by Katie French
“Yeah, water’ll bring ’em,” I say, reachin’ for my own. It’s not cool, but it’s clean. I could drink a gallon of it. “Biggest water-pumpin’ windmill I ever saw.”
He beams with pride. “First… to find… it.”
I smirk. “You find somethin’ like that, you don’t give it up for nothin’. Not the way things are now.”
He nods, but he doesn’t speak. It’s clear talkin’ tires him out. He elbows the kid, who’s pushin’ his food around his plate with one finger. Mike whispers, and the kid looks at us. “Hank… will… tell.”
Hank tilts his head at the mention of his name and starts the story. “Mike and his brother stumbled on the windmill when their truck broke down.”
Mike nods between Cole and me. “Brothers,” he’s saying.
I pat Cole on the back to show I understand. Cole blinks up at me through his bangs, his mouth full of food.
Hank scowls. “His brother got very sick. Mike was desperate. He traveled to each town, searching for medicine.” The kid continues the story like he’s told it a thousand times, his eyes unfocused and his meal untouched. “Then Mike found the undergrounders.”
I furrow my brow. “The who?”
Hank curls his lip. “The undergrounders. People who live underground. They have technology, solar cars, everything. They found a military stash under a hill. And they’re all doctors.”
Doctors? There’s somethin’ I’m supposed to ’member about doctors. Cole stops chewin’, his eyes growin’ wide.
Hank continues. “Mike took his brother to the doctors asked them to help. He begged them. They refused for no other reason than they were too busy. Mike’s brother died.”
“Killed… my… brother,” Mike says, thumpin’ his chest.
I suck in a breath. “Bastards.”
A blush is burnin’ up Mike’s neck, and all the tendons tighten. He thumps a fist on the table, rattlin’ the cups. “You… come,” he says, his voice a rusty sawblade. “You help… kill.”
Chapter 15
Riley
I stare at the ahnk brand on Corra’s wrist, not quite believing.
These people work for the Breeders. I bolt for the door.
“Stop!” Corra calls, her chair slamming back into the wall as she stands. “Riley, wait!”
When I sprint to the back of the room, the heavy metal door is closed. I yank on the handle, but nothing happens. Whirling around, I say, “Stay away from me.” I need a weapon, something to fight with, but Corra and Dennis are approaching, hands out. The rest of the men just watch me like I’m crazy.
“Where’s Nessa?” I ask, shooting glances around.
Corra holds out a hand to calm me. “You know Nessa?”
My eyes dart around. “Is she here? Where is she?”
“She’s not here. We owe no allegiance to her.” She steps toward me like I’m a frightened animal.
“But you know her?” I ask, my hand still on the door’s handle. “You were at the hospital?”
Corra nods, her expression confused. “Were you?”
Damn, I’ve given too much away. I swallow hard and try to think.
Corra takes a step toward me. “Riley, what I was trying to tell you was we were with Nessa. We worked with her at the hospital. But we left. Her tactics, along with Dr. Bashees’, were… inhumane. There was a group of us working on projects we couldn’t stomach. So we escaped.”
I scan her face, looking for any hint of a lie, but find none. She seems sincere. In a way, her story makes me trust her more. Any enemy of my enemy is my friend, right? But if they’ve run away from Nessa, that means she might be looking for them. Being here is not safe for me and mine.
I straighten my shirt and walk back to my place at the table. Sitting down, I try to pretend like I didn’t just make a fool of myself. “Go on.”
Corra gives Dennis a look. He sighs, walks back to his seat, and sits. “We must assume that Dr. Beetle is dead. Another search team must be sent and soon if our research is to continue.”
“And it must continue,” Corra says, looking around the room. “What did we come out here for if not to stop Nessa and her experiments for good?”
The man with the paunchy belly beside me nods. “We didn’t risk everything just to fail, Corra. We’re with you. But what can we do? Subject Seven is too powerful. Beetle was the only one trained to subdue it, and we can all guess what happened to him.” He gestures toward the image on our screens, the smear of blood. “Who would we send now?”
