The Host 6 page

The Seeker would be waiting for me there. My stomach rolled then, hunger momentarily replaced with nausea. Automatically, my foot eased off the gas.

I checked the map on the passenger seat. Soon I would reach a little pit stop at a place called Picacho Peak. Maybe I would stop to eat something there. Put off seeing the Seeker a few precious moments.

As I thought of this unfamiliar name‑Picacho Peak‑there was a strange, stifled reaction from Melanie. I couldn’t make it out. Had she been here before? I searched for a memory, a sight or a smell that corresponded, but found nothing. Picacho Peak. Again, there was that spike of interest 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 normal standards, but towering above the low, rough hills closer to me‑was beginning to take shape on the horizon. It had an unusual, distinctive shape. Melanie watched it grow as we traveled, pretending indifference to it.

Why did she pretend not to care when she so obviously did? I was disturbed by her strength when I tried to find out. I couldn’t see any way around the old blank wall. It felt thicker than usual, though I’d thought it was almost gone.

I tried to ignore her, not wanting to think about that‑that she was growing stronger. I watched the peak instead, tracing its shape against the pale, hot sky. There 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 vivid memory of Jared, catching me by surprise.

I shiver in my jacket, straining my eyes to see the muted glare of the sun dying behind the thick, bristly trees. I tell myself that it is not as cold as I think it is. My body just isn’t used to this.

The hands that are suddenly there on my shoulders do not startle me, though I am afraid of this unfamiliar place and I did not hear his silent approach. Their weight is too familiar.

“You’re easy to sneak up on.”

Even now, there is a smile in his voice.

“I saw you coming before you took the first step,” I say without turning. “I have eyes in the back of my head.”

Warm fingers stroke my face from my temple to my chin, dragging fire along my skin.

“You look like a dryad hidden 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.

“Not necessary,” he says. “You always look that way.”

“Says the last man on Earth to the last woman 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 warm compared to the chill forest air.

“Jamie might resent that implication.”

“Jamie’s still a boy. Please, please keep him safe.”

“I’ll make you a deal,” Jared offers. “You keep yourself safe, and I’ll do my best. Otherwise, no deal.”

Just a joke, but I can’t take it lightly. Once we are apart, there are no guarantees. “No matter what happens,” I insist.

“Nothing’s going to happen. Don’t 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 don’t 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 won’t 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 well you hide. I’m unstoppable at hide‑and‑seek.”

“Will you give me to the count of ten?”

“Without peeking.”

“You’re on,” I mumble, trying to disguise the fact that my throat is thick with tears.

“Don’t be afraid. You’ll be fine. You’re strong, you’re fast, and you’re smart.” He’s trying to convince himself, too.

Why am I leaving him? It’s 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 isn’t 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, almost pink red that I’d 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 said, I’m trying to be invisible; don’t 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 human in a huge city like Chicago? Are there others? Trying to find her doesn’t even seem like a choice, really. If there is a chance there are more humans out there, we have 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 secret place.

“And you?” I ask him in a thick voice. I’m not sure I can physically bear 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 doesn’t fit the way he used to. He has to fold in on himself, his long, gangly limbs poking out in sharp angles. His arms are starting to turn hard and sinewy, but in this moment he’s a child, shaking, cowering almost. Jared is loading the car. Jamie would not show this fear if he were here. Jamie wants to be brave, to be like Jared.

“I’m 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.

“You’ll be fine with Jared.” I have to sound brave, whether I feel that way or not.

“I know that. I’m scared for you. I’m scared you won’t come back. Like Dad.”

I flinch. When Dad didn’t 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 I’d ever felt. What if I do that to Jamie again?

“I’ll come back. I always come back.”

“I’m scared,” he says again.

I have to be brave.

“I promise everything will be fine. I’m coming back. I promise. You know I won’t break a promise, Jamie. Not to you.”

The shaking slows. He believes me. He trusts me.

And another:

I 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. They are nearly illegible, but if he finds them, he will understand:

Not fast enough. Love you love Jamie. Don’t 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 there…

“Enough,” I said out loud, cringing away from the whiplash of pain. “Enough! You’ve made your point! I can’t live without them either now. Does that make you happy? Because it doesn’t 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. “Show me one.”

