The Host Chapter 9: Discovered

I bevy quickly through the I-10 junction as the sun betroth flight s withall me. I didnt see much(prenominal) besides the white and yellow lines on the pavement, and the occasional big green sign pointing me farther east. I was in a hurry now.I wasnt current exactly what I was in a hurry for, though. To be disclose of this, I supposed. discover of pain, break of sadness, prohibited of aching for lost and hopeless loves. Did that mean out of this body? I couldnt compute of any other closure. I would legato ask my questions of the Healer, further it snarl as though the decision was make. Skipper. Quitter. I tested the words in my caput, trying to come to terms with them.If I could ensure a carriage, I would slip by Melanie out of the seekers reach. It would be genuinely hard. No, it would be impossible.I would try.I promised her this, but she wasnt listening. She was di smoothery dreaming. Giving up, I persuasion, now that it was too late for giving up to help. I move to stay clear of the red ignoreyon in her head, but I was at that amaze, too. No matter how hard I tried to see the cars zooming beside me, the shuttles locomote in toward the port, the hardly a(prenominal), fine clouds drifting overhead, I couldnt pull completely alleviate of her dreams. I memorized J ards construction from a thousand different angles. I watched Jamie carry up in a sudden growth spurt, always undress and b iodins. My arms ached for them both-no, the feeling was perspicaciouser than an ache, blade-edged and violent. It was intoler adequate to(p). I had to get out.I drove close to blindly along the narrow two-lane freeway. The desert was, if anything, to a gr take iner extent mo nononous and dead than onwards. Flatter, more colorless. I would make it to Tucson long before dinnertime. Dinner. I hadnt eaten yet today, and my stomach rumbled as I realized that.The Seeker would be waiting for me thither. My stomach rolled thusly, hunger mamaenta rily replaced with nausea. Automatically, my understructure eased come to the gas.I checked the map on the passenger seat. Soon I would reach a lower-ranking pit percentage point at a place called Picacho Peak. Maybe I would finish to eat something there. Put off seeing the Seeker a few trea sure enoughd moments.As I thought of this unfamiliar name-Picacho Peak-there was a strange, stifled reaction from Melanie. I couldnt make it out. Had she been here before? I searched for a store provide, a sight or a smell that corresponded, but found nada. Picacho Peak. Again, there was that spike of sake that Melanie repressed. What did the words mean to her? She retreated into faraway memories, avoiding me.This made me curious. I drove a little faster, wondering if the sight of the place would trigger something.A solitary mountain peak-not massive by design standards, but towering above the low, rough hills closer to me-was beginning to take shape on the horizon. It had an un rough -cut, distinctive shape. Melanie watched it grow as we traveled, pretending spiritlessness to it.Why did she pretend not to c ar when she so obviously did? I was disturbed by her strength when I tried to find out. I couldnt see any way or so the previous(a) blank wall. It felt succincter than usual, though Id thought it was al virtually gone.I tried to ignore her, not wanting to think about that-that she was growing stronger. I watched the peak instead, tincture its shape against the pale, hot sky. thither was something familiar about it. Something I was sure I recognized, even as I was positive that neither of us had been here before.Almost as if she was trying to distract me, Melanie plunged into a in writing(p) memory of Jargond, catching me by surprise.I shiver in my jacket, variant my eyes to see the muted gl are of the sun dying behind the thick, bristly trees. I recount myself that it is not as common cold as I think it is. My body just isnt used to this.The hands tha t are suddenly there on my shoulders do not startle me, though I am afraid of this unfamiliar place and I did not divulge his quiet approach. Their weight is too familiar.Youre easy to sneak up on. even off now, there is a smile in his voice.I adage you coming before you took the first step, I say without turning. I permit eyes in the stomach of my head.Warm fingers stroke my face from my temple to my chin, dragging fire along my skin.You look resembling a wood nymph concealed here in the trees, he whispers in my ear. One of them. So beautiful that you must be fictional.We should plant more trees around the cabin.He chuckles, and the sound makes my eyes close and my lips stretch into a grin. non necessary, he says. You always look that way.Says the exsert man on Earth to the last adult female on Earth, on the eve of their separation.My smile fades as I speak. Smiles cannot last today.He sighs. His star topology on my cheek is warm compared to the curtain fo equaliser air .Jamie might resent that implication.Jamies still a boy. Please, please keep him safe.Ill make you a deal, Jared offers. You keep yourself safe, and Ill do my best. Otherwise, no deal.fair a joke, but I cant take it lightly. Once we are a small-arm, there are no guarantees. No matter what happens, I insist. nonhings going to happen. Dont worry. The words are nearly meaningless. A waste of effort. But his voice is worth hearing, no matter the message.Okay.He pulls me around to face him, and I lean my head against his chest. I dont know what to compare his scent to. It is his own, as unique as the smell of juniper or the desert rain.You and I wont lose each other, he promises. I will always find you again. Being Jared, he cannot be completely serious for more than a heartbeat or two. No matter how come up you hide. Im un gopable at hide-and-seek.Will you cede me to the count of ten?Without peeking.Youre on, I mumble, trying to disguise the fact that my pharynx is thick with tears.D ont 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 weather forecast there isnt much entertainment in the dead-boring everything-is-perfect reports that pass for news among the parasites. It was the hair that caught my eye-the flash of deep, approximately pink red that Id only ever seen on one person.I can still see the look on her face as she peeked at the camera from the corner of one eye. The look that verbalise, Im trying to be invisible dont see me. She walked not quite slowly enough, working too hard at keeping a casual pace. Trying desperately to blend in.No body snatcher would feel that need.What is Sharon doing walking around h uman in a huge city similar bread? Are there others? Trying to find her doesnt even seem equal a choice, rattling. If there is a chance there are more humans out there, we arrive at to locate them.And I have to go alone. Sharon will run from anyone but me-well, she will run from me, too, but maybe she will pause long enough for me to explain. I am sure I know her conundrum place.And you? I ask him in a thick voice. Im not sure I can physically extend this looming goodbye. Will you be safe?Neither heaven nor hell can keep me apart from you, Melanie.Without giving me a chance