“We’re the only people on this island,” Richard said. “It had to be someone around this table. And whoever it is is wasting food supplies, not to mention showing a propensity for cruelty that I’m not sure I want sharing a home with my wife and children.”
“And you accuse us?”
“Rhett’s right,” Kathryn said. “You do test your drugs on animals. Hurting animals doesn’t seem to bother you.”
“There’s a hell of a difference between a clinical test and straight-up torture!”
“I notice you haven’t answered the question, though.”
“Because the question is ridiculous!” Charles said. “You’ve been treating us this way for months, as if we’re unwelcome guests in your space, as if we’re failing to live up to some standard of behavior you’re used to, and frankly, I’m sick of it!”
“You’re sick of it?” Kathryn spat. “You’re more than welcome to leave, then!”
“You know perfectly well that we can’t!”
Adam got to his feet and edged out the door and into the hall. The shouting continued. A moment later, he was joined by Ella.
“Well,” she said, “that was different.”
“I thought they were too refined to yell at each other,” Adam said.
“They were. They are,” Ella said. “I’ve never seen them blow up like that.”
The outburst had made Adam feel uneasy, as had the description of the tortured animal.
“Who do you think really did it?” he asked.
“Tortured the deer?” She shrugged. “No idea. Whoever it was is a real sicko, though. There are plenty of opportunities for hunting here, if you’ve got a yen to kill something. Whatever impulse was behind that was something entirely different.”
“Something twisted.”
“Yeah.” She shuddered.
“What are you doing with these people?” Adam asked her.
“You know what. I told you. I work for the Birkins. I’m their housekeeper.”
“But you told me you were going to quit.”
“And I told you why I didn’t. They gave me a chance to get away. They asked me to come with them to this island. I couldn’t say no to safety.” She shook her head. “Although I might have if I’d realized how bad they could get.”
“What did they do that made you want to quit?”
“They were supposed to help me apply to colleges,” Ella said. “I mean, I thought they were helping. They’ve got all kinds of great connections. I never had the money to go to school, but with their support I thought I might be able to get an education and really make something of myself.”
“So what happened?” Adam asked.
“Kathryn,” Ella said bitterly. It was the first time he’d heard her refer to the woman by her first name. “She tampered with my applications. Removed my high school transcript before posting them. When schools started contacting me and letting me know they hadn’t received it, she pretended she had accidentally lost it, but I knew better. That woman’s the most organized person I’ve ever met. She didn’t lose it. She took it out.”
“She sabotaged you?”
“Right,” Ella said. “If it hadn’t been literally a matter of life and death, I’d have left them a long time ago. But I’d rather be alive with the Birkins than dead of the virus.”
“You could leave now,” Adam pointed out. “If we’re right about the EMP, the virus is dead.”
She shook her head. “The boat we came in on is gone.”
“Gone where?”
“We kept it tethered up at the dock for a while, but someone didn’t tether it up one night and it drifted away.”
“Do you think they might have done it on purpose?” Adam asked.
Ella hesitated, then shook her head. “I don’t think even the McTerrells would be that vindictive,” she said. “Having two boats benefited everyone.”
“Mmm,” Adam said.
He wasn’t at all sure he agreed with Ella. The Birkins seemed to take every opportunity to provoke and bad-mouth the McTerrells, and the McTerrells were no better. He could easily believe that either family would sacrifice a necessary resource in the name of harming the other.
“Did the McTerrells have a boat?” he asked.
“No,” Ella said. “They came in on a helicopter. The pilot dropped them off and then left. We’ve lost contact with him since then. And the helicopter wouldn’t be able to fly now anyway.”
“Ah.”
“Anyway,” Ella said, “no matter how I feel about them, I can’t take their only boat and leave with it. I can’t strand them here. It would be too cruel.”
“Yeah,” Adam agreed. “I know you’re right. I just…I can’t believe you’re stuck with them, after the way they sabotaged your future. And with the way they still treat you now. They act like you still work for them, Ella, and I know you’re not getting paid.”
“In a way I am,” she said quietly. “They’re giving me a safe place to stay. They’re sharing their food with me.”
“I know you do your share of the hunting. You caught the fish we ate for dinner last night! Those fish didn’t belong to the Birkins and the McTerrells.”
“No, they didn’t, but everything else does. Even the deer are only here so the members of the country club can hunt them. They were brought in using country club dues. They don’t belong to me. They’re not mine to hunt.”
“Everything belongs to everyone now,” Adam said. “You think some country club membership is going to stop me from taking what I need around here?”
“Don’t kid yourself,” Ella said. “You’re only here because they’ve decided to tolerate you too. You might as well consider yourself an employee.”
“No, I don’t work for them.”
“No?” She raised her eyebrows. “Why’d you mow the whole lawn, then, when Richard asked you to? I know you don’t think it needs doing. You were afraid of what the consequences of saying no might be, weren’t you?”
Adam couldn’t deny it.
“All we can do is put up with it,” Ella went on. “All we can do is try to live with them. We can’t afford to anger either family, so we can’t choose sides when they argue. We have to stay neutral.”
