to be safe while I try to work this out.”
“Life ain’t safe.”
“You’re preaching to the choir. Tell her I’ll be back in touch when I can. Tell her not to try to get ahold of me. Tell her…” my voice trailed off.
“To have faith?” Mary offered.
“No reason to talk crazy, but you get the idea.”
“Yeah.”
“And Mary?”
“Yeah?”
“Someone else calls from a public phone, don’t answer. It’s not going to be me. And it’ll probably be someone willing to torture or kill you.”
“Fuck.”
I hung up, thinking it was the smartest thing I’d done in days. Now all I had to do was figure out who was after the vials and find them before they found me.
The GPS from the Subaru had my office, the motel, and the shack on it, so all I had was the card and that fucking word,
kyua
. The card was as big a mystery as the arm, and while I knew what
kyua
meant to me, I didn’t know what it meant to the believers. That’s what the Internet is for. I went back to the car, left the netbook open next to me and started driving, hoping it would beep or fart when it found itself a Wi-Fi signal.
As it turned out, there was no sound. But, as I cruised a liveblood business district, a pop-up told me there were five networks available, two unsecured. I connected and started the browser.
The first thing I saw wasn’t good. The local news feedon Misty’s home page featured a mug shot, probably taken during a stay in holding. Harsh lighting washed away the haggard skin texture, but the dry hair was a giveaway. If you saw this guy laid out in a coffin, you might think he was sort of handsome before the mortician went and ruined him.
It was me, my mug right below a big headline: C HAK W ANTED IN P OLICE K ILLING . That didn’t surprise me as much as the fact that I’d made it this far without being picked up. Maybe
fate
was saving me for something worse. They mentioned Misty, but didn’t have a picture.
I Googled
kyua
and
g
ot about two hundred thousand hits. Most told me that the word was a) Japanese for
cure
, which I already knew, and b) the name of a nineties horror film. Chakz didn’t generally have Web pages, so I wasn’t expecting any sermons or religious blogs. I did hope some overachieving grad student had decided to do a study about nascent chak-culture or some such. Mostly, I wanted to know if there was any kind of organization involved, something I could tag to the arm and the vials.
With so many chakz shipped off, what lame communications I did have with the so-called community had broken down. Jonesey worked hard to keep his hand in, that was his thing. Once he was gone, for me, it was mostly watching Nell Parker on TV. She visited some of the camps, but only to show how nice they were.
I followed some links, found photos of an abandoned cat found in Tokyo, for instance, but one reference stuck out.
Kyua
was the nickname of a local chak-camp, about five miles north of Fort Hammer, near a town called Chambers. More than that, it wasn’t the inmates whogave it the name, it was livebloods. I was surprised I’d never heard of it, wondering if I had but had forgotten.
Camp Kyua
, provided some more focused results, including a blog by the self-involved Kafka228, a liveblood clerk who handled chak intake forms at The Chambers Observation Center, the camp’s official name. He thought himself too smart for the room and wildly underemployed. He was also deeply amused by how
eager
some chakz were to get into Camp Kyua.
“They seem to think it’s Disney World!” he wrote. “I think some actually failed their tests
on purpose
. Wish it were this easy to get rid of roaches in my kitchen.”
An anonymous comment read, “If there were no kyua, chakz would have to invent one.” Another: “Kyua cures those who cure themselves.” Which, as the real Kafka pointed out, was kind of redundant.
Why the rush to get in? That was the kicker. From what I could piece together, ChemBet, the folks who
“Life ain’t safe.”
“You’re preaching to the choir. Tell her I’ll be back in touch when I can. Tell her not to try to get ahold of me. Tell her…” my voice trailed off.
“To have faith?” Mary offered.
“No reason to talk crazy, but you get the idea.”
“Yeah.”
“And Mary?”
“Yeah?”
“Someone else calls from a public phone, don’t answer. It’s not going to be me. And it’ll probably be someone willing to torture or kill you.”
“Fuck.”
I hung up, thinking it was the smartest thing I’d done in days. Now all I had to do was figure out who was after the vials and find them before they found me.
The GPS from the Subaru had my office, the motel, and the shack on it, so all I had was the card and that fucking word,
kyua
. The card was as big a mystery as the arm, and while I knew what
kyua
meant to me, I didn’t know what it meant to the believers. That’s what the Internet is for. I went back to the car, left the netbook open next to me and started driving, hoping it would beep or fart when it found itself a Wi-Fi signal.
As it turned out, there was no sound. But, as I cruised a liveblood business district, a pop-up told me there were five networks available, two unsecured. I connected and started the browser.
The first thing I saw wasn’t good. The local news feedon Misty’s home page featured a mug shot, probably taken during a stay in holding. Harsh lighting washed away the haggard skin texture, but the dry hair was a giveaway. If you saw this guy laid out in a coffin, you might think he was sort of handsome before the mortician went and ruined him.
It was me, my mug right below a big headline: C HAK W ANTED IN P OLICE K ILLING . That didn’t surprise me as much as the fact that I’d made it this far without being picked up. Maybe
fate
was saving me for something worse. They mentioned Misty, but didn’t have a picture.
I Googled
kyua
and
g
ot about two hundred thousand hits. Most told me that the word was a) Japanese for
cure
, which I already knew, and b) the name of a nineties horror film. Chakz didn’t generally have Web pages, so I wasn’t expecting any sermons or religious blogs. I did hope some overachieving grad student had decided to do a study about nascent chak-culture or some such. Mostly, I wanted to know if there was any kind of organization involved, something I could tag to the arm and the vials.
With so many chakz shipped off, what lame communications I did have with the so-called community had broken down. Jonesey worked hard to keep his hand in, that was his thing. Once he was gone, for me, it was mostly watching Nell Parker on TV. She visited some of the camps, but only to show how nice they were.
I followed some links, found photos of an abandoned cat found in Tokyo, for instance, but one reference stuck out.
Kyua
was the nickname of a local chak-camp, about five miles north of Fort Hammer, near a town called Chambers. More than that, it wasn’t the inmates whogave it the name, it was livebloods. I was surprised I’d never heard of it, wondering if I had but had forgotten.
Camp Kyua
, provided some more focused results, including a blog by the self-involved Kafka228, a liveblood clerk who handled chak intake forms at The Chambers Observation Center, the camp’s official name. He thought himself too smart for the room and wildly underemployed. He was also deeply amused by how
eager
some chakz were to get into Camp Kyua.
“They seem to think it’s Disney World!” he wrote. “I think some actually failed their tests
on purpose
. Wish it were this easy to get rid of roaches in my kitchen.”
An anonymous comment read, “If there were no kyua, chakz would have to invent one.” Another: “Kyua cures those who cure themselves.” Which, as the real Kafka pointed out, was kind of redundant.
Why the rush to get in? That was the kicker. From what I could piece together, ChemBet, the folks who
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