23
Despite the sounds of rending flesh and breaking bones lasting a full hour, the night passed without incident. At 4:00 am, Peter had finally relinquished his post to Ella and had joined the kids in the basement kitchen.
Jakob had heard his father come in, and having a good sense of time, even in the middle of the night, he had known it was late. So as he crouched over his father now, he felt bad about having to wake him up. But it was 6:30. The sun was officially up and would continue its daylong arc across the sky, with or without Peter. Ella’s words.
She had already organized and inventoried the supplies, packed the truck and reloaded weapons. All that was left for their journey to continue was for Jakob to rouse his father...after just two and half hours of sleep.
Sorry, Dad
, he thought, and then he placed his hand on his father’s shoulder. “Dad...”
Without flinching or opening his eyes, Peter said. “Three feet back.”
“W-what?”
Peter opened his eyes. “Next time you wake me up, do it from three feet back. And don’t touch me.”
The tone in his father’s voice disturbed him. Deep, gravelly and tired, the man lying on the linoleum floor didn’t sound much like his father. Covered in dirt, he didn’t really look like him either.
“Why?”
Peter rolled from his side to his back, revealing a knife in his hand. Then he pushed himself up. The handgun was under his arm. He lifted the knife and slowly traced a line through the air, stopping short of Jakob’s neck. The message was clear:
I couldn’t slit your throat if you were three feet back.
“You think you might become one of them? An ExoGen?”
Peter shook his head. “Old reflexes are coming back. If you spend enough time in enemy territory, you’ll develop them, too. It’s just a precaution. Had I been in the middle of nightmare...”
“I get it,” Jakob said, and he did. He’d woken from enough nightmares about his mother, kicking and punching, to know anyone around him might have received a fat lip. “But what about the gun?”
Peter sat up and slid the weapon into its holster. “Takes more than a knee-jerk reaction to lift a gun, aim and pull the trigger. Not much more. And I’ve been trained to never fire a weapon without confirming my target first.”
“So I shouldn’t sleep with a gun?”
Peter grinned. “You’d probably shoot yourself in your sleep.” Jakob took his father’s hand and helped him off the floor. He knew his father didn’t really need help, but the contact reaffirmed their relationship. Despite the horrors of the past two days, and the horrible lesson his father just gave him, they were still a team.
“Same rule applies to Ella and Anne,” Peter said. “They’ve both been out here for some time. Give them a wide berth when they’re sleeping.”
Jakob’s mind drifted to the previous night. After Peter had returned to the kitchen and fallen asleep, Anne had snuggled up beside Jakob, looped her arm in his and fallen back asleep. There was nothing weird about it. Nothing romantic. The contact provided comfort, for them both, but apparently even comfort could be deadly now. “Good to know.”
Peter looked around the empty kitchen. “Where are they?”
“Ella sent me to get you. She’s packed the truck. Organized it, too.”
Peter chuckled as he sheathed his knife. “Sounds like Ella.”
Jakob’s stomach twisted.
He’d been waiting to ask his father about her, and he might not get another chance for a while. He wasn’t sure he really wanted to know the truth about her. The subject shook the foundations of his reality, which was already on shaky ground. Want or not, he needed to know. So, he said, “Tell me about Ella. Who is she to you? Why do you trust her?”
The discomfort washing over his father’s face looked more intense than when they were fleeing from the Stalkers. He walked in a tight circle, rubbing his hands over his head, and then his face.
Before Peter could reply, Jakob added, “And don’t sugar-coat it. You’ve probably been trained to lie, and I probably wouldn’t see through it, but I’m old enough to handle the truth, and I think you owe it to me.”
Peter stopped walking in circles, leaned against the dusty counter and said, “Ella is my oldest friend.”
“
No lies,
” Jakob said.
Peter held up his hands, a placating gesture. “That’s the truth. I’ve known her for most of my life. Since I was nine. Until High School, we were inseparable.”
His father paused, so Jakob filled the gap, determined to keep the narrative moving. It wouldn’t be long before Ella or Anne came down to find out what was taking so long. “And during high school?”
