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"Fishy’s the best urban driver we have," he said "I’m sorry, Sal I’d do it if it wouldn’t slow us down"

"Don’t worry your head, pretty little tapeworirl," said Fishy blithely as he reached up to adjust thehad to be shifted a little, creating a coh that I was able to talksreat driver I al for"

Inoise

From the back of the van, Dr Banks’s voice slithered forth, veno as simple as a little car ride, but Sally wouldn’t even have noticed that she was et in touch with your inner human, Sal, if you want to survive this brave neorld"

"Shut up," said Nathan His coainst the seat

"There’s no need to get rough, boy," said Dr Banks "I’ to help the little lady, that’s all Since none of you can be bothered to do anything of the sort, it seems like it’s my fatherly duty"

"The fucked-up road show is now prepared to get rolling," said Fishy blithely, seeh the air "Please keep your hands, arms, heads, and children inside the ride at all tiet buas like it had personally offended hie at a speed that sentThe drums seemed louder than they had ever been, so loud that they threatened to rupture my eardrums from the inside out

I closedthe safety and serenity that would allow me to make it to the waterfront with my sanity intact But the dark wasn’t there All I found was the inside of my own eyelids, a plain, undifferentiated darkness that offered neither safety nor isolation I reached again, trying to find the one thing that had always been there for me, since even before I woke up in the hospital I was born in the hot warm dark I existed in its es that wanted to hurt me So hoas it possible that I couldn’t find it now?

Calm down, Sal, I told myself This is what he wants And that was true, wasn’t it? Dr Banks didn’t wantthat he couldn’tto make me lose touch withlocked somewhere in ain

The third tiled the idea of fingers into the idea of hands, and then I was plu down, down, down into the hot war or how dangerous the things ere doing were, because I was safe and ho but the dru heart I was alone I was safe, because I was alone

Wasn’t I?

Sally? It was a stupid question to ask, even if I was only asking it of the silence at the center of myself--and the silence wasn’t really silent, was it? The dru that they ht as well have been silent It was hard to put words on the things I sahen my eyes were closed They were built into s as limitless or as limited as words Are you there?

There was no reply from the hot warm dark I was alone there, like I had always been alone there, and there could be no answers unless I gave the me back up out of the darkness and into the frame of flesh and bone and sinew that I had stolen for hter asto see the waterfront stretching outside the van like a watery promise

Instead, what I saas an intersection packed with the smashed remains of a six-car pileup There were no sleepwalkers--at least not at the h I blinked, and then twisted to look behindonas possible to wake you," he said "I think we’re going to have to abandon the van"

"I’ot the distinct impression that he’d already made this statement several times while I was down in the hot waran That was als were at their worst, some people could be counted on to be absolutely terrible

"Then you’re going to be the delicious filling in a big metal bonbon," said Fishy cheerfully His words were accolanced at hirimaced when I saw the assault rifle in his hands, held as casually as a child’s toy He grinned at rimace "Don’t worry I have plenty of a out, we can always smash vases and jars until we find a, but fro but I bit , "There’s really no way around?"

He shook his head "We’re about a mile from the ferry launch, and all the roads are like this I think a lot of people tried to get out of Vallejo this way The quarantine s unsaid: that the quarantine’s efforts to keep the infected contained could easily have included sinking the boats, and that if this many people had been here at one ti howfrom the hottest point in the day They didn’t care for direct sunlight much, probably because it made it harder to sort their phero theht