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  Rachelle lay on her face behind a row of the Guard, weeping. Thomas slipped his arms under her body and lifted her up. “Come with me,” he said to his children.

  They walked away from the crowd without another word.

  IT WAS their custom to honor the dead by facing rather than turning from their bodies at the funeral pyres. To hide one’s eyes because looking at the death was painful insulted the one actually facing that death.

  Thomas helped a sagging, despondent Rachelle to the closest gazebo.

  Marie and Samuel had both been crying, and now Marie spoke for the first time. “Why aren’t we honoring him, Papa?”

  He couldn’t answer her.

  “Put me down,” Rachelle said.

  She took her children by their shoulders. “We are, Marie. We will honor him.”

  They hurried up the steps and gazed out over the crowd to the scene below. Thomas stepped up beside them and Rachelle gripped his arm. They watched the proceedings in stunned silence. The pummeling of Justin’s body continued. How they managed to break so many bones was beyond him.

  Rachelle’s fingers dug into Thomas’s elbow each time they struck Justin. But she knew as well as he did that there was nothing they could do for him now.

  Surely Ciphus hadn’t expected this kind of brutality. The Scabs were defiling the forest with their presence. Their smell drifted over the village like a fog. Those not directly involved let their attention wander and on occasion laughed.

  Many of the Forest People watched in stunned silence. Many wept quietly. Many sobbed openly.

  They stopped beating him and hauled him up by his feet, so that his head hung five or six feet above the ground. Thomas watched as a Scab walked up, squeezed Justin’s broken face, and then pushed him. His body swung like a deer carcass in a smoking shack. His arms hung limp, as if he were surrendering upside down.

  Rachelle grunted. “Can’t you make them stop? If they have to kill him . . .” She couldn’t finish.

  It didn’t matter. He knew what she was going to say. If they have to kill him, can’t they be forced to do it quickly? But neither of them could even say such a thing.

  “It’s their way,” Thomas said. “They don’t understand suffering like we do. They live with it every day.”

  “It’s not their way,” she said. “It’s the way of Teeleh.”

  Ciphus held up his hand and walked out to the body. He walked around it, then faced the crowd.

  “I know there are those among you who still think that here hangs a prophet.” His voice rang over the lake. “Let me ask you, would Elyon allow his prophet to suffer like this? You see, he is flesh and blood like the rest of us. Anyone who dares say that this mess of flesh is actually Elyon has lost his sense. Our Creator could never become so uncreated! He would never let a Scab abuse him, any more than he would let Teeleh abuse him. You see?”

  He faced the Horde soldiers. “Hit him.”

  One of the Scabs stepped forward and hammered Justin’s back. No one present could mistake the loud crack.

  Ciphus cleared his throat. “You see, just a man.”

  His words invited a fresh round of abuse from the other Horde guards. Three of them stepped forward and began slugging the body, laughing. Ciphus stepped back, surprised. In his eagerness to deflate Justin, he’d unexpectedly opened this door.

  “Thomas,” Rachelle pleaded.

  It was all he could stand. “Wait here.”

  He jumped from the gazebo and ran straight for Ciphus. A murmur spread through the section of the crowd that saw him. The elder turned his head before Thomas reached the inner circle.

  “Enough! To execute a man is one thing. If you insist on satisfying your blood lust, then do it quickly! But don’t humiliate the man who saved the Southern Forest and the Forest Guard just a week ago. Kill him if you must, but don’t mock his life.”

  A thousand voices rose in agreement.

  Ciphus seemed relieved. He frowned at Qurong. “It makes sense. Finish this.”

  “The agreement was to kill him our way. Our way is to take a man’s spirit be—”

  “You have taken his spirit!” Thomas yelled. “Now you’re taking the spirit of the people he served. Finish this!”

  Qurong regarded him, then nodded at his men.

  One of them grabbed a bucket of water they’d drawn from the lake earlier and splashed it in Justin’s face. Justin gasped.

