“This is it,” Sam says. “But we've still gotta get past the first guard tower, and then the other two.”
Josephine sits up and blinks repeatedly as though she's just woken up. “You may need my help to do that. They'll have questions that won’t be easy to answer.”
I hope she's able to help. I'd really hate to get gunned down now that we have my dad’s last journal. Although I guess there’s never really a great time for being gunned down.
Josephine taps the window with her index finger. “The guards know we were headed to the Palisade Palms with David. He notified his security team, because they keep tabs on his location at all times. They'll want to know why he isn't with us, and where he is. If we tell them he’s still there, they’ll be alarmed that they’ve lost communications.”
My mom's sadistic husband rules this entire island with an iron fist.
“Tell them he’s sending you out as a delegate to speak to the Marked who are gathering,” Sam says.
“That will be a hard sell. I haven't left the island by car in years. When we travel, we usually go by boat. They'll want to know why David would risk my safety by sending me toward a dangerous mob of Marked children.”
She sucks at improvising. “You’re a queen, though. Tell them King Solomon sent you to deal with the Marked that have gathered, but his plans are top secret and you can’t divulge details. You’ll be negotiating on his behalf, and he’s sending your daughter to learn from watching you.”
She shakes her head. “David doesn't negotiate, not with Marked children, or anyone who comes to make threats.”
I shiver. He doesn't negotiate because he just kills them. In fact, he's got a “Cleansing” planned, in which he intends to wipe them off the face of the earth forever. He sees the children on the hormone suppressant as a plague to be eradicated.
Sam slows the van, and turns around to face her. “Josephine, I need to know if you can handle this. You don’t have to say we’re negotiating. Say you're taking a message for the Marked from your husband, or that you’re delivering an ultimatum, or that you’re painting their fingernails. I don’t care, as long as they believe you and they let us past.”
She frowns. “They’ll never believe I’m headed over to paint their nails. That doesn’t even make sense.”
I roll my eyes. “The point is that you tell them something and you’re firm about it. Anything you think will get us past. Can you do that?”
Josephine folds her arms under her chest. “Nothing will make this seem normal.”
Sam growls. “Tell them you baked cookies that cure Tercera, or that you're going to teach them to read because God commands it. Tell them anything, I don't care, as long as you don’t tell them we left your husband, infected with Tercera and lying in a pile of unconscious guards. Guards I knocked out. Got it?”
My mom starts shaking, and I wish I was sitting in the back seat so I could put my hand over hers. I try to make eye contact, but she drops her gaze to her lap.
She needs reassurance, but Sam barks at her instead. “Can you keep Ruby safe? That’s what this comes down to. You lost her when she was a baby, and never found her, not in seventeen years. She’s survived entirely without a mother. Now that she has one, will you shelter her, or are you a liability?”
Josephine stares at her hands for three full seconds before looking up. “I will keep Ruby safe.”
“Good.” Sam drives up to the guard tower slowly and rolls down his window. A tall, thin guard with a carefully trimmed goatee walks over to the van. He's holding a clipboard and a pencil, but the men behind him are armed. They look at us with narrowed eyes and twitchy fingers. Sam glances at the clipboard dismissively and turns his eyes back to the road. “We're headed off the island on King Solomon's direct order.”
The guard looks at Sam and frowns. “I’ve never seen you before, and there's an army of infected infidels on that side of the bridge. Maybe you hadn’t noticed them.”
Sam doesn't even glance his way. “We're aware.”
Goatee shakes his head. “I have very clear orders. No vehicles in or out.”
“Orders change.” Sam glances back at Josephine, but she stares straight ahead without saying a word.
Goatee follows Sam's gaze and this time his eyes widen, and he bows. “Queen Josephine, you're planning to leave the island?” He steps even closer, close enough that I see my own reflection in his shiny buttons.
He taps on the window, but when Josephine doesn’t react, he looks her up and down. His eyes narrow, probably because he’s noticed her empty eyes and disheveled appearance. The right side of her face is puffy and red, and her dress is torn.