Look 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, 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 flattened out into another shallow curve.

Not north and south, the way I’d 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 don’t know all the directions. Just like with the cabin, I never gave you everything.

“I don’t 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.

“They’re just lines. And Uncle Jeb is just an old lunatic. A nut job, like the rest of my dad’s family.” I try to tug the book out of Jared’s hands, but he barely seems to notice my effort.

“A nut job, like Sharon’s mom?” he counters, still studying the dark pencil marks that deface the back cover of the old photo album. It’s the one thing I haven’t lost in all the running. Even the graffiti loony Uncle Jeb left 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 touched by the Stryder madness‑he didn’t 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 accident 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 it’s time we visited the Crazies,” Dad would announce, and then Mom 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 mother’s hidey‑hole. We got caught‑the woman had booby traps every‑where. Sharon was scolded soundly, and though I was sworn to secrecy, I’d had a sense Aunt Maggie might build a new sanctuary.

But I remember where the first is. I picture Sharon there now, living the life of Anne Frank in the middle of an enemy city. We have to find her and bring her home.

Jared interrupts my reminiscing. “Nut jobs are exactly the kind of people who will have survived. People who saw Big Brother when he wasn’t there. People who suspected the rest of humanity before the rest of humanity turned dangerous. 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, they’d still be here.”

My tone is softer, hearing the pain in his. “Okay, I agree with the theory. But these lines don’t 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, telling 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, ‘Linda’s mom asked you all to come up for a visit, right? Kind of strange, out of the blue? Got a little upset when only Linda would come? Tell you the truth, Trev, I don’t think Linda will be minding anything much when she gets back. Oh, she might act like it, but you’ll be able to tell the difference.’ It didn’t make sense at the time, but what he said really upset my dad. He ordered Uncle Jeb out of the house. Jeb wouldn’t leave at first. Kept warning us not to wait until it was too late. He grabbed my shoulder and pulled me into his side. ‘Don’t let ’em get you, honey,’ he whispered. ‘Follow the lines. Start at the beginning and follow the lines. Uncle Jeb’ll keep a safe place for you.’ That’s when Dad shoved him out the door.”

Jared nods absently, still studying. “The beginning… the beginning… It has to mean something.”

“Does it? They’re just squiggles, Jared. It’s not like a map‑they don’t even connect.”

“There’s something about the first one, though. Something familiar. I could swear I’ve seen it somewhere before.”

I sigh. “Maybe he told Aunt Maggie. Maybe she got better directions.”

“Maybe,” he says, and continues to stare at Uncle Jeb’s 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 surprised 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 despite 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 father’s 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 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.

“It’s where we Stryders come from,” I answer, repeating what I’ve been taught.

“Right. That’s the old Stryder ranch. You went there once, but I bet you don’t remember it. I think you were eighteen months old.” Dad laughs. “It’s been Stryder land since the very beginning…”

And then the memory of the picture itself. A picture she’d looked at a thousand times without ever seeing it. It was black and white, faded to grays. A small rustic wooden house, far away on the other 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 profile…

There were words, a label, scrawled in pencil across the top white border:

Stryder Ranch, 1904, in the morning shadow of…

“Picacho Peak,” I said quietly.

He’ll have figured it out, too, even if they never found Sharon. I know Jared will have put it together. He’s smarter than me, and he has the picture; he probably saw the answer before I did. He could be so close…

The 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 Jared’s and Jamie’s careful trek across the country, always by night in their inconspicuous stolen vehicle. It took weeks. I saw where she’d left them in a wooded preserve 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 painful we skipped through it, flinching. Next came the abandoned building she’d 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 shouldn’t 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. You’ll tell them where to find her. You’ll 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 didn’t 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 restaurant 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 repellent that my jaw locked against the sudden heave of my empty stomach. I slammed on the 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 shouldn’t have felt like a betrayal, the idea of continuing on my right and proper course. My first language, 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 existence 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 I’d lived. The image of Jared’s face danced behind my eyelids when I blinked against the sun‑not Melanie’s 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 body’s wants. It was me, more than I’d ever intended it to be. Did I want or did it want? Did that distinction even matter now?

