Evolution

by Teri Terry

  This not-thinking thing seems to be working well; I don’t want to mess it up.

  We somehow fit—her height close enough to mine—but not just that way…

  No, Kai, no thinking.

  Soon we’re heading back up the road again. She leans into me as the bike corners, and here in this moment, I can imagine I’m happy. There is the not thinking, the sunshine, the open road. The bike and the beautiful girl.

  Given enough time, maybe imagined happiness could start to feel like the real thing.

  CHAPTER 5

  FREJA

  WE SEE THE SMOKE IN THE DISTANCE before anything else. We stash the bike, go closer on foot to investigate. It drifts lazily on the breeze from a chimney in a farmhouse. It looks so ordinary, like we’ve stepped back into the world as it was before the epidemic. But we’re still in the quarantine zone, so it’s likely either survivors—though not being very careful to stay hidden if they are—or the immune, or army.

  I pull on Kai’s arm to draw him deeper into the trees. “Let me see if I can work out who is there,” I say in a low voice, and he nods.

  I reach.

  There’s a dog in a front room, dozing in front of the fireplace, too warm, too lazy to move. He finally stirs, and I watch through his eyes. There’s a man in a chair, a book in his hands; I can see a faint I for immune tattooed on his hand. He’s old, maybe seventy at least—white hair at his temples. The dog turns his head at a noise, jumps up, tail wagging, and goes through a door into a kitchen. There is a woman there, younger by perhaps thirty years. She’s taking something out of an AGA cooker that is making the dog drool even as she nudges him away: a roast chicken? They’ve got power—there is a microwave with a red blinking clock. She reaches into it to take something out and turns it off right away. I watch her until she takes off the oven mitts and I can see her hand: she’s immune too.

  I cast about the house, overgrown gardens, outbuildings. There are chickens, a few cows, and that is it. No other people.

  I withdraw, come back to myself. “There are two adults, both with immune tattoos, in the house—no one else,” I say. “They’ve got power; there might be a phone or internet?” Kai doesn’t say anything; he’s looking at me uneasily. “What?”

  “Your eyes. They changed.”

  “That’s what happens when you reach. Haven’t you seen that before with Shay?”

  The words are out before I can call them back, stop myself from saying her name.

  He hesitates, then shakes his head. “No. At least, never up close like that. I remember once Shay asked me if her eyes had changed, and I thought I saw something but wasn’t sure.”

  “What was it like? In my eyes?” I’m curious, because even though I’ve caught glimpses of this with other survivors’ eyes, I’ve never seen my own do that. When I reach out like that, I lose all sense of myself.

  “It’s hard to explain; the definition between the pupil and the iris is lost. Like, you know when someone focuses in close and their pupils get smaller? And then if they focus into the distance, they get bigger? It’s like that, but almost like it’s back and forth so fast all you see is a blur of the black of your pupils swirling in your eyes.”

  And now I’m looking into Kai’s normal eyes with mine—the ones that can be weird and do things eyes shouldn’t be able to do—and trying to imagine what it would feel like, to see something like that in someone close to you.

  “So, what do you think?” I say. “Is it totally awful?”

  Kai shakes his head. “Just something to get used to. It goes with the rest of you, like your stripy hair.” He grins and reaches and pulls my hair, and he’s kidding around now, but I know: it is weird for him. He’s uneasy, as much as he tries to pretend that he isn’t.

  I’m different. Other.

  And I always will be.

  CHAPTER 6

  KAI

  FREJA KNOCKS ON THE DOOR and then steps back, next to me.

  There’s barking inside, and then the sounds of locks clinking, and the door opens. It’s the old man Freja described as we walked here, and he’s holding a shotgun, and it is pointed at us. Behind him stands the woman, her hand holding the dog’s collar; despite the gun and growling dog, she looks scared.

  “What do you want?” the man says.

  I hold my hands out, show they are empty. “We don’t mean you any harm. We need some help.”

  “Help? Doesn’t everyone these days.” He lowers the gun a little. “What sort of help?”

  “Information. A telephone or the internet if possible.” The smell of food is coming out the door, and it’s all I can do not to drool.

  “And I expect you’re hungry.” He snorts.

  “A little,” I admit.

  “It may be that we need some help too—a different sort. Around the farm. Maybe we can make a deal?”

  * * *

  Hard labor is what they’re after. Maybe they’re taking advantage of our situation, but it feels good using my muscles until I’m exhausted, until I can’t think. There are so many things not to think about.

  Callie.

  Shay.

  Alex too, but the second he flits through my mind, I find more energy until finally the old man, Angus, comes out.

  “Haven’t you had enough, lad?”

  Angus and his daughter—Maureen—are both immune, as Freja had seen from their tattoos. They are all that is left of their friends and family.

  They chose to come back here, into the zone—to return to their farm. Home. They were discouraged, prevented really, from doing so at first. But the zones have broken down enough that after a while there was no one there to stop them.

