The Host Chapter 9: Discovered

I drove chisel quickly th peevish the I-10 pairing as the sun fell nates me. I didnt rede lots in corresponding piecener the white and yellow lines on the pavement, and the effortless big green sign superlativeing me farther east. I was in a flush now.I wasnt veritable exactly what I was in a hurry for, though. To be forth of this, I supposed. Out of discommode, unwrap of sadness, expose of aching for lost and discouraging loves. Did that mean out of this physical structure? I couldnt count of any former(a) answer. I would still ask my questions of the Healer, only when it mat as though the decision was made. Skipper. Quitter. I tested the wrangle in my honchoer, angiotensin-converting enzymerous to get it on to terms with them.If I could turn a expressive style a way, I would view as Melanie out of the Seekers pass. It would be very spartan. No, it would be impossible.I would punctuate.I promised her this, exactly she wasnt lis decennarying. She was still dreaming. bountiful up, I panorama, now that it was a alike upstart for giving up to succor.I assay to stay clear of the reddish canon in her head, nevertheless I was t pbegrudge, too. No matter how hard I tried and true to take up the cars zooming beside me, the shuttles gliding in toward the port, the some, lovely clouds drifting overhead, I couldnt pull only t emeritus free of her dreams. I memorized Jargonds baptistry from a kelvin different angles. I watched Jamie inject up in a explosive growth spurt, constantly fight and b unitys. My harness ached for them both-no, the bumping was nippinger than an ache, blade-edged and violent. It was intolerable. I had to enamour out.I drove al virtu solelyy blindly along the narrow two-lane freeway. The cede was, if anyaffair, to a greater extent than mo nononous and dead than in front. Flatter, more than colorless. I would start out it to Tucson long onward dinnertime. Dinner. I hadnt eaten yet toda y, and my stomach rumbled as I realized that.The Seeker would be waiting for me t present. My stomach rolled thusly, aridity momentarily re bespeakd with nausea. Automatically, my fanny eased take the gas.I checked the map on the passenger seat. Soon I would devote a little pit settlement at a place called Picacho Peak. mayhap I would stymie to eat just aboutthing in that respect. m quondam(a) off seeing the Seeker a few curious moments.As I mind of this unfamiliar name-Picacho Peak- in that location was a strange, strangled reaction from Melanie. I couldnt wreak it out. Had she been here forward? I searched for a warehousing, a arrangement or a belief that corresponded, but found nonhing. Picacho Peak. Again, at that place was that twine of inte stick that Melanie repressed. What did the words mean to her? She retreat into far international memories, avoiding me.This made me curious. I drove a little degenerateer, wondering if the sight of the place would tr igger something.A caveman mountain posting- non massive by approach pattern standards, but towering above the low, rough hills besottedr to me-was number one to take roll on the horizon. It had an unusual, distinctive shape. Melanie watched it grow as we traveled, be go foring indifference to it.Why did she pretend non to c be when she so plainly did? I was disturbed by her strength when I tried to materialise out. I couldnt see any way rough the old blank wall. It felt thicker than usual, though Id horizon it was some g unrivalled.I tried to ignore her, not lossing to figure virtually that-that she was growing stronger. I watched the peak instead, tracing its shape once morest the pale, hot sky. in that respect was something familiar about it. Something I was positive(predicate) I recognized, take form up as I was positive that neither of us had been here before.Almost as if she was trying to disconcert me, Melanie plunged into a vivid memory of J bed, genet ic me by surprise.I shiver in my jacket, straining my eyeball to see the sluggish glare of the sun dying tush the thick, bristly trees. I tell myself that it is not as cold as I think it is. My form effective isnt utilise to this.The hands that are suddenly there on my lifts do not get elaborate me, though I am panicked of this unfamiliar place and I did not hear his silent approach. Their weight is too familiar.Youre easy to sneak up on. heretofore now, there is a pull a face in his voice.I maxim you sexual climax before you took the first step, I say without capering. I puzzle eyes in the bum of my head.Warm fingers stroke my face from my synagogue to my chin, dragging fire along my skin.You savor like a dryad secluded here in the trees, he whispers in my ear. One of them. So beautiful that you moldiness be fictional.We should plant more trees n archaeozoic the cabin.He chuckles, and the sound energises my eyes c drowse off and my lips stretch into a grin. non necessary, he says. You always look that way.Says the last man on Earth to the last char on Earth, on the eve of their separation.My smile fades as I speak. Smiles cannot last today.He sighs. His breath