Page 39 of Jacob

“Alex, I did it.” Elias’s voice held pride and glee. He motioned to the screen of an electron microscope. “Look.”

She looked, heart beating wildly. Elias was brilliant but operated according to his own rules and interests. What she saw made every cell of her body recoil in terror. A virus that should have been wiped off the face of the earth decades ago, vibrant and modified and deadly.

Her gaze lifted in shock to Elias’s face. He looked delighted.

“How could you?” she asked, horrified.

He recoiled. “How could I? Stupid question. You always think so small, Alex. What’s the matter with you? You have to think BIG.”

The last word came out as a boom, the sound echoing around the room, taking time to die down. They were in some sort of room with doors in all four walls. The walls were painted black. She shrank back with a gasp at his voice, suddenly loud as a gunshot.

“Big,” Elias repeated, his grin growing until it stretched horribly from ear to ear, showing sharp teeth. And he was suddenly big, his head brushing the ceiling, hands huge, opening and closing.

He was terrifying, waves of cold coming off him as if he’d just been in a freezer. The room was freezing cold, too. Cold and dark. The air heavy, hard to breathe.

The doors—all those doors—suddenly opened with a loud clatter and people spilled out, as if they’d all been leaning against the closed doors like stacked wood. The first few fell to the floor, then others tripped over them, others still shuffling out. Alex could see the corridors and they were all teeming with people, pushing forward, tripping over themselves.

A dank odor accompanied them, a rank smell of decay. A smell of death. Moans rose from their ranks, moans of pain. Someone stumbling in from the closest door to her fell to the ground. A woman. First to her knees then, rolling to her side, face turned to Alex. The woman had pale eyes that stared up at her, beseeching.

Begging for something. For what? What could Alex give her? What did she need?

Her hand reached up, touched Alex’s. The hand was cold, clammy, not like human skin. Alex recoiled, then saw that the hand was suddenly covered in pustules. And so was the woman’s face. Everyone’s face, disfigured with smallpox pustules. Like a scene from the Middle Ages, death and destruction everywhere she looked. People writhing on the ground, claw-like hands reaching out, feet drumming. Everyone in agony.

Everyone dying.

The mass of people, limbs intertwined like some huge monstrous organism, began crawling toward her, scarred hands reaching for her, the moans rising…

One hand grabbed her ankle, pulling it. She was going to fall straight into the mass of dying people. She kicked, hard, but another hand reached out and another…

She screamed.

Something strong held her, she couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. She needed to get away, fast, before she drowned in the wave of people. They clawed at her, moaning. Something was holding on to her, something strong. She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t scream. All that came out of her mouth was terrified mewling. She shook and shuddered and whatever was holding her tightened its grip. Not painful but unbreakable. She flailed and came awake on a gasp and a smothered scream.

“Whoa!” a deep voice said. “You’re having a nightmare, honey. Wake up, that’s right. Open those baby blues for me.” Jacob tapped her cheek.

She opened her eyes and saw Jacob’s dark worried face above hers. He was holding her tightly but let go a little when he saw she was awake.

“Man, you scared the fu—, you scared the shi—, you scared me,” he finally said.

Alex sat up, shaken. She wanted to tell him that he could say shit or fuck around her but didn’t have the strength. Parts of the nightmare still had her in its grip, and she shuddered.

Jacob tightened his arms around her again, as if he could absorb her shaking. She couldn’t control anything her body did.

“Sorry,” she gasped. This was horrible. There was no way to hide herself, conceal what had happened. She felt raw, as if someone had peeled her skin off, leaving only beating organs, completely vulnerable.

“Nothing to be sorry about.” Jacob shifted, never letting her go, and she somehow found herself half sitting, leaning on him, completely in his embrace, and ohmygod, that felt good. The black cloud of the nightmare was dissipating by the second, leaving only ashes in her mind. “That was a bad one,” Jacob said.

She was lying with the side of her face against his chest, warm, hard, reassuring. His voice rumbled in her ear. A perfect nightmare-killer.

“Yeah. Bad.” Her voice was weak still. She felt ashamed, but not enough to pull away. In the dark of the night, being held by him was delicious. Like there was a bulwark against the evils of the world.

For years after her parents died, she’d had nightmares, waking up in the dark, lips pressed together so she wouldn’t wake up Great-Aunt Frances, who didn’t like her sleep interrupted. Not by crying in the night, not by nightmares, not by her niece sick with a fever.

She’d learned the hard way to hide it all.

She didn’t feel she needed to hide it now. Jacob wasn’t showing any signs of exasperation with his sleep being cut short. She was lying fully on him. He had one strong arm around her back, one big hand on the back of her head. She rose and fell with his regular breathing.

He wasn’t talking, letting his body do his talking for him. He was here for her.

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