Corra smiles like she’s been anticipating this question. She folds her hands and begins. “We’re scientists, great minds. We’ve been pampered far too long here in our compound.”
“But Riley hasn’t been.” She turns to me. “Riley’s been raised outside. She’s a fighter. You can see from looking at her that she’s equipped to take on this task.”
Heat begins to rise up my neck. “Now wait a minute.”
“You have to be kidding me,” Dennis says from across the table.
Corra shoots him a look. “Dennis, shut up. Riley, just listen. We can find your friends. Besides the Breeders and Nessa Vandewater, we’re the only ones who have satellite capabilities. In seconds, we can tell you where to find your loved ones. How long will it take to drive around and search from town to town, putting your group in the path of road gangs and Breeders’ patrols?” She pauses for effect. “How long before the people you’re looking for end up dead?”
I cringe at her words as they hit home. I need that satellite. I’d do anything to find Ethan and Clay.
Licking my lips, I look around the table at the faces staring back at me. They’re all trying to see what Corra sees. Hell, I’m not sure I see what Corra sees. I’m not a survivor. I’m just lucky. Half the time when the shit hit the fan it was Clay who pulled us out. And Clay’s gone.
“What would I have to do?”
Corra smiles and begins tapping the tabletop in front of her, directing it to do her bidding. “Subject Eight is a highly classified project stolen from the Breeders’ underground research labs. As you might know, Nessa has been conducting human experiments, subjecting people to horrible treatment with one goal in mind: creating a faster-maturing female. It sounds crazy, but in reality, before the fall of civilization, genetic science had been advancing in that area for years. Scientists created pigs and cows with faster gestation periods with great success. With some research into old archives, Nessa thought we could do the same with humans. And in many ways, it seemed like the answer to our prayers. Just think, mothers who could produce females faster. The population could increase, and humanity could start repairing itself. Many of us worked for years on that very project, creating an embryo that could gestate in only three months and grow to reproductive maturity in as little as three years.”
“How can that be possible?” I ask.
Corra leans forward, pursing her lips together. “I don’t want to bore you with all the science so I’ll just say this. Genetic engineering means rearranging our DNA, the building blocks of our body. It was a science long before our time. They did it with plants, and then with animals. By taking the traits from one animal and giving them to another, scientists created new species, made them stronger and more resistant to diseases. But ethically, people weren’t sure about using it on humans.”
“But when the governments fell, you all decided to do whatever the hell you felt like?” I ask, arching an eyebrow.
Corra’s smile is cautious. “What choice did we have? We used that science and began testing it on humans.”
“Plan B,” I mutter.
“Plan B indeed. But what she didn’t consider—what we didn’t consider—was this: just because a human body can mature that quickly doesn’t mean it should. The brain doesn’t mature at the same pace.”
The screen in front of me shifts to a video. A hunched form sits in a cell identical to the one I woke up in this morning. Brown matted hair covers her breasts and back, but it’s clear s
he’s an adult female, completely naked. As we watch, she prowls around the small space like a caged animal. Her gestures and body language suggest chimp or monkey, not human, although she looks completely normal. Then, on the screen, the heavy metal door opens.
A man wearing military gear like the men around this table enters the cell with a tray of food. The female backs up to the wall, submissively dropping her head but keeping her eyes on the food. Though there’s no sound, it’s seems like he’s speaking to her. She doesn’t appear to answer, just continues to stare at the food, staying at the far end of the cell.
He’s about to leave when she appears to say something. When he turns, surprise and delight is evident in his expression. He strides toward her, a smile on his face.
That’s when she strikes.
Her posture and expression change in an instant. The female pounces on the man, grabbing his shirt and groping for his eyes. As he flails, she makes quick work of his eyeballs, blinding him in seconds. Pushing him off, she bounds out the door as the man falls to the floor, his hands on his bleeding eye sockets.
“Oh my God,” I say into my hands.
Dennis snorts. “You think that’s bad?”