to catch my breath or wipe 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 crimp in on himself, his long, gangly limbs poking out in sharp angles. His arms are beginning to turn hard and sinewy, but in this moment hes a child, shaking, cowering almost. Jared is loading the car. Jamie would not show this fear if he were here. Jamie wan ts to be brave, to be like Jared.Im scared, he whispers.I kiss his night-dark hair. Even here among the sharp, resinous trees, it smells like dust and sun. It feels like he is part of me, that to separate us will 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 know that. Im scared for you. Im scared you wont come back. alike(p) pop music.I flinch. When Dad didnt come back-though his body did eventually, 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 floor below. They will find me in minutes, or seconds. I scrawl the words on a dirty shred of newsprint. The y 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 picture 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 smiling as we catch them thereEnough, I state 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. at that place is another choice, Melanie thought softly.Really? I demanded with heavy sarcasm. Show me one. savor and see.I was still staring at the mountain peak. It dominated the landscape, a sudden upthrust of rock surrounded by flat scrubland. Her interest pulled my eyes over the outline, traci ng the uneven two-pronged crest.A slow, rough curve, then(prenominal) 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 flattened out into another change curve.Not north and south, the way Id always seen the lines in her piecemeal memories it was up and down.The profile 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 corrected 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 Shar ons mom? he counters, still studying the dark pencil marks that spot the back cover of the old photo album. Its the one thing I havent lost in all the running. Even the graffiti loony Uncle Jeb left over(p) on it during his last visit has sentimental value now.Point taken. If Sharon is still alive, it will be because her mother, loony aunt Maggie, could give loony Uncle Jeb a run for the title of Craziest of the Crazy Stryder Siblings. My father had been only slightly stirred 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 ridicule, were the most devoted of conspiracy theorists. Uncle Guy had died before the others disappeared during the invasion, in a car accident so familiar that even Maggie and Jeb had struggled to make an intrigue out of it.My father always in a heartfelt way referred to them as the Crazies. I think its time we visited the Crazies, Dad would annou nce, and then mummy would groan-which is why 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 booby traps every-where. Sharon was scolded soundly, and though I was sworn to secrecy, Id had a sense Aunt Maggie might build a new sanctuary.But I flirt with where the first is. I picture Sharon there now, living the life of Anne blackguard in the middle of an enemy city. We have to find her and bring her home.Jared interrupts my reminiscing. eggs jobs are exactly the kind of people who will have survived. lot who saw Big Brother when he wasnt there. People who suspected the rest of humanity before the rest of humanity turned hazardous. People with hiding 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 rather than fought Well, theyd still be here.My tone is softer, hearing the pain i n his. Okay, I agree with the theory. But these lines dont mean anything.Tell me again what he said when he drew them.I sigh. They were arguing-Uncle Jeb and my dad. Uncle Jeb was trying to convince him that something was wrong, grave him not to trust anyone. Dad laughed it off. Jeb grabbed the photo album from the end postpone 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 knock over 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 hi s side. ??Dont let em get you, honey, he whispered. ??Follow the lines. Start at the beginning and follow 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 inform Ive seen it somewhere before.I sigh. Maybe he told Aunt Maggie. Maybe she got go against directions.Maybe, he says, and continues to stare at Uncle Jebs squiggles.She dragged me back in time, to a much, much older memory-a memory that had escaped her for a long while. I was strike 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 on the lookout control despite the fact that they were one of the most precious of her secrets-because of th e urgency of her discovery.In this blurry early memory, Melanie sit down in her fathers lap with the same album-not so tattered then-open in her hands. Her hands were tiny, her fingers stubby. It was very strange to remember being a child in this body.They were on the first page.Do you remember where this is? Dad asks, pointing to the old white-haired 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, repeating 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 eighteen 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 black and white, faded to grays. A small unpolished wooden house, far away on the othe r side of a desert field in the foreground, a split-rail fence a few equine shapes between the fence and the house. And then, behind it all, the sharp, familiar profileThere were words, a label, scrawled in pencil across the top white knellStryder Ranch, 1904, in the morning shadow ofPicacho Peak, I said quietly.Hell have pass judgment 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 with yearning and excitement that the blank wall in my head slipped entirely.I saw the whole journey 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 left them in a wooded prevent outside the city, so different from the empty 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 also more dangerous in its unfamiliar smells and sounds.Then the separation, a memory so torturous 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 faintness of her silent voice gave away her fatigue. The assault 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 happiness 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 store and a fast food eating house bordered on one side by a flat, concrete space-a place for mobile 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 lunch or an early dinner? Fill my gas tank and then continue on to Tucson in order to reveal my fresh discoveries to the Seeker?The thought was so nauseous 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 gilt 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 idea of continuing on my right and proper course. My first language, the admittedly language of the soul that was spoken only on our planet of origin, had no word for betrayal or traitor. Or eve n loyalty-because without the existence of an opposite, the judgment 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 eyelids 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 note of hand even matter now?In my rearview mirror, the g lint of the sun off a distant 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.