Goatee clears his throat. “Your Majesty, would you please step out of the vehicle while I call for confirmation? I want to make sure I understand King Solomon’s instructions and we’re all on the same page.”
He opens the side door and gestures for Josephine to step out. At the same time a shorter, squattier guard in an identical navy-blue uniform with the same row of shiny gold buttons appears on the other side, just outside of my door. He yanks the door handle and opens my side before I can think of a reason to object.
He motions for me to exit the van, but I shake my head dumbly. “We're under specific orders to leave the island and approach the Marked. You have no right to detain us.” And yet unless Sam’s willing to mow them down, we aren’t driving past them.
“I am not trying to detain you, merely to ensure you're safety,” Squatty says. “On whose orders are you leaving?”
“Are you deaf as well as short?” Sam asks, “We just told you. Queen Josephine is here, and we’re all following King Solomon's direction. Right, Your Highness?”
Josephine nods, but counterintuitively exits the car as they asked. Something comes over her when she leaves the van, as though being around all these soldiers fills her with the confidence of command. Her shoulders straighten, her back stiffens and she walks straight ahead with assurance. I wish I knew why she was walking briskly past the guard tower, and the grouping of guards in navy-blue uniforms. I scramble out of the van, Dad’s journal clutched in one hand, and jog to catch up to her. Sam and Job exit the van too, and fall in behind us quickly without saying a word.
Squatty and Goatee both call out for us to stop, but Josephine ignores them, so I follow her lead. Eventually they stop calling us, but I notice they’ve picked up the phone and are calling for direction. Not good.
We walk quickly toward the second guard tower where four other guards are standing. Their faces are full of uncertainty. I glance at a black phone on the side of the guard tower, relieved it's not ringing, and none of them have thought to pick it up.
One of the four men next to the guard tower reaches for Josephine as we pass, but a sharp glance from her and an inhalation of air, and his hand drops to his side. “Your majesty, are you sure you want to leave the island? And do you really mean to proceed on foot?”
She glances his way, eyes snapping in a way I've never seen, and he falls silent. We all follow her lead, walking past them as though they don't have any authority to detain us. Once we've gone more than a few dozen paces away, she whispers, “Never allow an inferior to believe they have any control over your actions.”
We walk steadily along, but I really wish we hadn’t been forced to leave the van behind. Does she mean for us to walk the entire length of the bridge? We’ve gone more than a mile, and there are several more to go. I want to ask, but no one else seems to be concerned. I glance back at Sam and widen my eyes, but he just shrugs. We can't very well argue with Josephine in front of so many armed men.
Thirty yards past the second guard tower, Josephine slows down. I keep walking fast initially, hoping she'll match my pace, but she doesn't. It occurs to me belatedly that she might be in pain. King Solomon beat her brutally when he thought my blood unlocked Donovan Behl's safe, confirming in his mind that I wasn’t really his child. King Solomon thought he was my father, and sadly he may yet be. Donovan's safe has a blood
key, so only someone of his bloodline could open it.
After reaching Galveston and discovering my mother was alive, I sort of fell apart. I didn't want to deal with any of it, so I borrowed some blood from my cousin Job, who is undeniably Donovan Behl's twin sister's son, plain and simple. I knew his blood would work, and it did.
Of course, David Solomon thought it was my blood that opened the safe, which would mean that I was Donovan Behl's daughter after all. He didn't process the news well, beating my mother brutally until I stepped in to stop him.
I touch her arm gently. “Are you okay?”
She looks up at me with eyes wide with sorrow and a quivering, swollen lip.
I repeat my question.
“You shot him,” she says. “I don’t understand why you shot him. He wasn’t hitting me anymore.”
When I stole the tranquilizer gun from his drawer, I assumed the dart would only incapacitate him. It was labeled with a capital T. “I stole that gun from a drawer in his desk. The only reason he’s infected with Tercera is that he had it hidden in a drawer. King Solomon obviously used it to infect other people. Otherwise, I never could have infected him to begin with.”