In my rearview mirror, the glint 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.

CHAPTER 10. Turned

The electric bell rang, announcing another visitor to the convenience store. I started guiltily and ducked my head behind the shelf of goods we were examining.

Stop acting like a criminal, Melanie advised.

I’m not acting, I replied tersely.

The palms of my hands felt cold under a thin sheen of sweat, though the small room was quite hot. The wide windows let in too much sun for the loud and laboring air‑conditioning unit to keep up.

Which one? I demanded.

The bigger one, she told me.

I grabbed the larger pack of the two available, a canvas sling that looked well able to hold more than I could carry. Then I walked around the corner to where the bottled water was shelved.

We can carry three gallons, she decided. That gives us three days to find them.

I took a deep breath, trying to tell myself that I wasn’t going along with this. I was simply trying to get more coordinates from her, that was all. When I had the whole story, I would find someone‑a different Seeker, maybe, one less repulsive than the one assigned to me‑and pass the information along. I was just being thorough, I promised myself.

My awkward attempt to lie to myself was so pathetic that Melanie didn’t pay any attention to it, felt no worry at all. It must be too late for me, as the Seeker had warned. Maybe I should have taken the shuttle.

Too late? I wish! Melanie grumbled. I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. I can’t even raise my hand! Her thought was a moan of frustration.

I looked down at my hand, resting against my thigh rather than reaching for the water as she wanted to do so badly. I could feel her impatience, her almost desperate desire to be on the move. On the run again, just as if my existence were no more than a short interruption, a wasted season now behind her.

She gave the mental equivalent of a snort at that, and then she was back to business. C’mon, she urged me. Let’s get going! It will be dark soon.

With a sigh, I pulled the largest shrink‑wrapped flat of water bottles from the shelf. It nearly hit the floor before I caught it against a lower shelf edge. My arms felt as though they’d popped halfway out of their sockets.

“You’re kidding me!” I exclaimed aloud.

Shut up!

“Excuse me?” a short, stooped man, the other customer, asked from the end of the aisle.

“Uh‑nothing,” I mumbled, not meeting his gaze. “This is heavier than I expected.”

“Would you like some help?” he offered.

“No, no,” I answered hastily. “I’ll just take a smaller one.”

He turned back to the selection of potato chips.

No, you will not, Melanie assured me. I’ve carried heavier loads than this. You’ve let us get all soft, Wanderer, she added in irritation.

Sorry, I responded absently, bemused by the fact that she had used my name for the first time.

Lift with your legs.

I struggled with the flat of water, wondering how far I could possibly be expected to carry it. I managed to get it to the front register, at least. With great relief, I edged its weight onto the counter. I put the bag on top of the water, and then added a box of granola bars, a roll of doughnuts, and a bag of chips from the closest display.

Water is way more important than food in the desert, and we can only carry so much ‑

I’m hungry, I interrupted. And these are light.

It’s your back, I guess, she said grudgingly, and then she ordered, Get a map.

I placed the one she wanted, a topographical map of the county, on the counter with the rest. It was no more than a prop in her charade.

The cashier, a white‑haired man with a ready smile, scanned the bar codes.

“Doing some hiking?” he asked pleasantly.

“The mountain is very beautiful.”

“The trailhead is just up that ‑” he said, starting to gesture.

“I’ll find it,” I promised quickly, pulling the heavy, badly balanced load back off the counter.

“Head down before it gets dark, sweetie. You don’t want to get lost.”

“I will.”

Melanie was thinking sulfurous thoughts about the kind old man.

He was being nice. He’s sincerely concerned about my welfare, I reminded her.

You’re all very creepy, she told me acidly. Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to talk to strangers?

I felt a deep tug of guilt as I answered. There are no strangers among my kind.

I can’t get used to not paying for things, she said, changing the subject. What’s the point of scanning them?

Inventory, of course. Is he supposed to remember everything we took when he needs to order more? Besides, what’s the point of money when everyone is perfectly honest? I paused, feeling the guilt again so strongly that it was an actual pain. Everyone but me, of course.

