11

REVELATION 7:14

. . . and have washed their robes, and made them white

in the blood of the Lamb.

~ * ~

Louise was in a red world. Everything was thick and slow-moving, and filled with pain. She could feel it, radiating from everything around her in vicious pulses, each spear of agony searching for HER, as if she had become a magnet to which all the suffering of this new existence must attach. She tried to move quickly through this place, wanting to flee from something that was chasing her (and she KNEW, oh yes she did, just what that WAS), but her body dragged stubbornly against the messages from her brain, as though the muscles were determined to do only the opposite, like obstinate children thwarting their mother out of spite.

She fought on, because anything else was unthinkable. To stay in one spot was to invite death, and she wasn't ready for that, she wanted to live forever, get married, have a hardheaded child or two of her own. But those dreams were tantalizing wisps floating just out of reach, then dissolving.

She pushed on, past the empty buildings in which light and dark things slept in unknown proximity. Both species found it imperative to kill the other for survival, one living—if such could be said—to kill, the other killing to live. The streets were lined with the shells of cars, parked years before and never reclaimed. Every vehicle was red, the ones with smaller windows darker than the others. More of the dark things rested in these metal crypts and she dared not wake them lest they join in the pursuit.

More pain, stronger now, this time coming from a companion, someone who had joined her in flight and whose every movement and exhalation filled her with additional misery. Jo? Louise didn't think so; she couldn't imagine that Jo would ever run, or even be afraid.

Red buildings, red cars, even the sidewalks were red, deep and shadowed except where vibrant shades of scarlet spilled from the cracked cement, streaming through like hot rays from an alien sun. Louise felt as if she fought a gale-strength wind with every foot, and each step brought a new stab of agony, blossoming cell by cell until it all centered in her hands. At last she looked down, her running mate forgotten or killed, and her hands were the only things in this dreadful place that weren't red. Instead they were yellow and green, an ugly, diseased rainbow that seeped from beneath her fingernails in disgusting, viscous droplets. Her face twisted in terror as the skin began to slough away, revealing more of the clotted matter beneath a cracking surface that had once been the tissues of her body. The pain flared threefold, a hundredfold, but all Louise could think was that she would never be able to survive without them, she would never be able to CLIMB, and God help her if they fell off—

"Louise," someone said. "Wake up. It's only a nightmare."

"What!" Louise came up fighting and gasping for air; for an instant she'd had the insane thought that she'd been sleeping underwater. "Dream!"

"Yes," Jo said soothingly. "Just a dream." Jo's face, lit by the glow of a fresh candle, swam into focus. She felt Jo's touch on her forehead, cool and calming, and the tripping movements of her heart and lungs regulated; at last she could breathe almost normally. But Jesus, she was hot! "How do you feel?" Jo's voice echoed strangely in Louise's ears. Beau's little body was too warm and Louise pushed him away and decided tiredly that it must be the vastness of the church causing the voice distortion, all those empty pews. . . .

"Okay." A robotic answer, conditioned by years of polite response. But how did she really feel?

She felt . . . red.

"What time is it?" she finally managed. The always-unspoken question: How long until sunrise?

"It won't be light for some time." Jo studied her. "How about something to eat? To keep up your strength."

Louise shook her head. "I don't think I could keep it down," she admitted.

"Then you fibbed. You really don't feel well." Her hand was on Louise's forehead again, the touch comforting. "You've got a terrible fever, you know." She clucked. "We have to unwrap your hands, Louise. They're probably infected."

Louise's stomach wrenched and she looked at Jo pleadingly. "Maybe I've just got a cold."

"Sure," Jo said amiably. "But they need clean bandages anyway, don't you think?"

Louise thought about her dream, the red world and the sight of her fingers, stripped of their miraculous sheet of skin and bleeding dark pus and the poison of infection. Just a dream, that's all. Yet . . .

What would she do if they pulled away the bandages and that's what she found?

She bent her head and examined her hands, appalled to see the once-white wrappings soaked with a score of nasty-colored stains.

"We have to." Jo's voice was insistent and Beau whined nervously. Louise wanted to refuse; instead she reluctantly held out her hands.

The pain mounted with each featherlike tug Jo gave the material, as if it were no longer blood that pulsed through the veins and capillaries but a congealed mass of rotting liquid forcing its way through her body and spreading as each finger was released, pushing disaster further into her vulnerable flesh. When the last strip was peeled away, Louise was again teetering on the edge of that raw, scarlet world, as though pain and fantasy had melded at the altar of St. Peter's. Kneeling in front of her, even Jo was at a loss for words when Louise's swollen hands were fully bared.

Beau's nose twitched at the odd and unpleasant smell coming from his mistress and he sniffed along the pew until he found her leg. As Jo dropped the last bandage, he tried to scramble clumsily onto Louise's lap to investigate. When he lost his balance, Louise gabbed for him reflexively; struggling for footing, Beau scraped his claws across the ravaged hands that reached to cradle him.

The red world burst into a special, angry shade of crimson and slammed Louise in the face.

~ * ~

Louise woke to find her spasming hands clutched in Jo's grip, pulled so firmly against the younger woman's thin chest that she could feel Jo's lungs heaving beneath her frail ribs. She tried to pull away and tell Jo that she was much better—her hands weren’t paining her anymore and she didn't feel so feverish or dizzy. Then she saw Jo's face and froze.