“Either way, now he's going to die because of what you did. There's no cure.”
I don't remind her that I hit him with the accelerant too, also taken from King Solomon's own desk. It was labeled only with an A. I wasn't sure at the time whether it was an antidote or an accelerant. If I'm being honest, I'm glad it was the accelerant.
Tercera kills slowly, far too slowly for the man who killed my dad and beat his wife for at least the last decade. During its normal progression, other than a minor rash on a patient's forehead, there are no other symptoms for the first year. The sores start in year two, worsening throughout the year, and organs stop working properly sometime during year three, eventually leading to total organ failure. It's a miserable way to go, but slow. Very, very slow. With the accelerant, which I'm pretty sure King Solomon developed himself, he shouldn’t make it more than a week. Two at the outside limit. Our only real gauge is that he used the accelerant a decade ago to wipe out hundreds of thousands of people—the entire US government. He killed them all so he could seize control, so I'd call being hit with the accelerant himself poetic justice.
Seems like my mom, who inexplicably still loves him, might not agree with me.
“I thought it was a tranq at first, but the bigger question is, why do you think he even had that stuff? Was he infecting people with Tercera for the last ten years?”
Why isn’t she wondering why he had it? Why isn’t she upset at him for hiding a deadly virus and using it for. . . Actually, I have no idea what he'd use it for. Perhaps to eliminate rivals or threats? The entire situation is disgusting.
“Why would you shoot him at all?” Her voice wavers and her hands flutter up and down.
“Let's review. First of all, he undeniably shot my dad, while I watched. He hasn’t said he didn’t do that. In fact, his only defense is that Donovan Behl isn’t my biological father, which I don’t think we know one way or another.”
“Don hid you from us for years.”
I nod. “Which is actually really sad if I’m David Solomon’s daughter. But even so, killing Donovan seems excessive.”
“You can make that determination once you’ve lost a child,” Josephine says, the steel in her voice surprising.
It’s the first time I’ve seen any real strength in her.
“I’ll give you that one, but Solomon doesn’t contest that he wiped out the government, and let the world burn while he hid here in Galveston. He’s basically a dictator.”
“He keeps our people safe and prosperous.”
“History shows that the people frequently love their dictators, but it doesn’t mean their people are free. But even if we allow all of that, I watched him beat the crap out of you. He kicked you in the stomach over and over with no sign of stopping until I stopped him. You didn't even seem shocked, so I'm guessing this isn't new behavior.”
“And?” She frowns.
“He deserved to die by Tercera. If I’d had a regular gun with regular bullets, I’d have used that instead.”
“I deserved the beating he was giving me. I made him angry.”
My jaw drops.
“Don't act self-righteous here, young lady. Wouldn't you be angry if you learned your wife had been unfaithful to you? If you believed she lied to you, you would react poorly as well.”
“Mom, you were married to Donovan.”
She shakes her head. “I was, but we were separated when I met David, and I was faithful to him. I swear I was. If we go back, I can explain to him.” She looks down at her hands, staring blankly at her empty palms. “There's a misunderstanding somewhere in all this. It isn't true that you're Donovan's daughter. You're Solomon's child, I know it in my heart.”
I draw my eyebrows together and really look at her. My mom's still shuffling along, eyes fixed on the ground beneath our feet. “If you were married to Donovan when I was conceived, I don't understand how you can be so sure I'm Solomon's daughter.”
“I was married to Donovan.” She sighs. “But I know you're David's daughter. I knew it then, and now that I've met you, I know it now.”
“I look just like you. I look nothing like either of them.”
She tsks. “It's in your eyes and your smile. Even your sense of unyielding certainty and your intelligence all speak to me. You're David's child, you must be.”
I growl. “So what? Who cares whose daughter I am? Even if he thinks you lied seventeen years ago, do you really think you deserved to be shoved and kicked, Mom? No matter the reason?”