  The news they told us at lunch was almost enough to take my appetite. The epidemic continued its relentless march while we were cut off from what was happening. Maybe not as fast as it once did. There’s a whisper inside that Shay had said Callie-who-wasn’t-Callie was the real carrier. So with her gone, it’s spreading the traditional way: person-to-person contact. It’s slower, so the progression has slowed down too.

  But Angus and Maureen had another theory. They said it’s due to the survivors are being rounded up, dealt with. Stopped from spreading death.

  I held Freja’s hand tight under the table.

  Our story, worked out on the way to their front door, was that Freja had been trapped far into the zone, that I’d gone to find her—that we’re both immune. That the reason she hasn’t gotten an immune tattoo is because she was in the center of the epidemic, where there is no authority. But this meant there was nothing either of us could say to defend survivors. Or else they’d be suspicious of Freja.

  Back inside, Freja droops against my shoulder.

  “Tired?”

  “Yes. I’ve been weeding. So many weeds!”

  Angus raises an eyebrow. “Kai is a better worker than you are.” He nods at me.

  “I’m not made for manual labor,” Freja says.

  “You did all right for one not used to it,” Maureen says, in a grudging tone. “Anyway, Dad has something he wants to say.”

  He clears his throat, pours everyone a glass of wine. The way he handles the bottle, I can tell: it’s precious.

  “Something to ask, more like,” he says.

  I exchange a glance with Freja.

  “Now hear me out before you say anything. I know you’ve got places you want to go, things to do. But the world out there isn’t the same. Why don’t you stay with us? I can’t manage the work anymore. And we’re sick of each other’s company.” He glances at his daughter.

  He asks us to think about it and not reply yet, and there is a part of me wondering about what he says. What if isolated places like this are soon all that is left in the UK? Or maybe even the world. Maybe there is nothing to be done beyond getting through it, surviving.

  Staying here wouldn’t
be so bad. With Freja.

  Working so hard I can’t think.

  “I’m sorry. We can’t do that,” Freja says. Her words are stiff. “And now that we’ve done as you’ve asked today, can we use the internet?”

  Angus exchanges a glance with his daughter. There is guilt on his face.

  “Well now. It does work, or at least it did the last time we tried. But…”

  “But what?”

  “The generator. We’re almost out of fuel. We can’t waste it on the computer.”

  CHAPTER 7

  FREJA

  “THEY TRICKED US!” I’m furious.

  “Not exactly. Well, maybe a little.”

  “You know they did.”

  It’s the next morning and we’re bouncing up the road in a dilapidated truck, empty cans in the back: ones we must fill with fuel for the farm before they’ll let us turn on their computer. And from the sounds of things, everywhere with fuel in a reasonable stretch of miles that was easy to find they’ve already found.

  “Let’s double back and pick up your bike. What if we can’t find any gas and run out?”

  Kai hesitates, then nods. He turns around at the junction, leaves me in the truck while he goes on foot to where we stashed the bike.

  “Let’s just leave now,” I say when he gets back. “Let’s go to Newcastle and look for your mum—not worry about trying to contact her first.”

  He shakes his head. “We haven’t got much fuel left in the bike either. We wouldn’t get far.”

  I help him heave the bike into the back with the empty cans.

  “So how about we drive as far as we can in the truck, then leave it and continue on the bike?”

  “What would they do to find fuel without their truck?”

  “They’re going to have to get used to not having any at some point if supplies aren’t being replenished. Why not sooner instead of later?”

  “That’s a bit cold. He’s an old man, Freja.”

  “I don’t trust him. There’s something in his aura—he just feels wrong.”

  “Is that because of what they said about survivors?”

  “No!” Then honesty makes me add: “Well, not entirely.”

  “It’s what they’ve been told—that survivors spread the epidemic. They don’t know any different.”

  “Well, they’re both immune anyway, aren’t they? So even if I were a carrier, why should they care? The only people around out here are immune—everyone else has left or died. It’s not just that, and you know it. They find the very idea of someone living and breathing and being that different from them abhorrent. And if they knew what I was, they’d feel the same about me.”

  “Maybe if they got to know you and then you told them you are a survivor, explained how they’ve got things wrong, they’d understand.”

  “And maybe Angus would get out his shotgun again.”

  Kai has nothing to say to that, and we continue on in silence. He didn’t have to say it out loud earlier; I could tell there was part of him that thought staying there with them on that farm wouldn’t be such a bad thing. He’d be tempted if he didn’t still need to try to find his sister and mum, and get revenge against Alex. And considering the state of the world and the options available, it’s kind of hard to argue: at least on a farm, chances are, we wouldn’t starve.

  But I could never, ever do it—not with how they’d feel about me if they found out what I am. And how long could I hide it?

  I glance at Kai as he drives. Sometimes he seems like the right fit, as if he were made just for me: the one—whatever that means. And sometimes I don’t know who he is.

  I sigh. No, that’s not it. It’s more that he doesn’t know who I am—that’s what is bothering me, isn’t it? Kai is constant, steady. You really do know where you are with him.

  It’s me who is the problem: different, other.

  Not quite human, like Kirkland-Smith said.