  Thomas couldn’t tell if Justin had opened his eyes, because the battered man faced the other way. But he did see something else that struck him as odd. Justin’s skin was starting to gray. How long had it been since his last bathing? As with all who’d trained with the Guard, he probably bathed every morning as was required. Justin had been in the desert, restricted to canteen water, but there hadn’t been a trace of the disease on him this morning.

  “Drown him,” Qurong said.

  Two of the Scabs hastily strapped a large stone on Justin’s body so that it would sink. A dozen others who had bound their legs with treated leather to protect them from the water stepped cautiously forward, staring at the lake.

  “Drown him!” Martyn shouted in a sudden fit of rage.

  They grabbed the tower’s hastily constructed supports and began to drag the platform down the shore, to the lake.

  Justin’s body turned, and now Thomas saw his eyes. The left was swollen shut; the right was barely cracked. Justin’s sight met his own and stopped. For a long time Justin looked at him. Even past the swollen flesh there was no fear in his face, no regret, no accusation. Only sorrow.

  Was he staring into Elyon’s eyes ? The thought struck a chord of terror deep in Thomas’s mind. This was the boy he’d met on top of the cliffs so long ago, the boy who could sing new worlds into existence. Who could turn the planet inside out, or split the globe in two for a day of play. Who could fill a lake that never ended with water so powerful that a single drop could undo any man or woman.

  A tremor ran through Thomas’s bones. He’d dived into Elyon’s water, breathed it deep, screamed with its pleasure and with its pain. This man who hung by his feet as they hauled the device into the lake was Elyon?

  Thomas’s chest swelled with grief. Tears were filling his eyes, and he didn’t know how to stop them. A lone child began to sob quietly behind him, and he turned. Lucy. She stood alone on the sand, crying.

  Thomas impulsively stepped back, dropped to one knee, and drew her in. Neither spoke. He faced the water.

  The Horde had pushed the tower ten feet off the shore, cursing bitterly as the water soaked past their leg coverings and ate at their cracked skin. The water was about four feet deep here, and Justin’s hands were submerged just past his wrists. He’d closed his eyes again, but his breathing was steady. He was awake.

  All except for two of the Scabs hurried out of the water. Their hands were pink where they’d touched the water, and they wiped at them madly, trying to rub them free of the poison that had discolored them. They tore the leather from their legs and beat their flesh to alleviate the pain. Above the waist, their skin was still gray.

  The two who’d stayed in the lake climbed up the tower, gripped the rope with both hands, and looked at Qurong.

  A small voice, barely more than a whisper, came from Justin. His mouth had opened and he was speaking!

  “Remember . . .”

  Thomas stopped breathing to hear. What had he said?

  “Remember me,” Justin said, louder this time, voice choking with emotion now. “Remember me!”

  They all heard it and stood frozen.

  Justin cried it out again in a terrible groan that echoed over the lake and cut straight to Thomas’s heart.

  “Remember me, Johan!”

  Johan?

  Thomas looked to his left. Martyn stood stock still, face hidden by his hood, arms folded. Qurong glanced at his general, then quickly motioned his men to commence the drowning.

  Justin was sobbing now. His tears fell into the water below his head. He
began to groan loudly. Then he began to scream.

  What was it? Why now?

  Lucy wailed in his arms, and Thomas drew her in tight, as much for his own comfort as hers. He was sure that his heart had stopped. He couldn’t bear to watch this! He couldn’t stand by and see any man in such a horrible state of torment.

  But he couldn’t dishonor the man by turning his head away.

  Still Justin screamed, long terrible shrieks that cut the night like a razor. Thomas gritted his teeth and begged the sound to stop.

  He noticed the change in Justin’s skin just before his head touched the water. The flesh on his chest and legs was now nearly white. It was flaking.

  The disease was overtaking Justin before Thomas’s very eyes!

  This was the source of his groans. The pain . . .

