The smug tone in the voice was more than Tyler could stand. He nudged Kenny with an elbow, giving him a look that said, Do your thing.
“Howie don’t do drills or diddly squat!”
Laughter rippled through the crowd. Kenny’s Tourette’s was often a source of amusement for those who weren’t the target. He smiled at the seething man who turned to face the fourteen-year old. Kenny shrugged his shoulders and tried to look sheepish.
Rosemary’s mouth twitched at one corner. “Kenny can’t help the outbursts, Howard. You know that. About the drills, you’re wrong. It is never a bad idea to be prepared for the worst. I think it’s a prudent course of action, and we will take a vote now. All in favor of a full-participation evacuation plan, raise your hands.” She counted, frowning. “All who oppose, raise your hands.” She counted again, then sighed.
“Twenty-three for, twenty-eight against. Very well, then.”
Tyler knew Rosemary. She would still put something together, even if the Colonists didn’t participate. It was another quality he admired about their leader – Rosemary placed the safety and well-being of her people before everything.
“Next order of business,” she started to say, but was interrupted by an outburst at the front table.
“He’s choking!” someone yelled.
Everyone stood, trying to see what was happening. Through the melee, Tyler watched Amelia push aside people much taller than herself to get to the table where Howard sat. Tyler edged his way to the table as well. He had taken first aid classes during his academic career, and even though they had focused on drowning situations, his training might be useful to Amelia.
The tiny woman stood on a bench with her arms wrapped around the torso of the much larger man – a backward bear hug. She was giving him the Heimlich maneuver.
“I don’t think he’s choking,” she said after several attempts.
The man’s face had turned crimson. His eyes bulged.
“He’s getting air. See his chest?”
Rosemary nodded.
Howard collapsed onto the sandy grass.
“If he can make sounds, he’s not choking,” Amelia said.
He was making sounds – horrible, gurgling, gagging sounds.
“Can’t you do something?” Rosemary said.
“No,” Amelia replied, tilting her head as she watched the man on the ground. “No, I can’t because I believe he’s been poisoned. I’ve seen it before.”
“Poisoned?” someone shrieked. “Oh my god!”
As if to underscore her diagnosis, foam began streaming out of Howard’s mouth, a bubbling rivulet of pink saliva. His eyes rolled back.
“A fast-acting poison. I’m afraid it’s too late for ipecac syrup or charcoal, which I don’t have at the moment anyway.”
She kneeled beside the dying man, taking his hand in her small one; the gentle, wise expression was tinged with sadness now.
She said, “Go to the light, my brother. Your time here is done. It is not the end, but the beginning of your next adventure. Be at peace.” She might have been speaking to a wounded animal.
Another stream of red-flecked saliva gushed out of the open mouth and pooled on the sand beside him. The Colonists watched in mute horror.
His chest rose and fell a final time, then didn’t move again.
For several heartbeats, nobody spoke. Finally, an anguished sob pierced the night, breaking the collective reverie. Everyone started talking at once. Tyler took a few steps back, allowing his focus to shift from person to person.
Lucas stood next to Rosemary now. The two exchanged pointed expressions.
Hector wrapped a protective arm around Ingrid’s shoulders. She frowned, but was not distraught.
Kenny wormed through the crowd to get a look at the dead guy.
Chin, the Colony’s oddball mechanical engineer, studied the crowd as did Tyler. The face was inscrutable as always.
An angelic voice began to sing the loveliest rendition of Amazing Grace he had ever heard. Charlotte stood off to the side, still wearing her apron. In the moonlight she appeared almost pretty, even with the missing teeth.
He felt something being slipped into his hand. He didn’t turn; he knew who was behind him.
Amelia returned from the kitchen carrying a tablecloth. She draped it over the dead man’s body and then his face.
After Charlotte’s song ended, Rosemary said, “The meeting is adjourned, folks. Lucas and I will get to the bottom of this, I assure you. Do not panic. Be vigilant in locking your doors and windows. I recommend the buddy system. Try not to go anywhere by yourself.”
“The buddy system isn’t going to stop a poisoner,” Ingrid said.
“Maybe our murderer will choose another method next time.”
Ingrid pressed her lips into a tight line.
Tyler took a few steps farther away from the mass of anxious, horrified people, and turned his back. He sought the light of one of the tiki torches, then unfolded the note in his palm.
Midnight.
There was no specified location for the rendezvous, but he didn’t need an address. He knew where to find Zoey.
***
“Tell me you’re not responsible for Howard’s death,” Tyler said to the woman who stood inches away.
Even in the gloom of night, her beauty was flawless. Achingly so. His stomach tightened into a painful clenched fist. He hated the effect she had on him – an effect she had evoked the first moment he laid eyes on her all those months ago. He could deny her nothing.
“What if I were? The guy was a douchebag.”
“Were you or not?” Tyler demanded.
The full lips spread into a smile. “No. Feel better now?”
She reached up to him, winding her fingers into his hair then pulling his mouth down to hers.
He was lost in her kiss. Minutes, perhaps hours, passed. Finally, with strength he didn’t know he possessed, he pulled away.