  Kai nudges my shoulder with his. “You okay?”

  “Sure. Fine.”

  “Could you get out the map Angus gave us? I can’t remember the next turn.”

  I unfold it. Angus has marked places in red that have been checked and have no fuel, villages where they’ve already been and siphoned what they could from abandoned cars. They’d debated the best place to try that was within the reach of this truck, and decided the only place we could get to before running out of fuel was an abandoned air force base. Not too far away—but far enough that we don’t have enough in the tank for a return trip if we don’t find any. Angus hadn’t tried it yet, not sure if there was anyone holed up in there. He said that it looked completely deserted, but that there were CCTV cameras that swiveled when you went up to it.

  “Are we definite that going to the RAF base is a good plan?” I say.

  “No, just the least bad idea. Are you sure you want to come with me?”

  Kai had suggested before that I could hide some distance away and wait for him, but there is something about letting him out of my sight—no. I can’t do it. Even though they’re not likely to be as crazy as SAR, anyone in the air force might still want to lock me up if they work out what I am, or if they realize I’m wanted for murder in London. And maybe Kai, as well, if they’ve linked my escape from London to him by now. And didn’t he say he broke out of jail a while back in Scotland too?

  I shake my head. “This is crazy, but if you’re going there, then so am I. If it isn’t deserted, I’ll be able to tell. Besides, have you got any other ideas?”

  “Apart from keep going until we run out of fuel? No.”

  I peer at the map. “Okay, it’s the next left.”

  After a while there are signs directing us to the base, and I put the map away. We’re driving through lush, green countryside. Farms and fields are overgrown, abandoned. With the people gone, it is a riot of rich life, left to grow as it will without any restraint.

  Just how I’d like to be.

  CHAPTER 8

  KAI

  “HOW DO I LOOK?” FREJA ASKS, and pirouettes, wearing a truly appalling sun hat. It’s wide-brimmed and covered in bright-pink flowers. Yesterday Maureen had insisted she wear it while working in the garden. Freja is too pale to handle the sun and so had a ready excuse for needing to take it along with us today.

  “Awesome, oh yes,” I say. “It suits you perfectly.”

  She punches me, hard, in the arm.

  “Ouch!” I rub my arm.

  I’ve got a more respectable baseball cap on, found near Angus’s back door when no one was looking. It’s not as big and floppy as Freja’s but should do the job if I’m careful not to turn toward the cameras. It would have been hard to explain just why we needed hats to hide from CCTV—assuming anyone is monitoring it, that is. We’re both wanted by the authorities, and somehow I get the sense this is the sort of thing it’d be best not to mention to Angus.

  Not that he thinks anything of getting us to steal fuel from any available source. I don’t imagine that dead people much care if you siphon their tank dry, but to be fair, an air force base might be different: the government isn’t always that willing to share, whether they need it themselves or not.

  “Okay, now let me do my thing and see if I can sense if anyone is around the place,” Freja says. This time she closes her eyes. Did she do that so I couldn’t see them go weird like the last time? I feel a twinge of guilt. It did bother me a little, and it’s hard to hide things from her.

  A few minutes pass, and then a few more. Just as I’m wondering what is taking so long, she opens her eyes and frowns. “I’m unsure what is going on. I thought at first that I might have sensed a few auras—or one at least, anyway—that could have meant one or more people were there. But when I looked closer, I couldn’t find anyone. Then I had a good check around the place using insects, a bird, even a mouse. I didn’t see any people. The gr
ass is overgrown, and the whole place looks deserted.”

  “Why do you say it could have meant people? What else could an aura be, apart from human?”

  “It could also have been a cat; sometimes I sense them like that—but I couldn’t find a cat anywhere. It might have run off, though. There is also one other possibility.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It could be a survivor, one who sensed me and is blocking so I can’t find them. Or someone like you, who isn’t a survivor but knows how to block—but that’s not very likely, since it isn’t easy to learn and they’d need a survivor to teach them.”

  “What do you think we should do?”

  “Check it out. From what I’ve sensed and seen, I don’t think there is any sort of military presence.”

  “You could be wrong.”

  “Yes.” She shrugs. “But it might have just been a cat. And if there is a survivor there, or someone taught by a survivor, even if they are military, I don’t think they’d be against us.”

  “Okay then.” I adjust the angle of my baseball cap to cover my face more. “Onward.”

  We walk up to the entrance; we left the truck parked down the road a little. There’s one of those bars that lifts up to allow cars through when someone in a guard booth pushes a button.

  “Don’t look up,” Freja says, “but Angus was right: there is a camera on the side of the building next to the fence that is swiveling to follow us. Someone must be in there watching.”

  “Unless it works automatically with motion sensors?”

  “Maybe.”

  “There doesn’t seem to be a bell to ring. Should we knock?”

  “It’s probably best to appear nonthreatening,” Freja says. “Or at least as nonthreatening as we can look with hats carefully shielding our faces from the cameras.”

  “Hello?” I call out. We wait a few moments; nothing happens. “Shall we?”