Corra swipes and the video disappears. “It is bad, Dennis. Just because you’ve already seen and dealt with it doesn’t make it any less horrible.” Corra turns to me. “Our friend and colleague, Dr. Handler, is permanently blind. Subject Seven wanted out. When she saw an opportunity, she used what she felt was appropriate force to free herself from captivity. She doesn’t see us as fellow humans. She sees us as threats.”
“We’re calling it ‘she’ now? What happened to referring to Subject Seven by less endearing pronouns?” Dennis asks.
Corra sighs, clearly frustrated, and continues. “Subject Seven is smart, but not quite human. Not in her mind. She’s more like an advanced primate species. She’s had no parenting—no collective upbringing to tell her certain actions are wrong or bad. She grew up in a cell with her only parent a twisted one.”
“Nessa.” She always did want children. If she couldn’t have Clay, she must’ve found a substitute.
“Nessa Vandewater is no more a mother to Subject Seven than that Nazi Josef Mengele was to the Jews he tortured. But she did create her subjects using her plan-B females. She’s their creator, not their mother.”
I think of my mother—of the fetus she carried in her belly after being a part of the plan-B experiments. That baby was a parasite, killing my mother from the inside out as it siphoned off her life. If it had lived, would it have been a monster like the one I saw on screen?
“Where is Subject Seven now?” I ask.
“She…” Corra pauses, looks at Dennis, and corrects herself. “It escaped after blinding Dr. Handler and killing another man. Before it went, it took something else we need. Something that could change the fate of our world.”
“What did it take?” I ask.
“Subject Eight.”
Chapter 16
Clay
When we finish our meal and chat, Mike and his entourage escort Cole and me to my shack. Hank sulks at the back of the pack of men. He seems pissed about the fact that Mike’s chosen not to splay our guts on the desert floor. After Mike leans down and whispers in his ear, Hank waves tiredly to the closed front door. “He says to rest. He’ll tell you more this evening when it’s cool.”
I walk up the steps, thankful for rest. Midafternoon has cooled the temperature to bake instead of broil. It still hotter’n hell’s shithouse, but with the throbbin’ headache I’ve picked up, I could use some R&R.
But when I open the door, a giant girl throws herself on me.
“Clay!” she shrieks, plasterin’ my neck with kisses.
I push her off. “What in the Sam Hill…”
She stumbles back, her cow eyes blinkin’. “You’ve forgotten again?”
Cole steps around me and rolls his eyes at her. “No, he remembers you’re not who you told him you are.”
She plugs her fists to her meaty hips. “What do you know, Ethan? You don’t know what’s goin’ on in his brain!”
What’s goin’ on in my brain is a throb fit to beat Jesus, but I center on somethin’ she said. “You called him Ethan.”
“He’s back to thinkin’ I’m Cole again,” the boy explains. He pats my arm kindly. “It’s okay, Clay. I don’t mind.”
“What?” I say, but I can barely stand. The headache blurs my vision, and the meal creeps up my throat. “I gotta lie down,” I say before crumplin’ to my knees in the doorway. Cole and the girl step back. Crawling through the doorway, I collapse on the floor. I hear them close the door behind me as I try to keep from pukin’. The pain is a hammer smashing into my cranium.
“Clay, you all right?” Cole whispers by my ear.
“Course he’s not all right. You started hollering, and he had to run out and save you. I saw it all from the hole in the boards. It’s your fault he’s like this,” the girl says.
“It’s not my fault. It’s Miss Nessa’s. And you’re not helping by tellin’ him lies, neither.”
“They aren’t lies!” she shrieks.
“Are too!” he retorts.
“Enough,” I say, grippin’ my head. “I can’t take it.”
They shut up, thank God. But the silence isn’t comforting, either. I wince and scrunch into a ball. No matter what I do, the pain finds me. Pain, pain, pain. Waves of it. Tsunamis.
Suddenly, the girl starts humming, her voice smooth and clear. The boy joins her, his voice a light alto. The lullaby’s melody is soothing. I let it carry me away.
I wake to the turn of a lock.