  The skin on his chest suddenly began to crack like a dried lake bed. Someone began to yell behind him. “He has the disease!” But the cry was lost in a long scream of agony from Justin.

  Thomas settled to his haunches and began to weep uncontrollably.

  Justin’s head went under. Bubbles boiled from his mouth. His body jerked and heaved. He’s not holding his breath, Thomas thought. He was trying to pull the water up into his lungs, but it was difficult, hanging upside down.

  Just as the water seemed to take its final, terrible toll on him, the two Scabs jerked him out of the lake. Water poured from his lungs. He gasped and sputtered.

  Thomas stood to his feet, horrified by their extended torture.

  They lowered him again. Again, Justin’s body jerked uncontrollably. Again, the water about his head boiled. Again, his diseased chest pumped deep, drawing, convulsing, spasming in rejection.

  Again they pulled him from the water before he could drown.

  Thomas tore for the water. “Kill him!” he screamed.

  You are demanding the death of Elyon.

  “Kill—”

  A fist from one of the Scabs landed on his temple before he even knew the man was there. He dropped to the sand and struggled to push himself up.

  “Finish it!” Ciphus said. “For the sake of Elyon, just finish this!”

  “Our custom is to—”

  “I don’t care what your custom is! Just kill him!”

  A Scab on Thomas’s left suddenly rushed at the water. The general Martyn. Johan. He had a sword in his hand.

  Thomas caught his breath. Something was wrong with this.

  Not until Johan’s feet splashed water did Thomas note the leathers on his legs. Johan’s hood fell off his head, baring a face twisted in rage for all to see. He bore down on Justin, roaring with fury now.

  “Die! Die!”

  Before any of them knew his full intent, Johan thrust his sword into Justin’s belly, jerked it to one side, and pulled it back out. Blood gushed from the gaping wound and splashed into the water.

  “Drown him!” Johan screamed.

  The two Scabs on top of the platform dropped the body. Justin hung suspended in the water, body jerking.

  Martyn swung around, marched out of the lake, tossed his sword to one side, and pulled his hood back over his head. He walked past Qurong toward the Horde army.

  Justin’s body stopped jerking.

  His skin was cracked and white, unrecognizable as human flesh. But it was the blood that Thomas stared at. Blood spilled for cleansing was permitted. When he’d returned from the desert nearly a Scab himself, he’d been permitted to bathe, even though he was bleeding from several of the cracks in his skin.

  But this . . .

  Did Ciphus realize that this might be different?

  The soldiers reached down and cut the cord. Justin’s body slipped into the water with a small splash and sank with the weight of the two large stones strapped to his wrists.

  Bubbles rose to the surface. They watched in silence as the water slowly became glassy once again. It was finished. The lake had swallowed the brutality whole, leaving no sign except for a slick of spilled blood.

  Thomas looked back at Ciphus. The elder’s face was white, fixated on the water.

  29

  MIKE OREAR adjusted his collar mike and glanced into the camera. He’d never imagined becoming the voice of the Raison Strain, but his gall in breaking the story had somehow caught a wave of appreciation with the viewers. CNN’s ratings had shot past Fox News’s for the first time in years. The brass extended his airtime to six hours a day, three in the morning, three in the evening. It was the assignment of a lifetime, he knew.

  A very short lifetime.

  Now, with the news widely known, and after an endless parade of guests—geneticists and virologists and psychologists and the like—the threat he’d made known had come to haunt him in a very, very real way. Before, he had been as consumed with breaking the story as with what the virus meant to him personally. Now, along with the rest of America, he couldn’t shake the dread knowledge that he was about to die.

  That knowledge changed everything. He wanted to be home with his mother and father. He wanted to go to church. He wanted to be married and have children. He wanted to cry.

  Instead, he decided to serve humanity in what way he could, which meant bringing knowledge and comfort and perhaps, just perhaps, aiding the incredible effort underway to beat this virus.

