by Brian Hodge
There comes a time when you no longer have the luxury of pride.
Still, we closed the gap and held each other, and something started to break in her. Every time she tried to say something, ask something, the words evaporated and she couldn’t quite get it out. How did we…? What was that…? Where are…? And why, plenty of why?
But if the dinosaurs didn’t get to ask the asteroid why, after having the run of the place for tens of millions of years longer than we have, there seemed no reason for us to expect any more consideration.
So as we huddled together for warmth, I told Lara most of what I knew and about half of what I suspected, and even though I’d wished she’d been Ashleigh, my heart still broke for her as she tried to process it all. Because she was sweet, and she was open, and as good a neighbor as you could ever hope to land next to, and as Cameron had said, if my instincts are correct, I don’t think it would take much to persuade her to give you a try.
This, just a few hours before he’d persuaded her to give him a try.
And I hated him for it. Now, at last, I could hate my brother with impunity. Whatever he was in all this, victim or instigator, I loathed him more for bringing Lara into this than for dragging me. After all, I was family, and cursed from birth. Lara, like Ashleigh, was innocent, collateral damage. Whatever the being that had been our mother had done to him, in its child-god tantrum, I hoped he suffered. I hoped his perception of time was so distorted that his suffering felt stretched over eternity.
“I need to ask you a personal question,” I said. “Starting with that day Cameron showed up, about a month ago…have you had your period since then?”
She looked at me, big green eyes full of dread, just inches from my own. “No, but…I shouldn’t be…he wore…I mean, I thought he did.”
“How late are you?”
“Only a week or two.” She shook her head fiercely. “That doesn’t mean anything. That’s not long.”
Except I could think of no other reason for Lara to have been spared the flames.
The only successful experiment our mother appeared to have conducted had been on herself. The rest had been failures to be disposed of like lab waste.
Which led me to believe that there was something different about her DNA, our DNA, something…compatible. It was the lock that these long-searching keys that had made their way to our world, through our atmosphere, had been seeking.
Maybe this was what Cameron had ultimately been running from. He feared he was next, and he didn’t want it. But free? Maybe not. I was certain now that this was the real reason why he’d shown up. No love, no reconciliation. Instead, he’d sought me out to take his place—but I brought, his last words, implied it—then delivered me.
But only after leaving behind a trace element of our lineage, the DNA we shared now taking root in Lara. Growing. Growing into something that may already have had a foot in two distinct worlds. Maybe Lara herself, as well.
“You shouldn’t be alive,” I told her.
I don’t know what she heard in that, any more than I know what I meant by it. She tried to run, though, and I tried to chase her, but after all this time without food or water we were so hungry, so thirsty, that neither of us got very far, and instead we collapsed into the leaves and dirt.
“We’ll think about that later.” My throat was so parched I barely got the words out. “We’ll just take it slow for now. Think about what to do about everything later.”
Lara sat on the ground in this unknown forest, huddled into herself, nodding. All the while, looking at me as if she’d never known me at all.
* * *
Before the afternoon was out we found berries, plus a pool of rainwater we were able to scoop and drink. After that we came across a weed-choked heap of mismatched junk, including metal appliances so old they’d rusted into lacework as brown as the surrounding foliage. The pile also held a prize: the carcass of a discarded sleeping bag. While it stank of mildew, it was more dry than damp, and after using the ragged metal to slice a few holes in the right places, it turned into something I could wear.
We also cut away a portion for makeshift shoes, but by now we were already far enough along that our soft, urban feet were bleeding and sore.
Still, the junk heap restored our hopes and energy. Where there was garbage, civilization couldn’t be far away. The sky began to darken before we could find it, though, an event that seemed to follow too soon after the sun’s midday peak, as though we’d jumped to later in the year, or…
Or we had awakened at a much more northerly latitude than we’d left.
Make it funny, make it something else for the bar story: Dude, you won’t believe how far away from home I ended up. I went to bed in Seattle, and woke up in the middle of British Columbia. Yeah, Canada. In the woods, almost 500 miles from home.
Why there? I have no idea…and no doubt but that she had her reasons.
Nightfall proved fortunate after all, because not long after dark, Lara and I were able to spot the glow of farmhouse’s yard light. One look at us, I’m sure, told the family that we weren’t capable of causing trouble, that we really were in dire need of help. They fed us, let us shower, gave us clothes and a place to sleep. And after a few calls, we even had a ride south in a truck.
Good people, Canadians.
We hit a bit of a snag at the border crossing into Washington, as we had no ID, no passport, no proof of citizenship. But after a flurry of phone calls, photos, and fingerprints, the situation got resolved in a few hours and we were on our way again. Lara and I were, after all, reported as missing persons from the same triplex in a Seattle residential block devastated by unknown causes the previous Friday night.