Melanie shied away from my feelings, worried by the depth of them, worried that I might change my mind. Instead she focused on her raging desire to be away from here, to be moving toward her objective. Her anxiety leaked through to me, and I walked faster.

I carried the stack to the car and set it on the ground beside the passenger door.

“Let me help you with that.”

I jerked up to see the other man from the store, a plastic bag in his hand, standing beside me.

“Ah… thank you,” I finally managed, my pulse thudding behind my ears.

We waited, Melanie tensed as if to run, while he lifted our acquisitions into the car.

There’s nothing to fear. He’s being kind, too.

She continued to watch him distrustfully.

“Thank you,” I said again as he shut the door.

“My pleasure.”

He walked off to his own vehicle without a backward glance at us. I climbed into my seat and grabbed the bag of potato chips.

Look at the map, she said. Wait till he’s out of sight.

No one is watching us, I promised her. But, with a sigh, I unfolded the map and ate with one hand. It was probably a good idea to have some sense of where we were headed.

Where are we headed? I asked her. We’ve found the starting point, so what now?

Look around, she commanded. If we can’t see it here, we’ll try the south side of the peak.

See what?

She placed the memorized image before me: a ragged zigzagging line, four tight switchbacks, the fifth point strangely blunt, like it was broken. Now I saw it as I should, a jagged range of four pointed mountain peaks with the broken‑looking fifth…

I scanned the skyline, east to west across the northern horizon. It was so easy it felt false, as though I’d made the image up only after seeing the mountain silhouette that created the northeast line of the horizon.

That’s it, Melanie almost sang in her excitement. Let’s go! She wanted me to be out of the car, on my feet, moving.

I shook my head, bending over the map again. The mountain ridge was so far in the distance I couldn’t guess at the miles between us and it. There was no way I was walking out of this parking lot and into the empty desert unless I had no other option.

Let’s be rational, I suggested, tracing my finger along a thin ribbon on the map, an unnamed road that connected to the freeway a few miles east and then continued in the general direction of the range.

Sure, she agreed complacently. The faster the better.

We found the unpaved road easily. It was just a pale scar of flat dirt through the sparse shrubbery, barely wide enough for one vehicle. I had a feeling that the road would be overgrown with lack of use in a different region‑some place with more vital vegetation, unlike the desert plants that needed decades to recover from such a violation. There was a rusted chain stretched across the entrance, screwed into a wooden post on one end, looped loosely around another post at the other. I moved quickly, pulling the chain free and piling it at the base of the first post, hurrying back to my running car, hoping no one would pass and stop to offer me help. The highway stayed clear as I drove onto the dirt and then rushed back to refasten the chain.

We both relaxed when the pavement disappeared behind us. I was glad that there was apparently no one left I would have to lie to, whether with words or silence. Alone, I felt less of a renegade.

Melanie was perfectly at home here in the middle of nothing. She knew the names of all the spiny plants around us. She hummed their names to herself, greeting them like old friends.

Creosote, ocotillo, cholla, prickly pear, mesquite…

Away from the highway, the trappings of civilization, the desert seemed to take on a new life for Melanie. Though she appreciated the speed of the jolting car‑our vehicle didn’t have the ground clearance necessary for this off‑road trip, as the shocks reminded me with every pit in the dirt‑she itched to be on her feet, loping through the safety of the baking desert.

We would probably have to walk, and all too soon for my taste, but when that time came, I doubted it would satisfy her. I could feel the real desire beneath the surface. Freedom. To move her body to the familiar rhythm of her long stride with only her will for guidance. For a moment, I allowed myself to see the prison that was life without a body. To be carried inside but unable to influence the shape around you. To be trapped. To have no choices.

I shuddered and refocused on the rough road, trying to stave off the mingled pity and horror. No other host had made me feel such guilt for what I was. Of course, none of the others had stuck around to complain about the situation.

The sun was close to the tips of the western hills when we had our first disagreement. The long shadows created strange patterns across the road, making it hard to avoid the rocks and craters.

There it is! Melanie crowed as we caught sight of another formation farther east: a smooth wave of rock, interrupted by a sudden spur that swung a thin, long finger out against the sky.