“I have no idea how to navigate that,” Adam said. “The things they say about each other—it’s crazy. The McTerrells are a lot, but I can’t believe one of them would mutilate a deer.”
“Well, somebody did it,” Ella said. “And the Birkins are right—the McTerrell family has never shied away from animal cruelty in the past.”
Adam had no idea what to say to that.
“Watch your step with them,” Ella warned, and disappeared down the hall toward the stairs.
Chapter 9
The next morning, Adam avoided the Birkins and the McTerrells as much as he could. He didn’t want members of either family gossiping to him about who might have killed the deer. Ella was right about at least one thing—he didn’t want to be seen taking sides. He didn’t want them to think he was favoring one family over the other. If an open fight ever did break out between them, Adam would take no part in it.
He busied himself in the kitchen for the first few hours of the day. He had found it a good place to go to get away from the rest of the group. Nobody seemed to come in here except to cook before meals and to clean afterward. Adam spent his time inventorying the food, creating a list on the ripped-out title page of one of the Santa Joaquina history books he’d found.
When he had finished, he took the list out to the shed where the larger stores of food were kept, thinking to inventory those items, too. On the way, however, he was waylaid by Ella.
“We’re going hunting,” she said. “You should come with us.”
“Who’s going hunting?” Adam asked.
“Olivia, Chase, and me,” Ella said. “There’s an extra gun, though, and we could use an extra set of hands to bring back our kill.”
Still he hesitated. “I thought you said we should stay o
ut of their way?” he asked. “Not take sides?”
She nodded. “You went out fishing with the Birkin boys yesterday, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“So today let’s go hunting with the McTerrells.”
He got her point. “Let me grab that gun.”
Chase and Olivia were waiting for them beyond the golf course, where the ninth green met the woods.
“Ever hunted before?” Chase asked Adam.
“Nope.”
“Well, it isn’t too hard, as long as you don’t have a problem with killing an animal.”
“Nothing I can’t handle. We’ve gotta eat, right?”
“Exactly,” Chase said. “Okay, just try to step quietly.”
Adam followed the rest of the group, bringing up the rear as they entered the forest.
“Do you think they’re hunting on the mainland?” Olivia asked.
“In some places,” Chase said. “In the Midwest, almost definitely. I bet that’s where the most survivors are. Places with low population density and a lot of natural resources. The cities must be pretty much wiped out by now.”
“Really?” Olivia sounded frightened.
“Probably,” Chase said. “Think about it. With people packed so close together, the bots would have been able to jump from host to host really quickly. But if you were living in a cabin in the woods somewhere, you were probably safe as long as you hadn’t gotten the tech yourself.”
Chase was right, Adam knew, but he could have been a little gentler in the way he’d said it.
He was reminded of Langley and Rhett in the fishing boat yesterday; the cool, analytical way Langley had talked about the virus and the way Rhett had laughed about death. None of these people had been very badly hurt by the things that had happened to the world, he thought. If Olivia was afraid, she was afraid of what was left for her on the mainland, not what was happening to the rest of humanity.
“Are you from a city, Adam?” Olivia asked.
He nodded. “San Francisco.”
“Is Chase right? Was it ruined?”
“Well, when I left, things were getting worse,” he said. “But we kept up with the news reports on the boat, and yeah, things got pretty bad there. My guess is most of the people in San Francisco didn’t make it unless they escaped the city early, like I did.” He didn’t mention the mass graves he and the others on the boat had seen, the piles of bodies being set on fire on the beaches.
“Did you have family there?” Ella asked him quietly. She was always so quiet around the Birkins and the McTerrells. Adam had thought, when he’d first met her, that she was shy. But she wasn’t shy with him. It seemed more likely now that she was protecting herself.
“My mother,” he said. “And my stepfather. They were in LA, actually. But they died of the virus. My mother had the nanotech.”
Ella rested a hand on his arm briefly.
“That’s what happened to us, too,” Chase said. “Our mom got the tech.”
“Just your mother?”
“She and Dad were divorced,” Olivia supplied.
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
Chase snorted. “We’re not. All they ever did was fight. It was good when they got divorced. At least we were finally able to get some peace and quiet.”
“And you lived with your father?” Adam asked.
“I was too old for custody to even be an issue,” Chase said. “Olivia had just turned sixteen. We kind of expected a court case, but there wasn’t one. Mom just moved out of the house one day. Didn’t even ask us if we wanted to come with her.”
“Which we wouldn’t have,” Olivia cut in.
“Still, that’s sad,” Adam said. “It must have been hard on the two of you.”
Chase shrugged and pushed a branch aside with the barrel of his gun. “It made things easier, actually,” he said. “We didn’t have to make any awkward decisions about which parent we wanted to live with. We didn’t have to worry about them thinking we loved one of them more than the other.”
“Even though we did,” Olivia added.
“Yeah. Well, it would have been weird to have to say it out loud,” Chase said. “This way, you know, it was easy. She left, and we didn’t have to worry about it.”
“And I guess she got the tech after the divorce?” Adam asked.
Olivia nodded. “That’s why there wasn’t a fight about whether Chase and I would get it too. If they’d still been married, they definitely would have gotten into it about that.”
