The Hunting (5 page)

‘That was so weird,’ Genie said. ‘You mean it? About hysterical stuff?’

Rian shrugged. ‘Made sense to me, but hell, it’s just a TV show. It’s a first anyway. Who knows what kinda weird stuff can happen to you guys now you’ve been teleported.’

‘Marshall says I should be making notes. Any changes and stuff. We’re like live guinea pigs. All kinds of things could happen to us, I guess.’

‘For sure. Every day I just look at you and think it’s a miracle you’re here and you’re OK.’

‘I’m only OK because you’re here, Rian. That’s the miracle.’

Rian held her again. They kissed and this time she didn’t pull away. He scooped her up and took her back to the sofa on the stoop and they stayed kissing.

Genie raised her head a moment. ‘Mouch, keep guard, all right?’

Mouch was hunting fish, or at least thought he was. It required all his canine attention. He tried to snap at them as they swam by then sneezed as his nose filled with water.

Rian was holding her close, stroking her short, spiky stubble.

Rian rubbed her head. ‘Your hair is growing. I’m kinda getting used to you being like this.’

Genie frowned. ‘Really?’

‘I never really knew how beautiful you are. Some people shave their head and it’s pretty scary, but you – you’re truly beautiful. I never knew I liked your ears before.’

‘My Spock ears?’ She laughed, embarrassed.

‘They’re cute. Makes you look at a person in a different way, don’t you think?’

Genie nodded. ‘I guess.’ She was thinking of Cary and Denis and the others. How scared they must be being back in the Fortress. Had they shaved their heads yet? Had they tried to teleport them again? Were they even alive?

‘I hate the fact that we’ve got no rights. I hate the fact that no one is interested in us. It makes me angry.’

‘Maybe it’s just too fantastic for people to handle?’ Rian suggested.

‘I mean, all those people in Spurlake who
know
what happened.’

Rian kissed her neck and began to work his way down. ‘Maybe they don’t. Maybe only a few actually know.’

Genie closed her eyes as his warm lips kissed her stomach. ‘You on their side now?’

‘No. I’m just saying it’s like cows. Every kid wants a hamburger, right? And they pretty much don’t ever think about cows, but if you took them to a slaughterhouse and saw the cow having its throat cut and the blood running out and then saw them cut up the cow with a bandsaw, I guarantee a lot of them would stop eating hamburgers.’

Genie frowned, stopping him from kissing her a moment.

‘So we’re hamburger?’

‘No, but we might be the cows, the invisible cows. My guess is a lot of people at the Fortress never see the cows. That’s all I’m saying.’

‘Deep stuff, Ri.’

Rian smiled, kissing her belly button. ‘I’m a geek, remember?’

Genie pulled him up and kissed the top of his head. ‘Hold me tight, Ri. I know what Renée is going through. I keep getting that feeling I’m about to disintegrate again.’

Rian held her tight, kissing her neck. She couldn’t believe that this was happening now, but it felt right.

Rian rolled up her T-shirt and she leaned forward so he could tug it off. She crushed her lips into his left ear.

Rian felt dizzy, he needed this so much.

Genie closed her eyes. She tensed as he kissed her again. She felt she was on fire. She wanted this moment to last for ever.

Moucher began barking about an hour later. He was standing out of sight somewhere on the other side of the island. Rian shouted for him to be quiet but he didn’t.

Rian pulled on his jeans and ran barefoot to where Moucher was barking. He grabbed his mouth and clamped it and told him to be quiet in no uncertain terms. He looked across the river. A breeze had come up, whipping whitecaps into a fine spray.

Two men with guns in a Zodiac inflatable were heading downstream. A train was rolling along on its tracks on the far side of the river, hauling a huge load, and maybe that’s why they hadn’t heard Moucher. Rian lay flat on the ground, with Mouch beside him, Mouch was scared a little as Rian held him tight.

‘You did good, Mouch, but you have to be quiet now,’ Rian told him, trying to calm the dog. Mouch relaxed a little.

Rian could see Genie staring from the edge of the house and he signalled for her to get out of sight. She quickly moved back.

Maybe these hunters hadn’t been looking for them, but could they take the chance? It was bad news they were ahead of them now, but then again, they wouldn’t be setting off until dark.

Rian watched the men go, one tall, one shorter and young – his son maybe – keeping well to the right of the river where the water was deeper.