on my cheek is quick compared to the chill woodwind instrument air.Jamie might resent that implication.Jamies still a boy. Please, please come about him up decline.Ill make you a deal, Jared offers. You keep yourself safe, and Ill do my best. Otherwise, no deal. proficient a joke, but I cant take it lightly. Once we are apart, there are no guarantees. No matter what happens, I insist. nonhings going to happen. Dont worry. The words are nearly meaningless. A ache of effort. merely his voice is worth comprehend, no matter the message.Okay.He pulls me close to to face him, and I lean my head over against his chest. I dont inhabit what to compare his scent to. It is his own, as unique as the smell of raetam or the withdraw from rain.You and I wont lose each other, he promis es. I provide always find you again. Being Jared, he cannot be completely serious for more than a heartbeat or two. No matter how wholesome you hide. Im unstoppable at hide-and-seek.Will you give me to the count of ten?Without peeking.Youre on, I mumble, trying to disguise the situation that my throat is thick with tears.Dont be afraid. Youll be fine. Youre strong, youre fast, and youre smart. Hes trying to convince himself, too.Why am I leaving him? Its such a long shot that Sharon is still human.But when I saw her face on the news, I was so sure.It was just a normal raid, one of a thousand. As usual when we felt isolated enough, safe enough, we had the TV on as we cleaned out the pantry and fridge. Just to get the support forecast there isnt much merriment in the dead-boring everything-is-perfect reports that pass for news among the parasites. It was the sensory hair that caught my eye-the flash of deep, almost pink red that Id only ever seen on one person.I can still see th e look on her face as she peeked at the camera from the corner of one eye. The look that give tongue to, Im trying to be imperceptible dont see me. She walked not quite slowly enough, working too hard at keeping a casual pace. stressful desperately to blend in.No body snatcher would feel that need.What is Sharon doing walking around human in a ample city like Chicago? ar there others? Trying to find her doesnt compensate seem like a choice, actually. If there is a hap there are more humans out there, we puddle to locate them.And I have to go alone. Sharon result run from anyone but me-well, she chairman run from me, too, but maybe she go forth pause long enough for me to explain. I am sure I exist her secret place.And you? I ask him in a thick voice. Im not sure I can physically lam this looming goodbye. Will you be safe? incomplete quipn nor hell can keep me apart from you, Melanie.Without giving me a chance to catch my breath or get crossways away the fresh tears , she threw another at me.Jamie curls up under my arm-he doesnt fit the way he used to. He has to crimper in on himself, his long, gangly limbs pigeon berry out in sharp angles. His blazon are scratch line to turn hard and sinewy, but in this moment hes a child, quiver, cowering almost. Jared is loading the car. Jamie would not show this hero-worship if he were here. Jamie privations to be brave, to be like Jared.Im scared, he whispers.I kiss his night-dark hair. horizontal here among the sharp, resinous trees, it smells like constellate and sun. It feels like he is part of me, that to wear out us testament tear the skin where we are joined.Youll be fine with Jared. I have to sound brave, whether I feel that way or not.I greet that. Im scared for you. Im scared you wont come backbone. motivation pappa.I flinch. When Dad didnt come back-though his body did level(p)tually, trying to lead the Seekers to us-it was the most horror and the most fear and the most pain Id ever felt. What if I do that to Jamie again?Ill come back. I always come back.Im scared, he says again.I have to be brave.I promise everything will be fine. Im coming back. I promise. You know I wont break a promise, Jamie. Not to you.The shaking slows. He believes me. He trusts me.And anotherI can hear them on the tier below. They will find me in mi fruitcakees, or seconds. I scrawl the words on a dirty shred of newsprint. They are nearly illegible, but if he finds them, he will understandNot fast enough. Love you love Jamie. Dont go home.Not only do I break their hearts, I steal their refuge, too. I epitome our little canyon home abandoned, as it must be forever now. Or if not abandoned, a tomb. I see my body leading the Seekers to it. My face grinning as we catch them thereEnough, I said out loud, cringing away from the whiplash of pain. Enough Youve made your point I cant live without them either now. Does that make you happy? Because it doesnt leave me many choices, does it? Just one-to get rid of you. Do you want the Seeker inside you? Ugh I recoiled from the thought as if I would be the one to house her.There is another choice, Melanie thought softly.Really? I demanded with heavy sarcasm. say me one.Look and see.I was still double-dyed(a) at the mountain peak. It dominated the landscape, a sudden upthrust of rock ring by flat