The Missing
Authors: Sarah Langan
-
HarperCollins
e-books
The Missing
MISSING
—Virus, Deltron 3030
Epigraph
iii
PROLOGUE: WINTER
1
PART ONE:
CONTAMINATION
7
ONE
Where Have You Been?
9
TWO
The Monster in the
Woods
31
PART TWO:
INCUBATION
45
THREE
Splitting
Atoms
47
FOUR
The War
Between the States
63
FIVE
Robitussin for What
Ails You!
77
SIX
The Melancholy Choir
90
Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin’
103
EIGHT
The Hunger
113
PART THREE: INFECTION
121
NINE
The Human
Trick
123
TEN
Babes in the
Woods
126
ELEVEN
or Maybe It Was So Funny It Was
Sad
139
TWELVE
God Only Knows
151
THIRTEEN
in Your Spare
Time!
158
FOURTEEN
A House Divided
173
FIFTEEN
The Fat Kids Kept Coughing
181
I Hate You!
190
SEVENTEEN
The Dandy
197
EIGHTEEN
Bloody Carpet
205
NINETEEN
Leaky Eyes
220
TWENTY
An Itch in Her
Bones
225
TWENTY-ONE
Romeo
and Juliet
231
TWENTY-TWO
A House in Ruins
242
TWENTY-THREE
Wheel of Fortune
255
PART FOUR: DISEASE
263
TWENTY-FOUR
Quarantine
265
They Don’t Have Any Feelings
273
TWENTY-SIX
Juliet, the Belly
Dancer
290
TWENTY-SEVEN
Going Lou McGuffin
295
TWENTY-EIGHT
Witch
306
TWENTY-NINE
Brother’s Keeper
316
THIRTY
From
Death, Life
326
THIRTY-ONE
The Lump
in the Bed
328
THIRTY-TWO
Mostly It Was Just Plain
Sad
333
THIRTY-THREE
The Victorian
338
THIRTY-FOUR
Room
69
345
The Cellar
350
THIRTY-SIX
Quickening
352
THIRTY-SEVEN
Mad-e-line!
354
THIRTY-EIGHT
But Still I Go
On
360
THIRTY-NINE
366
FORTY
Cyanide
368
FORTY-ONE
Choke
376
FORTY-TWO
Escape
382
FORTY-THREE
Hunger Pangs
384
FORTY-FOUR
Separation
392
King Solomon’s
Dilemma
394
FORTY-SIX
Luck and Divinity
397
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR PRAISE
OTHER BOOKS BY SARAH LANGAN COVER
I
n winter the dark creeps up on you. I’ve hardly fin- ished my dinner and the sky right now is black. There
is no electricity anymore, so I navigate at night with candles. The flames throw shadows that assume pecu- liar and familiar shapes. All the animals are dead, even the squirrels and rabbits. Come to think of it, I have not even heard a cricket. Through the cracks in my win- dows and chimney flue, there is only the howling wind, and underneath that, barely discernible screams.
But let me begin at the beginning: once upon a time. Once upon a time Corpus Christi was a sleepy, con- tented place. Early mornings were silent affairs, dis- turbed only by the sounds of spoons stirring coffee and alarms set to talk radio with the volume turned low. We were a tightly knit community, and during the sum- mers our children roamed free. At night the younger ones played manhunt on front lawns while the older sneaked beer by the river. They each thought they were getting away with something, as if the rest of us did not
remember with fondness those same rites of passage.
Unlike the rest of Mid-Maine, where the only queues to be found were at the unemployment offices, Corpus Christi thrived. Our hospital had the best cancer research
4 Sarah Langan
facilities on the East Coast, and lured doctors from as far south as New York. We were scientists and bankers, artists and teachers, and our stores were all family owned. Each year Wal-Mart tried to plant its roots along the side of our highway, but in a unanimous vote every spring, we salted the earth.
But even before the bad business with James Walker, there were signs. That spring, a fire at the Clott Paper Mill in nearby Bedford fanned sulfurous clouds into our skies that burned our eyes for days. The chemistry of the woods changed after that, and our trees began to die. While there was no unemployment line, state fund- ing cuts and rampant lawsuits year after year took their toll, and we watched our hospital decline. Fresh coats of paint, new slate roofs, dents in cars that needed to be hammered right again, were all postponed for one year, and then another, and sometimes another. As if we’d been infected by Maine’s economic disease, we knew that layoffs and closed shops were soon to follow. But back then, our welcome signs were bright and cheerful, and our streets paved, and our lawns neat and green. We took pride in where we came from, and we expected good things from our futures.
Still, there were signs. The summer before James Walker, my husband and I stopped sleeping through the night. I used to sit in my kitchen with a cup of milky Lipton tea until chirping birds signaled the coming dawn. I could feel something expectant waiting to open its eyes inside me, as if my body knew what my mind could not guess. If I look hard enough, I can find all kinds of signs. On a family vacation, I can remember seeing my daughter swim out past the breaking waves. It was not her hands, but her hair that sank last. I hesi- tated before I jumped in after her and pulled her out.
THE MISSING 5
Perhaps a part of me knew what my mind could not guess, and had wanted to save myself a broken heart.
But I digress.
I have a story for you. Forgive me if it seems I’m tell- ing you things that I could not possibly know. This is a small town, and you hear gossip. Besides, the dead do speak.
So gather round, as I used to tell the children during story hour. Gather round.
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
“G
eorge?” Lois Larkin called out to her fourth- grade class. Her voice was muffled, and she
held the attendance book close to her nose. It was a sunny Tuesday morning in September, and the clock tower had not yet chimed nine a.m.
“Uh huh,” George answered. He was chewing on a red Crayola.
Lois raised her wet eyes from the book. “George, don’t eat that. It’ll make you thick.” Then she took a deep breath, just like she’d learned in speech therapy, and corrected herself: “Sick.”
George pulled the crayon out of his mouth. Its entire top half was missing, and his teeth were coated in red wax. Lois shook her head. George Sanford: not the brightest of God’s children.
Lois Larkin was twenty-nine years old, and had been teaching fourth grade since she’d moved back to Cor- pus Christi seven years ago. Her figure was slender but curvy—what the barflies at the Dew Drop Inn called “slammin’.” When the boys and even the girls in her class daydreamed out the window, they were usually
fantasizing about the feel of her long, black hair, and the scent of her NILLA Wafer–flavored breath.
Kids loved Lois. Parents loved her. Drunks hooted happily at her. Even animals flocked to her. Lois was lovely save for one flaw. The space between her two front teeth was so wide she could cram a pencil through the gap. She’d submitted to six years of braces through middle and high school to close it, but nary a month after the metal cage in her mouth was clipped, her teeth migrated to their nascent terra firma, and the gap returned. When she was excited she lisped, and spit sprayed through the fissure, landing like an indifferent plague on the faces of friends and foes alike. Today, for example, the open page of her attendance book was damp.
“Jameth Walker?” Lois asked. “Here,” James called.
“No kicking, James. Feet thraight ahead . . . straight ahead.”
“Yeth, Mith Loith,” James sang. His smug grin spread from ear to ear. Lois’s first instinct was to crack the boy on the head with her soft book, but instead she conti- nued.
“Caroline?”
“Here, Miss Lois!” Caroline waved both hands in the air and squirmed in her chair like she had to take a piss. It occurred to Lois that maybe she didn’t like kids so much.