He waited a few minutes, making sure they were well out of sight. He let Mouch go and the dog bounced around him, happy to be free, anxious to please.

Rian rubbed his head. ‘Go find Genie, OK? Go find Genie.’ Mouch ran off, pleased to have something to do.

When Rian got back Genie was dressed and squatting beside Renée in the raft. She looked back at him a moment to check he was all right.

‘You sure you’re feeling OK, Renée?’

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘Your legs? Your legs feel –’ she tried to find the right word ‘– solid?’

‘Solid?’ She laughed, frowning at Genie. ‘Sure they’re solid. You don’t like my legs? Why? What’s going on? Why do you guys look so worried?’

Genie looked up at Rian and shrugged. If she didn’t know, she sure as hell wasn’t going to remind her.

‘What you got there, Ri?’ Renée asked.

‘Spear.’

‘Spear?’

‘Going to catch us some supper.’

‘Are you now?’ Renée laughed.

‘And you’re going to make a fire and gather up some of the vegetables growing in the garden.’

Renée looked at Genie and shook her head. ‘I told you he’s a meat-and-two-veg kind of guy. So boring. Fusion, Ri, go fusion.’

Genie laughed and helped Renée out of the raft.

‘Girl,’ Renée declared, ‘we got to hit the powder room. Then we’ll cook this boy his victuals.’

‘Victuals?’ Genie smiled, that’s what her grandma had called her food. She’d forgotten about that.

‘I got no idea what victuals are, but they kept mentioning them in some Mark Twain book we had to read in school once. Stuck in my head.’

‘
Tom Sawyer
,’ Genie asserted. ‘I had to read it too. Never thought I’d get to live like pioneers though. You think we’ll ever go back to school?’

‘Might. Not around here though. Maybe Mexico. If we ever get there. You think we’ll ever get there?’

Genie took her hand and led her towards the bushes and the ‘powder room’. ‘Sure. We’re going to get that yacht, sail as far as we want and never look back. Ever. Cabo won’t know what’s hit it.’

Renée smiled, linking arms. ‘I so want to believe that. I really do.’

Rian shook his head and looked at Moucher. ‘Girls. Go figure. You going to help me fish, Mouch? Spear fish?’

Moucher didn’t quite know whom to go with, but he was hungry. He stayed with the fish.

S
trindberg wasn’t happy – and that meant no one was happy.

Reverend Schneider stood before him sweating slightly, the way he did when he wasn’t sure which way the wind was blowing.

Strindberg was sitting at his desk reading a report. He made Schneider stand and Schneider noticed that the office had been stripped of all the pictures of the Cascades the previous CEO had placed on the walls. The office was huge, but now just had the bare minimum of books and a bank of TV monitors on the wall, one for each floor for the Fortress most likely. Strindberg wasn’t the most trusting of men. One could be sure he’d be watching everyone all the time.

‘You did well for us, Reverend. Brought in some good “volunteers”. Set up a nice little entrapment. I hope to hell that you have dismantled that website and destroyed all traces by now. Legally you put us at a big disadvantage. If anyone could link your activities to Fortransco we could be in big trouble. You clear on this? Just because you got compliance signatures from them, it means squat. They were minors.’

‘No one was complaining. I was asked to find volunteers and suitable candidates—’ Reverend Schneider began, but Strindberg cut him off.

‘These were not orphans. No one misses little orphans. Now we have parents involved. Parents who now know their kids were “possibly” incarcerated by us – and that makes us liable. So far we got them running scared, but if they get smart, we will look bad.

‘As it is we just want our test subjects back. It’s tough explaining to them that the kids who they think are their Jack and Jills are legally ours, but that’s how it is. We own them and it represents billions of dollars of research. I don’t know what you were thinking, but I looked at your agreement and it specifically requested orphans.’

‘It wasn’t easy—’ Reverend Schneider said, but was again cut off.

‘No, not easy. Nothing about this enterprise is easy. That’s why I’m here, to make things work. The project needs professionalism, objectivity and focus. It’s been too lax about everything. Happy amateurs with too much of other people’s money.

‘As it is we’re going to have to compensate those Spurlake parents for the “rights” to use their kids – and we are in uncharted waters here, Reverend. How much for a dead kid? Or soul, as you try to spin it. Don’t worry, we’ll buy them off. After all, these kids ran away, things weren’t perfect at home, right? No matter what they say. It’ll cost us, but as long as we get them all back, at least we regain our larger investment.’

