“Well, Jumpy seemed to sum it up well enough. Once those bread bandits had a full-blown case they nearly jumped out of their skin. They got so they were terrified of their own shadows.”
“Sure, the disease was named. Officially it was Gantose Syndrome, then it became corrupted to Jumpy. But they don’t know what caused it, or what it actually is, never mind the question of how it could be cured.”
“Does it matter now? No… it’s OK, Ben. I’ll pull it out of the water.” Good-natured Ben would sometimes try and help, but his hands would shake so much he’d shake the wet wood and spray water into our faces. He was good company, though, when I was out fishing for wood, so I always encouraged him to walk with me ’round the shoreline.
And so he’d tell me his latest theory. “If you ask me, Greg, even if Jumpy is a disease it’s not caused by bacteria or a virus.”
“It has to be one or the other, Ben. Even I know that you don’t get sick without some kind of infection.”
“That’s not true. Your body can be invaded by something called a prion.”
“A prion. What the hell’s that when it’s at home?”
“A prion can’t even be described as being alive as such. Usually it’s referred to as an agent, but it seems to be capable of reproduction. What’s more, it’s far smaller than a virus. Even worse, it’s virtually indestructible and can’t be destroyed by heat. Prions have been transmitted using scalpels that have been sterilized.”
“Then why haven’t these prions killed everyone off in the past?”
“Because the diseases they cause are rare. And prions tend not to be harmful as a rule. We’ve all got them swimming about inside us, but as I said, they’re rarely dangerous. They just lie dormant all our lives.”
“What’s the problem then? Don’t we all have benign bugs inside us?”
“That’s true. Normally prions don’t bother us. But if they do turn nasty…”
“I could see that big BUT coming.”
“But if they do turn nasty,” he said, getting enthusiastic again, “they produce a substance called amyloid, which always forms in brain tissue, not in any other part of the body.”
“Ah.” I saw where he was going with this. “If it attacks the brain, then it’s going to affect behavior.”
“Bull’s eye. And prions are transmissible.”
“You mean that these prions may be responsible for Jumpy?”
“I do. And that it caused millions of people in South America to act in such a bizarre and unusual way.”
“But simultaneously?”
“Some diseases spread fast. You’ve ridden a bus in winter when half the passengers are sneezing and coughing.”
“Have prion diseases spread as fast as this before?”
“Not to anyone’s knowledge.” He gave a grim smile. “A tad worrying, isn’t it?”
We talked on the beach as I collected wood that lake currents delivered to us with all the regularity of the old-time mailman. That had been my job of work for the last few months. For that I lived rent-free and took a weekly wage. Dollar bills in the outside world might only be good for starting campfires, but here in Sullivan they were still legal tender.
Never going out farther than their statutory two hundred yards were half a dozen rowboats, each with two or maybe three guys fishing. They’d never go beyond the orange buoys that marked the two-hundred-yard boundary offshore. If you ask me, they’d die of a heart attack if you even suggested they fire up the outboard motors and ride the four miles or so across the lake to Lewis, which now sat there like a crusty black scab. Those old guys’d tell you they didn’t believe in ghosts. But get this: They were still scared of them.
Fish jumped from the shallows. Birds sang in the woods. The sun climbed toward midday. The temperature soared with it, too.
“It’s getting too hot to do this much longer,” I told Ben.
He smiled. “Well, I know a place where we can find some cold beers.”
“Show me that place, Ben.” I grinned. “It sounds like a good place to be.”
Ben reached down into the water’s edge to grab a hefty branch that divided itself off into a mass of twigs.
“Leave it,” I told him. “We’ve got enough for today.”
“Kindling,” he panted as he hauled it in. It must have been heavier than it looked. “It’ll make good kindling.”
I laid the hooked pole down onto the beach, ready to give him a hand, when he let out this cry of shock.
“What’s wrong?” I saw that he was staring into the mass of twigs. His eyes had turned big and round in his face. His body had fixed into the same position, as if he couldn’t bring himself to move.
“Oh, my God…” he gasped, then lost his balance to fall back onto his butt on the shingle.
“Ben?” I bent down to look into the tangle of sticks that still dripped water. “What’s the matter, it’s only a head. So what’s the problem, buddy? You’ve seen three of those today.”
“Not like this one I haven’t.”
“Why, what’s so different about it?”
“Take a look for yourself.” He swallowed hard, as if his breakfast threatened to come storming back. “And while you’re about it: Count the eyes.”
Eight
THIS IS A ***WARNING***
Following a meeting May 15, the
Caucus has implemented the following emergency ruling with immediate effect:
STRANGERS
No more strangers are to be admitted into Sullivan.
Report any outsiders you see approaching the island by road or by boat.
If you see anyone on the island you suspect might be a stranger
REPORT IT!
Be aware that anyone giving food or shelter to a stranger will be punished.
Any such punishment will be severe.
Be warned.
OFF ISLAND TRAVEL
All travel off island is strictly forbidden.
TAKE THESE MEASURES SERIOUSLY THEY HAVE BEEN MADE TO KEEP OUR COMMUNITY SAFE.
Caucus Order 174, May 15
We read the notice stapled to the post by the jetty. I saw more of those yellow sheets of paper fixed to trees on the road that lead up to the town.
“The Caucus is getting jittery,” I told Ben.
“They’re not the only ones.” He still looked pale after seeing the severed head caught up in the branch he’d pulled from the water. “The whole world’s in meltdown.”
I’d only seen the head for a moment before it slithered from the fork in the branch and sank out of sight. Hell, it looked weird. Sickeningly weird. I was happy to see it vanish again, believe me, but Ben had shouted to me to pull it out with the hook (but on no account to touch it with my bare hands; something I wouldn’t have done for all the tea in China anyway). Showing as a gray ball through the clear water, the head came to a rest on pebbles on the lake bed. I must have disturbed it as I splashed into the shallows because in a moment it rolled away. Soon I couldn’t even see it, never mind hooking the thing out. Ben had called me back, telling me that the lake bed plunged down a good fifty feet there into an underwater ravine. The head was gone. Sweet Jesus, I was pleased to no end it had gone, too.
Even so, I still had a sharp mental image of it as it lay there wedged into the fork of the branch. A man’s head, it had only just started to decompose; that meant it had to have come from someone who’d been alive and well until a few days ago.
I use the word well loosely… very, very loosely. Because there was something about the head that just wasn’t right. The hair had been long, the face heavily bearded. A bread bandit, I figured. The eyes were closed. You could have fooled yourself that the guy was only sleeping (if it hadn’t been for the strings of raw meat hanging down where the neck should be). But what took your breath away, and what horrified Ben so much that he cried out, was that a sickening bulge of brown flesh came out of the side of the face where the cheek should be. Set in that were two wide blue eyes. And those eyes seemed somehow alive. They stared right into mine. Then a second later the head slipped from the branch and back into the water, where it now lay fifty feet beneath the surface. Thank God.