“Did you want to get it?” Adam asked.
“Jesus, no,” Chase said. “We always thought the nanobots were creepy. I mean, injecting actual robots into your blood? That’s super weird.”
“I would have always felt like I had bugs crawling around inside me,” Olivia said.
Chase nodded. “I’m not at all surprised it turned out bad,” he said. “Even before we knew it was deadly, I thought it was kind of sick when Mom did it. I was glad she wasn’t living with us anymore. It would be bizarre to look at someone every day and know they had bots inside them. How could you do it? How could you let someone with that kind of tech touch you, even if you didn’t know it could kill you?”
“I guess her boyfriend didn’t mind, though,” Olivia said caustically.
Adam looked back at Ella. Her eyes were wide, and he imagined she must be thinking the same thing he was. How could the McTerrell children speak so coldly about their mother? Didn’t they have any feelings of grief or sadness over her death? Adam had had a complicated, often painful relationship with his own mother, but he’d never wanted her dead. He’d been deeply saddened when he’d learned she’d gotten the nanotech injection and that the virus had claimed her. But the McTerrells seemed to feel only anger toward their mother, even now.
“Her boyfriend had the tech too,” Chase reminded his sister. “Sickos flock together.”
Olivia nodded. “She took off to St. Maarten with him,” she told Adam and Ella. “Right after they got their injections. We got a postcard from her. She didn’t ask us anything about ourselves, didn’t even wish us well. She just said she’d be relaxing on white sand beaches for the rest of her days, which would probably be a long time now that she wasn’t susceptible to cancer or heart disease.”
“And then she died,” Chase said. “And I guess the guy probably did too. Serves her right.”
Adam felt chilled. “How did you find out what happened to her?” he asked.
“We would have known anyway,” Chase said. “We knew she’d gotten the tech. But she actually had the nerve to get in touch with us again after she started showing symptoms.”
“Called us up,” Olivia confirmed. “She was coughing and choking and trying to tell us how much she loved us. How much we meant to her. Yeah, right. If she cared so much about us, she wouldn’t have left in the first place.”
Adam shuddered. He wondered whether Olivia and Chase had said something kind to their mother during that final conversation, whether they had told her they loved her too. Based on the way they were talking now, he thought it was more likely they had been cruel. He wondered if they’d told her they didn’t forgive her, that they didn’t care that she was dying.
What a way to go, Adam thought. He couldn’t help but feel sorry for Mrs. McTerrell, even though she had abandoned her family. She hadn’t deserved what had happened to her, in his opinion. That was more than anyone deserved.
The McTerrells frightened him. Until now, he’d thought they were the more easygoing of the two families. They were certainly quicker to laugh and slower to reach for a gun when they saw a newcomer. But if these children could be this harsh, this unforgiving, to their own mother…
Maybe Rhett had been on to something last night. Maybe the McTerrells were responsible for the mutilation of the deer. He would have to ask Ella later what she thought.
“Get down!” Chase hissed.
Adam dropped to a squat. “What is it?” he whispered.
“There’s a b
oar there.”
“A boar?” Adam squinted through the brush. “I thought it was just deer on this island.”
“So did we. Guess we were wrong.” Chase sounded pleased. “Pork tonight!”
“Can I shoot it?” Olivia asked.”
“Let Adam try first,” Chase said. “Hold up your gun, Adam—that’s right. You want to sight along the barrel. Line up just a little lower than you’re trying to hit. Steady now…wait for it…”
Adam’s finger brushed the trigger.
“Fire!” Chase hissed into his ear.
Adam fired.
The recoil punched the butt of the rifle into his shoulder and the shot rang out through the woods. Adam stumbled back out of his squat and landed on his butt. He knew already that he’d missed. The boar was squealing and kicking up a ruckus, clearly trying to flee for its life.
Ella jumped to her feet. Two quick shots rang out and the animal fell to the ground, dead.
Adam got up slowly, brushing the dirt from his pants. “That was amazing. Great shot.”
She shrugged modestly. “It was a big target.”
Chase handed his weapon to his sister and tramped through the brush to drag the boar back.
“Where’d you learn how to shoot like that?” Adam asked.
“The Birkins,” she said, not meeting his eyes.
“The Birkins taught you to shoot?”
“They went up to Oregon on a hunting trip once,” she said. They brought me with them. I learned on the trip. It’s not a big deal, really.”
Adam couldn’t help feeling that she was being evasive. “You learned how to shoot like that on a single hunting trip?”
“Is it that hard to believe?”
“Well, you’re amazing at it. Today was my first time and I’m a disaster. It’s not…hard to believe, exactly, but it’s pretty impressive that you got that good at it after one time out.”
He didn’t tell her what else he was thinking—that her story didn’t sound all that plausible in the first place. He had met the Birkins. He knew what they were like. They definitely hadn’t struck him as the kind of people who would take their housekeeper on a family vacation and allow her to participate in the fun. If they’d brought her on their hunting trip, he thought, they would have left her at their cabin to prepare their dinner for when they returned from the hunt.
Escape The Dark (Book 2): Fearful World Page 7