“Puberty,” Peter said. “You remember that. What happened next was probably inevitable. She...was my life. And then, we drifted. College took us apart. But we came back together, somehow ending up in the same place, again and again.”
“Including after you were married.”
Peter’s eyes locked on the floor. The nod was nearly impossible to see, but the shame his father felt was palpable.
“That’s why Mom hated her.”
“Yes.” Peter blinked his eyes and turned away from Jakob. “I think she knew that even though I loved her, and chose her—and you—that I could never really stop loving Ella. Even if I loved your mom. Even if Ella loved someone else. She’s...a part of me. A part of my soul, I guess, if you want total honesty.”
“Sounds a little fruity for a Marine, if you ask me,” Jakob said.
Peter laughed and wiped his eyes before turning back around. “We still good?”
“I already figured most of this,” Jakob said. “But I wanted to hear it from you. Wanted to really understand who they were to you.”
Jakob was surprised to see his father sag, as though air had just been let out of a balloon man. “There’s more.”
Unable to imagine what more there could be, Jakob just waited.
“Anne,” his father said. “She might be your sister. Half-sister.”
The swirling caldron of emotions that struck Jakob stumbled him back. He leaned against the wall, beside the door, then slid down to his butt. Sister...
A sister! Holy shit.
As confusion gave way to understanding and excitement about the idea, Peter’s wording struck him. “What do you mean, ‘might?’”
“Right now, all we have is Ella’s word that she’s mine.”
“Does the timing fit?” Jakob asked. “Were you...with her twelve years ago? Is that when it happened?”
Peter nodded and said, “That doesn’t make it real.”
“But you trust her, right?”
“I want to,” Peter said.
“But...?”
“It’s not easy to trust someone after they helped kill the planet, intentionally or not.”
“Right,” Jakob said. “That.”
“That.”
“Does Anne know?”
“I don’t think so,” Peter said. “And it’s probably her mother’s place to tell her, not ours.”
“She looks a little like you,” Jakob said. He realized he’d already gone from skeptical to accepting and hopeful. A sister meant his family had grown, and he’d given up believing things like that were possible.
“I saw that, too,” Peter said, “but in case you haven’t noticed, Ella and I look a lot alike, too. Dark hair. Dark eyes. When we were kids, people thought we were siblings. Some thought we were twins. Anne looks more like Ella than anything. Like how I remember Ella as a kid.”
Jakob hadn’t realized how alike Ella and his father looked. But now that he mentioned it... “I guess I see it. So how will you decide? It’s not like you can take a DNA test.”
“When I decide I can trust Ella again. Fully trust her, I mean.” Peter helped Jakob to his feet, once again reestablishing the bond of father and son. “Until then, there’s no reason to not accept them. Life outside the house is hard. Dangerous. But I think their presence in our lives is a blessing. A possible future.”
“A family,” Jakob said.
“We’ll see,” Peter said, and stepped into the doorway. “But best to not get your hopes up. This is a harsh world. You told me not to lie to you, so I’m not going to. Not ever. The odds of all four of us reaching Boston alive are... Well, they’re not good.”
Jakob had already come to the same conclusion, and expected himself to be the first to fall, but now that he might have a sister... The temptation to hope for a new, safer life, was significant. “Okay, C3PO. Thanks for the pick-me-up. Maybe don’t tell me the odds.”
“If that’s what you want, Captain Solo.” Peter led them out of the kitchen, arm around his son. They walked up the stairs, side by side, heading for the front door. “By the way, nice shooting yesterday. You’d have made a good Marine.”
Peter pushed through the door, squinting in the morning sun. But he stopped short of exiting, saying, “What the hell?”
24
Peter stared at the field separating the church’s front door from the road. What looked like a pixelated section of the cabbage crop—exactly where the Echo and its remains had lain, was missing. In its place was barren soil, which would hold new cabbage plants inside a month, if not sooner. But for now, it was a geometric scar of the previous day’s violence.