“What’s up your ass?” she said, amusement in her voice, and also a hint of annoyance. She didn’t like it when someone resisted her.
“I’ve become attached to these people, Zoey. I don’t want to see them get hurt.”
“Even the douchebags?”
“Even the douchebags.”
“I wondered what the hell was going on here. You were supposed to report back weeks ago.”
“And that’s why you washed up on our shore.”
“Of course. Do you think I would let you go so easily? Or allow these people to have a better life than we do? Have you forgotten your mission?”
He had not forgotten his mission. But he wrestled with whether he would complete it or spill his guts to Rosemary instead. If he chose the latter, it would allow the Colonists to prepare for the inevitable invasion from Tequesta...
...his home before he had traveled to the Colony as a spy.
Chapter 21 – Jessie
“I forgot how hot it can be up here,” Jessie said. She wasn’t complaining, but she admitted she might have become a bit spoiled in Cthor-Vangt, where you were always comfortable and always had enough to eat.
She walked on a cracked, weed-choked blacktop highway in Central Kansas. She supposed now that cars were no longer driving on the surface and there were no workers to fill in the cracks, the weeds would take over. She wondered how much time would pass before all evidence of people was gone.
Thousands of years? Millions?
“It doesn’t get this hot in England,” Harold said, removing his fisherman’s hat and mopping his brow with a bandana.
Harold walked on the other side of Tung, who said he needed to be in between them at all times. He said that was so he could keep them both safe. Jessie’s scythen told her he felt a heavy burden. They were above ground now, and she and Harold were his responsibility. If anything happened to either of them, it would not go well for Tung with the Cthor. They could be kind of mean sometimes. Tung carried a weapon that he would use ‘as a last resort.’ She caught a glimp
se of it when they had first emerged onto the Kansas prairie after the ride up on the special elevator. She would like to study the opening of that elevator when they returned. If you didn’t know where it was, you would never see it. It was disguised to look like a grove of cottonwood trees, but if you squinted your eyes just right, those trees looked like something on an alien planet. Just like the weapon Tung carried in his pocket. Of course neither were alien at all, just ‘futuristic.’ That was the word he supplied when she had asked about their appearance. Maybe when she was older, she would be taught how all these futuristic things worked. At the moment, though, she was excited to be above ground. And if she were lucky, there might be an opportunity to go to Florida.
She missed Amelia so much sometimes it gave her a stomach ache.
“Are we walking all the way to Tennessee?”
It was funny to hear Harold’s British accent while speaking in the ancient Cthor language. Harold had mastered it already, but Jessie still struggled with many of the words, so she was relieved when Tung replied.
“When we’re up here, we speak in English. Or whatever is indigenous to our location. We don’t want the locals to inadvertently hear a language that hasn’t been spoken for millennia. Even if they won’t recognize it.”
“Very well. So that’s a yes on the walking?”
Tung smiled. He seemed almost cheerful today. Jessie suspected he enjoyed being on the surface almost as much as her. Of course the world had changed since he called the above ground home. He had been recruited many thousands of years ago. Jessie herself could live to be very old, maybe even as old as Thoozy, who had been the oldest harvested human ever.
She missed Thoozy almost as much as Amelia, but because Logan had murdered him back in Liberty, she would never get a chance to see him again. The thought made her eyes water.
“What’s wrong, Jessie?”
“I was just thinking about Thoozy.”
“I miss him too.” Tung paused, then said, “Harold, we’ll try to find a vehicle or perhaps some horses along the way. The problem will be to locate a car that will start and which contains gasoline that’s still good. I expect most of it has turned by now.”
Harold nodded. “Oxidation.”
“Exactly. Batteries will no longer start on their own, so we’ll need one with a manual transmission, which we can push start.”
“Righto. We call that ‘popping the clutch’ back home.”
Even though Harold’s areas of expertise were old civilizations and old languages, he knew a lot of other stuff too. Like the word for what happens to gasoline when it goes bad.
Jessie had much to learn. In addition to a regular education such as any nine-year-old child would receive, she was also learning about the Cthor and Cthor-Vangt. She didn’t mind, though. She loved to learn.
“Riding horses would be fun,” she said. “I hope we find some.”
“I don’t,” Harold said with a grin. “I’m quite spry for a sixty-seven year old, but sitting in a saddle all day wreaks havoc on one’s bum.”
Jessie laughed. She liked when he said that word.
Harold gave her a wink, then said to Tung, “I’m surprised you don’t have some advanced chemical to put into the gas tanks of these vehicles.”
“The Cthor protocol is ‘When in Rome.’ They want us to fit in, which means no magic elixir to make the cars run.”
“Pity, that. Well, at least it’s a lovely day, and we’re getting plenty of exercise.”
“There’s a car up ahead.” Jessie shielded her eyes from the sun with one hand and pointed with the other. “A Cadillac Seville. That’s what it says on the trunk. It’s white. Do you see it?”
“I can just make out a metallic shape. Goodness, child. Your vision may also be exceptional. That’s something we hadn’t considered.” Tung looked at her like she had suddenly sprouted an extra eye in the middle of her forehead.
