"Well, I suppose it's a common enough name, but you never know."
"You never know what?"
Brown drew in a deep breath. "You don't know a Luna Ramos do you? She said her mom's a deputy."
"What?!" Paulie shrieked.
The little figure sitting beside the bed stirred, awoke and looked up.
"Mommy!" She leaped up and threw herself into Paulie's arms as the sheriff swung her around, their tears mingling as they whirled.
Luna pulled herself back, her face puffed up and wet. "Mommy, Uncle Alejandro, he's sick, real sick."
Paulie caught the eye of the doctor. Brown gave a small shake of the head, and the tears came again.
Chapter 16
Solly and Ross had headed west as fast as they could manage after their escape from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. The gunfire had been dying down as Solly had returned to their quarters to find Ross ready to go, having packed all their gear.
Their pickup had been parked nearby and Solly's plan was to wait for the Lee Corp fighters to retreat and then try to sneak out in the chaos that followed it, using the rips they'd made in the perimeter fence to escape through.
They drove the car to the edge of the base building complex and waited for the telltale whip-whip-whip of helicopter blades spinning up. As soon as he saw the navigation lights rising, he stabbed his foot on the gas and half slid his way over the broken chain link, praying that they weren't running over razor wire. It was a desperate chance, but it worked and, aside from the odd stray round cracking off into the night around them, they were able to make their escape across the airfield and find an open gate to accelerate through.
Once they'd gotten away, Solly was determined to put as many miles as possible between them and any pursuers. The first part of the journey went quickly, as the military had cleared the roads of vehicles, but they soon got bogged down again and were forced to take shelter in the small town of Richmond, IN, less than sixty miles from the base. Solly wanted to get below ground so that they could examine the cylinder. He'd been treating it as if it were a loaded weapon ever since he'd been told it had a mind, imagining it was some sort of super smart Alexa. It lay in its shielding, stowed at the bottom of his bag in the trunk, just in case it could hear them talking.
So, they'd left the pickup in a dark corner of the underground parking lot at the local mall. They'd seen a few people as they drove into town, but there was no sense of an organized community here and no sign of life in the carpark—probably explained by the overwhelming stench.
They parked the car beside a stairwell on the bottom floor, took their packs out and, flashlights at the ready, forced the "Staff Only" door open. With a sigh of relief, Solly drew air into his lungs and smelled nothing more odious than a faint aroma of oil and floor polish.
"Here, an office," he said and opened the door onto what once must have been the hub of a little empire. The flashlight swept the walls, revealing calendars, staff schedules, employee of the month awards with photos of smiling recipients, and down onto a tidy table with a three-tier letter tray. Solly imagined a small and neatly dressed man or woman sitting in the worn out office chair, lecturing one of their subordinates on timekeeping. In another world only weeks away.
Solly sat in the chair, pulled the cylinder from his pack and laid it on the desk beside a tiny stress toy in the shape of a dinosaur that, Ross discovered, did unmentionable things when it was squeezed.
"Come on, Ross," Solly grumbled, handing his flashlight to the boy to hold. "This is serious."
He rolled the cylinder back and forth until he found a seam that ran along the length of the shielding that had been added at the base. It looked like a silver foil, but, on closer inspection, Solly could see that it was translucent and crisscrossed by lines of fine wire. As he nudged at the seam, he noticed that it was held together by nothing more than Velcro, so he took a letter opener from the desk and began prying the two sides apart.
"Look at that," he said.
He'd expected to find that, once the shielding had been removed, the device was more or less unchanged, though he'd hoped to see some evidence of the claims made by the scientist from the base lab that it was “alive.”
In fact, Brendon had removed the original surface of the cylinder which, as it turned out, was merely a protective skin. Gone was the smooth metal finish to be replaced by an intricate mesh of embedded wires covering the entire device save for one area of black glass that, presumably, functioned as a display. More than anything else, it reminded Solly of the handle of a light saber.
