He still stars in my nightmares several times a week. He stood taller than my dad, and thinner, too. His light brown hair was cut short, and angry blue eyes stood out above a strong jaw. Freckles sprinkled his long, straight nose, but his cheeks were smooth. His mouth never stopped moving, and his perfect, huge teeth flashed as he spoke. He talked smoothly and clearly, as though he could talk his way out of anything. Even in my dreams, his voice makes my skin crawl.
“Wait,” Rhonda says. “Your dad was murdered and you saw it?”
I nod. It’s strangely satisfying to know Aunt Anne concealed the truth from more than just me. “He had light brown hair and blue eyes. He was taller than Dad, and thin. He wore nice clothes, like a blazer and a blue button down shirt, with shiny shoes. He had freckles on his nose.”
My uncle asks, “Was his name Jack?”
I stand up and pace from one end of the kitchen to the other. “I’ve been trying to remember. Dad yelled on the phone a lot, and I remember him yelling the name Jack, but I don’t recall what Jack looked like. Dad met his partner at their main lab several times, but it was always while I was at school.”
“So the freckle faced man could be Jack?” my aunt asks.
I close my eyes and go over that night again. “I guess, maybe, but the more I think about it, the less sense it makes. Dad seemed surprised when he saw the freckle nosed man through that little hole in the door. He bundled me off to the closet and told me not to come out, no matter what. I doubt he’d have been shocked to see his partner, or made me hide in the closet. He would’ve been angry possibly, but not surprised.”
My aunt exchanges a glance with Uncle Dan I can’t interpret.
“Regardless,” she says, “it was bad timing that the one man who could’ve stopped Tercera died shortly before it spread.”
“Bad timing?” My laughter’s about two octaves too high, but I can’t seem to stop myself. I force my mouth shut. “Dad created the virus that decimated the world. Weeks before it was released, someone killed him. You don’t think he had any culpability?”
My aunt draws herself up in her chair and squares her shoulders. “Your father was a good man. He did his utmost to keep the dangerous parts of his research safe. In fact, I’m positive his attempts to stymie this Jack caused his death, though I can’t prove it.”
I sit down hard on one of the wooden kitchen chairs, too numb to process any more. My dad was a giant among men, a genius, gifted, the perfect father, a devoted single parent. I’ve known all these things were true my whole life, but now I’m not so sure.
And apparently he wasn’t a single parent at all—not really. “What about my mom? You haven’t mentioned her yet.”
My aunt sighs. For the first time ever, my aunt looks old. She puts her head in her hands for a moment, and then she straightens up and meets my eye.
“I should’ve told you this part years ago. My only excuse is that the days blur and somehow, in a way I can’t explain, I woke up one day and you weren’t a baby anymore. Or maybe if I told you your mom was alive, and confessed that I lied about it, you might hate me for it. It’s always felt like you were my daughter, ever since we lost Don. Admitting you have another mother, well. It hurt me. I guess it doesn’t matter. I should’ve told you years ago and I didn’t.”
“Is my mom still alive?”
My aunt reaches across the table and puts her hand on mine, but I shake it off.
“She’s almost certainly dead now,” she says. “By our best estimates, Tercera wiped out more than 98 percent of the world in the first three years, closer to 99.9% in North America where it originated. But she wasn’t dead before that, no.”
“Why were Dad and I on the run? Why did Dad lie to me at all?”
My uncle clears his throat. “Your mother left your father. It happened a lot Before, people falling out of love. She didn’t want you when you were born, and your dad took you home from the hospital with her blessing, but your Mom and her new husband showed up a few months later and tried to take you away. Instead of fighting them in the courts, your dad decided to run from it. He couldn’t face the possibility of losing you.”
“That’s insane,” I say. “Why not just share me? I had a kid in my kindergarten class Before who lived with her mom most of the time, but then went to visit her dad sometimes too. I could’ve done that.”