  The news of the arms shipments hadn’t hit the fan yet. A plea from the Pentagon and the president himself had delayed the announcement for the time being. Their argument was simple and cogent: Let the public adjust to the news of the virus for a few days, then let the president tell them the rest of the story. It had been three days. The president was scheduled to give two major addresses today: the first to the United Nations in New York and the second to the nation at six Eastern tonight. The latter address would tell America the whole story.

  A clip of Nancy’s interview with a social psychologist from UCLA was on its last leg. Mike scanned his notes. The source who’d given him this information on Thomas Hunter was impeccable. The story itself was beyond belief. He’d decided to hold off on the dreams, but the story hardly needed that much detail. America deserved to know about Thomas Hunter.

  He looked into the camera, its red light on him. “Wise words of caution,” he said in reference to Dr. Beyer’s commentary on panic. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve recently come across some information that I think you’ll find fascinating. I realize that under the circumstances, ‘fascination’ seems like a pretentious word, but we’re still people and we still cling to hope, wherever we can find it, however it comes. And frankly, we may owe our hope to the man I’m about to show you. His name is Thomas Hunter.”

  A head shot of Hunter’s stern if somewhat boyish face filled the screen for a moment—a driver’s license photo from Colorado. Dark hair, strong jaw. The image slipped to the upper corner of Mike’s monitor.

  “‘Classified’ is another word that sounds a bit pretentious now, but there are details about Thomas Hunter that we can’t divulge without first confirming. What we can say is that it has come to our attention that this man was single-handedly responsible for calling out the threat this nation faces while facing a sea of doubters. Indeed, if the world had listened to Mr. Hunter a week earlier than they did, we might have avoided the virus altogether. I’m sure some of you remember a story we ran two weeks ago about Hunter’s kidnapping of Monique de Raison in Bangkok. It now appears that he did so in an attempt to stop the vaccine from being released.”

  This was where the story got a bit fuzzy. The whys and hows—and the bit about the dreams—were enough to cast suspicion on the entire story.

  “We have reason to believe that many in our government consider this man critical to our ability to defeat this threat. We also have reason to believe that his life may be in danger. I promise you, we’ll stay on top of this story and bring you details as soon as we have them.”

  He turned to Nancy, whom he’d insisted remain as his coanchor.

  “Nancy.”

  KARA HUNTER left the taxi
at a run and hurried up the concrete stairs to the white building in the middle of a pastoral setting outside of Baltimore, Maryland. The huge blue letters mounted overhead read “Genetrix Laboratories,” but she knew that only a year ago the sign had read “Raison Pharmaceutical.” The French company had sold it off when they’d centralized their operations in Bangkok.

  Monique de Raison was in this building, working feverishly on a solution to her own mutated virus.

  Thomas was dead.

  Kara had spent the first day in complete denial. Mother had slipped into one of her terrible brooding moods. Then the news of the Raison Strain hit the airwaves and everything changed. Kara went from complete unwillingness to accept Thomas’s death to the sinking realization that they were all dead anyway.

  The city of New York, like all cities, had first swallowed the story in jaded silence. It took twenty-four hours for the news to sink in. The streets hadn’t emptied right away, but by the end of the second day, finding a taxi would have been a chore. Wall Street was still up and running—they were saying that some semblance of life had to go on. The talking heads—the mayor, the governor, the president— all said the same thing. America had to keep functioning. Electricity, water, stocks and bonds. Food, gasoline, cars, and planes. Hospitals. If they shut down, the country would shut down. Panic would kill America as surely as any virus. Every lab in the world was frantically searching for a cure—one would be found.

  But Kara knew better.

  Today, Kara had developed a fresh case of denial. The news that Thomas might be some kind of hero had been picked up by every channel she surfed. They had dug up his driver’s license photo, of all things. There was his young face, trying so hard to be sincere. The picture brought tears to her eyes. She missed him enough that the threat of the Raison Strain felt strangely feeble.

  What if he was alive? They hadn’t actually found his body, had they?