"What does it say?" Ross said, "Look, right there, writing."
Solly brought the device up close. "It says ALISON. Some sort of acronym, I imagine. Well, at least we know what it's called.
Hello, I am Alison. Are you my father?
Solly leaped out of the chair and, with an involuntary spasm, dropped the device onto the table where it rolled into the base of the letter tray.
"It spoke!" he said to Ross. "You heard it, didn't you?"
Ross, who'd flattened himself against the inside of the door, nodded mutely.
Solly crept back to the table and rolled the device gingerly back toward the front of the desk. It came to rest with the display facing him.
Are you my father?
A pixelated eye made up of cyan dots scrolled onto the black display, then settled there, moving back and forth as if searching for something.
It's dark in here. I'm frightened.
There was nothing else for it, but to play along. He'd talked to Siri and Alexa often enough, after all.
"Who are you?" The real question he'd wanted to ask was “What are you?” but that somehow felt inappropriate.
My name is Alison. Who are you?
"I'm called Solly."
Are you my father? I am not supposed to talk to strangers.
Solly paused for a moment. If he answered “no,” the device would probably lock itself and not respond to his questions. On the other hand, lying didn't come easily to Solly Masters—a weakness that had gotten him into trouble more than once over the years. But then again, this was only a machine and, after all, Solly wasn't Ross's father, genetically speaking, but he took parental responsibility for the boy despite that.
"Yes, Alison, I'm your father," he said, shooting a glance at Ross and shutting down his retort before he had a chance to say anything.
Oh good. Where are we, father?
"We're in the basement of a car park in Richmond, Indiana."
Is the key here?
"No." Solly had no idea what the key might be, but it certainly wasn't here. "Do you know where it is?"
No. I need it, but that's all the information I've been given.
"Don't worry, we believe the key is in Arbroath and we're heading there at the moment."
Hooray! I'm so happy to have met you, father. Or would you like me to call you daddy?
"Father will do," Solly said. "Time to go to sleep—do you know how I deactivate you?"
Silly father. I go to sleep all by myself: if you'll tell me a story.
And so Solly Masters sat in the dark and recounted the tale of the Three Little Pigs to a glowing metal tube until it dimmed and went out.
"Am I the only one who's freaking out?" Ross said as they got back on the road. They'd spent the remainder of the night in that little office because it was moonless and Solly didn't want to be driving through a strange town in the dark lit up like a mobile lighthouse. As soon as the lights had gone out, he'd wrapped the cylinder in its sheath as he suspected this would keep it in a deactivated state until, if ever, they chose to open it again.
"I can promise you, telling a story to a smartspeaker, rather than the other way around, ranks as possibly the weirdest moment of my life, and it's had a lot of competition over the past couple of months."
They turned onto a road heading north and Ross wound down the window, filling the car with chilly but wonderfully fresh air. "It was the eye that was the
weirdest thing. I thought I was Frodo on top of Amon Hen."
"'Take it off! Fool, take it off! Take off the Ring!'" Solly said, and the two of them laughed as the car picked a path along the highway heading north, united in geekdom on a sunny winter's day.
It was only a brief respite, however. As soon as the sounds of their laughing and chatting were replaced by the rush of the wind through the open window and the truck's diesel engine, his mind began to pick again at the mystery of the cylinder.
Whatever else Alison might have been, one thing was obvious—she was a child. He didn't know how that could have been possible in an artificial being, but he'd reconciled himself to not learning a lot from her. He hoped he wouldn't live to regret deciding to impersonate her father. What if she discovered the lie? He was reminded again of Alison's resemblance to a lightsaber and found himself wondering if she might prove to be a similarly powerful weapon. After all, given how important she seemed to be, this was the only explanation. A second wave was coming and she, he was told, could stop it—that only made sense if she had some destructive power to oppose the Lee Corporation.