My aunt reaches for my hand again, but catches herself and balls her hands into fists. “Your mom’s new husband wasn’t stable. Your dad didn’t think he was safe. The scariest part to Don was that the new husband had a lot of money and influence, and your dad worried that he’d lose you entirely.”
The room goes utterly silent for one moment. Then another.
Finally Rhonda asks, “Why didn’t you go after the cure, after you found out it existed?”
My uncle says, “We read the journals too late. Years ago Don had a huge job with a very prestigious company, Pfizer. They made all the best vaccinations. To protect Ruby from her mother and abhorrent stepfather, he gave it up. He bought a tiny cabin in the woods with most of his cash, and planned to do odd jobs for cash around the area. Harvesting, woodcutting, handyman type work.”
“Don was a terrible handyman.” Aunt Anne snorts. “He was bored, and it showed. It wasn’t a good enough life for him, or for you. You needed friends and social interaction. He found an investor to fund his work on an idea.”
“Jack.”
Aunt Anne nods. “He’d been talking for years about combining viruses to create one vaccination. Limit the exposure to these kids of all the toxins. Limit the incessant visits. One shot to stop it all. He kept the project quiet, but as it progressed he needed access to more sophisticated equipment. He gambled when he moved out to Galveston to be near UTMB, the University of Texas’ Galveston campus.”
“It seemed to pay off,” my uncle says. “He told us everything was progressing perfectly. We didn’t know anything about his investor, not even his name. He said the identity of his investor was confidential, and we didn’t press. When Don was murdered, we knew the identification documents your dad was using for you wouldn’t hold up. The authorities would discover who your mother was and contact her.”
My aunt stands up and starts to pace the same track I walked moments ago. “We flew to Galveston immediately. I left my hospital in the lurch, but I didn’t care. Your dad had given up everything to protect you. I wasn’t sure what to do, but I knew my brother didn’t want you to go to your mother. Besides, for all I knew, she was involved in his death. She’d been searching for you. I wanted to see what the police investigation turned up before I made any decisions I couldn’t unmake.”
“So you took me back into hiding?” I ask.
“I was grief stricken.” A tear rolls down my aunt’s cheek and she doesn’t bother to brush it away. “My only sibling, who was also my best friend, died. I needed time. We all did. I needed to identify the best course of action for all of us.”
My aunt, the doctor, took me and ran, just like my dad. I actually felt sorry for my mom.
My uncle’s voice is softer than I’ve ever heard it, almost gentle compared to his usual barked commands. “It might have been an imprudent decision. It might even have been rash. But running to your dad’s cabin in the woods in Nebraska saved our lives. All of us. It’s the only reason we didn’t contract Tercera. So while you’re tallying up your father’s crimes, remember that his running away with you, and his murder, and the weeks we spent grieving in Nebraska while we tried to decide what to do, are the only things that kept you alive, kept this family alive.”
“How did we not come in contact with anyone?” Job asks. “I thought basically everyone had Tercera within a few weeks.”
My aunt nods. “They did. When we ran, we ordered enough food for a few weeks. The cabin was already well stocked with long term supplies from when you lived there before, Ruby.”
My uncle says, “Anne hated shopping, because the only decent store was over an hour drive. We�
��d been there about two weeks when we decided to replenish our supplies. That was about the time we started hearing reports of a strange rash. WPN started broadcasts before the news even picked up the story, but not many people gave credence to its claims that the strange rash on everyone’s forehead was a Mark of impending doom. Still, we worried. Life went on, but we thought, like others, that prudence was appropriate. After all, we were free of this Mark, whatever it might portend, and very few people were.”
“We emptied out our retirement funds and used them to order more food. Large quantities.” My aunt reaches for Rhonda.
Rhonda pulls away, too. I’m not the only one who’s upset.
I’m tired of them delaying the answer. “When did you read my dad’s journals?”
