Free Destination Unknown by Katherine Applegate Page B

back.

    “You’ve got my son, I have a right!” Big Bill roared.

    “Stay at least a hundred yards away,” Wylson shouted. “I am deadly serious about that, Mr. Weir.”

    A burning stick flew, twirling through the air toward Big Bill. Mo’Steel caught the brand and looked to Jobs for guidance.

    “What’s going on?” Jobs demanded.

    “Stay out of it and stay away from him!” Yago snapped. In his other hand he brandished the scimitar the alien Riders had left behind. Jobs had forgotten the weapon. Yago had not.

    “They have my son,” Big Bill pleaded. He started to say more but his face contorted in pain and choked off his words.

    “What is this about?” Olga Gonzalez shouted. “What is going on with you people?”

    Yago stepped forward just a few feet, still armed with his torch, and stabbed an accusing finger at the man writhing in pain. “He’s got it. You want it, you deal with him.”

    Daniel Burroway tried to sound reasonable, an impossible task for one red in the face and waving a glowing red branch. “He may be contagious. He’s being quarantined. If you come in contact with him you’ll be quarantined as well.”

    Olga was not easily cowed. “Where’s the doctor, then?”

    “He’s a shrink, not a real doctor,” Burroway said.

    Big Bill moaned and Jobs knelt beside him. “What is it, Mr. Weir?”

    “The leg,” he gasped.

    Jobs hesitated. Maybe they were right. Maybe whatever it was, it was contagious. Or maybe they were just hysterical. Gingerly he lifted the hem of Big Bill’s pant leg and tugged at it. The rotten fabric tore easily.

    Mo’Steel moved close, bringing the feeble, flickering light of the torch.

    Bill Weir’s leg was riddled with holes. Tunnels. He looked just like Violet Blake’s father and others. A wormer. A live wormer.

    Swallowing hard, dreading, not wanting to showit but unable to conceal his horror, Jobs tore the pant leg some more. The holes were everywhere through the calf muscle, up through the knee. The lower thigh was untouched. But as Jobs stared, he saw a round, red spot of blood appear just above Big Bill’s knee. A moment later the spot became a hole and the hole was filled by the pea-green head of a worm.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“DON’T LET ME LIVE.”
     

    Jobs didn’t know what to do. Once again his tenuous grip on certainty had been torn away. He’d been engaged in the mystery, trying to understand, and now all that he could see and feel and react to was the foul reality of the killing worm.

    He wanted to run away. Should run away. There was no hope for Bill Weir. Was there? Where was Mo? Right there, steady, but grim. Olga? Of course, Mo’Steel’s mother stayed by his side.

    “It’s some kind of worm,” Jobs whispered harshly, hoping Big Bill’s cries would keep him from overhearing.

    “It’s nothing I’ve ever seen or heard of. Not that size, not that fast. Not as a human parasite.”

    “Can you do anything?” Jobs pleaded.

    “I’m not a doctor.”

    “Mom, it’s a bug, right?” Mo’Steel said. “Maybe you could think about how to kill it.”

    Olga Gonzalez drew her son and Jobs a few paces away. “Look, you need to understand it’s very unlikely that this parasite you saw is the only one. That leg may be riddled with them. I have nothing to work with. We have a microscope but we’d need full daylight for that even to work because we don’t have a light. No lab. No equipment.”

    “It’s going to eat him alive,” Jobs said. “He’s conscious. He’s not in hibernation like Miss Blake’s dad. He’s feeling this. And it’s only in his leg — it could take a long time for him to die.”

    “Maybe we cut off his leg,” Mo’Steel suggested. “We got Dr. Huerta’s scalpel and all.”

    “That could kill the man,” Olga said. “Loss of blood, shock, infection . . . and any way, it might not stop the parasite. They may have advanced farther than you can see.”

    “Mom, do we have any other