She shrugged. “I can see really well. My daddy always said so. Even at night.”
Jessie could tell her new mentor felt even more weighed down with responsibility now. Perhaps she shouldn’t have let him know how well she could see. She liked him and didn’t want him to be stressed out. That was a term she had learned from her daddy before the end came. He had been very stressed out when everyone started dying. It was an awful time and she had tried to block it from her mind, but sometimes the memories crept back in. The months she had spent at the Circle K convenience store in Arizona after he died had been lonely and terrifying. She didn’t ever want to be alone like that again, so she always tried to make the people around her feel happy.
“What are the odds it will have a manual transmission?” Tung said, standing next to the Cadillac now.
It was getting hotter by the minute. The sound of the cicadas came in waves – a chittering tide of noise that ebbed and flowed in the air like water. The words streamed into her mind, unbidden. She knew now what it meant when that happened – her scythen had picked it up from someone. When she got better at managing the skill, she would be able to determine who had sent their thoughts and whether they were intended for her or had just randomly escaped from the sender. That’s how Tung had explained it. When she was younger, she believed they had come from monsters. She was glad she understood them better now, but they could still be scary. The thoughts of some of the people these days were not very nice.
“Less than ten percent, I would say.” Harold studied the car which was coated with a thick layer of dust and grime.
Tung opened the car door with a metallic screech.
This was the part Jessie dreaded. There was a dead person in there. At least they were mostly dried out now, though. Two years had gone by since people had started dying. She figured all those human bodies would decay and go back into the dirt long before the things those people built did.
She pinched her nostrils as the stench wafted from the vehicle. Boxes, bags, suitcases, blankets, and water bottles surrounded the body. Together, Tung and Harold scooped up the body sitting in the driver’s seat, and placed it on the side of the road as gently as her daddy did when putting her to bed. Neither of the men spoke, so she didn’t either. They soon returned to the open car door. Jessie had no idea how a manual-shifting car looked different from a regular car, but Tung did.
“Here goes nothing,” he said as he began to re-enter the vehicle.
She held her breath, not knowing whether the next moment would bring minor disappointment or giddy excitement. Before it was revealed, she felt a painful thump on the side of her head.
Everything went black.
***
Jessie felt like she was floating in a swimming pool. The water was warm. It must have been nighttime because everything was dark. Did people swim in their pools at night? She didn’t know. They had gone to the YMCA community pool back in Arizona a few times in the summer, but it closed at eight o’clock every evening. She knew you weren’t supposed to go swimming when it was raining, because if lightning struck the water, you would be electrocuted. Her daddy said water was an excellent conductor. She wasn’t sure what a conductor was, but she knew about being electrocuted. She did not want that to happen to her. Swimming at night must be different, though. She couldn’t imagine why it would be a bad thing, so she decided to keep floating in the darkness.
It would have been peaceful if not for the yelling.
It sounded like it was coming from miles away. It was a man’s voice, and familiar. Was he saying her name? She couldn’t tell. As she floated, she thought about whose voice it might be. It was definitely not her daddy’s voice. With a stab of sadness, she remembered he was dead. She had buried him herself under some heavy rocks back at the Circle K two years ago. He was probably dried up now, just like the body they had pulled from the white Cadillac Seville...
Her eyes flew open when recent memories crashed into conscious thought.
“Oh, thank goodness.” Tung stood over her with that stressed-out look on his face.
“What happened?” She rubbed the side of her head where it was hurting. When she pulled her hand away, her fingers felt wet. She stared at the bright red blood covering them, then squinted at her surroundings while trying to sit up.
“We were attacked by two assailants. I blame myself. I was distracted and wasn’t keeping an eye on you and Harold.”
“Where are they now?” she said, trying to sit up.
“Disposed of.”
She laid back down. “Did you have to use your weapon?”
“Yes, regrettably. They were not nice people, though, which made the task somewhat easier. Stay still for now, Jessie. I need to check on Harold.”
The next moment he was gone.
She lay on the hot asphalt looking up at the sky. There were no puffy-sheep clouds, so she soon lost interest. The meaning of Tung’s words finally registered: I need to check on Harold.
She popped up like the jack-in-the-box she’d had when she was three-years-old.
Her head was spinning and her thoughts were a little fuzzy, but otherwise she felt okay. Sea-green eyes scanned the perimeter. She saw the Cadillac not far away. In the other direction, Tung was crouched down next to a lumpish something lying in the middle of the road on top of the double white lines, the ones that meant you could pass other cars if they were driving too slowly.
The lump was Harold. She was on her feet the next second, running toward her friends.
Please don’t let him be dead...
“I told you not to move. You may have a head injury.”
Tung had unbuttoned Harold’s blue cotton shirt and was touching the chest with gentle fingers.
“I can help,” Jessie said. She could barely get the words out; it felt like she had swallowed a ping pong ball. She realized how much she had come to love her newest friend, maybe even as much as she loved Pablo and Maddie.
“Please sit on the ground, be quiet, and stay still. Let me see what is happening inside of him.”
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