"Where are we heading for?" Ross said as they found a clear section of highway and picked up speed.
"I want to go north before turning west," Solly responded. "So, I'm heading for Chicago and we'll pass it on the south. Then it's just a matter of going west until we get there. If we hit the sea, we've gone too far."
They made good progress that day and spent the night in a motel room in Lafayette. This time, they chose the upper floor, but the first room they went into was already occupied by the dead, so they found the closest one that looked over the parking lot. They'd seen some traffic on the road as they'd headed north, all of it moving toward Chicago and, as they watched, a car turned into the lot and drew up next to their truck.
"I'll deal with this," Solly said. "You stay out of sight."
"I'm getting fed up with you saying that. We're supposed to be partners," Ross said to Solly's retreating back.
A man was standing beside the truck looking into the cabin. His handgun swung around to face Solly, who'd called from the cover of a low brick wall in front of the motel.
The man put his weapon on the roof of the truck and raised his hands. "I don't mean no harm," he called. "It's just me, my lady and a baby. We're headin' north. Looking for somewhere to stay the night. We can move on if this is your place."
Solly watched as a young woman got out of the car holding a baby.
"Get back in, Martha, it ain't safe," the man hissed.
Solly stood up and tucked his weapon into a pocket of his coat before walking cautiously toward them.
"If you really don't mean any harm," he said, "then you're welcome. We've only just got here."
The man looked around as if searching for others. "We?"
Solly nodded. "Me and... my son." There, he'd said it.
"My name's John Baptiste," the man said, relaxing as he walked forward, hand extended. "It's good to meet a friendly face."
Solly took his hand. "Solly Masters."
"That there is Martha," he said, pointing at the woman with the baby. "And little Jenson."
"Your wife and son?"
Baptiste's face registered surprise and then sadness. "No. I found Martha when I was passin' through Denver. She had the little one with her."
"Jenson's the son of my old neighbors and I couldn't just leave him there when I found them passed away. John saved me."
"Ah, I just did what any right-minded person would do," Baptiste said, his pale skin coloring.
Solly gestured toward the motel. "You're welcome to stay here. It'd be good to have some conversation. Where are you headed? Chicago?"
"We're going to Virginia," Martha said as she walked into the dark hotel lobby.
"Why?"
Baptiste turned in surprise. "We're answering the call."
"What?"
"The call to arms. Haven't you heard? There's a president in DC again. The government's back."
Khaled lay on his bed in the white cell, looking up at the ceiling and watching imaginary patterns forming, moving and disappearing. He'd been left entirely alone today, unlike yesterday when Commander Chen had been triumphantly exhorting him to join her on the winning side.
He sighed as he remembered the good old days when she was simply Lia Chen, Chief Administration Officer of Lee Corporation and utter devotee of Annabel Lee. On the rare occasions he'd seen her, she'd struck him as a clever, capable, woman, though perhaps frustrated that she'd reached a glass ceiling because administration wasn't going to offer her a route to the very top of the tree. Well, she'd certainly solved that problem. The chief security officer had disappeared in suspicious circumstances and Lia Chen was promoted to replace him. This had all happened six months or so before the Long Night and she now headed what was, in practice, a private army.
"You take stubbornness too far," she'd said yesterday. Khaled had revealed nothing under interrogation. Frankly, their attempts to intimidate him were pathetic for a man who'd been subject to the tender ministrations of the Egyptian police in his youth. He suspected that they still valued him and wanted to learn what he knew while inflicting the minimum damage, but he'd managed to resist so far. What did he care about himself? He'd lost just about everyone that mattered to him.
So, Chen had visited him. "But we will succeed despite your resistance to our questions," she'd continued. "You see, we know that you arranged for something to be smuggled out of the building, and we know where it went. We lost it for a while, but, I'm delighted to say, we have found it again. And, tonight, I am sending an entire squad with helicopter support to retrieve it. I guarantee they will not fail."
