“Bad boy.” Finn gave the boy’s cheek a quick, hard flick. “No, Davey, no biting.”
Snarling, the Changed boy surged again. Finn backhanded him with a punch this time, right below the boy’s eye, and then waited as the guards strapped a wide band of leather across the boy’s forehead.
“All right, let’s try again.” Finn sliced off another chunk of Mather’s tongue with the scalpel. It took three more tries and as many punches before Davey let Finn drop the drippy meat into his mouth without snapping at the old man’s fingers. Peter watched as the boy held the morsel in his mouth then worked the meat from cheek to cheek.
“Go on.” Finn sounded just like a kindly old grandpa slipping his favorite grandson a Hershey’s Kiss, sure to spoil his appetite, on the sly. Without looking around, he added, “It’s quite interesting, actually. I’ve studied a number of them now. You do realize that the . . . what do you call it? The Change? From my observations, it’s not over yet, boy-o, not by a long shot.”
Something turned over in his chest. The Change wasn’t over? The thinking part of his brain had known this was a possibility, but no one in Rule had seen that happen to a Spared.
No one’s safe? Peter felt his mind cringing away. No, he’s wrong. I’m Spared. It’s not going to happen to me, or Chris, or any of the other Spared. It’s been too long; it’s been months. That can’t be right.
“Do you know what I wonder?” Finn’s face turned a little dreamy. “I wonder what it would be like.”
“What?” Peter managed. He slicked his lips. “You mean . . . to Change?”
“Yes. Self-awareness is a blessing and a curse, Peter. You know when you’re coming down with a cold. There are signs and symptoms. So what is the Change like? Do you sense it? Would you even know? You must. The dying have this sixth sense when the end is near. Even the insane know when their hold on reality slips. They may lie to themselves, of course, but . . . they know.”
“I . . . I d-don’t . . .” He was shaking. His teeth wouldn’t stop chattering. “I don’t c-care. I don’t w-want t-to know. It d-doesn’t matter.”
“Oh, but it does, and you should care. To understand your enemy—beat him at his own game—you must allow yourself to inhabit his brain, see with his eyes. Now, this is not to say ‘seen one Chucky, seen them all.’ Oh no. For example, take what happens to a Chucky once he’s completely turned, like our Davey here,” Finn waved a hand at the boy. “A fresh Chucky is an animal. Some stay wild. Others evolve, and some appear to be smarter than others. It’s the bell curve in action, boy-o. Why, I bet there’s a Chucky rocket scientist in the mix, somewhere. Oh, I’d so love to catch a normal kid a good long time before he goes native so I can measure the rate at which he reacquires function. I’m especially interested in the ones turning now. Their course must be so different from the first wave, don’t you agree? And how do they communicate? We know some work together, travel in bands and packs and gangs and tribes and so forth, while others are loners. So are we talking telepathy? Subaudible vocalizations? Scent? Body language? Alone? In combination?”
“What are you talking about?” Peter whispered. He was now thoroughly and deeply afraid for the first time since the world went dark. “You want to see if I’m going to Change? I’m not. It’s been too long. You want to know about Rule? You can torture me, but I won’t tell you.” When Finn didn’t reply, Peter said, “For God’s sake, what do you want?”
“You mean a smart boy like you can’t figure it out?” Dropping to one knee, Finn used a thumb to pull down Mather’s lower eyelid, then slid the scalpel into the pink tissue tethering Mather’s right eyeball to its socket. He worked the blade, scraping bone. “You disappoint me, Peter. Despite what the movies say, not all Vietnam vets are crazy. Some of us even get to be senators. Me, I’m a student of the natural world. Like Darwin, come to think of it. Evolution, natural selection, survival of the fittest—all unfolding before our eyes. We are the authors of the new origin of species, boy-o.”
“What—” Peter was sick with horror. “What are you going to do with me?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Finn said. Mather’s eye dangled from his fingers by a bloody stalk of nerve. “Experiment.”
Part 3 - The Short Straw
22
Eight days gone.
Alex had kept track, scratching a hash mark into the toe of her right boot with the metal prong of her watchband. Over the past eight days, she figured they’d covered anywhere from fifty to sixty miles. Getting her bearings was a challenge. The days were overcast, the nights starless, and their group kept to the deep woods. But she thought they were moving on a kind of circuit, going first west but looping north. They stopped at regular intervals, too, during which time the Changed hunted, chowed down, caught a little shut-eye.
The good news, all things considered, was that she wasn’t dead yet.
The bad news: she might draw that short straw, and soon.
It all came down to the math.
Eight days ago, on that first Saturday morning, the Changed had six Happy Meals to choose from, counting Alex. After all the ruckus, she’d assumed she was next on the menu. Yet it seemed that the Changed—well, Wolf anyway—had different ideas. Although conscious, Spider was still groggy, so Wolf had wandered up and down, eyeing the herd, that gory corn knife in hand. Twice, he lingered over Alex, now trussed between the old lady, Ruby, and the sickly guy whose name, she would discover, was Brian. Wolf ’s eyes touched on her, then flitted away before jumping back. Playing with her? She wasn’t sure. Maybe he was as puzzled as she. Were their experiences similar? Did he feel what she had, that odd sidestep into her consciousness? Could he read her? No, she didn’t think so. During the fight on the snow, she’d surprised Spider— and then she remembered how Wolf had been startled when she let that gob of spit fly.
So maybe it doesn’t go both ways. She’d given Wolf a narrow look as he moved down the line, studying each captive. Maybe I can use that somehow.
In the end, Wolf had chosen a small woman, tiny and brown as a wren, for that Saturday’s main course. What puzzled and then appalled her was how the woman didn’t struggle or protest. None of the others did either. Instead, they watched, impassively, as Acne and Beretta took the woman out of the line and led her, stumbling, across the snow a short ten yards to where Wolf waited. When they released her, the woman tottered but didn’t fall. She stood, swaying, head down, shoulders slumped. Having replaced his cowl so his face was visible only from the nose down, Wolf waited a long beat, then knotted his fist in the woman’s hair. The little woman let out a small cry as Wolf gave her head a vicious wrench that exposed her throat and made her back arch like a bow.