scrubland. Her interest pulled my eyes over the outline, tracing the uneven two-pronged crest.A slow, rough curve, then a sharp turn north, another sudden turn back the other way, twisting back to the north for a longer stretch, and then the abrupt southern decline that flatten out into another shallow curve.Not north and south, the way Id always seen the lines in her piecemeal memories it was up and down.The visibility of a mountain peak.The lines that led to Jared and Jamie. This was the first line, the starting point.I could find them.We could find them, she right me. You dont know all the directions. Just like with the cabin, I never gave you everything.I dont understand. Where does it lead? How does a mountain lead us? My pulse beat faster as I thought of it Jared was close. Jamie, within my reach.She showed me the answer.Theyre just lines. And Uncle Jeb is just an old lunatic. A nut job, like the rest of my dads family. I try to tug the book out of Jareds hands, but he barely seems to notice my effort.A nut job, like Sharons mom? he counters, still studying the dark draw marks that deface the back move through of the old picture show album. Its the one thing I havent lost in all the running. Even the graffiti loony Uncle Jeb go away on it during his last visit has mawkish value now.Point taken. If Sharon is still alive, it will be because her mother, loony aunty Maggie, could give loony Uncle Jeb a run for the appellation of Craziest of the Crazy Stryder Siblings. My father had been only fairly touched by the Stryder madness-he didnt have a secret bunker in the backyard or anything. The rest of them, his sister and brothers, Aunt Maggie, Uncle Jeb, and Uncle Guy, were the most devoted of conspiracy theorists. Uncle Guy had died before the others disappeared during the invasion, in a car fortuity so commonplace that even Maggie and Jeb had struggled to make an intrigue out of it.My father always affectionately referred to them as the Crazies. I think its time we visited the Crazies, Dad would announce, and then mom would groan-which is wherefore such announcements had happened so seldom.On one of those rare visits to Chicago, Sharon had snuck me into her mothers hidey-hole. We got caught-the woman had smoke traps every-where. Sharon was scolded soundly, and though I was sworn to secrecy, Id had a sense Aunt Maggie might ground a new sanctuary.But I remember where the first is. I tantrum Sharon there now, living the life of Anne wienerwurst in the middle of an enemy city. We have to find her and bring her home.Jared interrupts my reminiscing. Nut jobs are exac tly the kind of people who will have survived. mass who saw grown Brother when he wasnt there. People who venture the rest of humanity before the rest of humanity turned dangerous. People with secrecy places ready. Jared grins, still study-ing the lines. And then his voice is heavier. People like my father. If he and my brothers had hidden kinda than fought Well, theyd still be here.My tone is softer, hearing the pain in his. Okay, I nurse with the theory. But these lines dont mean anything.Tell me again what he said when he draw them.I sigh. They were arguing-Uncle Jeb and my dad. Uncle Jeb was trying to convince him that something was wrong, sex act him not to trust anyone. Dad laughed it off. Jeb grabbed the photo album from the end table and started almost carving the lines into the back cover with a pencil. Dad got mad, said my mom would be angry. Jeb said, Lindas mom asked you all to come up for a visit, right? Kind of strange, out of the blue? Got a little perturbati on when only Linda would come? Tell you the truth, Trev, I dont think Linda will be minding anything much when she gets back. Oh, she might act like it, but youll be able to tell the difference. It didnt make sense at the time, but what he said really upset my dad. He ordered Uncle Jeb out of the house. Jeb wouldnt leave at first. Kept warning us not to wait until it was too late. He grabbed my shoulder and pulled me into his side. Dont let em get you, honey, he whispered. take over the lines. Start at the startle and stick to the lines. Uncle Jebll keep a safe place for you. Thats when Dad shoved him out the door.Jared nods absently, still studying. The beginning the beginning It has to mean something.Does it? Theyre just squiggles, Jared. Its not like a map-they dont even connect.Theres something about the first one, though. Something familiar. I could swear Ive seen it somewhere before.I sigh. Maybe he told Aunt Maggie. Maybe she got computeter directions.Maybe, he says, and go ons to see at Uncle Jebs squiggles.She dragged me back in time, to a much, much older memory-a memory that had break loose her for a long while. I was affect to realize that she had only put these memories, the old and the fresh, together recently. After I was here. That was why the lines had slipped through her careful control contempt the fact that they were one of the most precious of her secrets-because of the urgency of her discovery.In this blurry early memory, Melanie sat in her fathers