At first Louise thought Jo's eyes had turned as white as her hip-length hair, then she realized that they'd rolled so far back in Jo's skull that her gray irises had disappeared beneath the virtually translucent covering of her eyelids.

“Jo?" Louise tried frantically to disengage her fingers but it was no use. She wanted to see her hands, but Jo held them so desperately against her body that Louise was afraid the girl would suddenly grab her shoulders and pull her into some terrifying, inexplicable embrace. Five seconds, then ten, stretching to twenty; still Jo hung on. All at once the pain returned with startling intensity and Louise wheezed, then nearly screamed when she saw that Jo's hands were glowing, the light spreading through their entangled fingers until it climbed onto Louise's knuckles, the backs of her hands, then her wrists. "Stop it!" Louise yelled. "Let me go!"

She panicked and backpedaled, trying to swing her arms from side to side like a dog fighting a too-tight leash, but the smaller girl's grip was impossible to break. Blood was rushing through her temples so fast and hard her arteries would surely burst—maybe she was having a stroke and this whole thing, even Beau's frenzied barking in the background, was only the prelude to an eternity of visions signaling her death.

Then her hands did explode, and the agony made the red world flare in front of her vision again, expanding a thousandfold into a noxious black cloud that spun wildly until it was nothing more than a fading black dot.

~ * ~

Louise sighed and groped for the blanket. If she could find the covers, she'd be comfortable enough to catch another half hour of shut-eye. Behind her, Beau was making annoying little cries and she turned over and tried to squeeze her eyes shut tighter. The roll brought the unprotected skin of her cheek against the cold, dirty floor of the church and her eyes flew open.

She scrambled to her feet. "Jo?"

Louise spotted her underneath the front pew where Beau was nuzzling her shadowed face. Louise hurried toward her, then hesitated as she remembered what had happened . . . how long ago? A glance at the stained glass windows told her it was still dark and she had no way of knowing how much time had elapsed since she—and presumably Jo—had passed out, although it must have been a while since the candle had almost melted on its saucer. Jo was curled beneath her spill of silky white hair and Louise's heart missed a beat; what if Jo was seriously hurt? She reached to push the hair from Jo's face and her pulse lurched again.

Her hands were healed.

She turned them over frantically. Nothing marred the skin surface, not even a hangnail; no cuts, no blood, no pus. Neither looked as though she'd ever taken a fall or been ravaged by an out-of-control infection, or even done work, for God's sake. She swallowed and turned back to Jo. There would be time to marvel later; right now Jo needed her help. This time she didn't hesitate to brush aside the mass of hair. "Jo?" Louise touched one thin shoulder. "Can you hear me?" The blonde girl moaned and moved slightly, trying to pull herself into a tighter ball, her arms wedged between her knees and her chest.

"Come on," Louise said. She slid her arms between Jo and the floor and flinched at the girl's body temperature. "You're freezing. Let's get you off the floor." She felt strong and healthy and it was no effort to lift Jo to the blanketed pew while Beau twisted underfoot; the teen's head lolled against her shoulder then disappeared beneath the tangled hair as Louise eased her along the length of the blankets. When one of Jo's arms slid to rest palm-up on the floor, Louise gave a small yelp. The hand—and its mate—were split and battered and obviously filled with a virulent infection.

Black dots of shock twinkled around Louise's vision but she resisted; there was no time to freak out. Instead she rapidly tore clean strips from the bottom of Jo's dress to use as bandages, telling herself that a lot of things were different now, and if people who had been drained of blood and died could rise and do the same to others, who was to say that a strange, angelic teenager couldn't have the power to heal? If she wanted reality there was always Beau, crying plaintively and gazing blindly off into space. She washed Jo's hands carefully, wincing each time the younger girl groaned and shuddered, then carefully wrapped each one as Jo had done for her, chewing her lip helplessly when she saw that foul yellow fluid and sticky blood already spotted the wrappings. The stains and mess on the front of her companion's dress would have to wait, and Louise finally covered Jo with two more blankets, then wrapped another around herself and sat next to her, easing Jo's head onto her lap to keep it off the cold wood. Jo's breathing smoothed, and as Louise felt her own head drooping she realized she was still recovering from the last remnants of her own infection. After a time, she slept.

~ * ~

The first thing Louise saw when she opened her eyes was her own breath fogging in front of her face, an amazing thing because she was so warm. The oppressive weight across her shoulders turned out to be too many blankets and she felt movement across her thighs; her hands felt beneath the blankets and found Beau curled on her lap. She disengaged herself and left Beau snoozing amidst the covers as she searched the dim church anxiously, but Jo was nowhere to be found. Back where she started, Louise noticed a small pile on the floor next to the altar; she poked at it curiously and discovered the dress Jo had been wearing and a smaller jumble, the remains of the ragged strips that had covered Jo's mutilated hands. At last Louise spread everything on the floor and settled down Indian-fashion to stare at it in wonder.

The petite dress, the hem torn into uneven fragments, and the equally ragged bandages were a pristine, nearly painful white.

Louise flexed her wrists and fingers, felt the play of muscles and tendons and the warmth of unimpaired circulation as she wondered idly what had happened to the bloodstains on the material.

At length, she supposed it really didn't matter.