My aunt shakes her head. “Not for a long time. We didn’t even know we had your dad’s journals right after he died. The day we ran, we contacted his assistant. She hadn’t been paid in a month. We offered to pay her, if she’d send us all his things. We couldn’t risk being seen if the police showed up.”
I close my eyes and think of Aunt Anne and Uncle Dan acting like criminals, sneaking around and having other people sneak for them.
Aunt Anne continues. “Within a few weeks of the news picking up the story, Pfizer scientists determined that the Mark was the first symptom of a viral illness that would worsen with time, sort of like HIV progresses into AIDS. By that point, almost everyone alive was already Marked, and there were plenty of people willing to cater to the paranoid, as long as enough money was involved. Very few people credited WPN’s ranting about a plague, but Pfizer’s analysis had everyone nervous. John Roth joined us immediately. He and his son had been on a hiking trip, and when they returned, everyone was talking about it. He called me right away.”
“And you just took them in?” I ask.
Uncle Dan nods. “He’s my oldest friend. He brought his son Sam up to Nebraska the first week after the Mark appeared. He was more nervous than most, since his dad died from some bizarre illness after traveling to Africa twenty years before.”
I remember Sam coming to stay with us. We hadn’t been in Nebraska very long, a few weeks, maybe a month. He seemed so much older than me then. I was six, and he was nine. “I remember, but what about—”
“We had a little money, but John Roth had a lot. Without him joining us, we might have starved,” my uncle says. “But we made it that first year without being exposed. Once the sores started showing up in year two, the whole world went crazy. We kept people away any way we could. You were all so young, I don’t know what you remember, but we tried to make sure you stayed inside as much as possible, and even outside, the cabin was fairly isolated. Ruby, you were only seven then. Rhonda, you and Job were nine.”
Aunt Anne stops pacing and reaches for Uncle Dan’s hand. She squeezes it tightly, like thinking about all this hurts. Maybe it does. “WPN predicted the sores would worsen and death would follow. People were listening by then, since they’d been right about the virus progressing. They insisted it would carry a one hundred percent mortality rate. People were terrified. Mobs formed, riots spread. By that point, almost every human on Earth was Marked and most of them were dealing with weeping sores. WPN’s followers weren’t. They had holed up in their compounds from the beginning, casting out anyone who got infected, but everyone else who wasn’t Marked was like us. Some combination of paranoid and lucky. Lucky enough to have a bug-out spot. Paranoid enough to have been cautious once the Mark appeared.”
“WPN told the government they had a cure,” Job says. “I remember this part. They said it had to be taken within a month of the first sores appearing. It was all over the radio programs. There were debates over whether to believe WPN, whether to take their deal and get the cure, or keep trying to find one ourselves.”
“WPN had terms,” my aunt says. “They argued with the government for over two weeks, but in the end there were only three days left for most government officials, including the President, to take it before they were outside of the window of efficacy. WPN demanded control of communications. They demanded weapons, food, and access to energy plants, tools, and resources. Their list went on and on. They claimed they needed it all to administer the cure effectively.”
“It wasn’t a cure,” Job says. “I remember that, too.”
“Right.” My uncle stares at the wall, his eyes glassy. “WPN somehow discovered a way to accelerate the progression of the virus. They fooled everyone so they could wipe out the only group that could’ve broken into their compound. As far as we knew at the time, there wasn’t a cure.”
I look sharply his way.
My aunt notices. “Even with your dad’s work there’s no guarantee, sweetheart. It seems very likely your dad created the Tercera virus that was released, but we don’t know for sure whether he completed his solution, or how the virus might have changed since its release. Even if a cure worked then, it might not work anymore.”
I raise one eyebrow. “When did you find out? I keep asking, and you keep talking about timelines.”