‘And me?’ Reverend Schneider asked. It had already cost him plenty to get the website closed down and to purge the links. Make sure nothing tracked back to him. It would be cached of course on a million servers but it was a dead link and at least it wouldn’t point towards the Fortress. Any investigations would end in a Crimean IP address, beyond reach.

‘You, Reverend? You got a nice little new church out of us, I understand. You got rich. Each soul extracted a pretty price from us.’

‘I—’

‘It’s over, Reverend. You’re out. I’m in. The legal department will have some documents for you to sign and if you even breathe the word “Fortress” or divulge any information that went on here, you will lose everything. You understand? Everything. And I guarantee you will be the next “soul” they test in the teleport chamber. You understand?’

Reverend Schneider blinked. He hadn’t quite expected this.

‘I want to know everything about Genie Magee,’ Strindberg said abruptly.

‘She’s possessed.’

Strindberg looked at him over his glasses and it wasn’t a kind look. ‘You can talk like that to your country hicks, but I want a straight, intelligible answer, Reverend. No Audrey Rose crap, OK?’

‘Genie Magee has a special talent,’ Reverend Schneider began again. ‘She can see through people.’

Strindberg smiled and pursed his lips.

‘I might hire her myself. See through people? What? Are we talking comic strip here? Alphas with special talents?’

Reverend Schneider took a deep breath. He didn’t like the sarcastic tone but felt he had to justify himself.

‘She has a demon in her soul. She has abilities.’

Strindberg frowned. ‘And we used her as a volunteer?’

Schneider decided to keep quiet about his role in her abduction. ‘She signed the waiver.’

‘I repeat, Reverend, she was a minor. It has no legal standing. What happened? You were there during transmission, I understand.’

‘Won’t your people tell you?’

‘I want to hear from you.’

‘There was a fire. They lost all her data and technically she should be dead. She didn’t even transmit for a microsecond. Nothing.’

‘But she isn’t dead.’

‘No.’

‘And she led a little song and dance against you in your church.’

Schneider looked momentarily embarrassed. ‘Yes.’

‘And now we are having to pay out a lot of money to lawyers and parents to keep this thing quiet. But she isn’t quiet; she’s getting ready to cause trouble. Any ideas on where this protégée of yours might be?’

Schneider shrugged. ‘All I know is that she stole a truck and ran off with her boyfriend.’

‘Now there’s a boyfriend?’

‘That’s where the trouble started.’

Strindberg made a note on the documents before him. ‘It usually does,’ he commented.

He looked up again at Schneider. ‘I want you to make finding that girl your mission, Reverend. If you want to keep your church – keep that nice fat life you’ve got making people miserable in Spurlake – you get out there and find her and bring her back alive. You understand? That’s your job now. Your only job.’

Schneider stood staring at him, expecting more.

Strindberg didn’t even look up. ‘You can go. And Reverend,’ he added, turning to his computer screen, ‘don’t even think of coming back without her.’

As Schneider left the room he realized that he was now sure of only one thing; Satan walked the earth and was running the Fortress.

Strindberg had no thoughts of Satan or any other character. He was observing the CCTV camera focused on the four kids in the observation quarters. He knew them as numbers but they were Cary, Julia, Randall and Denis. They were dressed in white T-shirts and shorts strapped to monitoring equipment, checking heart, lungs, blood and brainwave functions. A technician was doing tests on their nervous systems, sending extreme signals to each in turn, watching their reactions as they writhed in pain and screamed until she turned the signal off. She made notes as she performed each test.

These were just lab-rat test subjects now. As far as Strindberg was concerned they weren’t even human. These were just replicants. And like all lab rats, their feelings were not a matter for his concern.

He switched to another view. A recording of Genie Magee’s transmission, slowed to one second per frame. Something had happened that day that made her transmission different to all others. What was it they had missed? Why had it been successful and why didn’t they know that? This was why he was here. This was what he’d pledged the investors to find out. Possessed? What did Reverend Schneider say? She can see through people. A useful skill to have indeed. He watched her calm, rather beautiful face as she began to disintegrate. She didn’t even flinch. More than ever he wanted to meet this girl.