They had. This was obvious by Chen's absence from his cell today. She suspected that Khaled wasn't the only employee working against her, and the opportunity to gloat in front of the person she saw as the ring leader of this resistance would have been too great to resist. Somehow, then, Solly and Neil had gotten away with the device or, at least, Khaled had to hope that it was them, as seemed likely. Neither knew what it truly was, but he'd impressed on Neil how essential it was for it to get into the hands of the man calling himself Pastor Smith on the northwestern coast.
Alison. It had been Scott Lee's passion project for many years arising, Khaled suspected, from his frustration that Annabel had no interest in having children with him. He'd kept it from her for that very reason and the project had remained secret until a few months before the Long Night when Scott had revealed it to Khaled and thus drawn him into the conspiracy to fake his death.
Even Khaled didn't understand the full implications of Alison. He only hoped that the project wasn't, in truth, merely a way for Scott to play happy families with an imaginary child. There was, of course, the other one—the one modeled entirely on Annabel Lee herself, the one the Lee Corporation knew all about. He hoped never to encounter that model. The last thing this shattered world needed was the return of the person responsible for its destruction.
Chapter 17
Alejandro died that evening. Paulie was there when it happened and so, at her insistence, was Luna who, though only ten years old, had made her point of view crystal clear. Alejandro had looked after her for the past seven weeks and she wanted to be there for him, even though he couldn't possibly know. Neither of them noticed it happen. One moment they were nodding off, arms wrapped around each other in an easy chair, the next minute Luna and Paulie were both sobbing.
"Why couldn't you come quicker?" she wailed. "I texted you, I even prayed, but you didn't come."
Paulie's heart sank and a black shroud descended. She'd received one of Luna's messages when she'd connected her smartphone to power weeks ago, but she'd had no way of knowing when it had been sent and had felt duty bound to stay in Arbroath. Now she knew she'd been wrong. She should have gone that day, driven down to LA, found the two of them and brought them back with her. Alejandro would now be alive, and her daughter wouldn't hate he
r. Fear had stopped her getting on the road south—fear that she'd find out for certain her daughter was dead. She vowed never to let it rule her again.
It was an 85-mile drive north from Johnson Green's community back to Arbroath, and Paulie wanted to cover that distance in a single day, so they set off as dawn arrived. Green emerged from the main building, half dressed with mist steaming from his mouth, and implored her not to go.
"You told me that there are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people on the road heading for my town. I need to get there before they do, or they risk being turned away. In any case, that's where I belong."
And that was that. She felt a pang of regret as it seemed to her that, unlike the toxic community she'd spied on in Seattle, this was a true example of what was possible if people with good intentions came together. Arbroath was another, and that was where she was heading.
It had taken every ounce of determination to get Luna into the front seat of the car that morning. In fact, it was only Dany's presence, leaning over from the back and nuzzling the girl's ear, that persuaded the child to acquiesce.
Luna had wanted to see Alejandro buried in the little community graveyard and, to be truthful, so did Paulie, but there was no time to delay. Having seen the ugly side of her own people only the previous week, she did not want to leave their reaction to chance when refugees started appearing on their doorstep. Most of the folk inside the walls had no inkling of what it was like out here and what drove others to walk the dangerous roads north to their town. Arbroath, it seemed, was a beacon, and it was drawing people from far and wide.
The first half of the road north was familiar as Paulie had traveled down it over the previous couple of days, but fifty miles in they hit a fork and headed into less familiar territory. Almost as soon as they moved onto I-20, the obstructions increased, and the way became much harder to find.
They passed little groups of people moving in the same direction as them and, at one stage, she was forced to draw her pistol to face down a man trying to get a lift for himself and the two women who were with him. They looked exhausted, but Paulie knew that, if she stopped for them, she would probably get stuck as others begged for assistance. No, it was better to make sure that they got the help they needed when they arrived. If they made it.
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