His hand went for his gun, but he didn’t draw it. Ella and Anne waited by the armored pickup, looking alert, but relaxed. Peter crept over the cabbage, the leafy green balls crunching under his feet. When he got close enough to the truck that he didn’t need to shout, he asked, “Did you do this?”
“Found it like this,” Ella said. She leaned against the truck bed, one leg propped up on the wheel behind her, arms crossed. Closer now, Peter could see the tension in her eyes. “There isn’t a single drop of blood left. Every plant that was soiled has been removed and taken away. No sign of what did it. No prints. No scat. I’ve never seen this kind of behavior before.”
Peter stepped onto the dirt. The softness of it underfoot felt foreign, but familiar. A taste of his old life. When he had been a farmer, working the fields. When he had been an active duty CSO, deployed in one part of the world or another. The land underfoot was always dirt. Always soft. Since crops had covered the world, there wasn’t much barren soil left. The clearings were either pavement or concrete.
He walked to the center of the dirt patch and crouched. He put his hand into the soil and lifted it up. The earth was cool, damp and dark, like rich chocolate cake. He smelled it and realized it smelled exactly like he did. Like they all did since rubbing themselves in dirt. He worked his thumb through the soil, separating clumps. When he saw wriggling pink, he flinched.
A worm.
I haven’t seen a worm since... But is it even still a worm?
He separated the small creature from the soil and held it in his open palm. Its body pulsed, sliding across his skin, leaving a thin trail of slick goo behind.
Just a worm.
“The soil’s not contaminated yet,” he said.
“And it won’t be.” Ella pushed off the truck. “The DNA breaks down with the rest of the plant as it decays. By the time it reaches the worms, there’s nothing left but nutrients.”
That the land was still able to be worked gave Peter a small measure of hope. The damage could be undone...if they could get rid of the ExoGenetic plants. But that wasn’t even the plan, was it?
Why change the world back, when the human race could adapt? When we could eat the unlimited GMO crops without becoming monsters?
Peter dropped the soil and looked over the clearing. “You’re right about the prints; there aren’t any. But there
are
tracks.” He pointed to the nearly invisible crisscrossing lines covering the soil, the kind made when a branch is dragged over the earth to erase footprints. “The question isn’t what did this—it’s
who
.”
“We know,” Ella said, opening the door to the truck and climbing in behind the steering wheel. “Why don’t you tell him about it, Anne?”
Anne bounded up in front of Peter, bouncing from foot to foot. The action seemed playful in a way Peter hadn’t seen since the Change. She switched from bouncing to running in place and waving her arms around.
“What are you doing?” Jakob asked, trying not to laugh, but failing.
“Looking natural,” Anne said. “So they won’t know we’re talking.”
Peter was instantly on guard, his eyes scouring the area for signs of company, but any signs of his vigilance were hidden by a phony laugh. He clapped, as though cheering her on.
Jakob just stood there, stunned by the behavior.
“Why don’t you go in the truck,” Peter said to his son, just a flicker of seriousness in his eyes. Jakob suddenly grasped the secret messages being passed back and forth, and added his own horribly fake laugh to the mix, waving his arms at the pair like they were ridiculous and walking, stiff-legged, to the truck.
“Don’t reply,” Anne said, her voice jolting as she continued to bounce. “They might see you. And don’t look straight when I—”
Peter lowered his head, hiding his mouth from any would-be lip readers watching them. “I was doing things like this before you were born.”
“Right.” Anne stopped moving, raised her hands and made a show of touching her toes. When she came back up, she said, “My five o’clock.” Toe touch and back up. “Two miles out, not far from the horizon.”
Peter raised his hands, laughing. “Okay, okay. I get it. You can stop now.” His arms came up in a stretch, bending behind his head. As he slowly extended his arms, he rolled his head, snapping his eyes to five o’clock for a moment. In that brief observation, he saw a faint flicker of light, the tell tale sign of an amateur watching through a spy glass, oblivious to the sun’s reflection. He finished the faux stretch with a real yawn and said, “Let’s get this show on the road.”