Police? Yes. Feds? Those too.
But what could we tell them? As far as I was concerned, it was an alien abduction. We told them, as well as we could, considering we’d had no idea where we were, where to find that forest of charred bodies. I didn’t let on that I knew there was a pattern in this that went back years. Somebody, by now, had to figure it out, and if they didn’t, maybe our species really was too stupid to live.
Nobody asked for a DNA sample, and I didn’t volunteer one. Didn’t even drink from one of their cups to leave a trace of saliva.
Oddly enough, for as much damage as there was, Lara and I were the only residents of 18th Avenue NE who’d turned up missing. As if the being that had been my mother hadn’t known precisely where to find us, and had to go looking house by house.
As for the others who’d been brought to the wilderness, but hadn’t survived…apart from Ashleigh, I still have no idea who they were, or why they were taken, or from where. A control group, maybe?
I just keep mentally circling back to that night of shelter at the farmhouse, after Lara and I were clean and fed and warm again.
“Is it just me,” I asked her, “or do these people look like they’ve seen people like us out here before?”
* * *
And that’s about it. About all I can tell.
By now it hurts to type, and my thoughts no longer seem entirely my own.
So just a little more, this last bit while I still can.
Home, these past weeks, has been Ashleigh’s apartment. All I had to do was knock on her neighbor Rafael’s door and get the key. He was uneasy about surrendering it, because he was so used to feeding and walking Isis, and without the key how could he get in if he needed to, so I told him, well, how about you take Isis for yourself, because you obviously love her and she trusts you, and because…
It was the first he’d heard that Ashleigh wouldn’t be coming home again.
But we saved the dog, right? There’s always hope when you save the dog.
I’m afraid the rest of us aren’t so lucky.
It used to comfort me, the basics of matter and energy. Matter can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed. I liked knowing that my elements and atoms, held together for the time being by some ineffable force, would eventually disperse a
nd be put to other uses. This one here, in my finger, would help make up a neuron in some future woman’s brain. This other one, in my left retina, would drift onto a mountaintop, or go into the engine of the first manned spacecraft built by the human race to leave our solar system. It was the ultimate in recycling.
I don’t like this anymore. There is no more comfort in it.
Now it appears that death is no longer necessary for the process. I am being recycled in place. Repurposed, and acutely conscious of it happening.
I shouldn’t be alive—I know this. But I’m no more able to kill myself than I could kill Lara. She stayed here for our first exhausted night after we got back to Seattle, but the next morning she slipped away, vanishing utterly, driven either by the fear of what was going to happen to her or by her new fear of me.
But that’s not who I was. It was never who I was. I should have told her, let Lara know that I was already starting to view things differently, so neither of us would have to be alone in this. What would be the point to either of us dying when our new kind is already loose in the world? None. The asteroid has struck.
So for now I don’t leave. I stay away from the windows. I’ve smashed all the mirrors.
We are gods in the making now, Lara and I, and that I couldn’t kill her is the one thing that gives me hope. It proves to me I’m different, not like the one who made me what I’m becoming. I can be something better, benevolent and just.
We are gods in the making, but I’ll be something more. The ancient myths are full of stories of warring gods. And there is another out there I would destroy, if I can.
Like so many people, I’ve always wished I’d been born to a different family. I found one anyway, and tried to leave the other behind, and even thought I’d succeeded.
But it’s not as easy as it sounds. Those first people are always there, behind and underneath. No matter where you go, no matter what you try, you’ve still been programmed to be a continuation of them.
They have their seeds in you anyway, and by the time you discover where, it’s too late to dig them out.
About the Author
Brian Hodge is the award-winning author of eleven novels spanning horror, crime, and historical. He’s also written over 100 short stories, novelettes, and novellas, and five full-length collections. His first collection, The Convulsion Factory, was ranked by critic Stanley Wiater among the 113 best books of modern horror. The capstone novella of his second, “As Above, So Below,” was selected for inclusion in the massive Century’s Best Horror anthology of 100 exemplary works of the 20th century.
Recent or forthcoming works include another standalone novella, The Weight of the Dead; No Law Left Unbroken, a collection of crime fiction; a newly revised hardcover edition of Dark Advent, his early post-apocalyptic epic; and his latest novel, Leaves of Sherwood.
He lives in Colorado, where more of everything is in the works. He also dabbles in music, sound design, and photography; loves everything about organic gardening except the thieving squirrels; and trains in Krav Maga, grappling, and kickboxing, which are of no use at all against the squirrels.
Connect through his web site (www.brianhodge.net) or on Facebook (www.facebook.com/brianhodgewriter), and follow his blog, Warrior Poet (www.warriorpoetblog.com).
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Table of Contents
About the Author
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