Stiff as hell and achin’, I sit up. It’s dark. The only light comes in from the cracks between the boards, ribbons of moonlight. If I didn’t know better, I’d think I had a hangover. Wish I did. At least I’d have enjoyed the whiskey the night before. I sit up and open my eyes. The boy and girl lie together curled up like a pair of pups. When the door opens, they scatter apart, frowning at each other. Lamplight spills into the room along with its carrier, Hank springin’ in like a leprechaun with his tail on fire.
“Get up, you pigs,” he whispers. “Get up, you idiot losers. You rotty, pimple-nosed shitheads.”
I stand slowly, towerin’ a good foot and a half above him. “You’re a master of words, ain’t ya?”
When he sees I ain’t mad, it makes him even angrier. “You don’t scare me, you giant fat-head. Your brain’s garbage. I heard them talking. You’re an idiot.” He sings the last word like a taunt.
I make a fist and stomp toward him. He flinches and skitters back to the door. I laugh. “Not scared?”
He makes some hand gesture at me that must mean somethin’ awful in his language, but I ignore it. “Where’s Mike?”
“You’re to meet him now if you can manage with your stupid brain.” He sneers, but he keeps one hand on the doorway as if he might need to bolt.
And he might ’cause I feel like wringin’ his scrawny neck. “Get out of our way.”
He sticks his tongue out like a toddler, but then turns, jumps the two steps, and sprawls into the dust, his gas lamp landin’ with a thud and sputterin’ out.
“Jesus, that kid is a bag of shit,” I say.
Beside me, Cole watches him sprint through the dust toward the men gathered near the windmill, standin’ in a circle of torchlight. “I wish he’d fall down a gorge.”
I tousle his hair. “That’d knock some sense into him at least.”
Cole looks up at me, admiration on his face. “I’d like to knock some into him myself.”
“Wouldn’t we all?” I sling my arm around his shoulder.
“What’re we talking about?” The girl appears behind us.
Cole turns on her. “Stay in the shed. It’s not safe.”
“If it isn’t safe, you should stay, too. You’re the one who almost died trying to oil a windmill.”
“Knock off the bickerin’,” I say. “She can come,�
� I tell Cole. “If they haven’t raped her yet, they ain’t gonna.”
“Comforting,” she mumbles.
“You can always stay in the shed,” I say. When I lead Cole down the steps, I hear Betsy behind us.
The night has cooled and the sky is scattered with a million stars. With a nearly full moon, the scrub and buttes are a muted gray in the distance. A bird caws. The goats, now out of their sun shelters, blink at me with big, round eyes. I guess even goats can learn to be nocturnal in the desert. One bleats as we pass, pokin’ his snout between the wooden fence. Cole runs a finger down its nose, partin’ the coarse fur.
“Nice.” He lingers, petting the animal. But when I look back over my shoulder, he scampers up to my side again. I put my hand on his shoulder.
“Ugh. Now you smell like that thing,” Betsy whispers.
Up ahead, the men have gathered around an object illuminated by gas lanterns and torches. When I walk up, I see some kind of schematic drawn on large paper. A few men fiddle with several pieces of pipe taped together, wires coilin’ out of the top like cartoon hair.
“Is that a bomb?” I ask.
Everyone turns. Mike looks up at me and then gestures to Hank for him to speak.
“This is what we wanted you to see. We’ve been working on a way to infiltrate the undergrounders’ bunker for years. We’ve found plans to build a bomb that can take out their main power supply. Without clean air, they’ll be forced up like gophers.” Hank’s smile is mean. “We need to get the bomb inside. That’s where you come in.”
“Me?” I ask.
Mike whispers in the kid’s ear, and then Hank speaks. “The ventilation system has a very small entryway. We need someone small.” He points at Cole.
“Nuh-uh. No way.” I push Cole behind me.
Mike frowns. Hank knits his dark brows together. “I told you they didn’t want to help us, Mike.”
My eyes dart between Mike and his men, at the finely sharpened knives tucked in pockets on Mike’s vest. I bet he’s good with those knives, and pretty soon, his men are gonna start callin’ for our heads. I hold my hands out in a calming fashion. “We wanna help—we do. But you know as well as anybody, Mike, I can’t let my brother take all the risk. He’s just a kid.”