“I let him down. His anger and disappointment and frustration was justified, yes. We all must atone for the things we do that are wrong, and what I did was wrong. I should pay for that. Don't you agree?”
I grab her arm and she stops walking and turns toward me. “You didn't do anything wrong! Geez, I'm not even sure I am Donovan's daughter.”
My mom yanks her arm away, her eyes wide and clamped onto my face with burning intensity. “What are you talking about?”
She needs to keep walking. Why did I say anything? I glance behind me and notice the guards. Even with the wide space between us, I can tell they're shifting and watching us. “Nothing. Let's go.”
She grabs my arm tighter than I'd have imagined possible with her waify, delicate frame. “I demand you explain yourself, young lady.”
I sigh, and whisper, “I used Job's blood to open the safe, not mine. He's Donovan's nephew, so I knew his blood would work. I wasn't sure whether mine would at that point, and I wasn’t ready to find out.”
She shakes her head. “I watched you use your own finger.”
“It was a trick, okay? I don’t understand why you’re fixated on this so much, because no matter whose blood I have-” I think back to my dad's words in his journal. Her blood now carries something that is more mine than any DNA could ever be. My dad didn't think I was his daughter, not biologically, and he didn't care. My mom's sure Solomon is my dad. I shiver. “Donovan Behl is my dad, okay? Not your sick, twisted husband.”
My mom's face flushes red. “If you didn't use your blood to open that safe, you are his daughter, Solomon's flesh and blood after all. He'll forgive me, he’ll forgive both of us, I'm sure he will.” My mom smiles then, so wide it nearly cracks her face in two. “We must tell him right away.” Her fingers dig into my arm, and her eyes take on a feverish light.
I shake her hand off my arm, barely succeeding. “He isn't going to hear it, Mom. He's dying, remember? Quickly, since I hit him with the accelerant too.”
Mom turns toward the guards, and they notice she’s intent on them, even from this far away.
“Stop! Mom, there's nothing for you back there.”
“No.” Her eyes widen in terror. Her hand shoots back out to grip my wrist. “He mustn't die. You said there's a cure, when we were in the van headed this way. I heard y
ou say it. What is it, and where can we find it? You have to help him, he’s your father!”
I grit my teeth. “I'm not going back. I’ve been over this and over it. He deserves to die. He killed the only real father I ever knew.”
She stops walking and raises her voice. “If we don't save him, he'll never forgive us.”
I don't point out the absurdity of her statement. Sam and Job flank us now, keeping one eye on the guards and one on me. Sam doesn't say a word, but I know he's wondering how I want to play this.
I glance back toward the World Peace Now, or WPN, guard tower and notice the guards aren't confused anymore. I'm surprised to see they're moving backward, but it's purposeful. My eyes track ahead and I notice the tallest guard is heading for a large truck.
This is bad, very bad.
“Mom, we'll talk about it once we've reached the other side, I promise.” I point at the mass of bodies we can barely make out just out of range of the final guard tower, near the end of the long bridge, still more than a mile away.
“Those are Marked kids, Ruby. That's why the guards didn't want us trying to leave. Why would you run into the arms of infected children when you know King Solomon’s your father?”
I yank my hand free again and stomp my foot. “You aren't listening. It's like he’s broken your brain, and maybe he has after all these years of beatings. That man may have donated DNA to my body, but he shot my real father. He’s a monster, do you hear me? He's planning on killing a bunch of innocent people because they're infected with a virus that for all we know, he unleashed on the world! He isn't my dad and he never will be. My only real regret is that I hit him with Tercera back there instead of an actual bullet.”
Mom's face drains of blood, and her hands shake. “You shouldn't speak that way about a man you don't even know. If only my ex hadn’t gone mad, you’d have been raised by your father and me and none of this would be happening. We’d be a happy family right now.” She glances down at the leather journal I'm holding, and before I can guess what she plans to do, she snatches it from my hands, spins on her heel and sprints backward toward the black truck that's now barreling our way.
Sins of Our Ancestors Boxed Set Page 27