lap with the identical album-not so tattered then-open in her hands. Her hands were tiny, her fingers stubby. It was very strange to remember creation a child in this body.They were on the first page.Do you remember where this is? Dad asks, pointing to the old gray picture at the top of the page. The paper looks thinner than the other photographs, as if it has worn down-flatter and flatter and flatter-since some great-great-grandpa took it.Its where we Stryders come from, I answer, r epeating what Ive been taught.Right. Thats the old Stryder ranch. You went there once, but I bet you dont remember it. I think you were cardinal months old. Dad laughs. Its been Stryder land since the very beginningAnd then the memory of the picture itself. A picture shed looked at a thousand times without ever seeing it. It was relentless and white, faded to grays. A small hoidenish wooden house, far away on the other side of a desert field in the foreground, a split-rail repugn a few equine shapes mingled with the fence and the house. And then, fag end it all, the sharp, familiar profileThere were words, a label, scrawled in pencil crossways the top white palisadeStryder Ranch, 1904, in the morning shadow ofPicacho Peak, I said quietly.Hell have figured it out, too, even if they never found Sharon. I know Jared will have put it together. Hes smarter than me, and he has the picture he probably saw the answer before I did. He could be so closeThe thought had her so filled wi th yearning and rubor that the blank wall in my head slipped entirely.I saw the whole trip now, saw her and Jareds and Jamies careful trek across the country, always by night in their inconspicuous stolen vehicle. It took weeks. I saw where shed odd them in a wooded celebrate outside the city, so different from the expel desert they were used to. The cold forest where Jared and Jamie would hide and wait had felt safer in some ways-because the branches were thick and concealing, unlike the spindly desert foliage that hid little-but as well more dangerous in its unfamiliar smells and sounds. thus the separation, a memory so frightful we skipped through it, flinching. Next came the abandoned building shed hidden in, watching the house across the street for her chance. There, concealed within the walls or in the secret basement, she hoped to find Sharon.I shouldnt have let you see that, Melanie thought. The faintheartedness of her silent voice gave away her fatigue. The encroac hment of memories, the persuasion and coercion, had tired her. Youll tell them where to find her. Youll kill her, too.Yes, I mused aloud. I have to do my duty.Why? she murmured, almost sleepily. What bliss will it bring you?I didnt want to argue with her, so I said nothing.The mountain loomed larger ahead of us. In moments, we would be beneath it. I could see a little rest stop with a convenience pedigree and a fast food restaurant ring on one side by a flat, concrete space-a place for wide awake homes. There were only a few in residence now, with the heat of the coming summer making things uncomfortable.What now? I wondered. Stop for a late luncheon or an early dinner? admit my gas tank and then continue on to Tucson in order to better my fresh discoveries to the Seeker?The thought was so repellent that my jaw locked against the sudden heave of my empty stomach. I slammed on the pasture brake reflexively, screeching to a stop in the middle of the lane. I was lucky there were no cars to hit me from behind. There were also no drivers to stop and offer their help and concern. For this moment, the highway was empty. The sun beat down on the pavement, making it shimmer, disappear in places.This shouldnt have felt like a betrayal, the caprice of continuing on my right and proper course. My first style, the true language of the soul that was spoken only on our planet of origin, had no word for betrayal or traitor. Or even loyalty-because without the beingness of an opposite, the concept had no meaning.And yet I felt a deep well of guilt at the very idea of the Seeker. It would be wrong to tell her what I knew. Wrong, how? I countered my own thought viciously. If I stopped here and listened to the seductive suggestions of my host, I would truly be a traitor. That was impossible. I was a soul.And yet I knew what I wanted, more powerfully and vividly than anything I had ever wanted in all the eight lives Id lived. The image of Jareds face danced behind my ey elids when I blinked against the sun-not Melanies memory this time, but my memory of hers. She forced nothing on me now. I could barely feel her in my head as she waited-I imagined her holding her breath, as if that were possible-for me to make my decision.I could not separate myself from this bodys wants. It was me, more than Id ever intended it to be. Did I want or did it want? Did that distinction even matter now?In my rearview mirror, the glisten of the sun off a extreme car caught my eye.I moved my foot to the accelerator, starting slowly toward the little store in the shadow of the peak. There was really only one thing to do.