My uncle says, “The police conducted an investigation after your dad died that turned up no answers. It did, however, turn up the fact that he was on the run, and he wasn’t who he said he was. We only have the journals because his office manager snuck them out before the police cordoned the lab off. She shipped everything she could sneak out to the cabin, and it all got stacked in the garage, and then later, they got buried under the tons of supplies we bought.”
“When did you read them?” I ask.
My aunt looks at me for a moment, searching my eyes for something before she speaks. “We moved here, to Mississippi, a little more than three years after the Marking began, roughly two years after the acceleration of the government, and a year after the bulk of humanity died. Most people who had survived were starving at that point, and there was no one left to produce and prepare food, or to care for the sick except for pre-pubescent children. Everyone over the age of twelve or thirteen was sick. A lot of people committed suicide. All that was left were roaming bands of Marked kids, more desperate than ever, and slowly starving. There weren’t as many as before so it seemed safer to travel.”
She closes her eyes, massages her temples and reopens them. “We’d heard rumors that a society was forming. A society of unmarked people like us were banding together. Instead of raiding decimated towns and braving trips out to empty houses looking for undiscovered food caches, these people supposedly grew their own food, defended themselves and most of all, had a sustainable plan, which we needed. We were running out of everything fast.”
“We calculated we had less than a month of supplies left when we left,” Uncle Dan says.
“Which meant the garage wasn’t so full?” Job asks.
Aunt Anne nods. “Bingo. We sifted through our belongings to decide what was important enough to bring and what we would leave behind. We found the box of things from your dad’s office manager from three years before. The journals were in there, along with a briefcase and some files. When I realized what they were, I read them all. It had occurred to me before that if anyone might have leads on how to deal with a super virus, it would be your dad, but he was dead. I didn’t realize I had his research in my possession. By the time I read through to the end, it was already too late.”
Rhonda hasn’t moved or spoken a word, but she looks up then. “Too late for what, Mom? What about all the children?”
The children died by the billions, most of them starving when their parents died. Some of them starved slowly over a period of years.
“Most of them had already starved, Rhonda. We were thinking about our children. You, Job and Ruby.” My aunt puts her hand on my head and I don’t shy away this time. “We couldn’t risk pursuing it. The journals don’t have any specifics about the virus or your dad’s solution. They contain no coding or information on where he started in his research. There’s not enough for me to work from. The mentions in it of the viral delay being
linked to GnRH allowed me to develop the first hormone suppressant. I led the Unmarked initiative to make and distribute it.”
“It’s not enough,” I say. “You could’ve done more. You should’ve done more.”
Uncle Dan slams his hand on the table. “Stop. Your aunt’s not telling you the biggest reason we didn’t take action. You know where your dad’s lab was, Ruby. That’s why we couldn’t pursue it.”
“Galveston, Texas,” I say. “WPN’s home base. Their main compound.”
“The most heavily armed area in North America.” My uncle leans back. “Even if your dad’s lab hadn’t been controlled by WPN, there are hundreds of miles of countryside between here and there, most of it teeming with Marked kids, who we very much pitied, but we couldn’t risk traversing it with you three.”
“We did ask you about it.” My aunt turns toward me. “You may not remember it, but we asked if you knew anything about your dad’s work, or where he would’ve stored important things. You said you didn’t know where he’d put secret stuff. Anything you knew at the time, back when your dad wrote this, you’d forgotten by the time we asked. We don’t know what he meant, but it was such a long stretch to think that we could’ve reached the lab, much less found anything once we arrived.”
I remember lying to them about it, because I lied about anything to do with Dad’s death.
Rhonda stands. “Why didn’t you tell the Unmarked when you arrived? Surely they’d have sent a team. WPN may be full of lunatics and zealots, but even WPN must want a cure for Tercera.”
“We didn’t tell the leadership with the Unmarked because of a line in the journal,” my aunt says. “It implies that only Ruby can reach the cure. We didn’t want the Unmarked to take our child. We kept the secret to protect her.”
Marked (Sins of Our Ancestors Book 1) Page 7