With the casualness of a family continuing a cross-country vacation, Peter and Anne headed back to the truck and climbed inside. Peter had never sat in the passenger’s seat of his truck, and he was momentarily uncomfortable, but a second glance at the reflection across the barren field made him forget about riding shotgun. He put on his seatbelt and turned to Ella, who started the engine.
“Part of me wants to drive across the field and run them down,” Ella said.
“Why shouldn’t we?” Jakob asked.
“For starters,” Peter said, “our intel is limited. Non-existent. All we really know is that something intelligent, mostly likely human—” He glanced at Ella and saw her nodding, “—was here last night. We don’t know how many there are. What they have for weapons. Or what their intentions are. All we really know is that they know we’re here. That reflection out in the field could be a trap. Or a distraction. The variables are endless, and few of them are good. So our best course of action is to—”
“Get the hell out,” Anne said.
“And hope they don’t have a way to follow us,” Peter added.
Ella put the truck in gear and performed a fast three-point turn. Within a minute, they were back on the highway. Peter kept watch, but he saw no signs of pursuit.
“I’ve got two pieces of bad news,” Ella said, dashing Peter’s hopes that they’d managed to escape. “First...” she pointed ahead.
Cars filled the road in the distance. The remnants of a pile-up that had happened when civilization had gone to hell. Cars, trucks and eighteen-wheelers filled both sides of the freeway, the shoulder and the woods beyond, forming an impenetrable wall of twisted metal.
“Second,” Ella said. “We’re low on gas.”
Peter leaned over, looking at the gas gauge, which was hovering over ‘E.’ He could have sworn they’d had at least a quarter of a tank the previous night.
“But there’s a silver lining,” Ella said, pointing again, this time to a green exit sign just before the accident. As they approached, a blue rectangle mounted below the exit sign showed a gas pump icon and an arrow pointing to the right.
“Could be a trap,” Jakob said from the back.
“Probably,” Anne said.
“Before the debate begins,” Ella said, steering toward the approaching exit, “I would rather fight an army of people before giving up this tank of a truck and once again facing the prospect of crossing the country on foot. As long as we have wheels, our chances of surviving go way up. So if they want a fight, I suggest we give it to them. Otherwise, it’s going to be a long walk.”
No one said a word as she steered the truck off the highway and onto the off-ramp. She slowed to ten miles per hour, inching up to the intersection, stopping completely when the first signs of the gas station came into view. The tall sign was just visible over the tree line.
Peter turned to Jakob. “You up to handling the machine gun again?”
“Uh,” Jakob said. “And shooting it at people?”
“If there are people that want to shoot us, yes.”
Jakob thought on it for a moment, but gave a nod. “I’ll do what I have to.”
“Hop in the back. Stay down. Under the tarp. Out of sight. If things go south, I want a repeat of last night. Just remember to pick your targets and conserve your ammo.”
“Right,” Jakob said, “No pray and spray.” The boy was trying to sound confident, but he hadn’t fully hidden the quiver in his voice. Regardless of his fear, Jakob opened the back door, slid out and climbed into the truck bed.
Peter turned to Anne. “Get between the seats and stay there until we’re away, okay?”
She nodded and climbed down.
“We can’t just pull in there like it’s a normal gas station,” Ella said, gripping the wheel hard enough to drain the blood from her fingers. “We’ll be wide open for attack.”
“That’s why we’re not going to. You are.”
Ella’s eyes opened wide. “And you’ll be?”
“In the trees,” Peter said. “If there’s trouble, I’ll handle it and meet you at the pumps. If you hear me shooting before you get there, turn around.”
“And leave you?”
“If you have to, yes.”
“I don’t—
“You’ve got precious cargo,” Peter said. “You
will.
” He opened his door slowly and slid out onto the pavement. “Give me ten minutes to check things out, and then come in slow.” He took a step back, but Ella stopped him with a word.
“Peter.” She reached out her hand.
He leaned back in, took her fingers in his and squeezed. The stare between them said enough.
Peter withdrew his hand from hers. “I know.” Then he closed the door and ran into the woods lining the off-ramp, armed with a pistol, a knife and the desire to show whoever it was that was messing with them, that there were still more dangerous predators in the world than the ExoGens.