Destination Unknown by Katherine Applegate Page B

would see when at last the shape was close enough.

    Billy Weir floated, moved without benefit of muscles, simply floated through the air. He still stared, blank, as though blind, still showed no expression on his vacant face.

    He floated with his limbs all limp, with his head upraised, till he was above Big Bill.

    Big Bill was shrieking now, shrieking like a lunatic thing, his voice no longer human.

    And it seemed to Jobs as though a shadow extended down from Billy Weir to his adoptive father. The shadow enveloped them both. For a heartbeat Big Bill was silent. And then Billy Weir screamed.

    Jobs thought at first it was Big Bill again, but no, this voice was different, raw, hoarse, but at least an octave higher, a young voice screaming in pain.

    Then silence.

    Billy Weir sagged, fell to the ground.

    Jobs ran back to him, ran and grabbed his nerveless arms and pulled him away, dragging him back from Big Bill.

    He stopped, panting, shaking.

    Big Bill was silent. And Jobs knew the man was dead.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“TEN’S ONLY A MAGIC NUMBER IF YOU GOT TEN FINGERS.”
     

    “We have to get out of here, right now,” Olga said. “Those things could be capable of moving across the ground. Once they’re done with Mr. Weir . . .”

    Violet Blake heard the words but as if from far away. The pain in her hand was unlike anything she had ever experienced. She would not have believed that a single finger could possibly cause so much agony.

    She held her wounded hand with her free hand, using tattered, decaying bits of her dress as a bandage. The blood wouldn’t stop. But there was no way to tie a tourniquet, the finger had been lopped off right at the base.

    She would have liked to try and sew up whatever vein was producing the endless flow of blood, but she knew she didn’t have the nerve for that. The cauterization had been only partly successful.

    There was no one to help her. They had dragged the once more prostrate Billy Weir back toward the fire, but they’d been stopped by a solid front presented by Yago, D-Caf, Anamull, Burroway, and the psychiatrist, T.R.

    “Wylson says you’re quarantined,” Yago said. “The worms could be in you.”

    Violet wanted to scream at him. But the truth was, her mother and the others had been right, the fearful ones, the safe ones, they’d been right and she and her idealistic compatriots had been dangerously wrong. And now even her own mother believed she was contagious.

    “The point is we all have to get out of this area,” Olga said through gritted teeth.

    “Suddenly you discover prudence,” Burroway drawled. “A little late, I should say.”

    Olga erupted. “We’re not asking to mingle with you people, we’re saying, move. Move! Move now! You want to play gotcha? Do it later.”

    That seemed to get through. It got through to Violet. She could swear she felt the worms crawling up her legs. She had seen the one in her finger. She had seen it and felt it and known the terror and the pain of it.

    Burroway, having gotten off his snide remark,seemed unsure how to proceed. It was Violet’s mother who made the call. “Okay, we move out. We follow the river.”

    “We should go back to the ship,” Jobs said. “There are more Wakers there.”

    “And maybe more worms,” Burroway argued.

    “We can’t just go off and disappear and leave those people,” Jobs argued. “Not to mention the ship. There’s a lot of useful things there still. We need tools. We need to make weapons. We need to figure out what happened to all those people who just disappeared. And we have to be there to help the Wakers.”

    Violet sensed a desperation in Jobs’s voice. Of course: He was a techie, leaving the only technology in sight to head out into the wild.

    “Forget them,” Yago snapped. “Or else you go back, Jobs. You want to be Joe Responsible, you go. But leave the sword with us.”

    Olga put her hand on Jobs’s shoulder. “They’re right: We have to get out of